Mike Zeller: THE GENUIS WITHIN | The Tyler Wagner Show #1092

Everyone, welcome back to another episode. Today we have Mike Zeller with us. So welcome to the show, man.

Tyler Wagner Wagner, so glad to connect and can't wait to dive in. I get to learn from you today on how to market books. Are you going to teach me some secrets? This is like a free hour of consulting for me, right?

Yes, I'm down. I will definitely do that. But I do think that based on the research I've done about you, I think that we're going to learn some more interesting stuff by me asking you questions, but we could do both. I'm open for both. So, just to start us off though, because the people already know about me, tell me or tell us about a little bit more about you.

So, I've started 16 different ventures, done over 9 figures in revenue, but I'm also the author of The Genius Within. And it was really through a crazy series of where I lost $1 million, then my wife had a 2.5-year battle with mental health, and that kind of caused me to add a new layer to my mentorship and coaching. And it's basically, I help people rewire themselves from sabotage to success by reprogramming your identity, your belief structures, and your energy. So letting go of trapped and negative emotional energy and trauma using everything from NLP, advanced neuroscience, psychedelic mushrooms, some other tools in my toolbox, but to really help reset because most of us are stuck in some form of self-sabotage. So, and I work with high performers from around the world and it's a ton of fun.

All right, this is going to be a good one. So, okay, first question, like, so you had 6, I think you said 16 different ventures and now you're helping a lot of like, I guess you say world leaders, business owners, different types of leaders. Before all this though, I always think this question is interesting. When you were like 14, 15, did you foresee yourself doing any of this or what was the grand plan when you were in middle school or high school?

My grand plan was to be a pro baseball player back then.

All right.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I wanted to— I was throwing baseballs in my basement to develop my hand-eye coordination and I was just all in on baseball. But I quickly realized by the age of 19, I was like, man, this is going to be really hard. And there's a lot of people way better than me at baseball, even though I had a lot of inherent athletic ability. But I was like, all right, I got to find a different pathway.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Interesting. And when did you— sorry, when did you decide to kind of change pathways? Like college?

Age 19, after my freshman year of playing baseball in college, I had a, had a coach that was hardcore, and half the team quit by midseason. And I realized, man, this was no fun. Why am I sacrificing the best years of my life for a game? And when there's so much more to explore, you know, there's girls, there was adventure, there was beauty, places to travel to, and I didn't need to just be on a ball field all the time.

Hey, we're in alignment on everything you just said there. I like that. That's all. That's actually crazy though. Half the team. And obviously we can change topics, but I'm just like very quickly curious, did something ever happen to that coach? Because I feel like if I was like the owner of that school or whatever, I'd be like, dude, you're doing something wrong.

Half the team.

I'm like, what happened?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was trying to clean house basically. But he, it felt like he was being a Nazi for us. And, and, but You know, he softened up in the next few years, but he was still pretty hardcore. But he realized, hey, I got to change my approach because I'm— I can't keep losing good players that are just not coming back.

Got it. All right. So I have like from everything that I've researched about you and even just your short intro there, there's like 30 different questions. So what I'm trying to do is organize them in the best order I see fit, which is difficult. So Let's start with the first one, the million-dollar loss. That seems like something interesting. So, how did that happen? Tell us more about that.

First, I'm a creator on the Wealth Dynamics Profile, which is my favorite test for showing, for entrepreneurs, for showing your natural pathway for building wealth. Is that Roger Hamilton? Yep. Yep.

Okay. I love Roger Hamilton. Sorry.

Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're dead on. And you look at who are the creators, it's usually the crazy, guys that take on too much risk. They're irrationally optimistic. It's Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs gets kicked out of his own company and then flounders over at NeXT Computer. Elon Musk, Tesla was almost bankrupt multiple times, had one month of cash left and needed rescues from the federal government and investors and all that. SpaceX almost went out of business multiple times. So I took on too much and I couldn't rescue the companies that I was a part of, especially when my cash cow business disintegrated basically a month and a half, 2 months before our wedding. And that was providing the cash for the businesses. It was a partnership split that was unanticipated and was a surprise. And long story short, I just had too many irons in the fire and I was trying to juggle too many balls, which is a creator's challenge. You start too many things. And really disciplined creators, Richard Branson's one. He starts a business, but only starts a business if he's got the right operating partner. And so, I've had to learn that lesson painfully. And so, I lost actually a little over $1 million over about an 18-month period and had to do a whole financial reset that there's still pieces. A few years later, I'm still cleaning up smaller pieces, but it's much better now. And then, that led into mental health battle. Really, when my wife got pregnant, that triggered a lot of childhood trauma that came up as well because she is a 3-time suicide survivor from a crazy abusive upbringing. Is that— I got thrust right into like, how do I figure out trauma and PTSD and complex PTSD and panic attacks and all these things while raising an infant? So—

Dude, that's wild. And I mean, I can relate to like one of those topics of the panic attacks. Those are nuts, dude. Like you really— like at least when I've had them, You think you're gonna die. Like it really feels like you're dying. Yeah.

