RPF0252-Patrick_Snow_Interview
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00:00:30.680 | Have you ever thought about writing a book? Would you like to write a book?
00:00:34.680 | Well, if past data and research is any indication, I would say that 8 out of 10 of you who listen to this show just thought to yourself, "Well, yes, actually."
00:00:47.680 | Depending on what source you look at, there are some surveys that say that 81% of Americans feel they have a book in them and that they should write it.
00:00:56.680 | Today, we're going to talk about that with the publishing doctor himself and my own personal publishing coach because, yes, I'm part of that 81%.
00:01:07.680 | I'm in the middle of writing a book, but my personal publishing coach, I'm going to introduce him to you.
00:01:11.680 | His name is Mr. Patrick Snow, and today, we're going to talk publishing, try to give you some insight on why you should write a book and how you should go about doing it.
00:01:23.680 | [Music]
00:01:39.680 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host.
00:01:43.680 | Thank you for being with me today.
00:01:44.680 | Thrilled to be here to talk about this subject of book publishing. As with most things, easier to say you're doing something than to do it.
00:01:52.680 | The writing has been going slower than I would like, but I'm making progress, and I refuse to quit.
00:01:58.680 | I thought, "What a great time to talk publishing with a brand new sponsor of the show, Mr. Patrick Snow."
00:02:04.680 | You're going to find this useful today.
00:02:06.680 | [Music]
00:02:11.680 | One of the central themes that I like to explore on Radical Personal Finance here is financial freedom.
00:02:18.680 | I spend a lot of time talking about income, and as a component of income, I spend a lot of time talking about marketing.
00:02:24.680 | My point in doing this show is to point out to you how the world actually works, not to give you the answers that people often proffer when it comes to financial advice, not to say, "Well, the reason that you're broke is because you haven't put money in IRA."
00:02:40.680 | Maybe that's a part of your plan, but there are some bigger picture deals that you need to pay attention to.
00:02:47.680 | One of those things that I consistently, consistently would talk about is you need to pay attention to marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing.
00:02:55.680 | No matter who you are, no matter what you're doing, you need to pay attention to marketing.
00:03:00.680 | You must constantly be selling yourself and marketing yourself.
00:03:04.680 | That takes different forms. That takes different expressions.
00:03:07.680 | So at some point, you might be marketing yourself to a prospective employer.
00:03:12.680 | So then we get into the whole, "How do I get a job?" process.
00:03:15.680 | How do I create a resume? Is a resume even what matters?
00:03:19.680 | It's all about your marketing.
00:03:21.680 | You get into a business and running your own business.
00:03:24.680 | Well, it's all about marketing.
00:03:26.680 | Everything is going to have some component of marketing.
00:03:29.680 | If you are trying to spread your ideas and share them widely and gain influence and impact in the marketplace for your ideas with no dollar signs attached in any way, it's all about marketing.
00:03:42.680 | We've got to be excellent at marketing.
00:03:45.680 | And if you think about it, it's not that complicated to be excellent at marketing, but it's also not that easy.
00:03:55.680 | If you're broke and you're not making very much money, let me ask you a question.
00:03:59.680 | Take your field and ask yourself, number one, "Am I the most knowledgeable person in my field?"
00:04:06.680 | After listening to Radical Personal Finance, I would bet that your answer is, "Well, I'm on my way."
00:04:11.680 | So, "Am I very knowledgeable in my field? Am I an expert?"
00:04:15.680 | And now ask yourself the question, "Have I been able to convey to other people that I am indeed an expert?
00:04:22.680 | Do I have a platform? Have I gone about marketing the fact that I'm an expert?"
00:04:30.680 | Well, if you haven't, now's the time to start.
00:04:33.680 | But pay attention to the fact that you can't skip that step.
00:04:38.680 | It doesn't do you any good to be an expert and sit around telling yourself what an expert you are if you don't tell anyone else some of the things that you've learned and help them.
00:04:47.680 | You've got to help some other people.
00:04:49.680 | And so that comes down into communicating, and you're going to communicate in some form.
00:04:54.680 | You're going to communicate in written form, in verbal form like I do to you every day, in video form, in speeches.
00:05:01.680 | You've got to communicate in some way.
00:05:03.680 | Well, one important component of that is a book.
00:05:06.680 | And ask yourself this question, "How many people that are very influential have written a book?"
00:05:13.680 | What you'll find that many of them have written a book or at least have a book with their name on it.
00:05:19.680 | Whether or not they actually wrote it is another question.
00:05:21.680 | So today we're going to dig into that topic, and I'm going to introduce you to somebody who is actually my personal publishing coach.
00:05:27.680 | When I was able to develop the outline for Radical Personal Finance, I, again, started to research, and I've paid attention to the publishing realm for a while.
00:05:35.680 | I've intended to write a book.
00:05:37.680 | And so I went out and started researching different perspectives.
00:05:41.680 | I've had a background, a philosophy of knowing what I wanted to do and why I was doing it.
00:05:46.680 | But good information is incredibly valuable.
00:05:50.680 | So I joined a couple of online forums.
00:05:52.680 | I signed up and bought a couple of classes and some different information packages.
00:05:58.680 | And along the way, I was introduced to the name of somebody named Patrick Snow.
00:06:06.680 | He came recommended by somebody in an online forum that I was participating in, and they recommended him, and I went and checked him out.
00:06:14.680 | And I immediately knew that he was the guy who was in a position to help me.
00:06:18.680 | He was speaking my language.
00:06:20.680 | He had the experience and the knowledge and the information that we needed to do.
00:06:25.680 | So I hired him, and then as part of that also, I talked to him about Radical Personal Finance and was able to coax him into becoming a sponsor of the show.
00:06:34.680 | And so today, we're going to launch that sponsorship in the form of an interview, and this is an information-packed interview.
00:06:39.680 | And my hope is that you'll, number one, absorb the information, consider it, and go about thinking about what is in the book that you want to write and start considering how this could help your marketing for your personal brand.
00:06:54.680 | And then for a few of you, I hope that Patrick will be an extremely valuable resource for you, that you'll reach out to him, and perhaps he can serve you in the same way that he's currently helping and serving me as I work through this.
00:07:03.680 | So here we go. Let's get to the interview.
00:07:06.680 | Patrick, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:07:09.680 | Thrilled to be here, Joshua. Thank you for having me on your show.
00:07:12.680 | So this ought to be fun.
00:07:14.680 | We are fairly recently acquainted because I've started working with you on my own publishing experts – excuse me, my own publishing endeavors as I work on building my brand.
00:07:24.680 | And I've been impressed with the work that we've done.
00:07:26.680 | I've checked you out, and I think that it's going to be a great experience for you.
00:07:29.680 | And today we're here to launch even your sponsorship on the show, which is also exciting.
00:07:34.680 | We'll get to that later.
00:07:35.680 | But I want to start with giving you an opportunity to introduce yourself to the audience specifically.
00:07:40.680 | So what's your entrepreneurial story?
00:07:43.680 | Where did you start from, and where has your entrepreneurial journey brought you thus far?
00:07:48.680 | Well, I'll tell you what.
00:07:50.680 | I'll tell you the ending first and then go back to the beginning.
00:07:53.680 | I'm going to be 40 seconds.
00:07:55.680 | I'll tell you the ending first and then go back to the beginning.
00:07:58.680 | I'm going to be 47 years old soon.
00:08:00.680 | I currently reside in Maui, Hawaii.
00:08:04.680 | I've been here for three years.
00:08:05.680 | Before that I was in Seattle, Washington for 25 years.
00:08:09.680 | My boys are 24 and 20.
00:08:12.680 | Older one is a stock broker and financial advisor for JP Morgan Chase in New York City.
00:08:17.680 | My younger one is a college student in Honolulu.
00:08:20.680 | And my boys and family are my top priority.
00:08:23.680 | I'm an international best-selling author, a professional keynote speaker, a publishing coach, book marketing coach, professional speaking coach.
00:08:31.680 | I've got three books published.
00:08:33.680 | Two are with John Wiley and Sons in New York.
00:08:36.680 | The other is self-published.
00:08:37.680 | My first book is titled Creating Your Own Destiny, which is all about how to get exactly what you want out of life.
00:08:46.680 | Soul search for your innermost passions, transforming your most marketable passion into your profession.
