Latest / Content, Briefly / An inside look at Ross Simmonds' new book: Create Once, Distribute Forever

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An inside look at Ross Simmonds' new book: Create Once, Distribute Forever · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  Content marketing in general has gone way too far down this path of content, content, content, and we've forgotten that the industry is two words, content marketing. What is marketing?
• 0:09
  It's understanding the fundamentals of psychology of humans, of understanding that stories actually do matter, that humans want to be engaged, they wanna laugh, and that we're not these robots that simply because something shows up in Google, we're going to transact because it's there.
• 0:26
  [upbeat music] Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Today, I'm talking to my friend Ross Simmonds, who has been a longtime supporter and contributor to Superpath.
• 0:38
  We've done an AMA, we did an office hours, today we've got a podcast. Ross has just published his very first book, which is the primary subject of this conversation. It's called Create Once, Distribute Forever.
• 0:49
  I've got my advance copy in my hand right now and looking forward to diving in. We talk a lot about the book itself, why now?
• 0:57
  Kinda where does distribution fit into not only Ross's career arc, but also just kind of the macro environment that we're all living in right now, which is uncertain, to say the least, I would say.
• 1:08
  Anyways, Ross is always wonderful to chat with. He has tons of experience.
• 1:12
  There's no one more qualified to write this book, but he also just has a really thoughtful perspective on the B2B world, on content distribution specifically, and I really enjoyed this conversation.
• 1:22
  And we also get into a little bit of the meta process of finding a publisher, the writing process, all of which I think will probably be interesting to the, the writers out there. Really enjoyed this conversation.
• 1:32
  If you wanna get the book, rosssimmonds.com/book. You actually get a free chapter. There's an e-book, or you can buy copies for your team, all that good stuff. So go check that out.
• 1:40
  And thanks so much to Ross for making time to do this with us. Hope you enjoy it. Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here today with Ross Simmonds. Ross, we've done an AMA. Yeah. We've done an office hours- Yeah...
• 1:52
  a while back. Today, we're doing a podcast. We have a very special occasion today, too. As we record, it's April ninth, and it's your launch day for your new book. It is the launch, yes.
• 2:01
  Create, Once- Which I'm holding right here. [laughs] I love it. Create Once, Distribute Forever. I got it yesterday, so I haven't read it yet, so I apologize. [chuckles] It's okay. It's okay.
• 2:07
  Once you read it, I hope that you can find some value in it. And, uh, thank you for all the years of bringing me on, and the AMA was a hit.
• 2:14
  I can remember the adrenaline rushing after I went in through that with the looms I was dropping in through Superpath, all that stuff. That's right. It was so fun. So fun. We'll have to do those again one day.
• 2:24
  It feels like a marathon when you do it, or if you try to do it right, like I- Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah. I'd love to. Well, thank you for many years of contributing to Superpath.
• 2:32
  I know that anytime your name gets dropped in the group, there's a lot of chatter about- [chuckles]... oh, like, go look at the AMA. Or actually, anytime someone brings up the topic of content distribution- Right...
• 2:42
  they're always like, "Oh, go look at Ross's stuff." Which is cool. So you've been beating the drum on content distribution for a long time, so maybe we start here. Yeah. You wrote a book.
• 2:50
  I think my first question is, why now? Right. You know, like, what sort of prompted you to, like, take many years of blog posts, social content- Yeah...
• 2:58
  you know, and then say, "Okay, I'm gonna turn this into something, like- Yeah... truly evergreen."
• 3:02
  I think the reason why I kind of solidified now is the time is because I feel like we're at a pivotal moment in marketing where it's become completely overwhelming for people to keep track of the fact that there's a bunch of different channels where a bunch of different people are spending time, and you don't know where to start.
• 3:23
  Like, I haven't done any research on this, but I think marketers are the most highly anxious people in the world because of the chaos that we live in, which is digital marketing.
• 3:34
  You've got to learn TikTok, you've got to learn YouTube, you need to learn Reddit, you need to learn Quora, you need to learn Slack communities, you need to know email, GTM, oh, somebody's talking about some new thing called dark social.
• 3:46
  You need to know all of these things, and the pressure for marketers [chuckles] is ridiculous to think you have to keep up on all this, and then sprinkle in over the last few years AI, and holy smokes.