Yeah. And she'd have sometimes 2 of them a day and 3 or 4 a week for like 30 minutes or a couple hours almost. And, and, uh, it, it was the cleaning up that or handling that was harder than the million dollar loss. Um, yeah, just emotionally it's so, you know, so close, but yeah.

I believe it, man. Yeah. I, when I was in, uh, and luckily I, I mean, still occasionally randomly I have them, but I went through a period of like 6 months. Where I would literally have like 5 a day, like maybe 3 times a week. And I would go, I went to the hospital 6 different times for it. Wow. And every time I would go, they were like, you're a healthy, young, thriving 26 or 27-year-old. Everything's perfect. And I'm like, dude, no, it isn't. I don't feel good at all. And it ended up being somewhat linked to like, like alcohol and gluten.

Yeah.

So when I removed gluten from my diet and like very much lower drinking, They pretty much went completely away.

Wow. Crazy.

I don't know, like triggers, I guess, but yeah, different triggers. So, okay. Gotcha. So the, so rebuilding there, maybe I, I wanna talk about, so 16 different ventures. Is there any particular, I mean, I'm sure they all each have their own story. I don't know if we have time to go through all 16, but no, we don't. Be a couple that, is there a couple you wanna highlight that you think would be most interesting or that people could learn the most from?

Yeah. One of my favorite ones, the one that I'm most proud of, I would say is Providence Auto Group. So we built a CarMax-like car dealership in Nashville, Tennessee. We had a two-fold goal of create the best car buying experience in the state of Tennessee or in the Southeast, which we did and had the highest ratings. And then second, every car we sold helped us give away another car to a single mother or someone in need. And we gave away 40+ cars during my time of ownership and over $400,000 worth of vehicles, mostly to people that never thought they would ever own a car. And that was really, really cool. And so, that was part of our social enterprise brand development and brand story. And it was really cool to surprise someone. We would partner with nonprofits and they would choose the person that would receive it. People would show up without a driver's license because they thought they would never own a car. They'd be 25-year-old single mom with 2 kids. That was just so beautiful and meaningful to really meaningfully change someone's life. So, in new ventures, I want to have a strong giving component. We've had it in other ventures as well, but not as cool as that one. And then this next, I would say the venture that I'm most excited about is the one I haven't created yet. And so, there's going to be a mental health and neuro spa type venture that I'll create in the future, just my wife's journey with mental health and what I learned about mental health and how hard it is to cure. I feel like I've learned— technically, you can't say depression or PTSD is curable, but We've seen enough evidence that you can get in a much dramatically healthier state. And so I really want to see, especially the advent of, you know, the breakthrough status of psilocybin and MDMA and other things. So, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So really, I do find you to be like abnormally interesting. So I mean that like a good way. So that's why let me— let's actually go topic to topic and then I want to dive a little bit deeper into like the book and your like personal life. So, like, let's just talk NLP. I've never studied NLP, but I've met or I've had friends that have. Like, what's your overall take on it? I'm always just kind of curious about people that know NLP.

Well, I look at the evidence. Is there— if you look at Tony Robbins, why has he been so impactful? His core skill set that is the foundation of his teachings is NLP. And NLP is really the study of the most effective psychotherapists. Why were they getting so much better, such better results? And why, what was happening to people when they were having the breakthroughs? And it was usually an attachment of meaning that was changing, meaning, hey, I was a victim, this happened to me, to now that's a gift and I can use it in this way and I no longer feel the pain and sorrow and the hurt as much. And And so it's a psychological shift. It's like they say, you know, breakthroughs happen in an instant. Well, the aha, the shift, the energetic shift. And then there's some other pieces that's really cool with NLP. They— one of the most powerful elements that I use a lot is parts integration, or what Dr. Richard Schwartz calls internal family systems, where you have different psychological almost icons or identities. And so like I, in that time period where I lost $1 million, I named the part of me that was ashamed, that was feeling sad, that was feeling sorry for himself, that didn't want to show his face, I named him Weak-Ass Willie. And Weak-Ass Willie, if he's leading my life, I'm going to just hide out in my house and I'm not going to say hi to everyone and he's just going to keep living in shame. But then I had a client. I, I was— she was a physi— physician, a doctor in Bellevue, Washington, and I did a session with her. And at the end, she's like, Mike, you are creating magic in my life. You're Magic Mike. I'm like, ah, that's who— that's my powerful alter ego. I create magic in the lives of myself and my clients. And so Magic Mike helped me get out of that hole. Right? Magic Mike creates— so you figure out that powerful, resourceful state and you get those two parts to hear each other. And I got an author example of an author that I got unstuck as well, if you want, using that. So my friend Lori, she's written 80 books, all novels, uh, all that. So she's written— at one point she had built her business We did a VIP day and she'd built her business where she had become the ghost— or she was the face, no longer the writer, because it was like she had a formula, repeat, rinse and repeat, and she was bored with it. But she was making 7 figures a year from her business, uh, writing books. And her, her, uh, she had a team of 27 people. She's like, Mike, I feel like a fraud because I'm no longer writing my books anymore.

