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

Chandler Bolt built a $10 million business by challenging one of the biggest myths in publishing: that authors can only make money from book sales. As the founder of SelfPublishing.com, Chandler has helped many entrepreneurs use books to generate leads, attract high-value clients, and scale their businesses. In this episode, Chandler breaks down how one of his books generated $7 million in revenue for his business and reveals how to choose a profitable book idea, launch it successfully, and turn it into a driver of real business growth. In this episode, Hala and Chandler will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:00) SelfPublishing.com’s Business Model (04:24) Dropping Out to Build a Business (08:42) The Power of SEO in Branding (12:51) How SelfPublishing.com Generates Revenue (18:20) Using AI to Scale Operations (22:37) Finding the Highest-Margin Offers (25:47) Chandler’s Customer Growth Strategy (33:28) Why the Right Book Idea Matters (40:11) Turning Books Into Client Funnels (45:51) Maximizing ROI From Your Book (56:12) The Journey to Business Mastery Chandler Bolt is the founder and CEO of SelfPublishing.com, an online education and services company that helps people write, publish, and market books that grow their impact, income, and business. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, he is the author of seven books, including his most recent release, Published. Under his leadership, SelfPublishing.com has earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U. S. for multiple consecutive years. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. Quince - Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to Quince.com/profiting for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Resources Mentioned: Chandler’s Website: selfpublishing.com Chandler’s Instagram: instagram.com/chandler.bolt Chandler’s YouTube: youtube.com/@ChandlerBoltOfficial Chandler’s Book, Published: bit.ly/CB-Published Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by HeyGen, Shopify, Life at the Speed of Play, and Indeed. HeyGen helps you create AI avatar videos without constantly being behind the camera. Get your first three videos free at heygen.com/profitting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com/profitting. Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus helps entrepreneurs quickly test ideas and find the ones worth pursuing. Get two books for the price of one at GetMark'sBook.com/Yap. Indeed helps you attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/podcast.

• 0:45Hala Taha?

  As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at YoungAndProfiting.com/deals.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  The book is not going to make you rich, but publishing a book will. And so use the book to grow your business. This book has brought in roughly $7 million in revenue over the last 12 months for the business. It's how do we use the book to get more leads, more sales, more referrals, and create a revenue engine in the business?

• 1:11Hala Taha?

  Today's guest turned his book into what he calls a $7 million business card. Chandler Bolt is the founder and CEO of SelfPublishing.com. His company helps aspiring authors write, publish, launch, and market their books.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  I was snowboarding in Austria on a study abroad that was like my last hurrah. I published the book, realizing that the day I snowboarded, I made 400 bucks from the book.

• 1:35Hala Taha?

  Nice.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  And it was, you know, that showed me that there's something to this whole book thing.

• 1:39Hala Taha?

  Tell us how big SelfPublishing.com is.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  We're doing about 10 million a year. We've done roughly 80 million over the last decade. 100% bootstrapped. I own the whole company.

• 1:49Hala Taha?

  What do you typically charge a client?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Average order value is 10 grand. They could pay anywhere from 6 on the lowest end to 100K on the highest end.

• 1:58Hala Taha?

  So what's the difference in terms of the services?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the lowest end is...

• 2:03Hala Taha?

  You said you had employees in the Philippines and then you ended up doing US employees. Why did you make that change?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Uh, gosh.

• 2:11Hala Taha?

  What's your advice to listeners tuning in who have their own businesses? They haven't had like an organizational AI revolution within their company. Where should they start?

• 2:20Speaker 01

  I think if your team is not adopting AI, it's your fault. You've got to hire someone to start building this. You're leaving so much money on the table. You've got to start by...

• 2:30Hala Taha?

  Chandler, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Glad to be here.

• 2:32Hala Taha?

  I am pumped for this interview because I feel like so many people want to understand how to make money from books and how self-publishing works. And this is a new series called How We Profit, where we basically unpack business models. So first, I want to unpack the business model of your company, selfpublishing.com. And then I want to understand the business model behind authors and how you make money with books. So let's start with selfpublishing.com. What is your company? Who do you serve? And explain it to me like I'm a 12-year-old.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  So yeah, so we're an online education and service company. We help people write and publish books that grow their impact and their business. And so our bread and butter is helping people write books that grow their business. We coach them through the process. We, there's a bunch of services involved. So whereas a traditional publisher takes all the rights and royalties and is super slow and antiquated and boring, we're kind of the best of both worlds for authors.

