Latest / The Daily Writer / Monetizing Your Author Platform & Diversifying Your Income Streams | Thomas Umstattd, Jr.

Transcript

Monetizing Your Author Platform & Diversifying Your Income Streams | Thomas Umstattd, Jr. · The Daily Writer

0:08
SPEAKER_01: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm an author and ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Well, as you know, we talk a lot about income streams here on the show because there are countless ways to take your book or message and make money from it.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: A book is only the starting point.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Many writers write a book, they publish it, and then they ask, now what do I do with this?
0:36
SPEAKER_01: And my guest today is going to help us think about various ways to take your book or message and turn it into dollars.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Thomas Umstadt Jr.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: is the CEO of Author Media, a professional speaker and nonfiction author, and host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and The Christian Publishing Show.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: He's a wealth of knowledge on all things related to book marketing, media for authors, author branding, and much more.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and children.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: I want to encourage you to check out Thomas's websites, which there's two that I want to mention.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: The first is authormedia.com, where there is an absolute wealth of really phenomenal resources that he's been putting together over the years for writers.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: And his personal website is Thomasumstat.com.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: That's Thomas.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: And then his last name is UM S T A T D D dot com.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Make sure and check those out and support Thomas and what he's doing, because man, he's been such an amazing support to authors over the years.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Check those out.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: You're going to get a lot of good stuff there.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: In today's conversation, Thomas and I discussed several key things.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: One is non-book related ways to monetize your author platform, which is something everybody listening to this episode is already interested in.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: And if you're not, then you definitely should be.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: We also talk about how to diversify your income streams, the role of Patreon in his business, which I know some of you will be interested in, his signature course, book launch blueprint, and much, much more.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: This is a really fun conversation.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: Thomas is a really, really cool guy and also just smart as a tech.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: He's actually one of the smartest people that I know in this space because he's just thought about a lot of things and he's very strategic and very detailed.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: I think that's really, really cool.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: You're going to see that as well in this conversation.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Thomas is really sharp.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so glad that you can benefit from his wisdom on this episode today.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: So here's my interview with Thomas Umstad.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: Thomas, welcome to the Profitable Rider Podcast.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: It is an honor to have you here.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: You have been on my wish list of people to have on my show.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: You probably didn't know this for actually several years.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: So this is a few years in the making.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Welcome.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for having me, and I'm glad to finally come.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: You could have asked me earlier.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: This you know, this was the first time you reached out.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: I could have.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: There's actually been um there, there's probably a couple dozen people that I wanted to have on my show for a while.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: People who I've known from, you know, I've listened to their podcast, or we kind of have mutual friends in common, or it's an author that I respect or admire, or whatever.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, but many thanks to our mutual friend Becky Kapitsky for kind of the connection here.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: So she's the one uh responsible for this.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: So shout out to Becky if she hears this episode.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but but glad you're here, of course.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that I really respect about what you do, Thomas, is you have a lot of cool things going on.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: And I know it's taken time to build up your business over the years, um, not just as a writer, but as a content creator, as an entrepreneur, as an online business owner.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: And today on this this conversation, I really want to dive into four or five of the things that you do that are not related to books that you do to monetize your platform and build a business.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: So um I'm wondering if you can give us kind of the maybe the the short, shortish version of how did you get into all this to begin with?
4:00
SPEAKER_01: Um what actually got you into creating multiple streams of income as a business owner, not just through writing, but through other kinds of things that have been monetizing your content and your and your ideas?
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I actually got started with the alternate streams of income almost.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: So when I was in college, I was convinced I had this amazing book that the world needed to read.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: And I started going to writers' conferences with uh, and I learned about a book proposal.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: And I also learned about marketing, right?
4:31
SPEAKER_00: I was taking marketing in college.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: I was a business uh major, but I went to the marketing session and the lady's like, you got to build a website.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: And all the authors are like, How do I build a website?
4:40
SPEAKER_00: I've been building websites since I was a kid.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: So I built a website for an author who was there just for free, just because I wanted to be around authors is my first writer's conference.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: And she recommended me to all of her friends, and I started charging her friends for their websites.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: And pretty soon I had this side hustle of building websites for authors.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: And so when I went to the next conference, I had my book proposal in one hand, I had my flyer for my website business in the other, and I got a bunch of vague interest from agents in the book proposal, and I got a bunch of checks from authors who'd never met me before but wanted a website in the other.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, wow, this is a real business.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a real side hustle.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: And after my other business that I started in college, I was an entrepreneurship major, so I turned all of my business ideas into actual businesses in college.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, my other business failed, and I had a decision to make, and I was just making money, real money building these websites for authors.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: And so I decided to make that my business.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: And pretty soon I'm hiring staff and I get this big team eventually of uh web designers and web developers and marketers building websites for authors all over the world.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's amazing.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: That's really amazing.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the reasons that I do find that amazing is because a lot of writers feel intimidated by the idea of websites, by the idea of kind of taking control and building a business.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering if you can speak before we dive into some specific things that you're doing, aside from you know the website angle, which kind of got you into all this, can you speak to the mindset of the writer of on one side being a creator, a person who has ideas or they want to write books or they want to make things versus the business owner side of the mindset, I guess is how I would put it, who is thinking about business goals and creating things and income streams and those kinds of things.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Because for a lot of creative types and artists, those things are kind of mutually exclusive.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: So I'm wondering if you can help us think through how do we how do we think more like Thomas in the sense of really embracing the idea of being an entrepreneur and a business owner?
6:53
SPEAKER_00: It's not really thinking like Thomas.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Thomas has learned how to think like an entrepreneur, or I'm trying to.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: And that's interesting.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, an entrepreneur, a regular person sees a problem and they see an annoyance, you know, a point of pain or a frustration or inconvenience.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: An entrepreneur sees that same point of pain or frustration or inconvenience and sees an opportunity.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: So you have the Oregon Trail.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: You have all these wagons heading west and they're hitting this river, and crossing the river is a real pain, right?
7:22
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever played the Oregon Trail video game, right?
7:25
SPEAKER_00: It's a real pain.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, some people see that river and they see an opportunity and they're like, you know what?
7:29
SPEAKER_00: What if we don't go to Oregon?
