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A
Here's an oldie but a goodie from the archives from the side Hustle show greatest hits collection.
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What's up? What's up?
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Nick Loper here.
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Welcome to the Side Hustle Show. Because your earning power doesn't have to stop at 5 o' clock when you check out, I am excited to welcome Joshua Lycik back to the program. Joshua, what's going on man?
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C
Hey, I'm pretty stoked to be here today. Thanks for having me on again, Nick.
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A
You bet.
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B
So you might remember Joshua from Back in the archives. He was a guest on episode 201 which aired in late 2016 where we talked about the OPA plan. So it's other people's audiences. An excellent episode. An episode I still refer people back to all the time. Classic side Hustle show. In any case, today Joshua is back on the program. He is a sought after ghostwriter. You can find him@entrepreneurswordsmith.com who over the course of his ghostwriting career, his freelancing career has gone From a buck 67 an hour from his first gig, a fiverr gig, to over half a million dollars in sales in a single year. So I want you to stick around in this episode to hear how Joshua is generating high value leads on YouTube of all places, from a channel that at the time we're recording this has less than 300 subscribers. It's an innovative marketing strategy I think you can apply right away. Notes and links from this episode plus the full text summary with all of Joshua's top tips from the call are@sidehustlenation.com.
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A
Joshua so Joshua, how about catch us.
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B
Up, figure out what happened in between our last conversation and where we're at today.
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C
Well, the OPA strategy that we talked about almost four years ago, it worked. Through that and several other marketing methods, I was trying to get the word out about my services. I was tired of doing $5 projects, $10 projects, $100 projects, and I wanted to get a lot of high value clients. And for me I found that specializing in one of the most profitable freelance writing niches that there is ghostwriting made the most sense for me. I had ghostwritten several books, ebooks, but that was kind of one of my types of services that it offered. I'd done writing sales letters, writing web copy, writing autoresponder emails, and these are a hundred dollar projects here and there. But, but I found that I could add the most value if I were to package all of those services together into a single offer where I would ghost write your book. I would take you through the process of getting published, whether that's getting a traditional publishing deal, which I help authors do, or go the path of independent publishing and then creating all of the content that they need to market the book. So I'm still able to leverage the copywriting expertise I've brought, but I package it all into a service that launches the book and then converts the readers of that book into high ticket clients. And it's by using a YouTube marketing approach that well over half of my clients have found me. And as you said, it doesn't require millions of subscribers or even hundreds of thousands of views to convert. People who are ready to buy, searching for information about services like yours, find YouTube video, they get to see you as a three dimensional personality. Wow, I like this person's energy. I'm going to check them out, maybe watch a couple more videos, and pretty soon they click the link to book a discovery call and there I have another client.
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B
Yeah, this is really important because if you're going down the traditional path of YouTube monetization, you're going to need hundreds of thousands of views just to make these pennies per ad dollar on everything. This is interesting. So freelance copywriting first and then kind of by virtue of the work that people were asking you to do, you kind of said, hey, maybe there's an opportunity to niche down here in the world of ghostwriting. And so it was almost developing this skill first and then niching down as a result of that. Or was it work that you found yourself enjoying doing or was it particularly lucrative? What was the light bulb that says, this is what I'm going to focus on?
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C
I think it was the depth of the relationship and the value that I was able to identify. So for example, over three years ago, I worked with a client whose book generated over $300,000 for her. Several months following the release of the book, that became a stellar case study that still brings me clients to this day. Now compare that result to, hey, you know, he helped me rewrite my LinkedIn profile. That's kind of cool. Few hundred bucks or hey, wrote the copy for my website. It's kind of cool. So it was the excitement of the case study I found, well, I want to create more of those success stories that my work was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It literally was worth more than, oh, you know, we're launching our business, we'll pay you 500 bucks to write the copy for the homepage of our website and a couple of emails. So it was really the value of the outcome I produced that made me say, you know, I want to start working with people on months long books, projects and book launches rather than for a couple of weeks on just a website. There's a lot more value for both of us.
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B
Do you ever get the feeling of, I'm trying to think of a ghostwriter not getting any credit. It's somebody else's name on the title, on the author bio. You're just kind of like, you got to be content being behind the scenes.
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C
Yes, yes. About 80% of my author clients, we have that confidentiality and non disclosure agreement. But the other 20% make up for it. Most of that 20% they're digital marketers or are least familiar with kind of social proof and realizing how important recommendations are. So I said, joshua, your book made me a lot of money. So let's put together a testimonial video and case study through the NDA. I'm going to tell the world because that's confidentiality. Expires when the client decides to say, oh by the way, this is my ghostwriter, let's do a 25 minute video together. So that's made up for that 80% who haven't.