00:08:52.680 | Book number two is The Affluent Entrepreneur.
00:08:56.680 | This is 20 proven principles for achieving prosperity.
00:09:01.680 | And this book is all about analyzing and studying 20 of the most famous billionaires on planet Earth and learning from their mistakes, failures, and successes.
00:09:11.680 | And then emulating their successes to help us achieve the wealth that we desire.
00:09:16.680 | And then book number three is a whole lot of fun.
00:09:18.680 | It's titled Boy Entrepreneur, How One Hawaii Kid Succeeded in Business and You Can Too.
00:09:25.680 | It's an inspirational fable of free enterprise and self-leadership.
00:09:29.680 | And it also has eight business building special reports included in that.
00:09:34.680 | And so what I do is I earn my living full-time as a professional keynote speaker.
00:09:39.680 | I've done about 3,000 paid speaking engagements on three or four continents over the last 20 years or so.
00:09:47.680 | I absolutely love speaking and meeting new people.
00:09:49.680 | I speak mostly on the subject matter of free enterprise, entrepreneurship, sales, marketing, management, balancing family and work, achieving your dreams, goals, and visions, perseverance, persistence, all of those subject matters.
00:10:05.680 | And then when I'm not on the road as a professional keynote speaker, I make my living as a publishing coach, book marketing coach, professional speaking coach.
00:10:11.680 | And we've done about 1,000 books over the last 20 years where I've served as their mentor, helping my clients save both time and money and then help them create a world-class book that they own 100% of the rights of.
00:10:25.680 | But yet that book is far superior than the books that are published out of New York, typically 250 to 300-page hardcover book, world-class cover design, world-class content.
00:10:35.680 | And I serve as their mentor to make that happen and go through.
00:10:39.680 | I've been featured as a cover story in USA Today, Spanish edition of Forbes magazine, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, 750 radio and TV interviews.
00:10:48.680 | So I've had a lot of fun with the media over the years.
00:10:51.680 | But that's kind of the end of the story where I'm at now.
00:10:54.680 | And that's obviously the first time that you've ever done an elevator pitch.
00:10:58.680 | Yeah, and I try to keep it short because I don't want to bore the listeners.
00:11:02.680 | Very impressive. Very, very, very impressive. I like it.
00:11:06.680 | Yeah, so that's the end of the story and I guess – and my goal is to publish 10,000 people in my lifetime and I've gotten 1,000 done.
00:11:14.680 | We've got 9,000 to go.
00:11:16.680 | So to answer the beginning of the question, I was born and raised in Michigan.
00:11:21.680 | My father was a school teacher. My mother was a nurse.
00:11:23.680 | I was the fourth of five children and my dad taught me as a young child that I could achieve any dream, goal and vision that I wanted as long as I believed in myself and worked hard enough at it.
00:11:34.680 | And then his whole mantra was – and then you've got to pay for it.
00:11:39.680 | And so when I was in the eighth grade, I was cut off financially, meaning that I had to earn my way for anything.
00:11:45.680 | I had to buy my clothes, my shoes, buy anything that I wanted.
00:11:48.680 | And so soon thereafter, in the summers, I pushed a lawnmower.
00:11:52.680 | My dad's lawnmower, block after city, block after city, block and looking for long grass lawns.
00:11:59.680 | I would go knock on the door and ask for $10 or $20 to mow the grass depending on how big their yard was.
00:12:04.680 | And then the winter months, I would do the same thing with my snow shovel after a snowstorm and go shovel snow and earn $10 or $20.
00:12:13.680 | Shortly thereafter, I delivered the Detroit Free Pass, a newspaper route for almost a year.
00:12:19.680 | And I realized that it doesn't make sense to trade time for dollars and there had to have been a better way to earn more money with less time.
00:12:28.680 | And so I went back to the Detroit Free Press folks and they asked me if I would get into sales.
00:12:33.680 | And so I started doing door-to-door sales, selling Detroit Free Press subscriptions.
00:12:38.680 | And I remember I had my little sales pitch down and every Tuesday night and every Thursday night, I would go out from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
00:12:45.680 | And this guy, I don't even remember his name, but he was in a white van, could have been a molester of some kind.
00:12:51.680 | But nonetheless, he dropped me off in the neighborhood and said, "OK, I'll be back in three hours to pick you up."
00:12:58.680 | And so I had all these little forms in my pen in my pocket and I'd probably do three or four or five hundred doors in a night.
00:13:04.680 | And I don't know, maybe not that many, but it seemed like a lot.
00:13:08.680 | And I would get a dollar commission for every Sunday subscription that I would sell and then a $2 commission for every daily newspaper subscription that I'd sell.
00:13:19.680 | And I'd hit a grand slam if someone signed up for both a daily and a Sunday.
00:13:23.680 | And my Sunday pitch was easy. This was before the internet, before computers.
00:13:28.680 | And it was, you know, everybody had a TV and we all wanted to know what the TV was and TV guides costed money.
00:13:35.680 | So I would say, "When you buy your Detroit Free Press Sunday subscription, you get a free TV guide in every newspaper."
00:13:42.680 | And then not only that, if you go to the coupon section, you get more than $5 in coupons in every Sunday paper.
00:13:47.680 | And the Sunday paper only cost 50 cents or whatever it was.
00:13:50.680 | And so I would turn in these forms at the end of my night at dark on a school night.
00:13:55.680 | And then the guy in the van, whatever his name was, I don't remember his name at all, would literally give me $100 cash, $120 cash, $130 cash.
00:14:05.680 | On a bad night it would be like $80.
00:14:07.680 | And this was for a 13-year-old kid in the eighth grade.
00:14:11.680 | And so at that point, that's how my entrepreneurial career started.
00:14:16.680 | And that's how I learned about leveraging your brand, being persistent, enduring perseverance, overcoming rejection, developing thick skin, being told no again and again and again and not quitting and just continuing to move on.
00:14:34.680 | And I learned that by going through this field of sales and marketing and entrepreneurship that I could earn 10 times the amount of money on an hourly basis than what all my friends were earning when they were punching a clock, making minimum wage at a restaurant.
00:14:50.680 | And so that kind of fueled a fire and a burning passion for entrepreneurship that's been in me for the last 35 some odd years and it hasn't gone away.
00:15:00.680 | How hardcore was – you mentioned your dad cut you off in eighth grade.
00:15:05.680 | How hardcore was he about that?
00:15:06.680 | Was it kind of, "Patrick, you're on your own. I'm never giving you another buck," or is it a more gradual transition?
00:15:12.680 | We want you to start paying but he was still willing to help you out.
00:15:14.680 | What was it like?
00:15:15.680 | Well, both my mom and my dad were that way.
00:15:18.680 | And I think partly it was because we were middle-class America.
00:15:21.680 | I think when I was born, we were lower class in terms of income.
00:15:24.680 | I had no money.
00:15:25.680 | And then as I got older and as my siblings started graduating and going off to college, they had more money and more money.
00:15:30.680 | But it was five kids on a teacher's salary and then five kids on a – my mother was a nurse and she delivered babies in a hospital.
00:15:37.680 | And so they just didn't have a lot of money.
00:15:40.680 | So I think they kind of did it not so much out of choice but they did it out of need.
00:15:45.680 | And they also knew the importance of developing a hardcore work ethic.
00:15:50.680 | And so that was the reason why they did it and I'm certainly glad that they did.
00:15:55.680 | I had certain chores that I needed to do around the house.
00:15:58.680 | And if I did all of my chores around the house, they gave me $5 in allowance every week.
00:16:03.680 | And that $5 in allowance also just happened to be what it cost to buy my lunch ticket to eat a hot lunch at school because it's $5 a week for lunch.
00:16:13.680 | And a dollar a day to buy a school lunch.
00:16:16.680 | And at the time they seemed so good but now they're just looking back at how bad those were.
00:16:21.680 | But the point being was it wasn't hardcore.
00:16:24.680 | It wasn't – the other part of it was my mother worked nights.
00:16:27.680 | She worked the shift from 3 to 11 p.m.
00:16:30.680 | My father was taught school all day and then coached different sports teams in the evenings.
00:16:35.680 | And so it was – OK, by the way, mom is going to be gone.
00:16:39.680 | And so this is how you cook your own dinner.
00:16:42.680 | This is how you buy – make your food.
