Part 5: How to Write and Publish Your First Book in 30 Days - The Four Book Frameworks

0:00Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

0:30And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small, medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This message comes from Capital One. The Capital One Venture X Business Card has no preset spending limit, so the card's purchasing power can adapt to meet business needs.

1:09Plus, the card earns unlimited double miles on every purchase, so the more a business spends, the more miles earned. And when traveling, the Venture X Business Card grants access to over a thousand airport lounges. The Venture X Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms and conditions apply. Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash VentureXBusiness. I'm very excited we're at this point now. I've given one or two or similar book frameworks like this before to people. And I would say hundreds of people now have written books in 30 days using one of the ideas I'm about to present to you. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host.

1:54This is the James Altucher Show.

2:03The first one, I'll give you a little bonus framework. I'll describe a framework that I've used and how you can use it to write your first book in 30 days. This is perhaps the simplest of all book frameworks that I'm going to describe. So at one point, I wanted to write a book about what makes billionaires, what are the habits of billionaires, and what makes billionaires different from other people. Are they special? Is there something in common among all billionaires? So I have a podcast and among the many people I've interviewed have been many billionaires. So Richard Branson, Sarah Blakely, who started Spanx, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio, many billionaires from all backgrounds, all sorts of businesses, all sorts of industries.

2:47So here's the book framework now. I took the transcript of each interview and edited it heavily so that it would read well as a chapter because just reading a conversation does not read well. But I did heavy amount of editing so it would read well as a chapter. Then I wrote an introduction and an outro, meaning a conclusion to each chapter. And in the introduction, I might tell one of my own stories like, oh, I was once in a similar business but didn't do as well. or these are the things that were said by this person that really changed my mind about this, this, and this. And I would tell some personal stories.

3:27And then I might tell a little bit more of the personal story and background of the person I was introducing. And also what was fascinating to me about them. Then I would get into the edited interview, again, heavily edited interview, and then an outro, again, summarizing what I learned and what the key takeaways are, and maybe a list of bullet points of what I think homework or key takeaways for the reader should be. And I put that all together and I wrote an introduction for the whole book about why this was interesting to me, why I was so curious about billionaires, how I started interviewing them, why I started interviewing them.

4:05I talked about my own story of maybe struggling with money at different points and does one really need a billion dollars or what is the magic number? So I wrote an introduction with stories and storytelling. And at the end of the book, again, I wrote a conclusion, which again, tells stories and summarizes maybe the common things among the billionaires. You can also write an intermediate chapter, like, oh, here's a concept that everybody's talking about. They all journal. And I would write a chapter, here's techniques on journaling and so on. By the way, I'm not the only one who's done the podcast technique for writing a book.

4:43There's a really great book by Tim Ferriss called Tools of the Titans. And all it is, is the exact same thing I just described to you. It is edited transcripts of podcasts he did. By the way, there's a chapter about me in there. I'm one of the Titans. I'm really grateful for that. But Tools of the Titans was a book he wrote 100 % based on his podcast. He did another one, which was even a more simple technique, which is he emailed questions to 100 people. and edited heavily the answers and the email dialogue he had with each person and called that the tribe of mentors. And that was also a bestselling book.

5:22So this kind of podcast framework works very well to write a book in 30 days, particularly if you've already done the interviews. And for the 2 million people out there who have done a podcast and have episodes, pick a category that you've spoken to many people about in your podcast. and then you can write think like a blah, blah, blah. I talked to this idea with a friend of mine, Brian Keating, who wrote the book, Losing the Nobel Prize. And he wrote a book called Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, where he used the podcast technique, summarizing his interviews and what he learned from the many Nobel Prize winners that he's interviewed on his podcast.

6:01So this is a well-known technique. When you write it, it'll be different from other people who use this technique. Like I'm sure if you use the podcast technique, It'll be different from any book I write, any book Tim Ferriss writes, and on and on. So it's a bonus framework I'm giving to describe how I'm going to give four different frameworks by which you can write a book and publish the book in the next 30 days. So let's check out the next four concepts or frameworks you can use. The 101 technique is a tried and fun and perhaps one of the easiest ways to write a good, valuable book in the next 30 days.

6:40And when I say it's a tried technique, I remember when I was a kid growing up, there was this book I bought, the hundred most influential people in history. And all my friends bought it and my parents bought it and many adults I knew bought it. And people would spend hours arguing, you know, about the list of like, who should be on the list of a hundred most influential people. And people would argue, should Napoleon really be more influential than George Washington? Was Jesus really more influential than Muhammad? I mean, this listed the hundred most influential people all throughout history.