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B
Yeah, that's always going to be hard because I imagine you get people coming to you and saying, well, what else have you written? Can I see your portfolio? And you're like, well, so not really. It's all under confidentiality. So these guys are, once you have some happy clients, they're singing your praises and they say, I want to spread the word.
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C
Yes, yes. And also to help make up for that question of, well, I don't necessarily have all of the clients I can share in my portfolio. This next tip is going to be useful to everyone who's. Maybe in that same situation you can't share because of confidentiality or you're just getting started and don't have case studies out the wazoo. And that is creating YouTube videos that allow me to do demonstrate my expertise where I talk about how to write a memoir that's not boring, how to write a nonfiction book that's entertaining. And so I would share in 5 minute, 10 minute snippets, bits of my expertise. And so people have found me from those videos and say, hey, I love what you're talking about. And so most of my clients don't actually ever ask to see a portfolio. Strangely enough, it's all the videos that demonstrate that credibility and expertise. Yeah.
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B
And I've watched a few of your videos. The personality really shines through. And you can tell you know what you're talking about. You're excited about that stuff and it shines through so much more than it would if it was just like a webpage where it's like, hey, these are the services that I offer, these are the prices. It's like, oh, there's like, hey, this is a real guy behind this business. How do you figure out what content to create on YouTube? I'm curious like how the channel started and where this idea came from.
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C
Yeah, I started the channel about five years ago, but I was not really at all serious about actually using it to create content clients out of it. It was soon after you and I had had our last conversation talking about the other people's audiences strategy where I wanted to find ways to create clients online on demand, essentially. And I tried advertising, I tried Facebook, Instagram, I tried the LinkedIn sponsored and I just didn't find a lot that was really working. And then I started trying YouTube videos. Not just, oh, I want to create a YouTube video, but I want them to get found because that's the whole point of search engine optimization is you're creating content that people are already looking for, so might as well find you. That was my idea. And so I have kind of a multi step process I've used over the last three years or so to get noticed at the top of search results for very competitive keywords. For example, I have one of the top videos for all things related to writing book proposals, which is how you get book deals, traditional book publishing deals. So people who write want to become an author traditionally find one of my videos. So let's just take a sample there. Let's say I'm writing, I want to offer my book proposal writing services to get a traditional book deal. So what I do is I use a tool called Keywords Everywhere. It is a very low cost Google Chrome extension that tells you how many searches a month the keyword you just typed into Google Gits. What's the competition like? High competition, low competition. And then here's the really cool part. It tells you the suggested keywords or what other keywords people search for. So maybe the one you typed in gets zero searches a month. But then the keywords everywhere box on the side of your Google search results tells you that there's an alternative version that gets 1,000 searches a month, 9,000 searches a month. And so that's how I would put together, here's all of the keywords that relate to the expertise I could talk about. So it was just kind of a sifting Process of what do I know about. Put that in a spreadsheet. Next column. What does keywords everywhere tell me that people are actually searching for? And I found that the sweet spot for monthly searches for my business is 100 to 1,000 searches a month. I think that part's critical because if you put in a keyword that gets 10 searches a month, even if you're number one for that keyword result, not really going to get a lot of results. On the other hand, if it's 40,000 searches a month, like maybe how to write a Book, you're going to see big publishers and big channels have already clogged up the first five pages. There's not really an entry there or a chance to get much attention. So it's that sweet spot of 100 to 1,000 searches a month I found works really well for me. Now that's the first step. Keywords everywhere. It tells you what are all the different things that people are searching for. But then how do you decide? Maybe I type in book proposal and I have 50 different keywords that I could potentially have as the title of my video. Which one do I pick? I only have so many characters for the title of the video. That's where the second Google Chrome extension comes in, called tubebuddy. I also use this as a premium tool. I recommend the premium versions of both Keywords everywhere and tubebuddy. They're still very inexpensive. I think if you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers, TubeBuddy is like 2 bucks a month. So very, very affordable. Even for side hustlers, Keywords everywhere is even less than that. So here's what I do. I've got my column of 50 keywords related to writing a book proposal. I take each one of them and I go over to YouTube and I type them in to the YouTube search box and I hit enter. And then what tubebuddy does on the right hand side of my screen, it tells me and keyword score, meaning how likely are you to get the number one search result for that keyword? And most of them, Most of my 50 different keywords are going to show 0 out of 100, 7 out of 100, 20 out of 100. Meaning that's kind of my chances. Like 7 out of 100.
