How One Book Generated $7 Million for This Business | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E5

19:46Hala Taha:What do I need to bring up? And it will scan Slack and even send me things that I didn't realize what was going on in my company. You can create skills, which create a process that might've taken two or three people and going into different apps, and it can do that on your behalf. It is amazing what you can do with this platform. It has drastically improved our efficiency at Yap Media, so much so that we're pausing hiring on a lot of roles. I recommend you start with their four-week AI competency program. You can get access and get 10 % off at experience.mindstone.com slash yap. That's experience.mindstone, M-I-N-D-S-T-O-N-E dot com slash yap for 10 % off their four-week AI competency program.

20:29Hala Taha:Okay, let's talk about how you actually make money with your business. So what do you typically charge a client? Average order value is$10 ,000. They could pay anywhere from$6 ,000 on the lowest end to$100 ,000 on the highest end. Okay, so what's the difference in terms of the services? Yeah, so the lowest end is coaching and content only with no services. The highest is basically from done with you, or actually the lowest rung is we just show you how to do it, teach you how to do it, all the way to done-for-you ghostwriting. And we will write the book. We will do all the marketing stuff around it.

21:04And obviously, as an author, you've got to market the book. I mean, that's a big lesson, whether you go traditionally published or self-published, but that's our highest in ghostwriting.

21:12Hala Taha:What is the most costly piece of fulfilling for your clients? By far, the services. I mean, we live in such an interesting time with these online services, businesses, coaches, coaching businesses, whatever else, is I think the early days of the gold rush, it was just a course. Just have a course. Yeah, it was the gold rush. And then it was, oh, we need some coaching. Okay, so let's have coaching. And I think we were one of the first people to really do coaching at scale. I mean, we have a team of seven to 10 coaches that have all written and published books that do it at a really, really high level.

21:47But then you get to a point, and I think that's where people see the landscape being so much more competitive these days, is done-for-you services, which everybody else just calls services, by the way. I don't know why in our weird world people call it done-for-you services. But then you start adding that. That is really, really expensive. And so in the beginning, we built out a lot of that in the Philippines, had some mixed results. Then we've onshored a bunch of that stuff. But it still is by far the most expensive delivery piece. So when you look at our cogs are more like 25 to 30 percent, whereas a bunch of our competitors or people in the online coaching world would say, oh, my cogs are like 10 percent.

22:30So that makes it a little tricky because we can't spend as much to acquire a customer. And so there's just kind of more hard costs with the business.

22:38Hala Taha:Yeah. So it's mostly because you have to hire talent. Exactly. And retain that talent and train that talent. And so what happened when you said you had employees in the Philippines and then you ended up doing U.S. employees? Why did you make that change? Yeah, we still have employees in the Philippines. But I think anything customer-facing, I mean, like it or not, people in the U.S. just don't want to talk to people in the Philippines. I'm facing the same thing. We've got a lot of back-end folks that do copywriting and video editing internationally. But anybody client-facing has to be U.S. Yeah, which is, I mean, you can call it whatever you want, but your customers make the rules.

23:15So, I mean, I'm not saying I agree with it, but my customers are making the rules. And so then we realize, oh, well, if they're talking to customers, they can't be in the Philippines. so then you build this complex network of training back-end staff to then pass it off to the person who's talking to them, but then now you have double the labor. And now, especially in an age of AI, it's like, well, if you can train someone relatively quickly in the Philippines to do it, you could probably just build an AI agent to do it. And so why would you do that? And so that's where, we still have people there, but we've onshored a lot of it.

23:48Hala Taha:Yeah, I think people are really worried about job loss with AI, But for me, I'm hiring way more in the U.S. than I used to because I'm doing the same thing. Instead of thinking about hiring more international people, I'm like, well, one U.S. employee who could create like four agents would be the same as one U.S. employee and hiring for international supports for them, right? Yeah. So that's how I think about it, too. It is interesting how the jobs that are getting eliminated with AI are the offshore jobs and the lowest paid jobs typically that are outside of the U.S. And to your point, I can now hire assistants that I used to hire in the Philippines or in Latin America or whatever else.

24:27And I have four assistants for my key people on my team, but it's just all built with AI. So I agree. I think most people that, sure, it's coming for a lot of white collar work. Don't get me wrong. It is eventually.

24:38Hala Taha:But right now, this is for agencies. I feel like this is what's happening. I'm starting to feel like, well, it's hard to manage a lot of people. It's like the headache of managing people and training people. And it's like, well, I'd rather just have somebody who's like in Austin, for example. Yes. And using AI. Yeah. It's so funny because we've built AI managers and we're in the process. I mean, we're probably about halfway done of replacing all of our managers with AI. Wow. And it's crazy because if you think about it, management is sameness and it's repeating yourself. And so I'm kind of like you.

25:10I'm so tired of repeating myself for the hundredth time about the same exact thing to an imperfect human that then does it wrong again. And so I would rather just train the AI manager to do it. And then I have really good and skilled leaders. But then now all of a sudden there's way less ping-ponging, coordinating in the organization. And maybe in a business like yours, it's like, okay, that account manager doesn't have to manage five people. So instead of having five clients per account manager, we have eight or whatever. Maybe it's 10 now. And so they're twice as productive and I pay them 30 % more or 50 % more.

25:45So that's a win for the employee. It's a win for the business. is the win for the client.

25:48Hala Taha:I love that. Well, since we're on the topic, talk just about how you've implemented AI. I know that you've done a lot with it. Oh my gosh, everywhere. Everywhere, which is really controversial in my line of work with books and stuff. But I think, so we're building AI managers. We've built this massive, we call it the hub, where everything for employees is inside of this AI hub. Every call that we have in the business is recorded, reviewed, and scored, automatic note-taking. We have hundreds of one-on-one coaching calls a week. So now all of those are recorded, documented. The recordings are sent to our customers.

