Latest / The Expert Method / Why Great Books Fail to Find Readers
Transcript
- speaker-0: If you're selling books, you need to know who your target reader is. We're not talking to satisfy our own ego or satisfy our own desire to get it out there. We're talking to provide them with value. speaker-1: Why does the idea of getting super specific or getting niched down, as they say, why does that work? speaker-0: But if you're not clear on who your reader is, you're not gonna see the results. And that's why it could be a great book. It could be a five star across the board book. It might not sell. speaker-1: Today's guest is Lana McCara. Lana is an award-winning author and ghostwriter who has written over 50 books and sold over a million copies. She also runs Vendela Publishing and has spent decades helping authors write, publish, and market their work. In our conversation, we talk about why good books still fail to find readers and how getting clear on exactly who the book is for and putting that reader first in everything that you do helps authors build trust, sell more books. And create a body of work that people keep coming back to. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Lana Makara. Lana, thank you so much for being here. speaker-0: ⁓ what a exciting time. I'm so excited to be with ⁓ business owners. This is a little different for me and ⁓ I love it. speaker-1: Me too. Yeah, thanks for taking the time. So Lana, you've written and ghostwritten more than fifty books with over a million copies sold. So you've seen what happens when a book genuinely connects with the readers and finds the right audience and you know what it takes for a book to be successful. But in previous conversations and in your content, you've also made the point that quality alone isn't enough, right? Just a good book isn't the only thing required to to have a successful book. So why do good books fail to find readers? speaker-0: ⁓ there's a lot of layers to that, but I think there's some pretty simple principles that we can look at. ⁓ one of them is that the marketing for that book has to be targeted to the specific person. It's just like a product. If you're selling widgets, you have to know who your target audience is. And if you're selling books, you need to know who your target reader is. And if you're not clear on that, it's just like s shooting an arrow into the air, and if you're turned in the wrong direction, you no matter how good the arrow is, no matter how good anything is, it's just not going to hit the mark. And so you can be spending tons of money on ads and all of this email campaigns and and all these images and everything. But if you're not clear on who your reader is, you're not gonna see the results. And that's why it could be a great book. It could be a five star across the board book. It might not sell if you don't get that very ground floor basic thing. And for each book it's a little different. speaker-1: So at what point of the process do you try and achieve that clarity? Is it before you even kind of sit down and write so you have a clear picture on the person that you're writing to while you're writing the manuscript? Or at what point of the process are you trying to achieve that clarity of exactly who you're speaking to? speaker-0: Well it depends ⁓ on the on the writer. If it's a first time writer, then generally speaking, we would look at the material for the book that they are either in the process of writing. Most of the time when people come to to us, they have already got the book, you know, at least first draft done. ⁓ because they've been working on it and thinking about it. And then we kind of work backwards from there because then we want to put that ⁓ out to beta readers, we want to get feedback, we wanna look at if if this person has a business and who their target market is for their business, does it match the book? That kind of thing. The first intake that I do with a writer is what do you want to have happen? Do you want people to read this book and hire you? Or do you want people to read this book and tell their friends? Do you want people to read this book and do something else? So we need to get clear on the objectives. And then the feedback is going to help us to identify who the reader is. If this person has written a few books, it might be a little bit easier. And also before they start writing book number three or book number four, they need to be clear on who they're writing for because they're writing the book for the audience instead of trying to, you know, reverse engineer it and figure out who the book is for now that it's written. We wanna be very strategic and we wanna start marketing that book before it is even written. speaker-1: Yeah, and that idea of like pre marketing for a book is something that was brand new to me. We had a another conversation with a publisher ⁓ a few months ago and they talked about the idea that you should just and even again like your idea that you mentioned before, you should treat a book like a product, right? So when you're building a product or when you're writing a book, take the audience on the journey with you. Like, hey, just completed chapter one, right? Here's what I'm thinking. Kind of like get their feedback as you're writing. Same thing with your products, right? Like, hey, what do you think of this? Which color do you think would be better for this little widget? So kind of take the audience on the journey with you. Is that the kind of pre marketing that you would recommend an author d does? Just kind of like keeps takes them along the journey of