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Like you have a very low chance. Okay.
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You have a very low chance of getting number one.
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Okay, interesting.
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C
Then I'll find the occasional 77 out of 100, 86 out of 100. Whoa. That's it. So for me and my business, a bunch about writing book proposal how to write a book proposal. Book Proposal tips those were all like 0 out of 100. But there was one book proposal sample that had a very high score. So I thought, wow, I could get the number one search result for this.
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B
So still had a decent search. So you're cross referencing the tubebuddy likeliness to rank at the top with the keywords everywhere search volume to say, okay, there's still a decent amount of interest in this keyword.
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C
That's right. That's right. So I know from Keywords Everywhere if it's 100 to 1,000 searches a month and I know all the different alternative keywords that I could create a video about that relates to my expertise and gets 100 to 1,000 searches a month. But it's tubebuddy that narrows it down like a massive funnel down to that tiny little one, two or three keywords that you should actually create content on. And so for me that was book proposal template. So I have a 10 minute video. I believe it's still the number one search result on YouTube for book proposal template which gets I think 600 searches a month. So it's in my ballpark. I published it a few months ago. It's already got I think 1200 views. I don't do any boosting or any promotion or any marketing, anything like that. And so that video has got me quite a few clients. I of course share in the 10 minute video a sample book proposal. So it's not like I'm trying to game the system and I'm lying and oh, I have this as my keyword but I never mentioned that at all in the video. That's just not right.
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B
Yeah, then people like downvote you and the algorithm stops working.
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C
Right, right. But that one process I've used for over 100, I think over 120 different videos now through the one step keyword is everywhere list of keywords, narrowing it down with tubebuddy. That alone has been incredible for business. I'm still getting not just inquiries but I'm getting high ticket services, business people finding me from YouTube alone saying, oh, I saw you on YouTube the other day, I started binge watching your channel. They'll say, and I knew I had to talk to you to help me with my book. And this is while a lot of businesses are struggling and I'm not have to spend any money on advertising to do any of this with YouTube.
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Yeah, this is, I'm taking notes like crazy because YouTube has kind of been a neglected channel for me and it's like this is a new content frontier and this is a cool process to go about it, to set yourself up. Not to rely on your existing subscriber base, but to attract new viewership. I guess you're targeting a keyword strategy rather than just like a channel strategy. So that's really exciting stuff.
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C
Oh yes, absolutely. And it doesn't require thousands of views and clickbait or anything like that. It's just simply realizing what people are searching for. The most likely buyers, I should say. And that's the only people who are watching my videos. Not the masses, not tens of thousands of people. If I put out a video that's about how to hire a ghostwriter or what do ghostwriters charge it. Get 300 searches a month and maybe I'm the second or third video I'll get a few dozen views and one or two of them will are people who are looking to hire a ghostwriter and have a budget for it. And boom, they talk to me.
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A
More with Joshua in just a moment, including how he structures the videos and the calls to action that he found to work best Coming up right after this Summer is the season of backyard barbecues, hanging out at the lake, epic family road trips. But when the temperature rises, you don't.
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Want to be sweating over your wireless bill.
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B
Okay, so you're kind of targeting question based keywords that are somewhat high buyer intent of like I'm already thinking about hiring a ghostwriter. What do ghostwriters charge? How much do ghostwriters charge? How do I write a book or book proposal? Sample book proposal template. They've already got it set in their mind like I would like to write a book and now I'm going down the next step. So that's cool. What comes after that? So you put out some of these videos, they start to sit in Google. And this is the other cool thing about this is the same thing with SEO is like you do the work once, you set it up once and then it, like you said, it generates passive views, passive traffic. Clients coming into the top of the pipeline month after month after month versus a social media post. It's like here today, gone tomorrow. Now this is a little bit of a more evergreen strategy. So you put this content up and we can go check out some of your videos. We'll link up the channel in the show notes again. Side hustlenation.com Joshua, you see how he's kind of structured this stuff, but what happens actually, let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about the structure of the videos. I imagine, like you said, it's important to answer the question, but what else have you found effective in terms of filming and creating this type of content?
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C
Yeah, strangely enough, I have tried some of the most expensive stuff that regular podcasters use who are super committed to the Audio, visual quality, the Logitech products, the lapel mic, all this stuff. And to this day, the best video and audio quality is just using my freaking smartphone without any mics or anything like that.
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B
Don't overthink it.