26:26The action items are pulled out for them. So it makes our coaching more effective for our customers. It saves our coaches time. We're building out the AI managers. We're, I mean, it's just all kind of iteratively getting better. And then we build out kind of a one-off, Like I have my own setup and Obsidian and Claude and like NoteTaker and it's kind of disseminating information, helping me make better strategic decisions, my assistants building stuff alongside me to then pull notes or action items from meetings. So it runs the gamut from my personal productivity to ultimately trying to make every single person in the business more effective.

27:04Hala Taha:Yeah. Talk to me about how you actually rolled it out because I think you hired somebody on your team who like leads AI, right? Yeah. So kind of, you know, there's all the headlines about Block laying off 4 ,000 people or 6 ,000 people and basically changing the org chart. And so we're in the middle of changing the org chart where there's only three roles that exist. There's individual contributors, there's player coaches, and there's directly responsible individuals. So think someone who owns an initiative for a limited period of time. But exactly what you said is the individual contributor. We've now broken that in half and said there's doers and there's builders.

27:39And so we have one or two builders in the company. Their job is to build AI tools that make everyone else and everything else in the company more effective. And so those people already worked for me. So I didn't have to, I guess I'm fortunate in that way. I didn't have to go out and hire like an AI implementer or something, but we just claimed back their time and then got them building things one at a time to where now all of a sudden they built something that saves them five hours a week. So then they got five more hours to build and then they use that to build something for somebody else that saves them five hours a week.

28:10And so it kind of just iteratively starts speeding up into the point where we are now, which is just, it's basically their full-time job.

28:18Hala Taha:That sounds incredible. I feel like there's a lot to learn from you on that front. So what's your advice to listeners tuning in who have their own businesses, they're using AI personally and people on their team are using AI, but they haven't had like an organizational AI like revolution within their company. Like where should they start? What should they do first? You got to start by identifying a builder in your company or hiring them externally. And so I was talking to a buddy about this the other day. I'm like, dude, you've got to hire someone to start building this. You're leaving so much money on the table.

28:51And I think if your team is not adopting AI, it's your fault. And I would not expect them to build the thing that they're going to use. I think it's my responsibility as the CEO of the company to structurally build stuff that our frontline people can use to make them more effective. And so that's in the early days, you see all this stuff of like, everybody needs to be AI native. And it's like, okay, yeah, that's true. But are they really going to be building innovative solutions? Probably not. They're going to on the margins, implement some things that slowly make their role better. That's great.

29:25I love that. And so we got the whole team using it and encouraged people to use it. But then where things really changed is where we started implementing the builders. And I started pointing them at problems. and started having them come alongside people, starting with revenue first, because obviously if you got more revenue, well, then you can kind of pay for everything else. But then, so it was like, what are our highest revenue things? Doing that for people. What are our lowest margin, biggest time wasters? Okay, let's build all that stuff. So we automate and kind of, you know, save employee time, save backend stuff.

29:57We're able to trim our staff and be a little bit more leaner and stuff like that. And then it just starts kind of compounding.

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32:32Hala Taha:Okay, let's go back to your business, how you make money. So what would you say your highest margin services are? Like, what do you love to sell? Yeah, I would say I love this Keith Cunningham-ism that's every number in your business you should look at in three formats, which is dollar amount, a percentage in a per unit. So even when you think about profitable services, there's, you know, the ghostwriting would be our highest dollar amount, but not our highest percentage, right? And, you know, on a per unit, maybe it's about the same, but we try to break down the per unit profitability. I would say our 25K offer is probably our most profitable as a percentage, at least, and maybe even as a dollar amount, because there's just so much hard cost to ghostwriting, but I'd say that's probably...

33:18Hala Taha:Yeah, I was going to say it's probably really expensive to find a good ghostwriter. Like writing in general, I find, is very hard to hire for. There's not that many good writers. So I imagine that that could be a very expensive part of your business is actually the writing. That's a very expensive part of the business. Now, we're finding ways to implement AI tastefully and with a process because we think we haven't fully figured it out yet. But we believe that once we figure a lot of that stuff out, we'll actually write better books for our clients. because it'll be the hardest part of ghostwriting a book for someone else is disseminating all of the information from them.

33:54So how did you used to do it? Well, you would just interview them incessantly and look them up and research. And so you end up with 20 to 50 hours of research time to try and distill their voice and all that. Well, AI is really good at that. So we're figuring out ways to do that. But yeah, that's our biggest cost center. And then in a weird way, probably Probably actually our highest margin is our$6 ,000 product because there's no services. So it's, I mean, it's a percentage, but it's not like we're going to get rich or certainly not going to get to eight figures just slinging that price point.

34:27Hala Taha:Is there a service that you decided to turn off at some point where you're like, this is just not worth it? Tell us about that. Course only. I think courses are dead. I think courses are dead too. Yeah, which is so sad. RIP courses. And I mean, as someone who is a course creator and built a business off of that, but even before AI, we decided to shut down our course only offerings because people just weren't implementing it. And so, sure, can we make money off of it? Yeah, but it's just not a good sustainable business. Like, I think if you are in business where your customers aren't successful, at best, they're not successful.

35:04And at worst, they're pissed off and think you're just scamming them. That's not a sustainable business. So we cut that off a long time ago and we said, we're not going to sell anything above a threshold. Like if it's a hundred bucks or below, okay, cool. Yeah. But that's not really a major revenue driver for us. But if it's above a thousand dollar threshold, we're not selling it without having some sort of coaching component.

35:24Hala Taha:Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think there's one exception. I think AI courses are the only thing right now that can make money. Okay. Let's talk about how you get your customers, your marketing channels. What is a typical way that you're acquiring a customer? How much are you willing to spend on acquiring a customer? It's funny because most people in our space only get customers through ads. And we got to eight figures without really doing much ads at all and without having a personal brand, which, I mean, those are the two playbooks. If you're running a coaching business where you either have a massive personal brand and or you get really good at spending money on ads.

