Today on the Book More Show, Dean and I catch up in the studio to talk about the power of non-traditional books to collect all the leads you need.
Compared to the traditional approach of locking yourself away to write 1000 words a day, we talk about the benefits of a 'conversation-starting book' and how thinking about your book as a tool that powers a campaign can generate leads 1753 leads at just $3.53 per lead as we did in a recent Facebook ad.
We talk about the value of the everyday knowledge you already have and how asking the right questions can compel people to raise their hands; we debunk the myth that a book needs to be lengthy to be successful and discuss the impact of concise, impactful books that address potential clients' concerns.
This is a short, sharp shot of getting-it-done thinking!
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
- We discuss the potential of non-traditional books in the realm of lead generation
- Dean reveals the secret of writing a book in just 30 days, and the power of book titles that resonate with your ideal prospects.
- We highlight the impressive record of generating 1753 leads at just $3.53 per lead, and the strategy of generating leads for as little as $300.
- We delve into the process of using a self-published book as a lead generation tool.
- Stuart shares how he utilized the concept of a 'self-milking cow' to help people convert more leads.
- We emphasize the value of daily knowledge and the craft of asking the right questions in lead generation.
- We reflect on the influential book 'The Owner's Manual Through Your 40s' by Sean Phillips and his video with Bill, 'Body for Life'.
- We explain the art of creating concise, impactful books that address the five burning questions in the minds of potential clients.
- We debunk the myth that a book needs to be voluminous to be successful, emphasizing the fact that content trumps length.
- We discuss the power of an attractive book title, effective marketing strategies, and the advantages of using a podcast to connect with potential clients.
LINKS
Dean Jackson - LinkedIn
Dean Jackson
Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/153
How does your book idea score against the 8 book building blocks we use here all the time: Book Blueprint Scorecard
Titles & Outline Workshops: 90MinuteBooks.com/Workshops
Ready to get started: 90MinuteBooks.com
Questions/Feedback: Send us an email
Extra Credit Listening: MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Hey everybody, dean Jackson, Stuart Bell, here in World Headquarters, winter Haven, florida, excited. I want to you know this, a reason I you're here and I wanted to have this conversation because today is November 2nd, right, and I don't know if you know this or have heard of this tradition of nano-ri-mo. Do you know what that stands for?
Stuart: National national. Well, I'll trip everything. National novel writing month.
Dean: And all around the world, there are people who all year build up to this month where the idea is that you start writing on midnight 01 on November 1st and you have to stop writing at 59 on November 30th. And there's, you know, people all over the world get involved in this process and the thing that is, everybody builds up to this moment and do you know or wonder what the drop-off rate is by November 2nd? The number of people. The idea is that you're supposed to write 1,600 words a day.
Stuart: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, and do you know what the drop-off is of people who fall behind already on November 2nd?
Stuart: I haven't seen the numbers by any of you imagine it's a pretty dramatic Percipitus. Let's call it precipitus. Yeah, and you?
Dean: know, I started to think that because you end up. It strikes me, man, that's a lot of like effort and work to get to a point where you know you're going to. You know, hide yourself away in your cabin in the woods for a month and slave over, turn your phone off yeah exactly Drop out of society for all of these things and I really started realizing, man, there's such, you know.
I look at right now, between now and the end of the year, the strides that somebody could make if, instead of slaving out trying to write a book traditionally, that we went through the process. The reason that I created that, we created the 90-minute book opportunity for people is to make it super easy for them so they didn't have to hold themselves away for 30 days, dropping out of society and counter to the traditional flow. Yeah.
Stuart: The outcome that we're looking for is business owners is to start the conversation, and the way to start the conversation happens to be a book, as the most effective way of doing it.
Dean: Right.
Stuart: But to flip that and get caught up in the whole product being the book in the traditional sense. It just kills so many people yeah. And we've heard of a podcast just before this one at the office with someone who's written five.
