How to Make $10k/Month as a Writer - Nicolas Cole

0:00 there are so many people that are now realizing that they

0:05 all need to build things on the internet so we

0:08 used to live in an analog world now we live

0:10 in a digital world what you're about to hear is a conversation

0:12 between me and my friend Nicholas Cole this is Cole's second

0:15 time on the podcast the first time around we talked about

0:18 five paths to make a million dollars as an online writer

0:22 or rather as a writer and that episode did super super

0:25 well and today we're talking about the fastest path

0:27 to $10,000 a month as a WR so your fastest path

0:31 as a writer to 5K as a side hustle you know

0:34 10K 20K replacing your full-time income and then some is to just

0:38 go find one person and go I can help you

0:40 solve problems in your business we talk about how to craft

0:43 the perfect email and the sort of energy that it takes

0:46 to sell and how sales is really the same thing as education

0:49 and a bunch of mistakes that we see people make when

0:52 pitching us their various different Services it seems like the longer

0:55 road to go H I have to go educate and talk

0:59 to people well yeah in the beginning that is the longer

1:03 road instead of just you know trying to automate the whole

1:06 process and defer to technology but if you skip that step

1:09 you think you're taking the shortcut and then guess what shortcut

1:12 ends up being the longer road because you skipped the whole

1:16 learning Cole welcome back to the podcast how's it going great

1:19 man I'm always happy to be in London this is going

1:21 to be fun so in part one that we did which

1:24 people absolutely loved we went through your entire backstory and kind

1:27 of a surface level overview of how to make you

1:30 know how to make money online as a writer yep um

1:33 in this episode I was hoping we could go a little

1:35 bit deeper into this because you teach people how to make money

1:39 as ghost writers and we want to teach people what

1:43 is their fastest path to actually making money as a writer

1:46 because a lot of people still kind of think that writing

1:48 is a thing that can't like you can't really make money

1:50 from it I've just published a book traditional publishing people are

1:53 like oh do I find an agent do I get a book

1:55 deal what do people get wrong about making money online

1:57 as a writer okay most fun question on planet Earth for me

2:01 so let's we'll start with the mistake so the mistake

2:05 that writers make I think is thinking that you need to have

2:11 a ton of attention in order to start monetizing so

2:14 everyone thinks step one I need a million followers so already

2:18 wrong because if I told you tomorrow you had to go

2:21 give a speech in front of a million people you would

2:22 have an anxiety attack you don't need a million followers second

2:26 is they go okay well maybe I don't need a million

2:28 followers I just need 100,000 or I need 10,000 reduce

2:31 the number okay still 1,000 FS right yeah okay so still still

2:35 wrong and the reason you know there's all these different paths

2:38 you can take to monetizing your craft any craft will use

2:41 writing as the example the the fastest path though is not

2:46 selling a product it is selling a service because if you

2:50 think and everyone in the Creator World talks about selling digital

2:53 products right sell an ebook you sell a course you sell

2:56 a cohort-based experience whatever it is right but that's not

2:59 actually the the fastest path because most of those products if

3:02 not all of them are priced in a couple hundred bucks

3:05 or less or if you're selling an ebook it's like 10

3:07 or $20 right so the lower the price point the more

3:10 volume you need so it sounds really easy to go okay

3:14 well I can make you know five or 10 grand selling

3:16 a $200 course for example but you have to play that out

3:20 and go okay well how many of those do I need

3:22 to sell every month in order to sustain 5 10 20K

3:26 a month right you need volume yeah I mean especially

3:29 with a physical book like or a physical book is my book

3:31 sold a lot of cop well you know sold like 200,000

3:33 copies but I still I still haven't paid off the advance

3:37 and our royalty percentage is I think I'm allowed to share

3:40 this about like 15% oh you got we got 15 we

3:43 got a good deal deal we got a decent deal we

3:44 got 15% but it's like I make maybe 150 every time

3:48 I sell a book yeah no it's a horrible so I

3:50 need to sell a lot of books to make a living

3:52 as of professional writer if the thing that I was making

3:55 money from was selling books yeah and by the way so

3:58 and I'm happy to jam on this cuz I love

4:00 the whole traditional versus self-publishing we get nut on here as well

4:03 you know yeah like just do a round table because

4:06 the reason why there's the whole cliche nobody makes a living

4:09 as a writer is because of course it's going to be

4:11 hard to make a living as a writer when the thing

4:13 that you're selling is priced at $20 there's no recurring Revenue

4:17 most people buy a book once they don't buy it again

4:20 and then your deal in that is you get 10%

4:23 of the revenue so you're not even getting all $20 right you're getting

4:26 $2 and so then that leads to the cliche well

4:29 nobody makes a living as a writer right and that's wrong

4:32 and so your fastest path if you're sitting there and I

4:35 I think so often people have this conversation where they go I

4:40 want to make money every option is available to me well

4:43 no every option isn't available to you there's usually one thing

4:47 you're trying to optimize for in your life and if you're

4:49 working a full-time job and you're like I want to get

4:51 out of my full-time job your number one concern is how

4:54 do I replace my full-time income right so your fastest path

4:58 to replacing your full income is not selling products because products

5:02 take longer because you need to build an audience in order

5:05 to sell them and you need to sell them in volume

5:08 it's much easier to go find one client that is

5:11 willing to pay you three grand four grand five grand

5:15 to do something for them so it's actually monetizing through a service

5:18 so your fastest path as a writer to 5K

5:21 as a side hustle you know 10K 20K replacing your full-time income

5:25 and then some is to just go find one person and go

5:28 I can help you solve problems in your business okay it's

5:31 not to go be some viral Creator you can do

5:34 that just do that later fine okay so how do we do

5:37 that let's say I am let's rewind we we'll do

5:40 a bit of a role play let's say I'm 26 years old

5:42 I've been working two years as a doctor hi young Ali

5:44 in the in the UK's National Health Service and I'm like

5:46 you know I quite you know I think I enjoy

5:49 this medicine thing but you know if I project out 10 years

5:51 15 years 20 years will I continue to enjoy it I'd

5:54 love to have man if I could have 5K a month

5:56 coming in I'd be able to quit my job and be

5:58 able to take my Gap here be able to travel around

6:00 the world and then I can always come back to Medicine

6:02 later if I feel like it y but I sort

6:03 of feel like but like I don't know I just went

6:05 through med school I I don't really have any skills other than

6:07 the stuff around being a doctor okay so this I mean

6:10 I wrote a lot of essays in medical school but dot

6:12 dot dot yeah this will be awesome okay so step one

6:15 is you have to identify your information Advantage so most people

6:19 this is this is where how they start they go

6:22 I'm not happy I've decided I want to do something different

6:25 and then they just let their imagination run wild and they

6:28 look at you today like you know Ali this world we

6:31 now 5 million plus YouTube subscribers productivity expert and they're like

6:34 I want to be that y okay first of all you

6:36 didn't start there right that that is where you're ending up

6:40 now that's not where you started so your your goal is

6:46 not to just imagine and think you know what what

6:49 is the the most legendary version of myself and how do

6:53 I go be that tomorrow because that's not how the game

6:55 works it is so much easier to start by asking yourself

6:58 the question where do I already have an information Advantage what

7:01 do you mean by information Advantage so information Advantage is you've

7:04 been working as a doctor for 3 years right you graduated

7:07 medical school what whatever you inherently know more about that subject than

7:11 someone who hasn't had those experiences right it's inherent the problem

7:15 is we all take the knowledge that we have for granted

7:17 yeah because everyone I know is also a doctor so it's

7:19 like big whoop being a doctor it's not a big deal

7:22 yeah so to to to the classmate sitting next to you

7:24 you're like I don't know anything or I don't know anything

7:26 different right but remove yourself from that classroom and you actually

7:29 know a lot relative to the entire population so right so

7:33 Step One is recognizing in yourself what information do you take

7:37 for granted because that information is what allows you to go

7:41 help someone so thinking of it in the reverse if I

7:44 run a biotech company for example do I want to hire

7:48 someone who speaks and understands medicine and that and that you

7:52 know health and wellness industry or am I just going

7:55 to go hire some random person that has no idea what

7:58 any of those terms mean M so the misunderstanding and why I

8:02 say that ghost writing is the fastest path to monetization

8:05 is because anywhere you have an information Advantage you're already fluent

8:10 in that industry okay so at this point a lot

8:12 of people a lot of a lot of Medics I know

8:15 and this was me back in the day um would have

8:18 said okay I have an information advantage in that I got

8:21 into med school so why don't I just do tutoring for people

8:23 to help them get into med school yeah okay so now

8:27 think about who you're selling to soing who are you sing

8:31 to well you're mostely to brle students people in med school

8:36 right or their parents if they're applying to Mid school

8:38 and the parents are rich for example yeah but tutoring is already

8:41 price anchored to a certain thing right like most people like

8:44 how much are you willing to pay hourly for tutoring most

8:47 most tutoring per hour so the second thing is you have

8:52 to go okay I have an information Advantage Now who is

8:55 the most um like what's the right word the the mo

9:00 the most affluent customer right well it's a biotech startup

9:05 that just raised $30 million right or it's an executive

9:09 for a Pharma company or it's right all of those businesses to them

9:14 five grand is nothing 10 grand is nothing but if you

9:17 go pitch you know a parent of a kid who needs

9:20 help via tutoring 10 grand is a lot of money right

9:24 so the second thing is going okay I have an information

9:26 Advantage now who are all the customers that would be willing

9:29 to pay a premium to help them solve something in their business

9:32 yeah this is already I think a a massive like

9:36 sort of mind-blowing thing for people to realize that different people

9:38 value money at different level

9:40 significantly differently and especially businesses value

9:42 money at a completely different in a completely different way than

9:44 individuals do yeah how how did you first appreciate this sort

9:48 of disparity in how people think about money well I mean

9:51 the honest answer is I just undercharged for a long

9:54 time until it became so painfully obvious to me that I

9:57 was undercharging you know like when I was first starting out

10:00 I remember charging $25 or $50 an article and thinking you

10:04 know the jump from 25 to 50 was a lot I

10:07 was like oh I'm charging a lot and then the jump

10:09 from 50 to 100 was a lot and there was

10:12 a story that I tell sort of often in our programs is

10:14 there was a moment where I was pitching a ghost riding

10:16 client I was probably 27 and we met in this restaurant

10:20 in La and he was hiring me to GH stri

10:24 this white paper for for a crypto startup they were trying

10:26 to launch and I remember going into the meeting being like

10:30 okay how much should I charge I'm I'm going to throw

10:32 outrageous number in the air and I remember I mustered up

10:35 the courage I was like I'm going to charge 10 grand

10:37 to write this white paper and we were sitting in the meeting

10:40 and he we it all goes great and then he

10:42 goes all right so what's the damage how much is this going

10:44 to cost me I said it's gonna and at the last

10:46 minute I almost backed out you know but I was

10:48 like it's going to cost 10 grand and I like waited

10:52 and he looks at me and he goes I just want

10:54 you to know that I was prepared to pay three times

10:57 that but you already said the number so 10 grand it

10:59 is and I walked away from that meeting going I have

11:03 no idea how to value my value yeah and I think

11:07 that's something where it doesn't matter I see it in our ghost

11:10 Writing Academy all the time too we we train ghost

11:13 writers to build and write these educational email courses for people

11:16 we go you can sell this for five grand no problem

11:19 no matter how many times we tell them you can sell

11:21 this for five grand there's a large percentage of people who

11:24 the first time they pitch it they they can't even get

11:26 the words five grand out of their mouth because they're so

11:30 they can't conceive of someone being willing to pay that and it's

11:33 usually only until you experience it a couple times where

11:35 you're like wow everyone's saying yes to $1,000 like maybe I

11:39 should charge more right nice okay so quickest path to making

11:43 money I I I guess sort of zooming out from writing

11:45 in general it's it's find a small number of people

11:48 to pay you a lot of money rather than find a very

11:51 large number of people to pay you a small amount

11:52 of money correct and I think you know one of the issues

11:55 that people often think is if you're a young person

11:57 and you don't have much money chances are the people you know

12:00 are also young people who don't have much money and so

12:02 you're really anchored towards thinking my goodness I can't believe people

12:06 are paying $97 for a course wow man these American

12:10 scammers are so so good at taking money from like $97

12:12 for why would anyone pay that Y and they've just paid

12:15 like had tens of thousands in college fees and all that kind

12:17 of stuff at at the same time and it's all

12:19 I mean there's so many different ways to approach this conversation

12:22 but like for example 10 years ago I probably bought my first

12:25 online course I remember spending a 100 bucks or 200 bucks

12:28 going I can't believe I just spent that amount of money

12:31 on this last year we joined a mastermind for $668,000

12:35 so you have to sort of build the skill this is

12:39 something I want to write more about which is spending money

12:42 and investing money in yourself is a skill and you can

12:44 see it with people that make a lot of money but they

12:47 still have spending habits as if they were broke you know

12:51 they constrain themselves and I think a lot of a lot

12:54 of entrepreneurs or Founders they almost take this pride in you

12:58 know I don't drive car I drive a Prius you

13:00 know or I didn't I didn't get the nice apartment I

13:02 I still have My Little Queen one bedom and that's fine

13:05 like I'm not advocating for lavish spending but also you have

13:09 to realize that in some way you're also holding yourself back

13:12 because you're not building the skill of going I trust myself

13:15 to spend 68 Grand because I know I'm going to get

13:17 an Roi from that yeah yeah it reminds me

13:20 of a moment it was like a year or two ago um

13:23 where I was talking to tinon my YouTube producer and we

13:26 we'd hired this guy to do like graphic designs or something

13:28 and and you know I thought it was going to come

13:30 out to $1,200 or something like that cool whatever you know

13:32 the guy's really good $1,200 as a as a bargain then

13:34 we got the invoice and he charged 5 grand and I was

13:37 like oh and it's just like oh because because we arranged

13:40 it over like Twitter DMs I didn't quite realize he was

13:43 charging per asset rather than per platform and and then I

13:46 said to Dan or Finance guy like yeah five grand cool

13:49 whatever you know just pay the invoice and tinon remember remembers

13:52 that moment vividly thinking wow to Ali abdal there is no

13:56 difference between $1200 and $5,000 and that being like a[ __]

14:00 mindblowing moment for him to be like holy[ __] an entrepreneur

14:04 with a multi-million dollar business really values money spent on business

14:08 stuff yeah completely different rate if I was spending my personal

14:10 money I would value it very differently but if I spending

14:13 business money it's like because it's kind of Open Season yeah

14:16 and you know I understand why that's hard to wrap

14:19 your head around because honestly that's something you really only understand