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C
Okay? Best quality. So if you have a smartphone, you can begin getting clients on YouTube as of today. It's pretty simple like that. So I just set up my camera for some videos. If I'm going into an elaborate topic, I will actually write out the a very detailed outline of the video. Like, for example, I have a video on four and a half tips for working the Language of Hypnotists into your book to have a very persuasive effect on your readers. Now, in order to prepare for producing that video, I. I had to actually write out the four and a half tips and write out my examples and whatnot. And so I've just got those on my computer screen right in front of me. And I set up my smartphone adjacent to that so I can kind of glance back and forth at my notes as I'm talking through the video. I use a software called Camtasia to have my quick jump cuts or transitions, or if I kind of fall off the rails a little bit, I can just go and cut that out.
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B
Is it all you on camera, just kind of talking head style, or are you doing like over the shoulder screen sharing type of stuff?
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C
It depends on what it is. Sometimes I'll do a little mixture of both. If it's something that's really helpful to be visualized, then I'll use a recording software called useloom or loom. Useloom.com it's called. And I'll give you an example of a video I shot. I had realized that no ghostwriter had ever demonstrated their expertise on camera before actually taking notes from a client and writing them in something that made sense, it sounded like them, and it was beautifully professionally written. So that's free money on the table. I'm gonna go grab that money. So I record a video called Watch Joshua Lights at GhostWrite. And most of the video is me outside holding up my camera, talking about how I'm gonna be sharing how I ghostwrote a passage for a client. So that's the video and audio. And so I'm kind of talking through it on the video. Then what I did is after I recorded the video, I went and I actually used the Loom screen recording software, free software. I'm a free user right now of Loom and I simply am recording my screen share and I'M just typing and I spend five, six, seven minutes on my own time recording myself fixing this terrible passage I got from a client. Just a bunch of random notes and sprucing it into something amazing. I download that video. Once it's recorded, I open Camtasia, I upload my watch Josh Felicit ghostwrite kind of draft video I've recorded and I upload my loom recording of me editing that passage. And I overlay the screen share video on top of the part of the video where I'm talking. So it's very simple, kind of sliding that video in over top of the video and so you hear my voice throughout. It was very simple. No design of Photoshop video production classes required to figure out how to use Camtasia. It's really simple to be able to do. So I highly recommend, once you're kind of getting used to recording and feeling a little more comfortable, that's when it makes sense to get a little creative and do some overlays and like that. And even with a video overlay like that, it's real simple.
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Yeah, I want to say I use a software called Screencast O Matic for most of my video editing. And it's like, I want to say 15 bucks a year, it's like really, really affordable. And it's been kind of fun to play around with all the different edits and transitions and stuff and overlays that you could do in that software. But this is kind of one part overcoming objections. Like, is a ghostwriter going to be able to write in my voice, like, how does that even work? And it's one part kind of like factory tour, show me how the sausage is made. Show me how this actually works. And so it's like I imagine somebody who is spending the time to watch this is a very well qualified lead because it would interest nobody else.
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C
Right. And that's what one of the real points of my videos are, is if you're watching my videos, then I'm speaking like I have it in my head, I'm talking to someone who's about to book a discovery call with me. So everything I say is I'm imagining, I'm saying it to one person and that's the person who is going to be on my next discovery call.
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B
I like that. So that's the call to action in these videos. Do you save that for the end? Like, by the way, if you want to learn more about working with me, I'm a professional ghostwriter. Head over to my website and book a call.
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C
Yeah, A lot of my videos end that way, but not all of them. It's probably a mix of 50, 50, I would say half the time I say, and if you'd like to learn about how to get your book idea turned into a commercially viable product, here's how we can book a free. And I don't say discovery call, I say book and a free, profitable book roadmap where we're going to get together for an hour and discuss how we're going to take your ideas for the book, structure them in such a way that there is maximum entertainment and educational value. And so I explained the value of the call in about 30 seconds or so. And then the link to book the discovery call with me is the first thing you see at the top of the video description. It's also the top comment. So as soon as I upload a video, I leave a comment, book your profitable book roadmap. With Joshua, who's written over 45 books in his career, it's like, wow, 45 books. I haven't even written one or two yet. This guy's crazy. I gotta talk to him. And so that's the simple call to action there.
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B
Okay, so that's the first thing at the top of the description. And you pin that comment just so people make sure to see it. Does that show up like in YouTube search snippets? If somebody is searching for book proposal template and then they see like, I don't know if that's like the same as a meta description for Google SEO.