Dean: I'm going to look up something to show. Look at the numbers.
Stuart: So I was recording with Chris before Chris Carlson. He's written five books previously, himself not in a strictly traditional sense, but still not using those, and he said this process was the absolute easiest, most straightforward way to create the thing that gets him in conversation quicker, cheaper, faster, more to the point, given that the job of workers getting in conversation with potential clients- and.
I think the challenge that people have is that they say book and in their mind pops up a certain thing and that certain thing is the traditional book, both in their outcome and the process. But the reality is the book just happens to be the most effective way to get into the conversation and if you can shortcut that and not get caught up and bogged down in all of the traditional. So I went through it.
Dean: So we went and went through this process where we did. I've been doing these lead conversion workshops and lead generation workshops, lead getting workshops, and part of the thing that I share with everybody of getting leads is the most reliable number one thing is a book that has a title that your ideal prospects say that's the book for me, right? So about 90 days ago I launched on the lead getting workshop. I went through the process with people to show exactly what, the how to do it right, and show that you could do it in 30 days and get the whole and get the whole thing settled. So I created a book called convert more leads what to say to prospects so they all convert themselves and conceived the idea by going through the book title formulas that we talk about.
I'll talk about those in a second, but I went through that process with everybody and did the word palette and came up with that title convert more leads what to say to prospects so they all convert themselves. I had our designer Glenn do a wonderful cover where a guy's fishing with his hands behind his head and the fish are jumping in the boat. Right, that's the greatest thing. You're out fishing and the jumper the fish are jumping in the boat because that's, metaphorically, what we're doing.
We want your ideal prospects to jump into the boat and so in the last 60 days we launched that and we've generated 1753 leads for $3.53 per lead for those ideal prospects.
Right Now that I look at it, that if I'm coming into somebody's business and I want to generate leads on a long, you know, on a sustainable basis, if they're serving this as a market, that's going to be in business for the next you know, several years that that's the business that they're in. So the first thing I would say is that if you're doing a hundred weeks is the benchmark that I'd say is I'm looking to say if we could generate leads for $300 or $500 or whatever it is. We just did a catalog with the bike shop here in Winterhaven. You know, doing business is if you can reliably, for $300, fill up a basket with a hundred leads, a hundred people who expressly and voluntarily raise their hand and said is there any doubt that anybody who downloaded a book called Convert More Leads what their desire is? It's pretty much it does what it says on the tin, right? That's the thing.
Stuart: There's no confusion about what they're getting.
Dean: They're clearly expressing pressure, and especially yeah, if somebody's putting together the e-bike catalog, the 2023 e-bike catalog, that's everybody. That's what they want right.
So thinking about this as a process, to know that, while all these people are hidden away in their hidey hole writing 1600 words a day, many of them not going to get to the finish line and chalk it up maybe next year we'll do the same thing. But, you know, while that's all happening, somebody we could get into the process of identify the, your audience. What's the title of the book that they would definitely want?
Stuart: And it's you know different.
Dean: if you're looking for invisible prospects or visible prospects, you know either way how. It's only about how you reach them, and this is the perfect way for gathering invisible prospects, and we've done it for everything from medical things, the A to Z.
Stuart: we've done accountants and we've done Zimbabwe and outsourcers. So literally a thousand books. I mean thank you so much for coming on board, because that allows me to use that metaphor Literally a thousand books.
Dean: Yes.
Stuart: There's not an industry that there's not an example for.
Dean: Right.
Stuart: And to be able to pivot those titles to specifically your case within that. So there's more than one CPA book out there, but each one of them is targeting a slightly different group.
Dean: Yes.
Stuart: There's more than one medical book out there, but targeting a separate group.
So, that first job of work in the sequence is, as you say, getting people to raise their hands. I want that, and then the conversation starts. The book is just the mechanism for moving it, that minimum, viable commitment, the next step in the chain. And to be able to do that in a way that where other people are locking themselves away trying to make this perfect piece before they even put it out in the world. Yes, it's like Mike Tyson Everyone's got a plan until I smack him in the face. Well, get your book out there. You get smacked in the face a few times by the real audience and then so you look at these things, these bundles We've already.