their writing? speaker-0: Absolutely. And also get on Substack, put out some articles about the chapter you're working on. ⁓ use streaming for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Tell people, ⁓ I just finished chapter two today. I had this problem with it, and but I I pushed through and I found the answer. I mean, just take them on the journey in every aspect, content-wise, experience-wise, let them see your desk. I mean, do whatever you have to do to keep them engaged with you because what you're doing is you're we used to call this an old country term, priming the pump, where you are getting that momentum building ⁓ so that once the book comes out, a lot of people will be ready ⁓ and wanting it, eager for it. We recently had a ⁓ military veteran publish a memoir. about his ⁓ first deployment in Iraq and he had been doing that and he sold two hundred and fifty books within a couple of days, shot right up to bestseller, did not do any kind of strategic or, you know, the the pull and strings kind of stuff that people do to get number one. He had just been out there in all the groups talking about his book and when it was done and ready and published, it just shot right up. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. Get them ready. Get them prepared. Get them eager to buy your book. speaker-1: Prime the pump. I love that. That's gonna stick with me. ⁓ so I'd love to maybe take a couple of steps back with you and just explore the idea of why getting so specific works better. Because it feels like a paradox, right? Where it's like if you write a book that would resonate more broadly with people, at first glance you would think like, okay, that's probably the strategy to have more success. But why does the idea of getting super specific or getting niched down, as they say? Why does that work as opposed to writing for a mass audience? speaker-0: Your reader and your buyer for entrepreneurs needs to identify themselves as being someone that would really benefit. That's what I've been looking for. That's what they need to think. This is for me. I can use it right now. And that right now idea is important. ⁓ so buying decisions are made in the moment. And so the closer you can get to their interest level, where they are in their journey. If you're selling nonfiction, what exactly part of the journey are you coming into this person's life? I mean, where are they? Have they started a business? Are they trying to grow their business? Are they looking to scale? What are they doing if you're writing for entrepreneurs? But whatever it is, where are they in that journey? And if it's fiction, then you need to know what you're bringing to the table. You know, is my fantasy novel for this age level and this type of interest level because fantasy I mean you does it have dragons? Well if it has dragons then you have a certain type of person you're going to talk to. Some people like fantasy but they don't like dragons. And you need to know what it is. So the more narrow you can get the more success you will have because people will identify ⁓ that's something I want or ⁓ That's something I've been looking for. And they will click that button. It'll be a no brainer for them. If you're too general, they'll just like, ⁓ maybe one day. Not right now. You know, just like walking past the table at a fair, you know? We've seen ⁓ all do it. They just walk right on by because nothing pops out to them. Yeah. speaker-1: Right. And that idea of something that they need right now is new to me. But I think that's right on the money, right? It's like, okay, this is something that your reader or your prospective client needs to see and think to themselves, this is something that I need right now because this is going to solve a problem that I'm experiencing right now. Obviously that's maybe more relevant to the nonfiction category of books and the more speaking to products and services. That right now idea is is new to me. speaker-0: Hmm. Really good. I heard someone say that, I don't know, months ago. But a case in point comes up to me right now. I have been following this guy. I just found this guy on YouTube. He talks about scaling your business. And I'm right now in the process of preparing my publishing company for scale. And as soon as he was talking about scaling, I immediately keyed in on him. And now I'm binge watching him. I bought two books of this. ⁓ because I am interested in scaling. And so that is an example of why the right now is important. I'm motivated on the topic of scaling at this moment in my business journey, and that's where he is. So where are you? Where are you and what are you delivering with your book right now? speaker-1: Mm. I love it. And ⁓ part of me wants to kind of dive into kind of that full scope of that target audience picture, but I don't think that's super necessary. I think most people listening to this will have built out like an ICP profile, things like that before. So I think they can understand the scope. But I think something I'm more curious about is how does the clarity on who it is that you're speaking to or who it is that you're writing for actually translate into the content of the book? Right. So how does the clarity on who you're speaking to show up in is it like the whole topic of the book, I would imagine. Obviously that's probably going to be a big part of it, right? Like understanding who you're speaking to, who you want the reader to be, will in turn create the topic that you write about. But then like once you're writing, is there anything more than just like beyond the examples that