36:02But for us as partnerships, that is the, you know, that'll be probably six to eight million this year. And so we go speak at events. We've got a speaking team of seven people or so that go out and speak on the company's behalf. I'll speak at the big ones, but anything else, there's the team's going to speak. We'll do webinars, all kinds of stuff. So there's the partnership bucket. Then now we're starting to get good at ads. So we just last week passed a million for the year, which is not crazy, but we're starting to pick up some momentum there. And then last is content. And if you're ranking by revenue, it would say secondly is content.

36:41But that's SEO. That's our blog. And then now obviously building out the media team and the media company. That's YouTube, social, Instagram, DM funnels, all that stuff. And then how much we're willing to pay to get a customer. I'd say is roughly two grand. I'm like, we'll go higher, depending on the terms and depending on if it's on the back end or the front end.

37:03Hala Taha:Let's talk about the speaking engagements. I think that's like a marketing channel that I haven't heard of. Yeah. I'd love to like really unpack that. Talk to us about how you find these speakers. Are they your coaches? How you get them opportunities? Are they getting the opportunities? Are you, how are you paying them? How are they soliciting the offer? How are you closing the clients afterwards? Like walk us through the whole thing. Yeah. I think a lot of people are sleeping on live events. And it's crazy. I mean, what's old is new again, right? I think pretty soon TV ads are actually going to be very profitable because everybody's went digital.

37:38And so with events, what we do is we've got a whole playbook. So we do, I just think of it as a B2B sales team, which obviously you get a lot of experience in and are really good at. And I almost think like some of your podcast booking engine is kind of like a B2B sales team. But so it's B2B sales, except we're selling events on having us come speak. And so they do the outreach. We'll either do a sponsorship or a back-end deal where we'll give them a cut. And then our speakers, they're all internal staff. So we take our best salespeople. We take our best coaches, predominantly best salespeople, because if you can sell one-to-one, you can speak one-to-many.

38:14And so we train them up. We have a whole, we have really intensive training that we send people through where they get a bunch of small at-bats and kind of work their way up depending on how well they do. Then we use that plus the book itself to then go speak. We've got a booth. We give away a ton of books, which means we capture the leads of almost the whole room. We book a ton of appointments. We'll do anywhere from 50 to 100K per event, typically on the spot. And then obviously some overflow revenue on the back end. And we'll do 50 to 70 events this year. So that's kind of the the core of that side.

38:51We did a video on my personal YouTube channel kind of breaking down that whole blueprint. But that's -

38:57Hala Taha:Yeah, I feel like that must be giving you guys some ideas for your own business because I feel like that's just like a really unique model, going to conferences, sponsoring them, getting on stage, using your own employees who are like your rockstar employees to be the speakers and having a funnel that way. And live events convert so well because there's just something about being in the room with somebody who's really smart, who has the solution that you want. It builds the trust really fast. Webinars are also awesome too. What are you guys doing with webinars? Are you using your ads to funnel to the webinar?

39:29Yeah, well, we don't. So we do a webinar every week, at least one. And that's sometimes me, sometimes people on the team. Similarly, that's kind of like a speaking development funnel. But we don't often run ads to webinars just because the logistics are a little tricky where, you know, if you're running an ad to a live webinar, Well, then you're constantly refreshing your ads, the times, the creative. Then you got to deal with show rate. If we're spending money on Saturday for a webinar next Tuesday, like are those people just like got really complicated. So we kind of just said, screw that. We'll just run ads to a VSL instead.

40:02And then we'll do a lot of our webinars internally. But I want to.

40:07Hala Taha:And a VSL is a video sales letter, by the way, guys. Yeah. So basically five minute video, five to 10 minute video selling one to many what you do. It's funny you mentioned live events being one of the best sales mechanisms for people. I think if somebody's trying to get your first customers for your business, it's very simple. Find a local event that is specific to what you do or tangential to what you do. Convince them to let you speak at that event and then plug what you do subtly or maybe not so subtly if they let you in that talk. And so this was actually one of the first, I was doing webinars.

40:44Yeah. And this is one of the first ways, first event that I spoke at, I went locally, spoke to 27 orthodontists, which you think, hold up, you publish books, like why would you speak to orthodontists? But about creating a book that helps them grow their practice.

40:57Hala Taha:Yep. And an hour later, I walked out with 18 grand in sales. Amazing. And that was when the light bulb turned on for me where I said, oh, hold up, there's something to this one to many sales. And so whether it's a webinar, whether it's an in-person event, but especially an in-person event, as you mentioned, as the best and the fastest way to build trust and sell at scale, even without being salesy. How do you go about finding these conferences and live events? Like, what's your process for that? I think the question that we like to ask is, who is already talking to our ideal customers? Because somebody is.

41:34and either before or after they do business with us or just topically, these are people who would want to write books. Because I think a lot of people would think, oh, I got to go to the industry events. Like they would think, oh, you probably go to a bunch of publishing and writing conferences. We go to none of those.

41:48Hala Taha:Oh my gosh. Those suck because it's a red ocean. I don't want to show up and be one in a line of 15 people that help people publish books. So we actually take the total opposite approach and we say, who has the problem that we help solve? and then let's go speak at those events. So we love real estate investing events. Those crush for us. We love mom events, mom blogger events, mompreneur events. Those are awesome. Faith-based events where there's an angle towards faith-based business or faith-based leadership. Those are really good. Any entrepreneur self-help event. Like, I mean, it's that type of event.

42:24And especially if the person running the event has done the thing that you help with, right? So obviously, well, I'll just use my business as an example. Like if the person running the event has published a book and it was really helpful for them, those are the best because everyone in the audience is there because they at least respect the person running the event. They want to be like them. And so if we're able to just say, oh, hey, they published a book. You should too. We help, you know, kind of drop the mic.