Dean: We've got 1,753 people on the Convert More Leads, some of whom have already signed up for our lead conversion workshop, which is a $2,500 workshop, and others that we have that will move into other things, come into a live breakthrough blueprint or working with me one-on-one. So the idea of the way I look at it is, if we take 1,000 leads for $3,000, how many of those people over the next 100 weeks am I going to be able to help convert more leads? It's such an amazing thing. And then on the next go round, we're creating a book called Get More Leads, so the two bookends of what somebody could need for their business. They're either generating leads and they need to convert them, or they need to get more leads so that they're ready to launch the conversion process.
Stuart: I think there's a lot of challenge that people have because they come to the idea of a book and a lot of people accept that it's a great lead generation tool but then get stuck in this traditional mindset of, okay, well, a book is this thing that authors write away, locking themselves in a cabin and it's difficult and challenging and you kind of PTSD back to homework and redlined from school and all of the challenge and trauma around it. I think so many people underestimate the value of just the knowledge that they've got from their day-to-day activities. I think because we're in the business every day, we undervalue just that basic conversation, starting ways of thinking about things. So instead of being a book would be good, but I do need to lock myself away to get this award-winning piece created. Instead, just ask yourself what are the questions that people ask when they stick?
their head in the door, or when they phone up customer support, or when they what?
Dean: do they need to know to get that process? This is where all part of the whole genesis of the self-milking cow came from.
Stuart: Right.
Dean: That years ago I was running a mastermind group and this is before we started 90-minute books. This was the genesis of 90-minute books that I was already. I had figured out how to write books by recording and transcribing and editing. That's how I did Stop. Your Divorce was the first one that we did like that.
Then I did a book about how we did Stop your Divorce and a whole coaching program around that. But those I was sharing that with the mastermind group and then I was seeing people struggle with it brought up so many technical blocks. Then how do I record with or how do I get this transcribed and who's going to do the edit? How do I design the cover? How do I All these questions that were coming up that caused delay.
Stuart: Right, and I still remember the original.
Dean: I love, I say it. Sean Phillips was in the mastermind group, bill Phillips the brother, and did you ever meet Sean?
Stuart: Yeah.
Dean: Oh yeah, you're part of that too. Yeah, and he may be a guy who's more ADD than me, but he's super smart, knows so much stuff. Talk about what you were just saying. That it's all in there. And so I was coming home from London, I did an event in London, I was landed back in South Carolina, I was going to play some golf with Mike Hardwick at Kiowa and I woke up one morning early I was like 5 am because I was still on London time. It's kind of in a melatonin haze and I was thinking about Sean and I was thinking how you know? Because I just talked to him and he hadn't gotten made any progress and I realized he's got all the information. It's all in there.
Stuart: Yeah.
Dean: He knows it. He could just hook a hose up to his brain and just suck all the information out. And all this, of course, is happening like quickly and the connections were made. I was thinking if I could just milk his brain and then that created this visualization of him as a cow and I realized in that world it's not a dairy cow but an idea cow, a money cow, cash cow. Yeah, and I. That really is what I thought that he's trying. The frustration is he's trying to milk himself, and that's really where the idea of the self-milking cow came from. I immediately proposed to him that I would help him. Do we do the interview process? And that book is still on Amazon today. It's called the Owner's Manual through your 40s and it still is. I mean, it's a great content.
Stuart: Yeah, sean, and I have spoken to him a few times. I love the book. Sean I don't know of Sean back from years ago, the Body of Life.
Dean: Yeah, Body for Life.