• 3:59
  No wonder everybody's getting burnt out. No wonder everybody's highly anxious. Like, there's so much going on.
• 4:07
  So now for me was the time where I could try to contribute some value to the community that has done so much for me to say, "Folks, here's a guide that breaks down everything that I know about distribution," which is vast, because that's what I've focused my entire career on.
• 4:22
  I've spent the time to study Reddit. I've spent the time to study LinkedIn. I've spent the time to study X and do well on all of these channels. Here's everything I know on every single channel.
• 4:32
  I hope that this can reduce the stress. Will it? Hopefully. Really hope so. I don't know if it will, but I hope so.
• 4:40
  I hope people will put this on their desk and they'll come back to different chapters and say, "Okay, I'm gonna be really, really good at LinkedIn, and I'm just gonna follow this playbook." Right.
• 4:48
  "Or I'm gonna be really, really good on Reddit, and I'm gonna follow this playbook."
• 4:51
  That's my hope, and that is why now was the time for me to do it, because I think across the industry, it has never been more stressful, never been more anxious, never been more chaotic than right now.
• 5:02
  One hundred percent. One hundred percent. The last 12-ish months or so have been the most disrupted- Right... chaotic, wild time in content marketing. I mean, I can't speak from before 2010 or so, but- Right.
• 5:15
  [chuckles]... I can't imagine it was crazier than it's been lately. No. No. And I think- The energy has completely changed.
• 5:20
  Like, early days, everyone was excited and thrilled and pumped, and now I feel like, yes, we're excited and we're thrilled and we're pumped, but we're also like, "What is going on? What's happening?"
• 5:33
  Like, the trembles are, are constant. Yeah, yeah. Is the book focused primarily on B2B content marketing, or does it apply equally across B2B and B2C? Yeah.
• 5:43
  When I wrote this book, it was intentionally focused across all sectors- Okay... in all formats. So it's not even just focused on content distribution. It's focused on business distribution, story distribution.
• 5:55
  I've had people reach out who have gotten early copies, and they're talking about how they're using this book to get a better understanding of how they can run this, like, homeschooling program, right?
• 6:04
  Like, it can go into different niches and verticals and ideas. As long as you have a story worth telling, it's about how you can distribute that story.
• 6:13
  And it also talks about one of the more fundamental human things, which is a barrier for many, which is just, like, the fear-Of not wanting to be too promotional.
• 6:23
  A lot of people go through their life creating great things, whether it's an artist or a writer or a podcaster, and they create something that they believe is valuable, but they don't share it on social, they don't send it to anybody in their contact list.
• 6:37
  They won't even text their, like, besties to say that they created this thing because of this fear of being judged, because of this fear of how people will perceive them. They don't wanna be seen as a tryhard.
• 6:47
  All of these narratives go through our minds, and my goal with the book is to debunk all of that, because I'm so confident that right now there are some brilliant people with some great stories that need to be told that are holding themselves back.
• 6:59
  And my hope is that this book will help them figure out how to get that story out there and do it consistently. I love that.
• 7:05
  As you were saying that, I was just thinking about how the lines between B2B and B2C are so blurred- So blurred, right... these days. Kind of in a good way, right? Like it, it- Yeah...
• 7:15
  I mean, my world is so B2B, but it gives the folks on the B2B content and SEO team specifically this- Right... kind of, like, freedom maybe- Right...
• 7:24
  is the right word, to be like, "Well, we don't have to just use LinkedIn because that's where professionals hang out-" Yeah... or whatever. You know? Like the door is really open to try anything to get the- 100%...
• 7:33
  ideas and the content out there. Yeah.
• 7:35
  And I think what's interesting is, like, when you think of new channels like TikTok, let's say, the early adopters to some of these niche channels are gonna unlock, in my opinion, unfair advantages over the brands that are a bit delayed.
• 7:48
  If you're investing in influencer marketing in B2B today, it's sad, because I was talking about how this was a space back in, like, 2020 and 2019 telling people B2B influencers is probably a play.
• 8:01
  Like, that's still early. We're still early in that game.
• 8:04
  So if you're in B2B and you can take inspiration from B2C, I think you can unlock a competitive advantage and do things that most people aren't even willing to do.