you use and how the clarity on who you're speaking to shows up in the content on the page? speaker-0: ⁓ absolutely. It is so integral to what the content is. First of all, you have to think about what is the level of understanding that your reader has. If you're doing nonfiction, are you talking to somebody who's a rank beginner or someone who has been down the road and they're just looking to embellish on their knowledge right now? So how much vocabulary are you going to use? that they may not be familiar with, or maybe they're familiar with the vocabulary and you can use the acronyms and all the stuff and they're gonna get it, or maybe they won't. You need to know because we are communicating through language. So the language has to match. We need to know the intricacy of the detail that you're giving. Are you gonna give broad strokes and just give like a five point progression? Or maybe a 10-point progression, or are you gonna go and take one of those points and drill deep into it in this book? And maybe you'll have a series of 10 books on these 10 points. How are you going to approach it? And what is the level of explanation and example and all of that? Are you gonna talk on the fourth grade level or are you gonna talk on the college level? So a lot of this is so woven together. Are these people familiar with you or is this the first time you they'll ever see you? And you need to introduce yourself and put yourself into that a little bit with case studies and showing your expertise and that kind of thing. Or maybe they are seasoned and they know who you are. I'm sure Tony Robbins, any books he puts out, he doesn't have to introduce himself. ⁓ Not at all. ⁓ but you know, someone who's up and coming will need to put yourself in the book. And one ⁓ something else that has come up in conversation recently, so I'm going to throw this in here too. And that is on two separate occasions, two separate books that I ghost wrote for companies. Those companies said we need to take a pause on the writing because what we are uncovering in this material shows us that we need to pivot our business. Our entire business is headed toward the wrong audience. And we need to shift it over here. And when we're done, we're going to come back and shift the book to match our new focus. Because one of the things a book will do for you is it give you clarity on your process and on your target audience because you're talking through it, you're working through it, you're planning it, you're looking at what you're doing and it. And putting it in the book, and all of a sudden the light bulb goes off. Wait a minute. We and and for this particular company, they said, we have been targeting project managers. We need to be targeting the executor, the executives who managed the target man ⁓ managers. So they went to the to the executives level ⁓ as their ideal reader, and they had to pivot the entire book. But not only that, ⁓ my gosh, they disappeared for like four months and they came back with a brand new logo and I mean they just did it all, you know. I was so impressed. But that's what a book will do for you. We need to get that targeted to know exactly who we're talking to. Are they expert level? Are they very ranked beginners? Or maybe they are just new to it, but they know a little bit. And then deliver what they need, not what we want to deliver. We're not talking to satisfy our own ego or satisfy our own desire to get it out there. We're talking to provide them with value that will keep them coming back for more. So when book number two or number three comes out, they'll go, they'll go, I need that one too. I mean, you think about Malcolm Gladwell. The books he puts out. And once I got the Outliers book, I mean I'm hooked on Gladwell now. You know, whatever he's got, I want to see it. Because it really did resonate with me and with millions of other people too, by the way. So I mean, those books are not like high level college curriculum. They're they're very simple principles, but man, are they ever profound? So profound. speaker-1: Yeah. What I love about Malcolm Gladwell's books, and there's many authors who who write like this too, where they're just such interesting ideas that you never would have considered, right? It's kind of like alternative reasons for why things the way that they are, right? Especially in that outlier's book, it's like, okay, what actually creates an outlier? And there's just so many like interesting perspectives. Like the whole birthday thing has stuck with me. I've had that conversation many times about, you know, the average birthday. of professional NHL players, right? Like they're all seem to be born between October and November because they were, you know, older. But whatever. Like, yeah, I I I ⁓ love Malcolm Gladwell's books. But your point there that you mentioned about write what they need, right? Write for the audience and what they need. Serve the audience. Have them first. Not what you want to write and the things that you want to say, but what does your audience need? And then give them that in the book. And I think it's again the same thing applies to Business, right? With your services and products that you're offering. It's like you're gonna have this understanding, this perspective on like this is what we think they need or this is what we think we want to give them. But once you get real clarity on what your audience or your customers actually need, just give them that. But the last point that you brought up about, you know, once the company got into the process of writing the book, they realized that they