00:16:44.680 | And, oh, by the way, this is how the washing machine works and the dryer works.
00:16:48.680 | So if you want to have clean clothes and clean laundry, then here you go.
00:16:54.680 | This is how you use the washer and dryer and here's your $5 allowance, which is your lunch money.
00:16:58.680 | And anything else you want, you're on your own.
00:17:00.680 | So it was a great way to grow up and I tried to emulate that with my kids.
00:17:06.680 | I think as a parent, the two greatest things that we can give our children is time and love.
00:17:14.680 | And the more time and the more love that we give our children, then they're going to be very confident.
00:17:19.680 | They're going to pursue their dreams, goals, and visions and passions.
00:17:21.680 | The absolute – and then I would say the other thing is believing in their visions, believing in their passions.
00:17:28.680 | Help them discover their passions.
00:17:29.680 | Help them believe in that.
00:17:32.680 | The absolute worst thing I think you can do to your kids is to give them money unless they earn it.
00:17:38.680 | And so I guess that's my Midwestern roots in me growing up in Michigan.
00:17:43.680 | But certainly a great way to grow up and a great way to parent children.
00:17:47.680 | Did you try to train your boys to be entrepreneurs?
00:17:50.680 | I didn't try to.
00:17:52.680 | I just kind of did.
00:17:53.680 | My younger son, he's like – he's having so much fun buying and selling on the internet.
00:18:01.680 | He's like, "Why do I need to go to college?
00:18:02.680 | I'm making way more money than all my friends are.
00:18:04.680 | Way more money."
00:18:06.680 | And so when he and my younger son were young, they used to buy and sell paintball guns on the internet.
00:18:12.680 | And then they'd buy at $100 and they'd sell at $200.
00:18:16.680 | And then buy at $75 and sell at $150.
00:18:18.680 | And then clean them up and fix up the paintball guns and shine them up and then get lights posted on the actual guns so it's nice and shiny.
00:18:28.680 | And they'd take pictures on their phones and then post them on the internet.
00:18:33.680 | And then that evolved from being arms dealers.
00:18:35.680 | I guess they were legal arms dealers selling paintball guns and not real guns.
00:18:39.680 | And then they both had a passion for shoes.
00:18:42.680 | Not just any kind of shoes but Nike SBs, which were the Nike skateboard shoes.
00:18:48.680 | And these Nike skateboard shoes were like a cult-like following for many years.
00:18:52.680 | And I still think that they are.
00:18:54.680 | But I think my son right now has about 50 pairs of these shoes.
00:18:58.680 | But he's been making $500 to $1000 a month for as long as I can remember.
00:19:02.680 | As far back as the 7th grade all the way through junior high, high school into college.
00:19:07.680 | And he buys shoes at $75, sells for $200, buys at $150, sells at $300.
00:19:12.680 | He's got a pair of Nike SB skateboard shoes that there's only 5 pairs in the world that have been made.
00:19:18.680 | They're worth about $750.
00:19:20.680 | He's got another pair that's the only pair ever made and they're worth about $2500.
00:19:24.680 | And he actually won those from Nike SB.
00:19:26.680 | So they have both become entrepreneurial through that aspect.
00:19:32.680 | And I was probably a bit more lenient.
00:19:33.680 | I did buy their groceries.
00:19:35.680 | I did buy their clothes.
00:19:37.680 | But I certainly didn't buy anything else for them.
00:19:39.680 | Anything else that they needed they always earned on their own.
00:19:42.680 | And so yeah, I think it flat out works and I kind of followed my father's footsteps.
00:19:47.680 | But I think not to be a parenting coach here, but I think and I just lost my father tragically of pancreatic cancer after a 9-month courageous battle.
00:19:57.680 | He passed this past summer at 74 years old.
00:20:00.680 | And I think the single greatest gift that he's given me is that he has always believed in my dreams, goals, and visions.
00:20:08.680 | And so the gift that I've tried to share and pass on to my children is whatever their dreams, goals, and visions, I believe in them 100% wholeheartedly.
00:20:16.680 | And that belief in a kid, that might be the difference between their success and failure.
00:20:20.680 | So I'm always grateful for my father, Jack Snow, for that level of belief.
00:20:26.680 | And maybe that's why it was so hard for me to let him go this past summer.
00:20:29.680 | I want to spend most of our discussion talking about publishing, but I do want to just ask one more question on the discussion of entrepreneurship.
00:20:36.680 | So what specifically did you do in working with your sons as a parent?
00:20:43.680 | Because you say, "Okay, I just expected it.
00:20:45.680 | It just kind of happened."
00:20:46.680 | But what specifically did you do to encourage those entrepreneurial endeavors?
00:20:50.680 | Well, first off, I don't see any difference between publishing and entrepreneurship.
00:20:55.680 | I think they're one and the same.
00:20:57.680 | I think they're like salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly.
00:21:00.680 | They're interconnected because publishing is entrepreneurship.
00:21:04.680 | Entrepreneurship is what the information empire of publishing is all about.
00:21:10.680 | But what I specifically did with them is, of course, kids have big eyes.
00:21:15.680 | And whenever they are in a store and they see something, they desire it.
00:21:18.680 | And they go, "Wow, oh, I want that, Dad. I want that."
00:21:20.680 | I'm like, "Okay, great. Let's get that for you. Let's come up with a way to get that."
00:21:24.680 | They're like, "Well, just buy it."
00:21:26.680 | I'm like, "No, I'm not buying it. You got to buy it."
00:21:28.680 | They're like, "Okay, well, let's figure out a way to make money to do this."
00:21:30.680 | And so I would be always coming up with these money-making ideas, whether it be a lemonade stand, baking cookies, selling raffle tickets door to door.
00:21:39.680 | Some kind of way to encourage them to think for themselves that they could buy it if they were to earn it.
00:21:46.680 | And my goal was to always brainstorm with them and share with them ways in which they could come up with monies to do it on their own.
00:21:54.680 | And I remember speaking to my dad again back in 1983.
00:21:57.680 | I earned $500 in my paper out in my Detroit Free Press monies.
00:22:01.680 | And I had an extra $500.
00:22:02.680 | And at that time, I was a bike racer and I had this old piece of crap bike that was probably 10 years old and wasn't very good.
00:22:10.680 | And I was winning these races with this old beat-up 10-speed.
00:22:13.680 | And I thought, "My goodness, if I had a real racing bike, not only could I win these races, but I could really do well in this business."
00:22:20.680 | And so I ended up saving an additional $500.
00:22:23.680 | And then I told my dad that I'm going down to the bike shop and I'm buying a 1984 Team Fuji racing bike.
00:22:30.680 | And he said, "No, Patrick, there's no way you can do that.
00:22:32.680 | That's way too much money.
00:22:33.680 | That would be like a 12-year-old kid buying a $3,000 bike today."
00:22:36.680 | And I said, "No, Dad.
00:22:38.680 | At 13, I'm going to do this.
00:22:39.680 | This is my money.
00:22:40.680 | I've earned this.
00:22:41.680 | I'm going to do this."
00:22:42.680 | And so he said, "I guess it's your money.
00:22:44.680 | Do whatever you want."
00:22:45.680 | And so I took the $500, went down to the bike shop and bought a 1984 metallic blue Team Fuji racing bike.
00:22:54.680 | And then I raced that bike for about three years and I sold it when I went off to college.
00:22:58.680 | Long story short, about three years ago, I went back to allofcraigslist.com to see if I could find that same bike.
00:23:07.680 | And sure enough, for $100, I found the same size, color, make, model, year of that bike.
00:23:14.680 | I bought it for $100, fixed it up, and now that Team Fuji racing bike sits in my office as an entrepreneurial trophy of my pursuits as a child.
00:23:24.680 | So to answer your question, I would help my children come up with strategies as ways in which they could make their own money so they could make their own purchases.
00:23:33.680 | So let's talk about publishing because that was how we got connected.
00:23:36.680 | I'm a big believer in – I try to make it a life practice of learning the things I need to learn when I need to do them.
00:23:43.680 | And so a big focus for me as we record this here in October, October has been dedicated to my writing and starting the publishing process of my first book.
00:23:53.680 | And so as part of that, I've done a ton of research and try to inform myself and study about the things that are important to me.