• 3:27Hala Taha?

  And who is your target customer? Like, what is your ideal, perfect customer?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  It's funny, I think when you get into business, you imagine that all of the customers are going to be just like you.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  And so I thought, oh, it's just going to be younger guys trying to grow their online business. Now, there's certainly a pocket of that. So there's one bucket we would call Jeff, that's people who want to grow their business using a book. Then there's Suzie, where this was the most surprising pocket of the business. This is older women, often empty nesters, that want to write a book about their life experience. And then we have fiction authors who want to, you know, write fiction books. We have children's book authors, but really the bread and butter is business books and older women.

• 4:08Hala Taha?

  Interesting. The older women thing is like really interesting. They're just like bored and they, they want to write a book. What kind of life experiences are they writing about?

• 4:18Speaker 01

  It's all kinds of stuff, a lot of trauma, a lot of, what's the narcissistic exes. But I mean, a lot of it is, at the same time that their husband is kind of wanting to wind down his career, she feels like, hey, my kids are out of the house.

• 4:33Hala Taha?

  It's my turn.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  It's my turn. Like, I want a second act. And so, you know, these kids just got out. And so I've got this, I've got value to share and I want to help people. So it's very service minded. And so they kind of choose the medium of a book.

• 4:45Hala Taha?

  Really cool. Well, from me just learning more about you as I was studying for this interview, I know that you're a huge proponent of books having ROI, right? Why is trying to get rich off a book not the right way to go?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Well, if you want to get rich off of royalties, unless you're James Clear or How I Ride, probably not going to happen. But so the book is not going to make you rich, but publishing a book will. And so use the book to grow your business. And so that's what we're all about is how do we use the book to get more leads, more sales, more referrals and create a revenue engine in the business. So this book has brought in roughly $7 million in revenue over the last 12 months for the business.

• 5:28Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  But that's because we strategically use it inside the business. And so that's all of what we're helping people do is say, all right, hey, don't just publish it and then forget about it. But then also don't just publish it and think that you're going to get rich off the royalties. Use it to fuel the business.

• 5:41Hala Taha?

  Yeah, we'll get more into that and how authors make money. But first, tell us how big selfpublishing.com is, like how many employees you have? What is your annual revenue?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  So we've got 53 employees currently. We're doing about 10 million a year. We've done roughly 80 million over the last decade. Trying to have as few, the fewest amount of employees as possible.

• 6:02Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I mean, especially in the age of AI, right?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  I mean, that's the funny thing is when you start growing your business, you think that employees are a proxy for how well you're doing. Because you show up to the entrepreneur meetups and they say, oh, how many employees you got? What they really want to ask is how much are you profiting?

• 6:17Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  But they won't ask that. So then you think employees are a sign of success. When really it's just a sign of you having a lot of expenses. So 53 employees, roughly 10 million a year. We've been at eight figures the last few years in a row and trying to scale to 25.

• 6:32Hala Taha?

  And you bootstrapped, right?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Hundred percent bootstrapped. I own the whole company. You know, bought out my business partner early on, never, never raised money, except for like SBA loans early on that we paid back and all that stuff. But yeah.

• 6:46Hala Taha?

  Awesome. So tell us about the origin story. Because you dropped out of college sophomore year.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:52Hala Taha?

  And you went to study entrepreneurship, but you decided that you'd do better off just being an entrepreneur. So talk to us about the origin story and you've been basically doing this since then, right?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's funny, studying entrepreneurship is an oxymoron. I didn't know it at the time, but I went to school to learn business. And then two things happened. First, they shove you in all the prerequisites, which are totally worthless. But then, then they also have never ran businesses. And so that was kind of the final straw for me where none of my professors had ran businesses. I had ran businesses in high school and college. And when I was a freshman in college, I ran the number one painting business in the company for the company that I was working for. So that gave me the confidence to drop out. And then as I was dropping out, I wrote a couple of books about kind of my early entrepreneurial experience. Those books started popping off. And so I'll never forget, I was

• 7:45Speaker 01

  snowboarding in Austria on a study abroad that was like my last hurrah. I said, I'm gonna study abroad and then I'm gonna drop out of school. And while I was studying abroad, I published the book and I remember snowboarding and realizing that the day I snowboarded, I made 400 bucks from the book.