Oh, yeah.

And so that part of her was telling her to fire her whole team, go back to writing books that she didn't like to write anymore. And she said, but then the entrepreneurial part of herself said, hey, you're stupid. You're making 7 figures a year plus, employing 27 people, providing livelihood, and you don't even want to write these books. So those two parts were at war with each other. And she, after 2 years, she's like, "Mike, I'm in a state of such inner tension. I'm going to burn this sucker down or burn me down." Well, within a handful of hours, we had shifted it where those parts heard, understood, and appreciated each other. And she was able to basically realign and get on fire again. And no longer was there internal resistance, but there was internal alignment. And now she's still going strong 4 years later after that. Session.

That's so wild. And I actually, I've literally seen, I think it was in Tony Robbins Netflix documentary where he says there's like one guy in the audience he's talking to and he's like, change happens in an instant. And then he's very similar. So it's just interesting where I'm trying to formulate the question correctly. It's like, okay, change does happen in an instant, but it also takes a lot of work consistently over time to like produce results. So would you, is it kind of a good way to frame this or word it to say, like, change the way you view something can change in an instant, but like the actual results from getting something from that said change, that is not in an instant, obviously, right? So I don't know, it's just like, I don't know the best way to, to word it, but there is like a, there's like a paragraph or something that should be written about that. Yeah, I think it would help a lot of people because Yeah, I don't know.

I've got a metaphor for you.

Okay.

That is almost a metaphor of a breakthrough. Like, imagine that you're driving down a highway and you see Disney World. You just drive by it every day, but there's no freaking exit ramp. And Disney World could represent love, could represent the elimination of self-sabotage, could represent more money, money mindset, could represent greater health, adventure, living in Colombia, whatever. But you can't get off that freaking exit. Well, when you get that breakthrough, it's like there's an exit ramp now, but it's a gravel road. And you gotta get up, you gotta keep going off that exit, you gotta keep choosing. But now your mind has permission to exit off that gravel road. It has an exit ramp. Before, it didn't. I mean, because it's almost like our minds create new neuropathways, but sometimes we need a little assistance like a coach, NLP, plant medicine, whatever. And, when we create that new neuropathway, then we got to reinforce it so that gravel road becomes a two-lane highway. There's some gas stations, there's a McDonald's, there's a market, whatever, so that you keep going off and now you can get to Disney World. Over and over and it becomes almost your new way of being as that neural pathway is reinforced and reinforced and that old sabotaging pathway is let go of.

That is an incredible metaphor. It makes complete sense and I literally could visualize the whole thing. So that's all very good. We're going to clip that. So for the team that's going to edit this, clip that.

Okay.

Um, so let's now— let's move into psychedelics and stuff like that and plant medicines. So can you share maybe like, I don't know, the most interesting interaction or story that you have with plant medicines?

Yeah, you know, the— I'd say they, they have a consciousness, mainly the real plant medicines like psilocybin, not the LSD and stuff. I haven't experienced some of the others, um, but Psilocybin, ayahuasca, I'll speak from them. So when my wife and I, when she did psilocybin for the first time, she was in a very low mental state, like just no joy and just not feeling very hopeful in life. We do it for the first time, like the first time I did it, and this was only the second time I had ever done it, I felt this flood of gratitude. And joy. Um, but that is just a deep swell of gratitude of life and connectedness to life. Well, first time we do it, it's with her and some family members at our apartment at the time, and laughter. We just have this flood of laughter for 3 and a half hours, and it was almost like the plant medicine knew that that's what we needed, that's what her brain needed, because she hadn't laughed like that for years. And it was like, oh, by the way, Sarah, you can have laughter again. It's still there. Joy is still present. And I literally cried laughter for 30 minutes straight. And so did my brother-in-law. So there's just a consciousness to that that goes beyond a connectedness. It's almost like I see it as an avatar at the end of the first movie where the all of the animal kingdom rises up to defeat the destruction of the forest and everything. It's almost sort of like that of there's a healing force within the plant medicine that you got to know and respect and treat it seriously. But it's pretty insane and it's been amazing for healing our marriage, for healing a lot of other marriages that we're close to. That we've just seen this sort of thing work miracles in guided sessions and ceremonies, not just recreationally doing it on your own. Though that can be fun for some, but the joy of the ceremonial side is typically where the deeper healing is.

