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Rated PG 13. In theaters April 24th. Let's talk about the street team for your book launch. This is a strategy I've heard several times when Tori was on the podcast, she talked about it. We'll link that in the show notes, Tori's most recent episode for us. But they said you want a small group of people who will support your book launch, some of your biggest fans who want to be a part of the launch. One of the insights that Tori shared in that first episode was she had met with an author. Her name was Tiffany Alice, who is actually an early member, early guest on the show. And Tiffany mentioned that her street team, each individual bought on average five copies of the book. So this suggests that if you have demand for a lot of people to be on your launch team, we can call it a launch team if you want, then this can be a really great early sales mechanism too. These people are big fans of yours and they want to help spread the word. And they end up buying more than one copy of the book, which is just gold in the early stages of a book launch. Your street team can also provide specific feedback on different chunks of the book. James mentioned that he did this with the launch of Atomic Habits. His early readers, he kind of put them into small groups and gave each small group a batch of like 10 pages of the book and said read this in a Google Doc and leave your feedback on it. And this is his way of validating a lot of the concepts in the book. And when people all marked that they were confused about something, he changed that material. Now there's a book called Write Useful Books. It was written by Rob Fitzpatrick. And Rob Fitzpatrick has a software that he helps with this. It's called helpthisbook.com. this is an app that he built to help you gather feedback from your readers. And I thought about that. It's called helpthisbook.com to get feedback from your beta readers. Now, other authors said that for their street teams, they asked them to leave an Amazon or Goodreads review. There's actually a funny story of one of these authors got a negative review on their Amazon listing shortly after launch. And this person was just complaining that the book itself had been damaged in transit. It wasn't the fault of the author, it was actually Amazon's fault. And so this author emailed their audience and said, hey, I just released my book and we only have one video review on Amazon and it's a negative review about the quality of the book. Can you go and help me with some positive reviews? And they said their audience really showed up and left a lot of positive video reviews to the point where they considered, okay, maybe in the future this is a strategy, maybe I should like seed a negative review on Amazon to give my audience kind of a call to arms to go share some positive reviews. I don't know, your mileage may vary. You can decide if that feels like it's an integrity to you. This was kind of just an idea, but I thought that was interesting. Another author said for their early readers, they had some incentives to pre order. If you pre ordered, you would get your name in the acknowledgement section of the book and you would get an early access to the audiobook. And Jenna, Jenna Kutcher said that when she released her book, she offered 15 minute guest spots on other people's podcasts. So she said, if you join the street team and pre order the book, I will jump on your podcast for 15 minutes. And she batched this in a day. She said she just went, I forget if it was one or two weeks, but for several days, just back to back to back, 15 minute guest spots. And ahead of time, she sent a lot of context of, here's how this is going to work. I need you to be ready to record at this time. We're going to jump right into it so we get the most out of that time. She said it went very, very well. And lastly, another author said for their street team, their launch team, they put together a book club for their book with their people. And that was so popular and so successful that a lot of the people who were on that team were asking, okay, but what is the price? And he said, there is no price. The price is you pre order a book. And for that I will host a book club for us together. So that was a lot of great context. Saw Hill. His book became a New York Times bestseller. He said he sent out 250 personalized copies of the book, 200 of which he had to buy personally. But he said he sent out 200 copies of his book to early readers that he thought would share it. He had a goal of getting 80% of those people to actually share the book after they received it, and 95% of the people he sent a book to shared it. On each of those books, he had post it notes calling out, here's a specific part that I think would be interesting to you, which helps a lot. He recorded a video for everybody who pre ordered. He said he recorded over a thousand videos for people who pre ordered the book, which is insane dedication. He even offered 15 minute calls for people who bought more than 10 copies. So that was pretty wild. He said it was very, very intense. But if you watch Sawhill's launch as closely as I did, it was orchestrated incredibly well. It was so impressive, and it's no surprise that it was as successful as it was. One of the popular stories from the launch of Atomic Habits is how James targeted some communities of people that he thought would be good fits for the book. And he had several different groups he thought would be a good fit. But the one that really took hold was CrossFitters. He also tried venture capitalists. I forget some of the other ones, but his point was, if you could send to people who are both kind of chatty about the thing, the shared interest they're a part of, that's good. Like if this group is a group of people who talks about their thing, photographs their thing, shares their thing on Instagram, that's really good. But