needed to make a big pivot with their business. And that just made me think about You know, there's something magical about the process of putting words on a page and the clarity that can come from that experience. Right. I've recently over the last couple of months start tried to develop this habit of just writing for fifteen minutes every single day. I haven't gotten it to be like a daily thing yet, but I'm starting to do it more and more because with each session I try and pick things that I'm either thinking through with my business, like decisions that I'm trying to make with my business or just curio things that I'm curious about that I am learning more about that I just want to write about. But Yeah, when you first like start to sit there and write something, man, it is tough. It is tough and it just forces you to think everything through to such specific detail. Right. There's something magical about putting the process of putting words to the page. speaker-0: Yes, definitely is. It comes into a little bit of esoteric, which sounds a little weird because we're talking about logic and business, but there's something about delivering information that's coming from your head, your heart, your experience, your history, and you are essentially delivering part of yourself into that work. And the people who resonate with you are the ones who are attracted to it because you have a matching, a meeting of the minds, a meeting of the energy, the approach, ⁓ the philosophy, all these different things that contribute to your your perspective on what you're delivering. And it does have a magical feeling to it because books seem to have like a living essence to them. And certain books I have on my shelf, I've had on my shelf for years because I've so much resonance with what they say. And when I move, you know, I'm always tossing books because I can't take them all. But those certain ones, they're always gonna stay. There's one called the referral engine by John Jance. That stayed with me. Yep. speaker-1: Okay. Well maybe we can explore some of the ideas from that referral engine because I think that's that sounds like the most sustainable way to grow a business. But the finished product of the book and of writing, there's something magical to that. But then it's just like the process of going through the writing process just forches forces you to really digest your thinking and really just think things through on a level. It's just like you believe that you have all of your thinking, it's all sound, logical. And then once you step into the process of trying to write it out and put it on the page, you realize like, whoa, I do not have this. There's a lot of things that I haven't quite thought through or there's ways that I can simplify this a bit more. And then that clarity of something as profound as we're targeting the completely wrong audience, like what your client had experienced, can come to mind. So there's something powerful about the the act of just sitting down and just writing out your beliefs, your process in long form, just written and then trying to simplify it as much as possible. So lingering on this idea of niching down and getting super specific for a little bit longer. I've come across this in my business, both my businesses, just this fear of over niching, right? This fear of being able to commit and just go all in on this super specific niche feels scary, right? Is that something that you experience with your clients when you're trying to kind of Coach them through the process of like, okay, we need to get more specific, more specific, because there's typically some resistance to that. And kind of how do you talk them through that process of getting them to commit? speaker-0: Well, that's ⁓ such an inter interesting question because I've experienced that myself, my own life, as well as as with clients, yes. And I think the for myself, I have certifications and experience in some health and wellness fields. And I've been a practitioner in some of that over the years. I started off with it just on my own health journey, my daughter, my daughter's health journey. And I I just got involved and I thought, ⁓ this is so great. But at the same time, you know, I'm a writer. I have years of decades of experience in editing, book coaching, publishing, and on and on, ⁓ and speaking and training. And so I dabbled in these two things for a while. And eventually I got the message. I need to let the health and wellness stuff go. There are other people out there doing it. I don't need to do it myself. And the more I got totally focused in on the writing, the better my business has done. And that may seem, you know, like I'm eliminating like how many people by this health and wellness stuff, but I found out that split focus is really robbing both of them. I need to pick one so I can give my full focus to this. And the more I drill down, the more success I have with attracting the authors that I want to work with. I don't want to work with just anyone. I want to work with authors who are heartfelt, who have purpose and calling, someone who's trying to do good in the world, someone who has not a book report. They're not publishing a book that is just a compilation of research. They're publishing something that is coming from their experience. Something that is fresh and new and helpful. And they really want to help people. That's the kind of person I want. Yes, I know there are executives out there and CEOs and all these people with big money who would pay lots and lots of bucks for a ghostwriter to write about their latest business