• 8:14
  And by being willing to experiment with, like, 20% of your budget, 20% of your energy to say, "I'm going to do marketing on a channel that my competitors are afraid of," you're going to get ahead of your competitors.
• 8:27
  And for that one year, 12 months of you being there, your competitors are gonna watch, they're gonna study, and then they're gonna eventually follow after you. But you already have a 12-month head start.
• 8:36
  You have insight into what content works, what stories work. You've already built up a community, a following, et cetera, and now you have an, a leader's advantage. They have to play catch up. So I hear you 100%.
• 8:48
  I think people who are in B2B need to really obsess over thinking, what is B2C doing and how can I apply that to my world and how can I tap into it? Yeah. Yeah.
• 8:59
  You know, I find the whole, like, B2B creator/influencer thing to be kind of fascinating. Right.
• 9:06
  Like just, I recently posted on LinkedIn about how it used to be that a, quote-unquote, "lone wolf," like an individual or a very small team running a content program within a company- Yeah...
• 9:16
  could easily outperform a content team- Right... of 10 to 15 people with a huge budget because they're just-- they can move really quickly.
• 9:21
  They can, like, adapt to new mediums, new platforms, et cetera, and they can just go so much faster. Mm. But then I was thinking, could anyone do that now? Because all the- Right...
• 9:31
  people that you might hire to be part of your, like, team of one are probably- Right... realizing that they're better off doing it on their own and then- Right...
• 9:41
  charging those companies money for access to the audiences that they build. Anyways- Right... there's just, like, the dynamics of all this have changed so, so much. And- Yeah...
• 9:50
  from, like, a macro perspective, like, the types of conversations that we see in the Superpath community lately- Right... clearly reflect that. Yeah. Like, there's so much uncertainty out there right now. Yeah.
• 10:02
  Like, even related to that point, like, should companies encourage their teams to have, quote-unquote- Right... "personal brands?" Right. Right. Does it all have to be on the company platform? Yeah.
• 10:11
  Can these people do this stuff on the side? Should I even work at a company if I could actually make more money doing-- Anyways, I- Yeah... this is all over the place. It's true.
• 10:17
  They're all, they're all good points, right? Like, and I think, um, that's one of the reasons...
• 10:22
  Like, if, in the book I talk about communities, and I talk about it as a distribution channel, but more than anything, I view communities as a great place to do two things. One, level up your entire career.
• 10:34
  I am a massive believer in communities. I built my career arguably on the back of, oh gee, I'm gonna go way back into time. I don't think they even exist anymore, but, like, inbound.org, HubSpot- Yeah. So good...
• 10:45
  Rand Fishkin then launched that. That was, like, one of my early communities where I was able to build up a lot of my career, and then growthhackers.com.
• 10:52
  I don't think either of them are, like, still active communities, but going into those spaces and having dialogue with colleagues and peers about things like distribution and me, like, fine-tuning my ideas on distribution within those communities was ridiculously rewarding for my own mental capacity to be able to understand the space.
• 11:13
  And then I could take that and apply it to my work, to my clients, and to everyone around me. The other big benefit of these communities is that you can get a sense of content market fit.
• 11:23
  What are the stories that are trending within these niches, within these spaces that are relevant to you as a leader in your niche?
• 11:31
  If I go into Superpath and I'm trying to target marketers, let's say I run a marketing solution, I can go into that community and listen and watch and see how often people are talking about B2B influencers.
• 11:42
  And maybe that exact line that you just said around, okay, people are talking about whether or not they should go in-house to work and be the media engine internally.
• 11:51
  They're talking about whether or not they should become the media engine themselves, or whether or not they should just, like, create a group of people and offer it through, like, a network. Cool.
• 12:00
  You know what that turns into?
• 12:02
  It turns into a blog post, a blog post that I'm going to now write creating a piece on that topic, and then I go back to that community and I share it with them, and then I've added value to the community.
• 12:11
  When brands start thinking that way about how they can learn from communities and then give communities what they want, that is when you have content excellence and distribution excellenceAnd you don't get blocked and banned from the communities for adding value.
• 12:25
  So that's the thinking that I feel like a lot of organizations and marketing leaders should be applying to communities as well. Mm-hmm.