14:23 as you build things that generate more resource and as you

14:27 hire more resource and as you employ more resource right like we

14:31 both were Gamers growing up I saw that note in your book

14:35 by the way uh where you were like uh I

14:38 was I was work at it and I read that and I

14:41 was like oh I love this it made me such

14:43 a fan um but that is really the whole point

14:47 of video games you know and a video game is just

14:51 the deployment of resources to an end and I think when

14:55 you're starting out I remember being 25 years old living in Chicago

14:58 in a dump studio apartment I had no resource I

15:00 had like $100 in my checking account right so you can't

15:03 fathom or understand how other people are deploying resource when you

15:07 don't have resource which is why it is actually so important

15:10 to listen to conversations like this or surround yourself with other

15:14 people or even like do free work for people that have

15:17 thriving businesses because just you being in their presence and you

15:22 just like your team member saw you make that decision that changed

15:26 how they thought about it when you do free work

15:28 for someone else and you see them make that decision you're

15:31 getting paid in pattern recognition you're getting paid in experience yeah

15:37 I remember as we're talking about World World of Warcraft um

15:41 you know there's the area ghostlands in the burning Crusade

15:44 where I remember when I've uh I I started playing during

15:46 during burning Crusade and I had like a level 14 Warlock

15:49 and there was this there was this quest to kill one

15:51 of the silver Elites that would that would you that would

15:54 n you 14 silver and I was like 14 silver oh

15:57 my God I can buy that ostrich and that ostrich

16:01 and that ostrich the three different colors oh my[ __] god and then

16:04 you go to level 80 and or like and and then

16:06 you go to a main city and you right click inspect

16:08 people who've got like level 80 gear and you're like whoa

16:10 uhhuh and then as I got to level 80 and started

16:13 doing the stuff and started finding a way to use Auctioneer

16:16 and prospecting and Jewel crafting and all that[ __] to make

16:19 money I ended up spending 18,000 gold on like a one

16:22 of the motorbike mounty type thingies the mechano chopper or whatever

16:26 it was and I I still vividly remember remember how amazing

16:31 it felt to be making that 14 silver and thinking oh

16:33 my[ __] god this is incredible and then fast forward like

16:36 2 years later I'm spending 18,000 gold on this on this new

16:39 motorbike thing and I think that speaks to this idea

16:41 of yeah you're just over time you learn to deploy the resource

16:45 more effectively yep or almost like in a in um

16:48 have you have you read the mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson

16:51 no but you know I just I just got turned

16:53 on to his library and I'm like starting to go down

16:55 the library final Empire Bron Sanderson okay but it's like

16:58 in all these um stories it's like you've got the the hero

17:03 who starts off as like a little kid in the village

17:04 like you know Anakin Skywalker and tne or whatever and he's

17:07 like he's a bit[ __] he's not very powerful and then

17:09 over time as they learn eventually they get dominion over

17:11 the Galaxy and now they're likeing teleporting from one planet

17:14 to another whereas when they were a kid they were just sort

17:16 of stuck in this little village on one planet and it's

17:19 just sort of this power curve which really is also a thing

17:22 in entrepreneurship 100% yeah that's what I find so fascinating about

17:26 speaking to people who are like have bigger businesses it's just

17:28 they're just thinking on a completely different level and there okay

17:31 just sticking with the metaphor right it's like in wow when

17:34 you get to level 60 70 80 and you complete

17:37 a quest at that level you get paid way more gold right

17:42 so you complete a level 80 Quest they're like oh congratulations

17:44 for bringing us the 10 bore skins we give you nine

17:47 gold and 87 silver right but when you complete a quest

17:50 at level 14 you're getting paid 10 silver or 14 silver

17:54 right so the the second thing in this whole you know

17:57 like what is your fastest path to 10K a month I

18:01 would actually and I do I often advocate for the step

18:04 before that which is you shouldn't even try and charge

18:07 for the first thing that you do you're level one right

18:10 like you having 10 copper or zero Copper at level one makes

18:14 no difference you can't buy anything with 10 copper anyway right

18:17 so a lot of people whenever I talk about the ROI

18:20 of free work everyone comes back and like no you should

18:24 get paid what your worth is and your value and you

18:27 should never do free work and don't let people will take

18:29 advantage of you and I'm like you're thinking about it completely

18:31 wrong in the beginning free work is basically a marketing cost

18:35 it is a way to remove all friction and get yourself

18:39 paid in experience credibility pattern recognition right so all of a sudden

18:45 you don't have the constraint where you go all right

18:48 I'm going to charge three grand for this and someone goes

18:50 no okay want to know how you remove that barrier you

18:53 don't charge three grand and you just say I'll do it

18:55 for you for free and everyone thinks no that's short-term loss

18:59 but if I told you you're going to go pitch

19:02 that service for three grand and it's going to take you 9

19:05 months to get someone to say yes or you could pitch

19:08 it to someone for free today do a project and then

19:11 the next month have something to point to that you can

19:13 ladder up to a client month two which one would you

19:17 take and it's only in hindsight or once you explain

19:20 that that person goes oh I would do the second path

19:22 but that's not what most people do yeah yeah we talked

19:25 about this in our in our last part as well and after

19:28 that I've had so many people reach out to meed

19:31 with it so it's kind of good it's good that we're sort

19:33 of putting it on the map a little bit to be

19:35 like guys the ROI on free is astronomically yeah and we

19:39 might say no or we might not open the DM

19:41 or the email but if they go do that for 50

19:44 people someone's going to say yes you know and you have

19:46 to realize that in the beginning getting paid in cash is

19:49 actually not the most valuable thing for you you want

19:51 to get paid in confidence I can do this you want

19:54 to get paid in building a network oh now I know

19:56 someone who can introduce me to other clients there are a lot

19:59 of things more valuable than getting paid 100 bucks

20:02 or a bucks yeah but when you're at that stage it sort

20:05 of feels like when you're at level 14 the the 14

20:07 silver feels like oh my God I it's so much money

20:10 and you have to that you have to fight that and I

20:11 think that's why so many people if you have built

20:15 something successful like something I think about all the time is

20:18 if I you know if every social platform went to zero

20:21 tomorrow if my business went to zero tomorrow if everything

20:23 went to zero would I be able to do this again

20:27 and yeah of course I think I could and I think

20:29 you could too because once you have the skill you you realize

20:33 that all of those things aren't the thing that made

20:35 you you but when you're first starting out you can't wrap

20:38 your head around that so you think the title is important

20:41 you think the amount of money is important those things aren't what

20:44 are important what's important is whether or not you build

20:46 the skill what's the fastest path to building the skill do it

20:49 for free nice okay so I'm 26 I'm a doctor I

20:53 have an informational advantage in like the medical is area cool

20:58 and I know that that I and and I'm like okay

21:00 maybe I shouldn't do tutoring because tutoring is anchored to like

21:02 I don't know I was I was giving a talk

21:04 at Cambridge a few a few weeks ago and some guy came

21:07 up to me afterwards he was like you know you know

21:08 I've got a side hustle as a tutor and I'm like

21:10 okay how much do you charge and he was like oh

21:12 it's you know it's uh it's quite a lot of money

21:14 I was like oh how how how much is a lot

21:16 of money and he he felt really kg about saying

21:18 it cuz his friends were right he was like charge 45s

21:21 per hour yeah I was like yeah oh okay £5 per

21:27 hour um it very much very much as I'm could

21:30 to to a lot of Mone It's Like the Wolf of Wall

21:32 Street series we got to bump those numbers up those are

21:34 rookie numbers in this racket okay like yeah and you won

21:38 and again you only know that when you increase pattern recognition

21:42 hanging around other people building things bigger than you no different

21:45 than you and I are constantly looking for well who's built

21:48 something bigger than we've built yeah right so yeah this is

21:51 why when when I saw you a video about the cold

21:52 Gordon Mastermind I was like damn maybe I should pay $68,000[

21:56 __] for this freaking Mastermind and you guys like yeah we

21:58 kind of got the value from it from day one and then

22:00 all the rest of it was a bit of a waste cuz we knew what we had to what we had

22:02 to execute on and I was like H interesting but if

22:05 you think about again it's like does it matter if we got

22:08 the value over the course of a year or one day

22:10 no doesn't matter and and you know in some ways one

22:12 day is even better because it saves you time yeah

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25:25 this episode Okay cool so I've got the informational advantage

25:27 in like the medically typed bits but I shouldn't go off

25:30 to people who don't have much money how do I think about

25:32 it then so I mean okay first is recognizing that there

25:37 is an unfathomable amount of opportunity on planet Earth that most

25:41 people just can't wrap their heads around so what usually happens

25:45 is someone goes all right I've decided I want to provide

25:46 this skill they go talk to one person that person

25:49 says no and then they'll come back and they'll go I

25:53 guess it just doesn't work for my Niche it's just too

25:55 saturated there's just no there's no opportunity okay first of all

25:58 you haven't deployed enough volume to know whether there's enough opportunity

26:03 second is there are so many people that are now realizing

26:10 that they all need to build things on the internet so

26:13 we used to live in an analog world now we live

26:15 in a digital world I don't think that there's a business

26:18 owner on Earth who doesn't understand that their life would be

26:22 better easier and probably more profitable if they had a growing

26:25 audience if they had an email list if they had a way

26:28 of educating customers on autopilot so we all know that and every

26:31 single day that goes by more and more Founders more

26:34 entrepreneurs more business owners more

26:36 creators more podcasters YouTubers every single

26:38 person goes I should probably build myself more on the internet

26:42 okay so that Mega Trend increasing so all you have

26:46 to do is go I'm going to go help the category

26:50 of person who every single day that goes by that is

26:53 growing so going to any business owner any Creator anyone any

26:58 that is tally related to your information advantage and in my opinion

27:04 another mistake that gets made is people go well so

27:07 what are all the most popular writing gigs yeah so

27:11 for a long time the most popular ones have been SEO articles

27:16 blog posts basic content marketing stuff like that right so part

27:20 of the game is always going well where is the growing

27:25 audience in this case that would be the the growing customer

27:27 base and what is the Inc not popular yet but the increasingly

27:33 popular skill that they all want and so for every

27:37 business owner or Creator or anyone right there's three things they

27:40 all want they all want help putting out more content yep

27:45 well special in LinkedIn it seems okay so just and we'll

27:49 get more specific they all want help creating text based

27:51 content usually first and then it becomes video or audio right

27:56 they all need help moving that audience to an owned

27:59 platform AKA email right but the best way to move them

28:03 to an email list is not to say come join

28:05 my newsletter the best way to move them is to give some

28:08 sort of free value where they exchange their email address for something

28:12 so the best vehicle we found our educational email courses then

28:16 once they're on your email list well you don't just want

28:18 them to go through the educational email course and then they're

28:21 done and you never talk to them again right they need

28:23 a Weekly Newsletter because that Weekly Newsletter nurtures them for a prolong

28:27 period of time and then they inevitably buy your product

28:29 or service every single person needs those three things which means

28:33 all you have to do you could just pick one

28:35 of them and you go I'm this person with an information advantage

28:39 in this industry or this Niche and I specialize in one

28:42 of those three services and you need one person and they

28:46 will pay you three four five grand per project per

28:49 month and congratulations you either just replaced or at least hit

28:53 like 50% of your full-time income H okay so I'm

28:57 a j need doctor I have an informational advantage in medicine I

29:00 know I like writing I used to write essays in med

29:01 school and I likeed you know I had a personal blog

29:03 back in the day and blah blah blah you know all

29:05 that all that kind of stuff um and so I'm thinking

29:08 okay who could possibly want to pay me five grand

29:11 a month to help grow their LinkedIn presence and yeah it would

29:15 probably be a big farmer executive maybe the CEO maybe

29:21 someone in the CC Suite maybe someone who's the VP level

29:23 or director level or whatever let's go simpler than that a family

29:28 friend of yours who's a doctor and they have a small

29:33 business they have a private practice and they want to create

29:36 content on LinkedIn to help promote the fact that they're

29:38 like a shoulder and blah blah surgeon or whatever Dermatology

29:41 that kind of thing my dad's a spine surgeon okay so how

29:45 does my dad get more people to know that he's

29:48 a great spine surgeon you either put your name up on Google

29:53 and hope yeah that's one strategy which is what most

29:55 of them do or you go I'm going to start taking

29:58 this into my own hands I'm going to start educating people

30:00 right what are what are the reasons people have back pain

30:03 what are the ways to get rid of back back pain

30:05 without surgery if you have surgery how do you recover faster what

30:10 foods should you eat what exercises should you do right so

30:13 it doesn't take very long you start thinking through it and you're

30:15 like okay well that's pretty easy and I bet your information

30:18 Advantage would allow you to do that and how many doctors

30:21 are there in the world load like a lot right

30:25 so you don't need all the doctors you need one doctor

30:28 okay and so what am I pitching then let's say I

30:31 come up with a list of three family friends who are

30:33 all doing Private Practice in one's a spinal surgeon one's

30:37 a radiologist and one's a dermatologist and I'm like you know sweating

30:41 thinking of sending these emails what am I saying okay so

30:45 this is awesome so IR resist will offer script we'll just

30:47 do it like word for word okay so um I'm GNA

30:51 stick with the the spine example because I because I'm familiar

30:54 with it okay so first thing is you have to do

30:57 your homework and understand well what is what does this person

30:59 do and what do they specialize in and what's their problem

31:03 so another big mistake most people will go apply for a job

31:07 on upor or Fiverr right when you do that what

31:09 you're effectively doing is raising your hand going I have no

31:12 control I have no pricing power I have no leverage I

31:15 am applying for the job you tell me what you need

31:18 and I will do whatever it is that you ask okay

31:21 as a result that is why you have no pricing power

31:24 because the power Dynamic is wrong right they are the boss

31:27 you the employee have the dam them and have toate

31:33 a they didn't they or a problem that they know they

31:37 have they just haven't gotten around to fixing right so you go

31:41 to the doctor you go problem you want higher quality customers

31:46 you have a private practice you want more people who uh

31:49 are interested in back surgery but like a specific type

31:52 of back surgery so for example my dad specializes in minimally invasive

31:56 spine surgery okay so it's like that's the type of person

31:58 you want to attract right the the the problem though is

32:02 that you don't know how to find them they don't know

32:05 whether they can trust you or not Etc right the reason

32:09 that problem is happening is because you have a website

32:11 that isn't optimized for anything and it would be really easy

32:15 to find those people on LinkedIn you just need to start

32:17 creating content right and the ultimate negative consequence of that problem

32:22 is that until you start educating people you are going

32:25 to be your your business strategy is you're just going to sit

32:28 there and you're going to hope that customers walk through

32:30 the door okay so if you start with that like little mini

32:35 problem script it's impossible for the other person to sit

32:37 there and go I'm not listening right of course they're listening

32:41 because you just educated them on the whole problem of their business

32:45 which is not hard okay then once you've educated them

32:48 on the problem because they can't care about the solution

32:50 until they care about the problem so you first anchor them

32:53 in the problem then you go the solution to this would be

32:56 if we started educating people on minimally invasive spine surgery on LinkedIn