• 8:02Hala Taha?

  Nice.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  You know, not, not probably a significant amount of money to most people, but at the time it was life changing. And so that showed me that this is actually, there's something to this whole book thing. Then people started asking how to do it. And that's when I started teaching it.

• 8:16Hala Taha?

  And you actually started like a little pilot program, right? Before you actually launched your company. Talk to us about that. Talk to us about how you started to really form the idea of having a publishing company and how you tested it at first.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  If you're thinking about starting a business, don't create a logo, don't create an LLC, you don't even have to have a website.

• 8:37Hala Taha?

  I totally agree.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Get customers. If you don't have customers, you have a business idea, not a business. And so for us, we said, well, what's the fastest way that we can do this and validate the idea? Is to enroll a group of people and teach them as 44 people over the course of six months that we taught, did a bunch of things. First, it validated the idea. Cause I had chased a lot of ideas that made no money and, and I didn't want to do that again. But then it also showed proof of concept and created testimonials. And so we had that group of 44 people, over 60% of them published a book in the first six months. So that's what I would recommend to people watching or listening is sell then build. Validate, preferably in a group setting, not just selling one-on-one your time.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  But and then if you can do that, well, then you can productize that offering or that service or whatever to help a lot more people.

• 9:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah, that actually reminds me about how I made my first big sale with my social media and podcast agency. So at the time, I had one client that I was basically doing her stuff for free. Heather Monahan, you might have heard of her. She's like a big LinkedIn influencer. She's still my client. And I was basically doing her stuff for free, learning how to like productize everything that I was already doing for myself. And I remember I had a billionaire who had me on his podcast. And at the end of the show, he's like, do you do podcasts and social services? And I was like, yeah, I actually do. I had no logo, I had no website, I had no company name. I put together a PowerPoint and pitched him services and won a $30,000 per month deal as my first deal.

• 10:08Hala Taha?

  Without even having a website or like real clients, you know, I had like one test client, right? So it just goes to show like people just spend so much time on the wrong things. When really they just need to figure out their offer and try to get customers, like you said.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And the best way to figure out your offer is to ask someone if they're willing to pay. And so that's what I love about that story is when someone asks you, do you do the thing? Just say yes.

• 10:32Hala Taha?

  And figure it out.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Figure it out, come back with a price. If they instantly say yes, you probably priced it too low. Like, I mean, that's a great price and a great recurring retainer. I mean, that's a beautiful, beautiful first customer.

• 10:44Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I mean, it set off everything. I had a lot of social proof too, so that's the other lesson. I actually had a very big personal brand already and a big podcast and a very big LinkedIn following. So I had built it myself and had that social proof so I could price higher. If you don't have that, you obviously can't price as high. Speaking of personal brand, how have you built the brand of your business? Because you're not like, it seems like the business itself has a big name, but you don't necessarily have a big personal brand yet.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's so funny because early on in business, You follow all the advice, which is, hey, build something that you can sell.

• 11:20Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  You don't want to keep in risk. And so early on, it was the Chandler Bolt Show. And so pretty quickly, I said, oh, man, I can't do this because I'll never be able to get out of this business. And so I kind of pushed the business brand to the front and pushed my personal brand to the back, which I think is really smart if you want to sell a business, really dumb if you want to build a long-term brand with equity personally. And so then as of, so then we got to eight figures without a personal brand. We did that multiple years in a row. And then now I just started kind of last year, building out the personal brand. So I'm kind of late to this whole personal brand party. I think most people, it's easier to build the personal brand first, like you talked about, and then parlay that into a business than it is to go the other, the other way around.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  But now we're building out Bolt Media and kind of a seven-figure startup inside of an eight-figure company is how I'm looking at it. And then that'll service both the company brand and the personal brand on, on a lot more social. But the company's had a big brand in SEO and content for a long time, but that's always, it's not really as much of a brand as it is, I guess, just a big customer acquisition channel.

• 12:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I mean, the name of your company, Self Publishing, that's the first thing that came to my mind is like, damn, he's got the best SEO. The title of your company is so important and people don't realize it, even with podcast names, right? The title of your podcast is so important. If you don't have a keyword, you're just always like trying so hard to get people to listen and you have to like tell them about it or advertise to them, where people are probably just searching up, how do I self-publish?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 12:55Hala Taha?

