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Books4Guys - Chris "Mini Book Guy" Stanley · Books4Guys

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're in Key West.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are you on your boat as we speak?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: As I speak, I'm actually in my schoolie bus in North Carolina.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Typically, my wife and I and our kids are on a sailboat.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's our primary mode of living and transportation normally.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this season, we're actually fixing the boat up here in North Carolina.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so we're actually on our schoolie bus that we converted at the in-laws property right around from where we're working on the boat.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, full-time nomadic.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what I'm at about.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I actually didn't know that about you until I was kind of like reading through your bio and it said you lived on a sailboat.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, yeah, that's awesome.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we really like it.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: It uh we like feeling small in the big world because too often we kind of get really big in our own heads, you know, and you're like, my problems are so important.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: My world is like so there's so much pressure.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking about that this morning with my wife.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it feels like my problems are so big, and then you're like, wait a second, I'm out in the middle of the ocean or I'm traveling at two miles an hour because the wind isn't working today.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Really, am I even a blip on this radar?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so it kind of like puts it into perspective, like whatever.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just whatever.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Go with the wind, go with the flow.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love that approach.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: I love that approach.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I need to do better about that, and a lot of other people probably do too.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I I guess moral of the story, we need to go live on a boat.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go do it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but no, Chris, man, I'm excited to talk with you because I I saw a lot of your post on LinkedIn.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't, to be honest, I don't even know how I came across your profile or how you showed up on my feed, but you started to over and over, and I noticed you were talking about publishing books and specifically mini books.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I started doing some research and I was like, dang, Chris has published like 30 books, and then you were talking about, you know, essentially like teaching others how to do the same thing.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got I found your website and categorypublishing.com, and I was just looking into it, and I was like, man, this is like a whole niche of a style of book.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted you to just start by breaking down what category publishing is and just your story of getting involved with it and writing many books and then also helping coach others on doing the same thing.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like a boring dictionary description.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll kind of give the real high overview to where it kind of makes sense, like the real backstory.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, now it's not as sexy, but it actually makes logical sense.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, this is not something out of thin air.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was an insurance adjuster by trade.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went and looked at damaged vehicles.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I did for a living.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I started writing about that about eight years into being an adjuster.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you know what?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start an online business.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And someone said, you should teach people how to make money the way you're making money.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that's boring.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody would ever listen.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I finally listened to this mentor, started a company online, um, and started training people how to do what I did.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew everyone says you got to write a book, you got to write a book, you got to write a book.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I did, but I wrote a really short book and I didn't know what to call it then.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a 10,000-word book within the first year of being open that like made everything click.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just was like nause to me in my mind.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: It like organized everything.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then it also was nost to everybody I was talking to.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It just made everything make sense to them.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started like organizing my whole business just around the framework of the book to be like, well, if it's not in there, we don't need to talk about it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it just started giving me this, this real guide rails, basically.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that was like, oh my gosh, like almost 10 years ago now.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I started writing more and more books, some of them traditional length, 40,000 words, other ones shorter, like 10,000 words.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, there's something here about these short books.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I heard somebody use the term mini book.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, mini book?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: What's this?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I asked them, I was like, are you using this in any other capacity?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are you going to teach people how to do this?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, no.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: There was the category pirates, is who it was.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they teach category design.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, well, mini books makes way more sense for business owners to write in my head than like an 80,000-word tome that I'll never finish.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just write something quick.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was kind of the evolution.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, hey, I've ran a business, wrote a book for it, it helped it.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It grew to$750,000 a year as an online business.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And primarily it was centered around that mini book.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started talking about mini books and how it helped me.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of like how we got to today.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to go into category publishing, we can't.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole nother ball of yarn, but I can do it pretty quick.