7:31
SPEAKER_00: What if we build a ferry across this river, take our wagon, turn it into a ferry, and sell people for$5 a wagon, uh trip across the river, and we can make a lot of money.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: And when you play Oregon Trail, you know it's always worth it to pay the$5 and to try to ford the river on your own.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: And those ferry owners became very profitable.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: In fact, whole cities would spring up around a ferry.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: You'll still find uh towns and cities uh throughout the West today that have ferry in the name because some guy started a business around someone else's pain, around alleviating that pain.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: And that thinking, obviously, we don't have that many fairies today, and you couldn't make one with your hands.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: You'd need, you know, a lot of money to build a real fairy.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: But that thinking is still very appropriate.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: And you can find a point of pain that somebody else has, a point of intimidation or a fear, and you can turn that into an opportunity by alleviating them of that pain, right?
8:32
SPEAKER_00: So for some people it's accounting, for some people it's editing.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: For some people, it's the actual writing of the book, right?
8:37
SPEAKER_00: You're like, hey, you know what?
8:38
SPEAKER_00: I'll take your ideas and I'll capture them on page and take the pain of writing the rough draft out of your hands, or I'll do the editing, right?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: There's uh different people enjoy different things.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Some people they enjoy accounting.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: My dad, God bless him, enjoys accounting.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: He's been a CPA for 40 years.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: He lives in TurboTax and um Pro Series and QuickBooks and helping people with their taxes and reading the latest, you know, tax laws that come down from Congress and reading the tax court cases and the interpretations of those laws.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: He enjoys that.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: And he makes a lot of money taking that pain off of other people's plates who don't enjoy that.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: So uh find where your strengths and where your interests overlap with other people's needs, and that's where you're gonna be the happiest and most profitable.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Jim Collins calls this the hedgehog concept, where it's the combination of passion, skills, and needs.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And you you need to be passionate, you need to be skilled, and those two things, think of it as a Venn diagram, need to overlap with a third circle of the needs of others.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: And the S and needs is a dollar sign, right?
9:47
SPEAKER_00: It's needs in the kind of economic demand kind of sense, right?
9:51
SPEAKER_00: What does somebody need that they're willing to pay for?
9:53
SPEAKER_00: And if you can find that sweet spot, you'll find a lot of money.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: And you'll often find that that sweet spot is adjacent to your book rather than the book itself, particularly in nonfiction.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you'll have a book that just takes off, but often the book enables some other more profitable activity like public speaking.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: We have a mutual friend who's uh an on-author and she's made pretty good money from her from her book, but she makes five digits speaking in front of audiences per talk.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: She's a very well-paid public speaker, and the book is really uh a tool to aid her in her very profitable public speaking rather than the book royalties being how she pays the bills.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Do you think there's a difference between the writer who sees himself as primarily a content creator or a storyteller?
10:45
SPEAKER_01: In other words, the person who says, I just want to get my message out, I feel passionate about this message or this content, versus the person who's looking at what they do as solving problems.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: And how how can somebody maybe move more toward the problem-solving angle of taking that message or that content and then thinking of it as, okay, I'm I'm solving problems for people.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to just be through my book, it can be through public speaking or courses or other kinds of things.
11:11
SPEAKER_01: Is there a mindset shift that somebody needs to make to kind of get over to that other side of the river?
11:16
SPEAKER_01: If we're gonna keep with this river fairy analogy, I guess.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you need to die to yourself because you started off being like, here's the message I want to share.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: And it's all about you and the message that God's put on your heart.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: People often dress it up in really religious language, but still all about them.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: And you just got to die to that and start looking at other people and what they need to hear and and what they need to hear first.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you've got a whole world of things you want to talk to them about, but they don't have ears to hear all that stuff until you deal with the um, you know, the burning pain.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like you go to the doctor and you're bleeding and you have high cholesterol.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: And the doctor's like, okay, I'm gonna talk to you about your heart.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, doctor, I'm bleeding.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: Right.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: So the doctor's got to listen, right?
12:04
SPEAKER_00: You gotta talk to somebody about the bleeding first.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: And if you do a good job with the bleeding, then they'll be more likely to listen to you about the cholesterol.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And but that requires an attitude of service and an attitude of love.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And for some authors, they're just unwilling to do that, right?
12:22
SPEAKER_00: They're writing a memoir, it's all about them, and they just want to get their story out there.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and they're like, this is what God told me to say, and I'm gonna say it, and I don't care if anybody listens.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: They don't word it that way, they word it with very religious language, saying, Oh, you know, I'm gonna trust God with the sales, and I'm not gonna do any work to get the word out.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, I don't care about the money.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, money is your ability to advertise and promote and to make this self-sustainable.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: You should care about the money a little bit, especially if you have uh bills to pay or mouths to feed, uh, you know, treat this in a workmanlike manner and treat it like a real job if you want to make real money.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: It it does make it, gosh, those are really wise words.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make it a challenge, uh, as you mentioned, if you if you're kind of putting a spiritual veneer on this.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think anybody has bad intentions, but if you hang around like the Christian evangelical world long enough, you kind of pick up on certain phrases or certain code language that people use um to indicate certain things, you know, like you mentioned, God just put this message on my heart.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I just wish people would just stand up and kind of like question that, you know, like nobody ever says, How do you know God put that on your heart?
13:34
SPEAKER_01: Or how do you know God wants you to do this?
13:36
SPEAKER_01: We all just sort of smile and nod and you know, and accept that.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, sometimes I just I wish that we had a little bit of a test where I could send people to and go, here's a test you could take that would kind of like show did God really put this message on your heart, or is it just something that you want to share?
13:52
SPEAKER_01: Which is fine.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I wish maybe we just had more radical honesty, I think, in the church world.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: That's a whole nother that's a topic for a whole nother podcast, probably.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is in the Bible, testing words of knowledge and testing spirits, right?
14:05
SPEAKER_00: Just because the spirit says something doesn't mean you should listen to it or disregard it, right?
14:10
SPEAKER_00: There's a very specific protocol that is laid out in the New Testament.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, having multiple witnesses, right?
14:19
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, this this is kind of standard stuff, uh and and a little bit outside of my expertise as a as a marketer, but I have read the New Testament.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: And uh I've I've seen what Paul has to say about you know testing words of knowledge and and testing tongues and and and uh all of that.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we feel like, oh, well, if it's a book, the rules don't apply.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: But that's a dangerous place to be as a Christian, where you're like, oh yeah, the the rules of the old of the New Testament, they don't apply.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know, I don't know.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't I think the rules of the New Testament apply.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I would also say that if you're writing nonfiction, especially theological uh nonfiction, being in submission to the authorities is also important.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I did when I wrote my book um that I did publish, not the book I talked about, but a different book, is I had a special editor pass uh or editorial pass of the book that was just my pastor.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: And I send him an advanced reader copy, and I was like, what do you think?