33:02 be really easy here's some sample topics right the benefits

33:04 of doing this is that we would be able to start reaching

33:08 people that would either be interested in this or would uh

33:12 maybe know someone who's interested in this and then ultimately we

33:14 could move that social audience over to our email list

33:17 and we could even run like localized ads if we wanted

33:19 to against that email list we could do retargeting and the ultimate

33:23 positive outcome of that is if we do that you will

33:26 have significantly more control over lead flow for your business problem

33:31 script solution script and then they go okay that all makes

33:35 sense so how much so you have to go through all

33:38 of that before you go oh no problem so we can

33:40 create social content for you every month it's three grand

33:44 a month I take care of the ideas the writing all I

33:46 need is about 30 minutes of your time uh once

33:48 a month even we do a quick recap call go through all

33:52 the content that we've created look at the analytics um

33:55 you've already written a book so I can pull a lot

33:57 of the content from that book um and that's it happy

34:00 to help and is this all in a single email like

34:02 how what what ises the process of sending this out look

34:05 like so so that would be the call so to get

34:08 them on the call yeah right is you start we

34:10 have a phrase we talk about all the time which is

34:13 in the beginning your Niche is your network so you have

34:16 an information Advantage your Niche is the fact that you have

34:19 a family friend who's a doctor y okay great that's

34:21 the first person you should go pitch because they are most likely

34:24 to answer your text or answer your email or answer

34:27 your call right so the first thing is you open with problem

34:31 hey know it's been a long time since we chatted Uncle

34:34 yeah you know Uncle whoever yeah uh quick question I was thinking

34:39 about your business you know how do you typically get customers

34:42 you know is that something that you've been thinking about you

34:44 know are you struggling to get leads in your area tell

34:47 tell me about what's been going on okay that could be

34:49 a text message that could be an email that's and then

34:53 Uncle Johnny might reply to that yeah saying oh yeah it's

34:55 actually been kind of hard we adverti Google but nothing happens

34:58 exactly thing and then you go cool I've got a couple

35:00 interesting ideas why don't we hop on a call together

35:03 and I'll walk you through uh how this works I I

35:05 found something that I think would be really beneficial for your business

35:08 Uncle Johnny goes all right cool I got 30 minutes

35:10 on Thursday and then you go through problem script solution here's

35:14 what I would do for you so that is significantly easier

35:19 than going how do I build an audience of 100,000 people

35:21 and sell 200 courses a month every month forever right um what

35:28 if Uncle Johnny doesn't reply to my text then you just

35:31 chalk it up you give up there's no hope for you

35:33 and you should just never try that's it your Niche there's

35:36 no opportunity right obviously that's not the takeaway the takeaway is

35:40 go talk to more people how how many more people like

35:43 well what's your sense of how many emails SL like assuming

35:47 I was going to go cold like I'm reaching out

35:49 to local doctors in my area who I only have a tangential

35:53 connection to I the fact they live in my area how

35:55 many emails does it take to get a response to get

35:57 a get someone on a call do you have a sense

35:59 of what the thumb is up I would say so

36:01 even still I would not recommend even opening the door of cold

36:05 leads until you have fully exhausted warm leads and the way

36:11 I think about leads in general is I put them

36:13 into two different categories I call them leaks and faucets so

36:17 a leak is someone who goes you know my my sink

36:21 is leaking help me right so a leak is someone who

36:25 has the problem that you can help a faucet is someone

36:28 who goes my faucet's running fine I don't need your help

36:31 but I know lots of other people who do so

36:33 they become a conduit to other people okay and so one

36:36 of the biggest missed opportunities is people go well I'm going

36:38 to go pitch you know all these cold leads no you

36:40 should start with all the people that you know and then

36:43 go to each of them and go do you have a problem if yes I can help you or hey I'm

36:48 trying to grow my ghost writing business do you know anyone who

36:52 needs help creating content on LinkedIn or anyone who is creating

36:55 on LinkedIn but needs help moving that audience over to Emil

36:57 list right that's interesting like I I remember coming across

37:01 that line some somewhere it might have been one of in one

37:03 of your books and often messaging someone or emailing them saying

37:06 hey do you know someone who's looking for this sort thing

37:09 nobody doesn't it's the easiest thing either they know someone

37:11 or Chan they' be like oh actually I could kind of use

37:13 some help with that myself yes but it feels like

37:15 a more gentle pitch than can I help you grow your content

37:19 on LinkedIn or whatever yes it's like do you know anyone

37:21 who might be looking for this you are yeah I had

37:22 a a mentor in Chicago who used to say you are

37:24 never selling anything to anyone you are giving them an opportunity

37:29 and so when you think about Outreach whether it's to your network

37:32 or cold leads you don't want to approach it through

37:35 this lens of like like pitching because that's not everyone knows

37:40 when they're getting pitched right so the whole methodology that I'm

37:43 a firm believer in is you want it to all sound

37:47 like free Consulting everything that you do every text message every

37:51 email every phone call every Zoom call it should all feel

37:55 like hey I see what you're doing I I can't help

37:58 myself like you're making a mistake I I just wanted

38:00 to point it out and help you do with it what you

38:03 will I just wanted you to know right and when you

38:07 do that the other person can't help but go well ah

38:11 you just educated me on a problem and now I know

38:14 I have this problem and then inevitably they go to you

38:17 and say so is that what you do then you go

38:20 oh yeah no that that is what I do I specialize

38:22 in that and then they go can you help me

38:25 and you go sure i' I'd be happy to help right so

38:28 you're almost you're not pitching them and going by from me

38:31 you're educating and like guiding them until they're forced to go

38:35 I need someone to help me is this what you do

38:40 nice that s sort of takes the fear out of selling because

38:44 even in the way I'm describing I'm using the word

38:45 pitching which yeah even subconsciously has a certain energy about it

38:50 that feels like I'm trying to sell something yes if I

38:53 if I was if I had an agency that did I

38:56 don't know provide some service for right now and I was

38:58 trying to get you as a client even here on this podcast

39:01 I I wouldn't pitch you I would just drill into yeah

39:06 Ali like before this I took an hour I thought

39:08 about I went through your whole funnel you know I just

39:10 want I just wanted to point out to you right like

39:13 there's like these 10 things you should do and inevitably we're

39:16 going to get off the Pod and you're going to go

39:19 okay so that sounds like a lot of work any

39:20 chance I could just hire you and your team to do

39:22 that right and that that piece that skill if you understand

39:27 the power of that and you build that skill where you don't

39:29 talk in sales you talk in education you will make money

39:35 forever because that that is the bottleneck the bottleneck is not

39:39 someone going you know do I want to buy from you

39:42 yes or no the bottleneck is that the person doesn't usually

39:45 know the problem that they have MH there's a friend

39:49 of mine who does some really high-end Consulting for these sort

39:51 of big fashion brands and stuff and is I I was

39:54 asking him about how he lands these deal these deals and he

39:56 was like oh yeah just go and and I just teach

39:58 them about what's wrong with their supply chain Y and how

40:01 AI can potentially help and then I leave it

40:04 at that and on the way out one of the executives will sort

40:07 of walk me to the lift or to the elevator

40:09 or whatever offer me a coffee and say hey so can we

40:12 engage you or something and he's like those are the magic

40:14 words that I'm looking out for but I never I never

40:16 get any impression that that's what I'm going for I

40:18 mean just it it's a lot like dating right like what's

40:22 the fastest way to get someone else to deny you or say

40:26 no to to you you go up to them and you're like do you want to go out on a date

40:30 with me right no that's not usually how you get someone's

40:33 attention right how you get their attention is you're in a busy

40:36 place and you lean over and you know you see

40:39 someone attractive and you're like I want to talk to them

40:41 you don't open by pitching you open by going he you

40:45 know the brick chicken here is actually really good and then

40:48 they're like oh and you're like but don't get the don't

40:50 get the fries though they do this weird thing where they

40:52 put this like like age parmesan on it and you think

40:55 it's going to taste good but it's not going to taste

40:57 good and all you're doing is educating them you're just like

41:00 hey I saw that you're having this experience I just

41:02 want to make it better for you and inevitably they go

41:05 interesting now they're hooked now they start talking to you

41:08 the same is true in business the goal is never to sell

41:11 the goal is to educate yeah there's like um I think

41:17 there are people that do this well and then there are

41:19 people that do it less well like I've started increasingly getting

41:21 emails and DMS um like every other Instagram DM I get is

41:24 someone like giving me some sort of neg about how they've

41:27 been through my funnel and uhoh Ali did you know you're

41:30 leaving $4,000 a day on the table and this sort

41:33 of stuff and I'm just like[ __] off like they all taking

41:35 the same course they're all running the same the same kind

41:38 of script yeah so there there are ways to not do

41:42 it well um but to be honest a lot of it

41:44 comes down to tone a you could say the same thing

41:48 but the way that you write it or like something

41:51 we talk about in PGA all the time is actually sending

41:53 looms so you're sending a loom to personalize it more yeah

41:57 and the tone that you use if you start the loom

42:00 and it's like hey I've got this exciting idea for your business

42:04 and like pitch pitch pitch right the other person can

42:07 feel that and within 30 seconds they're like I'm out

42:09 of here right but if you open the loom this is like

42:12 this was such a huge lesson for me building my agency

42:14 you basically talk to every single person as if you've

42:17 already been friends for 10 years and that's that is

42:20 an energy right it's not like a trick it's just an energy

42:24 and you just hit them up and you're like hey John

42:27 um really love what you're up to I was just going

42:29 through your site um big fan of your industry and what

42:32 what you're about by the way like I've I've been really interested

42:35 in spine surgery for a long time um my dad's

42:38 a spine surgeon fun fact so I have this kind of like

42:40 knowledge about it uh but I was just going through

42:43 your funnel and I like I noticed a couple things just wanted

42:44 to point them out for you I hope this is helpful

42:47 like that tone comes off very differently right and so so

42:52 many of these things they're not hard it just is you

42:56 just need someone to point it out to you and then

42:57 you go oh that makes a lot of sense why me

43:00 pitching is like turning people off in the DM because people

43:04 don't want to be pitched they want to be educated nice

43:08 that's good as you're saying that I'm thinking of you know

43:11 there's a bunch of YouTubers that are like a lot

43:14 of people are going to YouTube as a source of organic lead

43:17 gen and the ones who I gravitate towards are the ones

43:20 who are 27 minute long video Loom walk through explaining how

43:24 all their systems work and it's a oh and oh

43:26 by by the way we do this for clients if you're

43:28 interested there's a link down below and I'm like nice yes

43:31 like it just makes perfect sense and there's almost this sort

43:34 of very casual you know I've got the cookies I don't

43:38 need you to have I I I I don't I don't

43:41 need you to buy the cookies but like I know you

43:43 want them and it's this weird kind of push pull yeah

43:46 where it's like hey I'm just being very casual about

43:49 this being very friendly about it I'm not trying to sell

43:51 you anything at all sort of vibe it's very reverse psychology

43:54 but but also it can be summarized I think really simply

43:58 in abundance mindset or scarcity mindset when someone is overly pitching

44:04 you right you you pick up on this scarcity that they

44:09 have right because they're like I need this client which inevitably

44:12 makes the other person feel like well why do you do you

44:15 need clients because no one wants to work with you

44:18 right and then you like get turned off from it

44:20 but in abundance mindset is like hey I'm good on CL

44:24 I'm actually full yeah I just wanted to point out to you

44:27 CU I think it would be helpful and that abundance makes

44:30 the other person feel like well if a lot of people

44:35 want to work with them and if they're so abundant

44:37 with what they have it must be really great I do want

44:40 to work with them so it doesn't it actually doesn't matter

44:43 whether you're full or not it doesn't matter if you have

44:45 10 clients or not it's the energy of are you operating

44:49 from scarcity or abundance nice yeah this is reminding me so

44:53 there's um there's a team member of ours that we hired

44:55 recently kayin and she's our community manager for productivity lab and I

45:00 did like a sort of very casual pod with her the other

45:03 day cuz we were waiting for Cal Newport to show

45:04 up and so she she and I just kind of did

45:06 a kind of bonus episode of the Pod and she she

45:09 was explaining how when she moved to London like three years

45:12 ago she joined our YouTuber Academy knowing she wanted to be

45:15 in the sort of alal orbits because she's a YouTuber

45:17 as well and stuff and she came to one of our meetups

45:19 and I remember this conversation where she came up to me

45:22 we had a very pleasant conversation for like 2 minutes she

45:25 mentioned a video that I that I had seen of hers

45:28 and then she left it at that and I didn't hear

45:29 from her for like two two whole years until she applied

45:32 for one of our jobs and I remember that interaction being

45:34 like Oh yeah I remember her she came to one

45:35 of our one of our meetups she seemed cool MH in contrast

45:38 there's this other guy who's been coming to every single Meetup

45:41 for the last like two years who seems clamoring to get

45:44 a job with the aliv team yeah and the energy

45:47 around that is so radically different where I'm like I'm I'm

45:50 already I'm I'm so turned off by this guy because claming

45:53 for a job whereas with her it was just like oh

45:55 it's just chill like yeah she normal she and she's applied

45:58 for a job and she's made the short list great let's

45:59 interview her that kind of thing yep yeah again a lot

46:02 of it is energy it's not that you shouldn't follow up

46:06 a million times I'm a huge advocate of keep following up

46:09 but it's the way that you do it it's the energy

46:12 of it right and and are you coming at it

46:13 from a place of like I swear I can help you you

46:16 know where are you coming at it from like again hey

46:19 I'm just reminding you I'm here anytime you want to chat

46:21 you know more than more than happy to help those just

46:23 come off so radically different and little just cuz you said

46:27 it like an amazing growth hack for finding clients and finding

46:34 opportunities is you just said it's like if someone wanted

46:37 to be in your orbit there's actually a really easy way

46:40 to be in your orbit it's called be a customer right

46:44 so if someone wanted to pitch me as a to offer

46:47 a service right and I knew that they had purchased ship

46:52 30 my likelihood of Reading and Responding to that email

46:57 and like genuinely considering it is 10 times higher than someone who

47:00 hasn't right so amazing growth pack just go find all

47:05 the people who run communities and have courses and know and have

47:08 all of the opportunity go pay $97 or 150 or what

47:13 whatever the cost is for one of their products be

47:15 a customer and the likelihood that they will listen to you

47:18 is exponentially higher yeah yeah whenever someone opens an email or anything