7:13And it was just the opinion of the author that he told story after story about who these people were, why they were influential and so on. So here's the technique. Pick an area that fascinates you, that you would love to research and that you would love to learn more about. So each day for the next 10 days, or maybe every other day, however long you want, make a list of 10 items that you completely did not know about this area. I'll give you an example specifically of entrepreneurship. So let's say you were gonna write a book, 101 Things You Need to Know About Entrepreneurship or 101 Unusual Things You Need to Know About Entrepreneurship.

7:54You can say, number one, the average millionaire has five different sources of income according to the IRS. So now you show the proof, you give a source, and then you tell a story. Oh, Richard Branson runs 400 companies, but what were his first five sources of income? Or maybe you write about Walt Disney and how his first source of income was making little animated shorts for movies. Then his second source of income was watches. His third source of income was theme parks. And then finally, this fourth or fifth source of income started with movies with Snow White. So you could talk about examples through history, but also your own personal examples of how it benefited you or some family member or some friend when they started to have multiple sources of income.

8:45So that's just item number one on the 101 things you need to know. Item number two, and this is very fascinating, only 30 % of startups fail, according to the Small Business Administration. Now, I've always been told 90 % of startups fail, but actually that's not true. And you could talk about many categories of businesses that one can start that it probably won't fail. Like most McDonald's franchises, for instance, don't fail. Most laundromats, if they're put in a good location, don't fail. Most car washes don't fail, again, if they're in a good location. So each item, you're gonna have 101 items altogether about entrepreneurship.

9:22You'll have, again, a description of what that item means and the proof of it. Like, is it really true that only 30 % of businesses, of startups fail? And then you could talk about either a story that you read about or a story from history or a personal story. And by the way, it's easy to research these things. Just go to Google and type in 10 unusual things about entrepreneurship, 10 unusual things about small businesses, 10 unusual pieces of data You could learn from the IRS. And gradually, you'll get, over the course of 10 to 15 days, 101 unusual things about entrepreneurship that everyone needs to know.

10:07And again, for each item, you write a couple of stories. You write the proof, the source, maybe a personal story combined with a historical story. And within 20, 25 days, you're going to have the first draft of a book. and then it'll take you the next few days to publish it using the techniques we're gonna describe. I wanna talk for a second about the concept of a listicle. So why can't it just be things every entrepreneur needs to know? Well, I'll tell you, people love lists. They like 101 unusual things every entrepreneur needs to know. This is all throughout history. Think about the most successful pieces of text ever written in history.

10:50Think of them all as books. or blog posts. For instance, in 1500 BC, there was a blogger who wrote the Ten Commandments. They had a blog on stone back then. So Moses wrote the Ten Commandments. In 300 BC, a young blogger named Buddha wrote the Four Noble Truths. And that became so popular, it actually became competitive to Hinduism. So in Hinduism, around the same time, people who were interested in yoga wrote the 108 Yoga Sutras, which is text that still exists to this day. In 1517, maybe one of the most popular pieces of text ever was a listicle, the 95 Theses. This was written by Martin Luther and caused half of Europe to split off from Catholicism.

11:35And even more recently, you have people like Robert Greene wrote the 48 Laws of Mastery. You have Stephen Covey wrote Seven habits of highly effective people. Jordan Peterson wrote 12 Rules for Life. I'll just give you some other examples you could think about writing about. For instance, you could write a book, 101 Secrets the U.S. Government is Keeping From You. By the way, great topic for someone to have you on as a podcast guest. But here are some secrets the U.S. government doesn't regularly share with people. If you're in New York City and afraid of a terrorist attack, stay at the Waldorf Astoria.

12:11How come? Because presidents usually stay there because below the ground floor is an exit, a secret exit to track 61, which is a secret train track that takes you to right to Grand Central and allows you to quickly get out of New York City. Here's another secret the government probably doesn't want you to know. If you want to avoid taxes and live in a beautiful spot and still be in the U.S., the U.S. Virgin Islands has a top federal tax rate of 3.35 percent instead of the top federal tax rate of 39 % in the States. Again, useful thing the U.S. government doesn't want you to know. And a very easy topic to research.