venture. I'm not interested in those people. They're not my niche. So I just focus on what I resonate with because. You know, we have this working relationship with our people. We have working relationship with clients. We have working relationships with readers. And for me, I want to enjoy that relationship. I've had some of these ⁓ you know, super high powered, motivated, rush it to the end kind of person. I don't enjoy that work. I don't want to feel rushed every day. I I want to be able to focus and do a good job. But to me, rushing and good writing don't go in the same sentence. You got to take your time, you got to get it right. ⁓ but there are some people who just want to flat out just deliver and not worry about the content or the quality too much. That's not for me. So that example is to say that when you are Writing your book, structuring your business, because the book and the business are, you know, kind of going together here. It's important to know who do I want to work with and who do I want to attract? Because when you get the right people, they become loyal, they become repeat buyers, they become your target market for life as long as you continue doing what you're doing. And those are the people who crank out money every year. And they're already in the house. So it's a lot easier to sell to them than it is to go go and get somebody new. And so developing this following, this readership, and and it goes for fiction too. Once you have a a person who really loves your work, they're going to be watching for the next book and the next book. And this is something that I call becoming a career author. When you are attracting that type of person that you are connecting with and then you just keep delivering to them and next year you deliver again and next year you deliver again and over time you will grow your following and then you have something that we call sell through. Sell through is when someone finds you on book number eight and they go on Amazon and find out ⁓ there's seven more and they just start buying them all and then you're making a lot more than you would if you just had one book. So you want that. You want a body of work. You want a legacy. You want to deliver to a group, a community of people who know you and want your material. That's what the niche niching down thing is all about. It's not really about eliminating everybody else. It's about growing these few people so they fuel your business. They buy your books And they sing your praises, you know, to others. That's what ni niching down is, actually. speaker-1: Right. Yeah, sounds like there's some ⁓ traces of the referral engine ideas ⁓ in in what you shared there, I would imagine, just based on the the title. ⁓ I love it. But yeah, it's just so with your point about you found the audience and the clientele that you resonated with, that you enjoyed working with, if we could linger on that idea a little bit longer for the folks out there, you know, I feel like every business and entrepreneur goes through this process of For the first year, two years, three years of your business, you're kind of just doing anything for anyone, right? You're just kind of saying yes to anything that comes through the door. And then ultimately you get to the point where you have the realization like you did, and as ⁓ all of us do at some point, where it's just this is not sustainable, right? Trying to work with all these different clients, doing all these different things is just not there's it's impossible to create any kind of standardization, right? If you're working with a new client every single time, kind of doing something different for each one. It's impossible to create any standardization and standardization is what's required to scale and to grow. But if once you get to that point where you're hyper focused on one specific niche, you know, it makes your messaging, like your marketing a lot easier because you're talking to a very specific person, right? It's going to resonate with that person more. And then you're fulfilling the same process for the same type of person every single time. So you can create a lot of standardization, right? So we all have at some point heard like the magic of niching, but then there's that fear that we have to kind of get over of committing. But honestly, to your point, it kinda gets to the point where it's you maybe just everything kind of breaks a little bit and you're just like, Okay, I'm tired. I just let's just commit. But before we revisit that idea, how do you know who your niche is? speaker-0: Good question. The answer is in the results. I actually did this as an exercise. I work on legal pads a lot with a pen and legal pad. To make a list of the clients I've worked with over the last couple of years, because as a ghostwriter, you know, I only work with two, possibly three people a year. It's not that hard for me to make a list. But, you know, when you're doing private work with people to think about who who was it that actually had the best success from the work that I'm doing with them? And who c who caused me to feel energized working with them? Who who created excitement in the conversation between them and me as we're working together? And for books, who left a raving review? And who's left a raving review every time? Those are the people that you want to focus on. And Then I did, I I learned to do ⁓ strategic questions and the questions are so much more important than the answers. You have to have the right questions. If you have the right questions, you can pull out information from a person you're interviewing from