Author Reset: What to Stop, Start, and Simplify This Year to Get Real Results

Welcome everybody to our BSPU call today. Excited to be with you. Today we are calling the author reset. What to stop, Start and Simplify in the new year.

Here’s the idea. January doesn’t expose a lack of motivation, right? You’re motivated. It’s January, right? you have New Year’s goals and ambitions and desires. If anything, January tends to expose. It is a lack of clarity about what it is that you really should be doing, what it is that you really should be focused on as an author. Maybe you look at last year and you go, you know, last year was good, but when it comes to my book, maybe you didn’t finish it like you wanted to. Maybe you did finish it and it started off strong, but then it didn’t go the way you wanted. I’m sure there’s something that you can look back on last year, not that you need to be entirely negative, please don’t be, but that you can look back on last year and think, you know what, I drifted here. I stopped doing what was working or I didn’t really find exactly what was working and now I need to really do a reset of my direction. You don’t need to start all over. If you already have your book, it’s a matter of using it. If your book isn’t done, then it’s a matter of really digging deep and getting it done. So, this isn’t about starting over or or changing making massive changes. It’s about resetting your direction. Okay. So, we’re going to talk today about three key areas and then I’m going to give you kind of sub points in each each one of those things that you should consider stopping, things that you should consider starting, and things that you need to consider to simplify in the new year. All right. So, part one, what is it that you should stop? What are the habits that maybe you have gotten yourself into that are quietly killing your momentum? Progress slows when authors carry last year’s bad habits or bad assumptions into the new year. And so what are those? Let me give you a few of them that maybe you need to make some adjustments on or think about. So I’ll give you I don’t know three or four. Number one that number one thing that you need to stop which might be a bad habit or a change of direction that you need to make. Number one, stop like chasing visibility, the visibility of social media, say for example, without like a clear path that you’re taking people down. In other words, if you’re going on podcast, fantastic. That’s great. You have visibility on a podcast. But do you have a clear call to action every single time that you go on a podcast? Do you have a path that you’re sending people down? If you don’t, then you’re chasing visibility and you’re just hoping that that visibility will like lead to the things that you want. But they don’t. It doesn’t. What you need to do is give people a clear call to action. So don’t create social content without like a clear next step. Yes, you can create some social content that’s just giving. If every single social content piece that you put out there has some type of call to action, that gets annoying. But if you don’t have a clear path and you never give a call to action, then that’s not going to give you what you want. So PR, social content, you need to have a focus of monetization. What is it that you are actually calling people to do that will be monetized and that will lead to revenue for your business? Okay, visibility without direction, it’s just noise. So let’s get rid of that. Number two thing to stop or get rid of is treating your book like a trophy. Now, be proud of your book. Have it displayed right when you do go on a podcast. Being proud of it is not the same as treating it like a trophy. But if that’s all your book was about was that it’s something it’s an accomplishment. It’s something that you’re proud of, then probably you’re not going to be on this call today with me. You probably have already gotten all the satisfaction that you need out of writing your book. And let me tell you something. Many times authors, and I’ve worked with thousands of them over the years, many times they will come in and they will say that they want one thing, but really what’s driving the desire to be an author is the ego. It’s pride. And that’s okay, right? I’m not here to be judgmental. I’m the book guy. I’ll help you do your book regardless of what your purpose is in doing it. But the fact that you’re here, that you’re watching this, that you’re paying attention to it, probably means that you want more from your book than it just being something that you’re proud of or something that you consider a trophy. So, don’t treat it like one. Don’t be unsure of how it’s going to create revenue for you. And if you think, well, it’s going to create revenue for me because it’s going to sell all by itself magically, well, you’ve heard me enough say that that just doesn’t happen. If you’re treating it like a trophy, it also means that you’re just always waiting for the right time to monetize like like eventually Rob’s gonna say something on one of these calls that like clicks and then I’m going to get started. No, get started right now. You’re not going to do it perfectly. That’s co that’s totally fine. That’s cool. You’re not going to have everything outlined the way it needs to be outlined. Get started. Make offers. Figure out what your monetization strategy is. start calling people to that action and then you’ll because you’re moving a