00:24:01.680 | This is one of the key things I think we miss in our schooling society where we try to – instead of teaching people how to become learners and self-directed learners,
00:24:09.680 | we try to teach people there's a curriculum that you need to know, and once you pass this curriculum, you're done.
00:24:14.680 | I reject that and I just try to say, "Well, let me filter all my information through my goals."
00:24:20.680 | As I've worked on this, I've purchased various courses, various books, various resources, looked for coaching services,
00:24:26.680 | and that was how I found your coaching services as I've looked for coaches and to find people to help me navigate this process and avoid some of the mistakes.
00:24:35.680 | So you're an expert in the topic of publishing.
00:24:39.680 | And when I look at the world of publishing today, I see two things.
00:24:43.680 | Number one, it's never been easier to publish a written work.
00:24:48.680 | You just sit down, plunk out some words, toss it, hire somebody on Fiverr to turn it into a .mobi file format and publish it on Amazon.
00:24:57.680 | So it's never been easier to do it.
00:24:59.680 | But on the other hand, it's never been more difficult to stand out among all the noise.
00:25:05.680 | There are more books being published now as I understand it than ever before in human history.
00:25:10.680 | So the question would be is publishing a book still the best thing to do?
00:25:15.680 | What would be your comments as a coach and having coached hundreds of authors, what would be your comments on the value of publishing physical paper books in today's world?
00:25:24.680 | Well, first and foremost, I agree with you.
00:25:28.680 | It's never been easier to publish books and there are more books now published than ever.
00:25:34.680 | But I would add an adjective to that, and that is that there are more crappy books published now more than ever.
00:25:42.680 | And one way that we need to stand out is to create a world-class book, a 250 to 300-page hardcover book that's far superior than the books that come out of New York.
00:25:55.680 | So world-class title, cover, testimonials, front page inserts, back page inserts.
00:26:01.680 | And it just kind of stands out.
00:26:05.680 | And so back end of your question again was what is the best way to stand out?
00:26:09.680 | Is that the best back end of your question?
00:26:12.680 | I guess I'm starting with a reason because when it gets to publishing a book, here's my approach even to my own book.
00:26:17.680 | I'm going to do a good job with it and I'm going to try to do – I'm going to do the best job I can to make it world-class because I want everything I do to be really, really valuable.
00:26:25.680 | And I'm hopeful of making money on it.
00:26:28.680 | But I also recognize the majority of the authors with the exception of a few noted fiction authors and a few interesting niches and with the exception of some massive best-selling nonfiction authors, the majority of authors that I've looked at say publishing a book is a very low-pay activity.
00:26:47.680 | It's a very low – you don't actually – you can't expect to make a ton of money on a book.
00:26:52.680 | And so then the question is, well, why should I bother to publish a book in today's world?
00:26:56.680 | How do you answer that if people are talking or have been thinking about the subject?
00:27:00.680 | Well, first off, I would completely 100% with all my heart and soul disagree with that statement.
00:27:06.680 | And the reason why I would disagree with that statement is that there's a lot of noise out there in the marketplace.
00:27:11.680 | There's a lot of social media babble and I'm a big advocate of social media.
00:27:16.680 | So I don't think there's anything wrong with social media.
00:27:18.680 | I think it's a fantastic tool.
00:27:20.680 | But everybody is of the belief that they can just go to social media and all their dreams, goals, and visions and revenue will happen.
00:27:27.680 | The problem is is that we need to stand out.
00:27:29.680 | And so I believe the best way to stand out is to write and publish a book because a book is not just a bound piece of work with words and content.
00:27:39.680 | A book is the world's greatest marketing secret in the history of our business.
00:27:44.680 | A book is a physical website.
00:27:46.680 | A book is a lead-generating tool.
00:27:48.680 | A book is an attraction magnet.
00:27:50.680 | A book is a credential and credibility piece that only about 1% of the people in the world have.
00:27:55.680 | A book is a way for you to stand out from the crowd, to get noticed, to get millions of dollars worth of free publicity.
00:28:02.680 | And the bottom line is you don't write and publish a book because you want to make a little bit of extra money on selling the book.
00:28:08.680 | You write and publish the book so that you can do speaking, coaching, and consulting.
00:28:14.680 | And in a few moments I'm going to share with you my holy grail of this industry and tell you the world's greatest marketing secret,
00:28:20.680 | which is to write and publish your book to transform your passions into your professions, to transform your intellectual property into the written word.
00:28:30.680 | It was Abraham Lincoln who said that the only way the dead can teach the yet unborn is through the written page.
00:28:37.680 | And so our goal as we leave a legacy for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, our goal to attract more market share,
00:28:45.680 | to stand out from the crowd, to get noticed, to get those speaking, coaching, consulting opportunities,
00:28:50.680 | is to understand that you don't actually make a whole lot of money off the book.
00:28:54.680 | And yeah, I've sold upwards of a million books in five languages in 108 countries, in Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Indonesian, English, and some others.
00:29:04.680 | Yeah, I've done well on my book, but the majority of my income comes from the speaking, the coaching, the consulting that happens as a result of leveraging the book
00:29:15.680 | to secure the speaking and the coaching opportunities.
00:29:18.680 | It's not from actual book sales.
00:29:21.680 | So as an example of this, when I first launched my professional speaking career 15, 16, 18 years ago,
00:29:28.680 | my book Creating Your Own Destiny had just gotten published.
00:29:32.680 | And as soon as the book was published, I searched on the internet.
00:29:35.680 | I found a $5,000 speaking engagement in Florida.
00:29:38.680 | At the time, I lived in Seattle, and I had been speaking up and down the I-5 corridor, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, British Columbia.
00:29:46.680 | And all of my speaking engagements I went to, I drove to, and wasn't paid that much, maybe $1,500, $2,500 here and there, $3,500.
00:29:55.680 | And then I found this $5,000 paid gig in Key Largo, Florida.
00:30:00.680 | I mailed the meeting planner a signed copy of my book, along with sending an email in my highlight video.
00:30:06.680 | And to my surprise, she replied back and said, "Yep, we want to book you. Send us the agreement."
00:30:11.680 | So I sent my speaking agreement for five grand, round-trip airline ticket, two nights hotel, my food and expenses, and they paid me in full nine months before the event.
00:30:23.680 | And so I was on cloud nine. I thought that was the greatest thing ever.
00:30:26.680 | And today my keynote speaking fee is $25,000.
00:30:29.680 | And so when I look back at that $5,000, I don't know why I was so excited.
00:30:34.680 | But the reason why is because it was my first one that paid that much, and the first time I got to fly to a gig.
00:30:40.680 | So I went down there. I did what my mentor taught me. I showed up early. I stayed late. I did the pre-speech interviews.
00:30:45.680 | I took the content from my pre-speech interviews, added that to the speech. I got a standing ovation.
00:30:51.680 | And it's important to know that most times I don't get a standing ovation unless I'm speaking to network marketing organizations, full commission sales, real estate mortgage.
00:30:58.680 | Anybody that's in sales, I typically get standing ovations.
00:31:02.680 | Most corporations, associations, you don't get standing ovations, and that's just the way it is in the business because they don't really care that much.
00:31:11.680 | So anyways, I went to the meeting planner afterwards, and I said, "Well, my goodness. I don't know what I did right, but I obviously screwed up, and I did something right because you guys loved it. The audience loved it."
00:31:23.680 | So I just need to know, what was it about Patrick Snow? Why did you book me as your speaker?
00:31:29.680 | There must have been other speakers that had bid on this gig.
00:31:33.680 | And she said, "Well, yes, Patrick. Of course. We had 47 other speakers all over North America, and every one of these 47 speakers sent us an email, and in that email was their embedded highlight video.
00:31:45.680 | And we watched 10 to 15 videos, and they were all great speakers.
00:31:48.680 | And then, Mr. Snow, you mailed us a signed copy of your book."
00:31:53.680 | And I said, "Well, great. What do you think of the book?" And she said, "We loved it. That's why we booked you as our keynote speaker."
00:31:57.680 | And then I said, "No! What do you think of the content of the book?"
00:32:01.680 | And she said, "Well, to tell you the truth, Patrick, to tell you the truth, I just want you to know that we have seven people on our speaker selection committee, and we've been so busy that not a single one of the seven of us had a chance to actually read your book."
00:32:16.680 | And when I heard that, I was like, "Oh, my goodness! I've just discovered the entire holy grail of the entire professional speaking industry."