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's kind of the story of how it makes sense.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, I see.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you just like you get to the point.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Get to the point of what you're trying to say or teach instead of having the traditional gotta fill out 40,000 words or 50,000 words to make it a traditional book.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's just here's the punch lines, here's what you need to know, here's what we're putting together.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Which does take a lot of fun.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you've read Atomic Habits, the first time I read that book, amazing book, no knock on James Clear ever will come out of my mouth.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the first time I read it as a guy, and I bet there's other guys who are listening to this who have done this, you get about 20% in, 25% in, and you're like, I know the rest of the book.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the meat of what he was saying, the big unlock of the new way of thinking.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I don't want to read 75% of case studies or stories about somebody doing this.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go do this myself.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: So MiniBooks is kind of like just cutting that out and saying, here's the meat and potatoes.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's skip the frills.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's no nice silverware.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just to go go do it, you know?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So who are the people that you work?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: You were talking about like business leaders, which that makes a lot of sense.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like you don't have a lot of time, but you've got a specific set of knowledge that you'd like to put out there and share that gives you more credibility to what you do.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: But how do people, I don't know, how do people find you?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you coach like what type of people are you coaching to get their book created and put out there?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it kind of ranges, which is where category publishing comes from.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll dovetail in nicely to your original question.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like I work with people that are just starting their business out.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh my gosh, I don't want to start and I have no reason to start a business, right?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've been a guy, it's like I've been cleaning barbecue grills for 12 years.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think I could write a book on that and start a business teaching people how to start this type of business, right?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sound familiar to my story, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, here's how I make money, here's how you can make money to other people.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I worked with him, but then I also am working right now with a billion-dollar company who is trying to do something really big and different, and they want to explain it to people in a way that's easy, portable.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in my words, they're creating a new category, a new way of thinking, and now we're helping them publish it.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where category publishing comes in.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Barbecue guy, he's saying, hey, here's a new type of business no one thinks about.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let me create that category and I'll be thought of as the leader of it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's category publishing, it's like a new way of thinking put in print to where now I'm thought of as the leader, even if I'm not.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because the reality is UC MiniBook model, when you go look up my name or these books, I wrote that in three days after I talked with category pirates and said, Are you going to do anything with this?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: They said, No, go after it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote the book on what I had done and how I did it.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then two years later, I look up, it had like 60 or 70 reviews, something like that.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And people started calling me the mini book guy.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was running another company.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't doing anything with it.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I was suddenly thought of as if you want to write a mini book like these guys, this is the one who'll teach you how to do that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And all I did was write a book on it and done it myself, obviously.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the thought process.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Is it, does it, does it kind of blow your mind when you look back at it now and you're just like, how did I become the mini book guy?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I still am like, I did a post today.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you look up LinkedIn, it's like, you know, I started calling myself the mini book guy when people started saying, hey, he's the guy for mini books.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, but I I don't think that's where I'm going to stay forever.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's been this weird little intersection of like mini books.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is it's not even a thing.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's not.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's different, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Which was what I was after.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted something different to call my own and to really dive in and be able to craft something, determine what is a mini book word count.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hint, it's five to fifteen thousand words.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: That was my definition, right?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Others have other definitions, but it's like, this is the definition because I wrote the book on it.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is wild to think that in this day and age that we're able to do that.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Write a book in three days, publish it, and people then know you for that.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And do you do all of that on Amazon for the most part?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Primarily.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: I see you post a lot about Amazon and how that's like the platform to do that on.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like how I always ask people this too.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of authors who aren't like big name authors, obviously, like the traditional route working with publishing companies is so hard.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: But Amazon opened up a whole new world for people that could to do some of this.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: But talk about just like the importance of Amazon to your business and like how that's helped create a niche for this specific, you know, mini books.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, like Amazon is like the democratization or democratization, there's the right way to say it, of the internet, right?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, oh, it's a government project they use.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was like AOL democratized it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, whoa, we can all do this now.