15:21
SPEAKER_00: And he sent back notes and I made changes based off of his notes, right?
15:24
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to make sure that my book was um kosher theologically and and in line with with my tradition uh or my um denomination, you could say.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, the that's that's a whole bag of cats.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: I didn't mean to get us off on uh this, but it is something that you know you do with fear and trembling when you're writing a book.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: This is this is something serious and um and do it with a uh with an act of love and a desire to serve.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: And it's that act of love and that desire to serve that will ultimately be rewarded because you can't force someone to buy your book.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: They have to want to buy your book, which means it has to be something that they already want.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Because you can't change people, especially people who haven't read your book yet.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: That's very true.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: That's very true.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: But for some for some authors, finding their way into your book actually takes place through other things.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: So they come to other things first, then they discover your book.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's a good segue into just talking about some of the things that you have done that are not books, but that have been very successful, and some ways that people have found you and things that they can purchase or be a part of that are that are not a book, but that are kind of book adjacent in many ways.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: Um so I've got several things here, and I'm curious if you would add anything to this list.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: Um speaking, conferences, podcasting, Patreon, and courses.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Is there anything else a major that's a part of your business currently that you would consider a significant income stream, or that's that's something that is really a key part of your overall um overall business strategy?
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: So our primary source of income is courses.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh those are the highest margin and the highest ticket price.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Um the next biggest source of revenue is Patreon.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: That said, most of the money that comes in from Patreon stays in the podcast.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't bring a lot of that home to my family because if you've ever heard a novel marketing podcast episode, there's all these credits at the end of the whole team that works together on the podcast.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: I have somebody who edits the audio, and I have somebody who converts the audio into a blog post version that can be read by humans.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, it feels like a blog post with headings and images and bullets and all of that.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: And that that all take and I have a producer, but that all takes um money and effort and time, and uh that's covered by patrons primarily.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Some of the patron money comes home, but not a lot.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: But the podcast is a really good way of uh promoting and selling the courses, and so it's a synergistic relationship, right?
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Somebody's listening to my voice on a podcast, it makes them more likely to want to buy even more of my advice and training in a course.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: What kinds of things?
18:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna ask, what kinds of things should somebody consider if they're going to set up a Patreon for their author platform?
18:30
SPEAKER_01: I know you can offer all kinds of different bonuses and ways to structure it.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: Can you walk us through what kinds of things that you offer for your Patreon?
18:38
SPEAKER_01: And maybe if you were starting today, what kinds of things would you do differently or would you basically do it the same?
18:47
SPEAKER_00: So the most important thing when starting a Patreon, especially for a podcast, is that uh you shouldn't do it until you've already built up your email list.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: Because if somebody's not going to give you your their email, they're not going to become your patron.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some people do, but like that is a way that you can get onto my email newsletter is by signing up as a patron first.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: But it's a somewhat uncommon journey into the author media ecosystem.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: And so the first thing you need to learn is how to attract people onto your email newsletter, how to offer them value in exchange for their email and how to do that continually.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And another thing you'll learn doing email, and this is really key when it comes to Patreon, is learn to experiment.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: So we've had over the history of our of the novel marketing Patreon probably twenty different tiers.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Really?
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Um of which currently, if you were to go to our page, you'll only see three.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: So we have experimented with all kinds of different price points and all kinds of different offerings.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: And that experimentation is really valuable.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: And there are people who are still grandfathered into various old patronage levels that are now no longer available and are now a really good deal compared to the equivalent today.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: And we we did a lot of experimentation and fiddling with it.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: And um people didn't notice, right?
20:18
SPEAKER_00: But we noticed when we'd have a good fit of cost and value.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: And now what we have, if you were to go to the novel marketing Patreon page, you'd see three tiers.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: The first is$4 a month, which comes with discounts for the courses.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Some courses have a patrons-only discount, which again, trying to have synergies between these different elements.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: And some people will sign up to become a patron just to get a course discount, which is a win, right?
20:47
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather them um have an ongoing payment in addition to whatever the one-time money they spent for the course.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh and the other benefit is that there's a monthly QA where I answer patron questions live on a webinar platform, which actually helps make the course a better experience, right?
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Because you're going through a course, some of the cheaper courses don't have a live element that's part of the course.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: But you can get that live element if you're a patron.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: You can ask questions about the course and I'll answer them, and everybody gets to hear the answer.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: At the$10 level, is a it's like a product that we provide.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: It's called the podcast host directory.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: It's a directory of um tens of thousands of podcasts and the email addresses of the hosts of those podcasts.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: If you want to do guest podcasting and you want to reach out to that podcast host, you can search for that podcast in the directory, see if they're there.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: And if they are, you've got their email address and you can reach out.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: And uh I found that to be a useful tool myself, but a lot of our uh patrons find that useful.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: The one downside of that particular tier is that there's a lot of like marketing PR people who don't care about the podcast and don't listen, who become patrons just to get access to.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: The podcast host directory.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: It's the only way to get it.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: And they're not really a part of the community.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm happy to take their money, don't get me wrong, but it um makes the our numbers a little bit misleading in the sense that some people are just patrons just for the podcast host directory.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: Now, how is that different than let's say getting on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and searching for the same shows?
22:22
SPEAKER_01: Is is are you giving them like fundamentally different info through the directory?
22:26
SPEAKER_00: The email address is the is the main difference.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: So you could go hunting for the email address yourself.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Um and if if a podcast has a contact form, that may be the better tool than the email address, but maybe the email address is better.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: So that's the main Yeah.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: It having that as an option is really useful.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And I I've found that useful sometimes just to look up a colleague's email.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: Um totally.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Or a fellow podcaster.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: So that's that's the primary value.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: All of our competitors offer a similar service or 10 to 20 times or 100 times more expensive.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: And I specifically put the podcast host directory inside of the Patreon ecosystem to kind of discourage strangers from getting it because I don't want a bunch of random people emailing a bunch of random podcasts.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: Um I want these to be people who've been trained and are a part of the family, so to speak.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: But I other than having it be through Patreon, I don't police it.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: And and so some people, some really savvy marketers like, wow, this is a really good price for this thing.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Who do I have to become a patron of?
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Who's Thomas?