47:22 with a hey I I was part of YouTuber Academy cohort

47:25 3 or something like that I'm going to read there's no

47:27 world in which I wouldn't read that like yeah I think

47:30 similarly when when you're when emailing people who have written books

47:33 if you've actually read the book and sort of leading

47:35 with hey you know I I I read your book two years

47:39 ago I loved ABC and D you know and they're way

47:41 more likely to read that than a random email yeah I

47:44 mean all of this stuff it's like we all know

47:46 this it it seems so basic in a lot of ways is

47:50 wouldn't it make sense to do your homework before you talk

47:52 to someone yes you know are they more likely to respond

47:56 to you if you clearly understand their business or their industry

48:00 yes so that's why starting with information Advantage is really easy

48:04 you know and then with all of this stuff by far

48:08 the biggest problem is people just don't do enough volume

48:10 to see they they talk to four people and those four

48:13 people say no and then they give up yeah yeah so we

48:16 I was asking about this what's what is a good

48:18 amount of volume before throwing what we tell people in PGA

48:23 is if you're starting warm with your network you should begin

48:26 by making a list of 50 people leak yeah 5 Z

48:30 leaks and fosses I was thinking five yeah no F five

48:35 is like you took you know one step into the starting

48:37 zone and like killed two bores and then are like why

48:40 don't I have all the Epic gear right so starting warm

48:44 you should make a list of 50 people that you know

48:46 that either might need your help or might know someone who

48:48 need your help if you're going cold minimum you need

48:53 to reach out to 100 people and I don't mean get some

48:57 software tool where you scrape emails and then just copy

49:00 paste spam send 100 emails or 100 DMs I mean identify

49:04 a 100 quality people do your homework on each one send

49:09 them a message if they respond create a loom problem script outcome

49:14 solution script pitch them right like you should go through

49:19 that entire process for each of them and only then should you

49:23 go okay I genuinely did my homework and genuinely educated 100

49:27 people and zero said yes and even at that point it

49:32 doesn't mean that it doesn't work it means you have

49:35 a problem you have a bottleneck somewhere in there and your job

49:38 is to identify that bottleneck remove it and do it again

49:41 do it again what are your thoughts on um using chat

49:45 GPT to automate some of this Outreach and stuff I

49:49 think the the the big misunderstanding with AI is everyone wants

49:54 to automate things they've never done before you can't automate something

49:59 that you haven't done and even if someone tells you how you

50:04 don't understand it so you're not getting the full value out

50:07 of it so this is one of those just like first

50:10 principle beliefs that I have which is the metaphor I like

50:14 using is if you were to run a marathon you would

50:16 train with ankle weights so that by the time you ran

50:19 the marathon you would take the ankle weights off and it

50:20 would be easier right so whenever I'm doing something I always

50:24 ask myself what is the what are the ankle weights so

50:27 in the beginning it seems like the longer road to go

50:31 H I have to go educate and talk to a 100

50:34 people well yeah in the beginning that is the longer road

50:38 instead of just you know trying to automate the whole process

50:40 and defer to technology but after you do that you are

50:44 significantly more educated about the process how to do it well

50:49 what drives the outcome what are the mistakes that then allows

50:52 you to leverage Tech but if you skip that step you

50:55 think you're taking the the shortcut and then guess what shortcut

50:58 ends up being the longer road because you skipped the whole

51:01 learning yeah you know yeah I started getting a bunch

51:05 of these sort of clearly chat GPT generated emails and it's it's

51:09 it's it's almost like I'm sure I'm sure you've gotten

51:11 this as well where you can kind of just tell when someone

51:14 is purely copy pasting something and it's just like the tone

51:17 is a bit off the start is off and it's just

51:19 it it's just an immediate you know archive from the inbox

51:22 kind of kind of response yeah but yeah as you say

51:25 someone who's like learned skill of doing it and is showing

51:29 that they have done the work because most well at least

51:33 some people kind of know what a Chad GPT generated like

51:35 paragraph sort of looks like sort of sounds like um there's

51:40 something about doing the work that really helps you stand out

51:44 which itself which then sort of becomes the shortcut the shortcut

51:47 is actually just doing the work yeah shocker you know

51:51 my my default is the coffee shop test if if you sat

51:55 down in front of that person at a coffee shop you

51:57 both decided to meet up we're grabbing coffee at 3 p.m.

52:00 okay cool and you said what was in that email out loud what would

52:06 happen like that's the question every person should ask themselves and if and if

52:10 just like you started laughing and you're

52:11 like oh I couldn't imagine saying that email

52:14 out loud right that's a problem and so if you're sitting there and you

52:18 can't even with a straight face go I wouldn't say this email out loud

52:22 that means you're not doing the work the goal is for someone to open

52:25 that email and go like I read I get cold pitched via DM and email

52:30 every day probably 20 to 50 times a day and I read every single one

52:36 of them because I try and keep my DMs clean and I try

52:38 and keep my email clean and the reason I don't respond to 99% isn't because

52:43 I don't know who the person is it's not because it's cold it's because

52:46 their message is not helpful they are not educating me they are not they didn't

52:53 do the work right so I love it's like when people are like Facebook

52:57 ads are dead email is dead cold Outreach is dead no none of those mediums

53:02 are dead period and they all work for people who do the work nice

53:09 okay what else do people need to know on this ro road to making 5

53:12 to 10K a month as a writer I think so last thing I'll say

53:17 is and we can talk about Creator economy digital products and sort of what

53:23 it's like being a Creator in today's world but I think that one

53:29 of the mega Trends is more and more people are realizing the power of being what

53:34 I'll call hybrid creators or or building

53:37 hybrid agencies so the first business that I

53:40 built was a ghost writing agency I grew that from zero to about 180,000

53:45 a month in 18 months or so and in hindsight one of the biggest

53:52 mistakes I made was there was a certain point in that business when we were

53:58 doing like 60 to 80k a month we had five full-time team members we

54:03 had about 152 clients me and my co-founder were completely out of the business

54:07 and we were both making 20 grand a month working like an hour or two

54:11 a day just making sure that the team was running that we we didn't it

54:15 was our first business I didn't know how good we had it at that time

54:19 but that was The Sweet Spot and what we should have done at that point

54:23 is not continue scaling with Services because

54:25 services are by Nature right like you

54:28 generate more Revenue because you land more

54:29 clients so to service those clients you

54:31 need to hire more people and people are stat at costs you're paying salaries

54:35 usually and so we didn't know that we just thought okay well we're just

54:40 going to grow forever it's not what happened and if I could go back

54:44 what I would have realized is that that was the sweet spot where it didn't

54:48 take that much effort to keep replenishing

54:50 clients when they would churn you know

54:52 so you could maintain profitability and like

54:53 the health of the business but then because

54:56 had reclaimed all my time I was only working in the service part

54:59 for an hour or two that's when I

55:01 would have started building digital products because every

55:03 digital product thereafter has no marginal cost

55:07 so it's it's pure profit right and so

55:11 if you think of the difference between you know a Service Company a ghost

55:13 writing agency doing 100K a month purely in Services versus one that does 60k

55:19 a month and then the other 40K is coming from digital products the second one

55:23 is wildly more profitable and then there's

55:26 a flywheel that happens the flywheel is

55:28 that yes a lot of people will buy the digital product and go well I

55:32 don't need your agency because you just told me how to do it that's

55:35 fine but a good percentage of your customers are going to get educated and go

55:42 oh this is actually harder than I thought it was can I just hire

55:45 you to do it for me so you just monetized the sale which creates

55:51 the flywheel your digital products are profitable

55:53 which educates customers to become service clients

55:56 right and it just keeps going and going so I think that this Mega trend

56:01 of hybrid companies or hybrid creators hybrid

56:06 agencies I don't see very many people

56:08 doing it or talking about it yet but I think these two worlds are going

56:11 to intersect okay this is good because the next thing I wanted to talk

56:15 to you about was to Riff on a business idea that we've been having over

56:17 the last week okay let's do it so um what do you think about

56:23 okay so we want to start an agency that is done fully Done For You

56:28 video for businesses where the business does not even need to provide the talent

56:34 we can do that so essentially what we want to do is create talking head

56:38 educational YouTube videos or LinkedIn videos

56:40 or videos for their documentation or videos

56:42 for their ads or whatever using the AL

56:45 YouTube formula which is you get someone who

56:48 sits on in front of a camera and says stuff with the occasional[ __]

56:51 happening on screen and like a nice

56:52 edit and like nice background music and stuff

56:54 basic talking head educational stuff m uh

56:56 but for businesses like software companies who

56:59 want to do documentation or ads or LinkedIn uh probably not LinkedIn because I

57:03 would need to be under the the founders personal brand potentially what do you

57:08 think of this okay so um I actually think that's a cool idea because you've

57:12 found a solution to the number one problem which is most often people

57:17 at those companies don't have time don't have

57:19 the skill don't want to build the skill

57:21 all of that right yeah we found that with hey friends which is the agency

57:23 that we started in partnership with um Hunter Hammond and Blom and we were

57:28 targeting individuals um and also like Executives

57:31 and stuff but we found that people

57:34 really suck at talking to a camera yeah people not making the time for it

57:37 people have all sorts of emotional issues

57:38 dealing with speaking to a freaking camera

57:40 even though they're the executive of a freaking

57:41 multi deam million dollar compan is like

57:43 why is it so hard to talk to the camera man yeah but apparently

57:46 it's really hard so you you found a great a great solution so two things

57:50 that immediately come to mind though um one is I think if you hire

57:54 one person one talk head you run a couple risks so one of the risks

58:01 is um I think of it like the podcast deals that Spotify did

58:05 with um what's her name one of them was Alex Earl and the other one

58:11 was uh daddy caller yeah who's who's the host that okay but yeah right

58:15 like where the talk the talking head

58:17 the person outgrows the situation and then they

58:21 want to leave they want to negotiate right that is a risk another risk

58:25 is when you rely so heavily on one person it makes it then hard

58:31 to deal with that situation if you need to transition so what I would

58:34 do is actually uh frame the channel not around a person but around a category

58:40 of idea so if it's like a fintech startup it would be like fintech

58:43 advice or what whatever and then I

58:45 would hire as contractors like three different

58:49 people so that way from the beginning you've set the pr it's not one

58:52 brand channel it's not a personal YouTube

58:54 channel there like multiple personalities people are not

58:56 that wted to the individual they care about the advice yes and then from there

59:00 I think you know if you're taking care of the scripting you're taking care

59:03 of the editing and everything the only thing I just I know because I ran

59:06 into it with ghost riding the only thing that you're navigating is then the type

59:11 of Team you're dealing with like for us with our ghost raining agency what

59:15 would happen is we'd get 10 Cooks in the kitchen like the executive would

59:18 want to weigh in on the writing or the script right and then the head

59:21 of marketing and then the marketing intern and then so the solution that have

59:26 found to this is you have to basically walk in and say not just

59:32 we're going to create these videos but we are going to create these types

59:36 of videos like very specific like one video a week is going to be um

59:42 like pure tutorial walk through you know another video a week is going to be

59:47 like Trend watching and you basically give them the rules for the formula up

59:51 front and you're like each of these videos has these set of rules which

59:56 reduces the amount of subjective decision making for each of them so that way

1:00:01 when their head of marketing comes in and is like you know I don't think

1:00:05 we should that I don't like that intro right well that I don't really

1:00:09 care if you like that intro or not like there's a method you know

1:00:13 and so you have to educate them on that method so that way which reduces

1:00:16 the amount of edits which sort of just defers more and more of that trust

1:00:20 to you in the beginning nice what do you think a reasonable price point

1:00:24 would this for this would be how much much volume did I um that's

1:00:29 a good question though yeah how quickly do you think you could grow a channel

1:00:32 and how much volume would you need to do to grow a channel reasonably

1:00:36 well uh the goal wouldn't be to grow a channel uh the goal would

1:00:39 be to produce the videos that could go on their website or on it's like

1:00:45 CH Channel growth would be a happy bonus rather than something that we would

1:00:50 lean that we would sell because it's just impossible to it's too hard to guarant

1:00:55 okay I'm going to give you one of the things that we learned too

1:00:57 which is then I would Anchor It

1:00:59 All Around longtail searching B basically what you're

1:01:03 selling them again this is like pricing

1:01:05 hierarchy right you're not selling them volume

1:01:08 of videos you're selling them a specific

1:01:10 library of content yes so you're like you

1:01:14 want to rank for these terms and phrases you want to build dominance

1:01:18 in this industry in this Niche one of the month one you go and do

1:01:22 an audit you're like these are all you know these are the top 30 longtail

1:01:26 things that people are searching for that are

1:01:28 related to your business at the end

1:01:30 of six months or at the end of one year together we are going

1:01:33 to have built this Niche library and because

1:01:36 they're buying an asset and an outcome

1:01:39 which is divorced from time and effort right that is what allows them

1:01:43 to go okay so how much is that now you can throw a number

1:01:46 in the air because how do you value that library of content well now

1:01:49 we're it's a complete subjective so you could charge 50 grand for that 100 Grand

1:01:54 right it depends on who you're pitching and then at the end of the six

1:01:58 months what do you do you go hey our team took some time education we

1:02:03 identified another Niche that you could build

1:02:07 dominance in it's tangent related we went

1:02:09 ahead did some free work for you this is these are the next 30

1:02:12 videos that you could make I think this would allow you to scale your dominance

1:02:16 do you want to do another six months it's anchored to time but it's

1:02:19 not really time that they're buying they're

1:02:21 buying the library nice that's good yeah

1:02:23 because what we don't want it to feel is if like we are going

1:02:26 to grow their YouTube channel because now

1:02:29 you've removed that part of the conversation you're

1:02:31 like followers don't matter we are going to rank for these and these are going

1:02:34 to show up in YouTube search they're going to show up in Google search

1:02:37 they can be embedded into your website

1:02:39 which improves the SEO thingy of your thingy

1:02:40 page because Google owns YouTube and exactly

1:02:43 so even just notice this conversation right

1:02:45 the more that we talk about the education component it's like hey did you know

1:02:50 that embedding these videos on your website

1:02:52 is going to increase the searchability

1:02:54 and performance of those sit most people are going to go no I didn't know

1:02:57 that yeah we noticed that your brand is already doing posts on LinkedIn did you

1:03:01 we can also repost the same content on LinkedIn and now you've bu a Content

1:03:03 Library on LinkedIn did you LinkedIn videos growing by 58 zillion per every year

1:03:08 kind of thing so because like

1:03:10 the framing is everything and because you've anchored

1:03:12 it to an asset and an outcome Library well now you can go

1:03:16 to a startup that just raised 30 million bucks and go it's 100 Grand and it'll

1:03:21 take us six months to build do you want this that's a pretty good

1:03:25 offer yeah this this is like an Enterprise

1:03:29 agency offering you know like yeah you

1:03:31 could do it for smaller companies and maybe you have like a paired down

1:03:34 offer but if I were you like where people go wrong with pricing is they

1:03:38 they pick two packages that are really close to each other so they're like

1:03:41 package one is five grand a month package two is Seven Grand a month

1:03:45 well for a business owner there's actually

1:03:47 no pricing threshold between those two I

1:03:50 don't care if it's 5 grand or seven Grand that to me that's the same

1:03:53 number right so what you want to do is if were to create two

1:03:56 different packages you want to widen the Gap you're like the five grand a month

1:03:59 is for small businesses or creators the 50 Grand a month is for you

1:04:04 know Enterprise tech companies well now there's

1:04:07 a pricing decision nice yeah that's interesting so

1:04:12 we could even reach out to companies

1:04:14 companies that really should have video content

1:04:16 company like Salesforce really should have a[ __] ton of tutorials on their own