• 12:32
  And to your point, like if those are the dialogues happening in Superpath, there should be brands listening and monitoring and hearing that and then reacting based off of it too. Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 12:40
  I can tell that there's a handful, not many, but there's a handful of brands who must have like keyword alerts set up within- Right... the group- Cool...
• 12:47
  'cause you, you can tell, like when a certain topic comes up, like they're there. Right. Instantly. And they're asking questions 'cause they wanna know- Right... more about that person's- Right...
• 12:54
  problem, and they're probably thinking, "Oh, okay, like- Yeah... how does this affect our product? Like could we- Right... do some marketing around this?" Right.
• 13:00
  Like what does our, does our sales team know that this is a thing? Is that cool to you? Like as the, the person who runs it, is that cool with you, like to have the brands in there monitoring and responding?
• 13:08
  Absolutely, as long as it's done in like a highbrow way. Like once it- Right. Right... if it devolves into like- Yeah... sales pitch. Right. Away. Yeah, yeah, we, we don't want that. But like- Yeah...
• 13:17
  yeah, of course, like I definitely want people who sell to content marketers to have the opportunity to come- Cool... and learn from these people. That's it. And I think for most company or communities,
• 13:26
  maybe this isn't true, but I would say for Superpath- Mm... the ability for individuals to come and transact is actually quite important. Right.
• 13:34
  Like one of the primary reasons that people join the community at all is the opportunity to find work. True. True. A freelance gig or a full-time job. And- Right...
• 13:42
  to kind of, the other side of that coin is the companies coming to find them, and giving the people on both sides the opportunity to have this transaction is great. That's cool.
• 13:50
  And I think that applies in other worlds too, like just learning. Yeah. Product development. Yeah. Customer research. Like those are awesome use cases for a community. Makes complete sense. Yeah. No, I like it.
• 13:59
  That's awesome. It's cool that you've kind of created a space where transactions can happen. We're all trying to get something at the end of the day. Totally. Totally.
• 14:06
  I was looking at your LinkedIn this morning, and I noticed that a lot of your posts have visuals, and they're like SOP type- Yeah... process visuals. It's like- Right...
• 14:17
  okay, you create a podcast, here would be the steps you would take to increase- Yeah... the amount of people it reaches, and it's like turn into a blog post, chop it into- Right... 30-second clips. Do, do- Yeah...
• 14:26
  10-minute clips. I think the question I am sort of getting to here is when I think about content distribution- Mm...
• 14:33
  the constraints that I think most, at least B2B content teams faces, time or resources, it's like all the energy's poured into the net new thing, and then- Yes...
• 14:43
  I feel like the everyone's sort of onto the next thing before the- Right... old thing has been properly distributed. Is that the primary constraint that you see?
• 14:51
  And i- is it really just about build a great SOP and just- Yeah... do it? Right. There's two primary constraints that hold brands back when it comes to content distribution. The first one is time. They have no time.
• 15:05
  They're already creating things. Their calendars are already full.
• 15:08
  They're already producing blog posts, writing eBooks, turning those eBooks into landing pages that they have to send paid traffic to, and they're communicating back and forth, workflows are running it all, chaos, reporting.
• 15:18
  They're full. That is what I hear all the time from B2B teams consistently, and the cheat code in distribution is paid. "Okay, let's throw some paid behind all of this, and we're doing our distribution." I hear you 100%.
• 15:30
  That works.
• 15:31
  So when time is your problem though, and you are on a hamster wheel of producing, producing, producing, producing, I ask you to do an audit of how much energy and time you're allocating to the creation of these pieces and how much time and energy you're allocating to distributing those pieces.
• 15:48
  And typically, you're gonna see like a 90% allocation to creation, 10% to distribution. Why is that broken? It's broken because the clock keeps ticking for the rest of our life. Like time- Right... keeps going.
• 16:00
  The piece was created for one hour. You took one hour of your time to create this piece, and then for the rest of eternity, you've only allocated 10 minutes to amplify it and promote it?
• 16:11
  That's crazy to me because if that piece was good, you should probably promote it next week, you should probably promote it the week after because time continues, right?
• 16:22
  So when you have that mindset, how do you give yourself more time? There's two ways.
• 16:26
  Either one, you're going to reduce the amount of time and energy that you're putting into these things that you're creating because you can't amplify them enough anyway. You're creating too much content.