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C
Yeah, that, that does show up at the top, the call to action there within the description itself. So I'll have my, my kind of call to action at the very top. Because if you're viewing it on your browser or Even on your YouTube video on your smartphone, it's not going to show the entire description. You have to click to see the rest of the description. So if you're watching this and it's like, well, I like what this guy's saying. I want it to be a frictionless experience to click and then be able to talk to me right away for the rest of the description. What I'll do is I will take my outline for the video, put it right there in the description, and just turn it into full length sentences.
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B
Okay, I got you. Because you're kind of running with this pretty detailed, not a full script, but this pretty detailed outline.
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C
Right? Right now I want to rank for more than just one keyword. The cool thing that Tubebuddy tells you is you get tags on YouTube videos. Up to a 500 characters worth of tags for a single video. Now, a cool thing that TubeBuddy does is it tells you how well you're ranking for each of the tags in the video. So I can open YouTube, go to my channel and I can see how every single video is performing for tags like, okay, this one's number 23 spot. Wow, that's way, way down the list. This one's number three. This one's number one. Oh look, I have five keywords that are number two. So that's five different number two spots for five different keywords, all of which are driving people collectively to the video. And the way I know what those tags should be is I go back to my Keywords Everywhere list and I look at the ones that have the highest searches, highest monthly searches from all of the Keywords Everywhere people also search suggestions. So it's really copy and paste from Keywords Everywhere spreadsheet, paste those into my YouTube tags up to 500 characters. And then for good measure, I then look at my description I've written and I make sure that all of the tags appear at least once in my description. So it's kind of full circle from Keywords Everywhere to TubeBuddy to YouTube, back to keywords everywhere. YouTube buddy. Again, these tools all work seamlessly together.
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B
Okay, yeah, really trying to send those YouTube SEO signals like this is what the video is about. This is why I've included that in the tag, in the description and the title. Lots of cool stuff. And I want to point out the. So the call to action book your profitable book roadmap call. And then on the website it says on entrepreneurs wordsmith.com, it says, this call is going to take 60 minutes. At the end of our time together, you will have a profitable book idea, direction for each chapter and a plan to convert readers into high ticket clients. You're already setting the stage for. Here's what we're going to cover. Here's the outcome of this call. It's not just like, hey, let's chat for 15 minutes. And then at the end we're like, well what next? It's like, no, here's what's going to happen. And you're kind of segmenting who you want to talk to. Like your ideal customer needs to have a back end to the book. It's like, I don't necessarily plan on this book being a huge moneymaker for me, but it's a top of the funnel item for your client to then sell some high ticket product or Service that's an ideal customer for you.
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C
Absolutely. They realize that the book is the gateway drug, the legal gateway drug to their brand.
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B
And we've talked about this before. You could see it with Tony Robbins. You can buy his book for $10 or you can go to his $10,000 walk on fire four day seminar type of deal.
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C
I would bet a lot of money that every single person who is at that $10,000 firewalk has read his books. And that's where they got started with the Tony Robbins brand.
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B
Yeah. Another cool thing that's on the website, and this is something that probably freelancers in just about any niche could copy or emulate, is you have the book value calculator where you plug in, okay, what's the size of your audience? How many copies do you expect to sell at this conversion rate? What is your course number one or digital product number one or service, you know, high ticket service number two, and then all these conversion rates and then it spits out this big number, which is way more than selling copies of your book for 10 bucks a piece and collecting a percentage of the royalties on that, which I think is really cool, to anchor your value as the person who's going to help them create that asset to a much higher price point than maybe something that they had in their head originally.
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C
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I got the idea for creating the book revenue calculator from clients who said, hey, Joshua, I use my book to sell several copies of my $5,000 consulting package. Like, wow. So my book, you know, maybe you only sold several hundred copies, but yet those readers were so in love with your ideas, your concepts, that the book itself was worth tens of thousands of dollars. I have one client who became part of the 2 comma Club of Clickfunnels by making $1 million from his book. From the funnel we created for him, it was directly from the book I ghost wrote for him. So he was kind enough to put together a testimonial video saying how we drove people from the book to his masterclass to becoming a one on one client of his, and that was worth $1 million in revenue. Yeah. I need to, as a service professional, take ownership of the responsibility that I have had in helping produce these outcomes. And that's something I highly recommend for all freelancers and side hustlers, is you're not just delivering a product or creating a service. You're delivering an outcome that has value. See what you can do to actually calculate what the value of your service or product is before someone talks to you. So let's say someone is working with my book revenue calculator on my website. It's the first thing they see. They're putting in their audience size and they realize, wow, if Joshua ghostwrites my book and makes sure it drives people into my funnel, this thing's going to be worth $300,000. So now I become an investment that they can conservatively estimate will produce an incredible return on investment.
