The Publishing Profits Podcast Show | Writing | Marketing | Books | eBooks | Audiobooks | Authors | Entrepreneurs

Tony Wrighton is a personal development author and speaker, known for his work on Zestology. He has three books published with Virgin Books in 12 languages and is one of the country’s foremost experts on NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). Tony is the host of top-rated podcast Zestology, where he interviews a wide range of experts in the field of health and personal development. In today’s show, here’s just a few of the ideas we discuss: What Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) is, and a few techniques you can use right NOW to dramatically improve your communication (so that you can get what you want and come off as a kinder, more likable person) Why great relationships are the KEY to great success in business and in almost every area of life The ONE thing you should focus on when you meet someone new if you want to create a great relationship instantly (even if you’re meeting Richard Branson) How to make a great request so that the other person is far more willing to help you out (without sounding demanding or selfish) Why communication is so powerful, and why you must learn how to become better if you want to achieve big goals and dreams …and much more! Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!).   The post 79: Improve Your Communication and Relationships with Neurolinguistic Programming – Tony Wrighton appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Stacey Hall is the bestselling author of several books including Chi-To-Be where she shares her 11 powerful “Energy Surges” to get boost your energy and vitality. Stacey is a sought-after keynote speaker, trainer and coach, and she teaches entrepreneurs how to attract perfect customers. Here’s a few of the highlights from this week’s show: How Stacey discovered the power of attraction marketing, and how to use it to get a much higher return on your marketing dollars (and time!) Stacey’s fight with adrenal fatigue, and how she learned to overcome the habit of trying to do everything herself (a common mistake entrepreneurs make) “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first” – Zig Ziglar Stacey’s Strategic Action Planning Process for success What do you want? What’s the most important thing in the world to you? Who do you want to be in the world? Where are you putting your energy? Are you spending time on what’s most important to you How to find, understand and use your Core Values to drive your business forward and much more! You can connect with Stacey and learn more about her and her books at www.chi-to-be.com Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 78: Stacey Hall on Boosting Your Energy and Attracting Perfect Customers appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Sir John Hargrave is the CEO of Media Shower, one of the leading content marketing firms on the planet. John believes that useful, entertaining, mind-blowing content is the only way to build long-lasting web traffic, search rankings, and sales. There are no shortcuts. His new book Mind Hacking comes out in January, 2016. Here’s just a taste of what you’ll learn in this outstanding interview with John: Why and how your mind can be reprogrammed (“You don’t have to believe everything you think.”) Exactly what mind hacking is, and what it isn’t. The right ways to do it, and the BIG mistakes to avoid when it comes to working on your mind. Why, like just about any major change in life, you must start by cultivating awareness. How to “debug” your mind by identifying negative thoughts, beliefs and bad habits that may be holding you back from the success you want and deserve. Some great free tools and guided exercises that show you exactly how to reprogram your mind to help you feel great and achieve anything you want in life. How to improve your imagination skills dramatically (even if you were never good at it before). Some amazing visualization techniques that will work for you even if you’re bad at visualizing. How to create a life-changing “Reality Distortion Field” that gives you what you want when you want it (right now!). John’s new book Mind Hacking is now available on Amazon here. Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 77: Mind Hacking 101 with Sir John Hargrave appeared first on TCK Publishing.

As one of the most established ghostwriters in the nation, New York Times best-selling author Michael Levin has written, co-written or ghostwritten more than 100 books, of which eleven are national best sellers. He has also made contributions to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, Politico, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Jerusalem Post, Writers Digest, and CBS News. Michael taught writing classes at the University of California – Los Angeles and New York University. He even appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2012. Michael always wanted to be a writer from the time he was a little kid. He first fell in love with storytelling when his father read Ask Mr. Bear and Winnie the Pooh to him. His choice of career solidified when he saw a film strip ingrade school of an author reading proofs of his book. That was when Michael said, “I want to be that when I grow up!” This interview covered a wide range of topics. Here are some of the takeaways: The most important thing for any new writer is “behind-in-chair time.” The importance of persistence The key to production is low quotas. Michael told his students at UCLA to simply write two rotten double spaced pages a day. Here’s a secret: you cannot write better than you can write, and you cannot write worse than you can write. Simply strive for quantity and you will get better. Write every day. Don’t put pressure on yourself. You’re going to have to overcome enough self-doubt anyway. Don’t make the burden greater. What’s different about writing books today. The short human attention span. People will see you as a thought leader simply because you’ve written a book. You don’t have to be published by a major publisher to get that respect. A lot of people don’t even know who the major publishers are. How traditional publishers fail to understand the marketing equation. How titles and subtitles work for nonfiction books. What the table of contents is for in a nonfiction book In terms of selling a book, the name of the author is secondary. The name of the publisher is immaterial. The primary concern of the reader is, “Will this book solve my problem?” The importance of defining and selling to your niche audience. The importance of defining what success looks like. The importance of defining the purpose for writing your book. How to use your nonfiction book to get more clients. How to use your nonfiction book to prequalify your clients. How to make a successful call to action. The importance of generating a conversation with your reader. How generous you need to be with your information. How to structure a proper call to action chapter. Drive people to your website throughout the book, and give them free stuff when they get there. Build a relationship with your customer. Keep your customer fascinated. Prove your value by showing how you’ve helped your other customers solve their problems. Emerson’s law of compensation. Simply put: You get what you give. Make your information valuable and only sell other products at the end of the book. How to answer the question: “should I self publish, or go with a traditional publisher?” The pitfalls of traditional publishing. How Amazon creates a level playing field. The power of shorter books. The value of calling your book a manual. Don’t worry about being a best-selling author, be the best earning author. The future of the book industry. Three Questions to Ask Yourself When Planning a Book. 1. Who is the specific niche audience for your book? Who are you trying to sell to? The truth is there is no mass market audience today for anything. 2. What is the next step you want people to take after reading your book? 3. What knowledge is in your head, that if your audience knew that you knew it, would cause them to take the next step with you? Links and Resources Mentioned in the Interview Business Ghost — Michael’s ghostwriting company Strategic Coach — the coaching program that Michael is a part of Contact Michael Levin email: [email protected] phone: 1-800-637-6856 Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 76: On Writing Bestselling Nonfiction Books with Ghostwriter Michael Levin appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Greg Cope White is a produced television writer. He also steps in front of the camera and hosts. The Pink Marine, his first book, just came out in November, 2015. His writing credits include HBO’s Dream On, Norman Lear’s The Powers That Be and 704 Hauser, Fox’s Life With Louie, Sony’s animated series Jumanji, and Disney’s Social Studies. He currently has a sitcom in development with Norman Lear’s Act III. He moved from New York to LA to pursue his dream of acting. As fate would have it, shortly after he moved to LA there was a writer’s strike. As an unemployed actor, with nothing but time on his hands he decided to take up the craft of writing screenplays. Shortly thereafter, he was given a job in development by Norman Lear’s production company. From that point on Greg moved up Hollywood’s letter of success. Seven months after being hired by Norman Lear Greg begin writing for television shows. Greg wrote his book The Pink Marine for two reasons. When he began the book he wanted to show people that if he could become a sergeant in the Marines, then anyone could do anything they set their mind to. As he wrote the book he expanded it to include stories of what it was like to be gay in the military when the military considered a crime. Our conversation was fascinating. We talked about life in Hollywood, writing for TV, they were networking, and the power of persistence among other things. Here are just a few of the takeaways: The importance of networking and being nice. Every job in Hollywood ends. The importance of being a good worker. The importance of writing everyday. The importance of helping other people succeed. Find a group of writers and help each other get better by reading each other’s work. How writing staffs work in Hollywood. The typical writing schedule for a TV show in Hollywood. Your reputation always precedes you. The importance of tenacity. Writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint. The importance of staying focused and on track. The importance of believing in yourself. How to handle rejection. The famous story of Sylvester Stallone and Rocky. If you believe in something, keep going. The difficulty of being objective about our own work The importance of having people who cheer you on. It’s all brainpower. You use your brain one step beyond where you think you can go. How blogging can help you find your voice and teach you about your audience. Surround yourself with people whose opinions you respect. To get the respect of others, you have to respect yourself. Everything is a mission. The importance of being honest. The difference between writing a book and writing for TV. The importance of limiting their time on social media. How the landscape for professional writers has changed. The advantages of the blogging format. What is Greg’s blogging process. The advantages of working with a copy editor. Believe in yourself and find your voice. Focus on authenticity and you will find success. Write like no one’s going to read your book. The Secret to Success in Hollywood. Keep in touch with as many people as you can. And always be growing your circle. Links and Resources Mentioned in the Interview The Pink Marine — Greg’s autobiography. He talks about his life in the Marine Corps and his journey toward self acceptance. Eat.Greg.Eat — Greg’s primary blog. Go.Greg.Go — Greg’s travel and hotel review blog. thepinkmarine.com — The website for Greg’s book. Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 75: Writing for Hollywood, Big Publishers and Blogs with Greg White appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Chip R. Bell is the bestselling author and co-author of more than 20 books. In 2015, Global Gurus ranked him the #1 keynote speaker in the world on customer service for the second year in a row. Chip was a highly decorated infantry unit commander in Vietnam with the elite 82nd Airborne. He has appeared live on CNBC, CNN, ABC, Fox Business Network, Bloomberg TV, NPR, and just about every other major network. Chip began his career while still working for a major corporation. He read somewhere that any time you start a new business you starve for the first two years. That didn’t appeal to him. Chip chose to plan for two years before striking out on his own, so that when he became his own boss, he would have clients and contacts to call on from day one. He made contacts at conferences and by doing a lot of free speeches for people. We had a very interesting conversation that covered everything from how to start your own speaking business, to how to write books, to customer service and how to give your customer a unique experience. Here are some of the topics we covered: How to Be Successful As a Speaker, Consultant, and Author The importance of conferences, writing, and free speeches when building a speaking business. Why to target industry specific magazines. How consulting, speaking/traing, and writing work together and support each other as the foundation of Chip’s business model. How writing a book gives you more authority than writing articles for magazines. When speaking for an organization find out if there’s a special industry specific magazine that you could write an article for. After you speak to the audience. Make connections. Make friends with speakers who speak on your topic. These people can recommend you as a speaker, and you can also post on each other’s blogs increasing the size of your potential audience. Authorship And Writing Your Book How writing a book gives you more authority than writing articles for magazines. If possible, breakup your book into articles or chapters. Write smaller chunks and link them together into a larger whole. A good way to start writing your book: write 10 articles on the same theme and see if you can link them together. Pursuing Your Passion Focus on making a difference in something you truly care about. When you pursue your passion working doesn’t feel like a chore. A good question to ask yourself: “Would I do this for free?” There is no such thing as work/life balance. Work is part of your life. When you’re doing something you have a passion for you don’t watch the clock. You have energy and enthusiasm that carries you forward. When you love what you do you don’t work a day in your life. Customer Service How small businesses have a huge advantage over large corporations. How you personalize and customize service as a small business. Small businesses can do market research faster and more accurately than large corporations. They can also implement changes in their business faster than large corporations can. How to create a level of service that people want to tell other people about. The difference between good service and unique service. Examples of how to create unique service. The power of the little things. The difference between “value-added,” and “value unique.” The importance of differentiating yourself from your competition. Look for ways to give your customers “monogram service.” “Word of Mouse” vs. “Word of Mouth.” Think about the experience you are creating for the customer through all the senses. The secret of Cracker Jack success. What is your “free prize inside?” How to make customer emails value unique. Make sure whatever you’re doing to be unique fits with your brand. Marketing on the Web Having an interactive web presence. Designing a website with a particular look and feel that fits your brand. The power of using guest posts on blogs to promote your book. When writing for blogs, look for ways to write posts around themes and holidays. Articles and blog posts written about holidays and special events are more likely to get picked up by traditional media. Links and Resources Mentioned in the Interview Weaving Influence — Chip’s publicity team. They offer a complete suite of services for marketing books. chipbell.com — Chip’s website Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 74: Creating a Career through Writing, Speaking and Training with Bestselling Author Chip Bell appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Brock Shinen launched his law practice in 2003 and specializes in Intellectual Property, Entertainment and Business. He’s one of the few lawyers who’s also an entrepreneur and author, so he has first-hand experience dealing with the same legal questions you and I have. Brock was working in the music industry when he became interested in the issues surrounding intellectual property and copyright. That’s when he decided to go to law school. On the writing side of things, Brock has been writing since 1992. He’s written just about everything you can from short stories, to songs, to fiction, nonfiction as well as articles. His office handles all kinds of clients. He has worked with New York Times best-selling authors and first-time authors anxious to make their mark. During our conversation we talked about a number of issues including why you should register your copyright, when it’s appropriate to trademark your title, and when you should consider forming an LLC as an author. Here are some of the takeaways: Under US copyright law when you fix something in a tangible form of expression, like a written book the work is protected. The issue authors have is that they can’t do anything with that protection unless they’ve filed a registration with the US copyright office. So for example, if you’ve noticed that someone has violated your copyright, you can’t sue them unless you have a registration claim on file with the US copyright office. It’s best to register your copyright within 90 days of publishing your book. You can copyright a book at any time. But if you copyright a book outside the 90 day window after publication, you lose some rights associated with your copyright. The Poor Man’s Copyright (that is mailing your manuscript to yourself as a form of protection) is a myth. The courts have ruled that mailing your manuscript to yourself gives you no protection. For one thing, it’s easy to unseal and reseal an envelope. Hiring a lawyer to register your copyright can be expensive for indie authors. But the government’s filing fee for a copyright is around $55 in most cases, and Brock has a course to teach you how to do it yourself. Registering your copyright yourself can take anywhere from one hour to two hours. After you register your copyright at the copyright office it can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months to receive confirmation that your work is copyrighted. The most important thing to remember when you register your copyright is to doublecheck and make sure you’ve submitted everything correctly because if you forget to submit something, you may not know for months that your application was incomplete. Trademark Law grants protection where you’ve used some sort of indicator to identify the source of your goods and services. Trademark law is more complicated than copyright law and you really need to get a lawyer to file a trademark application for you because there will be another lawyer reviewing your trademark application. You can trademark your book title if you are building your brand around that title. Under trademark law there are several different classifications of good and you’re required to pay fees for every classification of good that you want to protect yourself in making. The cost of setting up an LLC ranges from about $1000 to about $3000. But there are a lot of benefits. It’s important to be informed about your rights and responsibilities under the law. Don’t assume you have to fight when you get a demand or cease and desist letter.. In disputes the first step is often a posture. It’s important to consult an attorney so that you know your rights when you’re threatened. Don’t settle any claim before talking to an attorney. Don’t ever give personal information just because you get a demand letter. You are not required to give people information just because they ask for it. The Benefits of Incorporating As a Self Published Author 1. Setting up a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) can protect your personal assets if you’re sued for copyright infringement. 2. There are also several tax benefits to having an LLC. 3. If you’re doing business out in the marketplace, say with a distributor, they are much more likely to work with you if you are an LLC. You’re taken more seriously. Links and Resources Mentioned in the Interview Brock’s course on copywriting — a Udemy course where Brock teaches you everything you need to know to register your own copyright. US copyright office — this is where you register your copyright. US copyright office FAQs — here’s a lot of good information about registering your copyright. Copyright office fee schedule — a table showing what fees need to be paid to register a copyright. Shinenlaw.com — Brock’s law practice BrockShinen.com — Brock’s personal website cogneypop podcast &#82