direction you’ll have like some momentum and you can guide things a lot easier. You cannot steer a ship that isn’t moving in the water. Okay? So get yourself moving. Stop treating your book like a trophy. A book on a shelf is not going to change your business. Okay? But a book used a book in motion. Hey, that’s pretty cool. All right. Stop number three thing. Stop chasing shiny objects. Now, this is for me, okay? But this may be for a lot of you as well. What are shiny objects? Well, they’re courses that you never finish. They’re experiments that you never bring to completion. They’re halfbuilt marketing campaigns or funnels. For me, it’s primarily the course stuff, right? It’s primarily starting something from an educational standpoint that I just don’t finish. Now, for the most part, I’ve learned about myself and so I generally write really much bigger checks. But you know what? I’ve done plenty of that and I’ve started coaching programs that honestly I just didn’t finish or I just didn’t continue to give it my all. These are shiny objects. They make yourself feel good for a moment, but the reality is it’s not really leading to any type of conclusion. So, for this year, that’s number three is really for me. I’m I’m really focused on two primary things in bestseller publishing this year. Primary thing number one, and you’ll hear a lot more about it in the future, is we’re building out a speaker team. We’re bringing in somebody that’s going to help us to book speaking engagements for people that are going to speak on stages. These are going to be my past clients, maybe one of you that we’re going to have speak on stages. We’re going to compensate you for for that. Maybe speak on a chiropractic stage or a financial planner stage or you fill in the blank, right? whatever it is, you you know who my ideal clients are. Talk about how how to use a book, talk about how to write a book, and then help some of those people make a decision to become clients. So, we’re going to build out a speaking team this year. I already have the the internal admin team in place that’s going to help book the engagements. I already have several speakers that want to get started in doing it, which I’m very excited about. And we have already begun that process. That’s number one. And number two for me is Manny. I want to keep growing manuscript. I want to really get manuscripttor automated as much as possible when it comes to lead generation. Those are not shiny objects. Those are really important aspects of the growth of the company. Shiny objects are things that are going to take me away from that. So don’t let any shiny object take you away from what your real goal is, whatever that goal is for your business. Okay, that’s number three. Number four thing to stop, stop measuring for the wrong things. What does it look like for an author to measure the wrong thing? Well, being worried about your Amazon rank is measuring the wrong thing. Being worried about the number of likes that you get on a social media post or or what your follower growth is. Those are measuring the wrong things. Now, let me add this and this is really important. You need to measure. Okay? There are lots of things in my business that I measure. And one of the things that I looked at in December when I I thought about what things needed to change in January is I looked at several things that we don’t measure. And because we don’t measure them, they’re not performing as well as they could, right? Anything that you focus on and that you measure is going to improve. So, you need to be measuring, but you need to measure for the right things. What is that? Well, if you have a bookfunnel, then what you’re really measuring for ultimately is your cost of acquiring a high ticket client. You’re not measuring only what it cost you to sell a copy of your book because you may be going underwater in the sale of your book. I spend often times $50 to $60 to sell a book and I’m only getting back $30 to $40 on the front end when you include all of the upsells and everything. So, I lose money on every book that sells. But that’s not the key variable that I’m measuring for. The key variable I’m measuring for is how many of those people are turning into good sales opportunities for our teams and then they’re turning into clients. And so, if it cost me $1,000, which means that do the math. I if I’m losing $20 a book and I sell 50 books, that’s $1,000. And if one of those 50 people become a client worth $20,000 to Bestseller Publishing, am I losing any money? Of course not. That’s a funnel that works, but it only works when you’re measuring the right things. So, make sure that you’re measuring, but stop measuring for the wrong things. Okay? And what are the right things for us? Hey, if it leads to conversations or clients, if it leads to a conversion of somebody else becoming a client that we can help do a book, etc., then that’s a good business metric. If it doesn’t lead to those things, then I don’t really care about measuring for it as much, and neither should you. Okay? So, those are four things that you need to consider stopping. Okay? Four things that in the new year you should think about how those things apply to you. Let’s talk about a few things that you could start and that if you start them, it would help you to create some momentum. The idea here is that when you move, you start creating some traction. And traction can really be gained fast. Okay? Momentum, by