00:32:26.680 | And that is everybody else on the planet is trying to secure their gigs by emailing highlight videos and email and email and email.
00:32:35.680 | And the problem is meeting planners are getting 500 emails a day in spam and all kinds of issues, and it's going to their spam blocker, and so you don't even know if the emails are going through.
00:32:43.680 | And what I discovered, when you physically send a 250 to 300-page hardcover book via the regular US mail in one of those cardboard envelopes via priority service, then this shows up on their desk.
00:32:58.680 | And I throw in the USA Today cover story, the New York Times, some testimonials, a speaker one sheet, a cover letter, some other things.
00:33:05.680 | And I inscribe the book specifically to the meeting planner, "I'm excited about the prospects of being selected as your keynote speaker for your spring upcoming sales conference," or whatever it is.
00:33:16.680 | Then they just love that. And so I realized that that was the reason why you write and publish the books.
00:33:23.680 | Who cares about the book sales? Who cares if you're a bestseller? Who cares how many books you actually sell?
00:33:29.680 | All I care about is strategically gifting these books to the people who have the ability to hire me for speaking, coaching, consulting.
00:33:38.680 | So over the last 15 years, I've done about $3.5 million in revenue using that one marketing strategy alone.
00:33:46.680 | And I'm not trying to impress anybody with that revenue stream or that income number.
00:33:50.680 | And that's not been in one year, but that's been over the course of about 15 years.
00:33:54.680 | And I'm just trying to impress upon you how powerful it is.
00:33:58.680 | And so from that time 15 years ago, I find 10 speaking engagements on the Internet.
00:34:04.680 | I mail out 10 books to meeting planners.
00:34:07.680 | Three and a half out of 10 make that conversion and hire me as their speaker.
00:34:12.680 | And then with regards to publishing prospects as a coach, I find 10 people on the Internet throughout the world that want to write and publish a book, that want to be a bestseller, that want to be an author, speaker, coach, consultant, or just looking for a better way to promote their business.
00:34:24.680 | Maybe they're a chiropractor, a doctor, a financial services representative, whatever they are, I believe that the book is the best way to market you.
00:34:34.680 | And so I send out 10 books to these 10 prospects and then seven out of 10 convert and hire me as their coach.
00:34:42.680 | Seven or three?
00:34:43.680 | Seven. So seven on the coaching, but three and a half on the speaking.
00:34:48.680 | and the speaking. So my close ratio for speaking when sending books is 35%. My
00:34:54.980 | close ratio for coaching when sending books is 70%. And I tell you what, that's
00:35:01.440 | all I do. That's my entire marketing strategy. It is print books, shipbooks,
00:35:07.960 | follow up. Print books, shipbooks, follow up. Print books, shipbooks, follow up.
00:35:13.960 | That's the only marketing that I do and it's the only marketing that I need to do
00:35:17.940 | because nobody else on planet earth is doing that. And I love that quote that
00:35:22.280 | says, "The fortune is made in the follow up." And Napoleon Hill in his book, The
00:35:25.880 | Law of Success, says on average, "We must have seven bits of communication between
00:35:30.300 | buyer and seller for sale to transpire." So I mail the book, that's one. And then I
00:35:34.440 | call or email, that's two, three. And then once a week, every week for the rest of
00:35:38.000 | my life, I touch them. I drip on them just once a week. And then typically within
00:35:42.480 | seven weeks, I'm filling out paperwork to have them hire me as a coach or to book
00:35:47.920 | me as their keynote speaker. And so I would completely disagree with that
00:35:52.000 | statement that the whole reason why you write and publish the book is
00:35:56.840 | so that you can sell more whatever it is that you do. Whatever your business, if
00:36:02.840 | you're a landscape architect, you write and publish the book so you can attract more
00:36:06.280 | landscape architect clients. If you're a financial planner, you write and publish
00:36:10.200 | the book to attract more financial planning clients. If you're a chiropractor,
00:36:15.280 | you write and publish the book so that you can attract more patients. So without
00:36:19.640 | question, the book is the most powerful marketing tool and the world's greatest
00:36:27.480 | marketing secret in all of business, hands down. I am convinced.
00:36:31.640 | I think you said you disagreed, but you actually did agree with me because that's
00:36:35.480 | what I was saying is that it's not about the book directly, it's about the
00:36:38.360 | ancillary services. So this has been my plan with even Radical Personal Finance.
00:36:43.040 | One of the things that really frustrated me when I was a life insurance agent was
00:36:46.880 | that I didn't have the ability, based upon the rules and regulations of the large
00:36:52.600 | company I worked with, I didn't have the ability to publish my own materials to do
00:36:57.520 | my selling for me. And I would go out in the life insurance business, let's see,
00:37:00.800 | there would be books like, famous ones like Infinite Banking or Bank on Yourself,
00:37:05.520 | which are all about using whole life insurance policies as a way of funding
00:37:10.340 | your life, or whether it was other aspects of just different things. There'd be
00:37:14.680 | financial advisors and producers who all they would do is write the book. And what
00:37:20.160 | they would do is if they wrote the book, and they wrote the book well, number one,
00:37:24.360 | you get people to... Even Tony Robbins did last year with his book Money Master the
00:37:29.520 | Game. You get people to pay you to buy your marketing and advertising materials,
00:37:35.000 | and then those marketing and advertising materials, they make money on themselves,
00:37:38.480 | and then they turn around and incentivize people to go ahead and consume more of
00:37:44.840 | your services. And because you are going first as the entrepreneur, as the
00:37:48.720 | marketer, you're going first with the massively helpful content and the clear
00:37:53.360 | presentation. Your customers, instead of having an adversarial relationship, you
00:37:57.360 | have a work together relationship. And so if you build the marketing funnel
00:38:02.840 | systematically, and the book, you give somebody for whatever the cost of the
00:38:06.360 | book, whether in your case you're sending it out for free, you're giving somebody
00:38:10.240 | so much information that they're naturally going to inquire and say, "Oh,
00:38:13.480 | what's the next step? What can I do to get more specific application?" And that's
00:38:18.280 | how you build a strong marketing funnel. It used to frustrate me because I said,
00:38:21.960 | "This is so obvious. I see so many people doing it." But yet, I as an individual,
00:38:26.800 | legally, I wasn't permitted to do it. It's one of the reasons why I left that
00:38:30.640 | industry. And then with Radical Personal Finance, that's been my business model
00:38:34.240 | all along. I build the market first with the white space I saw with the podcast.
00:38:38.760 | Now I'm in the process of following that up with the book, coaching, products,
00:38:43.640 | additional resources for people who want to go deeper. And I believe it's the
00:38:47.120 | perfect win-win-win across the board marketing channel for most businesses
00:38:52.240 | because what it allows your clients to do is to self-select the ones that are right
00:38:56.360 | for you and the ones that are wrong for you. So instead of trying to do a mass
00:38:59.200 | market thing where, "Okay, I'm going to buy lots of time on television," and then
00:39:02.960 | reaching the mass market with the generalized content, you're focusing very
00:39:06.440 | specifically on helping the people who are a perfect fit for your content and then
00:39:11.280 | overwhelming those people who are the customers for your business with the most
00:39:14.920 | valuable information that they need. And it's a time-proven system. It frustrates
00:39:21.280 | me. I'm glad that I can now do it, but there's a little bit of pent-up
00:39:25.600 | frustration from years of watching it. I wasn't able to do it before, but I'm
00:39:28.280 | thrilled to be doing it now.
00:39:29.280 | - Well, and the best reason about this is that the life cycle of a book and the
00:39:35.880 | shelf life of a book can last for hundreds and hundreds of years. I mean,
00:39:40.240 | look at the Bible, for goodness sakes. Is that 2,000 years old, plus or minus? And
00:39:44.480 | so when you write and publish a book, that book is going to stay around for 50
00:39:49.640 | years, 75 years, 100 years, or more until that book physically falls apart. And so
00:39:55.520 | what happens is it's too expensive to go out there and hire a direct sales force
00:39:59.240 | trying to market your products and service and your brand. But when you look
00:40:03.240 | at a book, I don't look at a book as a salesman or a saleswoman. To me, a book is
00:40:08.560 | a sales it, and you don't have to pay medical or dental benefits. You don't
00:40:12.640 | have to pay a 401(k). A book will market and brand and sell for you for as long as
00:40:17.120 | that book is in circulation. And people don't throw away books. They give away
00:40:22.320 | books. They send them to the library. They gift them to people. They let people
00:40:26.040 | borrow them. And the book sells and markets and brands for you for hundreds
00:40:29.880 | of years. And so hence another reason why I think it's the world's greatest
00:40:33.200 | marketing secret. And you're absolutely right. And by the way, I think it's
00:40:36.960 | wonderful what you've done and go out on your own because radical personal
00:40:40.320 | finance is far better than anything I've seen out there. So grateful that you've
00:40:45.200 | made that leap and so thrilled about our friendship.