1:04:19 YouTube channel that are actually good yeah

1:04:21 a company like HubSpot should really you

1:04:23 know the HubSpot are a bit more modern so they are sort of doing it

1:04:25 but we could literally go through well okay how well what comes to mind

1:04:31 is we just go through the Fortune 500 look at all the YouTube channels

1:04:34 and see or or the nasda which is like for tech companies look at all

1:04:38 the YouTube channels see which are the ones

1:04:39 that we could make a compelling pitch

1:04:41 to see if we can get a warm intro to that person or alternatively

1:04:46 we start with our existing Network we

1:04:48 reach out to for example penguin or McMillan

1:04:50 or like any company that's ever sponsored our stuff how how would you go

1:04:54 about well this so now like what we're talking about is the conversation we've

1:04:58 been having just on this is the level 80 version you know we were

1:05:01 talking about the level 14 version this get 100K contract yeah and so where do

1:05:05 you start you start your Niche is your network you start with the people

1:05:08 you know first yeah and then you exhaust that list even if they might not

1:05:11 be the right right people for the 50k offer or whatever yeah leaks and facets

1:05:15 know yeah of course they'll know people yeah and they'll be far more likely

1:05:18 to H on the call with us to be like yeah of course I'll

1:05:20 talk to you yeah or dra CMO kind of thing I can tell you because

1:05:24 at my age see we we had some of like the biggest tech companies

1:05:28 in the world and as soon as you start getting up to like Fortune 500

1:05:32 or like multi-billion dollar companies yeah those are

1:05:35 very different deals oh F and like

1:05:37 you can do it but there's more red tape sales process takes longer like

1:05:42 in my opinion The Sweet Spot is you actually like do you know

1:05:45 the site crunch base yeah okay so

1:05:47 crunch Bas publishes you know companies that just

1:05:50 raised any amount of money if I were you I would Target companies

1:05:55 in the 10 to100 million range either

1:05:58 in in could be valuation money raised it could

1:06:01 be Revenue whatever because that range is where you're not so big that you

1:06:06 have 10,000 employees you know but you're

1:06:09 not small where you're like penny pinching

1:06:12 that that General range and that's a big range but that General range a lot

1:06:16 of those companies are like we know we want to do video we're still small

1:06:20 enough to move quickly let's just write the check let's just do it

1:06:23 yeah so what sort of um what sort of size checks were you charging

1:06:27 in the agency back in the day oh I mean our highest offering was like

1:06:31 five grand a month like that was one of my biggest mistakes was going we

1:06:35 literally had companies get on the phone and go we love your pitch do

1:06:37 you have anything more expensive and I was like 26 years old I didn't know

1:06:42 I was like no I thought five grand was a lot we we land

1:06:47 we landed one of the biggest Enterprise

1:06:50 tech companies in the world like they have

1:06:51 as many employees as like small countries and they literally said we don't do

1:06:58 we don't work with vendors for five grand a month like our smallest vendor is

1:07:03 like a hundred grand so they prepaid for a year a whole year up

1:07:08 front just because they like that was the only way to get the deal across

1:07:12 wow and like that experience taught me so much about just I mean you're

1:07:16 talking to a company that does 30 billion in Revenue you know it's like it's

1:07:20 crazy and so if I were you I would have two offers and I

1:07:26 would have one that caters to the smaller Creator but is still sort of Premium

1:07:31 like five grand a month 7500 a month you know smaller size business maybe

1:07:35 even like a company doing like 10 million would say yes to that but then

1:07:39 I would also have a super ding-dong version that's like you know 20 30

1:07:43 40 50k a month yeah and then you go pitch that to100 million do companies

1:07:49 if you guys didn't have your own long form YouTube video strategy what is

1:07:53 the sort of thing that that if hypothetically me or someone of my team would

1:07:57 to say hey guys you know we'll do we'll do long form long form

1:08:01 video for you what are the sorts of things you and dicki would be thinking

1:08:04 about um like all the things that we're talking about the first thing

1:08:08 is I would 100% do it for a start writing online Channel like all

1:08:12 of that beginner stuff I've written a gazillion

1:08:14 times I have all the content I've already done all the thinking like me

1:08:18 creating those videos is actually sort of low

1:08:20 leverage yeah you know and so creating a branded but f if you will

1:08:26 channel that just does all of that education

1:08:28 on autopilot that's really interesting to me

1:08:32 yeah how much would that be with to you in theory um I'd say

1:08:37 I mean if it was like three grand a month I would pull the trigger

1:08:41 like no questions asked I'd be like let's just try it okay you know

1:08:44 that that to me is just a yeah let's see what happens I think

1:08:47 our pricing cap would probably be around

1:08:50 10 grand a month okayish before you would

1:08:53 start thinking H okay I might as well just do it myself kind of thing

1:08:55 or yeah that already worth doing yeah it would from there it probably wouldn't

1:08:59 be a money decision it would be a priority decision it would be like if

1:09:02 we're going to spend 20 grand a month uh what's the ROI of that doing

1:09:08 this relative to something else oh something else we could spend 20 grand yeah

1:09:12 fine or should we just hire two people internally to do it right because

1:09:15 then I can start weighing full-time salaries and yeah okay nice but you have

1:09:19 to one of the benefits of pitching larger companies is that the larger a company

1:09:24 grows the the more taxing it becomes

1:09:27 to bring something internally because you know

1:09:29 you have to train them and you have processes and your head of HR

1:09:32 needs the process and like so it actually is easier to sell to those larger

1:09:37 companies because they're not really like they

1:09:40 can't do the rationalization of well we

1:09:42 could just hire five people it takes too much bandwidth for them whereas for us

1:09:46 we have a small team like I could hire two people and train them

1:09:48 relatively easily yeah okay well that's interesting

1:09:52 nice so 10 to 100 million start off

1:09:55 with the start off with a network until we have exhausted that and going

1:09:59 back to everything we've talked about if I were you I would consider just doing

1:10:03 the first one you could do it for free or just like do it

1:10:06 for five grand yeah do super cheap

1:10:08 for like penguin or something they'd probably be

1:10:09 done exactly and like learn figure out

1:10:12 where your inefficiencies are figure out what

1:10:13 it's worth to the client you can you can power level all of the learning

1:10:18 by doing it for one person nice that's a good idea I'm thinking if

1:10:23 we did reach out to the publisher and they're like you know you guys

1:10:25 should really have your own YouTube channels where you do yeah of course they

1:10:28 should intros to all of the books

1:10:29 that you're publishing have you seen their YouTube

1:10:31 channels no I haven't actually no shade

1:10:33 but they're pretty bad like publisher you

1:10:35 yeah it looks like like a like a writer's house from like the 90s you

1:10:39 know the sound is horrible like everybody needs help with video so it is

1:10:43 a great service it's just I would really I would not connect it to audience

1:10:50 growth I would anchor it to library you're buying an asset and I would

1:10:54 pitch companies that have the means nice easy enough um one thing I was going

1:11:00 to wanted to ask you about so i' I've been an aid listener

1:11:03 of the espresso hour really which is a great podcast like I think half my team

1:11:07 listens to it on the regular and we're always like oh you know

1:11:09 these guys talked about this thing last

1:11:11 week because it feels so relevant where we

1:11:12 are because I think your business and ours and it is at least

1:11:15 in a similar order of magnitude so the sort of stuff that you guys are thinking

1:11:18 about is ridiculously relevant to what we're thinking about and there are so few

1:11:22 business podcasts that are talking about talking about how do you go from seven

1:11:24 to eight figures Y and like the actual process of doing that um one thing

1:11:29 I'm curious about is why do you care you know you're getting married or you're

1:11:33 married now make money you can chill like why do you care about growing

1:11:37 the business um a lot of I mean I think it's true for anything

1:11:42 in life but I just want to know that I can you know I I've

1:11:46 built multiple seven figure companies now and I won't lie I really want the uh

1:11:53 the eight figure like I want to just know that I could do that um

1:11:57 that feeling might change after we hit you know 10 million by the way

1:12:01 this drives me nuts I hate when people say I built a x million

1:12:05 dollar business but they're doing it

1:12:06 on lifetime Revenue versus annual revenue people say

1:12:10 that oh all the time I it drives me nuts they're like I built

1:12:13 a $5 million company it's like no you built a million dollar company and you've

1:12:16 been in business for five years oh I did that with a video that I

1:12:19 made 5 years ago I was like how I built a million dollar business

1:12:22 in Mexico I was like if you add up all of the revenue

1:12:24 for like freaking years you get to just about a million okay I I'll excuse

1:12:28 it because it was a beginner mistake but but I see people I see

1:12:31 people who know what they're doing doing

1:12:34 that and I'm like why why it's frustrating

1:12:36 to me is because you're educating aspiring

1:12:39 entrepreneurs on the wrong thing you're setting

1:12:41 an unreasonable expectation you know and our goal

1:12:44 like I don't we've already done 10

1:12:46 million in lifetime Revenue I want to build a 10 million a year business

1:12:50 and are I'm hoping that we will do that by the end of this year

1:12:54 and so yeah I just I want to know that I'm capable and that I

1:12:58 can do that so it's kind of like a video game yeah why

1:13:00 not he playing on very why do you want to honestly it's the it's

1:13:04 a video game thing it's like you know I'm playing Horizon forbidden West on PS5

1:13:07 at the moment and I'm play on very hard difficulty Ultra hard is a bit

1:13:10 too grindy and a bit too hard but very hard is you know I'm

1:13:13 like trying to kill the Thunder jaw for like three freaking hours on a Saturday

1:13:16 but when I kill it it feels satisfying and I'm like hm is this what

1:13:19 they said about is is this what people meant when they said you should

1:13:22 relax more and not work and stuff it's like but it's just kind of nice

1:13:26 it's like playing at level 80 rather than level 50 yeah you know I

1:13:29 don't maybe I'm interpreting what you're saying

1:13:31 correctly but it's like I don't need

1:13:33 to build a billion dollar company if that happens cool but to be honest

1:13:38 when I think about that that feels

1:13:39 like way more responsibility than truthfully I want

1:13:42 to deal with I'm too creative I don't think I want to live my life

1:13:45 managing that um not that I could I love when people say that like

1:13:50 it'd be so easy I'm choosing not to build I don't want to go

1:13:53 to the gym because I don't want to get too big EX okay so

1:13:55 I understand the irony of what I just said but um but yeah I

1:13:59 think like once you build a seven figure company you're like okay what is it

1:14:03 what does it look like to build a multi figure company cool did

1:14:06 that and then it's like okay what does it look like to build an eight fig

1:14:09 company and then from there I'll reassess and you know do we want to continue

1:14:13 yeah but I learned that lesson really

1:14:15 painfully with my ghost raining agency which

1:14:17 was sometimes you growing too quickly is a huge problem and something Dicky

1:14:23 and I talk about all the time is what's the Tipping Point like when does

1:14:27 the business yeah you're growing or you

1:14:31 might reach you know 20 million in revenue

1:14:32 or 30 million in Revenue but you will probably cross these tipping points where

1:14:36 now you have you know 20 people to manage 30 people 50 people 100

1:14:40 people maybe that size of business a might not even be as profitable right

1:14:46 and B it might not be as fun so you sort of have to decide

1:14:50 like how big of a business Do you want to build and is the size

1:14:53 of that also giving you the other things you want in your life is

1:14:57 it fun yeah make you happy is it still profitable you know yeah and how

1:15:01 much do you care about like building to self I don't want to sell

1:15:05 I I'm I much prefer the idea of building cash generating machines you know

1:15:11 rather than a big sort of like 5x Revenue exit or something yeah I

1:15:14 mean if you think about it okay I sell my company for 20 million bucks

1:15:18 okay you know 50% goes to Uncle Sam so I got 10 million you

1:15:21 know and then I put that in what like a 5% account and and then

1:15:25 I make like you know what is that 400k a year or something like

1:15:30 that's actually a lot less than I make so yeah I have 10 million

1:15:34 bucks but my lifestyle is actually less than what I have now yeah so

1:15:39 why would I want to sell same argument by the way I make for book

1:15:45 deals like why why take the advance when you know the Publishers going to make

1:15:51 or they're going to try to make 10 times that on your book Maybe

1:15:55 a different path is just self-publishing the book and you you don't get a lump

1:15:59 sum up front but you might generate more in royalties over a longer time

1:16:04 Horizon what do you think I should do for my next book I'm so

1:16:07 glad you asked this so I I've been wanting to talk to you about

1:16:09 this so first of all I'm like halfway through your book I want to pay

1:16:13 you compliment and I feel like this is going to come off as a backhanded

1:16:17 compliment but I don't mean it that way it is way better written than

1:16:21 I thought it was going to be and not that I like thought you

1:16:24 were a bad writer or anything but very often I will read self-help books

1:16:28 and it's just like really it's like very mindless you know I am not finding

1:16:35 your book to be mindless at all um it's it's really cool and I

1:16:40 I like the combination of research and personal story and um I also think

1:16:45 the categorical difference of grinding productivity

1:16:50 versus Feelgood productivity like how you set

1:16:53 that up in the beginning very smart oh than you very smart um so one

1:16:58 of my questions was actually what was your book deal and was it a one

1:17:02 book deal was it a multiple book deal yeah it was one book deal

1:17:05 with penguin having the right of first refusal on future deals for life do you

1:17:10 know for how long but it it just means that if I do go try

1:17:13 to publish it I I have to give them the option to buy it

1:17:16 first how long is that clause in effect for do you know like if you

1:17:20 do that once and they take it do you have to give them first

1:17:24 right of ref usual for all the books after that I'm not sure I should

1:17:27 look at the contract that's an important piece to know but I I think

1:17:30 I I can choose to self-publish the next one if I wanted to you can

1:17:33 yeah okay I just have to give them the option of buying it but I

1:17:36 don't have to accept their offer oh okay well then that's fine it just

1:17:39 means that if penguin versus I don't know Simon and Shuster were bidding

1:17:43 that would have the right to dibs on it got it okay so before I

1:17:48 I give you my perspective what do you think you should do and like

1:17:51 how are you thinking about this yeah so this is this is going to be

1:17:55 very inside baseball so if anyone feels like leaving the podcast at this point

1:17:57 by all means please do um I am not sure so Thinking Out Loud

1:18:03 by the way I feel like this this is what I wanted to talk

1:18:07 to you about for m so let's just we'll just keep it going great perfect yeah

1:18:10 that's fine um I'm not sure so

1:18:13 obviously there's value in traditional publishing um

1:18:16 in my in my case the goal was to uh have an asset that would

1:18:22 to be seen as like a legit guy rather than quote just youber and all

1:18:25 that you know all of that stuff I think you accomplished that big time

1:18:27 yeah so the prestige the New York Times list the Sunday Times list the fact

1:18:30 that it's orally published with penguin blah

1:18:32 blah blah congrats on New York Times

1:18:33 by The wayen I haven't said that oh yeah we but congrats thank you

1:18:37 very much so all of that stuff is done um and now for future books

1:18:44 I know I want to write future books and I also quite like

1:18:48 the fact quite like to the fact that I had an editor who was nice

1:18:53 they had like the in-house penguin designer

1:18:56 made the front cover I hired an external designer to make 50 variations and we