• 16:35
  Or you're going to give yourself leverage through another team or resource by bringing in a partner, a freelancer, an agency like Foundation, shameless plug, that you're gonna find someone to support your distribution engine, or you're going to lean heavily into the SOP lane, and you're going to say, "Okay, how can we manage this, and how can we give this to somebody who's gonna own it within our org?"
• 16:57
  And thanks to AI, some of these elements that used to take four hours to do with the repurposing can be done in a fraction of that amount of time.
• 17:07
  That is, without question, one of the biggest hold, things holding brands back. The second one, though, I don't think it has anything to do with time. I don't think- Mm-hmm... it has anything to do with any real excuse.
• 17:20
  I think the excuse is simply the fact that everyone is scared of being judged, everyone is scared of being proven wrong, that their content isn't that good. What do I mean by that?
• 17:32
  Okay, so we've now actually distributed our pieces, and we're getting met with crickets. What does that mean? Means the content's probably sucky. It means the content was probably not good.
• 17:41
  If you actually distribute your content and you reach 100% of every person in your ICP and not a single person cares about what you've created, but they've read it, that means your content's not good, and that can be scary.
• 17:53
  That can be really scary. But sometimes you have to face the truth and then use the truth to inform, okay, we need to think differently about our stories.
• 18:01
  We had to think differently about the type of content we're creating and then move from there.
• 18:05
  So if you can distribute your content and you can get it in front of people more effectively, you now can solidify whether or not this asset was worth creating. So increase your sample size. Be okay with it.
• 18:16
  It sucks sometimes.
• 18:18
  I've press publish on pieces and distributed them into communities and have been met with crickets, and it was brutal.But I realize, okay, that piece didn't hit because I didn't show any personality, I wasn't engaging, I was very 101 with the topic, and I shared it in an advanced community.
• 18:34
  They think this is average. What was I thinking? I need to come into this community with a better level of content if I wanna win there. So long story, a little bit longer, I think those are the two issues.
• 18:45
  I think with the time it can be solved. I think with the fear of being judged and fear of having a piece that gets crickets can be solved as well.
• 18:54
  But it takes intention from the person behind the team and the creator to make that decision that they're gonna do this thing anyway. Yeah. I think in all my years of experience, what you just described is exactly right.
• 19:07
  My old coworker, Ryan Law, back at- Yeah... Ann Handley, wrote this blog post years ago with a title something like, "The Secret to Content Promotion is Hiding in Plain Sight." Mm.
• 19:17
  And basically what he describes is all these B2B SaaS companies make almost exclusively SEO content- Right... and then they try to use social and email to distribute that stuff, and it's just a mismatch. Right.
• 19:28
  It's like content created for an algorithm fed into basically a different algorithm. Right. You know what I mean?
• 19:34
  And I feel that one of the kind of macro trends we're seeing right now is a kind of like a return to- Right... fundamentals in content marketing. I love it. It's like- I'm here for it. Yeah. Yes.
• 19:44
  Like if you create stuff- Yeah... for the reader, it's actually so much easier to distribute it- Right... because you're not trying to force SEO stuff into the- Yeah...
• 19:54
  LinkedIn algorithm or whatever, which is just not ever gonna work. No, not at all. I think that's the key.
• 19:59
  I think it-- content marketing in general has gone way too far down this path of content, content, content, and we've forgotten that the industry is two words, content marketing. What is marketing?
• 20:10
  It's understanding the fundamentals of psychology of humans, of understanding that stories actually do matter, that humans want to be engaged, they wanna laugh, and that we're not these robots that simply because something shows up in Google, we're going to transact because it's there.
• 20:25
  No. Things might change, but the reason why today the Google SERP is in complete chaos with a bunch of links from random sites, with Reddit showing up and Quora showing up, is because SEOs ruined Google. That's it.
• 20:39
  We ruined it because Google is now filled, if you go to Google and you try to find a mattress, filled with a bunch of SEO optimized articles driving to affiliate links with mattresses that you never actually tested, but an SEO and ChatGPT wrote this piece, so it's gonna rank.
• 20:53
  Cool. You build some backlinks, it ranks. Cool. This is all the way that SEO has operated, and it's operated extremely well. But the issue is humans hated it. Humans- Yeah, right...