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B
Do you have a formula to say, okay, the calculator spit back out $300,000 but of course I'm not going to charge you that. I'm going to charge you a tenth of that, a third of that. What's your pricing formula?
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C
I don't have a pricing formula based directly on what the value is because let's say one person shows that it's going to be 50,000 where someone else shows $500,000. So I'm not necessarily going to charge that person 10x the price as the other one. It's just a pre sales call objection handling technique so that they know, okay, there is actually going to be money in this whatever that ultimately looks like so that they know that this isn't a nice to have. This is actually a way to grow their business and produce return on an investment.
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B
And yeah, if anybody is looking at that, they're serious about it. At least serious enough to book a call. They understand. Yeah. This is, I think it said in one of your videos like hey, treat yourself. This is not an inexpensive service.
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C
That's right. That's right. It is a high ticket service and that's what I found has worked really well for my business. And going from charging by the hour for this many hours or I'm going to produce this one piece of content as one deliverable of an email autoresponder list. But I'm going to produce this deliverable and everything associated with writing the book, publishing the book, marketing the book that creates ultimately that gets them all the way to the point where their book is literally producing return on investment. When we've done our work together, I.
- [31:49]
B
Was curious outside of this keywords everywhere and tubebuddy virtuous circle for keyword research and the titles and the descriptions of these videos, anything else that's driving viewers your way or that you found effective.
- [32:01]
C
As part of this system? I'm always thinking about how else people are finding me. So I'm mindful to not just produce video content that is directly associated with like what I see is my service, book writing, book publishing, book marketing. I'm thinking about what are the other problems people have that book is a solution for? So, for example, one of the videos that I have that does really well is all about getting PR for your business. So I have one of the top search results on YouTube for topics around getting PR. And just so happens I talk about in that video, I give examples of authors who became featured experts and contributors. Forbes, cnn, msnbc, Fox News, the mainstream media, because they became an author. And so that's the point of the video, how to get PR by becoming an author. And so I'm thinking about the different ways that people could realize, oh, wow, maybe writing a book is for me. For example, I have another video on how to write and deliver a TEDx talk that's based on your expertise and then how to turn your TEDx talk into a book. That way you can leverage the value of the talk that you gave. So thinking around my expertise and what else could lead people to decide that my service is for them? I would say another thing that I always make sure to do is to take my YouTube channel videos and embed them on my website as blog articles, copy and paste the video description, and boom, now I have an article. So now I've doubled my chances of producing clients because now I'm on the world's second largest search engine, YouTube, of course, and the world's first largest search engine, Google, via my blog articles. So I'm getting two pieces of content, well, one piece of content really, that now has two different chances to bring people my way from Google via the article on my blog, which is the same title as the video or the video itself.
- [33:59]
B
Okay, yeah, I love it. So it just doubles your chances of having some real estate on page one there.
- [34:03]
C
That's right. That's right. And there's several keywords. I have both. So the top result is one of my videos and then it's the right below that is the article on my blog, which is the same title as the video.
- [34:13]
B
I love it. See, Domination. I love it. And you mentioned the TEDx talk, how to deliver a TEDx talk. We'll link up your TEDx talk, which is on becoming a solopreneur, which I really enjoyed. I will link that up in the show notes for this episode.
- [34:27]
A
More with Joshua in just a moment, including balancing prospecting time with production time that is actually fulfilling the work that you just sold and why he says he's never really starting from scratch. Coming up right after this. Before this commercial is over, another 23 entrepreneurs are going to find their next team member on Indeed Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. When you need to find amazing candidates fast, you need the powerful matching tech and unmatched reach of our sponsor indeed + indeed's sponsor to jobs help you stand out and hire even faster. It'll make your post jump to the top of the page for your relevant candidates and the proof is in the results. Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed get 45% more applications. That's why for my next hire, I'm using Indeed and joining the three and a half million other employers already on board. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to indeed.com Sidehustleshow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Here's a little bit of side Hustle trivia for you. Did you know that our Partner Shopify powers 10% of all E commerce in the US everything from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to dozens of side Hustle show guests you've heard from right on this show. And there's strength in those numbers. Ever notice that purple shop pay button when you're shopping online? That's a telltale sign that a store is powered by Shopify and just one of the reasons Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. Shopify makes it easy to sell online with hundreds of beautiful ready to go templates, inventory management tools, payment processing, analytics, and powerful marketing and email tools built right in so you can find and keep more customers. If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.comsidehustle go to shopify.comsidehustleen one more time. It's shopify.comsidehustole.