12:49You can easily put together enough items in 20 days to write a book. And also it's a great one to market. First off, for each item, like take that Waldorf Astoria one. When did they make that? Was it ever used? Who was the first president who insisted on this? And do presidents still stay at the Waldorf Astoria to this day? What happened the last time you stayed at the Moldova Historia, if ever? Or what hotels do you stay at in New York City? What other secrets might there be? Or is there really a bunker under the White House, for instance? So all of these things are interesting. Could be interesting articles, could be interesting Twitter threads, could be interesting Facebook posts, could get you on podcasts, could be email newsletters.

13:30But it's great also as a book. And there is a tried and true history of people writing these listicles. and it's easy to research. I highly recommend checking out Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Mastery to see how he combines his 48 laws with storytelling. But also just remind yourself, the Ten Commandments, probably the thing read by the most number of people, billions of people was a listicle. Now you're just adding to that long and good tradition of books based on lists.

14:06Being an entrepreneur is a 24-7 job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates at the end of the day. The most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates.

14:37And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small, medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash Altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

15:30today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. Everybody loves habits and books about habits. Everybody wants the best habits for health, for success, for financial success, for relationship success. What are good habits for writers? What are good habits for salesmen? And on and on. I mean, I've had on my podcast, Charles Duhigg, who wrote the book, The Power of Habit, millions of copies sold. Atomic Habits by James Clear, 15 million copies sold. I don't know how many copies sold, but he's got 89 ,000 reviews. And I know it's over 10 million copies sold.

16:10So people love habits. And this is another category or another framework where you could write many books. But of course, we're focused on writing our first book in 30 days is pick a category you would like to have better habits in or a category you're fascinated by. And then search for academic research on habits for entrepreneurs, habits for golf players, habits for salespeople, habits for whatever it is you're interested in, best habits for cooking. So habits books always sell well. You can write them easily and it makes you an expert on this combination of a favorite topic, Habits for musicians, for instance.

16:55Anything you want combined with habits. Again, it's an example of idea sex, like in the Jesus diet technique. And I'll show you a couple examples where I search on habits for golf players or habits for salespeople. And what happens is, again, you'll find academic research papers. And what do we know about academic research papers again? They're impossible to read. So that gives you the benefit of you could take this academic research, summarize each habit that's discussed in each paper, summarize why it works according to the scientists, the proof that it works, which is all the data that they collected when studying this habit.

17:35I was searching on habits for golf players and I came across a research paper on specifically habits for golf players or doctors and the effects this golf has actually on their medical practices. So it also goes the other way where it might be that golf players get good habits for other things. And that's just one specific example. But again, the specific is you have an introduction where don't forget you use the six U's where you talk about habits and why you're looking at the habits of whatever topic it is, like entrepreneurship, sales, golf. Then each chapter is another technique produced by academic research, why the technique works, the proof, so on.

18:18And then personal stories that maybe you know from history or it's easily Googleable to find or even the research paper might mention stories from history or personal stories from yourself. You do one a day for 20 to 30 days. Now you have 20 to 30 chapters plus an introduction and boom, you have a book, you publish it on Amazon. And by the way, a week, a month later, you could publish the habits of another thing, the habits of doctors, the habits of teachers, the habits of firemen, the habits of astronauts. You can go on and on. You can write 100 books like this. Why do I say you can write 100 books like this?

18:57Well, the goal is each one of these, I'm teaching you how to write a book in 30 days. So that means you can write 12 books in a year or more because you can work on some books simultaneously. And the goal ultimately is some books will succeed. Some books might not succeed as much, but you'll get cashflow coming in from hundreds of different books over the next couple of years. and that can be a source of, a valuable source of income. You can make your living passively from just this passive income from all of these books you've been writing. So I think it's really important to learn these ideas of writing a book in 30 days.

19:33Not only that, but the other things I've mentioned in the introduction to this course, which is that a book is your business card. A book makes you credible so that you might get the speaking engagement or the consulting gig or get on the podcast or start a podcast or get an email newsletter. There's many ideas in the spoken wheel technique that can propel you forward once you start writing books. But a habits book is, again, a tried and true strategy for writing a book in 30 days, writing a book that will sell, writing a book that will help people, and potentially building a valuable source of passive income.

20:07So this was the habits technique. This next framework, again, is a tried and true throughout history framework for writing a fun, informative, knowledgeable, and easy to write book. One thing I want to remind you too, we're not limited by the myth of length. It doesn't have to be 250 pages. It could be 20 pages, 30 pages, 70 pages, whatever you want. We're trying to write a book. We're trying to write a book in 30 days. We're trying to write, in many cases, your first book. So let's talk about the Jesus diet technique. And by the way, it's a technique, but it's also a very specific idea for a book.