the other point that he made was a lot of people in our position, creators like us, authors like us, we get a lot of books shared to us. But if you can find people who rarely get early copies of books, the share rate on that is actually going to be much higher, which I thought was a very, very smart note. And I think the last tactical thing I'll share here is one of the folks in the room mentioned. They don't do their own YouTube content or podcast much anymore. Their strategy is actually just to be one of the greatest guests on the most popular shows. And so this individual had been on Diary of a CEO, they've been on the Mel Robbins podcast. They've been on many of some of the biggest podcasts that are out there right now. And they said they prepare 40 to 80 hours for each of these podcasts, which was so crazy to hear. But they said, listen, you want these episodes, for these shows to be their most successful episode. You want to be the most successful guest on that show, because then they're going to want you back. So what this individual did was they would go through past episodes of the podcast and identify some of the common recurring questions. They would take those common recurring questions and answer it through the lens of their own work, their own research, their own stories. So it was a unique answer to them that was relevant to their book or their material of whatever kind. But aside from that, not only did they have their own stories and answers to these questions ready to go, but they realized a lot of the reason that these shows grow is because they do short form vertical clips. So their idea was, how do I speak in viral clips? Like, how do I respond to a question with a great hook for my answer right out of the gate? So just the level of preparation on this was insane. And of course, those short form clips do well for the podcast themselves. But then they would take the YouTube video, send it to their team, their team would create way more clips out of it. And all of their growth on Instagram in the form of video, or a huge part of their growth on Instagram in the form of video was clips from other people's shows that their team pulled from the YouTube video, because this person had already done the work of thinking about answers in the form of clips. Kind of crazy. I mean, a little bit. It broke the fourth wall for me on how some of these major shows work. For example, I heard that these shows record much longer than you realize. A two or a two and a half hour episode of a podcast may have been cut down from four or four and a half hours of recording, which is wild, the amount of material they're getting. And yeah, I just have never prepped anywhere close to that degree to be a guest on any show. This is why the people in this room are so successful. I think I'll get to some of my miscellaneous thoughts here next, and then I'll end with some of the memorable quotes from this. On that point of this is why these people are so successful. I mean, I was just awestruck by the level of professionalism and excellence in this room. These people were just operating at such a high level. Maybe you can even hear it in my voice, how enthusiastic I am about this. Because I'll be honest, for the last couple of months, I've been in a little bit of a funk. I've just been kind of floating along and feeling a little sad for myself because things feel hard. Life feels hard. My 30s feel hard. It's a difficult season of life. I wish I had more time in the day. How do people do this? But when I was at this event, I didn't hear a single excuse, I didn't hear a single complaint. I just saw enthusiasm and professionalism and execution. These people just take it seriously and they just go after it. Of course, a lot of them have teams. One of the questions I posed to the group was I said, can we go around really quick and just talk about the size of your team and how it breaks down? You know, how many team members do you have? What's the breakdown of full time versus part time? And that was very illuminating because everyone in the room did it and it varied from, oh, I have no full time employees, I just have four contractors to it's just me and my wife to I have a team of 38 people. Like the spread was really that big and it wasn't correlated to business size or level of success either. Like some of the people with the smallest teams had the largest platforms. So it was really eye opening and inspiring to see what can be done with small teams. But also when you take it seriously, what you can do with team building. One of the things I've been really mulling over lately is okay, I am at capacity, so do I reduce the scope of what I do, Keep the team size the same, but do everything a little bit better? I think if I do that, I probably net out making a little bit less money if I'm doing fewer things. Or I could start hiring, I could start team building. I've been putting it off for a long time because it feels like such a responsibility and a commitment and an obligation. And I've always really wanted flexibility, optionality. But you know, I think about having a daughter and a lot of the meaning in my life is being a dad. And with that comes a lot of new responsibility and a lot of new obligation. And if I think about building a team, it's probably the same. You know, I'm sure it is harder, I'm sure it is more stressful. But I think with that responsibility and commitment comes a level of meaning and fun and excitement that I'm just not experiencing right now. Doing this in a bubble. So it really inspired me to think again about what if I start team building. What if I do hire somebody full time, somebody great. Yeah, I'll have to change our benefit structure. Yeah, I'll have to jump through some hoops and there's going to be more paperwork and blah, blah, blah. But I think, I think it's the right move. Because if I hire, we can do more. If we do more, I think