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is cool.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, publishing was kind of like that locked thing that like you had to be on the in, you had to be really small people selected on the in crowd, but Amazon came along and said, we'll let anybody print a book and have it.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it's not just my niche, but it's like every niche benefits from this because now it's like showing up in Walmart in the old days.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the comparison, right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like back in the day, if you get your product in Walmart, you've won, you've made it, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now for anyone, you could say, Hey, I wrote a book, spent some time with it, made it look good, and put it on Amazon.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, people don't know most of the time you from anybody else on there.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you now have this ultimate play level playing field that's like, what's holding me back?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that it really takes away that excuse for all of us to say, Well, I don't have a book.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you could, you could take a little bit of time and you could have a book a lot faster than you think.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: When you work, because I and again, I I love talking to authors and and I learn a lot.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: When you go this route, are all your books digital or is there print versions available?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like how does that work going through Amazon?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I'll answer that question.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Amazon has a print function on it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you can you build kind of different formats.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's the ebook version, which goes on to Kindle, and then there's the um the print version, hardback or paperback.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You could do either one.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: You got yours, I got my Kindle.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that you can print on demand.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the cool thing is like people always think, and I talked to somebody the other day, she's like, I spent$7,000 to get my book made.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then she's like, and now I have all these books in my garage and I want to write my second book.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband's like, you gotta move all the copies of that first book.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta sell them all before I let you write the second book.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, why would you own boxes of books?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like Amazon literally, when someone when you go buy my book, they print it on demand and ship it to you.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: No upfront cost at all.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon's like, we'll do everything.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You just make the thing, put it on here, and we'll take care of all the production.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you design the cover, you get your book organized and put together, and then Amazon takes care of the rest if someone wants it to be.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Man, that's so interesting.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: It like blows my mind.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, it makes sense, but I get I just didn't know that was possible.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know if it was all digital or if they did print on demand in the same way.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So right, and if you need help with it, that's what this book is about.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can see the barcodes and everything.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Mini book publishing.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just work for mini books, it's the same process.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just was specifically talking about mini books, but it's the same process.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's just how do you publish a book to Amazon?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're working with people, do you primarily, and you may do a little bit of both, but do you actually write the business or the category that someone's working within, or do you coach them on how to do it themselves?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've done both.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I do both.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, like this last company, the big company I was talking about, they already had done all that hard work, hired big level consultants, and they're like, we just need you to write the book and make it a book.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: We just we already did the hard thinking.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to do it again.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: But can you write it?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know how to write a book.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yeah, let's do that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But most people, how I've worked with them is like, I'm like, okay, Chris, you want to create your own category, or even if it's not your own category like Uber and you know, on-demand taxis, basically, it could just be, you know, you're thought of differently.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do I want, how do you want to be thought of?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be known as the guy who helps guys find books.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's like, okay, well, how do we do that?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do we deconstruct that to where you're not just like every other book club out there and we act actually get in the nitty-gritty?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And usually talking with someone long enough, you find something they say that goes, ah, that was different.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Never heard that before.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I bet that's your superpower.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And let's tap into that and kind of create a whole new identity for them around that and then reassemble the pieces through that lens.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Man, this is cool.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I can hear like your passion and excitement around this.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's kind of the same way when someone starts asking me questions about books for guys, like I just go in.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh man, I'm so excited to talk to you about this.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I can see the same thing from you, which kind of leads me leads me to my next question is obviously a lot of this happened organically for you.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you did something and all of a sudden it's morphed into what all of this now.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's for you and your family?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you what's the coolest part, I guess, of doing this?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is it the the freedom of you know, to do whatever you want?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the opportunity to work with different people in different kinds of like just what is so exciting about it?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And like what, you know, what's the coolest part you would say?