20:44And I'll explain what I mean. A friend of mine, his name was Matt, he lost his job, had a little bit of money, but was going to run out fast. So he picked up his bags, moved out of New York City, which is expensive to live in. And he moved to Medellin in Colombia, where it was much cheaper to live. And he had this idea. He was going to write basically a book called The Jesus Diet. So what was Jesus's diet? Jesus lived 2 ,000 years ago. Do we really know what he ate? Well, we do know a couple of things. We know that many people are inspired by the life of Jesus, of course, all of Christianity. And many people want to live and behave like Jesus because he is the holiest person ever in Christianity.

21:32and so it makes sense to write a book, well, what did Jesus eat and how can I treat my body the way Jesus treated his body? So in terms of diet, well, we do know, we actually do know what Jesus ate. A little bit of research would show that he roughly ate the Mediterranean diet, a diet that's called the Mediterranean diet. Now, there are many types of diets out there, of course, and we know diet books do well. There's keto diets, There's low-carb diets. There's all-meat diets. It's kind of the same thing. But the Mediterranean diet is well-known. It was covered in a book called The Blue Zones, where he looked at the eating habits of people who have a high quality of life well into the age of 100 or above.

22:20And it turns out that many of these people, that a blue zone area, that's a location where there are many people who live to be 100, is in the Mediterranean. and it's probably because they eat a Mediterranean diet. What's a Mediterranean diet? It's certain kinds of fish, it's hummus, it's baba ganoush, it's certain kinds of vegetables and certain types of, certain sizes of portions. So you would do research on the history of the area, the history of the culture. Are there any examples in the Bible where Jesus talks about food? I don't know, but that would have to be part of the research. There'd be research into the archeology of how people cooked back then or what sort of foods maybe they ate then that we don't eat as much now.

23:05And again, it's a real diet. It's known to be healthy, the Mediterranean diet. If you wrote a book called The Jesus Diet, you could have quotes and inspirational stories about Jesus. You could have scientific facts about the Mediterranean diet. You could have recipes about the Mediterranean diet. And so this is what my friend did. and he actually sold it as an online course and made enough money that he was able to live for several years in Columbia. I lost touch with him since then, so I don't know what he's working on now. Maybe he's still living off this. Now, again, I'm gonna talk about this in a second as a technique, but I wanna talk specifically, well, he already did this.

23:47So are you saying, I can't do this? No, I actually have never read what he did. I just knew he did a book or a course called The Jesus Diet. You could do the exact same thing and you'll come up with different religious stories, different recipes, different stories from the archaeology of the area, different stories about the science of the Mediterranean diet, plus maybe your own experiences as a Christian or your own experiences trying different diets. So I'm actually, in part, recommending you can write the Jesus diet. And again, I'll get to the technique in a second. But what's great about this one is there are sequels.

24:31Diets of the Saints, for instance, or the diets of other religious figures in Christianity. But here's the actual technique of which this is just one example. You take a religious concept or a religious leader and you combine it with another high value, important topic that sells well. And I call this idea sex, where you take one idea in one area of life and combine it with another idea in another area of life, combine them together and see what the result is. So I like the idea of combining important areas for modern life with ancient religions and spiritual practices and spiritual leaders. And this is, again, not a new idea.

25:23There's Zen and the Art of Archery was a bestselling book for many years. There's the Inner Game of Tennis, which is partly based on Taoism and partly based on tennis. There's the Tao of Pu. There's the art of war written by Sun Tzu. And Steven Pressfield combined that with writing techniques. So he wrote the war of art rather than the art of war. But he was using ideas from the art of war mixed with ideas he had about writing. So let's think of some others. For instance, if I were to Google right now, Jesus and salesman, there's over 8 million results. So what about, is Jesus the greatest salesman in the world?

26:05Or what would be the book title? The Sales Techniques of Jesus. And again, there's 8 million Google results when I search for that. So it's not a completely unique idea, but you make it unique with your own take on Christianity, on Jesus, on selling your own stories. And don't forget, length's not important. So this could be 30 pages or 90 pages or 200 pages. And don't forget in the introduction and maybe the introduction of every chapter, you talk about the six U's. Like, why is it important now? Why is it urgent now that we learn the selling techniques of Jesus? How could this be useful? How could it be user-friendly?