  And you pop up. Talk to us about that.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  So I mean, early on, it was self-publishing school. And then we realized our best customers don't want to be students and go to school. And so we had, I'd kind of negotiated the acquisition of the domain selfpublishing.com. And that was rapidly growing and that was probably 50 to 150 grand a month in revenue for self-publishing school, just as an SEO and content play. So that kept growing. People kept saying, yo, I don't want to be a student. And so then eventually we said, hey, we need To rebrand.

• 13:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Because self publishing school is just not a premier brand in the space. And if we want to own the space of self publishing, well, self publishing.com. I mean, we literally own the domain. So that's when we did a big rebrand. And I learned a lot of lessons. Like I was saying, in some ways, we still haven't done a good job of the rebrand. People still call us self publishing school. A lot of people call us self publishing, self dash. But I mean, it's like, I did learn that, you know, the longer you have a brand, the harder it is to get people to call you something else.

• 13:59Hala Taha?

  Well, I mean, at least you had self publishing in the original title. Right? So at least you got that right.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  You got a great brand. I mean, I'd like, you talk about just branding something and owning a concept. Young and profiting and Yap, I think is just, it's a really beautiful example of that.

• 14:17Hala Taha?

  Yes and no, actually. So Young and Profiting is, I love Yap and Yap Media, I think is perfect. But nobody's searching Young and Profiting. So I get a lot of listeners that are like, I'm too old to listen to your show. And I'm like, no, you're not. You know, you, you don't have to be young or people will want to be yes. And I'd be like, I'm too old. And I'm like, everybody I interview, like, most people are like 50 plus, like, has nothing. Yeah, so titles are super important. For me, I've always like contemplated, like, should I change the name? I haven't. Everything worked out.

• 14:52Hala Taha?

  But I think it would have been a lot quicker. I know a lot of friends who have podcasts like Self Motivation Daily or Motivation Daily. And they get so many downloads, have no online presence, they don't try hard, you know? So make your life easier and put a keyword in your business name. I promise you guys.

• 15:10Hala Taha?

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• 15:53Hala Taha?

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• 16:20Hala Taha?

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• 17:02Hala Taha?

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• 17:46Hala Taha?

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• 18:30Speaker 01

  Average order value is 10 grand. They could pay anywhere from six on the lowest end to 100K on the highest end.

• 18:37Hala Taha?

  Okay, so what's the difference in terms of the services?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  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. And obviously, they gotta, as an author, you gotta market the book. I mean, that's a big lesson, whether you go traditionally publish or self-publish, but that's our highest end, ghostwriting.

• 19:07Hala Taha?

  What is the most costly piece of fulfilling for your clients?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  By far, the services. I mean, we live in such an interesting time with these online services, businesses, coaches, coaching businesses, whatever else. As I think the early days of the gold rush, it was just, it was just a course. Just have a course.

• 19:26Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  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. But 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's still is by far the most expensive

• 20:13Speaker 01

  delivery piece. So when you look at our cogs are more like 25 to 30%, whereas a bunch of our competitors or people in the online coaching world would say, oh, my cogs are like 10%. So 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.

• 20:33Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So it's mostly because you have to hire talent.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:36Hala Taha?

  And retain that talent and train that talent. And so what happened when you, you said you had employees in the Philippines and then you ended up doing US employees? Why did you make that change?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, we still have employees in the Philippines, but I think anything customer facing, I mean, like it or not, people in the US just don't want to talk to people in the Philippines.

• 20:56Hala Taha?

  I'm facing the same thing. We've got a lot of backend folks that do copywriting and video editing internationally, but anybody client facing has to be US.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is, I mean, you can call it whatever you want, but your customers make the rules. So I mean, I'm not saying I agree with it, but my customers are making the rules. And so then we realized, oh, well, if they're talking to customers, they can't be in the Philippines. So then you build this complex network of training backend 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.

• 21:39Hala Taha?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  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.

• 21:43Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I think people are really worried about job loss with AI, but for me, I'm hiring way more in the US than I used to because I'm doing the same thing. Instead of thinking about hiring more international people, I'm like, well, one US employee who could create like four agents would be the same as one US employee and hiring four international supports for them. Right?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:05Hala Taha?