- [36:48]
B
Now. Josh 1 thing that I'm curious about in any sort of freelance or service based business is your day to day workflow. I'm talking about kind of lead gen marketing, prospecting, sales time versus production time. You've written 45 books. I have written several but each one takes months to make. So I'm curious about that balance between the marketing side and then the production side.
- [37:13]
C
Yes, yes. So I usually dedicate one day a week where I'm Going to be working on a video. And that's kind of a rolling day. So I'm not necessarily like religiously publishing one or two videos every single day. I try to average about one video a week. Some days it's Saturday afternoon, I'm finally getting around to doing a video and it's uploaded Saturday night, or I get up early and it's done Sunday morning. But I'm trying to average one video a week is workable. With the workflow I have right now with having quite a few clients and having a little toddler running around the house, working from home and kind of managing the book of clients in order to serve all the clients I have, I do work quite a bit. My schedule every day is 6am to 6pm in order to do everything I need to get done, it's still workable to do the YouTube strategy because the time I devote to that is mere hours rather than countless hours or multiple days. And the more I've done the videos, the shorter it takes. Going from like, oh, I've got an idea for a video, and two hours later it's done and uploaded and posted. And I'm now ranking in the top four or five search results for 10 keywords in just a couple of hours, kind of getting down to that point. So it's one of those things that the more you do it, the easier and the faster it becomes to produce something that's worthy of one of those top spots for the different keywords you're targeting.
- [38:28]
B
Yeah, gotcha. Have you become a super fast writer? Are you using text to speech or anything? Or just like, I'm curious about cranking out thousands and thousands of words at a time for clients.
- [38:39]
C
Yes, definitely. Using speech to text is absolutely critical in order to make that happen. And when I was working on my own novels, this is going back well over 10 years ago when I wrote my first two books. My first one took three years and I was working on it day and night. And of course I was battling. I was battling writer's block. Now, there is no such thing as ghost writer's block. I will say that again. There is no such thing as ghostwriter's block because my clients have given me the ideas, the experience, and the stories they want to write about. And so it's my job to ask the question very simply, what's the best way to say this? Of course, that's kind of the goal, but I have different systems for saying it the right way. And in working with the editors of publishing houses based in New York City and elsewhere. I've learned some of the tricks of the actual publishing industry trade for having book templates for different topics. So there's kind of a health and wellness general template that we all use, same as for memoirs and for fiction. So I'm never starting from scratch saying, okay, based on material that they have, how can I turn it into something I know what it needs to become before I start writing the book? I just build it on the template, and that saves a significant amount of time and also ensures it's going to be a viable product when I'm done.
- [39:56]
B
Okay, that's just based on what readers expect in certain genres. Or is it just out of your own discovery from having worked on these books or read these books to say, like, this is the general template that they all fall under in this category?
- [40:09]
C
Yes, because readers have expectations. So, like, let's say I'm writing a theology textbook. There's going to be a certain way that I write that book, a certain language tier, certain vocabulary. I'm using, certain chapters that are going to be an absolute necessity to include based on everything else that's out there. Now, if I'm writing the next Harlequin romance novel, there's going to be a template I'm working with from that one. So I'm never starting from scratch. But I'm saying, here's what seems to work the best for the readers of this category. And so every author who is going to be writing for existing readers. There's no such thing as writing a book for someone who's never read a book before. That's not a thing.
- [40:50]
B
I'm just impressed by this skill set to be kind of a language chameleon and be able to change voices and headspaces for all these different types of projects. I'm just impressed by that.
- [41:02]
C
I think that comes in part from my experience in professional acting. Right around the time that we had our last episode, I was doing quite a bit of shows about three nights a week, combination of dinner theater, improvisational comedy, and most of my parts, I was playing multiple characters. And in order to sell that personality, you have to switch voice, switch characters in not even minutes, but in some cases a matter of seconds for the show to go on. And so I bring that same skill set where I'm working with someone who's got a deeply personal memoir of surviving the war as a child, and then the next person is, let's say, a sassy entrepreneur who has a distinct style in the way they're talking about digital marketing. And then the next person is a sophisticated management theory book. So I do. And I have to switch voices, switch settings, switch characters. So what I'm doing as a ghostwriter is I'm merely acting in print. I'm portraying each author on the page so that when someone reads my client's books, no one can tell they work with a ghostwriter.
- [42:04]
B
Yeah. And if nobody second guesses it, that's how you know you've done a good job and it's worked for you. Turning this into a multi six figure a year business. What's coming down the pipeline? What's next for you? What's got you excited these days?