00:40:47.480 | Yeah. It's going to be good even as we work together because if you – well, my
00:40:52.760 | theory has been let me just focus on doing the best that I can. I can't claim
00:40:56.560 | to be better, but I can work really hard to be excellent. And at every stage, if I
00:41:00.920 | work hard in my business to be excellent, the people who are going to be
00:41:05.400 | appropriate for my services will follow through. And I think that can be applied
00:41:09.200 | at the microcosm scale on any business, any person. I want to shift now and
00:41:15.120 | talk about online branding versus physical, like talking at the book and
00:41:20.280 | how you see the intersection. I teach some concepts on radical personal
00:41:24.160 | finance and I focus on always start with building your number one wealth engine,
00:41:31.040 | which is your income. And that's going to start by your human – by enhancing
00:41:35.360 | your human capital, which is your earning ability. So you've got to focus on
00:41:38.800 | building the earning ability in your job, by advancing in your career or in your
00:41:42.600 | business by promoting your business more broadly. And so that's going to build in
00:41:47.760 | with marketing. And I see specifically even for most employees, most employees
00:41:52.320 | are not thinking about their personal brand. They're not thinking about how do
00:41:54.920 | I enhance myself and learn the skills that I need to be a useful resource for my
00:41:59.840 | next employer and how do I market myself to be attractive to my next employer. So
00:42:05.160 | I recommend as a minimum to get started and establish yourself with a blog in
00:42:09.800 | your industry, focus on building up your expertise, focus on promoting and being a
00:42:15.880 | resource in your industry. And it's so simple today with a few bucks of hosting
00:42:20.920 | fees to launch a great-looking blog. How do you see the intersection between
00:42:25.600 | online posting, online blogging, writing articles versus publishing a
00:42:31.480 | comprehensive book? What do you see as the proper intersection between those two
00:42:34.420 | things for most people?
00:42:35.920 | Well, the intersection is I have many, many, many clients that they say, "Well, I
00:42:40.680 | can't ever write a book. That's too hard. That's too long. That's going to take
00:42:43.200 | too much time." And I say, "But you have a blog." And they say, "Yeah." And I say, "Well, how long
00:42:46.560 | have you been blogging?" And I'm like, "Oh," they all say, "Oh, we've been blogging for two years." And my
00:42:50.520 | answer is, "Well, go back and take an inventory of your 50 best blogs that
00:42:57.600 | you've gotten the best response from that you enjoy the most and then you
00:43:01.360 | repurpose those 50 blogs as content for your book and now you have a book with
00:43:07.600 | 50 different chapters in the book. And then all we have to do is come up with a
00:43:11.760 | introduction, a final note, a title, subtitle, tagline. We get some testimonials in
00:43:16.720 | there, do the acknowledgments, dedication page, these kind of things. Your back page
00:43:20.240 | sales inserts and bam, you're published. And so a lot of time publishing is just
00:43:27.640 | simply a collection of all of the existing works that you've
00:43:34.560 | already done. It's a repurposing the blog content that's already been published.
00:43:38.760 | And so I would say that it's one and the same. The only difference is
00:43:44.640 | that you can physically send a blog to somebody and they might not do anything
00:43:49.040 | with it. It might just get lost in the electronic space. But if you physically
00:43:54.240 | put a book in someone's hand, they have to do something. And they have to put it
00:43:58.680 | aside, they have to put it by their bed stand, they have to put it on their
00:44:00.960 | bookshelf. It might sit in their inbox for a week or two, but they have to
00:44:04.600 | physically do something. So I'm above the belief that the printed book is far
00:44:08.120 | better than a blog. But I think if you don't want to spend the time writing the
00:44:13.120 | book from scratch, I would say repurpose all of the content from your blog and
00:44:17.680 | turn your blog into a book. And I've had probably 50 clients that don't believe
00:44:23.520 | that they can write a book, but all of them have blogs and they take their
00:44:27.400 | blogging content, copy and paste it, repurpose it, stick it into their book,
00:44:31.880 | and then literally 90 to 95 percent of the heavy lifting of the book has been
00:44:35.500 | done. So to me, a blog and a book are one and the same. It's just that a book is
00:44:40.360 | far more impressive to the meeting planner and certainly catches the
00:44:44.320 | attention. But the actual content and the ability to change and impact people's
00:44:48.200 | lives if the books get read and if the blogs get read have that same power. So
00:44:53.620 | I'm a big advocate of blogging. Let's talk about publishing, self-publishing
00:44:57.800 | versus working on attracting a publisher to actually publish your work. This is
00:45:03.120 | also one of the big decisions that authors have to make and there's a lot
00:45:07.400 | of historical baggage on both sides of these things. In 2015, if you're coaching
00:45:11.880 | a client who's considering, "Should I self-publish my book or should I try to
00:45:17.720 | find a publisher to publish it for me?" Where do you start with giving them
00:45:21.360 | advice? Well, first thing I let them know that there's about a hundred decisions
00:45:25.320 | that they need to make in order for them to successfully publish a world-class
00:45:30.280 | book that they can actually make money on. And if they make about 95% of those
00:45:35.640 | decisions correctly, then the book is going to be a miserable failure. So the
00:45:39.760 | key is that you got to make 100 out of 100 decisions correct in order to
00:45:45.160 | succeed in this business. And so 100 out of 100 and the most important of those
00:45:50.680 | decisions is selecting the right publishing option. And a lot of people
00:45:56.680 | don't realize this but there's actually three or three and a half publishing
00:45:59.660 | options that you have. And option number one, in no specific order that most
00:46:04.640 | people are familiar with, are the traditional New York publishing
00:46:08.080 | publishers such as like my publisher is John Wiley and Sons. And then we have
00:46:13.520 | Time Warner and Penguin and Putnam and McGraw-Hill and Hay House. And some of
00:46:17.880 | these companies are in New York, some are not in New York, most are in New York.
00:46:22.000 | But I just call these companies the traditional New York publisher route. And
00:46:26.760 | bottom line, in the past these companies would buy the rights of your book and
00:46:30.920 | then they print, publish, distribute their book and you give up and you sell the
00:46:35.880 | rights to this book with hopes that they're going to do the marketing for you.
00:46:38.800 | And unfortunately about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that's when they stopped doing
00:46:43.480 | marketing. Mark Victor Hanson of Chicken Soup for the Soul is on record as stating
00:46:48.240 | that a major New York publisher today is nothing more than a company that pays
00:46:51.520 | for the printing of the books. That's all they do. My books have been with my
00:46:55.700 | publisher in New York for five years and they've done absolutely nothing. So I've
00:46:59.320 | experienced firsthand that publishing a book in New York doesn't necessarily
00:47:05.280 | ever ensure that you're going to actually make money off of the book. And
00:47:09.120 | every New York publisher that I've ever met, every single one of them are
00:47:12.560 | disappointed and wish they would have not selected that route because they're
00:47:16.320 | not making money, they're not getting paid. And so if you look at the numbers, a
00:47:20.880 | literary agent friend of mine that's been in the industry forever, she says
00:47:23.880 | that if you have a manuscript completed, then you have a one in one thousand
00:47:28.640 | chance of having an editor in New York actually read your manuscript. If they
00:47:33.280 | read your manuscript, now you have a one in one thousand chance of them actually
00:47:37.120 | buying the rights of your manuscript. And so one in one thousand to read it, one
00:47:43.040 | in one thousand to buy it. When I did my two book deal with John Wiley and Sons
00:47:47.240 | five or six years ago, they paid me $40,000 advance for two books. We did a
00:47:52.520 | two book deal with Creating Your Own Destiny and The Affluent Entrepreneur.