Maryann Reid is an award-winning author and social commentator. She has been featured by countless media outlets including USA Today, Essence, Glamour, The CBS Early Show, and The Wendy Williams Experience. Maryann has been profiled in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Oprah.com, and NBC Nightly News for her innovative approach to life and solving its complex issues. She has become a pro at getting massive media exposure for her books, and she coaches other authors on how to get more attention and publicity. In today’s show, Maryann shares her counterintuitive strategy for selling a ton of books for herself and her clients. Instead of focusing heavily on “new” media like social media and blogging, she focuses her efforts on getting booked in old school traditional media: print, TV, and radio. Maryann shares: Why traditional media can be less competitive and more profitable for an author Her strategy for “starting local and then going global” that will skyrocket your exposure over time if you follow the process How to get booked several times a year only spending a few minutes a week on your PR campaign Why you should definitely consider hiring a PR firm if you can afford it (and how to get the most out of it) Plus, a few amazing marketing tips and tricks Maryann has developed over the years Learn more and connect with Maryann Reid at maryannreidinc.com Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 72: How to Get Massive Traditional Media Exposure for Your Book with Maryann Reid appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Hung Pham is an entrepreneur and author in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the founder of Culture Summit, a conference focused on building strong cultures that lead to great companies. In his books, Hung provides simple, easy to follow, actionable plans for improving many areas of your life including health, fitness, work and personal relationships. His focus is on helping people take action and implement quickly. Hung suffered from a gambling addiction for 8 years and racked up over $200,000 in losses and a massive amount of debt. He went through depression and suicidal thoughts regularly, and felt like he was stuck. He hated his job but needed to stick with it in order to pay his debts from gambling. Stuck in a vicious cycle, it looked like there was no hope. Today, Hung is a successful author, entrepreneur and leader in the field of personal development and creating company cultures that work better for investors, entrepreneurs, employees and customers. Here are a few of the awesome things Hung shares in this interview: Why his goal is to simply help one person improve their life (and how he accomplishes it several times a day) How Hung overcame depression, suicidal thoughts and addiction Why self publishing and being able to share his story is so fulfilling and adds meaning to his life How he created freedom and meaning by building his online business with his books What the Culture Conference is and how it’s transforming companies, boosting profits and helping people live happier lives Why the mission matters more than just about anything else How culture change starts with listening (and some profound marketing wisdom as well that everyone who’s selling anything should take notes on) How to find meaningful work, or take your existing work and add meaning to it How employers can create a workplace filled with passionate employees (without firing everyone and starting over) How to use focus sessions, surveys and more to learn exactly what your employees and customers want and need to succeed Why change starts “from the top” and how to get leaders to focus on what’s most important to everyone, not just business as usual Two powerful questions for making positive changes: What works? What doesn’t work? Why it’s better to focus on getting it done than getting it perfect Hung’s 1-on-1 strategy sessions that keep him tapped in to what’s most important for his readers, changes lives, and adds meaning and fulfillment on a whole new level To learn more about Hung, check out his weekly newsletter here: www.missionandpossible.com Learn more about the Culture Conference: www.culturesummit.co Check out Hung’s books on Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/hungpham Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 71: Turning Your Life and Company Around Starts with Culture – Hung Pham’s Inspiring Story appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Ferol Vernon is the COO of Written Word Media. The company helps connect readers with their next great read and provides a powerful ad platform for authors and publishers. Ferol is a tech genius, and he’s worked on all kinds of technology from medical simulators to web and mobile based products for musicians, authors and artists. Ferol started creating websites at night as a hobby that quickly turned into a passion. He then went to get his MBA at Duke University and went on to work with Reverb Nation, creating software and tools for musicians. Together with his wife, they started Written Word Media and now run five websites that help connect authors with readers. In today’s show, Ferol shares some nuggets of wisdom including: Why every author should be using email marketing as it’s the #1 controllable driver of book sales (word of mouth may sell more books, but it’s almost impossible to control) The inside scoop on readers’ preferences for Amazon Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and Google Play (and some interesting developments about Oyster going out of business, and much of their team migrating over to Google’s book squad) Why building relationships with your readers is the most important marketing strategy, and how to do it properly Why you must have your own author website, and how to build it quickly and cheaply yourself (See the free training videos at www.blogbusinessschool.com) Some insights into eBook pricing, and how to maximize your sales, royalties, and audience building. Do you know what eBook price is best for your needs? (You can read Ferol’s article on eBook pricing here). How Ferol is driving massive amounts of readers to his sites using blogging, Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, and much more How to learn about the audience demographics of bargain eBook readers so you can maximize your marketing effectiveness …and much more! You can learn more about Ferol and Written Word Media at www.writtenwordmedia.com Here are their book promotion sites to check out for your next eBook promotion campaign: Freebooksy: http://www.freebooksy.com Bargain Booksy: http://www.bargainbooksy.com NewInBooks: http://newinbooks.com Red Feather Romance: http://www.redfeatherromance.com A Year of Books: http://www.ayearofbooks.net Want even more book promotion sites? Check out Tom’s list of free and paid boom promotion sites. For free books: https://www.tckpublishing.com/list-of-sites-to-promote-your-free-amazon-kindle-books/ For paid books: https://www.tckpublishing.com/top-kindle-book-promotion-sites-for-paid-kindle-books-0-99-and-up/ Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 70: Ebook Promotion Sites and Pricing Analysis with Ferol Vernon appeared first on TCK Publishing.

KC Dyer’s seventh book, Finding Fraser, a romantic comedy for grown-ups, has become a runaway bestseller, selling more than 40,000 copies in just two months. Right now, KC is in the middle of her book tour, so I brought her on the show to find out how she suddenly became an “overnight” success and what she’s up to so you can learn from her success. Here are a few highlights from the interview with KC: She published her first novel in 2001 and has been a “struggling author” ever since. Her first six books were traditionally published, but she decided to self publish Finding Fraser for the first time after she had no luck selling the book to a major publisher. Four of her books were traditionally published unagented (without a literary agent). Even though KC decided to self publish the book, she was committed to making sure she worked only with professionals and that readers would get the same quality, if not better, finished product. She hired a publicist, Rachel from Gal Friday Publicity to help get some press for the release of Finding Fraser. She’s doing an “old-fashioned” book tour with 15-17 stop in British Columbia, including Vancouver Island, Kelowna and more. She developed a great relationship with bestselling author Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series (and her book has a few connections to a certain character in Outlander, which has definitely caught the attention of many fans of the hit series). Connect with KC on her blog at kcdyer.com You can learn more about Finding Fraser on Amazon here and on the website for the book at findingfraser.com Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 69: An Inspiring Publishing Success Story with Fiction Author KC Dyer appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Robin Waite is Business Strategy Expert and co-founder of a successful Online Strategy Agency in the UK. He has helped over 200 businesses create change and growth within their organisation since 2004. Robin has personally taught Business, Online Marketing and Social Media Strategy to over 1,000 business owners. Robin now specializes in creating growth and scalability for established businesses with over £500k+ in revenue through a tailored program of coaching, workshops and practical implementation. Here are a few highlights from the interview with Robin: Why most small business owners think they just need a website, but usually need a complete branding overhaul and a serious rethinking of their core values and overall marketing strategy. Why tiny little details like the material you use for printing your business cards can make a huge difference in your results. Customers make 90% of their buying decisions with emotion and 10% with logic. The marketplace and knowledge gap Robin saw in his web design business and how he filled it by creating more intimate and extensive services for small business owners (and some super valuable lessons any entrepreneur can use to find new opportunities). Some really powerful content marketing strategies, including some advanced tips on repurposing content, social media and blogging. How YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine in the world, and why every small business should have a presence there to get tons of new leads for free by providing short educational videos about your products, services and industry. How to use Slideshare and Prezi to get more leads for your business using online slideshows (like Powerpoint or Keynote slides). How to use Zapier to automate tasks and save yourself and your team a ton of time and money. Connect with Robin and learn more at about.me/robin.waite Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!).   The post 68: Building Your Brand Online with Robin Waite appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Adrienne Dorison has a Master’s Degree in Forest Economics and extensive experience working in Supply Chain Management. She had a successful corporate career at a Fortune 500 company when she suddenly decided to take the leap and start her own business cold turkey. She’s now a sought-after thought leader and successful business coach and mentor to others who want to make the leap to creating a successful business and for entrepreneurs who want to take their success to the next level. Here are a few of the ideas Adrienne shares in this interview: How and why Adrienne decided to quit a successful corporate job and immediately start her own business (and how she skyrocketed her business from nothing in just a few short months) How she paid off over $45k in debt in just 6 months (and that was right after she quit her job) Why “you’ll never feel fully ready” and how to move forward and make progress even when you don’t feel like you know what to do or how to do it Why you MUST focus on income-generating tasks when you start or plan to grow a business, and how to get laser-focused on what your top income-generating tasks are Why Adrienne started waking up at 4:30am, and how it changed her success habits for the better Ask yourself, “What am I willing to do to achieve the results I want?” Focus on 90-day goals so you can focus on getting important work done and making progress instead of just daydreaming and procrastinating How to find your MIM (Most Important Mission for today) and how this one habit can triple your rate of growth personally and professionally Why you must break down your goals into actionable baby steps so you can immediately begin to implement them and make progress instead of getting stuck in indecision You can join Adrienne’s private Facebook group called The Society of Self Mastery here: facebook.com/groups/bizbosslady Learn more about Adrienne at adriennedorison.com Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 67: Adrienne Dorison on Creating Habits for Success and Explosive Sales Growth appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Andrea Waltz is a professional speaker, business author, and fiction writer. As co-author of the best-selling book, Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There, she is wildly passionate about teaching audiences how they can overcome fear of failure and rejection and reprogram how they think about the word NO! She’s currently working with her husband and co-author Richard on a hew fiction series called Onyx Webb. It is a creepy paranormal suspense series with an inspirational message. Here are a few of the highlights from the interview with Andrea Waltz: Andrea started self publishing back in 1996, long before eBooks became mainstream (which meant she had a whole lot of books in her garage). Her initial goal was to sell her books via her public speaking and training sessions. Her first book was called Unlocking the Secrets of Retail Magic and was only 64 pages long (about as short as a book could be at the time and still be printed). She studied Dan Kennedy’s books and courses on copywriting and marketing. “Don’t be selfish with your book!” Give it away to people who you feel deserve it. Use it instead of a business card. Send it to influencers and people who can get your message out to more people. Andrea created a list of 500 influencers in her field and snail mailed every single one of them a copy of her book – this single strategy was the heart of her marketing campaign which allowed her to sell hundreds of thousands of self-published books! Understand exactly who your target customer/reader is AND how to reach them via podcasts, blogs, social media, etc. “Courage is about the journey, not the result” Become a researcher! Create your own marketing funnel and database of customers. Never leave it to chance or someone else to care about your readers like you do. Andrea also shared some really innovative marketing strategies she’s using with her new fiction series, so definitely listen to that part of the interview and take notes if you write fiction! You can learn more about Andrea and connect with her at www.goforno.com Learn more about her new Paranormal Suspense series at onyxwebb.com Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 66: Go for No! A Huge Self Publishing Success Story with Andrea Waltz appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Dr. Barry Sears is the author of The Zone series of books on weight loss and nutrition. He is a Ph.D. biochemist best known for creating and promoting the Zone diet, which helps people eat a proper diet that allows you to achieve stable blood sugar levels, hormone balance, reduce inflammation, and reduce your risk of chronic diseases. Dr. Sears created his dietary program to avoid dying of a heart attack like many of his family members. Dr. Sears has also popularized the use of fish oil and Omega-3 fatty acids to reduce systemic inflammation and promote good health. In this podcast, Dr. Sears shows you how you can lose weight naturally and easily by reducing your inflammation. The Zone Diet is not a fad diet. Instead, it’s a science-based, simple, proven dietary program that mimics the way our ancestors ate. The Zone Diet consists of eating two-thirds fruits, vegetables, and berries and one-third healthy proteins and healthy fats like avocados. Dr. Sears shares how inflammation and weight loss are linked and how you can dramatically improve your health with some simple changes. Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 65: Dr. Barry Sears on The Zone Diet, Nutrition and Natural Weight Loss appeared first on TCK Publishing.