the way, doesn’t come from doing like a hundred different things. Momentum comes like really intentionally when you’re doing the most important things over and over and over again. And yes, it can be boring. That kind of of boredom though creates tremendous opportunities in your business. So some of these you’re going to have heard me talk about many times, but we want to start and keep doing the things that are important. So number one is you want to continue. You want to start if you’re not doing it now. You want to continue if you are doing it now to regularly use your door your book as a door opener. Your door you want to use your book as a door opener consistently. Now, I just talked about this a few weeks ago and I taught on our speaking engagement process, how you use a book to get speaking engagements. And I was happy to hear that at least one of my clients went through the training and after his book was published and his book was launched, he went through the training and he started doing it. Kevin McDaniels is his name and Kevin is a buddy of mine. And so Kevin started doing it. He started sending out five books a week. I’m not going to talk about all the details of it because you can go back and you can find the training. It’s very easy. You find the the top hundred events, associations, corporations that you want to speak for. You find the name, email address, telephone number, and mailing address of the person that is the event coordinator or the seale person that’s in charge of that. And then you’re going to send that person a book. You’re going to start by sending them an email letting them know that a book is on the way. You’re going to send them a physical copy of the book. And then you’re going to follow it with a phone call. Well, he started doing that. And I I I tell everybody, I say, “Look, don’t expect any results at all in 90 days.” Expect zero. Because if you expect zero, you’re going to be really pleasantly surprised because people are going to reply to you. People are going to pick up the phone and thank you. People are going to have nice conversations with you, but expect nothing to happen. Well, it’s been about five or six weeks since Kevin started. and he and I talked the other day because he reached out to me and he said, “Hey, I wanted to let you know I just booked a $5,000 speaking engagement from somebody that I’ve never met before that I met because I used your strategy. I found his name, email address, telephone number. I’ve been sending five books out a week.” And now this is some six weeks later, so 30, 40 books have been sent out as well as emails out as well as follow-up telephone calls. And that has already led to his first $5,000 speaking engagement. And I said, “Look, if you just continue to do exactly what you’re doing, you will have far more opportunity than you know what to do with.” He only wants to get two speaking engagements a month. That’s it. 5 to$10,000. Because, by the way, when he speaks at these corporate events, he picks up coaching clients. So really, he’s being paid to market his services, which by the way is true probably for most of you who could be speakers. So he actually started it. Guess what happened? He got results. Something good happened. So use your book. Start using your book as a door opener. A door opener to conversations. A door opener to referrals. A door opener to speaking opportunities. A door opener to PR and media. I’ve told you guys. And in case you you do not remember or in case you um have never heard me talk about it, my very first opportunity came when I wrote my first book now some 18 years ago. And I sent a copy of that book out to all the local radio stations explaining that my book had become a bestseller and I would love to have an interview. I’m a local guy. I’ll come down to the radio station. And somebody took me up on that offer. The door opened. I went through that door. I had a conversation with the program manager. They did a five-minute interview with me. The very day that interviewed aired, they they aired it live and then they aired it again as a recording. That very day I gave my telephone number. Somebody called me that day and became a client and it was worth $6,000 to my company. The very day, the very first time I was on media and used my book as a door opener. Guess what I did? I continued doing it. And that’s how my business went from zero to over seven figures in one year and then multi-se figures the next year. All I did was more and more and more of it. Number one, start using your book as a door opener. Number two, start anchoring everything regarding your book to one like core offer. I think for some of us, we have lots of things that we can do and lots of things that we’re good at. And maybe, you know, we’ve heard Russell Brunson and others talk about the value ladder and I have a value ladder. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you don’t have like one core offer dialed in that’s a high ticket offer, then just focus on that. Just start there. one problems you you solve, one amazing outcome that you deliver, one way for people to take the next step with you. That way they’re not complicated, right? That way when you do have a conversation with somebody, it’s not like, “Okay, well, I don’t know if I should try this thing that you sell or this thing that you sell or if I need level A or level B or level C.” Just give them one thing. Here’s how I can help you. This and that’s it. And if they say, “Well, gosh, that’s, you know, that’s out of my budget.” Ah, sorry. At the Rolls-Royce dealership, we sell Rolls-Royces, right? At the Toyota dealership, they sell Toyotas. They don’t change the budget because someone walks into a Rolls-Royce dealership and says, “Hey, this is my budget.” They’re like, “Ah, this is kind of what we sell.” Do that. That’s it. One offer. Make it make it super crystal clear. Number three thing to start, always have and create a simple sales path for people to get to you. Use the BSP model. book to a conversation to a client. That’s it. Now, I’ve shared some of the statistics with you. When I was trying to figure this out in the early days, I had 80 phone calls. The very first time I did this, 80 in one month. I spoke to 80 different people in one month and not a single one of those people bought. I was like, “Something’s wrong here.” Like, something was working because the book led to all these conversations, but it didn’t led lead to clients. So, I had to fix the conversation. But when I fixed the conversation, things exploded. And I mean exploded. So create a simple path and then you’ll see where the mistakes are or the issues or the challenges are and you can correct those things along the way. Last but not least, have some type of weekly book activation. I actually call it my war room time. And I just started doing this in January. So basically every morning, well, let me take a step back and I’ll explain the details to you. So I love creating habits in my life. I don’t think I grew up as a very disciplined person, but I always admired discipline. I’d always admired people that had great discipline. So I wanted to create that in my life. And so I did. I worked really hard at creating discipline. I have a like bulletproof morning routine that starts at about 5:30 every morning and it goes to about 8:30 every morning. And if you ever want to hear about that, I’m more than happy to share about it. But I did notice something uh about my morning routine. When it comes to say about 8:39 when I’m starting my workday, so to speak, I’m often in the start of my workday led by matters of urgency like what my email inbox is or who in Slack needs me or things like that unless I have appointments on my calendar and that’s different. And I said, you know what? Neither one of those things is ideal for where I’m at and the stage of my company and and what I do for my company. So I said, I don’t want to be led by somebody else’s email to me, and I don’t want to be led by somebody else’s Slack message to me. And I don’t want to be led by an appointment that I just randomly set for 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. in the morning. I want to be led by making sure that I have like what I’ve started calling my war room time in the morning. Now, this is after my entire morning routine, which is more about me, my spiritual health, my mental health, my physical health, all of those things. But I thought, let me just carry that over into the first one to two hours of my day. And one of those things is all about, okay, what is going to be like my war room focus for marketing today? One of those kind of key activation things for my war room time. And this is an element of it that I’m talking about where you need some type of book activation. I would recommend every day, but at least every week. And what does that mean? Well, it means that you have some kind of habit of outreach every single day regarding your book. You have some type of habit that you’ve created of followup with your book. You have some type of habit created where you’re maybe building writing content or creating video content tied to your book or you’re having conversations on a daily basis because of your book or that are led from your book. So every day it’s all about, you know, for me my war room time. How can I get more people to pay attention to my content, to pay attention to my books? How can I create more JV opportunities? How can I build and and book more speaking engagements, not just for me, but for our speaking team, etc. You need some kind of war room like weekly and even daily how you’re going to activate your book. I hope that makes sense. I tried to give some explanation as to how that relates to me hoping that it would also help you. Your book will create momentum for you. That I promise you, but only if you’re using it. Using it every single day, not on occasion when somebody happens to find it. That’s part one. That was part two. What to stop, what to start. Now, let’s talk about what to simplify. Richard Cotch, um, a billionaire in the UK, wrote a wrote a number of really cool books. One is called Simplify. Highly recommend it. Another’s called uh I think it’s 8020 business. Also highly recommend it. I know him from Perry Marshall and I’m in the second year of Perry Marshall’s mastermind. And um you know subtraction pe people think that addition is really the way to grow your business, right? I’m going to add new products. I’m going to add new services. I’m going to add new things that I do. The reality is the fastest way to grow is actually to to simplify. And often that means you need to subtract things from your life and from your business. Complexity does not make us more sophisticated. All complexity does is bog you down. And so if your your stuff is too complex, if your business if what you’re offering, if how you’re