Latest / Author Hour / 75 Books a Month: How Michael Erath Built a Three-Book Author Ecosystem at Next Level Growth
Transcript
- speaker-0: The emotion wasn't there. The intonation didn't hit with how I wanted it to. So I actually went back in studio through you guys and re-recorded the audio book myself. And a couple of things came out of that. One, people who listen to it can hear and feel the emotion in like the really vulnerable, difficult parts. Because as the person who lived it, it's hard to read those without the emotion coming out. Right? And so it creates. I've had people say they felt really connected to me listening to it. But the other thing that really was an unintended surprise that like, well, of course this makes sense, is I now have in my voice a digital recording that will live forever of me telling my story. So my grandkids, grandkids who will never see me, never know me, can actually hear a great, great grandfather in their voice telling their story. And there's something just from a personal family perspective that like, wow, that's really memorializing some very cool things. I'd love to have something like that of my great-grandfather, right? speaker-1: Well, you're a scribe veteran and a veteran author, so I'm excited to have you here. I feel like we got a lot to learn from you. speaker-0: Yeah, they say the third time's a charm and it seems to be, so. speaker-1: Did it feel that way? So you just published your third book. How different was that from your first time through? speaker-0: You know, they were, they were all three very different. We pivoted on the third one and I ended up instead of using a ghostwriter, switching to someone as a coach. So I ended up writing the entire thing with a coach versus having a writer do it. So it was a totally different experience, but it was the right, it was the right call for sure. speaker-1: How did you feel about it? Like how did you feel going through that process as the writer now? speaker-0: Yeah, was, what's the statement? I despise writing, but love having written or something like that. It was kind of that. It was a labor of love, but the book was more technical in nature and it just didn't make sense for someone to have to learn the content to be able to then rewrite about it. And so I just needed somebody to guide me through the process. speaker-1: Sure. So zoom us all the way back out. Take us back to like maybe 2015. What was your kind of career and setting and life situation that led you to add author to your bio? speaker-0: So I had been, I transitioned kind of a career path. had had a family manufacturing business that I was the owner of for about two decades. And I was switching into coaching and consulting. speaker-1: You manufactured families? speaker-0: Well, I have. So we manufactured hardwood veneer, kitchen cabinet industry. And when I transitioned as part of that kind of backstory, I had in that business, had a, I brought in a business partner that had embezzled over half a million dollars, committed bank fraud, it all hit right in 2008. So we had a massive, massive loss. He ended up spending time in federal prison. was, was a crazy story and as I started getting into this coaching and consulting world and sharing my story with people, more and more people was like, that needs to be a book. And so I was like, all right. And Cameron Harold is a dear friend of mine and he's written a couple of books through you guys. And he had recommended me speaking to you at the time. And that was kind of all it took. The first book, Rise, came out in 2017 and that was more of a personal memoir and story. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: But it was really just to kind of get my story out there. And it also yielded a lot of credibility when I was writing the third book, I was doing some research and there's as of 2023, there were over 53,000 people in the U S on LinkedIn that call themselves a business coach. Wow. It's become that saturated. So I really wanted to be able to get my story out there as a, as a differentiator. speaker-1: And clearly saw results from that book. What happened from that first book that led you, you know, pretty quickly into starting the second and now the third. speaker-0: Yeah, the second and third books really came out of during, during my journey as a business coach and consultant, I initially became part of EOS and part of that system and broke away in 2020 and kind of built our own more principles based flexible framework. And I was initially doing that with ⁓ a good friend of mine, Greg Cleary, who started Pinnacle Business Guides. I was one of the original co-creators of that. And he and I. co-wrote a book, Path to the Pinnacle, which I want to say came out in 22 perhaps, 22 or 23. And so that was its own process going through. We did use a ghostwriter for that one and it was more storytelling. But even with a really good friend, the co-authoring experience is a whole different journey. So that one was kind of to get our methodology and ideology out there. And then I I broke away from that group and decided to build my own framework and the five obsessions of elite organizations, which is the third book. Then this is the one that I had that I ended up deciding to write myself with a coach through, through scribe that one really, I wanted to, I wanted to build something in the book that was taking a lot of what we teach our clients and really giving a lot of it away through. to the point of like, here's how to go do this yourself. Like if this is the tool you want to use, here's how to use it, here's how to implement it and walk people through that as a guide with the idea being that it would create value for smaller