42:51Hala Taha:That's such a, like, that's an amazing idea for folks, for so many different types of businesses, to just think about the conferences where your target audience is, and not necessarily your industry conference, right? So, so smart. I love that we went over that. So let's talk about your customer. Let's talk about writing a book and why people write books. We already talked about how if you're looking to make money off royalties, that's a really hard game, unless you are, like, an influencer or you've got a large audience. Like, for example, I'm actually starting to write my book. I just hired an agent and a writer and working on it.

43:26Hala Taha:And I hope I make money off royalties. But you got me thinking about something else that I have to make sure in this proposal process that my book actually aligns to my main focus of my business, which is my podcast network. So I grow and monetize like 45 other podcasts. And I'm an expert in monetizing influencers across all their channels, right? And so I need to make sure my book aligns to that. And originally that was the plan, but my agents were trying to make it more broad. And when I was like just studying for this interview, I was like, damn it, I was right. It should be about creator entrepreneurship.

44:04Hala Taha:And like, and I should use it because like, you know, even if the book, I think the book will be successful, but even if it's mildly successful, having it be about creator entrepreneurship would ensure that I would get more leads. It's help us understand why it's, you know, it's not even worth releasing a book if you have the wrong idea. So I think the first question you got to answer is, do you want to sell books or do you want to make money? And let's just use an example, right? I see two very distinctly different books, which is I'm assuming is kind of how your agent's thinking about this. There is the I Help You Make More Money as a Creator book, which is going to print revenue for your business.

44:42And then there's the young and profiting broad. Yeah, profit young. Yeah, profit young. How to start a business and side hustle and whatever, which is great because you can sell some books to your audience and all that. But, I mean, doesn't align with the core business. So I think you've got a kind of a fork in the road choice, which is probably similar to some people watching or listening this, which is which one do I want to do first? and I would argue, I mean, not that I'm biased or anything, but I would argue to do the creator, make money as a creator book first, even maybe even in the lead up to, because if you traditionally publish, cool, it's gonna be two years from now.

45:21I mean, it's gonna take - It literally is two years from now. So dang long. And so in the middle of that, well, let's just do the book that's gonna actually make us money. Let's sell the rights to the other one. And then in the process of self-publishing a book directly related to the business, that is gonna bring in a ton of customers. And the benefit is you're going to learn how to write and publish and launch and all that as well. So that when it gets to maybe what's the more big leagues book, you know how to do it. And so you can go crush that big brand book. That's like, that's the excuse that you, actually, I don't know, you could use the other one too.

45:56But I would say the Profit Young concept is the excuse to get on all the podcasts, do all the big shows.

46:03Hala Taha:I think that's, and I really think I could go about it both ways. But to your point, I could self-publish the creator entrepreneurship book and just use that as like a network ROI tool. Interesting. And I wouldn't get, I would say, and we should have you on our show. It seems like I'm about to be a case study. We should have you on the show and we'll do, we have this one page launch plan and we'll just map it out and do a video on it. but I would say you start with the core premise, which this is, you're not going to like this, is I don't even need to sell 5 ,000 copies, but I want to get 50 customers or whatever the number is.

46:45Like that's what we would back into the math on. And we would just do that. And then you don't get lost in the sauce of like, this book's got to sell a bajillion copies and I got to dedicate two years of my life to this and stop everything else. Because I think that's where people get hung up. They think, oh, I got to do all this and that's going to be a massive distraction. Make me no money. So yeah, I'm not doing that. But I think if we strategically did that book, which is the same thing I would say to anyone listening, especially if you're early on in your business, don't write the broad book.

47:14Write the specific book that's going to make you money. And then you can parlay the other stuff later.

47:20Hala Taha:And a lot of people don't realize that their book is what allows them to go on a podcast and have, you know, original content. And like your writing makes you understand how you think a lot better, right? And really helps you distill your ideas so that when you are put on the spot or when you're standing on a stage, you know how to captivate an audience and know what to say that's like actually meaningful and interesting. So for me, one of the reasons why I want to write a book is because now that I don't do courses, I feel like I need another way to like write my ideas down, gather my thoughts and really be able to distill them.

47:57Yeah, it's interesting, especially in a world of AI, you need hub IP. You use that hub IP to splinter everything else. So you splinter the podcast that you're on, you're talking about that topic and you're clipping that up, right? You're in the social post and everything that you're doing is really just spinning off of that hub IP and then maybe you decide to do it again and again. But you've got kind of your source material, whereas I feel like most people going about it backwards. Yeah. Where they're trying to kind of figure out what their hub IP.

48:28Hala Taha:Piecemeal it every day, basically, instead of just working on the thing. And then you can really delegate to your team. Here's the book. Make me a webinar on chapter three, you know, or whatever it is. Long form video. I mean, we literally do this at our company. It's that book is the instruction manual for new clients. That book is the onboarding manual for new employees. That book, we're splintering out and creating long form videos on it. We're creating short form on that. And a lot of times we try to reinvent the wheel and I'm like, hey, just go back to the book. It's literally in the book.

48:59Exactly how I want to say this is in the book. So then it just makes the content team's job easier. Everything gets easier when you crystallize your core IP or your core methodology into the book.

49:10Hala Taha:What are the best practices to actually get clients from a book? Like what are the key things that your clients need to do after they publish to get the clients? Well, I think the secret weapon is go speak at events and give away the book for free, which people get super weird about. I don't know why, but they think, oh, I'm going to go speak at this event and bring$1 ,500 worth of books. And to which I asked them, what is a customer worth to you? A thousand bucks, 10 ,000 bucks, 25 ,000 bucks, a hundred grand. So if you just get one client, yeah, that's way worth it. And so I just look at, I reframe giving away my book as what is my cost to acquire a customer.