00:47:56.000 | And that was back then and I missed the big money by three or four years. If I
00:47:58.920 | had done it five years earlier, I could have gotten $100,000 per book. But what's
00:48:02.800 | happened in the publishing industry, they continuously lose money year after year
00:48:06.080 | after year. So the advances are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So now
00:48:10.360 | what we see coming out of New York is if they read it and if they buy it, they're
00:48:14.240 | going to give you a one to five thousand dollar advance. And then they're going
00:48:18.240 | to ask you to sign an IOU that says that you commit to purchasing upwards of
00:48:23.520 | ten thousand books in your life at ten dollars a piece. And if you do the math,
00:48:28.800 | you're basically signing an IOU that says that you're going to buy a hundred
00:48:31.880 | thousand dollars worth of your own books. And so I don't think that's a win-win-win
00:48:35.720 | deal. And by the way, the reality of it is the New York publishing route is
00:48:40.720 | really not even an option for most people to consider. If you're not a movie
00:48:44.240 | star, a celebrity, a professional athlete, a musician, a politician, then I wouldn't
00:48:49.000 | even waste your time. I was rejected for 15 years before they bought the rights
00:48:53.800 | of my books. And the only reason why they bought the rights of my books, I'd sold
00:48:56.760 | several hundred thousand copies. And so they wanted my brand, they wanted my
00:49:00.360 | platform. And the only reason that I sold out to them was as a publishing coach and
00:49:06.160 | a book marketing coach, I felt that I could have more credential and
00:49:10.080 | credibility by knowing both the New York publishing route and the self-publishing
00:49:13.680 | route. And so from an author standpoint, selling my books to the New York
00:49:17.120 | publishing community was the absolute worst thing that I've ever done
00:49:20.000 | business-wise. But from a coach, having that credential and credibility of the
00:49:25.960 | number one business publisher in the world on my side, it was the best
00:49:28.960 | decision that I made business-wise. So I would say this, if you're not a movie
00:49:33.680 | star, a politician, a celebrity, professional athlete, politician, then I
00:49:37.760 | wouldn't even waste your time because you might spend 10, 15, 20 years before
00:49:41.000 | your book ever gets picked up. So that's option one, is the traditional New York
00:49:45.080 | publishing route. A second option would be the internet publishing route. And if
00:49:51.000 | you go to the internet and in Google you type in the phrase "publishing", you're
00:49:55.160 | gonna find about a thousand companies that pop up. And every one of these
00:50:00.040 | companies are scams, every single one. And since we're being recorded, I'm not gonna
00:50:05.480 | mention any names on this, but all you got to do, the first 10, 20, 30, 50, 100
00:50:10.040 | companies that pop up on Google when you type in "publishing", every one of those
00:50:14.360 | companies are a scam. And the reason why they're a scam, they're gonna charge
00:50:17.640 | anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 up front in advance to publish your book. And if
00:50:23.000 | you don't know any better, many people, millions of people, select that route. So
00:50:27.320 | now they pay these companies all kinds of money at the end of the day when the
00:50:31.640 | time is right to print the book. Now the author ends up printing the books but
00:50:38.200 | they don't know any better, they print through these internet publishers. And
00:50:40.920 | the internet publishers, they charge $12, $12, $12 a book. And you as an author, you
00:50:47.120 | don't know any better because you've never sourced out a printer before. So
00:50:50.360 | you pay $12, $12, $12, $12 to buy a book, book, book, book, book. And then this
00:50:55.080 | internet publisher takes that $12, goes to their printer, they print your books
00:51:00.320 | for $6 a piece. And now they pay $6, $6, $6, $6 and they sell the books for you at
00:51:07.080 | $12, $12, $12. So if you go out in your lifetime and you sell 10,000 copies of
00:51:12.120 | your book, these scam internet publishers have just taken $60,000 of
00:51:17.720 | your profits. So they're charging on the front end and they're charging on the
00:51:21.360 | back end. And the reason why is whomever controls the PDF files controls the
00:51:25.840 | print run, whomever controls the print run controls the profits. And so what I
00:51:30.800 | coach and teach is full-fledged self-publishing where you eliminate all
00:51:35.720 | those third-party middlemen between you and the printer. You want to have a
00:51:39.480 | direct relationship with printers. I've got 29 printers all over the world that
00:51:43.920 | I've sourced my business with, that I've got relationships with. I introduced my
00:51:49.040 | publishing clients to printers in Hong Kong, in China, in Canada, all over the US.
00:51:54.160 | And so now my clients when they print the book, they're paying $5 to $6 per
00:51:58.840 | book in the US. And then in China if they want to go to China or Hong Kong, they're
00:52:03.560 | paying $2 to $3 per book. And so why in the world would we ever pay $12, $12, $12
00:52:08.600 | for a book when we can print in the US for $5 to $6 a book or pay $2 to $3
00:52:13.280 | a book. And the reason why this is important is to succeed in this industry.
00:52:18.640 | You need to understand that a book is nothing more than a lead generating tool
00:52:22.520 | that you need to gift to your speaking, coaching, consulting, whomever your
00:52:27.120 | prospects are. And as you give those books away, the revenue will skyrocket in
00:52:33.240 | your business based on whatever products, services, widgets that you create. And
00:52:38.720 | the key is that you give your books away like you're giving away candy at
00:52:43.640 | Halloween. You just give them away, one, two, three, four, five books every day.
00:52:48.040 | You don't want to give books away to people who are homeless and live under a
00:52:50.520 | bridge. You want to give those people food because they're going to burn your
00:52:53.280 | books as fuel. What I'm suggesting that you do is you give your books away to
00:52:57.440 | meeting planners, to book reviewers, to bloggers, to radio and TV producers, to
00:53:03.800 | editors of magazines, to people in network marketing or direct sales that
00:53:07.400 | have huge teams. You gift your book away upwards of five to seven to ten books a
00:53:12.240 | day to people who have big mouths who will promote your message. And the reason
00:53:17.600 | why option number three, full-fledged self-publishing, is the best way to go is
00:53:22.120 | because it's easy to give books away when you're paying $2 to $3 a book or
00:53:25.880 | five to six dollars a book. It's very, very painful to give your books away
00:53:30.240 | when you're paying $12 a book. And that's why that internet publishing route just
00:53:34.400 | doesn't option, is not a valid option. So I coach option three, which is full-fledged
00:53:39.920 | self-publishing. The same thing that Benjamin Franklin created when this
00:53:45.400 | country was started. Same thing that Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar
00:53:49.720 | Allan Poe, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, anybody who's everybody in the field of
00:53:55.640 | publishing, every one of us, we get our start in self-publishing because you own
00:54:00.480 | 100% of the rights, you keep 100% of the profits, you make every last
00:54:04.360 | decision. If you want a pink softcover book, you get pink softcover. If you want
00:54:09.440 | purple hardcover, you get purple hardcover. You own it, you control it, and
00:54:15.040 | you keep all of the profits. And so that's why option three of self-publishing
00:54:20.840 | is the only way to actually make money out there. And there are other people out
00:54:26.320 | there that are aware of services like CreateSpace and Lulu and some of these
00:54:31.040 | others, and I would argue that the CreateSpaces and the Lulu's are not
00:54:34.520 | actually real publishers. They're simply just prototype printers, and they were
00:54:39.200 | created to compete with China pricing. So if you need five or seven or ten books
00:54:43.160 | in a heartbeat, you can go to CreateSpace and get a low-cost, low-quality book for
00:54:49.200 | dirt, dirt cheap. And the issue is they've got technology constraints that they
00:54:53.920 | can't do hardcover, they can't do French flaps, they can't do some of those. So
00:54:57.720 | those are the three and a half publishing options. The traditional New
00:55:01.140 | York publishing route, the internet publishing route, which are all scams,
00:55:04.720 | self-publishing, which I coach and teach, and then the CreateSpace is really just
00:55:10.520 | a printer. And when you understand their technology limitations, you'll see that
00:55:15.200 | they are just a printer. So those are the three and a half publishing options, and
00:55:20.200 | the only way to make money in this business if you select the traditional
00:55:23.560 | route, I'm sorry, the route of self-publishing. So those are three things
00:55:29.000 | that everybody needs to really understand before they decide to plunge