23:33
SPEAKER_00: And then it's that way.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then the uh$25 a month tier um it is for a featured patron.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: And this these folks get their book featured on the podcast from time to time.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: And one of the interesting things about your really high-ticket tiers is that people often will pick the high-ticket tier not because they want the rewards, but because they want to support your podcast.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Um and a lot of the people who do the premiere patron, they don't ever give me their book info.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: It's not about promoting their book, it's about supporting the show.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a way of saying thank you for the podcast being helpful.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: And uh and I'm really appreciative of them because that's what makes the podcast possible.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: So the the school of thought here is what's called value for value, right?
24:24
SPEAKER_00: You provide the podcast for free, and then people give you back whatever value they find.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: And if they get a lot of value out of your podcast, they give you a lot of value back.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't have to be just treasure, it could also be time and talent, right?
24:37
SPEAKER_00: They can help your podcast by promoting it or helping you make it better in some way with their uh time or their talent.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: So time, talent, treasure, find some way to give back.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: And you'll actually get more out of a podcast if you're giving back to that podcast than if you're just taking it for free.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: Although I do confess, um I've been a patrons of uh a patron of Joanna Penn's podcast for years, but I think I've only ever submitted like two questions to her.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not making very good use of my patronage of her show.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: But you probably listen to the QA episodes quite a bit.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, and they're really good.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: Um and I don't even find I don't care about that.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: I just love her show and I think she's great, and I just want to support it.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: So Yeah.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Her QA uh episode was the inspiration of our QA nice webinar.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the early days, I people would send in their questions, my wife would read their question and then I would answer it.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: And we swapped it for the live format because it's a little bit more fun, and it allows me to interrogate the question a little bit.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes somebody will ask the wrong question.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: And in a kind of stale, they send in the question and then I send them back the answer format.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: I can't help them ask the right question or find out if they ask the right question.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: Whereas in a live format, I can do that.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: But there is a tightness to the answers in the um pre-recorded format that we don't have because it's live and I'm coming up with the answers off the top of my head.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: So there's pros and cons of it, but we do take the audio of those webinars and we put it out as a podcast for people to listen to.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: And patrons really like that.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: People like to listen to that because they often don't know what questions to ask, and hearing other authors asking questions and hearing answers that they get can be very enlightening.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: And how long have you been doing Patreon?
26:36
SPEAKER_01: It's been several years, right?
26:38
SPEAKER_00: At least um Yeah, I think we started our Patreon in 2016 or 2015.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: So it's been going quite a while.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't remember when we started.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: It's but yeah, it's been at least five years.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything that you would do differently if you were starting Patreon today?
27:03
SPEAKER_00: Um one thing I would do differently than how we launched our Patreon.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: We launched our Patreon with an episode about the Patreon.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: And if I were to do it today, I would have also launched it with a live uh webinar.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: To promote it.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: I um that's what we did for the Patreon for Christian publishing show, and it worked really well.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: So instead of so the idea here is um Esther's banquet, right?
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Before you ask the Emperor for your big question, you know, your big ask-you throw banquet.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: So we would do we do a webinar first.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: In the webinar, we kind of share the vision of, you know, why do we need the money?
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Why does this podcast exist?
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And also the webinars answering a lot of questions, right?
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Kind of giving them a taste of that Q ⁇ A.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think if we had done that, it would have launched a little bit stronger.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: We'll get back to the conversation in just a moment.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: But first I want to take a second to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, The Word Wizard.
28:05
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28:12
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28:20
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28:35
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28:41
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28:46
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28:50
SPEAKER_01: Now back to the conversation.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: So you have Patreon.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh can you talk a bit about courses?
28:57
SPEAKER_01: I I know courses is a major, major topic.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: We could do multiple episodes on just on courses alone, but for authors who have not yet developed their first course, do you have any tips for how to figure out what kind of course you should do?
29:13
SPEAKER_01: How do you pick your course platform?
29:15
SPEAKER_01: Um any tips for just getting that first course out there?
29:21
SPEAKER_00: So I'll I guess the best way to answer this is to kind of point out the biggest mistakes that I see people making.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: That's really good.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: The biggest mistake is thinking that courses are easy to make.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's really good.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: It looks like easy money.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of like if you're watching an acrobatic show and the person's like swallowing a sword or balancing on a tightrope, they make it look really easy, especially the ones who are really, really good at it.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: They're like, How hard could balancing on top of a bicycle be?
29:55
SPEAKER_00: And then you actually try to do it yourself, and you're like, oh my goodness, this is incredibly difficult.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And so you need to respect it as a profession.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: And just because you're a successful author doesn't mean that you're going to be a successful course creator.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: It is its own skill that takes time and training to learn how to do well.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: So that's my first piece of advice.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: My next piece of advice would be to start small.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: So most people they want to create a this is everything I've ever learned about my topic course, and you know, create hundreds of hours of video and this big overwhelming thing.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually really hard to sell to your audience, especially for what you're gonna want to pay charge for it.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to create, and it's not a good place to start.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: So instead, what I recommend doing is a really narrowly focused course around a very tangible transformation.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: And uh and make the course a small course where you're only looking at like an hour or two hours of content that you're creating.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: Um and then you don't create the course.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: You still don't create the course.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: So what's the next step?
31:08
SPEAKER_00: You create the landing page for the course, you make the promises to your audience and you explain why this course will be valuable, and then you email your audience and say, Hey, I'm thinking about putting together a course.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Let's say you're uh an author and you write on parenting, and you've you're putting together a course and it's the tantruming child handbook, right?
31:30
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when your child is tantruming at throwing a tantrum at the store, right?
31:34
SPEAKER_00: It's like some really narrow deliverable.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: It's like this will help that never happen again or help you know what to do.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a parenting guru.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh, or it's the potty training uh guide, right?
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Some some really narrow element of parenting.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: This isn't everything I know about parenting.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: This is like how to get your toddler to go potty for the first time, right?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: 12 tips.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: And you have some real clear promise that at the end of these two hours, you will know exactly what to do next to get your uh toddler potty trained or what have you.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing I'm doing this off the top of my head, so it's not very good.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: No, it's great.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: And but then you put together your sales page, your landing page, and and maybe your webinar to promote it as well.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: And you see if you can get anybody to sign up for it.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: Because what most people find when they get into the course business is that they don't actually know how to get people to sign up for their courses, or they're not making the course that their audience is wanting.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And if you create the landing page first, that learn, that discovery is very inexpensive because you haven't made the course and no one signs up for it, and so you're not making the course.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but if people are interested, you're real clear.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: It's like, I'm gonna be making this course as you're going through.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: This is an initial beta launch, so you're gonna get to give feedback on how to make the course better, right?