  So that's how I think about it too.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  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 US. And to your point, I can now hire a Assistance that I used to hire in the Philippines or in Latin America or whatever else. And 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.

• 22:32Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it is. It is eventually, but right now this is for, for agencies. I feel like this is what's happening. I'm starting to feel like, well, it's, 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.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:47Hala Taha?

  And using AI.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so funny because we, 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.

• 22:58Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  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. I'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 and 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. And maybe it's 10 now. And so they're twice as productive and I pay them 30% more or 50% more. So that's a win for the employee. It's a win for the business. It's a win for the client.

• 23:43Hala 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.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Everywhere. Everywhere, which is really controversial in, in my, in my line of work with, with books and stuff.

• 23:57Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  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, I mean, 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. The action items are pulled out for them. So it makes our coaching more effective for our customers. It saves our coaches time. Building out the AI managers, we are, I mean, it's just all kind of iteratively getting better. And then we build out kind of one off, like I have my own setup and Obsidian and Claude.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  And it's like note taker and it's, 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.

• 24:59Hala 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?

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So kind of, you know, there's the, all the headlines about Block laying off 4,000 people or 6,000 people. And, and basically changing the work chart. And so we're in the middle of changing the work 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. And 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.

• 25:48Speaker 01

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

• 26:14Hala 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 what, where should they start? What should they do first?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  You gotta 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. And 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.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  They're going to, on the margins, implement some things that slowly make their role better. That's great. I 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. We'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.

• 28:02Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious, so I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on the platform has doubled.

• 28:46Hala Taha?

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• 29:00Hala Taha?

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• 29:44Hala Taha?

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• 30:10Hala Taha?

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• 30:55Hala Taha?

  Go to getmarksbook.com/yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free. So you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push. 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?

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say I love this Keith Cunninghamism that's every number in your business, you should look at in three formats, which is dollar amount, a percentage and 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, 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, maybe even as a dollar amount, because there's just so much hard cost to ghostwriting. But I'd say that's probably.

• 31:54Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I was gonna 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.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  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. So how'd 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.

• 32:43Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  So we're, we're figuring out ways to do that. But yeah, I'd say that's our biggest cost center. And then in a weird way, our, probably actually our highest margin is our $6,000 product, because there's no services.

• 32:54Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  So it's, I mean, as a percentage, but it's not like we're gonna get rich or that's certainly not gonna get to eight figures just slinging that price point.

• 33:03Hala 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.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Course only. I think courses are dead.

• 33:13Hala Taha?

  I think courses are dead too.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Which is so sad. R I P courses. And I mean, as someone who is a course creator and built a business off of that, but even before A I, we decided to shut down our course only offerings because people just weren't implementing it.

• 33:28Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  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 were in business where your customers aren't successful, at best, they're not successful, and 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.

• 33:51Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  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.

• 33:59Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think there's one exception. I think A I courses

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 34:05Hala Taha?

  are the only thing right now that can make money.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:08Hala Taha?

  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?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  It's funny, because most people in our space only get customers through ads. And we get to eight figures without really doing much ads at all, and without having a personal brand, which, I mean, those are the two playbooks.

• 34:31Hala Taha?

  That's incredible, yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  If you're running a coaching business, well, you either have a massive personal brand and/or you get really good at spending money on ads. But for us, it's 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.

• 34:50Hala Taha?

  Oh, wow.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  I'll speak at the, 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 well, I've If you're ranking by revenue, it would say secondly is content. But that's SEO, that's our blog. And then now, obviously, building out the media team that's in 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.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  I'm like, we'll go higher depending on the terms and depending on if it's on the backend or the frontend.

• 35:38Hala Taha?

  Let's talk about the speaking engagements. I think that's like a marketing channel that I haven't heard of.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:44Hala Taha?

  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 or 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.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  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? Like, I think pretty soon TV ads are actually going to be very profitable because everybody's went digital. And so with events, what we do is we've got a whole playbook. So we do, I just think of it as a B to B sales team, which obviously you've got a lot of experience in and are really good at. And I almost think like some, some of your podcast booking engine is kind of like a B to B sales team. But so it's B to B 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 backend deal where we'll give them a cut. And then our speakers, we, they're all internal staff. So we take our best salespeople.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  We take our best coaches, predominantly best salespeople. Cause if you can sell one to one, you can speak one to many. And 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 captured leads of almost a 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 backend and we'll do 50.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  To seventy events this year. So that's kind of the the core of that side. We did a video on my personal YouTube channel, kind of breaking down that whole uh that whole blueprint, but

• 37:33Hala 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 rock star 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 are using your ads to funnel to the webinar?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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 it's a little 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, and then we'll do a lot of our our webinars internally. But I want I

• 38:42Hala Taha?