[Speaker:TYLER WAGNER] Dude, yeah. I mean, that's actually somewhat similar to my first few times with mushrooms, just intense laughter and just the gratitude feeling, like crying of laughter, just like amazing. It's like, I don't know, it's really kind of hard to describe almost the feeling. It's, it's, but it's very good. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So, okay, let's dive. So I think this is good start. So people have kind of background, some stories about you, but let's dive into the book and I want to talk about the content, but also the process that you took on the creation and marketing. And then if you have questions for me, happy to answer. A lot of our audience are people that are authors or aspiring authors because obviously, the audience is— a lot of them come from my business, as you're aware of. So, I always want to talk about the back end of the book. But before that, so Genius Within, I guess the most obvious question would be from the intro that you provide, like, how do you help high achievers find their deepest area of genius? And can you kind of go a little bit more into detail on that?

Yeah, yeah, good question. So the genesis of this book really came from my masterminds where I was leading a lot of high-achieving entrepreneurs and mainly in e-commerce and thought leadership space. And they were often in a season of transition, but I was like, "All right, if they're in this season of transition and they're different, they have a different life experience, they have different unique talents, they have different personalities, I can't give them the same cookie-cutter approach." So I have to gather data. And so I'd have people do basically 4 or 5 different tests. Now, I have them do 5 different tests, the Wealth Dynamics, DiSC profile, Strengths Finder, Myers-Briggs, and the Kolbe Index. And so that makes up the first of the 4 legs. Unique abilities is the first leg. So I want to gather as much of their unique talent. Where are they amazing at? And then where do they suck at? Be really clear about both. Because you're twice as likely to step into flow state when you're operating from your strengths. And when you're in flow state, you're 500% more productive and your increase in life satisfaction goes up dramatically. And so, I can figure out people's flows, what's more likely to induce them into flow state by gathering more data. Because if I gather all the data, the patterns pop like popcorn. So, that's step number 1. Second step is defining life experiences. Like, if I look back from the timeline at the beginning of your life to now, what are the moments that led you into what you're in? What are, what are the setbacks that led to a setup? What are the heartaches that are the breakdowns? Right. And if I gather those, then that often helps you understand your why. The third thing is your key relationships. Who brings you life versus who brings you death? Like at the time, I started dreaming about coaching and mentoring and getting asked to coach and mentor. I was primarily in real estate. Well, I like real estate agents and I like real estate investors, but I love being around authors and thought leaders. And I had all these— it was weird. I remember thinking one day, I was like, "Why do I have all these friends that are authors, but I haven't even written a book?" I don't know if I'll ever even write a book at the time. It's like, "Ah, but they bring me life versus some of these other people bring me death." So, I was asking myself, "How do I get around more people that bring me life versus death? And then where's my inherent natural cluster of relationships?" That's a clue. And then the fourth thing is your talents or your passions and your values. Your values are like that moral compass, that grid of what you're going to stand for, what you're going to stand against. And your passions are like, hey, your curiosities. If you look at Musk, Elon Musk, or Da Vinci, they're driven by curiosity. And we're all curious about something, and you can reignite your life by restoking the flames of curiosity. And then curiosity often becomes a passion, and passion often becomes a purpose, and purpose often becomes a path. So anyway, so I gotta tap into all that, gather all the clues, and without fail, if someone goes through the full process, whether it's a day session with me or through my course or book, they're going to have more clarity than they've ever had about who on earth they are and what on earth they're meant to do and how to make money doing their purpose.

Dude, that's incredible. And I think it's interesting because when people have asked me just kind of how, like, I've gotten to where I'm at, and I think you kind of said this without saying it how I said it, but I've come to realize in life, I think a lot of it is just taking action and then having a reflection period. And just becoming aware of like, how did I feel? Who am I naturally gravitated towards? And just like almost— and it almost becomes the question, if you've ever seen Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson have a debate about free will. So, it's almost like this thing of like, I guess, some things you may think you force, and I don't know free will or not, who knows? But what I'm getting at here is, sometimes you should look at your life as if there is no free will and just sit back and be like, what in the past month, what are all the things I did and almost didn't even realize why I was doing them and what made me happy, what made me not happy, what made me fulfilled, not fulfilled. And then you can have a path. And for me, it was as simple as like my, in college, my the degree I was going for was accounting. And I'm like the biggest people person ever. So, I was miserable the first year of like that path. And then, now I started a podcast like 5, 6 years ago. Dude, I could do like 10 podcasts in a day for 10 hours, 1 hour each, be— I would love every second of it. It doesn't feel like work at all. But you put me in a room by myself crunching numbers for 10 hours, I'm looking at the clock every 30 seconds like it's hell. And just noticing that, is actually, it's not just I don't like accounting and I like podcasting. It's like, oh, it's actually, no, I don't like really anything involving being by myself for 10 hours and solving shit. I like to just do this. Anything people-related is what I like. So, that's a huge understanding of myself. And I think if people take that reflection period more often, and they don't because life gets in the way, they're busy, family, work. And they never actually reflect on, like, what do they actually want to do?