In today’s episode, Larry Gilman, a successful actor, master business consultant, entrepreneur and speaker shares an important message for entrepreneurs, authors and creative people who want even more success and fulfillment in their life. Larry has been an incredible mentor to me personally, and in this interview he shares some incredible wisdom and advice for anyone who wants to create a better life and fulfill their dreams. Here are a few of the highlights: Why entrepreneurs are people who are fully committed to their dream, and are willing to take the risk of doing something new and unknown rather than simply accepting what is. How to stay connected with your passion, remember your dream no matter what happens day-to-day, and overcome any distractions or obstacles by reconnecting to your inner voice and mission. How to master the details required for success (like email and busy work) while maintaining your vision and getting the important things done. One simple idea to improve your communication skills immediately. How to continually embrace and express your creativity – the key to your success and making progress. Why you can and probably should have more than just one passion in life. How to let your subconscious mind work for you. Why NOT working is not a waste of time, and how to use your downtime most effectively without stress or anxiety. How to get yourself to think non-linearly and create totally new ideas and solutions by opening up yourself to unlimited possibilities, rather than self-imposed limits and constraints. Why following your hobbies and passions can be one of the greatest sources of breakthrough in your business life and personal life. Why getting back in touch with your body can help you improve your productivity, happiness and results. Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 64: Larry Gilman Master Business and Communications Teacher on Success and Fulfillment appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Honorée Corder is a bestselling author, executive and business coach, and serial entrepreneur who helps people clarify their visions and turn them into reality. She empowers others to dream big and go for what they truly want. Her mission is to inspire and motivate people to turn their vision and dreams into their real-life reality, sharing a leading-edge process she created for her executive coaching clients. Here are a few of the highlights from the interview with Honoree Corder: Why Honoree is so passionate about personal development, and the incredible difference it can make in someone’s life when they decide to make a positive change. Why Honoree would always ask, “Would you like to buy 10-100 copies?” when she published her very first book. Why Honoree wakes up at 4:30 am and follows “The Miracle Morning” routine taught by Hal Elrod (And also how she came to help publish and serialize Hal Elrod’s work). The importance of meditation, reading, exercise, and committing to writing at least 1,000 words every single day. “Work until you figure out what works for you.” Why Honoree uses Evernote for storage and sees it as a valuable tool for any author or writer. How Honoree uses blogs, podcasts, social media and Twitter for her rockstar marketing campaigns. And much more! Honoree recommends the book Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson and Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. Honoree recommends The Bullet Journal for productivity and keeping organized and attending the Mastermind Talks events by Jayson Gaignard. Learn more about Honoree and connect with her at honoreecorder.com Like this post? Click on the image below and share this on your favorite Social Media Platform (like Pinterest!). The post 63: Creating Prosperity for Writers, Personal Development and The Miracle Morning with Honoree Corder appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Patrick King is a dating, image, and social skills coach based in San Francisco, California, and has been featured on numerous national publications such as Inc.com. He’s also a #1 Amazon best-selling author with the most popular online dating book on the market, and writes frequently on dating, love, sex, and relationships. He focuses on using his emotional intelligence and understanding human interaction to break down emotional barriers, instill confidence, and equip people with the tools they need for success. Patrick started out as an attorney helping startup businesses and entrepreneurs get started on the right track. As more and more friends started asking for relationship advice and help, Patrick realized he had a gift to share with the world beyond his training as an attorney. Patrick decided to begin publishing his books on Kindle after he met Jordan Gray who we interviewed in episode 38. He used the Kindle publishing Bible to help him format his first book for Kindle. It was a book on online dating. Patrick really didn’t enjoy being a lawyer. He decided to leave that job after he had 10 books published on Amazon. Patrick doesn’t think changing careers from lawyer to dating expert was really the leap of faith that some people like to say it was. He quit his job after he had enough success selling his expertise that he knew eventually he could produce an income that would support him. What Makes a Good Online Dating Profile What most people don’t realize is that writing a good online dating profile is an exercise in creative writing. Writing a good profile means avoiding the tropes of bad online dating profiles. You want to avoid things like: Using a list of adjectives to describe yourself. Saying how much you love to travel. Saying you love eating your food. Don’t use the same pictures as everyone else. What you want to do is make your personality stand out in a way that everyone else is not. When you look at human beings superficially we all have a lot in common. So if you don’t dig deep and highlight those aspects of your personality that make you unique, you’re just going to look like everyone else online. “Online dating is this funny thing. You want to brag about yourself but, it’s not a resume. You want to appear the best version of yourself. But you want to appear humble too. So, it’s kind of trying to walk a fine line.” – Patrick King How Patrick Works with Dating Clients The first step to working with Patrick is to fill out his contact form. After you send him a message he will reply to you. That begins the dialogue. When you become his client he’ll send you a survey of 50 questions that will give him a good idea of your personality. This isn’t a standard questionnaire. It has quirky questions like, “what is your dream job?” The purpose of these questions is to help you dig deep and reveal your authentic personality so he can help you put that on display most effectively. He uses the questionnaire to craft a dating profile that is equal parts substance and silliness. What you have to remember is that a dating profile is simply a snapshot or aspect of who you are. It’s not the whole picture. That’s where a lot of people go wrong. They try to fit everything about them into the space of a relatively tiny profile and because that’s what they’re trying to do they end up making very general statements that don’t give potential dates any real information about them, or allow any sort of initial attraction to form. Patrick uses a series of mini stories to illustrate the attractive and unique parts of your personality. It’s the old adage, “show don’t tell” you want to give people a relatable story rather than telling them what a wonderful person you are. How Being an Online Dating Coach Has Helped Patrick Become a Better Writer The number one thing that helped Patrick become a better writer is focusing on the topics that his clients and audience wanted him to write about. When you have a laser focus on helping your audience achieve the results they want, and every word you write is designed to take them from where they are to where they want to be, building an audience of engaged, helpful fans to spread the word about your message and products is inevitable. “If you are writing nonfiction you should have an idea of who your target audience is. You should have an idea of exactly what they want. You should know what benefits they’re expecting to get out of your book. If you don’t know that you need to go back and do some more research.” – Patrick King Patrick King’s Amazon Marketing Strategy Patrick doesn’t have a traditional marketing strategy for Amazon. He writes guest blogs on some dating advice blogs. He does podcasts like this one. If you want to be better at marketing your books learn copywriting. That was the biggest game

Joel Boggess is the host of the ReLaunch podcast show, and the author of the #1 Amazon bestselling book Finding Your Voice: Sort Through the Clutter; Discover Clarity, Confidence and Direction. Joel is passionate about sharing fresh ideas, success tips and inspirations through real life stories. Joel is an expert at helping you connect to who you are at your core, so you have the clarity of life direction, and are empowered to take your work, home and family life in a direction that’s best for YOU. Joel Boggess’ broadcasting career began in the early 90s behind the mic in traditional radio, on camera as a reporter, and in the master control room as an Associate Producer. Today, he is a #1 bestselling author, a front-runner in the world of podcasting and new media, and is one-half of the broadcast team behind the creation, development and explosive growth of ReLaunch. Within 12 days of the podcast’s initial launch, it soared up the iTunes charts to hit #1 in business, education, and in health in the listing of New and Noteworthy podcasts. His latest book, Finding your Voice, hit the #1 spot on Amazon in three categories – success, self esteem, and happiness; on the same day, in the same hour. Joel has mastered the art and science of how to develop and execute a podcast launch and growth plan, as well as how to mobilize listeners. His global audience has grown 10-fold in twelve months time and he has earned numerous podcast awards including Best Overall and Most Inspirational podcast. Find Your Voice Your success begins with a passion to share your voice. There are a number of different ways you can put your voice out into the world for people to take it in. You can: Start a podcast Write books Do a video series Be a blogger There are many other ways as well. But it all starts with a deep passion to share your voice and your message with the world. Once you’ve discovered that passion within yourself you can figure out what is the best way to put your voice out there, so your audience can find you. What mediums resonate most with you and your voice? What do you enjoy doing most? Do you enjoy social media? Do you enjoy making YouTube videos? Do you enjoy doing interviews? Do you enjoy blogging? Whatever you enjoy doing most is how you should interact with the world to build your platform first. Build an audience on whatever platform seems most fun to you to start with. The key is to make sure you’ve mastered the platform before you move on to anything else. Consistency is the key to success when building your author platform. In order to be consistent you have to like what you’re doing. That’s why it makes sense to begin building your platform in whatever way seems most fun and easiest to you. Here’s another way to look at it. Where do you spend your time online right now? What social media platforms do you use? Consider building an audience on your favorite social media platform first. Become rockstar good at whatever social media platform is your favorite. Once you have an audience you can branch out in any number of different directions. When you try to be everywhere online at once, you defeat your purpose and you make it practically impossible to build any kind of sizable audience. Find Your Message and Share It with the World “I believe everyone was sent here with a message to share straight up. And once you get in tune with your message it’s a game changer for you.” – Joel Boggess The key to being successful on the Internet today is to figure out the message you were meant to share is, and then share that message with as many people as you can in an authentic way. You can learn a lot from the stars in your market. There’s nothing wrong with emulating the successful people in your niche. But above all else what you want to do is be yourself. Authenticity is in short supply today. And if you’re true to yourself that will come through whatever platform you use. Joel and his students focus on finding their personal messages in his elite online group. It functions as a mastermind where everyone is completely safe to express themselves. Be Yourself When Joel decided to write his book Finding Your Voice he shared some of his personal journey with his readers. He talked about his difficult childhood. He told readers about how his parents divorced when he was three years old. And he also talked about his near-death experience. He was in a coma for several days and when he woke up Joel knew that he had a mission to share his message with the world. After going through his near-death experience and years of therapy, Joel has a passion for helping other people find their purpose in life. Helping people get in touch with themselves on a deeper level so that they’re connected to their own authenticity and the self-confidence that comes with it has been a real calling for Joel his entire life. Finding Your Voice: The Guidebook to