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think the coolest part is, like you said, the freedom to literally go wherever, do whatever, what we want.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like when we started the online company, I left a multiple six-figure paying job.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had almost nothing in the bank.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was an idiot.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be like me.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I left that great job and I said, I'm gonna go start this company because we all think our things are just gonna take off, right?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just boom, here we go.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I started, I know nothing, almost nothing.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think I know something.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I know nothing looking back.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this thing.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I start building it, and we're like down to literally hundreds of dollars.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And like my in-laws are like, hey, you can use our credit card, it's got 10,000 on it to keep afloat, literally, figuratively, until this thing takes off.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we lived in this weird space of like, I'm trying to start a business, get all the gig work online I can, tap into my old industry to make a little money here and there.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: But like that was the some of the funnest times for us was like just surviving, but it's not about money.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was like this is what we think we're supposed to do.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're passionate about it, we're excited about it.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: It enabled us to move and travel within reason of what we had financially available to us.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think kind of like the epitome example of that when it comes to books is I wrote a book called God Is Like a Geyser.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it is all about our travels in Yellowstone.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we went out to Yellowstone, planned to be there two days, spent two months there.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: We stayed two months after we planned to be there for two days because we could, because we would just travel full time.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I fell in love with geysers, and I had no idea it was like what Yellowstone was like, and I just was so enamored with it.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I set out to write a book about it.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't work out, so I pivoted it to this other book and turned it into a Christian devotional, and it's all about that.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: But when I got it done, I knew this was more of a mass market appeal than an adjusting book, right?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's like thousands of us adjusters, there's like millions who might be interested in Yellowstone.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up pushing it uh through some book promotion sites like Book Bub, and I got selected and promoted, and we left CellSignal with our sailboat knowing this m huge advertisement was going out.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: We were gonna be out of CellSignal.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have Starlink, this is before Starlink.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like, we're gonna be in the middle of an island, the dry Tortuga's have no idea how this did, and then come back days later.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: 20,000 books had moved.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we were like, what?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: 20,000 people just got our book.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is crazy to me.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was in the middle of the ocean and 20,000 books went out, and I did nothing other than pay them some money and uploaded a link.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's the internet dream, so to speak.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you're just like, it's crazy that that can actually happen.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, isn't it so cool?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've talked to a few other people, kind of similar.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're in that that space of we're almost not gonna make it, but we know what we're doing is the right thing to do.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, you know where you're headed.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: You truly believe that's that's where you're supposed to go.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you you experience that.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: You guys were like, all right, I know.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, for everyone listening, you know, you like you hear people talk numbers and and you hear the success stories.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm doing bunny quotes outside my camera if you can't see success stories.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And people don't realize like most entrepreneurs, once they start making decent money, they are taking bigger risks and reinvestment and like hiring teams.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And like, I have a team of people running my adjusting company, and then like they they hear the success stories, but they don't realize like the risk and the leverage changes.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, you think one day I'll just be so comfortable, I'll be comfortable.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you get comfortable, especially us guys, what do we do?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, where's the bigger weight?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go bigger, right?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want to climb up a taller mountain.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the same in business.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I tell everybody give yourself three years.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you believe in an idea, plan on three years.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the AI time frame, that sounds like an eternity.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Point a direction for three years.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: It might pivot what the product is or the book looks like, but go one direction for three years.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna learn so much.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're always shifting, it's so hard to like grab on to that and see what progress you're actually making.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're all we're looking at too small a time horizon.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you hit on two points there.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh obviously the one where like life is short.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta have purpose.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you can't, everyone always talks about making it and then sitting on the beach, and then you hear people are gonna like, yeah, what's next?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is cool for a couple of weeks, but you know, I can't do this forever.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I was gonna ask you as well.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: You were talking about like you have a team now, because I was gonna ask, when you put books out there, I and I don't know if Amazon helps with this, but and obviously the more you do, the more people follow you, it's a little bit easier to market and let know.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: But like I was curious to know from a marketing standpoint, how you specifically promote your book or like your next book.