Yeah.

You know, like, I don't know. I think it's interesting.

Yeah. And our life is littered with clues. It's just a matter of gathering the clues in an organized, systematic process that helps us see the evidence, almost like a, you know, Sherlock Holmes. I consider myself one of the best in the world at gathering evidence of what people are made to do.

Yeah, I like that. Like, how did you say that again? Life is littered with clues, and then what was the next part?

It's just a matter of gathering the clues and assembling them in such a way that the patterns pop like popcorn. It's kind of like you look at a Jim Collins— what's he doing in Good to Great and all his other books? He gathers the data, comes in with some guesses of what the data might show, but he lets the data speak, and he gets enough data, and then the patterns emerge. They rise up.

Yeah. So I guess it's like in the beginning you have to have some sort of like assumptions to then take action and then you assess how did the action meet against the assumption?

Yeah.

And then, you know, keep moving forward based on all the data collected. Got it. So now let's talk about like the process of the book. So how did you, like, what was the process of writing, editing, publishing, market? Like tell us everything behind the scenes. Unreal behind the curtain.

Yeah, yeah, no worries. Uh, so I read, uh, it was in 2021 that I really wrote— no, sorry, 2020 that I really wrote the book. And it was in a month. I basically wrote the, the main body of the manuscript in a month. So my wife was going to bed at like 9:45 at night, so that meant I was going to bed at about 9:45 at night because it was her first trimester of pregnancy. And she was really just— had a horrible round of morning sickness and all that. So I said, "You know what? I'm going to freaking write my book during the season. That's a lasting piece of something that could really be a nice foundational piece for me." So I would get up at 4:00 AM and take some nootropics and some matcha latte and write for 2, 3, 4 hours before really most of the rest of the world was even up, including my wife. And so I wrote, wrote it basically in 30 days. Um, and then from there, uh, I worked with a company called Book Launchers. They, they self-published, but they helped me. They did the editing, the proofreading, all that was included. They did some of the marketing in the sense of just helping me get on some basic podcasts. Uh, they did all the citations for me because I was like, I'm never gonna do that. Um, so, um Then they did the formatting and cover design. I paid them, you know, it was around $1,000 a month, so it was pretty reasonable. And so then it took me about 9 or 10 months to get it all the way done after that, and then I launched it. I didn't, you know, in that period we were still recovering from the financial loss, and my wife was in depression, and then we had just had a baby. I was like, you know what, I'm just going to get this book out there. I know it's not going to be a best— I didn't have a pathway and the energy and the finances to make it a bestseller. I know we connected originally around about then, but I was like, I just couldn't pull it off energetically. And but I was like, you know what, I'm going to give myself some grace. This is not going to be my home run book. My second book, which is going to come out next year, that one has a much bigger runway. And plus, my wife's first novel will come out. And so, I was like, "You know what? I'm just going to get it out, learn this game, get comfortable with it, and face that." I had a lot of imposter syndrome too because I was just coming off a million-dollar loss and feeling a lot of shame and a few other details around that as well that were just really embarrassing. And Anyway, so I was like, it's a victory just getting the sucker done and out.

I agree. I think that's why I always tell authors too, it's like, I mean, success is different for everybody, but at the end of the day, I think we can all agree whether the book sells 2 copies or a million, just finishing a book and like feeling good about it at the end, dude, that's huge. It's hard, dude. Like, it's just hard. So that's all. So then, okay, so that was the whole creation process and then And I guess some of the marketing was in that $1,000 a month package. But what did you— what would you change? So like, now that you have gone through the process once, based on what you learned, did you— is there anything that you did that was wrong or right that you wouldn't do or would do more of?

Yeah, getting on big podcasts is a real needle mover. So I would emphasize that a little bit more. And then But, you know, Dream 100 list. I did make a Dream 100 list that was very helpful, and I did get on many of those bigger shows. I liked, I liked also building, doing a lead magnet. So I had a nice little lead magnet called 6 Steps to Finding Your Deepest Area of Genius. I always had that on the podcast interviews. So, you know, I'll have that one here. And then I had a book funnel that was very helpful. So free plus shipping. So, that works out great. That's geniuswithinbook.com is where that's at. And that just builds your email list and audience. And so, highly, highly recommend doing those things. But then, if you have to pay money to be on the bigger shows, pay money to be on the bigger shows and get a really nice podcast one-shooter. I think I've got a pretty sharp one.