- [42:16]
C
What's been getting me excited actually is real estate. That's one of my dreams. I saw this program on PBS back in the 90s about buying low and renting high real estate, single family home, multifamily homes. And so I have family members who've, who've done that. And so I decided that having so much excess capital and not expanding my lifestyle to fit the income, which is definitely a no no as you're doing, as you're doing really well in your job, your career side hustle, taking that excess capital, learning about my local real estate market and now buying a property. So I do actually have the hallowed passive residual income everyone talks about where there's a new check coming from tenants every single month. And it's at the point where I've even forgotten I have these properties. It's like, oh wow, there's a check from that. Those folks. That's amazing. And so that's actually covering some of our actual annual living expenses, me and my family. So it's just more of that. It's turning my ghostwriting services into books and then turning those profitable books into more real estate, more passive income for my family.
- [43:21]
B
Do you see that being a path to. You mentioned 6am to 6pm to scale back the hours or. It sounds as if you really love this writing work. So I'm curious, do you eventually want to retire from that? On the real estate stuff, where's the end goal here?
- [43:36]
C
I don't think I'll ever stop writing books just because I enjoy it so much. It is intellectually stimulating, it's exciting, it's entertaining for me. And there will be moments where I write something I have to stop and get goosebumps like, oh, that was so, so good. And I have to admire my own work. I don't ever want to stop. The great artists of the Renaissance and other periods of history. I don't think ever said, okay, I'm done, I'm done sculpting now, that was enough. But it's like that next piece that next in my case, whether it's a musician or an artist, that next commissioned piece, that's really what I'm doing is I'm a commissioned artist as a ghostwriter creating pieces. So I don't expect I'll be retiring. It'll just be more books, more investment properties, just on and up for the next few decades.
- [44:14]
B
Okay, I like it. Yeah, it's the financial independence piece without necessarily the retirement early piece. Joshua, really appreciate you sharing that along with the rest of this stuff. This has been awesome. Entrepreneurswordsmith.com Check Joshua out over there. Of course, we'll link up his TEDx talk as well. Joshua, let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.
- [44:36]
C
My number one tip for side Hustle Nation is for you to convert your hourly services, your individual deliverables you could do into a single package so that people are buying as much of the value you can offer clients bundled into one thing that gets incredible results. And in comparison, for me, I've bundled content creation, ghost writing, producing a book, formatting the book, creating an audiobook version of that, creating marketing materials for that book. I've bundled all of that into one single offer that produces something that can make offers a lot of money. So in that case for you, imagine if you were to take your clientele all the way to producing an incredible return on investment. You might have to offer them several things that in tandem, working together, get them where they need to go. For a graphic designer, this could look like instead of billing by the hour, producing one thing here and there on fiverr, spending three or four hours a day on upwork, bidding for jobs, create a core offer where you can do a bunch of different graphic design and visual arts pieces, maybe a complete overhaul of a brand, plus all the templates that a company, an entrepreneur could ever need for all of their online assets to have that visual clarity and even add in some business consulting and visual strategy on top of that to create that high ticket offer. So Instead of having five clients each paying you 50 bucks or 500 bucks, you have five clients who are paying you $5,000.
- [46:10]
B
Are you presenting that on the book, profitable discovery calls?
- [46:15]
C
Yes, that's exactly what we're talking about is how to do exactly that.
- [46:19]
B
If I'm on the call with you, do you give me like a small, medium and large option or is it just like here's the price. Here's what's included.
- [46:25]
C
Oh, it is actually small, medium and large. Yes. The large being the core offer. Like if we do everything together. Here's what that is. Let's say you already have a book that's in progress. Maybe you already have a book publishing contract. Well, what my role is then is going to be is turning your kind of halfway there manuscript into the final draft and then we'll just hand it off to your publisher and it'll go from there. So it's middle of the road. And then there's for people who want, maybe they want the expertise of a ghostwriter, but they're willing to do some of the writing themselves. Then my role is as a book coach and manuscript consultant for them for a much lower monthly fee. I'm actually coaching them through editing their work and making sure it's up to the standard that as if I had ghostwritten it myself. So I find different ways to work with people at all levels. But it's starting with the core offer and it's just saying, well, you don't need this piece or that piece. We'll take out these three deliverables from my main service so I'm not having to start from scratch with every client.
- [47:22]
B
Gotcha. Yeah. You've got your menu. You can pick and choose what makes the most sense for each client. So that's really cool. Joshua, thank you so much for joining me. Once again, notes and links from this episode plus the full text summary with all of Joshua's tips from the call are@sidehustlenation.com Joshua that is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the side Hustle show. Hustle on the.