  And a VSL is a video sales letter, by the way, guys.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically, five minute video, five to 10 minute video, selling one to many uh what 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.

• 39:19Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 01

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

• 39:32Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  And an hour later, I walk, I walked out with 18 grand in sales.

• 39:37Hala Taha?

  Amazing.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 39:57Hala Taha?

  How do you go about finding these conferences and live events? Like, what's your process for that?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I think the question that we like to ask is, who is already talking to our ideal customers? Cause somebody is. And either before or after they do business with us, or just topically, these are people who would want to write books.

• 40:15Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Cause I think a lot of people would think, oh, I gotta 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.

• 40:23Hala Taha?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Those suck. Because it's, 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 a, 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. And especially if the person running the event has done the thing that you help with. Right? So obviously, uh, well, I'll just use my business as an example.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  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. And they want to be like them. And so the, 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.

• 41:26Hala Taha?

  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. Uh, 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. Um, and I hope I make money off royalties.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:05Hala Taha?

  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, uh, focus of my business, which is my podcast network. So I grow and monetize like forty five 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.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:26Hala Taha?

  And originally that was the plan.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:29Hala Taha?

  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. I, it should be, it should be about creator entrepreneurship 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, which would ensure that I would get more leads. Help us understand why it's, you know, it's, it's not even worth releasing a book if you have the wrong idea.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Hmm. So I think the first question you gotta answer is do you want to sell books or do you want to make money? And let's use you as an example, right? I, 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. And then there's the young and profiting broad.

• 43:22Hala Taha?

  Yeah, profit young, they're profit young.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  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?

• 43:44Hala Taha?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  And I would argue, I mean, I'm not that I'm biased or anything, uh, 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.

• 43:57Hala Taha?

  I mean, It is, it literally is two years from now.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  So dang long. And so in the mid, 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 gonna 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, well, actually, I don't know. You could use the other one too. But I would say the, the profit young uh, uh, concept is the excuse to get on all the podcasts. Do all the big shows.

• 44:39Hala Taha?

  That's, I think that's, and I, 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.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, and I wouldn't get, I would say, and we, we should have you uh, on our show.

• 44:56Hala Taha?

  It seems like I'm about to be a case study.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  We should, we should have you on the show and we'll do, we have this one, uh, one page launch plan and we'll, uh, we'll just map it out, uh, and do a video on it. But I would say you start with the core premise, which this is, you're not gonna like this,

• 45:13Speaker 01

  is I don't even need to sell 5,000 copies. But I wanna get 50 customers, or whatever the number is. Like, 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 gotta sell a bajillion copies and I gotta dedicate two years of my life to this and stop everything else. And because I think that's where people get hung up. They think, oh, I gotta do all this and that's gonna be a massive distraction. Make me no money. So yeah, I'm not doing that. But I think if we strategically did that, 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, write the specific book that's gonna make you money. And then you can parlay the other stuff later.

• 45:55Hala Taha?

  And a lot of people don't realize that their book is what allows them to go on a podcast and, 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.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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, you've got kind of your source material. Whereas I feel like most people are going about it backwards.

• 47:00Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Where they're trying to kind of figure out what their hub IP.

• 47:03Hala 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.

• 47:14Speaker 01

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

• 47:45Hala 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 client?

• 47:55Speaker 01

  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?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  A thousand bucks, 10,000 bucks, 25,000 bucks, 100 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? So books, that, that book will cost me maybe seven bucks a book. And so, yeah, if I bring 100 copies, it's 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.

• 48:56Speaker 01

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

• 49:14Hala 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.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  I love this quote. It's give away all of 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 I learned from on this and I don't want to do it.

• 49:38Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  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. So give away your best stuff for free. People will read, 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.

• 50:13Hala 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?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  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. And 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.

• 51:06Hala Taha?

  You mentioned a word that really got my ears perking up, which was best selling. And we know that everybody who's an author, they want to be a New York Times bestselling author, US Today, USA Today bestselling author. What are the hacks or, or secrets that you can tell us about becoming a bestseller?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 51:38Hala Taha?