Yours is great. Yeah.

Yeah. So, what else? And then, link up. Like, start building the relationships at least 2 years before you you need them. And if you've got a show, like one of the things I don't have that I need to have next round is my own show so that I can invite people on. And then maybe I get a return favor when it's time for my book, help promote other people's products and services. And so next round, I'm going to have that.

Dude, I think, and all that was amazing, but I actually, I don't know, it just hasn't been top of mind because relationship building for me is such a natural thing. But one of the biggest takeaways there was like, build relationships before you need them. And again, because for me, it's just, I love doing it. It's natural. I did 100 phone calls a week for like 5 years of my life. I think I told you that's how I grew the business mostly. So regardless though, it's just so essential to like, I think that should just be almost like a part of like your daily routine is just like always thinking about relationship building. And then when your book comes out 2, 3 years later, you know, you haven't asked these relationships to do anything for you in 3 years. It's not that big of an ask to be like, hey, can you buy a 99-cent or $10 book or leave a review and share it? You know, it's nothing crazy of an ask. So, yeah, but if you don't have the relationship built for that amount of time, or at least for like 6 months, let's say, you know, if somebody's not going to just support you after knowing you for 10 minutes, I mean, they could, but it's less Exactly. Okay, cool. So, and then next year you have another one, I guess before I get into the last question, like what's kind of the overall game plan? I mean, I feel so, you know, 16 businesses, 9 figures revenue, so a big loss rebuilding 2 books. You're obviously impacting a lot of people. Like maybe the 20 years from now, what's it look like? Do you have any vision for that?

Yeah, 20 years beyond this, I'd say I'm gonna have like 10 to 15 books out by then.

Oh, heck yeah! That's awesome.

So I'm gonna keep writing books and creating more books, so it's definitely gonna be a big piece of my future. I've got more book ideas. Idea generation is easy for me, and actually I enjoy writing once I create enough focus for it. So Yeah, I think there's, there's a lot there for me. I want to keep launching and building bigger audiences, and I'm learning more and more. Once, once you get your feet wet, it becomes easier and you're less intimidated and less scared. So I feel a lot less scared this next round. Already have some relationships, easier for me to get another round of bigger relationships as well on the next Yeah.

Um, I totally agree on that, and that's with anything, but I think with books in particular, the first one is like terrifying, and then after the first one you realize like, dude, this is— I mean, it's not that scary. It's okay.

Yeah. Um, yeah, exactly.

So last question for you is like, if there's anything we didn't cover that you want to share, please do, and then, you know, let people know how to stay in contact with you and stuff and where to get—

Yeah. Yeah, I think we're good on my end, but I do want to ask, you know, ask you like a couple things on— so with my wife's novel coming out, would be the best, you know, we don't necessarily care as much about the bestseller initially, um, but what, what would be some ways to get really build an audience? She's not— she's going to be a bit like Atticus. Do you know Atticus, the famous poet? Oh yeah, yeah, that does it. Wears a mask and you don't know who he really is. Yeah, she doesn't want her face and name to really be out there. What would you say, like, to build audience, to get her— and her book is really freaking good. It's— she's a brilliant writer, one of the best I know. So it's a novel. Yeah, you know, it's one of 6 series, one of 6 in the series.

Okay, so here's, I'll kind of reverse engineer this and it's kind of cool that she doesn't want the identity to be known because the only difference in the strategy I'm about to say is that I, I guess you would remove in some way, you would remove interviews. You could do radio. Yeah. But like anything face revealing, you can't really do.

Yeah.

Wear a mask. But regardless how I've built everything in my life, basically is partnerships. So the fact that she doesn't want to reveal who she is, I mean, she's going to have to reveal who she is to some people, right? But not to the general, like, outside world. So I would just find, like, people that have large audiences of people that would be interested in her work, right? Like, for me to grow the business, we're big on book marketing. So I partnered with all the book publishers in the world. English, and they refer me all their clients. So if I was her, that would be the first thing is, and I guess it is kind of like the Dream 100 is I would research and find like, who are all the people that already have my audience that I could deliver value to them in exchange, they would promote my work to their audience. And, and then I would have virtual assistants. And I think Dream 100 is great, but what I would recommend, and this is gonna sound crazy, but I would recommend Dream 1 million, honestly, because you don't have to do the reach-outs yourself. You could hire a virtual assistant for $5 an hour and give them a templated message and you could do 1,000 reach-outs a day. Like we put over 10,000 reach-outs a day in my Authors Unite company for it to find partnerships. And the message says, hey, name, I think there might be ways we can collaborate. And that's all it says. And then literally like 60%, 70% of people respond and they're like, What did you have in mind? I'm always open to collaborate. And then you start the convo, book a bunch of calls, build out a sales team. So in this case though, you know, don't just stick to 100, like try to build as many partnerships as you possibly can and have them promote the work. Sorry, go ahead.