32:51
SPEAKER_00: Very transparent about all of that.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: People actually prefer to get a discount and go through it the first time and have more access to you.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: That's a really appealing version of the pitch.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And then after each 10-minute video that you record, you release it and you get feedback.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps you teach it live the first time.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: So instead of recording a highly produced video that's got slides and edits and cuts and zooms, you just do it on Zoom for your 25 students who signed up.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: And then you take questions at the end and then you make modifications to the training based off of the questions that come in.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: And you do it kind of collaboratively almost with your audience the first time.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: And then the next time you do it, you know you've got a hit and you're gonna promote it with much more confidence because you've already got students who, by the way, are also now able to write testimonials because that's a big element of selling courses, is to have a student testimonial.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And so having that initial beta launch is really key.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: And doing a small course first is key because you're gonna learn a lot of things.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna learn, oh, I need to learn video editing.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: I need to learn how to capture good video in the first place.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to learn a little bit about lighting.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to learn a little bit about audio.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna learn how to put together a good slide.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a lot of skills that go into a course, and better to practice that on a smaller course.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: If you watch my earlier courses, they're pretty wretched compared to my newer ones because I've learned a lot the hard way.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: My earliest courses were audio only because you know I'm a podcaster, I know how to do audio, so I just would record audio into a microphone.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: And what do people want now?
34:26
SPEAKER_00: They want video and they want text and they you know they want to and they want interaction.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: And that's what my new courses provide.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: They want it all.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: The the final thing I will say, or a couple more things on courses.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: One is that information wants to be free.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: So if you're just giving away knowledge, it's hard to charge for that.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: It's why books don't want to be much more than$20 or$30 for a book.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: But education always wants to be expensive.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: And so the more interactivity that you add to a course, the more coaching elements you have in a course, the more people want to spend for that course, and the more people are willing to spend for that course.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: So it's a continuum between information, which tends to be more passive income for you, but at a lower price point, and education, which is more interactivity for you at a higher price point.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: I I like I found that a combination of highly edited, highly produced presentation of the material combined with live interaction with the students is the best of both worlds.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: It's the cream and the coffee.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Um because people can re-reference that highly produced 10-minute video uh and they don't have to watch a replay of a two-hour QA, which uh is got a low signal to noise ratio for people watching the replay.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: It's fun for folks where they're live, but it doesn't make for a good product uh to give to people down the road.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay, for everybody listening, if you're thinking about doing courses, I hope that you're gonna go back and re-listen to the last 10 minutes of this episode because Thomas, I feel like you just gave a really amazing crash course and like really great tips on doing courses.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: Um I have actually not gotten into online courses anytime recently.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: I really should, considering that I was a college professor for you know a good chunk of my life, but just not something I've gotten into because I've been uh too busy doing client work.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: But you've really inspired me to take another look at that.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: This is uh great tips on courses, phenomenal.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh my one last tip on courses I'll say is cohorts I found work really well.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: Um the problem with a self-paced course is that if you're cleaning the garage in a self-paced manner, you'll never clean the garage.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we need accountability, and part of what turns a course from information to education isn't just answering questions, it's also accountability and motivation.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: And a cohort, which is a fancy term for marketers for like a semester, like colleges have been doing this for hundreds of years.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: Forever, yeah.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Um the difference is that a cohort doesn't have to be a semester long, it could just be a week long or a month long, but everyone's doing all of the same material on the same day.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: And that is transformative because now you don't want to fall behind.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: And peer pressure is now a positive motivation.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and anytime you can make peer pressure a positive motivation is a good thing.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: And we have um our one of our courses, our book launch blueprint course, is our one cohort model course, and it has the highest completion rate of all of our courses.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: Despite the fact that it's the longest in terms of material, or one of the longest in terms of the material.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: And it's because everyone does all the work on the same day.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: And this is a discovery that generals made a long time ago that soldiers, when they march, they can go faster with less fatigue.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if we know why, even today, why that's the case.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: And I've I've often wanted wondered like, how would a marching unit do on a marathon competition, right?
38:04
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the marathon or less fatigue.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not uncommon for soldiers in war to do a marathon or even two in a day.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: If it's a double-time, you know, Civil War era marching.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: They they they could do 50 miles in a day.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: Caesar supposedly did 100 miles in a day uh when he really needed to, right?
38:21
SPEAKER_00: That's that and that's with gear, right?
38:23
SPEAKER_00: And how do you do that?
38:24
SPEAKER_00: With drums.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: You take the weapons out of some of your soldiers' hands and you put drums in their hands and they beat to the drum, and everyone marches together because they're all marching together.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not as tiring and it's it's motivating, and people are less likely to fall behind, which in a war situation is deadly, right?
38:42
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be the one guy who fell out of his unit because he couldn't keep up, right?
38:45
SPEAKER_00: That's the guy who gets killed.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: You want to stay with your buddies in your cohort or in your battalion, right?
38:51
SPEAKER_00: Whatever whichever era we're talking about here.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: And that same, those same psychological discoveries that Caesar or whoever made back in the day are still true.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: And having a cohort where everyone's marching together really is easier for you as the instructor, because you're only teaching one day at a time, but it's also easier on the students.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: And that model really works well.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: And it also gives a sense of completion.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: At the end, you get to celebrate.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you're cleaning the garage in a self-paced manner, when is the garage clean?
39:24
SPEAKER_00: Right?
39:25
SPEAKER_00: How clean is clean?
39:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's no graduation day, there's no, you know, pop the champagne, the garage is finally clean.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: And you don't want that because that won't give you good testimonials, it won't give you good student outcomes.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: So having a good cohort model when you can is good.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: Not every course lends itself to that model.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: And not all of my courses are cohort model.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: There are advantages to something that's self-paced.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you have to really recruit self-motivated people for that self-paced kind of course.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Does the does the length of the course itself, like how much material would go into it, do you think that also contributes to your decision about whether to do a cohort or not?
40:06
SPEAKER_01: For example, if you're doing like a very specific workshop that's like a 90-minute workshop or a 60-minute workshop that doesn't really require a cohort versus a topic that's more in-depth, like, for example, your book launch blueprint, which is like a that involves multiple layers of information and it's a lot of parts and all that stuff.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: Does that also factor into that decision, I would assume?