we'll end up making more. Of course this will cost more, so I might net out the same. But if I do less for the purpose of comfort and ease, I think it actually kind of starts a slow march to the bottom on the business. Like, I think that I should take advantage of the opportunity in front of me, the respect that people have for me, and honestly, in some ways the expectation that people have for me, like the fact that I was in this room, goes to show that people respect what I do and have high expectations or belief in me. And I think I could do a better job of matching that in terms of the belief and the confidence I have in myself. And if I believe more in myself, I think it does mean that I take the business more seriously and start team building. One of the folks in the room who has one of the largest teams was really talking about eos, the entrepreneur operating system. It's a system made by Gino Wickman. I believe with the book Traction. It's where the ideas of visionary and integrator come from. I have historically, in the terms of the book, been wearing both hats as both visionary and integrator. That's just not sustainable. And as the on camera, on microphone talent, I think I kind of have to play the visionary role more than the integrator, which means that I'm going to need to hire more operations, more integrator style talent. This individual also really talked about this idea of what he called the Culture Index for hiring. But he mentioned he had a Culture Index coach who gave an assessment of his team members. And ever since he started following the insights from that process and hiring people based on what the role needs from an individual and what the Culture Index says about that individual, that he has unlocked his team's talents, putting the right people in the right seats. And he just could not have been more glowing about this. So something to look into, the combination of EOS and Culture Index if you are team building. Something I'm certainly going to look at. I wish I would have taken more photos and asked for more numbers while I was there. I get nervous asking people if we can exchange contact information, especially phone numbers, because it feels so personal. But everybody that I asked said yes. And it's a much more direct line to folks, especially knowing that a lot of folks who have large social media accounts are not running their own social media or no longer the only person in their own social media accounts. So having somebody's phone number is a Much more reliable and faster way to reach them. And after an event like that where you really get to know people, it's a great place to do it. I didn't take a single photo with people there, but as I watched other people do it, I was like, man, I really should, I really should have documented more of this, taken more photos and shared it for memories for posting to the gram. I just, I just didn't really do that. We learned a lot about the author's equity model for authors. I'm actually not sure if I'm at liberty to share some of that. I think they've been fairly public with it, but I don't think it's like posted to their website. But I think it's interesting. The big innovations with it are a couple of things. Number one, there's no advance, which is a bummer for aspiring authors. They're not getting advance up front. That's one of the best parts of traditional publishing. But the economics are much more author friendly. It's a profit split after covering the costs of hiring freelancers on your team. That being editors, designers, publicists, if you want. Those costs are shared between author's equity and the author print costs, distribution. But after that it's a 70, 30 profit split to the author and that's a big deal. That's roughly a 2x royalty on sales of your book. It's closer to self publishing in that way. I also really like that author's Equity has a 10 year reversion of rights as part of their standard terms. So after 10 years you can reclaim and resell the rights of your book if you would like. That's not a thing in traditional publishing. But again the big trade off is you don't get an advance up front. So you have to take a risk on yourself, take a chance on yourself. And if you think the material will succeed, that's going to be pretty interesting to you. Okay, let me get to some of the memorable quotes from the event that I wanted to pass along. One individual said they've been taking a lot more time away from quote unquote working and they've noticed that they are starting to feel creativity in their body more. They said I actually wanted to work less. So I've been working less. And the outcome of working less is actually feel more creative and it's unlocked more creative energy and productivity from me, which is interesting, you know, and I, I've experienced this on a small scale myself. The more closely I, I hold on to trying to produce more. Sometimes I get Too tight and it actually reduces creativity. Sometimes. Creating space is actually what unlocks a lot of it. Someone else on the topic of hiring said, if you pay for half of someone's time, you get a quarter of their attention. And this was a recommendation to pull the trigger and hire people full time. Because if you pay for somebody's full attention, you pay for somebody's full time, you get all of their attention, sometimes extra attention. If you pay for half of someone's time, you get a quarter of their attention. There is no piece like the piece of someone else posting for you. This came from somebody there with a huge Instagram following and they said they don't have it on their phone and they. They haven't logged in on their phone for a long time. Everything they post is actually posted by a member of their team and they said there is no piece like the piece of someone else posting for you. Really interesting. Am I doing my best or am I doing what is required? I like this idea. This has played a