• 21:04
  hated going to the SERP, clicking on these pieces and getting mediocre posts that were average, and then getting a mattress that didn't match up with what it expected.
• 21:13
  So Google has to respond, and how does Google respond?
• 21:16
  By understanding that humans trust humans, and humans want to consume content from people who are actually passionate about certain topics, so they start to show Reddit in the SERP, they start to show Quora in the SERP.
• 21:27
  They're trying their hardest to give us value in the SERP. Is it working? Not really. It's chaotic mess still. But what do brands do amidst all of this chaos?
• 21:37
  My recommendation is, just as you described, go back to fundamentals. Is SEO important? 100%.
• 21:43
  Should you create a bunch of content to rank in the SERP, but also get scraped by the LLMs and then get that to be trained to communicate back to your ideal customers? 100%.
• 21:52
  But the content that you optimize needs to be good.
• 21:56
  You cannot create mediocre content asking ChatGPT to write you a blog post and press publish on it, throw in an image or two, and then call it a day and think that that's going to win.
• 22:07
  It might temporarily, but when you get dinged by the algorithm and you start getting people saying, "This is trash," you will start to realize the impact that that has not only on your brand, but also on the algorithm in your SERP.
• 22:19
  So my reco is simple. Embrace the fundamentals of creating highly valuable content, optimize it for search, and then let it win.
• 22:26
  Or create content with the intent of having it seeded into communities, thought leadership driven content, or intent around social media sharing. Cool. Create with intent.
• 22:38
  When you start with that, it makes the entire game easier. Do you think it's fair to say that almost all companies should create less net new content? Or am I-- is that too much of an oversimplification?
• 22:51
  It is too much of a simplification because there's so many companies in the world, right? And that's the only reason.
• 22:57
  If we were talking about the vast majority of the brands that are investing in content marketing at a, like, significant scale, yes, they can produce less.
• 23:04
  But the vast majority of the companies in the world are small mom and pop shops who actually don't create content, and they don't even have, like, a Facebook page. Sure. So they- Got it. Yeah... need to create something.
• 23:12
  Like, they should be doing it.
• 23:13
  So most businesses, yes, 100%, but a lot of the, like, more senior organizations that have been in the game for a while, they can scale it back because they're playing, in, uh, my opinion, an old playbook.
• 23:28
  The old playbook just won't continue to work.
• 23:30
  I think a lot of the smaller early stage companies and, like, mom and pop shops, which make up the vast majority of, like, the general business world, they just need to get started.
• 23:38
  Like, they [chuckles] just need to jump on and start creating 'cause they're losing out on so much value.
• 23:43
  But the vast majority of the B2B brands that you and I would talk to, yes, they need to slow it down and start focusing a little bit more on distribution. Yeah, I love it.
• 23:52
  I do wanna ask you, Ross, a little bit if you're open to talking about- Let's do it... about the meta process of writing a book. Like, the people- Yeah... listening to this podcast are content marketers, they're writers.
• 24:01
  Yeah. I would guess, and I'm one of them, a lot of the folks are like, "Oh, maybe one day I wanna write a book." You know? Right. Like, that's been on my mind for a very long time.
• 24:09
  Can you give us, like, any insight into, like, deciding you're gonna do it, the writing process, publishing? I mean, just to whatever extent you feel comfortable. For sure. Yeah, no, 100%. So I've written e-books before.
• 24:19
  I've written e-books. I had one e-book back in 2015 called Stand Out!Which was talking about how to stand out on the internet. Cool. I wrote a book called How to Crack the Reddit Code in, I think 2018. Cool.
• 24:32
  That was all fun and dandy. The process for those was a lot more different. The process for those was similar in the sense that you have to just find time.
• 24:41
  So I had to block off time in my calendar, make a commitment to myself that I'm gonna write like a thousand words each of these days, a hundred words each of these days, and just block off time.
• 24:51
  It has taken two years to write Create Once, Distribute Forever because I'm not just an author. I, sometimes I wish I was just an author who could go into a, a corner of a room for two months and just write.
• 25:04
  [chuckles] Maybe in my next career that is what I'll do because it would be pretty chill lifestyle. But I'm a dad. I've got an agency that I'm running. I'm an investor in startups. I'm doing a lot of things.