So what, what, what would a partnership look like for a thriller, a fiction thriller?

I think what it would look like is at the end of the day, I mean, you could do an affiliate deal, although you know, you don't make much money off the book sales really, you know? Yeah. So, but that's one little angle. Another angle is like, and see, to me, I don't view things as competition, although sadly a lot of people do. I always am trying to find the angle of collaboration. So literally what I would actually try to do, and there's other partners she could find, but her competitors, like who are thrillers that have successful audiences, and how can you build relationship with them where they would be willing to promote your work to their already built-up audience? And, you know, what value could she provide them? I'm not quite sure yet, but maybe she has her own show. And maybe it's also a situation where it's like, guess what? I can't help you as much as you can help me right now. That's okay. Maybe you just want to do it out of the goodness of your heart. And actually, a lot of people do.

Yeah. Cool.

You know, so yeah, I like that. And then reviews. Okay. So Amazon reviews and I have some people that I could introduce you to that help with this. But again, a lot of times it's either money or a lot of time, right? So the partnerships, try to get over 1,000 Amazon reviews and then run Amazon ads. Amazon ads are super cheap, like 7 cents a click. They're like nothing. So And if you have a ton of reviews, conversions are way higher. And it seems to be like the first benchmark is 100 reviews. That's when you'll see a tick in conversion go up. But 1,000+ reviews, you know, at least from perception-wise, you know, you're viewed as up there with the biggest books in the world. Like your book doesn't have 1,000+ reviews unless it's, you know, doing pretty good.

Wow.

So I don't know.

Those are just 3 things. So you're running ads to— on Amazon reviews, you're running ads to people who have bought and read the book before? Or just anybody?

I mean, you want to like start with your inner network and just ask people to leave reviews and build that up. And then after your Amazon page has 1,000+ reviews, then run ads to the book.

Yeah.

That's what I mean. And there was one last thing I was gonna say and I just lost it. If it comes back to me, I'll text you. I lost it. But oh, it's always gonna be, Ultimately, what I— because dude, I've been in this 12 years, around 4,000 books now. And what I've come to realize is like, it's really a two-part equation. And in the middle of it, there's so many different ways to accomplish it. But as long as the story is remarkable enough, and I got this from Seth Godin, he's like, you know, if you look at the word remarkable, it's something that's worth remarking upon. So, if the story is something where when people read it, they're like, oh shit, I got to tell my friend or share this with somebody. That's the first part of the equation. And that's not easy. Right. But that's the first part. And then second part is just get it in as many hands as possible. So like, even if it's like giving away a free PDF copy to like everyone on earth, like what, like just sending it. And then what'll happen is if people like it, they'll read the first chapter. Nobody likes reading 400 pages of PDF and then they go and buy it.

Yeah.

You know, so just get it in eyeball. So I don't know, I like volume plays. I'm not much on like the like everything has to be so targeted and strategic. Sometimes it can just be like, dude, just reach out to 1,000 people a day and eventually something good will happen.

You know? Like, at least that's been my spray and pray. Yeah.

But if you spray enough, I mean, I don't know. I mean, 10,000 people a day, there's 8 billion people on the planet.

Yeah.

Yeah. Eventually I'll reach all you guys, you know?

That's right. That's right.

But, but yeah, so I don't know. Yeah, that's great.

That's great. All good. That's really helpful. I'm going to do— I'm going to get my reviews up. Let's see. I got to get now, but I should still run ads right now, right? Even on my book, even though I have less than 100 reviews, I'm right at 36. 6 as of right now.

Oh, you could. I just wouldn't spend a ton, you know. I mean, they are so cheap, it almost doesn't matter. But it's like the conversions really do change a lot after it's in the 3 or 4-digit reviews. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, I feel you. Okay. Um, so I just need to get everything. If I can get it up, then I'm going to be in a great spot. Okay.

Yeah.

Perfect. Okay. That makes sense. And then what about where would I go hubs-wise? Who, who, who's the Tyler Wagner of fiction book, or are you the Tyler Wagner of fiction book marketing and exposure as well?

You know, I actually, my next podcast might literally be that answer. So I'm gonna talk to them about this. Uh, it's just funny timing that this lined up like this, but, um, we can, we've done, out of those 4,000 books, maybe 200 or 300 of them have been fiction. So like our— we're definitely not like— fiction's not our main thing at all. But the same thing that we discussed when we talked, however long ago that was, about how we do the Wall Street Journal stuff, we can do that for fiction on the USA Today list. So like, yeah, you know, I could get at the launch for a fiction book, I could get it probably 10,000, 20,000 99-cent sales. So like a very good like spike USA Today bestseller, leverage that in many different ways. So yeah, I would just say I'm better with nonfiction if I'm being completely honest.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, that's, that's— you're my go-to guy for my next book. My, my next book is going to be— that's the one I want to hit on the list for sure. So word.