trying to attract a client is too complex, then you’ve got to find a way to simplify that and to subtract it. So your book number one, your message and your book should like be crystal clear about a number of things. who it’s for, the problems that it solves, and what happens next in the process. That’s what your book should do. So if you’re trying to for example getting a speaking engagement with your book and your book have maybe has many elements many chapters within it to solve a particular problem but you should be able to very concisely and very clearly explain to an event planner right or an association president that hey I am the expert on this particular topic and here’s how it relates to your event or your speaking engagement like super clear the problem that it solves, how it relates, and you should be able to mail that book in advance as an example and say, “All you need to do is read chapter 3, and that will completely clear things up for you and how we can potentially help.” So, simplify your message. Make sure that your book and your message for what you’re looking for is really clear and really simple. Also, simplify your marketing. Number two, simplify your marketing. Now, look, I I give you a lot of shiny objects. I know. I talk about using your book for speaking. I talk about using your book to get on podcast. Talk about using your book for PR. I talk about using your book with a bookfunnel. What you need to do, and the reason I do that is because I’m trying to give you a lot of variety that you can choose what kind of fits your personality and makes sense for you. But what you have to do is just choose one. Just choose one and get it working. If you feel like you are more suited to being a speaker and that’s really what you want to do, then choose that and dial it in. Dial it in big time. Now, you may not have like all the things that you need. Well, then you’ve got to go out and get them. Maybe you don’t have a signature speech. Well, you have to figure that out. Maybe you don’t know exactly how much you should be charging or or how much your services are worth. Well, you need to get some advice on that kind of thing. So, there may be a lot of things that need to be answered, but just choose one. Don’t like spread it around hoping that something is going to stick. Maybe you want to focus on just creating content. Fantastic way to use your book. Creating content, building a platform, driving people back to your book. It’s fantastic if you have the discipline and the skill to do that both on video and in writing. Let me tell you, you will create a massive platform if you don’t quit. But maybe that’s not you. So, whatever it is, just choose one and like go deep on it. decide I’m going to stick with this. Number one, we always talk in our focus 90, never change for at least 90 days. Like focus just for 90 days. But truth be told, you should focus for 6 months or a year on something. That’s when you’ll begin to create some mastery in it. One channel, one marketing focus, etc. that’s done well will beat a dozen that are done poorly or that are done haphazardly. So just simplify what it is you’re going to do. Pick one thing that I am talking about on a weekly basis and then go deep. We have tons of training in the BSPU area for you. Number three, simplify your goals. Simplify your goals. We talked a lot about goals in December, so I’m not going to give you a big goals thing again, but number one, as we talked about December, your goals should never be vague. Your goals need to be crystal clear and they need to be simple. You need to be able to know, did I reach them or not? Right? Like if it’s too complicated and you’re wondering, did I reach my goal? how close am I to my goal? Then something’s wrong with your goal. Your goal needs to be really simple, really clear. It can’t be vague. Maybe it’s something as simple as I want to have x number of conversations a week. Maybe it’s as simple as I am going to follow Rob’s plan and send out five books a week and reach out to people five times a week to set up speaking engagements. Make that your goal. Like keep your goals really simple. I’m not talking about your big life goals. I’m talking to the ones as related to your book. revenue tied to your book, clients tied to your book, that sort of thing. Okay, so let’s go back through these three and then let me kind of wrap it up and of course answer any questions that you have. The idea here is you’re motivated. It’s January 13th. We’re moving. Okay, let’s make sure that we’re moving in the right direction. So, I talked about what to stop, what to start, and what to simplify. I gave you a bunch of things about stopping. For me, I told you it was all about stopping the shiny objects so that I can stay focused on what the plan is for BSP. uh this year I talked about what to start made that really clear and then we talked about what to simplify. So let’s keep things really simple with this. If you had to make your book produce results in the next 90 days if your life depended on it then choose something that I just talked about that you need to stop that you need to start and that you need to simplify. And if you do that I promise you you don’t need like more information. You got plenty of information. You’re super smart. You just need to get aligned. Make a decision and get committed to that thing. And when you do it, the results will come. The results will absolutely come for you.