the very beginning. A couple of my key questions are what do you want to see happen from the book? What is your objective from the book? But when I'm interviewing a potential ghostwriting client, now notice I'm not selling to them. I'm interviewing them to see if we're a fit. And this question, what do you want to have happen at the end? Some people say, Well, I want speaking engagements, or I want more clients in my business, or I want to grow this or that. ⁓ and that's that's totally fine. It just depends on what they want. So I know what to deliver, you know, when we actually get to the writing. But then the other thing is what experience do you want the reader to have while they're reading the book? Do you want them to feel excited? Do you want them to have insights, aha moments? Do you want them to be pulling out their pad and writing notes for their business? Or is it something that is personal development? Personal development in entrepreneurship is huge. So, what do you want the reader to experience? And what would you see as a win at the end of the day? So, what do you want the book to do for you personally? You might say, I want the reader to buy my product at the end, but what do you want? You want bestseller status? You want New York Times? Do you want to establish yourself in the market among all the other experts out there? Do you want to get your place on the playing field? What are you wanting for yourself and your business as a result of this book? So this it's a multi-layered series of questions to get the positioning of the book. So then you can be strategic at how you lay it out, what your plans are, what what elements of content do you bring in to get what you want, to get what they want? And to give them the experience that you want to deliver to them, because every book is an experience from chapter one all the way through. And so that's just the start of it to get clarity. And so the the discovery call is actually almost like a coaching call for them. Because a lot of times they'll say, ⁓ I never really thought about what I want the reader to experience. Let's talk about that, you know. But so what that does then is it establishes you as somebody who knows what you're doing. Because you're asking the right questions. And people have said that to me before. ⁓ you're asking the right questions. And yes, well, this isn't my first rodeo. I've been doing it for a long time. And I found out that the answers to those questions will tell me whether I want to work with this person or not. And so it it is a give and take. It's a give and take conversation. speaker-1: Yeah. So do that reflection in your own time to look back at who have I delivered the best results to, who had the most energy, who was I most enthusiastic to work with. And then if obviously you're an author, what readers had the best reviews, but then you use those insights to formulate the questions that you want to ask to almost interview your potential like your new prospects coming up to see if they're gonna be a fit within those Categories of people or those characteristics of people that you've delivered the best success for and you enjoyed working with the most. That's a brilliant insight. And you know, you talked about trying to ask good questions. It's hopefully what I'm or that's what I'm endeavoring to do here in this podcast. but one final question that I have for you before we get to like the final recurring kind of podcast question. Have you found, and this is going back to again, kind of the central theme that we've spent our conversation discussing. Have you found that the books and the businesses, but let's just stay in the world of books, but I'm sure the idea is translate. The books that are more focused on delivering for the audience, right? The more audience focused, like the authors that care about delivering as much value as they possibly can to the audience, the reader base, have the most success, right? The ones that care more about delivering value to the reader as opposed to like they're writing this book for what's going to happen to them, right? They want to reach bestseller. Like the people that are more focused. on delivering for the reader, have the most success? speaker-0: Absolutely. The reader can sense whether this person is just stroking their ego or if they truly care about the the reader's results and the heartfeltness of it. And you don't have to be touchy feely, you know, in your book. You can be very businesslike and still care. That project management book was very technical and You know, it wasn't exactly what I would call my favorite read for myself personally, but yet it ha was full of information that let these ⁓ executives know that, yeah, we've been there, we've done that, we want you to succeed, and that's why we're going the extra mile to put all these different things, these different points into the book to help you ⁓ because we this is what we do. This is our life, and you can learn from our experience. That is really what you're after. And and it builds that trust factor, right? That's what you're doing. You're building that trust factor. I think about Mel Robin's book, Let Them. That let them book is life changing. And she did it out of a heart of helping people who are hurting and breaking codependency and all of that. ⁓ Mel is amazing, but that book, it's no wonder. I go into bookstores all the time because I'm I'm in that world. It's everywhere. And people raving about it because it came out of a heart of compassion from her and it's got life changing, very simple principles in it. Yeah. speaker-1: And tactically how that might show up for, you know, an entrepreneur that's maybe writing more of like a business C book, like that project management company, right? Tactically putting your audience first might show up in the sense where like there's probably gonna be moments, things that you're considering putting in the book, but it's like, is that giving too much away? Right? Don't we wanna kinda keep some of this for ourselves? Like are we trying to it's those moments where you just say, Give it to ⁓ right? Just give them everything. Are those the kind of decisions that would represent putting the audience first, right? Not trying to gatekeep anything, just kind of giving it all, putting it all out there, putting it all in there. Is that kind of an idea? speaker-0: Yes, it is. And it it goes right into the guy that Alex Hermosi is the name of the guy that ⁓ I've been following about scaling. He says, Give away the information and sell the access. So you tell them everything. Don't hold back a thing. But if you want personal help, if you want to get in on my Zoom calls and all of that, that costs. That costs more. But I'm gonna give you all I can give you right now. And you're gonna benefit from it to a level. But you need me to take it over the top. And it's true. It's true because somebody with experience is gonna help push you over the top. You're not gonna be able to do it all on your own. So you're building trust with them. They appreciate it. They know you're the real deal. I mean, show your stuff. Go ahead. ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah. Right. And it's yeah, it's just ⁓ give away everything, give away all the information and then sell the implementation or sell the access, right? It's you putting absolutely everything into this piece of content, into this book, so that if they wanna just do it themselves, they absolutely can. They have everything that they need to do so. But if they want support, if they want your experience to help them in the implementation of it, who are they gonna contact to do so, right? The person that gave them the information. I love it. So Thank you so much, Lana, for the time. I have one final question for you. It's a recurring question I ask every guest. But before we get to that, how can people find you? speaker-0: Lana Makira dot com is my website and the publishing company Vendela V is in Victor E-N-D-E-L-A publishing dot com. Thank you so much. Thank you. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. We'll have the links to that in the description. So for anybody who feels like they have a story to tell, a book to write, they've thought about the idea, definitely get in contact with Lana. Check out her team. I again I talked to you, told you before the ⁓ before that we started recording, but do a lot of stalking on guests beforehand and if you go as soon as you go on the website, right, you'll tell that you know, they know what they're doing. And ⁓ yeah, get in touch with Lana. But my final question for you, Lana, is a recurring question I ask every guest. But if you had a giant billboard that had one message to the world that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why? speaker-0: Just get started. Just get started. You're not gonna get anywhere if you don't get started. Get your legal pad, get a pen, start writing down notes. Just get started. People ask me, how can I write this book? It's been in my head for ten years. Just get started. Just do it. Yeah. speaker-1: Just get started. Love it. Lana, thank you so much for the time. Thank you for listening. The main thing I'm taking away from my conversation with Lana is yet another reminder of a universal principle, whether it's your business or your book that you're writing, is know who you are building for, know who you are serving, who is your niche, who is your reader, who is your client, right? The clarity that you have on that ICP, that ideal customer profile or the ideal reader for your book will inform everything that you do, right? speaker-0: Thank you so much. speaker-1: if it's using the book as context, right? It's the stories that you tell to prove the point or to communicate the principle. It's the marketing language that you use to promote the book. It's the book that you write, right? Like that clarity on who you're writing for is going to inform everything that you do because it's all for them, right? It's for serving them. It's for serving that person. And the same goes for business, right? Your product, your service comes from solving a problem that a person has, right? So you need to understand that person and who you're serving. And then that will inform absolutely everything that you do, right? The standardized process they use for fulfillment, the marketing language again that you use, the sales language that you use, right? Clarity on who you're solving and the problem that you're who you're serving and the problem that you're solving for them is really the most fundamental thing that you need to understand for your book or for your business. So Lana, thank you for that reminder. If you want to get connected with Lana, Check out any of her books or her publishing company. You can find the links in the description. And if you're an author or a coach and you want to make you want more of your clients to actually follow through on what you teach and get results, I put a free resource in the description that will help you build more execution support into your program without requiring you or your team's time. Thank you for listening and I'll see you in the next one.