companies or companies that just wanted to do it themselves. But it would also be a business development tool that for companies that liked the concept and liked the tools, they would just want to bring one of us in to help them do it faster. speaker-1: It is interesting thinking back all of these sort of business, you know, EOS and scaling, like all of them seem to either come from or eventually end up as a book, right? You got traction scaling path of the pinnacle, five obsessions of elite organizations. Like it just feels like one of the linchpins of the strategy to kind of give away everything. And then people realize how hard it is to implement and then they engage in it. speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. And the real reason behind the third book, so originally I thought, well, you know, I've done two before with a ghostwriter. I'll do this with a ghostwriter as well. But the challenge with the third book is, and you go back and you mentioned some of these systems you talked about. One of the things that I realized along my journey was that when you leverage in your business a prescriptive, rigid system, By default, I don't think it's as much by design, but by default, it puts primacy on the system, not the user. And so regardless of your company, regardless of your culture, your industry, your size, it forces you into someone else's system. And so what I wanted to focus on was how to, like all of those books you mentioned, they're all fundamentally about the same principles. And so if you instead create a framework around principles and help companies focus on principles and excelling in those, the system becomes secondary and it becomes also more fluid and custom tailored to the organization because then it doesn't matter where the tools come from. speaker-1: Yeah. that makes, mean, having gone through a light EOS implementation, also, know, great people often chafe at being forced to adapt to a system rather than being allowed to be great as themselves. Right. Yeah. So tell me about the impact of some of these, that some of these books had, you know, I often say like unexplained good things result from having a book out into the world. And I'm sure you've got, you know, from three books now, tons of stories about that, of how it. led to connections or new business lines or new opportunities or new clients, anything like that. speaker-0: It's definitely helped ⁓ from a client acquisition perspective. It establishes authority and it's kind of a force multiplier to get the message out there beyond your ability to necessarily direct it at people. know, somebody recommends the book to a friend, you have no idea who that person is, they read the book, and now all of sudden there's a connection and they know about you and what you do. But I think some of the things for me when I wrote Rise, I made a choice to be extremely vulnerable about the blind spots and mistakes I made and how that affected. There's a section, there's a chapter in the book, I talk about a time that my success in the first business had gotten to my head and it actually affected our marriage. My wife and I separated for a short period of time before kind of figuring that out. And so I got really vulnerable in that book and I've had so many people that have read it come up to me and say, gosh, know, let me tell you what happened to me. And it's, you know, as entrepreneurs, don't talk about, you know, failures and mistakes. Everybody talks about, it's kind of the country club conversation about how great everything is, right? It's what you see on social media. And I think that has been very fulfilling for me because it's helped other people feel comfortable sharing their stories and coming to terms with that. And then, you the other thing that's just been great to see is periodically going back and getting to read some of the reviews and just, you again, people, have no idea who this person is and hearing how something they read impacted them. was talking yesterday with a, actually it was a discovery meeting with a prospect and I was meeting with the executive team of this company, the CFO I had never met before. He had a copy of the five obsessions of elite organizations and was telling me that one of his direct reports had a really difficult conversation. later that day they were going to be having with one of their direct reports. And he had actually highlighted like several pages in the book and had given that to them to prep for the meeting because he felt like the content and if they, if they understood it would help, would help them navigate that conversation. So things like that, that are just unexpected examples of how something you put out there that you believe is valuable. Now you're getting affirmation. Other people are finding, finding tremendous value in. speaker-1: Yeah, that's a great story because I feel like everybody's hope, so many people's hope is that the book will be useful. know, it's great to be interesting. It's great to be entertaining. But, you know, I, as an author, yearn for those stories that you just told where it's like, no, we had this problem. I opened this book. I handed it to this person. This information like helped us through a difficult time or a difficult decision or change our trajectory that might've resulted in, yeah, you know, six or seven figures of improvement. to the organization and to all those families. Like that's the, that's the hope that you have when you write a book is that those are going to find people. speaker-0: Right. And think to your point, I think, and this is maybe for people considering writing a book, some of the feedback I hear, and I've had people that were reluctant to actually