Billy Murphy is an ex-professional poker player, entrepreneur, blogger and business coach. He’s the founder of foreverjobless.com, a blog for entrepreneurs. In today’s show, Billy shares some brilliant ideas for any author, entrepreneur or artist who wants to create a profitable business and avoid one of the biggest mistakes for a startup: starting a business that has no hope of profitability. Getting Started in Business Billy started playing poker online in college. He didn’t have a credit card when he started so his roommate deposited $50 in a poker room for him. He started playing at the penny tables. He didn’t make any real money at the beginning but he did learn how to play. When Billy heard that people were making a living playing poker online he decided to go all in and figure out how to do it for himself. Billy hired 2 poker coaches and learned how to make a living playing poker. He played poker online professionally for four years. Online poker was never his long-term plan. It was just a way to make good money easily from home. He knew if he wanted to create some serious success in life, he had to invest his money wisely in business. So he began investing in online businesses in 2009, and then started foreverjobless.com in 2011. How to Find a Great Business Idea The way Billy became successful in poker is the way anyone become successful in business too. You become interested in an opportunity. You experiment with the opportunity you’re interested in. You hire a coach or find a mentor who has achieved the success that you want to achieve. They can guide you down a proven path of success. You take what the coach teaches and apply it to your own life to achieve your own brand of success. Everyone starts out at zero in business. You learn as you go. You succeed the fastest when you find mentors who can show you a proven path to success. “We all stand on the shoulders of giants. All the people who came before us did the hard work. There’s no good reason to go into a new job or calling and try to reinvent the wheel. It’s insane.” – Tom Corson Knowles Manage Your Business Risk Billy now helps people start profitable online businesses with his online business incubator program. The foundation of that program is Billy’s four step process for evaluating profitable online business opportunities. Billy’s philosophy is that you should know whether your business is going to succeed before you start investing time and money into it. And if you’re not 100% sure the business is going to succeed, the business should have a sufficient expected value that it’s worth taking the risk. Expected value is a poker term. It’s the value of a decision over the long term. For example, if Billy bet me $100 that flipping a penny would result in the penny landing on heads, and I bet him $100 that the result would be that the penny landed on tales, over the long run the expected value of that bet for both of us is zero because a penny will land on heads or tails 50% of the time, over the long run. In business or life or anything else there’s an expected value to every business decision you make. The key is to figure out the expected value before you invest significant time and money into a business. You want to make sure that the business opportunity you’re pursuing is in line with your business, income and life goals. It’s always important to have the best idea of the expected value of your business you can before you commit time and money to bringing the business into the world. It becomes especially important when you invest large amounts of money in a business opportunity. 4 Steps to Create a Profitable Business Idea There are 4 steps you need to go through to start a profitable business. 1. The Idea Phase This is where you come up with your business ideas, do your market research and find the right opportunity that the market actually wants. It’s also important during this phase that you identify gaps in the market and work to fill those gaps. You don’t want to start a carbon copy business. You want to stand out from the crowd, not just be another member of it. Having a carbon copy business is one of the most common reasons online businesses fail. Be different or unique in some way that’s important to your customers. 2) The Marketing Phase This is where you figure out exactly how you are going to reach your audience and grow your customer base from day 1. If you don’t know how to do marketing or don’t think you can market your idea, it’s best to try to find somebody else who can help you with the marketing or move on. 3) Due Diligence In the third phase of Billy’s system he asks the following questions: Who are my competitors? What can I do better than them? Can I reach my audience the same way they are reaching theirs? What are their traffic sources? And what percentage of their sales does each

Chris Kennedy is a bestselling Science Fiction and Fantasy author. He’s also a former naval aviator with over 3,000 hours flying attack and reconnaissance aircraft (basically, he’s a badass). We sat down with Chris for an exclusive interview, and he shared some powerful ideas and tips for any author who wants to build a platform and create an avid group of loyal readers. The Journey to Bestseller Chris took an unlikely path to becoming a best-selling self published author. He read somewhere that 81% of people say they have a story to tell. Chris always thought of himself as part of the other 19%. All of Chris’s friends will tell you that his strong suits are math, science, and systems. No one in his life thought of him as a particularly creative person (I used to feel the exact same way!). Then one day while he was driving home from work, he got an idea for a story. He actually talked himself out of writing that story. When he got home Chris found out there was an hour to wait until dinner would be ready, so he decided to start writing his first novel. When Chris told his wife he was writing a novel, she didn’t believe him. After he finished the novel, Chris began writing query letters and trying to get a literary agent. He queried over 80 agents but he didn’t see any results. That’s when he started on the path to self-publishing. Why Self Publishing As he began to research self-publishing, Chris realized that he needed to create a plan to publish his book and put it into action. And that’s exactly what he did. He created a plan and saw it through. Chris publishes four books a year. He would publish more if it weren’t for his day job doing instructional systems design for the Navy. Get a Daily Action Plan Chris’s daily publishing work changes based on what phase of production he’s in at any given time. Right now he’s doing editing for an upcoming novel, so not as much writing is getting done. A typical day for Chris when he’s writing goes like this: Work from 7 AM to 4:30 PM Come home and engage in social media for 1 to 2 hours before dinner Eat dinner Write for one hour to three hours. His goal is to get at least 1000 words written every day during the writing phase of his production process It can be hard to sleep with his production schedule and he finds himself playing a lot of catch-up on the weekends when it comes to sleep. Tips for Writers “Start marketing (your book) early. Do not wait until it comes out. Start developing the relationship with the readers about 4 to 6 months early.” – Chris Kennedy The biggest mistake Chris sees new self published authors making is that they don’t try to develop a relationship with customers before the book is released. The best thing you can do to ensure the success of your book is to get on Amazon’s email list. And the best way to maximize your chances of doing that is to get enough traffic to your book when you launch your book that Amazon’s algorithms take notice. That’s why Chris suggests building a relationship with your audience 4 to 6 months before the book is released. If you build a relationship with people who might be interested in your novel, and then tell them when it’s released, a percentage of those people will buy that book. Then, you email those people who bought your book and say “If you like this book would you mind leaving a review?” Again a percentage of those people won’t leave a review, but some will. And that’s how you begin to build your platform as an indie author. Chris’s Marketing Strategy Chris does the majority of his marketing on social media. He is active on Facebook and twitter. He makes a point to post 3 to 4 pieces of content a day that will help aspiring indie authors. The most important thing you need to do is begin building your email list. Building an email list allows you to communicate with your fans directly. Especially these days where everyone has a cell phone when you email people you often get their attention immediately. Chris’s Redshirt Marketing Strategy Chris’s biggest marketing success has been his redshirt marketing strategy. The term redshirt comes from Star Trek. A “redshirt” in Science Fiction refers to a walk on character who gets killed almost immediately after they enter the scene. People can email Chris and ask to be put into his next book. You have a better chance of getting into the book if you can give Chris one or two details about your personality and interest that will help him flesh out your character for the book. It turns out people really enjoy being killed in a fictional story (not so much in real life, though). Chris has several fans who have requested that he put their friends and family into the books after he has already killed them. Chris actually had a blogger for the Pope ask to be in one of his books. That was the firs

When Nathan Chan started a digital magazine business called Foundr Magazine, he never expected it would turn into a massive global business. But that simple digital magazine for iOS and Android became famous for curating helpful information for new and aspiring entrepreneurs. Using savvy outreach and pure hustle, he was able to land interviews with legendary entrepreneurs like Richard Branson and Tim Ferriss for the magazine. The rest is history, as they say. So if you’re thinking about publishing a magazine or getting involved in the digital magazine business, you can learn a lot from Nathan. What is a Digital Magazine? A digital magazine is a paperless magazine that is read online—on computers, smartphones, iPads, and tablet. It’s just like a regular magazine in design and style, except it’s not being printed on paper and sitting on a grocery store shelf near the checkout counter. How to Distribute a Digital Magazine Digital magazine content can take the form of: Written articles Audio interviews Pictures Video interviews The great thing about digital magazines is you can include more interactive content like videos, audios, and additional content like checklists or workbooks that just don’t make sense for physical magazines. Foundr Magazine is delivered on phones and tablets via iTunes (for iOS) and Google Play (for Android). Digital magazines can also be delivered as PDFs. One element that paper magazines and digital magazines share in common is the cover. The cover is there to catch the attention of your audience and give them a sense of what will be in that particular issue of the magazine. So if you’re going to start a magazine business, make absolutely sure you invest in high-quality design, especially for the covers. Why Digital Magazines Are Better Digital Magazines can provide a much better experience than physical magazines because you don’t have to rely on advertisers to support your business. Open a typical magazine and you’ll have trouble finding anything actually useful inside it. Sure, there’s a nice recipe on page 73 or a great article on page 44, but everything else is just ads, right? Not so with digital magazines! Digital magazines often use a subscription or pay-per-issue model, so you don’t have to rely on advertisers. That means you can design the magazine FOR your subscribers and readers, and not primarily for advertisers. Why Nathan Started Foundr Magazine Nathan started Foundr Magazine because he saw a gap in the market. Magazines like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and HBR focus on CEOs and people who already have a business. He wanted to have a magazine in the world that he could relate to. That’s why Foundr Magazine is for new and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to build a business. Nathan started the magazine because he wanted to find answers to questions he had about starting a business. And he thought it would be a good idea to share his journey with the rest of the world. Foundr Magazine focuses on giving new and aspiring entrepreneurs tactical advice they can use today to begin building their business. Digital Magazines are Similar to Ebooks E-books and digital magazines are very similar. They’re both content sources delivered digitally that used to exist solely in the analog paper world. Just like with e-books, digital magazines need to have an eye-catching cover that looks like a magazine cover. You have to have great content inside your book or magazine, but you also have to have great design and packaging so that customers actually want to buy it and read it. If you want to start a digital magazine, look for other magazines that your readers might read. See what cover elements you can emulate to make your digital magazine feel like a magazine to your audience. How is a Digital Magazine Different From a Paper Magazine? The major difference between a digital magazine and a physical magazine is the type of content that’s available in a digital magazine. In a digital magazine you can include audio and video of the interviews that you would just print in a traditional magazine. All of the other features of a traditional magazine exist in a digital magazine. You still have articles and letters to the editor. Being able to give your audience content in several different formats makes the content more accessible to a wider range of people. Being able to listen to or watch an interview while you’re doing something else allows your audience to consume the magazine the way they want to. It also gives the consumers of your content freedom they didn’t have before the invention of the Internet. A typical paper magazine is over 100 pages long, with at least half of those pages devoted to advertisements. A typical issue of Foundr Magazine is about 70 pages long, and has about five hours worth of interviews in each issue. One of the benefits of having a digital magazine is that it’s a continu

Lauren E. Miller is the bestselling author of four books including 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Stressing Out. She is also a stress relief educator and founder of Grab & Go Stress Solutions. In this interview, Lauren shares some powerful tips and strategies for de-stressing and creating inner peace, purpose and success in your life. Why Stress is Important Lauren went to CU Boulder for postgraduate work in psychology to study anxiety and stress relief. Over 20 years later, she is still following her calling, teaching men and women how to destress their lives no matter what surrounds them. A few years ago, Lauren found herself facing two of the biggest stressors anyone can face in life. She went through a divorce and was diagnosed with cancer. She had to deal with: Going through a divorce A double mastectomy 16 rounds of chemo 12 surgeries to deal with third-degree burns on her chest (They essentially grafted her back to her front) A MRSA staph infection from the hospital Needless to say, it was an incredibly stressful time in her life. She even had two out of body experiences during this time. Her body, her mind, and her life were a mess. She feels that two-year period gave her the PhD in life experience of everything she had been teaching her clients about stress, anxiety, and how to heal. The Effects of Stress on Your Body “Invest on de-stressing on a daily basis. What causes you to pause for a moment and reflect? Those are the indications and invitations of remembering something about yourself that brings you calm.” – Lauren E Miller. Studies show that stress increases the risk of heart disease and cancer more than smoking or eating high cholesterol foods! Stress damages your immune system, your heart, and every cell in your body, and that damage increases your risk of every disease we know of from the common cold to serious diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and autoimmune disorders like lupus. Needless to say, stress is bad for you. So you need to figure out how YOU handle stress, and find better ways to deal with life when bad things happen (because bad things happen to all of us. You can’t avoid that!). How to Handle Stress Remember that you are unique, and that means the way you react to stress is unique too. Observe yourself, and make note of what gives you peace. When you find yourself in a stressful situation, that is the universe inviting you to reframe that moment. How can you find the motivation, strength, and power to change the direction of your life when you’re stressed? Consider what helps you relieve stress. Does it help when you take a deep breath? Meditate? Go for a walk? Take a short nap? When you find something that works for you, write it down, and make sure to keep doing those little things that help you handle life and stress better. Your Reticular Activating System What causes you to linger and be present in the moment? Does the image of beauty catch your eye? Is there a particular song on the radio that gives you a sense of peace or joy? After having conversation do you feel better or worse? The key is to become aware of when you feel good, flexible and powerful. If you focus on those times and decide that they’re important to your awareness, your reticular activating system will begin reframing your life, and happiness and success will come more easily to you, because that’s what you’re focusing on. You have the ability to reprogram your reticular activating system simply by deciding what to focus on. You can focus on what is beautiful, right and true. Or you can live in your worry, doubt, and fear. When people say “stress is all in your head,” that’s what they mean. When you focus on the things in life that make you stressed out, you feel more stress. But when you focus on the things that make you feel better, like taking a deep breath and relaxing your body, your stress levels go way down. The reticular activating system sits at the base of your brainstem. It is responsible for all of your motivation. We receive about 2 billion stimuli every second. The reticular activation system is the filter through which things come to our conscious awareness. Some people have trained themselves to filter out the good things in life and only focus on what causes them stress. You can change the perception of your life and how you react to situations if you consciously decide what to focus on. When you consciously decide to change your focus, your reticular activation system will start looking for different things in the world to bring to your awareness. Once you begin to see the world differently, it’s not just your perception of the world that changes. The world itself changes to bring what you need to you. How to Handle the Stress of Cancer When you go through aggressive cancer treatment, your body and strength is compromised because you are poisoning your body to kill the cancer cells to pro