  I've heard all about this kind of stuff.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  I mean, that is like the thing where people say, well, I gotta hit the list. Well, you gotta 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.

• 52:17Hala Taha?

  So it's like a person deciding. It's not like, just like a formula.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  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 a hundred customers than briefly hit number one on some list that, I mean, because it just doesn't matter anymore.

• 52:42Hala Taha?

  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. Can you talk to us about how to like really think of the best book idea for our, to drive ROI for our business?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  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 that 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. So 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,

• 53:48Speaker 01

  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 a hundred thousand followers or more. I'm just making stuff.

• 54:01Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  The pain that they have is, you know, there may be, their revenue is super lumpy and inconsistent. 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. And 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 podcasts or whatever else, right? And then the price that you're 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.

• 54:34Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  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 XYZ. The promise that I made to her that compelled her to work with us was this. And 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. Twenty more zeros, a hundred more zeros. And so that's how I would kind of think about doing that.

• 54:59Hala Taha?

  Alex from Ozzie 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.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  They're still trying to copy it.

• 55:09Hala Taha?

  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?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  I think, 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 pitched it as like this nonprofit thing, like sponsoring hot for newer book buying books. But 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.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 56:23Hala Taha?

  He doesn't need the money.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Well, he doesn't need the money.

• 56:25Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  But also, for most people, no one cares.

• 56:28Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And he has the audience and he doesn't need the money.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Oh, it's Alex.

• 56:31Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  And he's done this a couple of times before.

• 56:34Hala Taha?

  And he's shared so much value in the past that they're like, I'm gonna learn something.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  I gotta see it. It's a spectacle, so I'm gonna 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 upfront, included in that is a ticket to a virtual event, then 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.

• 56:59Hala Taha?

  Hmm, so interesting.

• 57:02Hala Taha?

  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?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's a big way. And it's kind of the, what's beautiful about that is it's kind of a little bit circular, right? Where 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.

• 57:46Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Which it's the dumbest way to make money as a speaker, because you end up leaving probably millions of dollars on the table.

• 57:55Hala Taha?

  Because they're not selling a high-ticket offer at the event, you mean?

• 57:57Speaker 01

  They're not selling anything on the backend. 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-publish that book, I just added more money in royalties on the backend. Or maybe I'm making some sort of offer on the backend. And so the first year I ever spoke was 2018, and my goal was to do, go zero to a million.

• 58:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  And we did it on like, the last day of the year, which was crazy. I don't, I think I got paid one speaking fee that whole year. It was all in the backend sales. And then when most people hear that, they think, oh, you're just going, you're 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. Yes, 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. And 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.

• 59:12Hala Taha?

  Amazing.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 59:20Hala 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.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Smart.

• 59:31Hala Taha?

  And I have like a lead capture to give them the notes of the presentation.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 59:36Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  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 you could go vice versa. Hey, if you want my slides, and then when you opt in, you'll get a free copy of my book, just because those leads are worth so much. I 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 much money are you spending?

• 59:59Hala Taha?

  On ads.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  On ads.

• 1:00:00Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  What's your cost per lead?

• 1:00:01Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  25 bucks a lead, 50 bucks a lead. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, what if you just gave them a book? That costs you nothing digitally or a physical book that costs 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.

• 1:00:17Hala Taha?

  And it's marketing for you.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  And it stays with them, you know?

• 1:00:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:00:29Hala 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.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:00:46Hala Taha?

  Wait, helping what?

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Mobile notaries.

• 1:00:49Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Which I didn't know this was a thing either.

• 1:00:50Hala Taha?

  I didn't even know. I never heard of it.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  People who show, you know, you got like an important document to sign.

• 1:00:54Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  They show up and then notarize it at your home.

• 1:00:57Hala Taha?

  Oh, great. So you don't have to like go to the bank or wherever you usually have to go, right?

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Very 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 Profit Young book, or maybe the Get Rich as a Creator book. And but you might think, oh, creators with 100,000 people with, like, is that too niche? That's what Bill thought, or that's what Bill was kind of thinking and. 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. I 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.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:01:51Hala Taha?

  Would you consider your business to be a coaching business? Like at its core, do you have a coaching business?