• 25:16
  I'm a speaker. I travel a lot, and I wrote a lot when I was in the air. That's one great place to write 'cause there's no distractions.
• 25:24
  But it started by just saying, "Okay, I'm gonna do this," and this time I said, "I'm gonna go bigger."
• 25:29
  So all of my self-published books that went through my PDFs and, like, selling it on Gumroad and Podia and things like that, those were all great. They've all generated great revenue and stuff like that.
• 25:39
  But I wanted to go down the path of, like, let's solidify this with a real book, a physical book, potentially get it in bookstores and try to make some noise.
• 25:49
  So the start of the process was like, "What am I gonna write about? What am I going to talk about?" I've been talking about distribution for a long time, so it became an easy layup.
• 25:58
  And then I started to go through the mental thinking of, "What is my intent with this book?" I didn't know. So I started to reach out to people who have published a book.
• 26:06
  I reached out to folks all over who I've admired their work, and I was like, "Hey, see you wrote this book. What are your thoughts on the process, et cetera. Give me some rundowns."
• 26:15
  And they were like, "Okay, this is what you can do." There's essentially a handful of different paths that you can take. Either you write it straight from scratch all the way through.
• 26:24
  You go out and you try to find, like, a publisher who's gonna sign you to a book deal, and with that book deal you get, like, an advance. One of my cousins recently did that.
• 26:33
  He writes books for, like, kids essentially, and he's an educator, early childhood education, stuff like that. So he wrote a children's book, and he got an advance and, uh, what I loved about that was the cash up front.
• 26:45
  But what I didn't like about that was the fact that you don't really have complete control, and they lock you in for a long time- Right... sometimes. So I was like, "Oh, okay. I don't really like that approach.
• 26:53
  I wanna find a way that I can still control and own all the rights." So I started to look at self-publishing routes, but also through a publisher at the same time.
• 27:02
  So what that means is you have this, like, augmented experience where you still are responsible for you're controlling your revenue, controlling your prices. You get to decide all of that.
• 27:15
  You are responsible for making sure that it's a successful launch, all of that, and you can find a wide range of different partners. The one that I found was called Lion's Crest.
• 27:24
  They've published books for, like, Goggins, Tiffany Hardish, folks like that who have some great books, and people who I look at in the industry and I'm like, "Well, they're not in our industry," but I s- look at and I'm like, "Cool.
• 27:34
  One, they look like me. Two, they've had successful books. I'm gonna go with these folks, too." So I went down that path, and they were super helpful at guiding the process.
• 27:44
  So you work with them to support you in different regards. Sometimes people go down the path where it's like, "You just write the whole thing for me, and I'm gonna put my name on it."
• 27:53
  I took the path of, I'm gonna create a bunch of this stuff and have, like, a coach who facilitates, like, making sure I do it and stay on track. They didn't really keep me on track 'cause it's been two years.
• 28:02
  It was supposed to be, like, eight months or less, but things happen, and I didn't- Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was just going. So that was the process. So what does that look like?
• 28:11
  They essentially hold you accountable to stating when things are due, writing chapters, getting it out there.
• 28:18
  They work with you on, like, your flow, your story, your narrative and things like that, and they're essentially like a accountability coach, so to speak. And that was my process.
• 28:28
  Upon completion, they then guide you along the way of like, "Okay, you're gonna need to upload these files to this. Here's some other ways that you need to promote it.
• 28:38
  Do you want to be listed as someone who bookstores can order from, libraries can order from?"
• 28:43
  They ask you all these questions, you answer the questions, and then you have to either pay more or not pay to get that distribution, and then it goes from there. So the process is essentially that.
• 28:54
  It's pretty much like, for me anyway, my process was having them to kinda guide, coach, support, ensure that I was not writing a long blog post, but instead writing a book, which was cool.
• 29:07
  And then from there, also the support in giving that coaching around, okay, this is how you set up pre-orders [chuckles] and things like that, like, things that I just didn't wanna work with.
• 29:17
  Yeah, there's so much involved in all that. So much involved. And luckily, like, at Foundation, I've got a team.
• 29:22
  So two colleagues at Foundation, Leah and Ina, supported deeply in a lot of the ongoing tasks associated with the launch. So, like, coordinating the launch on Indigo, Chapters, Target, all of that stuff.