00:55:31.720 | into this business. So last theme, because our interview today is a
00:55:35.800 | dual-fold interview. Number one, to provide some really useful information
00:55:41.160 | and overview and ideas to members of the audience about publishing their book, but
00:55:47.480 | also it's content marketing that we're using this to launch your sponsorship
00:55:50.680 | of the show. And I think that this is going to be a really good fit because
00:55:54.400 | number one, I'll be sharing my journey as I've hired you to be my coach as I work
00:55:59.280 | through the publishing process. And then also I think that this show and
00:56:03.800 | your coaching services are going to be a great fit for at least some members of
00:56:07.440 | the audience. So let's talk about your specific coaching services and what you
00:56:12.160 | do. Lay out the marketplace, the different options. If somebody's been
00:56:15.600 | thinking about publishing a book, where they would go for information? And go
00:56:20.000 | ahead and give us your few minutes of advertising and sales pitch here of what
00:56:24.560 | makes you different versus other people who are out there as consultants and
00:56:28.080 | coaches. Well, first off, you know, I haven't sold 500 million copies of my
00:56:33.240 | books like many people in this industry have. And the people that have sold that
00:56:37.320 | many books, they don't have a coaching system. They aren't doing the one-on-one
00:56:42.120 | coaching. They don't have a no expiration lifetime coaching system like I have. And
00:56:46.440 | so I would suggest that the way that I'm different, there's nobody else on planet
00:56:49.960 | earth that does what I do. There's nobody on planet earth that offers the amount of
00:56:54.080 | value that I provide offering a lifetime coaching assistance for serving as the
00:57:01.960 | writing coach, publishing coach, book marketing coach, professional speaking
00:57:06.480 | coach, small business coach, coaching coach, consulting coach, media training
00:57:12.600 | coach, and publicity coach for life with no expiration. I do upwards of six live
00:57:17.520 | group coaching calls a week, a one-on-one call per week, unlimited email access,
00:57:22.480 | unlimited text, and then I do 11 bestseller publishing institutes around
00:57:26.880 | the world each year. In addition to that, I provide my clients with a 52-step book
00:57:33.200 | marketing business plan, a 20 professional speaker secrets, a path or
00:57:37.520 | model, a 55-step publishing coaching roadmap with all my vendors, editors,
00:57:41.800 | proofreaders, typesetters, co-designers, printers, ebooks, global book distribution,
00:57:46.640 | foreign language rights, audiobooks, the whole thing, A to Z, soup to nuts. We
00:57:51.920 | cover all of it as part of this information empire. So I would be
00:57:56.260 | thrilled and honored to offer anybody that's listening to this amazing podcast
00:58:03.040 | of Radical Personal Finance, any of your fans, anybody listening, a
00:58:08.280 | complimentary, no obligation, 30 to 60 minute publishing consultation by phone,
00:58:15.320 | by Skype, or in person if geographically possible. And the best way to schedule
00:58:22.960 | that is to send me a text on my private cell phone number. That number is 206-310-1200.
00:58:31.080 | Again, that's 206-310-1200, 206-310-1200. And then send me your name and your time
00:58:41.720 | zone and I will text you right back to get a hold of you. Also for more
00:58:45.480 | information you can look on the web at my website. My professional speaking
00:58:49.600 | website is PatrickSnow.com, but most importantly my publishing website is
00:58:54.880 | ThePublishingDoctor.com. All three words all spelled out. ThePublishingDoctor.com.
00:59:02.920 | Go to that website. There's a thin line red box. There's a one-hour publishing
00:59:07.160 | interview on there that you might want to listen to as well. All the information
00:59:10.520 | that you ever want to know about publishing. I've got about a 20 page
00:59:14.080 | scrolling website there on ThePublishingDoctor.com that shows
00:59:18.880 | anything and everything that you want to know about this business. And then of
00:59:21.640 | course you can email me. My email is Patrick@PatrickSnow.com. Again,
00:59:25.560 | Patrick@PatrickSnow.com. But my concern with emails, oftentimes people's emails
00:59:30.800 | end up in my spam box and I miss it all together. And hence that's the best
00:59:34.360 | reason why your listeners should text me direct on my private cell phone number
00:59:38.240 | to schedule their complimentary 30 to 60 minute consultation. And again that
00:59:43.920 | number is 206-310-1200. Be sure to put your name and your time zone and we'll
00:59:51.080 | get back to you and schedule that call.
00:59:52.640 | Patrick, this has been awesome. I've had a great time working with you so far and
00:59:56.640 | we're gonna crank out the Radical Personal Finance bestseller and I'll be
01:00:01.240 | reporting to the audience the whole progress all along the way. And I hope
01:00:05.720 | that I think this is gonna work out really well. Publishing a book, in my
01:00:10.440 | mind, takes some time and it's gonna take some work as I'm in the thick of
01:00:14.000 | writing it and working my way through all these publishing decisions myself
01:00:17.120 | with you. But I see the benefit of it and I'm excited about it and I'd love for
01:00:22.240 | some of the audience members, for whom it's appropriate, who have a business or
01:00:25.840 | a practice or at that stage where they can go ahead and take this next step for
01:00:28.440 | their own marketing. I would love for them to connect with you. So thank you so
01:00:31.360 | much for coming on.
01:00:32.360 | Yeah, and I would say that publishing a book is the third most important
01:00:35.040 | decision in your life. First is who you're gonna marry. Number two is how
01:00:38.520 | many children you're gonna have. And number three is to write and publish a
01:00:42.160 | book to promote whatever practice that you do. It is the world's greatest
01:00:46.440 | marketing secret. And so I would just leave your listeners with this last
01:00:49.080 | quote and that is, "Think it, ink it. Believe it, achieve it." When you think it,
01:00:54.600 | ink it, believe it, achieve it, you will become an unstoppable force of power
01:00:58.400 | fully capable of achieving your destiny.
01:01:03.000 | I like it. Thanks, dude.
01:01:05.000 | Pull out a pen, sit down, write down some ideas and get started is all I have to say.
01:01:11.400 | You've got a lot of work ahead of you to get started on your book.
01:01:16.320 | Interesting thing, I can't give away Patrick's intellectual property, but when
01:01:20.480 | I became a coaching client, one of the things that was really useful to me was
01:01:24.000 | he actually sent over his instruction manual for the actual process of writing
01:01:29.240 | a book. And he coaches his clients specifically step by step by step by
01:01:33.840 | step how to actually write their book. It's really, really good. And that's his
01:01:38.640 | intellectual property, so I'm not gonna steal it. But if you do become a client
01:01:41.640 | of his, he gives you a really great step-by-step process for specifically
01:01:45.400 | one thing after another what to do. So if you think that you're interested in
01:01:49.560 | publishing or interested in writing a book, then reach out to Patrick. Again, the
01:01:53.040 | best way to get a hold of him is to text him. I'll put that number in the show
01:01:57.040 | notes for today's show, or you can write it down now. It is 206-310-1200.
01:02:06.320 | Text him your name and your time zone and just let him know you heard
01:02:10.480 | about him on Radical Personal Finance and he'll coordinate a time to connect
01:02:13.320 | with you. So that's always the best way to get a hold of him. Or to check him out,
01:02:17.000 | again, go to PatrickSnow.com or ThePublishingDoctor.com and you can see a
01:02:21.680 | lot of his information. And research his reputation out there just like you
01:02:24.880 | would with anybody. But he's been, so far I've really enjoyed working with him and
01:02:28.760 | he's been helpful to me. I've been trying to help him a little bit with his
01:02:31.800 | techie stuff. He tells me his weak point is some of the techie stuff, so I've been
01:02:35.640 | trying to get a couple of things, give him a couple ideas to improve his
01:02:40.560 | tech ability. So Patrick, we'll get you squared away. I hope you help me get my
01:02:45.240 | book published and make it look beautiful and nice and we'll get your
01:02:48.240 | tech stuff squared away. So again, if you want to get in touch with him, the best
01:02:51.680 | way to do that is text him at 206-310-1200. Thank you all so much for
01:02:58.360 | listening. I appreciate each and every one of you who is in this audience. I
01:03:01.080 | appreciate all the love and support that you give to me. I appreciate the emails
01:03:05.160 | that you send me. I appreciate the reviews that you make on iTunes. Those
01:03:08.520 | of those things are so important and helpful and I thank you for each and
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01:04:08.200 | much for listening. I will be back with you soon. Are you ready to make your next
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