1:18:59 couldn't find anything better than the cover

1:19:00 and the cover turns out to be really nice it's a great cover thanks

1:19:04 uh they penguin Ved us like 36

1:19:07 different language translation deals it's in bookstores

1:19:10 people are sending me pictures from like

1:19:11 freaking Taiwan from like random bookstore in Austin

1:19:15 you know all all over the world people are sending pictures of this book

1:19:17 in different translations and and I I hear that that sort of stuff doesn't

1:19:22 really happen if you're self-published unless you

1:19:24 become like a David gogin or something like

1:19:25 that which just seem seems unlikely so there's part of me that's like I

1:19:30 like the freedom that Paul Millard has

1:19:32 making like 400 Grand already from his book

1:19:34 sales of the pathless path I like the idea of doing like smaller books

1:19:39 um like I really want to do a book around like I don't want

1:19:43 to say the title because like normally I'm not protective of ideas but when it

1:19:47 comes to book titles I'm pretty productive of ideas um but I I I want

1:19:52 to do a series of books and have feel like I have more freedom

1:19:55 and that the stakes are lower but also I like the idea that you know

1:20:00 there's a big publisher behind it who

1:20:01 then is doing the publisher Machinery to get

1:20:04 it into different languages and into different

1:20:06 bookstores around the world which is kind

1:20:08 of cool so just to summarize what what do you feel like the publisher

1:20:13 did that you wouldn't be able to do

1:20:16 specifically good point the translation deal translational

1:20:20 I would say I would say the bulk translation deal cuz fun fun fact

1:20:23 by the way right now I am negotiating the uh the Korean rights for art

1:20:30 and business of online writing which is

1:20:32 self-published so you can do translation deals

1:20:35 it's just they're the they're emailing you

1:20:38 they're not emailing the publishing a handful

1:20:40 of people have em us being like hey do you have a Slovakian deal

1:20:42 and I'm like do we have a yep turns out we do sorry that kind

1:20:45 of thing so it's possible and that you can do that but you know

1:20:51 doing a bulk deal like they go out and sell it in 36 languages that's

1:20:54 something something that a publisher does

1:20:55 that individual typically cannot okay so that's one

1:20:58 but like what else what else do you

1:20:59 feel like they translation thing and the book

1:21:01 stores okay so do you know the data of how many copies were bought

1:21:07 online versus in store um yeah that's a good point um no but just

1:21:13 looking at what we already have it's like 910 Amazon versus everything else okay

1:21:18 so and everything else also like uh bonds& Noble it's unclear as to whether it

1:21:22 was uh bricks and morar or online sale so a big chunk of those were

1:21:26 probably online as well the the mega Trend in books is that it's funny

1:21:31 because everyone whenever they talk about book deals is like I want to get

1:21:33 into bookstores but the trend line is that books spot in stores is going down

1:21:37 and books spot online is going up um something else that I have found

1:21:41 a lot of people don't know is you talked about you know the designer

1:21:45 inh house creating this amazing cover and you work with an editor you can

1:21:49 hire all those people yeah yeah we did hire an Exel editor we also hired

1:21:52 an Exel designer so that's so even those houses want to freance on the side

1:21:57 or they used to work in a big five house and now they freance

1:22:00 on the side so also this argument of like taking a book deal and you

1:22:04 get access to these specialized people it's not true you can get access to them

1:22:10 just reaching out to them and going do you want a freelance so

1:22:14 and then another thing was I read the whole analysis that your team did

1:22:18 of the marketing y um which was fascinating that was really cool that you

1:22:23 did that um do you care if I share some of those numbers so one

1:22:27 of the things I was shocked that you only spent 25 Grand on marketing

1:22:32 I know that's not counting labor costs but that was like the Zoom and some

1:22:35 paid newsletters and stuff it was very minimal marketing okay so like 25 Grand

1:22:40 to generate the outcome that you did

1:22:43 and that probably isn't really what moved the needle

1:22:45 what moved the needle is your organic Audience by by far right and what

1:22:50 did the publisher do um they landed a things like we got Good Morning America

1:22:57 because of the publisher we got like the The Today Show Australia because

1:22:59 of the publisher we got a few like we got the financial times piece that kind

1:23:03 of stuff yeah okay so status symbols yeah you know but which which

1:23:07 by the way the thing is I

1:23:09 have probably spent 3,000 hours reading about traditional

1:23:15 publishing contracts I've read the nerdiest books

1:23:18 on like the history of publishing how

1:23:20 it's evolved like something that I've really

1:23:23 wanted as a writer to be as educated

1:23:25 as possible about what is happening in this industry how do deals get deals

1:23:29 get structured what what are the in incentive

1:23:31 structures right what are the benefits

1:23:33 of taking a traditional publisher versus self

1:23:35 publishing all these things and so when

1:23:37 you really like list them out the publisher

1:23:42 really isn't doing that much what they're

1:23:45 doing is a they are giving you the ability to play the New York

1:23:48 Times game y That's it if I go sell a million copies tomorrow but I'm

1:23:52 not with a Publishing House New York times doesn't care yeah right so Ponzi

1:23:57 scheme they give you access to the game right yeah okay in literature also you

1:24:03 can't win Awards so you can't really

1:24:05 win the Pitzer prize Nobel Prize or anything

1:24:07 unless you're with big five gatekeeper okay so you can't play that game um

1:24:13 bookstores so a lot of people don't

1:24:16 know how bookstores work as businesses but basically

1:24:21 what a bookstore is trying to figure out is they have inventory and they're

1:24:24 like well what books should we carry now just because you uh accept

1:24:30 a book deal yeah doesn't mean that they're going to get you in every bookstore

1:24:35 right because how many books does a bookstore hold yeah like small numbers

1:24:38 in the grand schem of things 300 yeah whenever I walk into a bookstore I'm like

1:24:41 is my book there and the answer is usually no like I've never seen

1:24:43 it in a bookstore okay so there's the IR of I've seen Instagram stories

1:24:46 of people who've seen it in bookstores yeah exactly so okay so they're not

1:24:50 going to get you in every bookstore right and the bookstores that they get you

1:24:53 in what happens it's almost like like an old school algorithm so what they

1:24:58 do is they pick these markets and they go okay we're going to Target

1:25:02 these couple bookstores in this localized area

1:25:05 and they have a rep from their house

1:25:06 that goes to the bookstore and goes hey here's the deal Ali abnal sure you

1:25:10 don't know who this person is but we just signed this huge book deal

1:25:13 with him um he has 5 million YouTube subscribers so he's goingon to push

1:25:17 the[ __] out of this thing right and they're basically selling to the bookstore

1:25:24 your ability to Market to bring people to the book and that is how the bookstore

1:25:29 decides well what books should we carry right so already if you're an author

1:25:34 you're like okay how much leverage do I have and even if I sign

1:25:37 a book deal the publisher is not putting me in every bookstore so how

1:25:41 much leverage do I have that the publisher can go market to the bookstore saying

1:25:46 this author is going to drive in person sales yeah right so all

1:25:50 of these variables work together so when you

1:25:52 start listing all these things out if you

1:25:55 were to just be really brutally honest like who got you New York Times

1:25:59 was it you or was it the publisher the publisher unlocked the ability to be

1:26:03 on the list but it was really our audience that drove the sales

1:26:06 to get on the list yes okay so then you start doing the math so

1:26:10 okay you got the status symbol once a New York Times bestseller always a New

1:26:13 York Times bestseller so you don't need to play that game anymore right I

1:26:16 don't think there's much value being at two times New York exactly so it's

1:26:19 times like to embarass the thing or whatever exactly so now you start doing

1:26:23 the math on published book and you

1:26:25 go okay what's the difference between we'll just

1:26:26 use round numbers what's the difference between

1:26:28 a million advance and a 10% royalty versus

1:26:32 zero advance but 100% royalty right and if you start like okay so how

1:26:39 many copies you sold 200,000 yeah okay let's just be super generous and go

1:26:45 a 100,000 of those are from in bookstores which the publisher did for you right

1:26:49 so we'll say you're responsible for driving

1:26:51 100K uh copies and you sell your next

1:26:55 book for 10 bucks as an ebook 20 bucks in print um and again

1:26:59 just we'll use round numbers $10 is the the net uh and you sell

1:27:04 a lot of them through your own website and yeah some through Amazon where

1:27:07 like the split is 6040 whatever you've

1:27:09 already made your million yeah 100,000 copies 10

1:27:15 bucks a copy yeah you've already made a million and that's in the first

1:27:18 year so what happens then year two year three year four year five and like

1:27:23 nobody does the napkin math but it doesn't it almost doesn't matter how big

1:27:26 the advance is is that when you take into account the higher royalty and if

1:27:32 you're someone who has an audience and continues

1:27:33 pushing it right you go from marketing

1:27:36 the book that you don't really own you own 10% of it to marketing

1:27:39 your library that you have majority

1:27:41 or all ownership over and the royalties start

1:27:44 outpacing the advance yeah and the advance you have to pay off anyway through

1:27:48 the royalties so it's not even free money it's just yeah yeah most most

1:27:52 authors even if they get a million dollar advance they don't see a royalty

1:27:54 from their book so they they just went I'm going to take the million up

1:27:58 front and sometimes that's the right decision

1:28:00 but if if you just want to write one

1:28:03 book if you were like I'm one and done you made the right decision

1:28:05 you won the status game probably got a really nice Advance you're you're good

1:28:09 right but if you actually enjoy writing and you want to build a library

1:28:14 well you should own the majority of your library I love when people are like

1:28:18 nobody buys Books Okay uh how do you think all the Publishers make billions

1:28:23 of dollars people buy books it's just

1:28:25 the Publishers convince writers that there's no money

1:28:27 in books which is why the writers all go sure you want to take

1:28:30 90% of my product no problem and then they just slowly accumulate a library over

1:28:35 the years and over the decades yeah and it's like okay so it sounds

1:28:40 like you think self-publish is the way to go I would so I think

1:28:45 from both a content and a digital

1:28:48 product perspective we'll just take a different lens

1:28:50 yeah if you ran an experiment a public experiment and said here's all the math

1:28:56 on my traditional book and then I do it again and you put forth

1:28:59 the same resources but you do it all yourself and then you do a postmortem

1:29:03 hear the differences first of all I think from a Content perspective that would

1:29:07 crush second it would teach you a ton and third of all you could

1:29:11 probably bundle all of that into a digital product that monetizes it again being

1:29:16 like I'm going to walk you through my whole publishing process I I also like

1:29:20 the fact that if you're self-published you can give away books yeah you're you

1:29:24 can do a lot so in um Dicky and I got offered um a book

1:29:30 deal like a year ago or something and I was the contract was nuts

1:29:34 I was like I can't believe you think people sign stuff like this like

1:29:38 it was so predatory and they were like this is standard language like I

1:29:42 don't understand what you have a problem with and I was like you want lifetime

1:29:46 representation of everything that I write forever

1:29:48 they were like yeah most writers have

1:29:49 no problem with that I'm like get out get out of here and so um

1:29:54 um yeah I just I think that in the long run because you have

1:29:59 anyone who is building an audience I

1:30:02 would really stress test the value of taking

1:30:05 the money up front versus extending the time Horizon and going you're you're

1:30:10 a creative person you're going to want to create things for the next 50 years

1:30:14 so what does it look like when you own your library for 50 years

1:30:18 yeah I was I wasn't even vaguely thinking of like the money like initially what

1:30:21 I said to the publisher was oh I don't want an advance I just

1:30:24 about the royalties cuz I don't I don't need the cash flow and they

1:30:26 were like great perfect and then I was told actually that's bad idea because

1:30:29 if there's a big Advance on their p&l then they're going to put more effort

1:30:33 into kind of thing and so the money upfront was really more of a at least

1:30:37 they've got some skin in the game yeah kind of idea yeah it

1:30:40 for so another flaw of traditional publishing

1:30:43 right is that forces them to actually

1:30:45 be incentivized if they part of the part of the reason why so many writers

1:30:51 uh vent about their publishing deals is because the publisher goes well we don't

1:30:55 really believe in the book but hey you're willing to sell us 90% of it

1:30:58 so we'll give you a 10 grand advance but when they do that they

1:31:01 have no incentive to actually go push it so the only reason that you

1:31:05 are taking the big Advance is to basically put their nose to the Grind

1:31:09 Stone being like now you have to push it yeah interesting you want to talk

1:31:14 I would love to ask you some questions about writing the book actually yeah

1:31:17 sure okay so um first of all productivity and self-help is one of those things

1:31:22 where it's hard to reinvent because it's like how many times can you talk

1:31:28 about the same thing you know um which is why I think I like

1:31:32 going into the book I was sort of like uh we we'll see we'll

1:31:35 see you know and I was really pleasantly surprised um how did you come up

1:31:41 with this lens of Feelgood productivity and you reference a lot of studies in it

1:31:47 were those studies that you had read and then they that is what gave

1:31:52 you the idea or did you sort of start with the idea and then

1:31:55 you went and found research that supported it yeah um okay so the back story

1:32:01 is that initially the book was titled

1:32:03 the productivity equation which was modeled off of a skillshare class that I did

1:32:06 that was about productivity equals meaning multiplied

1:32:08 by output multiplied by fun or something something like that and I I I always

1:32:12 had this fun construct within whatever I

1:32:14 would teach about productivity on YouTube and stuff

1:32:17 and initially when publisher a approached me they were like we'll just give you

1:32:22 a book deal site on scene you don't even need to proposal just like sign

1:32:25 sign the book deal kind of thing uh I took I took ages to sign

1:32:28 sign the papers and just before I was signing them when they were sort

1:32:31 of um hustling me about it I spoke to a writer friend who said

1:32:35 you know who's your agent and I was like I don't have an agent

1:32:38 and she was like you need to don't sign this thing talk to an agent

1:32:41 I talk to an agent BL blah blah blah blah then we sort of renegotiated

1:32:45 that deal with Publisher a and then it came to writing a proper proposal

1:32:51 for us Publishers because apparently us Publishers

1:32:53 don't don't don't like books where they're

1:32:55 not at least jointly publishing it at the same time cuz if they F

1:32:59 if the US publisher is playing second fiddle to the UK publisher then they don't

1:33:02 like it or something to that effect so then we had to write a proposal

1:33:05 a proper proposal for the US Publishers and so I wrote the productivity equation

1:33:10 and sent it to a couple of editors and basically the feedback was

1:33:14 that this is terrible and it's not going to sell because no one wants to read

1:33:16 a book called The productivity equation it

1:33:18 just sounds boring as[ __] with the idea

1:33:20 and there was this guy David moldow who was super helpful um he's

1:33:22 the guy who also did clar's proposal and also has worked with a bunch

1:33:26 of our other friends in that WhatsApp group um he basically said yep it stinks

1:33:32 uh but come on man like if you had to boil it down to one

1:33:34 thing you know you're successful you're

1:33:35 a doctor you're YouTuber like what's the one

1:33:37 thing and I was like oh I just find a way to make everything

1:33:39 fun and he was like that's the book that's a cool concept and he's

1:33:43 like I don't think anyone's gone into productivity from that angle so like why

1:33:47 not just do that and initially it was like okay well maybe that's a thing