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Is it all organic now, or do you actually do like I wish.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you you think like I've written nine insurance adjuster books, and each one, like the second one was the one that really went really good, and it really gave me the framework to build on.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: But each one did pretty good.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Book number three did really good, and then it was like the other ones kind of were hit and miss, but they were just questions I kept getting that I didn't want to keep answering.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you want to know how to do a resume?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go find out, write the book on it, and now I never have to talk about this again.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the book on it, right?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it actually, each book didn't naturally do better.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, I think this is important for business owners to realize too, just because one book hits or one book doesn't hit, doesn't mean the next one will or will not.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And with book marketing, Amazon is not as much interested pushing you as an author as it is its platform.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: So if there's a better author that's like bigger that will for sure make more sales, they're not gonna push you naturally or organically, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: You might bring them 200 sales, James Clear is gonna give them 2000 without a blink, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just so you can't count on organic, especially us small e entrepreneur authors.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So what I do is I call it the lazy uh book marketing method, and that's like my next book is called the lazy book launch model.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, I I can't like I do one podcast a month for mini books.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's it, you're it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I will not book another one for at least 30 days because I I just can't.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: The capacity isn't there.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you get so much energy and excitement because I'm like, I finally get to talk about this.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to find a way to market that was manageable in a few minutes a day, basically 15 to 30 minutes a week.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I could just find the system and do that.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I've spent literally years trying different things, and I'm like, that's too exhausting, that costs too much money.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have no control over that.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've kind of found my groove that I've started teaching others, and it primarily revolves around book bub ads.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if anybody knows much about that platform, basically book bub.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is a daily email that goes out of book deals.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a discounted book list.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And by buying ads in that, you're targeting right to a reader rather than social media to everybody.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm able to know you read books in this genre.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have a good shot at this person.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is my target market almost guaranteed.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, that's where it primarily centers around.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the lazy method because I don't want to have to do a hundred podcast episodes for a book launch.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: I can't.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: I got a family, I travel full-time, I have a company I have to run.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's primarily how I do it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's cool to know.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe, you know, maybe as you got started, maybe you did put more effort and time in and to do get to a certain point.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: But then yeah, your bandwidth, when you hit a certain level, you you just don't have as much.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy when you're busy, like how fast your days go by.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: How do you keep up with, and I always love asking that question too, is like, especially people that have like families and you've got other responsibilities, like how do you manage and balance your day?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like you've actually like hired some help too that help you with certain things.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: But you, I mean, you're still primarily hands-on and into a lot of it, it seems as well.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the team handles my primary company and the day-to-day operations.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I am the shiny object syndrome to like the 10th degree.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's why money books are perfect for me.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Go write a book on it, leave everybody else alone.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, don't change the company.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to talk about it, go write a book and leave them alone, right?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I am marketing and then I am like the personality per se behind it.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm still very much involved, but it's not let's grade homework, let's assign homework, let's answer every phone call.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I can't do that and run the company and do payroll.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like I do that stuff, you know, like more CEO like stuff now.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then um on the mini book side, I am um you hit on something.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to hit on something.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, day daily schedule.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, the big thing that I found is I have a team of contractors primarily that I work with who do individual tasks, like you grade the homework, you assign the homework, you don't mix.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, you might help pass them along, but you know your job's doing well and they're doing better than me.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I walk meet with them once a month.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: One time a month, that's it.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I have almost nothing on my calendar ever.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't schedule calls, like everyone's like, let's do a five-minute LinkedIn chat.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, like I can't.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: If I leave my calendar open primarily because we travel, but also for the bandwidth issue, I am the marketing and direction for that company.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And for my mini book now category publishing business, I am the same, right?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: I am like the project person.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I need that lots of time allocated to say, like, what are we doing?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go work on this book, on this project.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna translate this into Spanish.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna now go after this market, and that just takes time.