40:28
SPEAKER_00: It does.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: Also, some of my smaller courses are a part of my bigger courses.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, we have a small course called How to Get Booked as a podcast guest.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: And it's got training on how to find podcasts, how to pitch them.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: It's got a template of exactly what to say.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: And then it's got a whole like a media training section on how to do a good job on the interview, all that sort of thing.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: So it's a very focused course.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: And it's not a part of a cohort, but it is a part of the book launch blueprint.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: So if you sign up for the book launch blueprint, this course is bundled in.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: And on the media day, you go through the how to get booked as a podcast guest course.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: There's additional material if you're in the book launch blueprint, and of course, there's the live QA and the office hours and all of that.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the homework.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: But it's the how to get booked as a podcast guest course is also a popular standalone course.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: Right.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: People will just take that and they don't want it to be a cohort if they've got an interview on Tuesday, and they're gonna skip the whole first section on how to get their uh how to get booked, right?
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Because if they have an interview on Tuesday, they need to go straight to the how do I look good on camera, how do I sound good in their microphone section, right?
41:40
SPEAKER_00: They and having a self-forced element, self-paced element is really beneficial in that context because they want to go fast because that motivation is coming from an external source, uh, their interview on Tuesday.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: I want to come back to the book launch blueprint here in just a minute, uh, because I know you're getting ready to offer that again really soon.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: Um let me sidetrack us for a minute, because I want to ask you about this, uh, about doing live events, retreats, conferences, that kind of a thing.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: So this is something I'm right in the middle of in my own business.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: I've done a couple of live retreats, small retreats so far.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, my experience was that they were a lot of work to put together.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: Um I only have done a couple of them, so I don't have a lot of experience to speak from.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: They weren't really highly profitable.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: Actually, the first one I lost money on, which I was I had planned it into my business budget because I wanted to just get my feet wet.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: The second one I didn't make that much on, I made a little bit.
42:38
SPEAKER_01: But I found them to be really tiring to plan, but also very exhilarating.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: And the people who came to those really, really loved those.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to figure out what place should live events occupy in my own profitable rider business.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I know you you just wrapped up a live event, and so I'm curious if you can share anything about what you have learned about events and how how should how should an author know whether to make that a part of their business?
43:05
SPEAKER_00: So live events are a lot like courses in many ways.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: And some of my advice is actually the same, right?
43:10
SPEAKER_00: Before you do the live event, you do the the sales page and see if anyone will sign up for it.
43:15
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's exactly what we did for the novel marketing conference.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: Created a Kickstarter.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't like a$500 goal Kickstarter of like, you know, for sure this is gonna happen.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: The goal was I don't know,$10,000 or$20,000.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: It was a sizable goal.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: And the goal for the Kickstarter was based off of what I anticipated the break-even to be for the conference.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: That's smart.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm providing for my family, I'm the only breadwinner, I have a lot of little children, so it's a lot of mouths to feed, and I can't afford to do the normal thing like what you did, which is you know, lose money for a few years leading up to what ultimately becomes a very profitable conference.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: And and that's that's normal because it's hard to have a conference be profitable the very first year.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Um and so I put it on Kickstarter.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: And what helped me was that novel marketing is the longest running book marketing podcast in the world.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: So we've had people in the community for 10 plus years.
44:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I have a kind of an unfair advantage in that the community is already existing and it's an event for the community.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, even with all of that, it was less profitable than if I had put that same effort into a course.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: Because the course is just so much higher margin.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: Conferences have real costs of lodging for volunteers or for staff, paying to fly in speakers, um, paying for the venue, paying for the food.
44:48
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of uh logistical details to keep track of.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: I had a great team.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: I was able to use my team for producing the podcast.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: We're the same people who produced the conference.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: So uh my producer was there, my blog, the person who wrote the blog post, she was there, and they worked really hard to help the conference happen.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, they were paid, right?
45:08
SPEAKER_00: That's another cost for the conference.
45:11
SPEAKER_00: Um the thing about conferences and live events is that they have a much higher break-even point.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: They can become incredibly profitable, but you often need hundreds of people to make a live event super profitable.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: But it depends on your cost structure as well.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: So one kind of live event is the uh Mastermind Gathering style live event.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: And I've seen um people, I have not charged for this kind of event before.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: I've I've hosted some, uh, but not on a paid basis.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: And this is where you have like 12 people and an Airbed, Airbnb, and you charge, you know,$1,000,$1,500 for several days of very personalized um event.
45:57
SPEAKER_00: And you're with this kind of event, you're targeting a kind of a higher net worth person or at least a higher uh wealth person.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: Because that's a lot of money, right?
46:05
SPEAKER_00: If someone's gonna pay$1,500 to come to a retreat, uh they're not paying$1,500.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: They're also away from work that number of days and they're paying for an airplane.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: Um one tip for this kind of event is you want to host it in a city with a hub, airport, to reduce that flight cost, right?
46:23
SPEAKER_00: So you're looking at Chicago, Denver, Dallas Fort Worth, Atlanta, right?
46:29
SPEAKER_00: The kind of uh cities that have an airport that has direct flights to everywhere.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: So that will make it cheaper.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're gonna have to, you know, if it doesn't matter what city to do it in, do it in that kind of city.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: It's one way to reduce the cost.
46:43
SPEAKER_00: But still, it's a big financial commitment.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: So that's one kind of event.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, I actually have a whole episode on the different kinds of writers' events.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: Another is what's called a big room conference where everyone's in one room and there's a single track.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: That's what I hosted with the novel marketing conference.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: It was one big room, we had 100 people or just under 100 people, and um, every presentation was presented to every attendee.
47:06
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: And then you have a multi-track conference.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: And multi-track conferences, you have it's like a three-ring circus where there's multiple rooms and multiple presentations going on simultaneously.
47:18
SPEAKER_00: And those are almost impossible to do priv profitably.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: I I've been behind the scenes on those and I've seen people pull it off, but you need typically 250 attendees to be profitable, um, depending on your venue and how expensive the venue is.
47:33
SPEAKER_00: Some events they need 500 plus to be profitable because they're hosting it at some fancy hotel and it's just really expensive.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: Um so event again, hosting and running events is a profession, right?
47:50
SPEAKER_00: People do it for a living.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: It needs to be respected as a thing that people do for real.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just the sort of thing you can do on the spur of the moment.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: I listen to a bunch of podcast episodes by event coordinators leading up to our event.
48:06
SPEAKER_00: And I've been dabbling with it for 10 years, hosting and helping with various kinds of events.
48:13
SPEAKER_00: And this is actually an important principle for all of these things.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: There's something Jesus said about spiritual things that I think applies to business things.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: And he said in the King James word is something like, until you are faithful with that which is another man's, who will give you that which is your own?
48:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: Um that's good.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't normally read the King James, the King James version of that passage is stuck in my head.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: And that applies to a lot of these business principles, right?
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Before you can become a master blacksmith, you first must be an apprentice blacksmith, right?
48:45
SPEAKER_00: Until you can be a doctor, you must first be a resident.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: And um, volunteering for somebody else's conference, working on someone else's podcast, uh, helping edit somebody else's book, all of these things get you paid money or paid experience or both.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: And it's a really beneficial thing.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: So being behind the scenes for a lot of conferences as a speaker helped give me an education on how conferences run.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: So that when I ran one, I had opinions about how it was to be done and how to make it easier to run and and to keep it simple, right?
49:23
SPEAKER_00: Come at least for the novel marketing conference, we kept the conference itself very simple in terms of complexity, right?
49:30
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's doing one thing at the same time.
49:32
SPEAKER_00: And that that helped.
49:33
SPEAKER_00: But that came from me being at lots of really complicated conferences that required like training just to learn how to do the conference because there's a three-ring circus, and if you're not sure what to do next, it's really easy to get lost, right?
49:48
SPEAKER_01: That is a brilliant principle.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Um that's a really, really brilliant principle that you shared about being part of somebody else's thing before you try to do your own thing.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: That is exactly why I think doing if you want to be successful with your own books, writing for other people can be so immensely helpful.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, not only can you make money a lot faster by doing stuff like ghostwriting or editing or whatever else, you also learn a lot.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of writers sort of resist this idea of doing client work because there's, you know, in in the writing world, there's there's such a huge impulse to like be the author and be the one who's doing the book launch and being the one who's got the number one bestseller and and all these kinds of emotional attachments that so many writers have to being an quote unquote being an author.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: But you learn so much doing work with other authors and helping them with their book launches.
50:44
SPEAKER_01: Gosh, I I think I must have written almost a thousand show notes, podcasts, episodes worth of show notes for clients before I started ghostwriting.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: And I got really, really fast and really, really good at it.
50:57
SPEAKER_01: This was before the days of AI.
50:59
SPEAKER_01: And that was invaluable training.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: It really were really was helpful.
51:02
SPEAKER_01: So I'm so glad you mentioned that.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: And I love the idea of volunteering for other people's conferences and hanging around what they're doing to kind of learn from them and see their mistakes or see what they're doing well.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: That's that's really genius.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: That's good.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, and it's connects to another principle.
51:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm quoting Jesus a lot, I realize, but a lot of what he had to say applies with business.
51:20
SPEAKER_00: He said a lot of good things.
51:21
SPEAKER_00: Being faithful with the little things helps to be faithful with the big things, right?
51:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:25
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't imagine better practice for being a ghostwriter than putting together podcast show notes.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: Right.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: Because you're taking audio, rough, uncut, unformed audio, and you're honing it, you're focusing it, and you're publishing it publicly for public criticism, ridicule, and praise.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: And right, that that's real practice.
51:45
SPEAKER_00: That is deliberate practice, and that helps you get better faster and in very small, bite-sized ways.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: One of the courses that we have is the five-year plan.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: And the five-year plan is basically this read a book on craft and then write a short story, practicing that book on craft, and next month do it again for five years.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
52:10
SPEAKER_00: We say what book to read, and we teach some marketing things in there as well.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: But like that principle of being faithful in the little things and writing short stories and getting feedback on those short stories, most people skip that, right?
52:22
SPEAKER_00: They want to go straight to the novel and they want to go straight to getting edits on the novel and publishing the novel, and they haven't done the little things yet.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: And often when you skip the little things, you skip the little failures, and you end up having to learn from the big failures.
52:36
SPEAKER_00: And that's a way more expensive way to learn.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: That's a great principle.
52:40
SPEAKER_01: I've never heard anybody put it that way before.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: Actually, that's so I remember John Maxwell taught one time in one of his Enjoy Life lessons from years ago, talked about get your train wreck out of the way early.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: Because you're going to have a train wreck, probably multiple train wrecks in your life.
52:57
SPEAKER_01: So get that first one done early so you can learn some humility and learn some good lessons.
53:01
SPEAKER_01: Because you don't want to have a train wreck when you're 45 or when you're 40 or you're 60, because then it's devastating.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: In Silicon Valley, they call this failing fast.
53:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:14
SPEAKER_00: It's getting that hard feedback from the market.
53:17
unknown: Yeah.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: Twitter started off as a podcasting company.
53:21
SPEAKER_00: I did not know that.
53:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:23
SPEAKER_00: They were an RSS-based podcasting company and they pivoted into becoming a micro blogging company.
53:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh so their fast failure was learning that you can't monetize a network with podcasting.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: And so they pivoted into something else that became its own thing.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: And now they're going through another pivot where Elon Musk is going to try to turn them into the everything app, like what they have with uh some of these apps in China.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: So we'll see if that works, if he's able to create an everything app.
53:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yeah, that fast failure allowed them to realize what they were doing wasn't working and then they needed to pivot into something else.
54:00
SPEAKER_01: I remember when I was teaching college, uh, I don't know when, I don't know what year Twitter launched.
54:05
SPEAKER_01: Was it what, 2008, 9, 10, something, sometime around there?
54:11
SPEAKER_01: And I had a student in my class, he was like always into the cutting-edge stuff, and I I distinctly remember this.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: He came into class one day and he was talking about, oh, there's this new thing called Twitter.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like Facebook a little bit, but it's really different.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, and and you don't just write something on there, you tweet something, and I just thought, that is the absolute stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: Why in the world would anybody want to do that?
54:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, it shows what I know.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it became a huge thing.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes you just never know when something's gonna catch on, I guess.
54:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, now it determines who the next president's gonna be.
54:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, isn't that crazy?
54:43
SPEAKER_01: It's like, wow, the uh the influence of these things have.
54:46
SPEAKER_01: Before we wrap up, Thomas, I would love for you to share about the book launch blueprint, which is a really cool thing you have going on.
54:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh, what is it and how can people get involved in it?
54:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this is our course where we teach how to launch a book using the novel marketing book launch method.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: And uh we've had uh incredible results of our students going through this.
55:06
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I just got emailed a week and a half ago.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: One of our alumni uh just became a New York, or sorry, a uh category bestseller.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: So she's a number one new release in her category.
55:18
SPEAKER_00: And that's the goal.