read the book that I had given it to, and then eventually, you when they do, I get really good feedback. And one of the more common things I hear people say is, you know, everybody's writing a book now and so much of it is just regurgitating everything else that's out there. And I think if you're going to do this, really think about what what is it that is of utility that you have to offer and make sure that you're giving that in the writing of the book because that will create, if there's utility in it, then people will be drawn to it, whatever that utility is. And then the rest of it comes along, right? But if it's just a 200 page sales letter, that's not the context of a great book. speaker-1: Yeah, I like to say, you know, there's a trap where people focus on originality. They worry that they're rehashing something that's already out there. I originality is a trap. Like if you're trying to be original, if you go too original, you're not going to be useful because we're all in the process of sort of relearning the same lessons that everybody else had to learn. know, when you read some of these great books from previous generations, they're still amazing and they're still useful, but they need to be updated for our kind of time in our application. But if you're a unique, if you're a mix of authentic and excellent, truly generous, as you said, like I wanted to put everything I knew in this book. wanted to give away all the secrets. didn't hold anything back. That's how you actually make a book that is like impressive and useful to people that really demonstrates your full expertise. Yeah. Was that a difficult decision for you or did you know going in that you wanted to sort of give away everything you knew, teach everything, hold nothing back? speaker-0: Going into the third book, was exactly the strategy in writing it. And a lot of that came from when I was working as an EOS implementer and getting to know Gina Whitman, that was his strategy behind writing Traction, was give enough of it away that people can use it without your guidance, let the book be the guide. Which is scary, right? But then the reality is, The reason most organizations aren't great is because it's not because entrepreneurs don't know what to do. It's they need the discipline. They need the roadmap. They need it laid out for them because otherwise they're busy with everything else and it kind of falls to the wayside. And so what tends to happen is smaller companies will self-facilitate and self-implement a lot of these things. Larger organizations, typically if they try to do it themselves, They get to a point where they realize they're not doing it well. And that's where it becomes very easy to bring someone in who does this on a daily basis and help them kind of figure out how to make it fit, make it work. So it's kind of in those stages. And I actually with, with this last book, I built out an AI clone as a companion. So people can actually use that clone to get insights and guidance as kind of a step in between just having the book by itself or paying for. full time. speaker-1: Yeah, it's interesting. The, the, difference, the gap between information and outcome is often so big, you know, in particular with some of these traction. And I imagine next level growth to a great extent, like the hard part is the, is the hard conversations, the human pieces. And some people need, you know, need a human context for tackling those really hard conversations. It's not, you know, everybody knows where the issues are on an intellectual level, but it's the context to unpack them and really, you know, break the log jams sometimes. Exactly. What was the process and the decision to go from kind of coming in, you thought it was, you were working with a ghostwriter and then you decided to write on your own. That's an interesting path. You're not, I've seen a few people do that, but it's certainly not the majority. So tell me about that decision. Cause I think that's an interesting one. speaker-0: Yeah, know, the book started out like every other one that I had done. And so I was working with my contacts at Scribe and we were going through, I believe we were in the outlining process. And as we were working through that, it just became really clear that... For me to get a ghostwriter up to speed on the technical nature of what I was trying to put in the book, it just was not, that wasn't going to work. So the person I was working with at Scribe, kind of on the back of the house, that's where we just got into a conversation about like, feel like I need to write this myself and I'm not really sure that the book ever gets written. How does this work? And they made a pivot. And I believe the woman that I worked with as the coach, I think she was a writing professor at, she was in Colorado. I don't know if it was at University of Colorado, but that was basically what she did and she taught writing. So she came alongside me and helped me through the entire process. It took longer because of course I'm writing every word of this thing and typing up all the revisions myself, but it was a great process. was a ton of learning and there's something. I think also now to be able to say that, I actually wrote all the words in this book, right? wasn't, wasn't me translating it or giving it to someone else to translate and write. So that was, that was kind of a fascinating outcome that I didn't expect to be as, as positive as it was. speaker-1: Yeah. Was it harder than you thought? speaker-0: Much. was. know, parts of it flowed really well and parts of it were, were harder. And, you know, there were some sections that like the first draft was the final draft and others that, you know, probably