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than being busy, which sometimes I feel exhaustedly busy, I'm trying to be three big balls moving forward.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Stay ultra focused on what you need to focus on at that time before you take on any other responsibility.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: No, that makes a lot of sense.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, no, well, Chris, I I've got, man, this is so enlightening.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, I was so curious to know more about just how this all worked because you're the only person I've seen do this, you know, and I've I've interviewed a lot of authors and a lot of people uh in this space now, so it's so interesting.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I've got one final question for you because I want to be respectful of your time.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: You got a lot going on, and I appreciate us being asked you do for the month.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: But from a, I always ask people this question, and uh maybe it's a difficult one for you, but as a writer and and a reader, what is a book or two that has had a very positive impact on you, either personally or professionally?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then what is a book that if someone like me, hey, Chris, I I need a I need a book recommendation.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: What's one or two that you like to recommend to other people?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, most influential book for me, outside of Bible and religious things, I would say, is Play Bigger by Al Ramadan, Christopher Lockhead, Kevin Maney, Dave Peterson.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that book is what I read in 2016 when I was starting my business.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all about category design, how you go and you don't just create the same thing as everybody else and compete.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: You create a whole new game.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's so you're gonna play bigger, right?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's now your game, you understand it, ins and outs.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I read that and I literally used it as the playbook for starting my company.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it took longer, I think, to get to revenue than some of the culture hacks sometimes we see, like, oh, I'm gonna do book talk and I'm gonna like burn books and sell a few copies and maybe a course real quick.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: This was like intentionally designing something new that then now people say, Oh, you're the only and for sure, the best choice for that.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that book, Play Bigger, changed my life.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: In book recommendation, that one, like seriously.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're like, no, I want something different for more modern, because 2016 feels like an eternity ago now.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: 26 version would be called the existing market trap.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Same author, Al Ramadan.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: He said he wished he had written that book first, and I actually got to do production on it.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he wrote the manuscript.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I got to work with my hero, him and Christopher Lockhead, take the raw manuscript, turn it into a book, watch him do bestseller crap with it.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a mini book.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a one-hour read that will change the way you see business.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm adding both of those my list.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right when you popped the first one off, I was like, Yep, need to have that one, need to have that one.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: So existing market trap is first.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: They call it the prequel.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: They pulled the Star Wars, they went backwards and did the prequel.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So crazy.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't feel like 2016 was 10 years ago when you really think about it, which is wild.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy though, when you it's like 10 years.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: That was a decade?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've been doing this a decade online.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in one hand, you measure it and you go, wow, this is crazy.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've you know done so much.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And on the other hand, you're like, a decade ago, I had one kid, now I've got three.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it just feels like in a decade from now, how am I gonna feel?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm gonna feel a lot older than I do right now.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, whoa, that's this is crazy fast.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Chris, where can people find you if they want to follow your work or if they're interested in potentially working with you?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, category publishers.com would be the best place to go, uh, at least currently.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you go to LinkedIn though and type in my name, Chris Stanley, type in the mini book guy, anything about mini books, you'll probably find it.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I would recommend that if anybody wants to read one rather than going on a deep dive about how to write a book, this one goes on a shallow dive.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've read this one yet, Chris.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is the one that started it all.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of like all of my books condensed into one.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And now I've been breaking them out one by one, like, oh, you want to go deep on what it's actually takes to write a book?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's a different book.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: But this one gives you enough to get you excited and to go, I think I could do that.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you could write a book just off of this one.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're interested in mini books, writing a short book, check it out.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Mini book model.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's actually the one we've got on the Books for Guys website so far.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Working on getting all the others on there.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, I was like, holy cow, Chris has a lot.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's all right.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you point them just to maybe one in the series, like the flagship, hey, mini book model, God is like a geyser.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: They can figure it out because I got like eight or nine in each of those series.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect, perfect.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll make sure all the links on how to find you and everything's in the episode details.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: But Chris, man, thank you so much.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully the boat gets back ready to be on the water sooner than later, and you guys can enjoy.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I could tell you're ready to get back out there.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Man, thank you so much for doing this.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: This was awesome.