All right. Yeah, we'll go big, dude. That'll be fun.

Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. Well, Tyler, dude, thanks for having me on, man. And actually, let me ask you one more question. All right. Book titles. So in my next book, it's— we're working on calling it Twice Born: How a Crisis Can Remake You. And it's all about the remaking. So you think post-pandemic, you think like going through, you know, people have been through bankruptcy, which I've been through one of those. You would go through the mental health crises, you go through all the different things. How do you use those crises? Is it wide enough? And deep enough. And I want to tell inspirational stories from like David Meltzer and others that have been through, you know, things. Winston Churchill, you know, went through a crisis that remade him. And I like it. So does it resonate where someone would pick up an inspirational book like that?

Yes. So I think it's really cool. And I do like the title and the subtitle. There's just one thing that I'm feeling an urge to share. So, like, one of our most successful books that we ever marketed, it's called Weightlifting Is a Waste of Time.

Oh, yeah. John Jackrush. Yeah.

So, and just to be fair, like, he does have a large audience himself, so I don't take full credit by any means for his, like, all the success of the book. But we did the initial launch for him, and he hit Wall Street Journal 2 weeks in a row. Yeah. And, but the reason I think that that book, cuz a lot of times, right? Like, you know, books will spike, they'll hit the list and then if the author doesn't continue marketing, inevitably they're gonna fall. Dude, this book is still cranking. It has like 4,000 reviews on Amazon. Like, I, I don't know how many copies he sold, but it's at least hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Like, it's killing it.

Wow.

And my theory on it is the content's good, it's accurate. I actually own his workout system and I think it works like— Yeah. X3 Bar is great. I love John. That's sick, right?

It works. I'm gonna do it tonight, dude.

Yeah, I did it earlier. It's, it seems like too good to be true when you're like looking into it, but it is true. It freaking works. Regardless though, the title is controversial and it caused, I think like it upset a lot of like people that are, you know, doing like hours of working out. Like, so I think, I don't know, just with your title and I, I do like it a lot. But I would just consider maybe messing around with other titles and maybe running ads and see what clicks and what doesn't. Because if that title somehow had controversy in it and made people feel an emotion, which maybe Twice Born does, I don't know, but not as much as like Weightlifting Is a Waste of Time, that pisses people off.

Oh yeah.

Like really intrigues them. So I don't know. That's my theory on why his book has done so well. Not just because the content, but It's kind of like the title makes you fucking feel something, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe it could be something like Twice Born: Can a Crisis Remake or Destroy You? Or something, I don't know. Yeah, where's the question or something?

The subtitle, some curio— like a curio— something that provokes curiosity, or like some sort of like negative emotion or positive emotion, or I think in his, it's like all of the above, you know, like for somebody who wants to have a shortcut with working out, it's positive. For somebody who's a fitness trainer, it's negative. They're like, screw you. Working out is not a waste of time. I know that. So I don't know. I would just mess with it. And as Tim Ferriss did, he wrote a whole article on his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, and how he tested stuff because it was going to be called The Lifestyle Entrepreneur, I think, or something like that. So you could run like some Google Ads, spend maybe $500 or something, and like you would discover somewhat. You probably need a bigger budget to truly collect enough data, but you know, and just see like what is actually causing people to like want to read more, look more into it.

So yeah, yeah, I love that. I think my— what I'm also going to do with Genius Within, I'm going to rename it and do a revised and expanded version. You can call it the true north principle or something along those lines as well that resonates with a deeper undercurrent of people's— how they think about purpose.

Yeah. And I think that provokes curiosity because look, the genius within, I think it's very clear, right? So I like that about it. But the north star, and I can't remember exactly what you said, but I just think that the north star thing, to me, that made me think like, oh, this is like, this is the way. Like, I'm curious, like, why is this so certain? I don't know. That's how I felt when I heard that. Like, I wanna know this guy's so certain about this. So I don't know. Yeah. I like it.

I'm with you, dude. Great, great feedback, my friend. Thanks for, thanks for having me on. And anything else I can do for you, my man?

No, man. That's it. I appreciate you coming on and just keep me posted if I can ever help. And we'll do another, when your book comes out, the next one, we'll do another show.

Yeah, great. And how long are you going to be in Colombia, by the way?

I don't know. I'm kind of just bouncing back between here and Miami. So what happened then? Just so you know, we're still recording.

So this is fun.

But like, essentially what happened, and I've heard this has happened to many others, but, you know, I'm a guy from the US, came down here, met a girl, fell in love a little bit, and been here 6 months. So I don't know.

There you go.

That's the reason.

I understand that. I don't blame you.