49:51So books, that book will cost me maybe seven bucks a book. And so, yeah, if I bring a hundred copies of 700 bucks. So if I go speak at an event, a few hundred people, well then I'll bring a couple hundred copies that creates some urgency and some scarcity around it. And so people are bum rushing the booth and then booking appointments. I mean, it's just mayhem. We're signing a bunch of books. And so that is the secret weapon. But if you're running more of a online business, let's say, well, use the book to get leads, sales, and referrals. So integrate it into every opt-in to use it as surprise and delight, get people to show up to webinars by giving them the book if they show up and stay to the end, use it before or after sales calls and you'll convert more people into customers.

50:34So just integrate it into the existing sales funnel that you have and you'll see all of your numbers go up.

50:39Hala Taha:What about somebody who's like, if I put all my secrets in this book, no one's going to buy from me. They're just going to do it on their own. I love this quote. It's give away all your best stuff for free and people will pay you to tell it to them again. I mean, people, and I've done this, you've probably done this, you read a book and you say, oh my gosh, this is really impressive. This is obviously the person to learn from on this and I don't want to do it. Like I want to just pay them to do it for me. And so then I become a customer of that person because I just want to write the check or I sign up to have that person mentor someone on my team because I'm trying to transmute that knowledge into my company as quickly and easily as possible.

51:18So give away your best stuff for free. People will read it. Sometimes they won't even read it and they'll just say, oh, well, I need to work with you on this. And so just by the pure act of them seeing the book or buying the book or whatever else. So give away your best stuff for free and it will be the best thing you do to grow your business.

51:38Hala Taha:I totally agree. Do you ever get pushback that you're making book writing like no longer an art if it's more of like a marketing channel? You know, I've been called a lot of bad things. That's probably one of them. You know, I think there's this weird, these people that romanticize writing and those are the same people who they would say, oh, I have the best looking book cover and to which we would say, but that's not the best selling book cover. So I don't care if it looks good if it doesn't convert. And same with, you know, Robert Kiyosaki would say it's not best written author, it's best selling author.

52:16And so I think your ideas can be great, but if people don't buy them and read them, they're meaningless. And I think the people making that argument are totally missing the point and just yelling into the void that no one's listening.

52:30Hala Taha:You mentioned a word that really got my ears perking up, which was bestselling. And we know that everybody who's an author, they want to be a New York Times bestselling author, a U.S. Today, USA Today bestselling author. What are the hacks or secrets that you can tell us about becoming a bestseller? So the little known hack about getting on the New York Times bestseller list is that you can pay someone 250 grand and buy 10 to 12 ,000 copies of your book, and they will game the algorithm and you have a chance. Now this is, I've been happening. I've heard all about this kind of stuff. I mean, that is like the thing where people say, well, I got to hit the list.

53:08Well, you got to sell 10 to 12 ,000 copies. There needs to be some in local bookstores. There needs to be some in physical bookstores and Amazon and bulk purchases. It's this complicated algorithm. And yet at the end of the day, it's so stupid. It's the New York Times is a joke. and the New York Times bestseller list is even more of a joke because it's editorial. So I know plenty of people who have sold way more than enough copies. It's roughly 10 to 12 ,000 in week one or in the lead up in week one. That's what you need to sell. But they didn't make the list because the editor said, hey.

53:42Hala Taha:So it's like a person deciding. It's not like just like a formula. Yeah. And so that's where, in my personal opinion, the other lists are a better aspirational goal. But I think the bestseller list, chasing that is a dumb goal if the end goal is to grow your business. And so I'd rather have 100 customers than briefly hit number one on some list that, I mean, because it just doesn't matter anymore. Yeah, I totally agree. It's just an ego thing, I feel like. So like I mentioned, I'm writing a book and I'm in the proposal process and I'm really trying to laser in on the idea. And I think you've got this great idea framework that you've talked about recently.

54:21Hala Taha:Can you talk to us about how to like really think of the best book idea for our, to drive ROI for our business? Yeah. So we did this whole series on the YouTube channel about the million dollar author. And then we did, so basically there's four components. You got to come up with a million dollar idea. Then you got to write a book that turns readers into customers, which there's a lot of specifics there. Then you have a six-figure launch, and then you turn it into a seven-figure business card. And then we did kind of some case studies on eight-figure books with Alex Ramosi and Cody Sanchez and a bunch of people like that.

54:57So if that's the aspirational end state, well, then how do we reverse engineer all of those things? Well, you need something that speaks specifically to your ideal customers, right? And so the way I would think about it is the four Ps, which is person, pain, promise, price. So let's say maybe this is the creator that monetizes a creator book. Well, then the person is someone who maybe has 100 ,000 followers or more. I'm just making this up. Yeah. The pain that they have is, you know, there may be their revenue is super lumpy and inconsistent. consistent, they're tired of being hand to mouth on brand deals, and they want to find a more, a better long-term strategy for revenue.

55:39And the promise that you can make is I can help you convert the following that you already have into a better revenue stream and monetize your podcast or whatever else, right? And then the price, your pricing based on value. So then if I'm thinking about that book, well, then I would think I would write specifically to the person that, and I would actually think of a real person, like your best client. And you say, all right, awesome. I'm just writing this book to Sarah, who's my best client. And then the pain that Sarah had when she started working with us is X, Y, Z. The promise that I made to her that compelled her to work with us was this.

56:13And so now I'm just going to write the book specifically to that person. And then I'm going to use that book to find 20 more Sarahs, 100 more Sarahs. And so that's how I would kind to think about doing that.