Ian Ippolito founded Rent-A-Coder and grew the company to millions of dollars a year in sales. That company became one of the leading websites in the world that connects businesses and entrepreneurs with high quality freelancers, contractors, and virtual assistants. Now Ian is ready to share his most valuable tips and ideas for success when it comes to starting and growing a business. How to Start a Business Ian first got the idea to become an entrepreneur selling egg rolls with his mom to raise money for his school, but it was years later before he started his first “real business.” One of his first businesses was creating and selling software online, which was a cool idea but didn’t really solve a problem for his customers, and that business soon failed. Lesson learned: Your business must solve a problem for your customers! How to Pivot After a Business Failure After that initial failure, Ian started Planet Source Code, an advertising-driven website. Internet advertising was skyrocketing at that time in the late 1990’s because of the internet boom. But then Internet Crash in 2000 obliterated that business. Timing matters in business. The right idea at the wrong time could cause your business to fail rather than succeed. Always Look Ahead A few years later, Ian picked himself back up and started vWorker (which was originally called Rent-A-Coder, and is now freelancer.com). It was one of the first websites that connected freelancers with business owners and entrepreneurs. He founded the company from the bedroom of his house. That company is now worth over $100 million. Ian wanted to be an entrepreneur from that moment that he saw his mother sell egg rolls at $5 a piece to raise money for his school. From that moment on, Ian was always looking for opportunities to be his own boss. His ideal plan was to build a business on the side, ramp it up so that it replaced his working income, quit his job and run his company. Ian’s first three businesses all failed, but each of them provided a great learning experience that allowed Ian to succeed massively with vWorker. Failure in Business is More Typical Than Success Ian’s entrepreneurial journey is very typical. Most entrepreneurs experience failure and temporary setbacks multiple times before they find their groove and develop a profitable business that solves the problems of their customers and makes them incredibly wealthy. If you fail once in business, you’re on the right track. If you fail twice, you’re starting to get somewhere. Don’t be afraid to fail. And don’t bother starting a business if you’re not willing to fail, because you’re going to spend most of your life on the journey of entrepreneurship, and most of the road will be paved with mistakes and failures. Don’t look for certainty when you start your business, because you won’t find it until you create it by conquering the chaos of life and business. For Ian, and for most of us, that journey takes years or even decades before you get to a point where you “have it all.” Every Mountain is a Stepping Stone in Business Ian has achieved incredible success in business, but Ian he is always looking for the next mountain to climb. You always have to have goals for the future to maintain any level of success. “Often times it’s traveling to the next goal that is the exciting thing. You’ll find that achieving the goal itself isn’t as exciting as you thought it would be.” – Ian Ippolito Always set goals, and always work towards your goals. No matter how successful your business becomes, you must constantly push it forward. In business, you’re either growing or dying. There is no middle ground. Advice for People Who Want to Start a Business Delayed gratification is crucial for business success. “Are you the type of person that will wait for delayed gratification? Building a business takes a lot of hard work. It’s not an overnight success. For an entrepreneur, the only thing that matters is that you get back up.” – Ian Ippolito Delayed Gratification There’s a way to test children to see if they have it in them to become successful entrepreneurs. It’s called The Marshmallow Test. Researchers would offer children a marshmallow. They told the kids that they could have that marshmallow right now or if they waited to eat the marshmallow when the researchers came back they get another marshmallow. Two-thirds of the kids ate the marshmallow within the first 30 seconds. The children who had the willpower to delay gratification were more likely to be successful in the long run. Building a business is hard work and you have to be willing to do hard work with no promise of reward insight if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. Note: The marshmallow test has been debunked as bad science, but there is still loads of truth in the idea that you must be able to delay gratifi

Dr. Terry Wahls is a professor of clinical medicine at the Carver school of Medicine in Iowa City. In today’s show, Dr. Terry Wahls shares her incredible story and journey of reversing multiple sclerosis and other chronic diseases with a healthy diet. Dr. Wahls has firsthand experience with multiple sclerosis. She was diagnosed with it in 2000. In November 2007, she started a new diet based on her own personal research into nutrition. You can see the dramatic change in her health in the real pictures below. Today, Dr. Wahls focuses on cutting-edge medical and nutritional research on how to reverse Multiple Sclerosis and other degenerative diseases. She continues to educate the public on the importance of good nutrition, exercise and other science-based approaches for disease prevention and even reversal. Doctor Wahl’s Personal Battle with Multiple Sclerosis Terry was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000. By 2003 the disease was re-classified as secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. She took the recommended course of chemotherapy and that didn’t seem to help much. She took a second look at all of the medical literature she could find on the disease after she began using a wheelchair in her daily life. That’s when she found some research showing that certain vitamins and minerals could help alleviate her symptoms. She took some supplements, but those didn’t seem to help slow the progression of the disease. In December 2007 she got an inspiration and decided to change her diet so that she got more of these vitamins and minerals from the foods themselves rather than from the supplements created by health food companies. She thought maybe it wasn’t the vitamins themselves that made the difference, but it was actually eating the whole fruits and vegetables that came with all the vitamins along with other nutrients and enzymes that made the difference. After a few weeks on her new diet, her health took a dramatic turn for the better. In just three months, she was out of her wheelchair and could walk with a cane. Five months later, she could walk without a cane. And just nine months after that she was able to do an 18-mile bike ride! Doctor Wahls says her incredible recovery is due to the power of intensive nutrition. Her personal battle with multiple sclerosis changed how she views disease and health. It changed how she practices medicine. It also changed the nature of her research. Doctor Wahl’s Pilot Study on Multiple Sclerosis Doctor Wahls currently has a pilot study going to test the dietary changes that reversed the effects of her multiple sclerosis. The study includes: Teaching people how to eat a specific diet that may help with multiple sclerosis Teaching people how to meditate Teaching people how to do self massage Giving people a personalized exercise program Patients are also given an electrical therapy device and they begin doing electrical stimulation. They also get a lot of coaching and support through weekly phone calls with Doctor Wahls and her team, and the patients are followed for 12 months to track the results. Doctor Wahls presented her data at the 2011 neuroscience conference. It was a hot topic at the conference because generally speaking multiple sclerosis is a degenerative disease that doesn’t get better over time. People generally decline a little every year. The fact that the Wahls diet has been shown to stabilize and reverse the effects of multiple sclerosis in even a few patients is very encouraging. The Wahls Diet Plan Dr. Wahl’s diet includes nine (9) cups of vegetables and berries every day, as much of it should be raw as possible or lightly cooked. This includes three (3) cups of brightly-colored fruits and vegetables, three (3) cups of leafy greens, three (3) cups of sulfur-rich vegetables (cabbage family, onion family, asparagus, mushrooms). Doctor Wahls recommends that people limit starchy vegetables and whole grains to no more than 2 servings a week. Doctor Wahls encourages people to have high quality protein. The History of the Human Diet Here is a timeline of human evolution as it relates to food. Our species has evolved over the last 2.5 million years. Grains and starchy vegetables entered our diet about 10,000 years ago. Processed white flowers didn’t enter the human diet until about 2000 years ago. 200 years ago use of sugar and flour spiked in the human diet. 75 years ago we began using processed vegetable oils which prior to that time would’ve been industrial waste products. 50 years ago we began using high fructose corn syrup. The result of all those changes is that we have a huge amount of calories without any nutritional benefits. That’s a big problem. We are much more likely today to develop sensitivities to the protein in wheat and dairy called gluten and casein. All of this sugar and carbohydrate storage in our bowels causes the growth of different types of bacteria that our biology isn’t de

Betsy Talbot is the bestselling self published author of several books including Dream Save Do about how she and her husband Warren were able to sell everything they owned and travel the world for four years living a nomadic lifestyle. In the book, Betsy shows readers how to travel the world and turn your dreams into reality. How She Became an Author When Betsy and Warren were 37, two of their friends had life-threatening medical conditions spontaneously emerge. Betsy’s brother had a heart attack at 35, and her friend had an aneurysm. Having two people close to her deal with serious medical conditions caused Betsy and her husband Warren to reevaluate what they wanted to do with their lives. They thought about it and decided if they knew they weren’t going to make it to 40 the one thing that they would do with their life right now is travel the world. So that’s what they decided to do. It took them two years to sell all their possessions and quit their jobs. Then they spent four years traveling the world together. After four years of travel with no home base Betsy realized that she would be more comfortable having a home to return to. That’s when Betsy and Warren decided to buy a house in a small village in Spain. They became authors during their world traveling adventures. They started the website anunclutteredlife.com and attracted an audience because of their adventures. After writing the blog for a year and a half they decided to write a book and put all of their information down in one place where people can easily access it. That became the book, Dream Save Do: An Action Plan for Dreamers Like You. Now Betsy and Warren live in Spain 8 months of the year and travel the world 5 months of the year. The Power of Self-Publishing Betsy always wanted to be a writer. Before she decided to quit her job and travel the world, she didn’t think she was qualified to be a writer because she didn’t have the proper credentials. She didn’t have an MFA. She wasn’t a freelancer before she decided to travel the world. After quitting her job and downsizing her life to have maximum mobility, the self-publishing landscape allowed her to follow another dream. “That’s the great thing about self-publishing coming into its own. Anyone can try their hand at this if they want to take it seriously.” – Betsy Talbot Making that first decision to travel the world and following through on it gave her the courage to try more new things. If you try something and fail, that’s all right. You can always try again or try something else. There are no permanent mistakes in this life. Working Together as a Couple Deciding to work as a team and make the life shift to traveling the world has really strengthened Betsy and Warren’s relationship. They’ve traveled the world together and learned to rely on one another. They learned to run a business together that was entirely new to both of them when they started. Going through those kinds of things together has helped them develop their communication skills and really strengthened the bonds of their relationship. When they talk to one another they have a rule that they only discuss one topic at a time and they can’t bring up any other topics in that conversation. That helps them streamline their communication and makes things very clear when they talk. When Betsy and Warren do fight, their argument is over very quickly. Betsy attributes this to the fact that when you travel together you learn that you only have each other to rely on at the end of the day, so long drawn out arguments and holding grudges are counterproductive. Betsy doesn’t know if she and Warren could’ve tackled all the things they’ve tackled in the last 4 years at the beginning of the relationship. She thinks that they might not have gotten past the first big fight. For Betsy there are 2 keys to having a strong relationship. Always communicate clearly. Nobody is a mind reader. Always tell your partner what you want and need as quickly as possible. If you’re confused about what your partner wants or needs ask them clear specific questions. Keep your fights fast and solution oriented. Betsy and Warren still fight on occasion. When they fight their goal is not to “win” the fight, but instead to solve the problem the fight is about. Every fight you have in a relationship can be boiled down to one problem or set of problems that isn’t being addressed appropriately. If you can define the problem, and focus on solving the problem instead of getting personal in your arguments, your fights will be fast contained affairs, and your relationship will be healthier in the long run. How to Manage Your Business with a Partner, Romantic or Otherwise The best thing you can do if you’re managing a business with a partner is to divide and conquer. Figure out what each person’s responsibilities are going to be, an

Andy Murphy started off in the business and marketing world. He got into real estate shortly before the real estate bubble collapsed in 2008. Since then Andy has reinvented his life. He’s been coaching people for several years on how to achieve success through designing your mindset for success. He helps high level performers take their performance to the next level. Andy grew up in Liverpool England. He’s lived all over the world. He’s been to Australia, Bali, New Zealand, California, and he’s currently living in Florida. Finding Your Success Mindset His personal development journey began 13 years ago when he was working in the IT industry. The company he was working for was ready to fire him. Andy had reached a point with that company where there was no possibility for advancement and he was getting very frustrated. His boss gave him 3 months of severance and he decided to go to Australia with no job and no plan. Shortly after landing in Australia he took a beautiful woman to a party and a stranger at the party offered him a job in sales learning neurolinguistic programming (NLP). Andy accepted the job offer, even though he thought the guy was crazy, because he had nothing better to do and he thought he would give it a try. He didn’t even realize he was being trained in neurolinguistic programming until he’d been doing the job for a number of years. He became one of the top practitioners of neurolinguistic programming in Australia within 5 months. He was highly sought after by several companies. He chose to join the largest real estate firm in New Zealand and took that company over in a very short period of time. At the age of 26, Andy was at the pinnacle of success. He was working 2 days a week making several thousand dollars a day. He had a beautiful supermodel girlfriend, and it seemed like nothing was beyond his reach. When You Lose Everything, You Find Out Who You Really Are At that point a friend of his came back from a real estate conference with a newspaper clipping from Dubai that said, “The worldwide property fair.” That’s when a light bulb went off for Andy and he decided to take his company to the Dubai property fair. Andy asked a friend of his to help them put a business plan together. His friend was developing a resort in Fiji. The 2 minds came together, and they moved that project to Dubai. This was all happening around 2008 when the US financial market and world real estate market suffered a massive correction and the world economy contracted. Andy’s business partner decided it would be a good idea to steal all his money and leave him bankrupt. Andy suffered a nervous breakdown because of the financial collapse. He went from living at the pinnacle of success to living in a gym, working out every day, and practicing martial arts. That was a shift that Andy needed in his life at the time. It stripped all the extraneous parts of his life away so that he could learn who he was at his core. He was given the opportunity to work for a massive real estate company out in Hong Kong. Instead he borrowed money and chose to fly to LA for 5 days and get training on neurolinguistic programming. At this point he couldn’t afford rent or food. His life took another dramatic turn for the positive because of Andy’s choice to follow his intuition and fly to LA. Andy has worked with clients who range the gamut from Saudi Arabian royalty, to CEOs, to successful TV actors. Following his intuition has helped Andy be his best self and find ways to succeed when the odds were stacked against him. How to Create Success After a Massive Setback The key to any success in life is following your intuition and conscience. When you learn to follow your intuition you will find your own successful path in life. “I knew at that moment in my life that where I was was just that, it’s not who I was. That was one of the panicle moments that changed my whole life.” – Andy Murphy There was a voice inside Andy’s head saying, “You’ve sold to over 2,000 people, you’re good at what you do, now what do you want to do with it?” That was another pinnacle turning point in Andy’s life. He worked out exactly who he wanted to work with and what he wanted to do. He wanted to: Work with UFC fighters Sit on the beach with his laptop and earn $1000 an hour Take neurolinguistic programming to a new level Setting these new goals gave Andy an enormous drive to accomplish something big. He went to LA and didn’t know anyone. He hustled. He made friends. He networked. He did many free sessions for clients to get his name out there. He traveled extensively just to be around mentors and learn even more about NLP. He spent $60,000 over the first 2 years in LA to develop his skills and build his business. That doesn’t include daily expenses. All of that money was spent just to build his skills and network. The whole point