Stuart: Yeah, body for Life. He recorded a video with Bill. Body of Work, that's what I was thinking of. If anyone can find that it's well worth watching. But you say that he's got the knowledge in his head because he's his own lived experience as he's gone from his 20s to his 40s. And if someone was sat down with him, if they bumped into him in the coffee shop, got him talking about it for 10 minutes, he would be able to deliver such gems. So the same for all business owners out there. You know the stuff.
you know the five questions that people ask the things that they really should be asking instead, because those questions are probably not the real important pieces, the next steps that they can take and even if you just take those three elements five questions people ask, five things that they should really know or questions that they should be asking and five action steps that people can take. Creating a book that just had those things don't have to think about it anymore than that as a lead generation tool with the right title would fill the funnel. Start the conversations for the whole next three years worth of business.
Dean: And that's all it is. That's what I really want to stress for people. If you look on the 90 minute books website, when we've got the 90 minute book as a, we did a 90 minute book, I've called the 90 minute book and people can get that at 90minutebookcom. And when you opt in for the 90 minute book, the first thing that we see is a video with me explaining the value of a small book, because it's often the two things that I think stand in people's way of getting a 90 minute book is they think or perceive that they need to have a big book, and that's the vision that they have, and it's gonna take a lot of time and effort to create that, without really even knowing whether you've struck the right chord.
Right, and I'm not opposed to the big books, but I think that you can start and we've had some people start with a 90 minute book as version one to get the idea to do the thing, because what we've learned is it doesn't matter to people whether the book is 50 pages or 250 pages when they're presented with the offer of the book. If we run because most of the time we're doing Facebook ads people see a cover. This is a book, I can download it right now. That's the offer and I'm making 100% the decision on. Am I interested in what the title of this book?
Stuart: is.
Dean: So when people see convert more leads what to say to prospects? So they all convert themselves, they say I want that and it doesn't make any difference whether that book is 50 pages or 250 pages for the job of work that we're hiring.
Stuart: Because, although both things can be called a book, both things are printed on paper and they're bound.
The job of work of a book that you're buying off Amazon or from Bud and Noble to be entertained to read the actual content, that has to be a big book because you're competing with all of the other books out there. But the book where the job of work is to those people who download, convert more leads. They want to know the secret to convert more leads. And if the answer was one sentence, tap your nose three times and then turn around counterclockwise and that would yeah, that would be, it's done its job.
So the idea that people get into this traditional mindset trap the traditional trap I'm going to call it that from now on this traditional trap of thinking that they have to write something that competes with other things on Amazon, other things by. It's like people not wanting to start YouTube channels because they see Mr Beast with 100 million followers and think, oh, he's got 200 million.
Dean: Yeah, he works hard for those, he does.
Stuart: Yeah, but it's this idea of oh well, unless it's that level of success, it's not worth it.
When, again, the job of work is completely different, and for people to hold themselves back from not getting started, of thinking that they need to wait till November, clear the calendar, lock themselves away 1600 words a day just to get to an end point, that may or may not hit the mark. The podcast that went live last weekend as we record this one today, was with Kevin Burr. So his first book was kind of like a 20 ideas type book where he was just touching on the 20 points of building relationships with people. One of the 20 was around writing a bio, having a professional bio that you can give to people as an easy way for them to remember who you are and what you do. That idea, when he released the first book, all the feedback that he was getting was about that particular idea because it just hit the zeitgeist of his audience. So the second book that you wrote was specifically doubling down on that and the amplification that he's getting, the opt-ins that he's getting of doubling down on that idea. That resonated with the audience.
We hear all the time people will come and they've spent months and tens of thousands of dollars on other projects that have either stalled or not gone anywhere or turned into a bit of a tar baby of work that they needed to do. When I look at what they've spent and the time that it's taken and thinking you could have done something so much more efficient.
And even if, like you say, you then do go on to double down on that particular project and turn it into a more traditional book and try and get more traditional media to pick it up, starting off with the first version that's out there and testing the audience in a quick and cost effective way yeah, so much more productive.