56:23Hala Taha:Alex Tramosi had a really exceptional book launch that I think really made history. Every entrepreneur I know was talking about it. And like, I heard about that. We're still trying to copy it. I know. I heard about that so many times. Why do you think what he did was so incredible? Or do you think it was incredible? I think his launch was incredible. I think it is not replicable for 99.99 % of most authors. And so there's a lot that we can learn from that launch itself. But I mean, you put it on a bumper sticker. The bumper sticker would say, add value for five years. That's the strategy. And then sure, he did some smart things around how he, you know, pitched it as like this nonprofit thing, like sponsor an entrepreneur by bulk buying books.

57:11But really, it was just a book buy pitch with a live event. And so I'm a big fan of live events. And I think live events or virtual live events are the best way to generate a ton of revenue on the back end of your book. But I think the way that Alex did it is totally wrong and not the way that most people should do it. And so I would reverse engineer, and we just created this video, it's like the million dollar event model, which is the goal of the book launch is to get people to show up to the event. The goal of the event is to sell your high ticket offer. What Alex did totally different is he had a live book launch, which let's just be real, for most people -

57:47Hala Taha:He doesn't need the money. So he - He doesn't need the money. Yeah. But also for most people, no one cares. Yeah. And he is the audience and he doesn't need the money. Oh, it's Alex. Yeah. And he's done this a couple times before. And he shared so much value in the past that they're like, I'm going to learn something. I got to see it. It's a spectacle. So I'm going to show up to the thing. Whereas most people show up to my live book launch party. It's like, who cares? Yeah, I'm not interested in that. But if you instead sold a book bundle up front included in that is to take it to a virtual event.

58:16Then at that virtual event, it's around the topic of the content of your book. You can still get a bunch of people to show up and that's where you make it rain on the back end.

58:25Hala Taha:So interesting. Now I have a lot of clients. I have two sides of my business. I have a podcast, social media agency where we produce podcasts, run people's social channels, and I have the network. On the agency side, I get a lot of author clients where I'm running their LinkedIn, their Instagram, their podcast. And a lot of them make money off speaking. And they always tell me like, oh, I'm writing a book so I can get more speaking engagements. Is that a main way that authors are making money right now? Yeah. I mean, it's a big way. And it's kind of what's beautiful about that is it's kind of a little bit circular, right?

58:57Where you write the book to increase your speaking fees, and then you go out and speak and you sell more books if you do it strategically. And so it becomes kind of this flywheel. But where I think a lot of people are leaving money on the table is they're just getting paid a speaking fee. Yeah. Which it's the dumbest way to make money as a speaker because you end up leaving probably millions of dollars on the table. Because they're not selling a high

59:20Hala Taha:ticket offer at the event, you mean? They're not selling anything on the back end. They're not bundling in books, which is just such an easy thing that most people don't think about, which is, oh yeah, my speaking fee is 25 grand, but I need you to buy books for everyone in the audience when I come. Oh, now I just added another 10 grand to that. Especially if I self-published that book, I just added more money and royalties on the back end. Or maybe I'm making some sort of offer on the back end. And so the first year I ever spoke was 2018. And my goal was to go zero to a million. And we did it on like the last day of the year, which was crazy.

59:56I think I got paid one speaking fee that whole year. It was all in the back end sales. And then when most people hear that, they think, oh, you're just going, you speak to sell. Like I'm going to some event and I'm yelling at people to run to the back of the room with their credit card desk. None of that. I don't, we don't ever speak to sell. It's very low key. It's offering value. We speak. The last couple of minutes is, Hey, how many of y 'all want to write a book? Okay. Awesome. How many of you it's next year? Great. Here's a free copy of my book. I don't have enough for everyone, but it's back at the booth.

1:00:29And so then everybody goes there and then how many of you, this is a priority. Okay. Scan this QR code, book a call with my team. We'll see if we can help you. That's it. Amazing. And then on the back of that, though, that's 50 to 100 grand or more per speaking gig, which I think most speakers are leaving on the table.

1:00:44Hala Taha:Are you trying to capture everyone's email at the event as well? I know something that I've done that's worked really well is I'll do like a presentation and then I'll be like, if you guys want the notes. Smart. And I have like a lead capture to give them the notes of the presentation. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I think that's great. Now, I think when you publish your book, I would say get the book for free and the notes are included. So then, or, or you could go vice versa, Hey, if you want my slides. Um, and then when you opt in, you'll get a free copy of my book just because those leads are worth so much.

1:01:14I mean, if you think about, this is just another way that is really funny to me when people get weird about giving away their book for free. I'm like, well, how, how much money are you spending

1:01:23Hala Taha:on ads? What's your cost per lead? Yeah. 25 bucks a lead, 50 bucks a lead. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, What if you just gave them a book that cost you nothing digitally or a physical book that cost you seven bucks? And those are the best leads ever because then they hop on the plane, they're bringing my book with them and they're reading it on the plane. And it's marketing for you. And it stays with them. You know, they're throwing away all these business cards that people give them, but they're not throwing away that book. And then every time they see that book, they think of you and your business.

1:01:53Hala Taha:Maybe you can walk us through a case study of like maybe your favorite case study of somebody who published a book with you and the results that they got from it. Yeah. One of my favorite case studies in the business space is this guy named Bill Soroka. So hilarious. So he wrote a book on helping mobile notaries. Wait, helping what? Mobile notaries. Okay. Which I didn't know this was a thing either. I didn't even know. I never heard of it. People who show, you know, you got like an important document to sign. Yeah. They show up and then notarize it at your home. Oh, great. So you don't have to like go to the bank or wherever you usually have to go, right?

1:02:25Very niche. So we always say the riches in the niches. People get weird about that. In your instance, right? It's like you've got this, the Prophet Young book, or maybe the Get Rich as a Creator book. But you might think, oh, creators with 100 ,000 people, like, is that too niche? That's what Bill thought, or that's what Bill was kind of thinking. And I said, you know what, Bill, that actually might be too niche. But Bill went on to write that book anyway. I'm like, I don't even know these people existed. And he wrote the book. And now the book has, I think, 1 ,500 reviews on Amazon. He created a six-figure business off the back end of that book.