Chris Fox is the bestselling author of several books including No Such Thing As Werewolves. He works as an engineer writing and creating iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch apps. Chris started out as an Executive Vice President at a major mortgage bank until the Financial Crisis hit. He decided to switch to a customer service job, and in his spare time in between answering customer service calls began to write his first novel. The one problem with his customer service job was after earning a six-figure income for several years, $12 an hour didn’t go very far. Chris realized he needed to find another way to make an income that could keep him afloat. In 2010, after Apple came out with the iPad, Chris realized that in a very short time millions of people were going to have iPads and iPhones as well as other tablet devices. So he decided to teach himself app development and make another career move. Writing is still Chris’s passion so he writes novels when he’s not working at his day job. Chris published his first novel in October 2015 and has since self-published several very successful novels. How to Write a Novel in Micro Sprints Chris wrote his first novel in 2 years while working as a customer service rep at a credit union. He did this in between phone calls at that customer service job. Chris’s goal was to write 100 words per micro Sprint at his job. On average he had 3 minutes in between phone calls. So he would try to type 100 words or about 3 paragraphs between each two customer service phone calls. The value of this kind of fast writing is that it doesn’t allow your critical voice to stop you from getting your words on the screen. When you only have 3 minutes to write 100 words, you can’t worry about editing or polishing those words. You just have to write legible something down as fast as you can. Chris was the top employee at his job. The credit union had these things called cross sells. Customer service reps had to offer these services to people calling into the credit union if the customers were a good fit for them. Chris was really good at selling these cross promoted services. He was left alone to type on a word document in between phone calls because he was the credit union’s top performer at cross-selling. The key to being successful with this type of writing is to set up micro goals for your micro sprints. That’s why 100 words for Chris Fox was so important. “The smaller period of time you give yourself to get things done the more productive you’re going to be.” – Tom Corson Knowles The real secret behind the success of micro sprints is that you have a deadline hanging over your head that doesn’t allow you to get bogged down in the details of writing. Don’t let writer’s block stop you from writing your book. Set small deadlines and avoid the trap of too much self-conscious reflection and thinking. Tips for a Better Writing Process Chris is a software engineer and app developer as well as an author, so he brings the same approach to his writing as he does to coding. When you want to build an application it’s much better to come up with a plan for the application before you build it. If you begin to code without a plan, very often your application will never be finished. Chris likes to come up with the scene at the end of the book first, and then plot his way backwards to the beginning of the book. Think of your favorite movie. Now think of the climactic scene of that movie. For example, the climactic scene of Star Wars is where the death Star is destroyed. Chris comes up with what he thinks might be a good climactic scene, then he asks questions about how that scene came about. He writes down his answers. He will continue to ask questions about the story until the plot is fully fleshed out for him. After he has a good idea of the plot and all of its twists, he’ll write the story from the beginning to the end in a quick first draft. Once he finishes that quick first draft, he’ll begin the editing process. He doesn’t spend as much time on plotting as he used too. Chris used to spend hour upon hour writing out detailed plots. Now he writes down plot ideas as they occur to him throughout the day. Twice a week or so he’ll compile all of his plot ideas and organize them. When it’s time for him to start working on the project he’ll look at his plot ideas file and hammer out a cohesive outline. Chris’s plotting system is something he is constantly refining. His first novel took him 2 years to write. He wrote the first draft of his novel Project Solaris in 2 weeks. How to Write 5,000 Words Per Hour Chris drafts his novels one hour at a time. He can write 5,000 words in one hour. He’s able to do that because of the training that he went through at his customer service job. Chris wakes up at 5 AM every morning and goes to the gym. While he’s at the gym he thi

Daniel J Lewis is an award-winning podcaster. He helps others launch and improve their own podcast shows by sharing their passion. Daniel also designs websites and offers one-on-one consulting. He speaks frequently on technology, social media, and theology. He also hosts a network of podcast shows including how to use audacity, a clean comedy podcast called the Ramen noodle, and a podcast on the hit ABC show Once upon a Time. Daniel has a passion for podcasting and his primary business is helping others make great podcast shows. Daniels passion for podcasting began in 2005 after Apple announced that iTunes would support podcasting. A friend of his actually told Daniel that he should get into podcasting. So he began searching for podcasts. The first 2 podcasts Daniel listened to were This Week in Tech podcast and the Jesus Geek podcast. He listened to this podcast on his laptop while driving his car because he didn’t have an iPod at the time. At one point Daniel realized that he could do a podcast. He knew how to edit audio. He knew how to work with WordPress well enough to start a podcast website. It was just realizing that he had the ability to make all the working parts move together so that he could start his own podcast. The idea for the clean comedy podcast came from his love of clean comedy and the fact that you can effectively create a quality podcast on a shoestring budget. He launched the clean comedy podcast in 2007. How He Learned to Podcast Daniel learned podcasting through trial and error. He’s never been one to read the manual. He knew how to build a website with WordPress. He also knew that a podcast is just a blog post with an audio file attached that’s connected to an RSS feed. He started from there and the rest is history. How to Start a Podcast Show The technology of a podcast is easy to learn, even if you know nothing about technology. It will take some time to figure out the technology, but anyone can do it. Here’s how to start your own podcast: Start by hosting your podcast website on Bluehost or Hostgator. Install WordPress and then install the PowerPress plugin. Host your media with either libsyn or blueberry. Libsyn is going to be a little bit less expensive. Blubrry is optimized for WordPress. Blubrry is for people who want something that is designed to work with WordPress. If you use the promo code noodle at libsyn or blubrry you will get your first month free. Setting up your website and hosting your audio files with libsyn or blubrry gives you: A website home where everyone can find you A podcasting RSS feed Media hosting for your podcast Stats and analytics for your show Then you just publish your podcast episodes like you would publish a blog post and attach your media files to them. Next you get your RSS feed from PowerPress and submit that RSS feed to iTunes, and other podcast directories. From that moment on every time you publish a podcast episode, which is just a blog post with a media file attached to it, that syndicates out to all the podcast directories that you signed up for. Here is Daniel’s complete guide to starting a podcast How to Produce a Great Podcast The 2 most important ways to stand out in the podcast marketplace are: Quality of content Quantity of content Look at the podcasts that rise to the top in iTunes. Yes, there are podcasts that are professionally produced by people who’ve come over from radio and places like NPR. But you don’t have to have a team to produce a high quality podcast. There are people like Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Michael Hyatt, and Eric Fisher. You’ll see podcasters who are doing a solo podcasts. They record it themselves They edit it themselves They may present the content solo, they may present it as an interview What they’re focused on is high quality of the content first, then high-quality presentation of that content, then high-quality production of that content. It’s important that your audience be able to hear and understand the content that you release on the web. Finally, they promote that high-quality content well. Everything begins with quality content. Quality content is content that adds value to the life of the listener while also being easy to consume. If listeners don’t hear quality content they won’t stick around. Content is King in Podcasting Think of your favorite TV shows. When your first hooked by a TV show, it’s usually because you’re hooked by the storyline. As you continue to watch the TV show, you become interested in the characters and the actors who play those characters. There is a lot of low-quality content available on the iTunes platform. It doesn’t take much work to stand out from the crowd. As long as you take it seriously and focus on producing programs with quality content that can be understood by a listening audience you have a good chance of being successful on the iTunes platform. One strategy that doesn&#

Deeanne Gist has rocketed up the bestseller lists and captured readers everywhere with her original, fun historical novels. With three-quarters of a million trade books sold, her awards include National Readers’ Choice, Book Buyers’ Best, Golden Quill, Books-A-Million Pick of the Month, Romantic Times Pick of the Month, Award of Excellence, and Laurel Wreath. She has also received four RITA nominations, two consecutive Christy Awards, and rave reviews of her books. In today’s show, Deeanne shares her inspiring story of overcoming rejection and becoming a bestselling traditionally published author. Deeanne took an unlikely path to becoming an author. She developed dyslexia as a child. Her father would read textbooks to her until she got to college. She went to Texas A & M and got a degree in elementary education. When she graduated with a 2.3 GPA there was a lot of celebrating. She got a job as a teacher. After she had 4 babies in 4 years it made more sense for her to be a stay-at-home mom, so she quit her job to take care of her family. Becoming a Fiction Writer Deeanne needed a creative outlet. She tried crafting. She ended up being a journalist because she could do that from home. She wrote articles for People, Parenting, Parents, and Family Fun. Being a journalist taught Deeanne: How to write by word count How to write to a deadline How to write tight How to get a thick skin How to deal with rejection The skills she learned as a journalist were a wonderful base of knowledge for her when she decided to try her hand at fiction writing. Deeanne worked at journalism to support her fiction habit. When she finished her first novel she thought it was the best book ever written, and that the publishers in New York would be falling all over themselves to publish it. Fortunately, they didn’t publish it. She wasn’t a good enough writer yet. Writing that first unpublished novel taught her a lot about how to write fiction. The rejection letters Deeanne kept getting said, “This girl can write but she needs to learn her craft.” She was tired of receiving those types of rejection letters. She did a number of things to learn the craft of fiction writing. She joined a writer’s organization She entered contests She read how to books She got a critique group that met every Monday and swapped chapters She wrote a second book, and that book sold Deeanne found her literary agent in 1997. But she didn’t sell her 1st book until 2005. The key to being a successful writer is perseverance. “Selling a manuscript to a New York publishing house is like finding a spouse. Everything’s got to be just right. Everything’s got to be lined up in the heavenly bodies. Even, like the editor can’t have the flu when he picks up your manuscript that day. You can’t have a manuscript that has a premise similar to a manuscript they are already publishing that you have no idea about. There are so many reasons that you might be getting rejections that have nothing to do with the craft of the novel.” – Deeanne Gist RWA Workshops Deeanne learned the craft of fiction writing after joining the Romance writers of America and attending the local writer’s workshops. She recommends that everyone join the Romance writers of America. You don’t have to be a romance writer to join the RWA. They have local chapters all over the world and they’ll invite speakers to teach craft workshops and everything about the business of writing. “I really want to encourage those of you who are getting rejection letters to get a thick skin and no that it is not necessarily the craft, and certainly not you personally.” – Deeanne Gist If you’re not a romance writer, you can just skip the speakers discussing genre specific skills, like including sensuality in your book. On the other hand, you might want to attend those discussions anyway. You don’t have to write a romance to benefit from including romantic elements in your story. Recommended Books on the Art of Fiction Writing Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain is a classic in the field. The book focuses on the mechanics of writing a great story. Dwight spends a fair bit of time talking about “motivation-reaction” units. For example, if you want to have a character laugh you have to give them a motivation to laugh before the laugh takes place. It won’t make sense to have your character laugh and then explain why they’re laughing. The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler. The first half of this book talks about character archetypes. The second half talks about plot structure. The book is written for screenwriters but a novel should also use the same kind of story structure. Deeanne refers to these two books every time she writes a novel. Christopher Vogler and Michael Hague are the 2 plot experts that Deeanne really pays attention to. Tips on Writing Better Fiction Pay atte