1:33:51 and then it became the productivity game

1:33:52 and they became all about gamification and stuff

1:33:55 and as I was initially I made the mistake of Outsourcing the research so

1:34:00 I got a research assistant who was kind of reading a bun papers and stuff

1:34:02 and feeding the insights and I'd sort of come up with this framework around

1:34:05 like okay well what do video game designers do like why is wow addictive

1:34:09 and how do we apply that to productivity blah blah blah and then I started

1:34:12 writing and realizing I didn't quite have

1:34:14 the material and I couldn't really make

1:34:15 the case that like fun was the thing and then I started reading the papers

1:34:20 myself and then I was like oh okay the guy who I HED had

1:34:24 an English background he didn't have a science

1:34:26 background so he's he's trying to read

1:34:27 all these like psychology studies he doesn't

1:34:30 probably do he probably didn't even know

1:34:32 how to actually access them because of like the logins and all that kind

1:34:34 of stuff ah yeah the journals so when I started getting into the journals

1:34:37 myself that was when I sort of went on a bit of a rabbit Trail

1:34:40 to see like what is the evidence that like is is there evidence backing

1:34:44 up this sort of fun idea because there was the The Happiness Advantage by Shan

1:34:47 Aker like which is the idea that you know success comes from happiness rather

1:34:50 than the other way around it's not

1:34:52 that happiness leads to success it's that success

1:34:53 no it's not that success leads to happiness it's that happiness leads to success

1:34:56 so I knew there was some stuff there so I sort of followed up

1:34:59 his thingies and eventually came came came

1:35:02 on this broaden and build theory that I

1:35:04 talked about in the introduction that positive

1:35:05 emotions are like the thing that like

1:35:07 runs this upward spiral of productivity and positivity and blah blah blah and I

1:35:11 was like okay this is it finally there is like a thing that I can

1:35:15 hang my hat on to be like there is evidence that positive emotions Drive

1:35:20 productivity mhm which is not quite the same as fun and so then it became

1:35:24 a bit of like a balancing act to be like okay how much do we

1:35:26 lean into the language of fun or how much do we lean into the language

1:35:29 of positive emotions and eventually the positive

1:35:30 emotions thing made sense and then in the shower one day I I

1:35:33 was thinking positive emotion productivity positive productivity it

1:35:37 sounds a bit[ __] Good Vibes productivity well there's a book called Good Vibes

1:35:41 Good Life by Vex King so I can't do that what's another word for Good

1:35:44 Vibes feel good feel good feel good prod feel good produc[ __] like got good

1:35:50 brother do it then I hopped on made a loom to send to my agent

1:35:53 editor and team to be like guys I think I've got a title I

1:35:55 think it's feel good productivity what do you think and everyone was like yeah

1:35:58 that's like the first of the 5,000 titles we've tested so far that feels

1:36:02 as if it lands and so it was like that kind of idea fascinating yeah

1:36:06 I remember there was a um I forget where in the book it is like

1:36:10 somewhere early on where you are referencing

1:36:12 you're making the case for this and then

1:36:13 you're referencing all the different um different

1:36:17 studies or different books that you were reading and each sentence that you had

1:36:20 pulled referenced a researcher talking about play

1:36:23 in their work and every sentence was had the word play or playful

1:36:27 in it and that's where I started to really be like okay I understand how

1:36:31 this is all being connected together and it's cool because I think with things

1:36:36 like self-help just broadly yeah a lot

1:36:39 of the the secret to positioning or differentiation

1:36:43 is finding that through line in lots of different things and pulling it together

1:36:48 and I feel like this through line was I keep pointing over here because you

1:36:51 have a copy of it uh on your book and I keep looking at it

1:36:54 is um that's that was a really interesting through line to find and I

1:37:01 feel like it all seems to it's how it always is right it's like

1:37:05 it seems to make so much sense now it doesn't seem like it made

1:37:09 a ton of sense in the beginning yeah how much how much did you

1:37:13 discover this either through just writing and reading

1:37:16 and exploration or are you were you

1:37:18 an outliner did you like have an idea start with an outline refine the outline

1:37:23 what was that process like yeah you know it I think the first half

1:37:27 of the book has a strong through line the second half doesn't really because

1:37:30 the the title Feelgood productivity only came out

1:37:32 only came about like two and a half

1:37:34 years into the process and so it was always going to be play power

1:37:38 and people like those were always the S the chapters in in part one

1:37:44 but initially because I started with an outline and it was like part one

1:37:47 was about energizing and part two was

1:37:49 about procrastination part three was around like burnout

1:37:51 and stuff I I think we managed to to make it make it

1:37:57 with that through line but if I had my time again and another five years

1:38:04 and I knew the title of the book was going to be feel good productivity

1:38:06 it would have had a way stronger through line because I could I'm sure I

1:38:09 could have found like a lot of really good stuff that really pushed that message

1:38:13 but because the title sort of came towards the end of the process then

1:38:17 it was a case of trying to almost retrofit what we already had knowing

1:38:21 that like okay well all this stuff are on Burn there's all this stuff around

1:38:24 like procrastination and emotions and stuff and like I guess we can do a little

1:38:29 bit of literary slide of hand and saying that like you know feeling bad

1:38:31 makes you procrastinate so Feeling Good Makes

1:38:33 You productive it's like it's not quite

1:38:35 that simple but with a bit of hand waving and a little bit of like

1:38:39 shoehorning in a block quote or something that like a pull quote that really

1:38:42 emphasizes Feelgood angle maybe it can work yeah and so it felt a little

1:38:49 unsatisfying once that TI it's like try trying to come up with the title

1:38:52 of a YouTube video Once once youve made the video it's like y well it's

1:38:55 always way harder than starting with the title and so yeah I don't

1:38:59 know what your original question was yeah okay so on a like that's one

1:39:03 of the biggest things that we teach in all our writing programs too is like

1:39:07 if you start with the title the title is what dictates all of the content

1:39:10 but if you start with the content and try and retrofit the title it's

1:39:13 impossible what[ __] nightmare yeah so actually

1:39:15 so it's interesting that the the next book

1:39:18 you write yeah it's like you should spend a disproportionate amount of time

1:39:23 on the title 100% CU that's what I tell every author I know this now whenever

1:39:28 someone's like yeah I'm two years

1:39:29 into the process and we're still thinking about

1:39:31 the title I'm like no I I can feel the pain and they're all like

1:39:35 yep I know yeah cuz literally the the title or the subtitle completely changes

1:39:40 so many the stories you tell the res you pull the advice you give everything

1:39:45 I I I would have had no idea about this had I not been

1:39:47 through the process because if someone had told me this three years ago that oh

1:39:50 yeah you should really think of the title first I you know I listened

1:39:53 to the publisher where they were like oh you know like in like 80%

1:39:56 of cases the title comes later and stuff I was like okay okay so

1:40:00 this another thing I've learned I've learned

1:40:02 that Publishers have they don't really have

1:40:05 a framework for books they sort of do like I can tell that they all

1:40:11 think that the key to self-help is go as broad as possible and the challenge

1:40:17 of going broad is that it becomes less and less tangible and less and less

1:40:21 specific and so what happens is you have a lot of these self-help books

1:40:24 that come out with nothing to hold on to so they'll be titled like

1:40:28 Limitless whoever's book is named Limitless is his name to you right so it'll be

1:40:32 Limitless and the subtitle will be like becoming your best self and it's like

1:40:36 I don't know what I'm signing up for um your book actually and I think

1:40:41 it often happens on accident I don't want to take away from what you

1:40:44 did but I think it often happens on accident where your book title is actually

1:40:49 I've been formulating this this framework around

1:40:52 like the perfect book title what is

1:40:53 the perfect book title your main title is actually a category of productivity y

1:41:00 so as much as possible you actually

1:41:02 want to define a categorical difference right

1:41:05 so like slow productivity K Port defining

1:41:08 a category exactly he's not trying to be

1:41:09 productivity he's trying to be slow productivity

1:41:11 exactly and so on accident or on purpose

1:41:15 that you did that which is literally 90% of the game because people

1:41:18 that read the book title then go

1:41:20 I intuitively understand this isn't about all productivity

1:41:24 and I've already seen there's a book

1:41:25 on slow productivity so different Niche or subcategory

1:41:29 what is Feelgood productivity so you're being

1:41:31 specific but it's also really broad like

1:41:34 everyone wants to be productive and everyone wants to feel good yeah so one

1:41:37 of the keys that I found to book titles is how can you make something

1:41:41 both specific and Broad at the same

1:41:44 time Feelgood productivity accomplishes that then the subtitle

1:41:48 has to tell you what you're going to get right and so the subtitle

1:41:52 it's like how to do more of what matters to you how to do

1:41:55 more of what matters to you right okay so it actually is accomplishing that so

1:41:59 you see Feelgood productivity and you go oh this is a how-to book so

1:42:02 we accomplished that right and then it's like well what does the person want

1:42:06 to learn how to do they want to learn how to do what matters

1:42:09 to them right if you don't have those two pieces if you don't have

1:42:13 the category differentiator multiplied by and what are

1:42:17 you actually telling me yeah there's a reason

1:42:21 why those books don't move you know and so now your job when you

1:42:26 go do this on your own the next time is like how do you take

1:42:29 that General framework and go now let

1:42:31 me apply it to something different and then

1:42:33 spend like a year just doing nothing but workshopping the title and the subtitle

1:42:37 I agree I I completely agree um do you think I should lean

1:42:41 into being the productivity guy I think I think in snow laap would you talk

1:42:46 about this kind of the whole like you know Ryan holiday equal stoicism kind

1:42:49 of thing um and if you ask people what's the word that you would associate

1:42:55 with Ali abdal that word is productivity that's a really good word it's a really

1:42:59 high value word to be associated with my name and so do I want

1:43:03 to go I don't know feel good

1:43:05 Fitness feel good relationships feel good spirituality

1:43:07 feel good parenting or do I want

1:43:08 to go productive relationships productive parenting you know

1:43:12 that sort of idea okay so this is an awesome question this is going

1:43:15 to be very Advanced so anyone who's listening we're just gon to skip straight

1:43:19 to level 80 okay all right so first of all um I I think

1:43:25 it's funny this growing Trend you see it on Twitter and linked it in YouTube

1:43:29 where everyone's like I am the broad

1:43:31 category guy yeah the writing guy the writing

1:43:34 guy the productivity guy right okay

1:43:37 the thing that everyone needs to internalize is

1:43:39 that when you're thinking categorically the goal

1:43:42 you are not what's important like the goal

1:43:45 is actually not how do I grow the category of I'm the productivity guy

1:43:50 the goal is how do I grow the category itself and I am part

1:43:53 of it fine like Ryan holid grew stoicism right so he doesn't go I'm

1:43:57 the stoicism guy he goes I'm going to evangelize stoicism and because I am doing

1:44:01 that more than anyone you associate me

1:44:03 with that category right so every person who

1:44:05 does the guy thing I'm like you you already misunderstood the idea right second

1:44:10 of all is your book title you stumbled upon something which is it's not all

1:44:16 productivity it's Feelgood productivity right so if

1:44:19 I were you I your mega category is not productivity you're not the productivity

1:44:24 guy it's Feelgood productivity then the question is

1:44:28 okay so you own that now you've planted your flag now what are all

1:44:32 the subcategories of Feelgood productivity so what

1:44:35 are all the other things that can go within that umbrella feel good productivity

1:44:40 for parents feel good productivity for writers feel

1:44:42 good prod for students so you can go the you can go the for who

1:44:46 the miracle morning for so for yeah for left dogs yeah so you could

1:44:53 go you can Niche down within that category by audience yeah you could Niche down

1:44:58 by outcome you could Niche down by problem you could Niche down in all

1:45:03 sorts of different ways um okay what do you mean by problem or by so

1:45:09 I think that the mistake would be well I actually think you could go

1:45:18 multiple different ways typically it's very hard

1:45:21 so there's a old book um um called

1:45:24 positioning you ever read that book positioning I've read it ages ago but I need

1:45:27 to by Al R Al re and Jack trout and they have this this concept

1:45:32 called uh line extension or brand extension

1:45:35 right which is you know Google becomes

1:45:38 known for search and then they go and take the Google brand and they

1:45:42 bring it over to social call it Google Plus and it doesn't go anywhere

1:45:46 right because typically you can't just take

1:45:48 a brand and then extend it into other

1:45:50 categories right so I think the mistake would be you thinking well I'm

1:45:56 Ali abdal and I've been successful in productivity now let me just go jump

1:46:00 to a different Mega category and just think right you can sort of make

1:46:07 the argument though that it's not fully line

1:46:11 extension if you're extending not the brand Ali

1:46:15 abdal but you're extending the category so

1:46:18 of Feelgood productivity and that's where you

1:46:20 could go feel good relationships you know

1:46:24 Feelgood Fitness whatever sure but what I would

1:46:29 think about first is what are the categories

1:46:31 that are most closely related to productivity

1:46:36 like relationships isn't the closest next category so what are some other I mean

1:46:42 motivation would be I mean I guess like how do you define category time

1:46:45 management man like that's a subset of product

1:46:48 productivity is so wide so you're sort of going like what are the largest

1:46:52 subcategories within productivity sure yeah time management

1:46:54 would be big one procrastination motivation definitely

1:46:57 uh increasingly discipline is a lot of so

1:47:01 like for example like Feelgood discipline like that's

1:47:05 interesting that's interesting and and that that is

1:47:07 like a one deviation away and you're not yeah I'm full of them

1:47:12 and so that's not you going I'm Ally abdall I can be successful

1:47:16 at anything that's you taking your already

1:47:20 successful flag in the ground and going I'm

1:47:22 just going to extend it to this little territory that's right next to me

1:47:26 yeah feel good discipline would be an interesting book to write and so that's

1:47:30 kind it almost writes itself exactly ex that tile it writes itself and something

1:47:34 that I I always look for especially with book titles is how do you take

1:47:37 two words that shouldn't be in the same room and put them in the same

1:47:40 room and Feelgood and discipline usually are

1:47:44 not put together so inevitably you just created some magic for the person's like

1:47:49 feel good in relationships I mean that's like so vanilla like exactly so you're

1:47:53 looking for that dissonance oh that's good anything

1:47:57 else um yeah I think just to like crystallize it though if I were

1:48:02 you especially because of how successful this book has been and I sort of seen

1:48:06 how you've adjusted some of your branding to like sort of be all cohesive

1:48:10 with this book and the book title

1:48:11 everything website redesign stuff as well I would

1:48:14 if I were you I would 100% double down on the magga category of Feelgood

1:48:18 productivity and make everything fall under

1:48:20 that and literally I I honestly think no one has really executed this better

1:48:26 from a categorical lens as Ryan holiday with stoicism

1:48:29 yeah and that's your whole goal it's just Ali AB doll comes second Feelgood

1:48:34 productivity comes first how do I build a suite of products and a library

1:48:38 of Ip and books yeah that falls within that category so if I did

1:48:42 a book called something like I don't know how to actually enjoy your work

1:48:46 or something like that how to how to actually enjoy your 9 to5 or something