1:03:03I mean, it just opened up all of these doors. And so I think the lesson out of that and why it's one of my favorite stories is the riches are in the niches. Write to a very specific audience connected to your business. And if you do it well, it'll be one of the best things you ever do.

1:03:16Hala Taha:Would you consider your business to be a coaching business? At its core, do you have a coaching business? It's complicated. I think, honestly, yeah. If you boil it all down, yeah, it's a coaching business. It's a coaching business on how to publish your book. Yeah, exactly. Now, there's services. But I even say, you know, we're a content business, but content is just coaching at scale. Yeah. It's documenting. Well, I guess you're doing it for them. So you're like a coaching business with agency services. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. Yeah. And I would say that I would look at it as like a productized service.

1:03:50and the coaching is what gives us the margin, better margin services, if that makes sense. Like if we just went in and had a service-based business, it would be a race to the bottom. It's a total commodity. But the content and the coaching is what actually makes us differentiated and gives us a lot more margin. And so I think maybe the lesson for people watching or listening is how can you create that component to your business? Because if it's just a commoditized service, you're probably not gonna make much money. But if you can somehow repackage it in a way that where there's a higher level or higher margin component, then obviously the business will be way more profitable.

1:04:27Hala Taha:Yeah, I mean, it's just such a great lesson. Like your story is such a great example of you learned to skill yourself publishing books. You self-published your first book, correct? And then you got better and better at it. Was it getting the clients that made you better at it? Like how did you get really good and really knowledgeable about being the core expert on self-publishing books to the point where you were able to like build this whole business and help so many other people? Like how did you get your mastery in publishing books? A lot of reps, a lot of reps. So I did it seven times. I personally helped dozens of people.

1:05:05But then I think one of the things you learn early on is, well, you got to know something well enough to do it. Then do you do it well enough to teach it? And then do you teach it well enough to replicate it through other people teaching it. And I think that's kind of almost like the journeys of mastery. The problem is most people skip the first step and they don't do it themselves, which is just so stupid because how are you going to teach something you haven't done? I guess you could, you know, be a professor or teach at the local high school. Yeah. Well, I said those who can't do teach, I guess.

1:05:33For me, I'm like, I can't teach something that I haven't done. So I got to go do it, do it well enough to teach it and then teach it well enough to replicate yourself. But I think most people get stuck in that final piece, which is you've got to productize and create process around what you do. And so that was early on the big leap for me because everybody's business caps out if it's 100 % reliant on you as the fulfillment person. And so that's where early on I realized, oh, shoot, if I'm coaching all these authors, I don't have time to grow this business. So I got to get out of that one-on-one fulfillment.

1:06:06And so that's when we started hiring coaches. And now those coaches do it way better than I did. And they and that's where, you know, a lot of times people are like, well, I want to work with you. I'm like, no, you don't, because my coaches are better than me at this right now because they're in the trenches. They do it all day, every day.

1:06:23Hala Taha:I'll give an example with myself to kind of explain this. So I became an influencer on LinkedIn and I knew the algorithm inside out. I still do. But there was a period of time where I was still focused on my business and I had a team running my LinkedIn that like there's a period of time where I was like, I don't know how the algorithm myself works. Like I need to know I need to get back in it. And be hands-on so that I know how it works. How do you keep things fresh? Because you've been doing this for how many years now? 20 years? 10 years? Something like that. Yeah. 12 years or more. It's interesting you mention that.

1:06:56Because I think there's two things that come out of that. One is I think there's a handful of levers in your business that you just have to never get out of. And so it's funny. You mentioned what you, with your LinkedIn or whatever else. And I'm relearning this because we hit a plateau of growth. And it was super frustrating over the last couple of years. And I realized what had happened is I stopped doing the core things that made the business grow. And so I've had to re-ask myself the question of what are those two or three things that if I spend time on them every day, the business will grow way faster.

1:07:30And then I've had to audit my calendar and say, how do I cut everything else and spend as much time as possible on those things?

1:07:35Hala Taha:What are those things? It's creating content. It's one-to-many speaking. So, I mean, essentially when it comes down to it, it's rainmaking, strategy, and talent, which I think are the job of any good CEO is you need to be able to do all three. The strategy is, you know, if you've got 50 something people working on a dumb strategy, well, then you're just, you know, rowing a big boat in a circle. And so you got to have a better strategy. Then, you know, are you rainmaking? So are you kind of bringing in deals and stuff like that? And that's not everyone's gift, but I'm decently good at it. So I need to be rainmaking.

1:08:08And then the talent. Are you attracting, retaining, and developing the best talent possible? Because that is your fuel for growth. And so I think that's what it comes down to. And I realized a lot of other things I'd let creep in and I had to prune all that stuff out and get back to core principles. But then to answer your question around getting stale in the business, I think you've got to go on fun quests inside of your business to keep you from chasing new businesses. which is so dangerous for people. I mean, I think the two most dangerous phrases in entrepreneurship are what's new and what's next because you end up chasing all of these things and you end up with split focus and your business doesn't grow.

1:08:50So the way I kind of gamify it is I find new and interesting problems in the business and then I go solve those things. And so I mentioned we're building out the media company and the media team right now. That's new. That's interesting. That is something that we've never done before and we sucked at and we're slowly getting better at it. That will make the core business grow though. But anytime I've kind of gotten squirrel syndrome and said, oh yeah, I need to come over here and start doing some investing because the business is spitting off all this cash. Well, then now I got two problems. I got really bad investments and I got a business that ain't growing.