Dean: It's so amazing, too, that sometimes we don't know what the market's going to respond to. You don't know what people I've often, you know, and I run into it. Sometimes Not every book idea that I come up with is the is a crystal clear winner, but within two or three tries I find one that is dramatically better, you know, and that was. I just had that situation with a reverse mortgage book that, you know, we, the book we came up with, was a book called House Rich, and the difference in, you know, and that's the great thing about testing these things of not writing them in stone, gives us an opportunity to experiment, right, and that's kind of the whole thing. And there was a difference between House Rich with an exclamation mark and House Rich with a question mark. So the idea was joining people in the idea of one of our book title formulas is join the conversation that's already going on in their mind, right? I was just thinking that that's the title, and so we've had a lot of success with these how to know when something makes sense, right, so how to know when it makes sense to refinance, or how to know, in this case, when a reverse mortgage makes sense. And that was with the now the big subhead of House Rich question mark how to know when a reverse mortgage makes sense, image of a house sitting on top of cash buried beneath the house, right.
And that's been a winner, a unqualified winner, that were able to generate those leads in the ten, eleven dollar range. And I know that those, if we can generate a hundred of those leads for and follow up with those people for a hundred weeks, that it's going to be a multiple of the money. It's just stocking our pond with those. So it's funny because the you know, get More Leads with the fish jumping in the boat, is the second book in the series. But the Get More Leads is how to choose the words that get you all the leads you want, and it's the image of all these fish going off to the right side of the book following a sign that says free worms this way, and they're all going off the book into the second book which is then they're jumping in the boat being converted, so I was pretty happy with the way that.
I thought that was pretty clever the way the series jumped together.
Stuart: A great example of horse for sale type of examples that does what it says on the tin and not being clever and not being too ambiguous about what it is.
It's just very specifically. Here's the thing that you want, the conversation that's going on in your head already. Here's the answer to that problem. Talk about a hundred weeks. It's interesting, then, to think about the ongoing the campaign after they've initially opted in, because I think that trips some people up as well, and thinking about the book as the start of the conversation. But then the long term, the 80 of people who convert over the longer term rather than the short term.
That's why we're such a fan of podcasts, because, just as it's easy to create a book based on your own knowledge, being asked questions that you immediately know the answers to, it's also easy to do a podcast where you're talking to people about the same subject, because anyone who's been in business for more than a year probably doesn't have a difficulty talking about the subject.
But, when you sit people down and say, okay, now you've got to write 52 emails to regularly send out to people and deliver them value. And either that or it's go to an aggregator and just get the same generic stuff that everyone else is doing To be able to just simply record a podcast, and I mean, don't need quite such a fantastic studio as one's got here.
Dean: But if you can find one, do it.
Stuart: Yeah, come down to Dolphin Studio.
Dean: If you're anywhere in central Florida, this is the place.
Stuart: But even just doing it from Zoom at home, doing something that you can quickly and easily get that out to people in a weekly message. Here's the new podcast that we recorded, by the way, whenever you're ready, and here's the call to action.
Dean: That's been a great thing too. That that's what we've been doing with people is we've been calling them milking sessions, where we'll do on Zoom record. People set them up so that they can record their answers, to create content from that follow up content. My goal is to get it so that people can just embrace their bovinity and just lean into being a cow and make the milk and come in and get milk. Nobody ever has talkers block right and that's the greatest thing. That's. The biggest secret is that. It's the asynchronous thing that kills people is that setting off the time that they're gonna try and do it on their own but, having it synchronous and scheduled and Involving other people is the power move.
That's how you get the stuff done right. It's not if it was up to you just to organize everything and do it.
Stuart: It's nothing gets done with the best intention in the world, if this is a nice that way my myself included like I can't.
Dean: I have very I've a very proven track record of not getting anything done when I don't have something Synchronous and scheduled. You know that. But the things, the most important things that I do when I think about it, are Synchronous and scheduled like that I do the workshops I never miss yeah, the podcasts when I've got guests are on the thing. Never missed their schedule at a time I've come, you know.