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  It's complicated. I think honestly, yeah. If you boil it all down, yeah, it's a coaching business.

• 1:02:04Hala Taha?

  It's a coaching business on how to publish your book.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Now there's services, but I even say, you know, we're a content business, but content is just coaching at scale.

• 1:02:14Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  It's documenting.

• 1:02:17Hala Taha?

  Well, I guess you're doing it for them. So you're like a coaching business with agency services.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to look at it.

• 1:02:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  And I would say that I would look at it as like a productized service. And 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? Cause if it's just a commoditized service, you're probably not going to 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.

• 1:03:02Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just such a great lesson. Like your story is such a great example of you learned a skill yourself, publishing books. You sort of, you self-published your first book, correct? And then you got better and better at it. How 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?

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Lot of reps, lot of reps. So I did it seven times. I personally helped dozens of people. But then I think one of the things you learn early on. Is well, you gotta 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 I, it's just so stupid. Because how are you gonna teach something you haven't done? I guess you could, you know, be a professor or teach at the local high school. What's it, those who can't do, teach, I guess. For me, I'm like, I can't teach something that I haven't done, so I gotta go do it. Do it well enough to teach it and then teach it well enough to replicate yourself.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  But I think most people get stuck in that final piece, which is you've gotta 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 a hundred percent 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 gotta get out of that one-on-one fulfillment. And 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 wanna 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.

• 1:04:58Hala 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 was 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? Twenty years, ten years?

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Something like that, yeah. It's twelve years or more. It's interesting you mention that, because 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 with 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. And then I've had to audit my calendar and say, how do I cut everything else and spend as

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  much time as possible on those things?

• 1:06:11Hala Taha?

  What are those things?

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  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 gotta 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. And 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.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  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, core principles. But then, to answer your question around getting stale in the business?

• 1:07:06Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  I think you gotta 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. So 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 suck at and we're slowly getting better at it. That will make the core business grow though.

• 1:07:48Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:08:02Hala Taha?

  Yeah, just focus on, focus on your, your business.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 1:08:06Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I love that. This has been such a really, like 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. Uh, last couple of 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?

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  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 ourselves as a company,

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  building an in-person office, going from zero to 20 something employees in person in Austin. That'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 is, 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.

• 1:09:48Hala Taha?

  So you were remote and you, you have an office now in Austin?

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Hala Taha?

  Is it going well?

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's going really well now. It wasn't for a long time.

• 1:09:56Hala Taha?

  Why?

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Gosh, first off, it's funny because I think I had the holy grail of what people want and then gave it up to, for the next evolution, which is, I was remote. Our, our team is remote. We were killing it. We were 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 Band-Aid off and do too much all at once. And 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.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  And so then we, 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. And 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.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  But we just kind of brick by brick started building it and bringing the team together.

• 1:11:30Hala Taha?

  Do you like being in the office? I'm actually considering, I have a fully remote team, 60 people around the world. And this year I'm, I'm like working on getting an office and like hiring more. I've got like all these J Ds out for Austin for producers and creative directors and I'm working on it.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:11:47Hala Taha?

  You like it?

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  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 to commute. I 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 gotta think about that take up brain space. It's just 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

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  of trust and communication. And the fastest way to improve both is to get in the same room with someone.

• 1:12:38Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, it's worth it, but it's really hard and we can talk, uh, we could talk about a lot of the lessons I've learned, but I think it's a worthwhile pursuit.

• 1:12:48Hala 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 improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  You gotta get in rooms with your ideal customers. And so sell one to many. So that's the kind of we talked about earlier on the episode.

• 1:13:06Hala Taha?

  Conferences.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

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

• 1:13:23Hala Taha?

  Love that. And what is your secret to profiting in life?

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Secret to profiting in life, I think, is having a, 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, 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, uh, yeah, that's kind of how I think about it.

• 1:13:59Hala Taha?

  Amazing. And where can everybody learn about you and selfpublishing.com?

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you can, um, 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. Uh, you can go to selfpublishing.com forward slash hala, uh, if you want to book a call with the team and chat about, uh, a book and how we can help and that sort of thing.

• 1:14:23Hala Taha?

  Cool. I'll put that link in the show notes. Thank you so much.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Thank you. This was fun.

• 1:14:28Hala Taha?

  And that yap 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. 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 Wednesdays,

• 1:15:12Hala Taha?

  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.