55:20
SPEAKER_00: So the goal isn't to become a New York Times bestselling book, because that's actually not possible for most books, purely based off of the editorial guidelines for the New York Times bestseller list.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: They exclude a lot of books for various reasons.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: So it's not a true bestseller list in terms of numbers, and it's um heavily curated.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't believe me, it's not even really a legit bestseller list, but that's another topic.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, that was their defense in the Supreme Court case.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: It actually went all the way to court in the all the way to the Supreme Court in the 80s.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, we're not a real bestseller list, we're an editorial um list.
55:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh but the Amazon list is more algorithmic and you can earn your way there with a really strong launch.
56:01
SPEAKER_00: And the the goal is to have a strong enough launch where you can get that number one new release badge.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: So the fact that you don't have very many reviews isn't counted against you.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: Because if you've got a badge that says number one new release or number one bestseller in your category, nobody cares how many reviews you have.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: And so you use that time to get as many sales as possible, to get as many reviews as possible, and hopefully get as much word of mouth as possible.
56:26
SPEAKER_00: So ultimately, what makes a book sell is word of mouth.
56:30
SPEAKER_00: But the only way to get word of mouth is to get enough people talking and people outside of your social circle.
56:37
SPEAKER_00: Because one thing that dooms some books is that the author is stuck in a social bubble of either a geographic bubble or a psychographic bubble or whatever.
56:49
SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot smaller than they realized.
56:51
SPEAKER_00: And once everyone in that bubble finds out about their book, word of mouth kind of stops working.
56:56
SPEAKER_00: They have to find those other pawns to throw stones into, and they often don't know that they need to do that or how.
57:03
SPEAKER_00: And ideally, what you want is you want all of those pawns talking all at the same time, right?
57:07
SPEAKER_00: You want to get that wave going, that avalanche kicked off.
57:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we teach in the book launch blueprint.
57:14
SPEAKER_00: We teach how to prepare for the launch and then how to execute the launch really well.
57:19
SPEAKER_00: And it's our one cohort model course.
57:21
SPEAKER_00: I teach it with Christy Hall of Fame author James Rhubart, who's retiring from the course.
57:27
SPEAKER_00: The thing about the course being so much work for us putting it on, all that interactivity is that it's a lot of work.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: And so he's retiring.
57:33
SPEAKER_00: So after this year, the book launch blueprint is going away.
57:36
SPEAKER_00: So, those of you listening to this episode in the future, this is not gonna be a course you'll be able to buy.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: But you can still buy it.
57:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh registration ends, I think, April 12th, 2024.
57:47
SPEAKER_00: And uh the first day is April 15th.
57:51
SPEAKER_00: And everyone's gonna do day one together, everyone's gonna do day two together.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of four weeks, you will have a customized book launch plan for you for your book that plays to your strengths, avoids your weaknesses, and sets your book up for success.
58:06
SPEAKER_01: And how can people find uh find out more about that and uh sign up for it?
58:11
SPEAKER_00: You can go to booklaunch.fun or perhaps you can put a link in the show notes.
58:16
SPEAKER_00: You can also find it at authormedia.com slash courses.
58:21
SPEAKER_01: Did you say dot fun, like F-U-N?
58:23
SPEAKER_01: What is that?
58:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh what country code is that?
58:26
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's one of the new TLDs uh top level.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, we're trying to try to make book launches fun.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
58:35
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
58:36
SPEAKER_01: Well, Thomas, thanks so much.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: This has been an absolute blast having you on.
58:39
SPEAKER_01: This is fulfilling one of the little things I've been wanting to do for years, so now we have made it possible.
58:44
SPEAKER_01: So thanks for making time to be on the show.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: I was just on your show last week, so these will probably release within the same few weeks, I imagine.
58:51
SPEAKER_01: So thanks for the cool podcast, Pop.
58:53
SPEAKER_01: It's been a blast and appreciate all that you're doing for authors.
58:56
SPEAKER_00: This has been a lot of fun, and thank you, thank you for having me.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for helping authors learn how to make money doing this because it's really easy to lose money uh in this industry.
59:06
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
59:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, the old joke is how do you make a small fortune in publishing?
59:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, you start off with a large fortune.
59:12
SPEAKER_00: So learning how to do it profitably uh is really important.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a good joke.
59:18
SPEAKER_00: It isn't it's a joke so old it's new again.
59:21
SPEAKER_00: I've never heard of it before.
59:23
SPEAKER_00: I think I want to say that joke is 50 or 60 years old.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's hilarious.
59:28
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
59:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's been true for a very long time.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: That that is very true.
59:32
SPEAKER_01: Even literally today, uh obviously I'm not gonna name what the book project is, but I was talking to a literary agent about a potential client project.
59:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't do a lot of traditional publishing stuff, but this one sort of came out of left field.
59:46
SPEAKER_01: So I was talking to the agent, she's gonna shop this book around to all the big publishers and whatnot.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm contract I'm contracting with them to do a proposal first.
59:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was interesting because even in the conversations, uh sort of the the dialogue was, you know, the book is probably uh there's a good chance it's not gonna even make its advance back.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's kind of a niche book on a on a niche topic.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: So there's a good chance, you know, it's not gonna be like this big hit, but it's really, really important to the author.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting, like even within like the psychology of publishing itself, there's sort of the expectation of not having a lot of success all the time.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: And so it's kind of crazy.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_01: So uh but that that's part of it, you know.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: We we do this partly because we're passionate about it, because we love it.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_01: And if we can make some money at it, that's awesome too.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_00: And the more you think outside of the book royalty, the ways you'll find to make money.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_01: That's right, which is what this whole episode's been about.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_01: So thanks for taking us down this road.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: This has been enormously helpful.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for having me.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope you took notes during that conversation because Thomas dropped a ton of wisdom on monetizing your author platform and diversifying your income streams as a writer.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_01: I want to thank Thomas for taking time to be a guest today on this episode.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: He's a really busy guy, and I really appreciate him taking the time to share his wisdom with a profitable writer audience.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_01: Now, for everybody listening, make sure and visit his two sites, authormedia.com, where there is a wealth of resources for authors, and then his personal website, ThomasUmstadt.com.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_01: Both of those links are in the show notes.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: Hey, as always, thanks so much for listening.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate you taking time to listen to this episode.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: And I hope you had as much fun as I did listening to the conversation as I did conducting it with Thomas.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: Really, really good stuff.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_01: Hey, my friend, as always, I appreciate you so much, and I'll see you in the next episode.