Stuart: Because you're not competing against that bit of your brain that's trying to distract you with other things right. If it's there, someone else has arranged it. You just have to turn up. It's like going to the gym. We were just grabbing coffee before and bumped into Brook, who's one of the owners of a water-sider gym in winter.
I haven't here. I used to regularly go to the gym when I was down here, because it was in the calendar. I had it blocked off. I didn't have to think about going, it was just I need to get out the door and rush down there. Mm-hmm. As soon as that schedule went, as soon as there was some variation in there as soon as the Details.
All that gym is not there anymore. I need to find the other one. And is it on this block or that block? Or what time was a class? All of those things is just enough of a grain of sand To cog up the wheels and then all of a sudden, this other thing is more important.
I need to do this. So I think that trick of I'm doing a lot more work now in LinkedIn than I've done before and that's because I've working with another group of people and Engaging them to keep me accountable and doing some of the work the idea I would have perfectly loved to have done this seven years ago.
It's not like it's a brand new idea and I suddenly discovered LinkedIn. It's just that every time I thought about it, something else came up. So, having the calls with them scheduled, the work that we're doing agreed, having not even so much the accountability but the framework to make sure that it's done, it puts it on rails, and I think that's one of the big benefits of. Something like 90-minute books and something like the podcast that we do for people. It's scheduled and synchronous, it's in the calendar, it's not interrupted and all you have to do is turn up and like you say there's no such thing as talkers block.
Dean: Is there? Do we have a? What do we have in terms of the book title? Workshop Resource for yeah, on the website.
Stuart: I'll link it in the show notes for this episode. But on the 90-minute books website, on the resource tab, there's two workshops in there a book titles workshop, which we just updated that with a newer one, and then the outline workshop as well.
Dean: Is it a video like a zoom one, or audio?
Stuart: the titles. One is a zoom one that we did recently, and then the outline one is a little bit older. That's the conference call on and then, in addition to that, there's the book blueprint scorecard, which lists out there a building blocks of the book.
So single target market title, amplifying subheading, call to action, outline content, and then, after the beyond, the book elements, and then there's a whole host of videos that Go with each of those modules. But that first step of picking the title, that book titles workshop, there's the Zincal where I think that's the focus.
Dean: So let's put a link in the email that we signed about this to the the book title workshop, because I know that as soon as somebody gets the title in their mind, that's the catalyst for gain. That's the toughest thing is Coming up with that. So I know as soon as people get that idea that we can launch into action to Get the rest of it done, be great to go into the new year with your book already in your hand, right.
Stuart: Second of November you know, mean, in the time when all these nano-rimo people are kind of locking themselves away, we can get the majority of it, from your perspective, done the work that we need to do with you for the content, the Conversation with the cover design guys who come down. It design dialed in. All of that can be done within the next couple of weeks, and then we kind of take it and just do all of the work in the background.
Yeah so come January the first, I mean new marketing budgets. Put that towards some Facebook ads with this as the cookie to get people to opt in. Yeah it's the title. It's funny, this kind of traditional trap that people fall into when I hear people talking about Traditionally writing books and then they'll write it all and then I'll go to the publishing company and then the publishing company will go back and forth and back and forth on picking the title and they took right the tail, wagon the dog.
If the much more effective way for us as business owners with the job of work being starting conversations is the title is the first thing. The content then backs it up and makes people, makes the people who have requested it, comfortable enough to then take the action step, take the next step. That's the path not write it, and then we'll work out what to do with afterwards.
Dean: Amen, I love it. Well, I think we've said it all. Yeah, you know, let those other people that hold themselves up in a in their hidey hole and get their book written in a month, but yeah let's click on that link, watch the book title workshop. Get that going and then we're ready to help you start your book and run into the new year with a whole stock, your pond, full of the right prospects for you yeah. I love it. Very exciting it is perfect.