In today’s show, David Favor and Tom Corson-Knowles talk about great ideas—how to find them, model them, and use them to transform your life and your career. David Favor is a self published author who knows quite a bit about technology and how the Internet works. In our conversation, we cover a wide range of topics including how to be successful in any area of life (and especially self publishing.) We take a deep dive into platform building, and we also discuss the important differences between traditional publishing and self publishing. How I Self Published My First Ebook Tom Corson Knowles built an e-book Empire that made over $12,000 a month in royalties from Amazon.com in one year. His first published book was a book on nutrition that he cowrote with his mother. He helped her get her ideas down on the screen and organize them into a book accessible to everyone. Tom followed up that book with a book on personal development. He was inspired by Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T Kiyosaki. Tom learns a lot more from writing about a subject than simply reading about it. When Tom was young he believed that corporations were evil because many corporations do a number of things that aren’t that great. After reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, he came to understand that money is simply a tool, and it’s what we do with that tool that matters. “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Gandhi He realized if he really wanted to see the world change in significant ways he needed to make money to affect change in the world. Using money to change in the world is a great way to make a difference. Of course, you can help people without having a lot of money, but even Mother Teresa wouldn’t have been able to affect change on the scale she did without people donating to her cause. The Time Value of Money When you make $1,000,000 over 20 years, you get a certain amount of value out of that money. If you make that same million dollars in 12 months, you’re getting a lot more value with the same amount of money. You have much more power and flexibility if you can make $1,000,000 in one year than if you have to wait 20 years for your million dollars. Money only has value relative to time. For example, how much would it be worth to you if someone were to pay you 1 billion dollars today? What about if they would pay you 150 years from now? Big difference, right? Value Your Time Every business goal you pursue can be achieved one of two ways. You can either: Do-it-yourself. Or pay someone else to do it. If you do it yourself, it won’t cost you any money, but it will cost you the time it takes to learn the skill necessary in order to achieve the goal, plus the time it takes to actually perform the tasks necessary to achieve the goal. You have to ask yourself this question: “Is my time better used in learning the skill necessary to achieve the goal and doing the task myself, or is my money better spent paying someone to achieve the goal while I spend my time doing other things?” Model Successful People Find a role model who has achieved success in every area of life that you want to achieve success, and ask them how they did it. Success leaves clues. If you can distill what actions your mentor took in order to become successful and then do the same actions, you will become successful much faster than people who flail about trying to figure out the rules of success for themselves. Get Expert Advice Great ideas are free, and they work for everyone. If you see someone who is successful doing what you want to be doing, figure out how they got to where they are and follow the same process. Keep track of the results, and modify your efforts as necessary. One of the things Tom has been interested in lately is licensing. He hired an expert at $350 an hour to answer all of his questions about licensing. That’s a lot of money, but at a much cheaper cost in both money and time than getting a business degree and learning everything you can about licensing over several years. It’s important when searching for writing advice that you make sure the people you listen to actually have the level of success that you want. Anyone can give you some advice on writing, but if you actually want to learn how to write better, you should follow the advice of someone who has achieved great results with their own writing. The great thing about the Internet is that anyone who wants to write a book or blog can do so. And everyone has opinions. Just make sure you’re listening to people who’ve been successful the way you want to be successful. Don’t blindly follow the advice of writers who have only sold a few books, or who have never worked with a professional editor. Use Commonsense Just the other day, Tom read a blog post from one author is saying that the best place to publish your book is on kobo.com. That idea is ridiculous. How can Kobo be the best place to publish a book if it has le

Tyler Basu is the bestselling author of Lifestyle Business Blueprint, the founder and host of the Chatting with Champions podcast, and a sought after business consultant. Tyler’s journey began when he read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, and he decided to follow Robert Kiyosaki’s path. When he was younger Robert Kiyosaki worked at Xerox in the sales department. In his book, he suggests that if you want to make money you should probably learn sales. That’s what Tyler did. After high school he bounced around working in several sales departments. He worked in retail, multilevel marketing, and promoting seminars. Eventually he worked in direct sales selling door to door. During this time he was reading every business book he could find and attending seminars with Tony Robbins and Jim Rohn. Tyler describes himself as a personal development junkie. Starting His First Business When Tyler was 21, he decided he wanted to get into real estate investing, mostly to learn how to do it. Tyler took a course on real estate when he was in college so he could get into the real estate investing business. That’s when he started following real estate investors online. He started reading blogs and listening to podcasts. That’s when he decided to start creating his own content. He realized it wasn’t doing any good to consume all the content he was consuming and not do anything with it. Tyler started blogging in late 2011. He blogged for about a year sharing what he was learning from seminars and reading books, along with learning WordPress. Going into 2013 Tyler decided that he should start interviewing people, and that’s what led him to create the podcast Chatting with Champions. He’s written several books since then including his latest book Lifestyle Business Blueprint. This new book is the culmination of everything he has learned from reading books, going to seminars, and interviewing successful entrepreneurs. “Seminars are definitely good, but I think the more important thing is that you do something with the information that you get.” – Tyler Basu Tom used to have low self-confidence. But going to seminars and being around people who were doing what he wanted to do allowed him to imagine the possibility of him actually succeeding at his goals. “What’s normal for [people attending seminars with you] becomes possible for you because their way of thinking slowly rubs off on you.” Tyler Basu Learning the Skills to Be Successful in Business After he started blogging, Tyler began following other entrepreneurial blogs to see what they were doing. Pat Flynn of smartpassiveincome.com was one of the first success bloggers he followed. Tyler also started paying attention to successful podcasters like Tim Ferris and Seth Godin. Through his podcast and blog, and by paying attention to other successful bloggers and podcasters Tyler was able to build a network of successful acquaintances. Networking and connecting with other successful entrepreneurs was the true starting point of Tyler being able to manifest success. “It’s important that you do go out and make those connections, because a lot of people if you’re a blogger, author, or online entrepreneur, sometimes you can stay in your office all day long. You can write blogs, books and articles, but if you don’t actually connect with people and build those relationships, it’s really hard to get ahead because you can’t succeed as a one-man team.” – Tom Corson Knowles Tyler lives in Vancouver which is a wonderful place to live if you want to connect with entrepreneurs because it’s a big city and there are always networking events available. He goes to a networking event of some type at least once a week. Meeting people in person is essential to business success because businesses are about relationships. Tyler sees networking online as a starting point to networking in person. He stays connected with people online to keep in touch with them but building relationships in person is essential. Lifestyle Business Blueprint Two years ago Tyler didn’t know there was such a thing as a Lifestyle Entrepreneur. After posting a podcast for two years and interviewing 80 successful entrepreneurs, he began to notice that several of them build businesses based on their values that earn the money and give them the type of life they wanted to have. Lifestyle Entrepreneurs: Have more free time than most people. They have the freedom to work from whereever they want. Usually their business just requires them to have an Internet connection to run it. They can work from home, while traveling, or from a hotel. They’re doing something that they love. They’re focusing their time and energy on activities that they’re good at, that they really love to do. They create systems to handle everything else, or they outsource the work to other people.

Elizabeth Garrison is the #1 Amazon bestselling author of Wounds of the Father: A True Story of Child Abuse, Betrayal, and Redemption. Growing up, Lizzie suffered from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, and overwhelming feelings of shame and low self confidence. In today’s show, Lizzie shares her inspiring story of overcoming a very tough childhood and adolescence along with some words of wisdom for writers and all people to heal, recover from trauma, and live a meaningful life. Elizabeth has always been a writer. In graduate school she studied how writing could help you deal with personal problems. She was drawn to studying how writing helps heal trauma because of how writing helped her handle her own tragic childhood. When she was in second grade, she begged her mother for a typewriter. When she got the typewriter for Christmas she taught herself how to type. Elizabeth finished her first book in the fourth grade. It was 102 pages long because she wanted to write at least 100 pages and have a “real book.” Now she works with children on producing trauma narratives to help them process the trauma they’ve been through in their lives. Healing Through Writing Elizabeth was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household in the Midwest. Her parents believed in corporal punishment, a lot of which crossed the line into physical abuse. There was a lot of emotional abuse as well. She had to deal with incest as well. Her family projected a very good image to outside observers, but inside her home there was a lot of pain and her dad was very controlling. By the age of 12 Elizabeth started drinking, and by the age of 14 she was hooked on crystal meth. She spent the majority of her teenage years in and out of foster homes and treatment centers. She also had her fair share of homelessness and living in correctional facilities. Throughout all of those difficult experiences she kept writing. Writing has been her sanctuary of sanity throughout her life. Writing is what kept her from losing her mind through all those difficult times. When Elizabeth turned 18 she was looking at doing a lot of jail time. That’s when she decided to get sober and the real work began. She got her GED and ended up getting into college to study how writing can help treat psychological issues. Elizabeth sometimes has a hard time articulating things when talking about them. But when she gets it down on paper that’s where she can get clear about her own feelings and everything makes sense to her. It’s also where she gets the most relief. For many years Elizabeth kept her writing secret because that’s where a lot of her pain went. She wanted to keep that separate from the rest of her life. Writing Trauma Narratives to Help Heal Psychological Wounds Having kids write a trauma narrative about traumatic events in their past is the number one treatment for dealing with psychological issues arising from childhood. If the child is too young to write, they use pictures to help them develop a trauma narrative. Writing a trauma narrative actually moves your traumatic experiences from the back of your brain into the frontal lobe where they can be analyzed more dispassionately. It allows you to rewire your brain so that you’re not reacting unconsciously to stimuli that cause you to play out negative patterns. Trauma is not a single event. The trauma itself is an event, but there are all kinds of things surrounding the trauma that may actually be more traumatic than the actual event itself. You have: The trauma Telling people about the trauma Dealing with people knowing about the trauma The shame around the trauma When you’re using writing to help process a traumatic event, you should write about the most traumatic experience for you surrounding the actual trauma in question. Was it the trauma itself? Was it telling people about the trauma? What hurt you the most about this traumatic event? Where and when do you experience the most pain? You also want to be sure to describe the traumatic event using sensory details because that’s how you describe something a character is experiencing in writing, and in this scenario you are the character. It’s important that you show someone reading your trauma narrative the experience rather than just telling them about it. Writing a trauma narrative can also help you discover triggers that you weren’t even aware of. For example, maybe there’s a smell that you smelled during your traumatic experience that your brain has linked to the trauma so that any time you smell that smell you have this same physiological response that you did when you were traumatized. The ultimate goal of writing your trauma narrative is so you can see where the traumas of your past are affecting your present life, so you can be aware of that and understand where your reactions are coming from. It’s most helpful to write your trauma narrative

Amish Shah is an online marketing legend, entrepreneur and philanthropist. In 2001, he started an affiliate marketing company online and quit his job just three years later. One of Amish’s companies made the Inc. 500 List of fastest growing companies. He’s sold several businesses for more than $1 million, and is a successful serial entrepreneur. Today, Amish is building his educational company Deep Origins into a global brand, teaching people about ancient wisdom from yoga to Ayurveda to meditation and other powerful ancient traditions. Deep Origins combines this ancient wisdom with modern science to improve lives and make the world a better place. The company has several products including information on Ayurveda, Alpha Brain Waves, and Ancient Explorers. Amish got his start as an affiliate marketer. An affiliate marketer makes money when someone clicks on their affiliate link and buys something from the destination website. Amish started making real money with affiliate marketing when he advertised Netflix on his affiliate site lostseason2.com. The website is no longer active, but by 2004 Amish was making over $1,000,000 a year with affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer: You don’t need a product. You don’t need an email list. What you need to do is drive traffic to the destination website that you are an affiliate of through your affiliate link. How Entrepreneurs Solve Problems There are 3 basic approaches to solving problems as an entrepreneur. 1. The Outward Approach Ask a mentor. Ask someone who’s more successful than you. Get advice from your peers. Get advice from the web. Look for advice from people who’ve achieved what you want to achieve. Read the books and take part in the masterminds of high-level people like Elon Musk and Richard Branson. 2. The Inward Approach Another approach you can take to solving your problems is journaling. Write down your problems and goals. Then write down the steps you need to take in order to solve and accomplish them. It’s funny how in the digital age we have all these tools that can help us visualize our problems in different ways, and we never think to just step away from the computer and reconnect with our intuition. Amish believes it’s important to get your problems out on a piece of paper. Before you know it, you’ll be solving all the problems you have in your head. 3. Meditation Meditation helps Amish stay grounded and connected to his intuition. It helps to clear the mind and insulate it from all the distractions of modern everyday life. Meditation also gives Amish access to insights that he wouldn’t get without spending the time in his meditation practice. The more time you can turn off the computer, the clearer your mind will be, and the more ideas for next steps you will see. The Key to Success “Take care of yourself. Take care of your body. Keep your mind sharp. And go do it.” – Amish Shah Success isn’t complicated. People just think there should be an easier way to attain it. They’re always looking for shortcuts. The truth is there is no shortcut to success. You just have to take the steps necessary in order to succeed, and have the perseverance to see your plan through to the end. The best way to succeed is to work backwards. Figure out what you want to achieve. Then write down the steps necessary in order to achieve your goal. Make a plan and follow your plan to completion. If the plan doesn’t work like you thought it would then make a detour and get back to the plan as soon as possible. Perseverance is the one attribute that determines success more than anything else. There is enough information online today for anyone to be successful as an online entrepreneur. Implementation of successful strategies is what sets Amish’s successful students apart from his unsuccessful students. Unsuccessful people look for excuses why they can’t implement certain strategies. Successful students take in the information and implement the strategies right away. If it doesn’t work, they figure out how to tweak and improve it until it does work. People who won’t implement successful strategies will never be successful in the entrepreneurial space. You have to be willing to try new things as an entrepreneur if you want to succeed. According to Amish, the path of a successful entrepreneur looks like this: Decide what you want to do. Research what other successful people have done. Adapt what you learn about other successful people to your own circumstance. Implement your adapted learning in your own life. Learn from your own experience about what works and what doesn’t. Upgrade your own processes. Repeat steps 2 through 6 until you achieve the success you want. You can read all the information in the world but until you put yourself in the arena by offering some sort of product for customers you’re never going to learn what you need to succeed. Help Your