1:48:50 that's almost like extending the category

1:48:51 of Feelgood productivity um yeah sort of yeah

1:48:55 you could do that that the risk that you run with that is um it's

1:49:00 very similar to that book the book that you just wrote and so same

1:49:04 like with our pricing discussion where people

1:49:06 like put prices together most people if you

1:49:09 look at like Mark Manson's actually a good example of this his second book

1:49:13 and his first book are actually very similar and so when you read the first

1:49:17 book you're sort of like I don't know that I need to read the second

1:49:19 book because it's so you know and so when you're thinking about the library

1:49:23 your goal is like how do I create something that is farther away

1:49:27 from my first book from from a concept perspective good point yeah so feel good

1:49:33 discipline would be one of them where people can appreciate that those two are

1:49:36 actually different books but they're close they're

1:49:38 related enough that like okay yeah that makes

1:49:40 sense yeah you know or like Feelgood uh conflict resolution you're like oh I

1:49:47 that's interesting like conflict resolution usually feels

1:49:50 stressful yeah you know so what would

1:49:52 that look like so you have I mean you it doesn't get much bigger

1:49:58 than the irony of Feelgood productivity is

1:50:02 that you've niched down without niching down because

1:50:04 it's still so wide yeah so you've you've found something that's the magic is

1:50:09 like finding something specific that actually doesn't

1:50:13 rule a lot of people out but immediately

1:50:14 forces people to go well do I want slow productivity or do I want

1:50:17 Feelgood productivity yeah yeah part of the reason

1:50:21 to have blocks on the book cover

1:50:22 was was also that like I could imagine a world where all of our books

1:50:25 had like blocks like colored blocks

1:50:28 in different configurations and so I was sort

1:50:30 of like mocking up feel-good parenting being like the blocks are a bit higgledy

1:50:34 piggledy to look like kind of a totle of blocks oh that's cool or like

1:50:37 Feelgood Fitness is like the blocks are like a barbell or something or something

1:50:41 to that effect it would just be cute if like the whole thing could have

1:50:44 like a the whole Library could have a sort of video animated reconfiguration

1:50:50 of the blocks that would result in the things but y that's going really like no

1:50:54 one cares so something else to think about too is if you wanted to like

1:50:57 experiment with that Library you could not deploy a ton of resource and you

1:51:03 could write smaller uh ebooks or even print books on Amazon with within

1:51:10 those different verticals and then look

1:51:13 for the one that outperforms the rest and then

1:51:15 go to the publisher and go I'm ready to do round two I've written

1:51:21 five different Feelgood category ebooks this is

1:51:24 the one that's clearly working let's do

1:51:26 a book deal that's even bigger than the first one but is basically that book

1:51:31 expanded yeah because Atomic habits is just

1:51:34 blog post expanded Mark Manson's book was

1:51:37 a blog post expanded right so they are interested in the expansion of ideas

1:51:42 once they're proven successful and I guess kind of ring on that maybe it

1:51:46 would be it would also be useful to just do a video tool called

1:51:49 f good discipline with of like how

1:51:53 to actually how to blah blah whatever whatever

1:51:55 the subtitle would be and see how that does I mean so a book

1:51:59 I'm working on right now is based

1:52:01 on our first episode together because the title

1:52:05 I forget even the title but it was like five five ways to make

1:52:08 a million dollars as a writer or something

1:52:10 that kind of thing and that because it

1:52:12 performed so well sent me down the rabbit hole of well um or five

1:52:16 paths to make something like that and I was like oh it'd be really

1:52:20 interesting to do a book around the different career paths and how each one

1:52:24 pros and cons of making a million doll as a writer like how do you

1:52:27 make a million as a literary writer you know and so yeah you should

1:52:31 take all of these ideas and just run it through the lean writing method create

1:52:36 a video on it create Twitter threads on it feel good discipline that's a good

1:52:42 starting to percolate yeah that could be quite quite a fun book to write

1:52:45 the the best part is I only take 10% yeah nice um cool what

1:52:54 about hybrid publishing I hate it it's a hedge I think I think anything

1:52:59 in life almost anything in life that is

1:53:01 a hedge means except hybrid agencies except

1:53:03 hybrid agencies exactly hybrid agencies the word

1:53:06 is in a different context but hybrid publishing

1:53:08 is like you don't know whether you're playing the New York Times game

1:53:12 or the self-publishing game you've picked a weird

1:53:15 Middle Ground how many copies has art

1:53:16 and business of online writing sold I don't know how many or like how much

1:53:21 have you made from it uh yeah number of copies I don't know but I've

1:53:24 probably made like a quarter million

1:53:27 from it something like that self-published yeah so

1:53:30 you just get royalty checks every month or every qu how does it work

1:53:33 uh every month on Amazon nice and I sell like 20% of them through

1:53:37 my own website so I'm getting 100% of that sale oh you just like through

1:53:42 like a gumroad store or something yeah like that yeah and what's Wild is

1:53:46 when I wrote I wrote that book in 2020 I had been writing online

1:53:49 for a while didn't have a huge audience the advance I would have gotten

1:53:53 for that book probably would have been about

1:53:56 20 grand yeah maybe I could have talked

1:53:59 my way into getting like a 50 Grand Advance just because of where I

1:54:02 was but if I had done that to date I probably wouldn't have made

1:54:07 much more than 50 Grand so it's interesting too to look at that decision

1:54:11 in hindsight and go not only have

1:54:13 I completely eclipsed whatever that Advance would be

1:54:16 but I'm making way more and if you sell on Amazon so like how how

1:54:19 much do you personally take home from each sale like do you sense of what

1:54:22 those numbers are I've read this so many times and I always forget the exact

1:54:25 numbers but it's something like uh depending

1:54:28 on eBook or print book it's somewhere

1:54:31 in the ballpark of I think print is like it's one of the two

1:54:36 it's either print is 30% and ebook is 70% or it's flipped but it's

1:54:41 a it's a percentage of the same okay fine and have you got an audiobook

1:54:45 for it no and that was one of the biggest missed opportunities I've just

1:54:49 been so busy and we've been building our companies but that's on my to-do

1:54:52 list for this year nice it's if I had done the audio book with it

1:54:56 I probably would have made another 250 which is really frustrating to look

1:55:00 at in hindsight but you know yeah okay golden question maybe it's a good one

1:55:04 to to end on was writing this book daunting and how did you overcome

1:55:12 the constant inner critic did you have an inner critic what was that like oh

1:55:17 yeah all the like all the way through I thought I'd gotten over imposter

1:55:22 syndrome and stuff because i' been doing YouTube videos for so long and and all

1:55:25 and all that but as soon as it came to writing a book there was

1:55:29 something about that that why do you think that is why why is that so

1:55:32 daunting for people I think uh for me a big part of it was

1:55:36 that when you write a book you're really putting out a thing into the world

1:55:41 saying that like I think what I have to share is sufficiently valuable whereas

1:55:45 when you put out YouTube videos like I mean everyone in the dog's putting

1:55:47 out YouTube videos like it's not a it's not like a major you you

1:55:51 weren't sticking your neck out that far we're putting out a YouTube video I mean

1:55:54 still people think that putting out a YouTube video is sticking the neck out

1:55:56 but putting out a book where in particular

1:55:59 strangers can then review it on Amazon

1:56:01 and Goodreads publicly and can actually share

1:56:04 what they think about it even though

1:56:05 people comment ridiculous things on YouTube videos

1:56:07 yeah but it's a YouTube video like no

1:56:08 one like it's it it doesn't have a rating YouTube videos don't have a rating

1:56:12 system I think it was part of it was the fear of what if

1:56:19 people don't like this and then that will be public acknowledge that it is[

1:56:23 __] ah and that is really scary um which was a big part of like

1:56:29 second guessing myself also the books I read I was sort of comparing

1:56:33 my shitty first drafts to like Dan Pink's final draft and thinking gosh it's so

1:56:37 good how was it so good um and yeah when I got the book

1:56:44 deal I was 26 and I kind of thought like who the[ __] is going

1:56:47 to listen to a 26y old dude like talk about prod wow realized it

1:56:50 was four years ago wow yeah and so so H yeah there it it

1:56:54 was a lot of these sorts of things and like I I've never really

1:56:57 done anything interesting yeah I mean I was a doctor but like big whoops so

1:57:00 was everyone I know you know that kind of thing and like yeah I

1:57:02 grew a YouTube channel but like you know it's not like a Mr Beast levels

1:57:05 of YouTube channel and yeah I grew business but like you know it's it's

1:57:09 only a seven figure business you know that sort of thing it was all sorts

1:57:12 of like my credential is only X and there are 5 million other

1:57:18 in the world 5 million or more people in the world who also have credential X

1:57:21 or Y interesting like who am I to write this book so then how

1:57:24 did you get it over the Finish Line um did you like hire a coach

1:57:27 or anybody to help you yeah so we had I had a writing coach

1:57:30 initially in the early stages and then

1:57:32 had a external editor outside of the Publishing

1:57:34 House about halfway through the process she was great Rachel she sort of project

1:57:38 manag the whole thing and a lot of my conversations with Rachel and with Kate

1:57:41 my agent were like emotional supporty type

1:57:43 conversations where they were like don't worry

1:57:45 everyone goes through this yep it's fine you don't have to read the reviews also

1:57:49 the book is genuinely good so don't worry about it like we tell you

1:57:51 if we thought it was like don't

1:57:52 worry we're all professionals we've done this before

1:57:54 the Publishers have done this before we know when a book is bad we're

1:57:57 not going to let this be bad don't worry a lot of that so

1:58:00 that is a big value yeah you know I I understand then why a lot

1:58:03 of people want that that handholding you know but you can hire that up

1:58:07 ex you also can hire that yeah interesting and then a big part

1:58:12 of it was along the way I had to remember to take my own advice

1:58:14 and whenever I would really struggle

1:58:16 with the book it's because I flipped into treating

1:58:18 it with too much seriousness just taking it too sincerely sorry to just just

1:58:22 taking it too seriously and thinking this is a big heavy thing and it

1:58:26 was the times where I really embodied this idea of like what would this actually

1:58:30 look like if it were fun like what does the feel-good version of this look

1:58:33 like exactly where I would be like you know what this is this literally

1:58:36 this the the[ __] I'm writing about and like let me actually Okay cool

1:58:40 so let me you know get a walking pad for my desk let me

1:58:43 kind of do this like dictate this bit while I'm going for a walk

1:58:45 around hide Park let me do this bit in the coffee shop let me have

1:58:48 like a co-working party with friends let's take the whole team to a team

1:58:51 retreat in Wales and get a big ass a andb where the goal is no

1:58:54 one's allowed to do any work and so the team's all hanging out and I'm

1:58:57 just sitting there grinding on this book cuz I have to get a chapter

1:58:59 every day it was things like

1:59:00 that that made the process more enjoyable that ultimately

1:59:03 helped it get over the Finish Line what what of those things are you

1:59:06 planning on doing this next time um a big part of it is the intense

1:59:10 Sprints I found that the most productive times in the book journey were where

1:59:14 I had like a whole week or two to just think about the book

1:59:18 the whole stuff around like well if you write for 3 hours a day then

1:59:20 that's as much as anyone can do in any raise length of time and then

1:59:23 that if you're right a th words a day that extended out compounds blah

1:59:26 blah blah I didn't really make much

1:59:28 progress because the startup costs of rebooting

1:59:31 it back into my Ram and like trying to figure out like where where

1:59:35 was I and like okay where was let me bring up all those tabs

1:59:37 on freaking zoto and scrier that I have like what was that study Again

1:59:42 by that time it's like it's time for my coffee and poo and then

1:59:44 it's like I can't be a to write anymore but on the weeks where I

1:59:47 just had nothing to do other than write the book or on the whole days

1:59:50 where I had nothing to do other than write the book yeah I screw around

1:59:52 a bit in the morning I go to the toilet three times but I

1:59:55 still have another seven hours to write the book yeah so that's you know

1:59:58 I'm actually really glad you said that because one of the things I beat

2:00:01 myself up about most often is you know because I'm I'm running a company you

2:00:06 know there's a lot to do and I will get very down on myself

2:00:11 being like you didn't do your personal writing today yeah I did eight hours

2:00:15 of work writing you know but I didn't get my personal writing and I actually

2:00:19 think yeah it's funny sometimes just need to hear it from someone else but I

2:00:23 think you're totally right is it'd be better to just immerse yourself for a week

2:00:27 rather than try and do 30 minutes a day which is so interesting

2:00:30 because that's countered to everything we talk about in ship 30 but I think

2:00:35 especially when you're juggling so many different

2:00:37 types of Pursuits or projects like immersion is

2:00:39 almost always better yeah I think so um what was I going to say

2:00:44 it's like um I I I've also realized this this a big part of what

2:00:48 Cal talks about in slow productivity like the more projects you have going

2:00:51 on in parallel the more the administrative overhead

2:00:54 costs of each project add up and so

2:00:56 actually just carving out a whole day to just do one thing means

2:01:00 that you don't have to deal with all of the other[ __] that would otherwise

2:01:03 be associated with running a business and and building a team and stuff yep

2:01:07 so yeah I'm very bullish on these short Sprints of intensity to just turn it

2:01:12 into a party like go to I I I see why writers go

2:01:15 to a cam in the woods in the woods for like a week at a time

2:01:17 or a month at a time I'm like you know what that would actually be

2:01:21 kind of fun maybe I'm gonna come full circle because I always trash The Cabin

2:01:24 in the Woods the shapo and the cord Cod pipe maybe I'll come full circle

2:01:28 and go you know what there is a place for a cabin in the woods

2:01:30 after all yeah I think editing is nice to do in like small drips

2:01:33 and drops because editing it's like the goal is to see it with fresh

2:01:37 eyes and to like you know yeah that's a good point but the WR

2:01:41 especially the first draft the writing itself

2:01:43 and then and and also like the really

2:01:45 meaty edits where it's like okay I need to immerse myself in this for a whole

2:01:47 like week just to see the whole picture and then be able

2:01:50 to slot things around yeah you have to hold all that stuff in your head

2:01:53 yeah well congrats again on New York

2:01:56 Times besteller thank you very much enjoying

2:01:58 the book but you also sort of talked me out of reading the second

2:02:01 half so we'll see if I finish it although a lot of people have said

2:02:04 the chapter 9 the final chapter is their favorite one so maybe you just

2:02:07 get great and if you watch to the end of this video we'll give you

2:02:10 a bonus yeah um do you have any bonuses this time around for people

2:02:15 who are watching the end of this episode you know they know where to find

2:02:18 us we're always giving away free stuff not too worried about it happy happy

2:02:23 I got to see you here in London yeah thanks for coming by and if

2:02:25 someone's watching this on YouTube you can click here for the first episode

2:02:27 that we did which goes into more detail about the backstory and L A bit

2:02:31 more of the ground work good stuff awesome all right so that's it

2:02:35 for this week's episode of Deep dive thank

2:02:37 you so much for watching or listening all

2:02:38 the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be

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2:02:56 you enjoyed this episode you might like to check out this episode here as well

2:02:59 which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode

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