went through 10 iterations to get right. speaker-1: Yeah, that's, it's so interesting. It's so funny how that, that works out. Did you feel like you got a better command of the material by being forced to write it out? Did you like learn things about your own tools and process? speaker-0: I think it just everything, it locked everything in a lot deeper in terms of the content. Yeah. And to your point of having to go back and reread and rewrite and reread and rewrite is just the absorption gets so much deeper and stronger. speaker-1: Yeah, is really interesting. think people, first time authors, likely underestimate the number of reps, in particular if you're writing your own book, that you have to go through. It's not that there's a writing process and an editing process. It's that there's a writing process and an editing and an editing and an editing. Exactly. That's a lot of rounds. So tell me about how you use these books in the context of your business, right? Like I think you represent a really common. speaker-0: Right, exactly. speaker-1: sort of archetype for scribe and for authors generally, which is the book is one part of kind of a broader machine that is, know, whether it's consulting or services or something else. So, you know, having been through this three times now, how does it fit into your ecosystem? How are you using it that, you know, you and prospects readers are finding useful? speaker-0: Yeah. So the way my business is structured right now, there are nine of us that are doing the coaching and consulting work. So, so I wrote the book intentionally to be the voice of our, of our brand, not just, just me as kind of a solopreneur or the sage. And so a couple of things we do, we've, we've got the audio book. So I did, I did do an audible and I recorded it myself. We've got that on our website. You can't actually navigate to it, but there's a link that we can give people to listen for free on the website. So that's one way we get it out there. We give away books all the time. We mail books out to targeted lists. speaker-1: to get out. Or you're just, kind of buy a list from somebody of specific types. speaker-0: Yeah, we're not even buying a list. using AI tools to get the list for us. ⁓ interesting. And so now you're not having to pay for it. And then our marketing coordinator validates addresses, things like that. And then we send those, we send books out, giving them away at events that we sponsor, things like that. And the idea being it's getting the book in as many people's hands as we can. It's kind of like planting seeds and the harvest eventually comes, but it's relevant. relative to how many seeds you planted. Right. And so speaker-1: How many do you give away per, I don't know, month, quarter, year, just for reference for people? speaker-0: I would say on average we're giving away 75 to 100 books a month. speaker-1: Okay, that's great clip. speaker-0: So it's, know, and when I look at this from a customer acquisition cost perspective, it's because of the amount of context that the book provides the reader, it's without a doubt the best lead magnet that we have. speaker-1: They spend hours and hours learning about you in like a high prestige medium. Like this really well curated experience. Yeah. speaker-0: Exactly. And even when we, you know, the second chapter of the book explains in great detail how we differentiate ourselves from kind of the world of sameness, the EOSs and the scaling ups and all of that. So it allows us when people read that to say exactly the way we want it said, this is how we're different. This is why it matters. This is where the value is. And so, you the idea being it's for my landed cost of a book, And I send, I do send these books out FedEx grounds. So I spend about 12 bucks, 11, $12 per book to send them out. I don't want to do media mail, which you could, and it's a lot cheaper, but I, you know, we've got a very nice branded package that goes out. it's, know, the FedEx guy walks to your door and brings it to you. And so it's a, it's a good experience, but my total cost is about $16 per book that I send out. Right. so sending the books out relative to if You know, if one in 50 books ever turns into a client, the customer acquisition cost is perfectly fine. speaker-1: Yeah, you're about 20,000 a year just sending out books, right? Maybe call it a thousand books a year or 12,000 at 16 bucks each. I imagine that's difficult to track with specificity, but you just know that some of these seeds are growing enough that it makes business sense. speaker-0: Yeah, so we do add these to our CRM when we send them out. So we are able to track as people do enter our funnel, we are able to track that. And in the book, in the additional resources section, we have tools you can download, things like that. those have opt-in pages, right? So now we're collecting information on people that downloaded tools from the book. We've got a nurturing campaign around that, but the book also... directs people to the AI clone. So if people opt in and sign up for that, so we can kind of see what it is that they're, they're. speaker-1: brings them back into the digital world. speaker-0: Correct. And so then we know, you know, we sent out hundred books. We know that we know these 12 people read it because they've been downloading the tools or they sign up for the clone or whatever the case may be. So we can start to track behaviors. speaker-1: And you just match that on what the name and the organization? Okay. Yeah. Cause you don't necessarily have an email when you're sending it out. speaker-0: Correct. We have the person's name, the company name, so we establish the lead without an email address. And then when that