small role in the book that I'm writing. This idea of trying your best, it sounds like the bar you should be pursuing, right? Did you do your best? But sometimes the work or the job requires more than your current best. And when you say I'm trying my best, it's as if you're saying that's a fixed position, that's a fixed possibility, a fixed ability. But really, if the job requires more than what your current best is, I think it's on you to acquire the skills and improve your ability so that you can do what is required. I really like that question. Fewer moves, bolder strokes. I've heard James say this on a few different podcasts. As he has spent more time as a father, his time has contracted, as has mine. And he said, one of the things I try to do is make fewer moves, but bolder strokes do fewer things. But the things that I do try to do with more excellence and more intensity and more intention, I think that's wise for creators today, especially if you have a fixed capacity that you want to keep fixed. And this is the tension that I felt when it comes to hiring, because again, there is a world where instead of hiring to add more capacity, I reduce the scope of what I want to do and just try to be more excellent in a smaller number of things. I think both are viable. But regardless of your capacity, your overall capacity, the size of your team, I think generally most of us could do with reducing the scope of what we're doing, making fewer moves and bolder strokes. Next idea was am I willing to do the losing version of this for a long time? The idea here was when we get ideas that we're excited about, we want to do something. Let's, let's say you want to start a podcast. It's easy to say, I want the winning version of that life. I want the winning version of that decision. The winning version of this decision seems really fun and exciting, but the reality is it takes a long time to get to the winning version of things. Are you willing to do the losing version of this thing for a long time? And if the answer is yes, then you are set up for success. You want to be at peace or even happy doing the losing version of something because that is the energy that will take you through the hard times and get you to the winning version. What makes this book giftable? This was part of our author and book discussion. Can you find a reason to position your book as an obvious gift for some type of person in some type of season of life? Really interesting question. If you create a reputation for being a great book to gift for graduation or for summer, you know, whatever season, whatever excuse, if your book can be positioned as the obvious gift for that season or for that event, that can be a big deal for you. And then lastly, where do tastemakers hang out? This is a really interesting insight. One of the authors there said he had a friend who was a barber and that barber cut hair for really influential people. And he just gave that barber a bunch of copies of his book and said, hey, give this to anybody that you think would enjoy it. And then those individuals getting their hair cut would get that book as a gift and maybe share it either on their platforms or with individuals. But when you are in the hands of tastemakers, that can be a really great thing for you. So those are the highlights of my notes. I took a lot of other little, little things here, but I really took a lot out of this and I'm still processing it. But most of all, I am just feeling so motivated to take my work more seriously because these people did not succeed through chance. You know, it was so impressive. So impressive. I mean, day two saw Hill was up at 4:30 running 12 miles and I was sleeping for another three hours or so. And we are not the same. We are not the same. But I think I could do more of that in this season of life. I recently spoke to Eric Zimmer on the show about his process writing the book, and I was talking to my friend Ryan Hawk recently as well. He's written several books now. And I said, where do you fit this in? You have several kids, you're an involved dad. How do you do it? And he said, I wake up an hour and a half before my kids get up. I don't do that. I wake up when I hear my daughter waking up on the baby monitor and then my day begins. So one of the things I'm going to be doing over the next month is trying to shift into more of a morning person, trying to get an hour or two of work in before she wakes up in the morning. If I can do that, that's a huge additional amount of capacity to the team, to my personal workload. That also unlocks my evenings a little bit more. I'm so much better in the mornings. I'm a morning person. But if I sacrifice all of my best working time, then that's just a huge loss. So that's my goal for April as I'm trying to become a morning person. I'm starting to ramble here, so I'll wrap this up. I really, really enjoyed this. I hope that in the future I feel more comfortable and at home in a setting like this. But I also hope that I keep getting invited into rooms where I do feel a little bit uncomfortable. And I hope you do too. And I hope when you get those invitations, you go. There's absolutely no downside to this, even though there were times when I thought about trying to weasel my way out of it because I was so anxious and so nervous to be a small fish in this pool or pond. I guess fish belong in ponds. But I'm so glad I went and I hope if you get the opportunity, you do the same. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating review on Apple Podcasts. We are getting close to 500. We've gotten several new reviews in the last week and I love it. It makes my day. So thank you guys. Thank you to Melody and Dory and John. I saw your reviews. Those are huge. If you're listening on Spotify, leave a review or comment on Spotify. I love seeing that as well. But most of all, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next week.