• 29:36
  Making sure that the books were circulated through all of these bookstores, independent bookstores. The publishing space is a beast on its own. And then thinking through, okay, what am I actually doing this for?
• 29:47
  Am I creating this book because I wanna be a New York Times bestseller? Am I creating this book because I want to get this story out there and solidify myself as, like, the thought leader in distribution?
• 29:59
  Am I publishing this book because I want to increase my speaker rates? All of these things became a part of the reasoning and the rationale and the strategy around the book and what I should be thinking about.
• 30:11
  And upon concluding that my reasoning was really to s- put my stamp on my career of saying, "Distribution has had 10 years of my life. This is my distribution book.
• 30:22
  I probably won't write another one, but this is going to be, like, a staple moment for my career, and my life," was kinda like what I wanted to do. So that's what this is. It's not really to me-I don't know.
• 30:34
  I'm going through like this q- it's not a quarter life crisis anymore because I'm older, but like [chuckles] I'm in this moment where I'm trying to figure out like, is this the beginning of the distribution or the midway point of the distribution story, or is this the end of the distribution story?
• 30:53
  Have I gotten the message out there? Is this this final outcome? And if people wanna learn about distribution, this is where I point them, and now I explore new stories, new opportunities, new ideas. I don't know.
• 31:04
  And I've never said that out loud, definitely not on a public address kind of thing. That's fascinating. It's interesting. That's fascinating.
• 31:10
  Well, I feel like very much related to that, like our industry is, maybe upheaval is too strong of a word, but like- Right... there is a lot of uncertainty out there about like how is AI gonna- Right...
• 31:19
  influence business- Every-- right... specifically marketing, like, you know, related to things like SEO, like- Yeah... I don't-- who knows? You know what I mean? Who knows? It's true. Yeah.
• 31:28
  You might have to write another book in like ten years. I might have to. When we know more about all of that. Exactly. I've got so many ideas on stories that I wanna tell.
• 31:36
  Like, that's why I think, like, where I go with my next book will be interesting, 'cause there will be another book.
• 31:42
  I just don't know where I'm gonna go because there's so many things that I'm deeply curious about right now. Yeah. And that is what led me down the path of distribution. It's just curiosity.
• 31:49
  What led me down B2B, I was just curious about how these companies ran their content engines, and I started to study them and then write about them, and then millions of people were, like, reading and interested in it, and that's kind of been the game.
• 32:01
  It's just like I follow what I'm curious about. And right now, I'm very, very curious about the implications of AI on content and how that content influences us as people, the psychology of it all.
• 32:14
  The, all of this stuff is just mind-blowing to me, and I think it's gonna be an interesting next few years. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I wanna be respectful of your time, Ross, because today is your launch day.
• 32:24
  I appreciate it. I could ask you so many questions about what you just said, but maybe we'll save them so that you can- Do another round through after the- Yeah, yeah...
• 32:31
  after the distribution buzz has kinda settled down a bit. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for making time. Also, congratulations. Thank you. Like, no one is more qualified to write this book than you.
• 32:39
  Appreciate you. I would encourage folks to check it out. Create Once, Distribute Forever. Where's the best place for people to buy, or do you have a preference of where they check it out? Yeah.
• 32:49
  Folks can go directly to Amazon. You can go to, I think it's called Hickory House if you're not a Amazon fan.
• 32:56
  You can also get a, I think the Kindle version is available for sale for very cheap, so you can get that for just a buck.
• 33:02
  And then if you want a bundle, the-- I'm offering an exclusive package to organizations who wanna buy a bunch for their team, who might even want some of the special bonus offerings like me coming in and speaking to their team at rosssimonds.com/book.
• 33:15
  So you can check that out, and it has a bunch of different options for people who might wanna buy a bunch as well as a few different bonuses. But Jimmy, thank you so much for having me on.
• 33:23
  It's been multiple years of collaboration and hopefully me adding value to the Superpath community. Huge, yeah.
• 33:30
  And I hope that, uh, I hope this was valuable again, and, uh, I appreciate you and all that you do, and I look forward to your book maybe on community at some point. One day. One day. Thanks, Ross.
• 33:38
  Really appreciate it, man. And, uh- Cheers... we'll talk to you soon. [outro music]