person and company come back in through one of the opt-in pages. speaker-1: Yep. The dots. Yeah. Super interesting. Okay. Is that the main campaign, the main kind of place that you use the book and spend to spread it in the world? speaker-0: It is. do like, so for example, there are some associations that we pay to sponsor. And then as part of that, we ask that they distribute the book to their memberships, things like that. you know, again, it's, it's really like what, what's the, what's the best way to create targeted distribution to get it in as many of the right hands as possible, knowing that at some ratio, it will come back to speaker-1: Yeah. So you're not, you're not focused on selling books in a traditional way at all. Yeah. You just want them in the hands of your sort of specific target reader. speaker-0: No. Right. think, and you would probably have data on this, but I think if your goal in writing a book is to retire on book sales, it's probably not gonna happen. Right. speaker-1: The median outcome is not financially transformative. speaker-0: But if it, but if there is, there is some business that you use it to then promote and by growing that business is how it comes back to you, then it's a, a, it's a fantastic tool for that. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. And, and this is a well-honed playbook by now. I mean, you probably did something similar with the path to the pinnacle and are able to implement the same thing now with, five live sessions. And there's precedent, you know, both, as you said, both scaling up attraction. You know, the book was sort of the linchpin, I think at least from the outside, seems of the strategy of growing those, those organizations and that kind of movement or system or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, very interesting. And anything else that you tried that speaker-0: Yep, exactly. speaker-1: didn't work that you cut off. speaker-0: Yes. So actually with, with rise, the first book, which again, that was a memoir. I opted for the audio book to have a voice actor read the And what I realized was hearing somebody else read my story. It just was off. the, the emotion wasn't there. The intonation didn't hit with how I wanted it to. So I actually went back in studio through you guys and. re-recorded the audio book myself. And a couple of things came out of that. One, people who listen to it can hear and feel the emotion in like the really vulnerable, difficult parts. Because as the person who lived it, it's hard to read those without the emotion coming out, right? And so it creates, I've had people say they felt really connected to me listening to it. But the other thing that really was an unintended, you know, surprised that like, well, of course this makes sense is I now have in my voice a digital recording that will live forever of me telling my story. So my grandkids, grandkids who will never see me, never know me can actually hear, you know, a great, great grandfather in their voice telling their story. And there's something just from a personal family perspective that like, wow, that's That's really memorializing some very cool things. I'd love to have something like that of my great grandfather, right? speaker-1: Yeah, that's so cool. I say often, there's no object I wish existed more than a book written by my father. And that now that we have the ability for really anybody to preserve their experience and their family legacy and these digital tools in a really high quality artifact, there's no excuse not to. be really, it'll be cool to see what a few generations look like kind of in this, of compounding lineage and context look like in this era. speaker-0: That's a great point. speaker-1: So a closing question here is what advice do you have for someone sort of considering writing their first book? Maybe where you were 10 or 15 years ago. speaker-0: One, would say to trust the process, don't try to shortcut the process because that will not work out as well. And at the same time, when you get into the editing phase, really... So when somebody goes to sell a business, private equity firms typically try to get them into what they call deal fatigue, where toward the end of the deal... you're so sick and tired of going through the process that you just want it done. So you take something of a lower standard. would say that same logic applies when you're trying to get to your finished product, stick with the editing and revision process as long as you need to, to get to the outcome you want. Don't throw in the towel a little too early because you're just, you don't want to have to go through one more iteration. Do the work. It will absolutely be worth it because you're going to have this thing forever. speaker-1: of that craftsmanship has no deadline is my maximum for that one. Just, yeah, trust your gut in the editing process and stick with it. yeah, make it, make it an artifact that you're really proud of cause it'll, it'll outlive us. Michael, thank you so much for taking the time. Where should people go to find your books, read more about you, follow along. speaker-0: Yeah, so you can find me on Amazon, looking me up as an author. We've got a website, fiveobsessions.com that gets you into that book. And everything's available also through our website, nextlevelgrowth.com. speaker-1: Awesome. I always say you've done a really remarkable job building sort of the ecosystem tools around your book. So if people are sort of thinking about that as a strategy, like yours is a great thing to take a look at and find some inspiration in. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Take care. right. Thanks. Bye. speaker-0: Awesome. All right. Thanks, Eric.