1:09:27Hala Taha:Focus on your business. 100%. Yeah, I love that. This has been such an interesting conversation. I feel like we really learned a lot about book publishing from both angles. We learned a lot about your business. Last couple questions here. I know you talked about a challenge of you recently feeling like you needed to get back to the core essence of your business. What other big challenges have you had in the last 12 years? Like what were some of the big things that you've navigated? So many. Entrepreneurship is an exercise in repeated failure. you you most likely are going to fail before it even gets off the ground you're going to have big big failures all throughout the journey every growth next growth stage meets new failure you hit a million dollars now you got new problems you hit a few million dollars a year now you got new problems you hit eight figures a year you got new problems and so we've got a mantra at our company fail fast fail forward fail often i mean i think failure is the fastest way to learn and grow And so whether it's been early on, my business partner trying to kick me out of the business, going multiple six figures in debt, borrowing money out of my parents' retirement, buying him out, or more recently, reinventing ourself as a company, building an in-person office, going from zero to 20-something employees in person in Austin.

1:10:48That's been big challenges. We've had turnover. We've had a hard time finding people. And it's just like had to reinvent so many things. But I think if you're not reinventing yourself and failing, somebody else is, and they're going to put you out of business. And so I've had to reframe the way that I look at those failures as, oh, no, this is just an opportunity to learn and grow. And if it's not happening, it's probably because I'm getting stale and I'm just going to be obsolete. So you were remote and you have an office now in Austin? Yeah.

1:11:17Hala Taha:Is it going well? Yeah, it's going really well now. It wasn't for a long time. Why? uh gosh well first off it's funny because i think i had the holy grail of what people want and then gave it up to to for the next evolution which is i was remote our team was remote we were killing it we're growing but i just realized we got to reinvent because we're running some headwinds and i think where we want to go nobody else is doing it remotely doesn't mean it can't be done but i'd rather swim with the tide than against the tide and so i think why it was difficult is because in classic entrepreneur fashion, I tried to rip the bandaid off and do too much all at once.

1:11:57And then I just ripped out a bunch of my core infrastructure and I didn't realize how important that core infrastructure was to my sanity, my time, the business's success. And so then it took me a while to rebuild that infrastructure. And I didn't realize that, you know, I think at the time we had 65 employees and we were all remote. And I'd been working with a bunch of these people for years and years. And so you just have, everything's easier, but if you're trying to build something from scratch, now there's two ways to do it. You can just import your whole team or you can kind of build from scratch.

1:12:30And that's what I chose to do. Mostly just because I knew if I tried to force everyone to move, that would be just a bunch of turnover and stuff. So I think I did, I simultaneously tried to do too much all at once and delayed some of the hard decisions that I need to make. So I just straddled the fence and that just really screwed us for a while. But we just kind of brick by brick started building it and bringing the team together.

1:12:55Hala Taha:Being in the office, I'm actually considering, I have a fully remote team, 60 people around the world. And this year I'm like working on getting an office and like hiring more. I've got like all these JDs out for Austin for producers and creative directors. And yeah, I'm working on it. I love it. I love it. I think it's really, really hard. It takes a specific type of person. So don't get me wrong. There's tons of trade-offs. I take a nap every day. I used to take that nap in my bed. And now I'm like putting my face down on my desk. And that kind of sucks. You know, I've got to commute. I didn't have a commute.

1:13:29I mean, there's all of these trade-offs. Hiring talent is way harder. there's a bunch of stuff that matters that you didn't previously that didn't previously matter you've now got to you've got a whole bucket of problems that you didn't previously have and things that you got to think about that take up brain space it's like why are we talking about this like what's in the office what's the what's our policy on this yeah but i think at the end of the day it's worth it because businesses move at the speed of trust and communication and the fastest way to improve both is to get in the same room as someone.

1:14:03And so, yeah, it's worth it, but it's really hard. And we can talk about a lot of the lessons I've learned, but I think it's a worthwhile pursuit.

1:14:12Hala Taha:Amazing. Okay. Well, I end my show with two questions I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? You got to get in rooms with your ideal customers. And so sell one to many. So that's the kind we talked about earlier on the episode. Yeah, with all the conferences. The conferences show up and speak at those conferences, or maybe it's webinars, or maybe it's writing a book and then putting that book in the hands of all of your ideal customers. But find a way to sell and find a way to sell one to many.

1:14:44And if you do that well, your business is going to grow exponentially faster.

1:14:47Hala Taha:Love that. And what is your secret to profiting in life? Secret to profiting in life, I think, is having a high no bar and not caring what other people think about that and being willing to be unreasonable and weird. It's like, no, I do not go to the grocery store. No, I say no to all of these things so that you can prune out the stuff that doesn't belong and only have the stuff that truly moves the needle that either makes you a ton of money or makes you really happy or preferably both. And then, yeah, that's kind of how I think about it. Amazing. And where can everybody learn about you and selfpublishing.com?

1:15:28Yeah. So you can check out our social content on selfpublishing.com, Instagram, or YouTube. We put up a ton of videos there. And then Chandler Bold is all about scaling the business. You can go to selfpublishing.com forward slash holla if you want to book a call with the team and chat about a book and how we can help and that sort of thing.

1:15:48Hala Taha:Cool. I'll put that link in the show notes. Thank you so much. Thank you. This was fun. And that, yeah, fam, is how Chandler Bolt profits. The big lesson is that a book does not have to be your product. You're not going to make a ton of money off your book unless you're super famous. But for the right entrepreneur, a book can become your funnel, your credibility builder, your referral engine, your content engine, and it can help you sell everything that you sell in your business. Today, Chandler showed us how selfpublishing.com actually makes money, what it costs to help authors publish, where the margins and hidden costs live, and why the right book idea matters so much.

1:16:25Hala Taha:Because when a book is done right, it's not just something that sits on a shelf. Your book can turn into leads, clients, speaking engagements, referrals, and long-term authority. Thanks for listening to How We Profit Wednesday's The Young and Profiting Series, where real entrepreneurs share real numbers, real margins, and the real story of how their businesses actually work. I'm Halataha, and I'll see you next time.