Heather Hart is an international bestselling and award-winning author. She coaches to authors at TrainingAuthors.com. With the heart of an author, she enjoys working from home where she spends her time working on her next book, coming up with new and improved marketing ideas, and teaching other authors what she has learned along her journey to becoming a bestseller. Heather has always been a writer. She wrote stories as a child. She began publishing books in 2009 with a co-author. She hasn’t slowed down since then. Heather never expected to actually become a published author. After her twins were born, Heather had 4 children at home under 5 years old, and she couldn’t afford daycare. That’s when she began volunteering and met a fellow volunteer who was already a published author. They formed a partnership, and things have been going strong ever since. How to Get Reviews for Your Books on Amazon and Goodreads “The best thing I’ve ever found to get book reviews is to start an email list for book reviewers, so you can email them whenever you have a new book. As soon as we started our list, it transformed the number of reviews we were getting on our books.” – Heather Hart It’s important to have a dedicated email list just for people who review your books. She was very clear about what she expected from reviewers in the exchange for a free review copy. In order to receive a review copy her subscriber had to agree to review her book on Amazon and Goodreads. They could also choose to review her book on their blog if they had one. Her subscribers have to put an FTC disclaimer in their review letting people know that they received a free review copy for their honest review. Heather makes a point to send the free review copy in the preferred file choice of the recipient. Bookfunnel.com offers an inexpensive service that takes care of sending your book file in the recipient’s preferred file choice. In the email where Heather delivers the e-book file she lets the reviewer know what her timeframe is. Often what she’ll do is publish the book on Amazon about 2 weeks before she markets the book. This allows her review team to post reviews on Amazon before she markets the book. Pro tip: Label your Advanced Review Copy (ARC) file appropriately so your readers know not to judge you for spelling mistakes and/or plot problems you’re working out before publication. This way you can start getting reviews before publication. Heather usually sends out her Advanced Review Copy to reviewers at the same time she sends out a copy of her book to her final proofreader. If Heather sends out a review copy before the book is launched on, Amazon she tells them when the book will be live on Amazon and sends them a link to the book when it is live. Book Promotions How Heather promotes a book depends on the channel she’s using to sell her book. She has a lot of books in KDP select. She uses KDP select because she likes making use of the free days, and she also likes to use Kindle Countdown Deals. She also has several books published with wide distribution on every major e-book platform. For those books Heather uploads them to Amazon first, and then pushes them to Smashwords, which distributes them to all the other major online outlets. She emails Smashwords coupons to reviewers so they can get the book for free. Tips on Generating More Reviews for Your Books If you have an email list, simply send an email and say, “If you’ve read this book please consider leaving a review.” At the end of the email add a link to the book you want to get reviews for. Insert a page at the end of your book before your author bio asking people to review that book if they like it. You can also put that link in a paperback book as a tangible reminder to go review the book online. There are groups on Facebook where people are looking for free review copies. You can check those Facebook groups to find reviewers. If you’re in KDP select you can post to those Facebook groups on your KDP select free days, and tell people they can get the book for free and you’d appreciate an honest review. Don’t Ask Your Friends and Family for a Review Here’s why… Your friends and family may not be your target audience. They probably read books outside your genre, so they’re unlikely to write a review that is of value to others. Just because they’re your friends and family doesn’t mean they want to read your book. Friends and family are more likely to review the author in their book review then the actual content of the book. This doesn’t help other readers in the marketplace, and it can actually turn off new readers from buying your book. Asking close friends and family is against the spirit of Amazon’s Terms of Service (TOS), and Amazon often deletes reviews from the author’s closest friends and family. For example, if your friends have bee

Michael Mackintosh is the bestselling author of several books. He is a spiritual entrepreneur, having created multiple successful businesses online. He’s a sought-after speaker, consultant, and trainer specializing in helping people unleash their inner artist and become incredibly creative and productive. Michael had some powerful experiences as a young man that propelled him into the personal development field. He has been teaching meditation and personal development techniques for the last 22 years. He started writing books in 2006 as a way to teach more people the information he had to share. The First Book Problem Michael has published 15 books in the last year. The first book he wrote will never be published. His first book has gone through 90 drafts and it isn’t clear enough to publish for a mass audience. I think many times you should just look at your first attempt at a book or major project in a new field as the learning experience that it is. The first 2 books I wrote aren’t going to be published either. They suffer from the same problem that Michael’s first book did. They aren’t organized or clear enough to make sense to a larger audience. It’s not worth my time to put in the work to fix them to a point where there publishable. I would never get my time/money investment back because those books are too much of a mess. Sometimes you have to know when to quit a project so you can focus your time, energy, and creativity on something more important or impactful. It’s more important to finish your first book and publish it as a learning experience than it is that you try to make it perfect. No book you produce is ever going to meet your standards of perfection. The Power of a Meditation Habit For the last 2 years Michael has been taking his writing more seriously. He starts each day by meditating. It’s through his meditation habit that he activates his creativity. Michael never has writers block. He feels like the words are coming through him. He doesn’t feel like he writes his books himself because he gets into a flow state when he writes. He goes to the beach for inspiration. When he comes home he’s eager to write the ideas that came to him while walking on the beach. Right now Michael has dozens of books he wants to write. He just has to write them one at a time and finish each of them off. The Magic of Meditation Michael spent his teenage years drinking heavily and doing a lot of psychedelic drugs. It was fun to a point. Then things took a turn for the worse and he was battling depression with no direction in his life. That’s when Michael’s mother suggested that he give meditation a try. Initially he had some resistance to the idea. When he finally decided to give it a try in earnest, he had an out of body experience. He saw himself living a life without drugs and alcohol. He saw himself being happy for no reason. He got a real clear sense of all the things he needed to do to make that life a reality. After that first meditation experience Michael stopped using drugs and alcohol and began to turn his life around. After his own experience with the healing power of meditation, Michael chose to devote the rest of his life teaching what he learned through his own experience, so that other people who are facing similar problems might get the help and information they need to succeed. Now he lives in Hawaii and enjoys a paradise lifestyle. He feels compelled to give back because all of his needs are met, and all that’s left for him to do is serve the world. The money and fame that Michael enjoys is all a side consequence of living life from the heart. He’s in a place now where he has all the money he needs. His biggest drives are to serve the world and create for the world. How to Stay in the Creative Flow “When you learn to let go and allow things to happen, when you are tuning into different energy which doesn’t have all this resistance and blocks, it’s just a lot easier. It’s more graceful and more fun to be in that creative process.” – Michael Mackintosh When you meditate on a regular basis and are able to get into a flow state when you work, that allows you to produce content effortlessly from your highest self. For Michael, meditation charges his creative battery. Then he watches himself write words during his writing sessions. Afterwards, he has to read what he wrote during the writing session to remember what he wrote down. It’s almost as though he writes in a trancelike state and he simply transcribing messages from his higher self. If you’ve ever got lost in a multi-hour writing session, you probably know exactly what that feels like. If Michael ever feels like he’s actually “doing” something, it feels hard and like work. And he doesn’t end up finishing it. By getting out of his own way, he’s able to be much more creative and prolific as a w

Sam Carpenter is the bestselling author of Work the System, a book many entrepreneurs consider to be the best book ever written on systematizing a business. If you’ve read The E-Myth or Think and Grow Rich, this book is right up there at the top of the list of books that every entrepreneur should read. As an entrepreneur, Sam struggled for many years to grow his company. What he realized is that he was spending almost all of his time “putting out fires,” handling “emergencies,” and he was always bogged down with day-to-day work. One day he finally decided to create systems so that his business could work without him having to put out all the fires and constantly work in the business. In today’s interview, Sam shares his story and why you absolutely must create systems for your business if you ever want to escape the rat race and get ahead. Sam has a varied background. He’s done everything from digging ditches to project managing for an electric company. He started his first business 30 years ago and has never looked back. The call center Sam bought was a nightmare for 15 years. He was working 80 to 100 hours a week at the same time he was the single custodial parent for 2 children. Sam kept that call center going for 15 years. At the end of that time he had 12 employees when he had what he calls a “mini enlightenment.” He realized he was seeing his life all wrong. He changed the way he visualized his life and began taking radical action to change his life’s direction. It took him 5 years to fix his business. He took another 5 years to write a handbook for his employees teaching them how to operate the business successfully without him. He realized the book he wrote could help anyone run their business better. That’s when he began to edit the book so that it could be used by a public audience. He took two years to write the book for the public. Over the last seven years Sam has been lecturing, blogging, and sharing his message every way he can. Systems Produce Better Results With Minimal Effort Sam is another example that the systems of our lives are far more important than things like background and education. He has the money he needs and the time he wants to pursue his happiness. “Getting what you want in life has nothing to do with the attributes you have. It has to do with the machinery.” – Sam Carpenter I totally agree with what Sam has to say about getting what you want. I have a four-year degree from one of the top entrepreneurship schools in the country, and the only two things that I learned from that four years of schooling that I use today are my Microsoft Excel skills and business accounting. What has propelled my business the farthest are personal skills, the soft skills that are not taught in college. The thing about ultra successful people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg is they knew what they wanted and they simply went after it. It took Sam a while to figure out what he wanted out of life. Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less The idea of “simple mechanics” is very important. Our lives are made up of simple processes. Every day we run the same procedures over and over to do our work, get through our day, and moved through our lives. Everything we do in our life can be broken down into simple individual processes. How we get up in the morning. How we get dressed. How we go to work. How we set up a sales presentation. How we put the payroll together. How you go to the bathroom. Everything we do in life can be broken down into a simple process. Every linear process that we execute on a daily basis leads to the results of our lives. Everything about our lives in this moment is the result of simple processes that we have executed through our lives which have brought us to this present moment. What we have right now, this present moment is the result of numerous unrelated systems. The problem most people have is they don’t see the simple systems that are the motive force behind their life. Focus on the Process to Get the Result You Want “We need to spend our time in the processes, not in the result. If you spend your time adjusting the processes and documenting them, if you spend your time in that part of the equation, the results will take care of themselves.” – Sam Carpenter This reality we live in is not a mishmash of random sites, sounds, and events. It is a very logical group of unrelated systems that operate on cause-and-effect. Our lives are collections of independent unrelated systems. It’s only when you realize this fact about the way the world works that you can take a business and break it down into its component processes to make it work better. Most people spend their time trying to get their results to conform to what they want in their lives. The truth is that you can’t control results. You can only control the processes that lead to the results you w

UJ Ramdas is the author and creator of The 5 Minute Journal where positivity meets science. The 5 Minute Journal combines inspiring quotes, daily exercises for gratitude, affirmations, weekly challenges, and thoughtful questions that will help you get focused and be more productive. UJ isn’t your typical author. From the very beginning, he created The 5 Minute Journal with a very different mindset. He set out to create not just a good book, but a great product that would change people’s lives—this year, next year, and for many years to come. From the writing to the editing, design, printing, warehousing, distribution, marketing and more, UJ has bucked tradition and gone his own way. The 5 Minute Journal isn’t a self-published book—it’s a uniquely produced product that happens to look like a book. Instead of giving away most of the profits to a publisher, The 5 Minute Journal is printed and produced from a specialty printing house / manufacturer in bulk quantities that allow UJ’s company to earn high margins. Instead of using only one distributor like Amazon, the company has its own warehouse and fulfillment center for distribution, again avoiding unnecessary fees to 3rd parties. Marketing the Journal Instead of some boring or expensive marketing campaign, The 5 Minute Journal has generated an incredible amount of free exposure in the media, on blogs, on popular podcasts, and even a video review by Tim Ferriss. UJ has always been very passionate about human behavior and specifically how to change it. He has been working in the field of behavior modification for most of his life. He’s done quite a bit of work on himself, and he’s worked with a clinic to directly help hundreds of other people change their behavior as well. Friends have recognized his talent as a writer from an early age. UJ looks at a book as a product. Most writers see a book as a book. When you look at a book as a product you can look to market and package it in very different ways than people who just look at a book as a book. He took a walk with a friend and The 5 Minute Journal was born after that conversation. The 5 Minute Journal condenses 20 years of psychological research into an easy to do Journal with structured entry prompts. He Almost Died… UJ decided to head out to Bali for a few months in early 2014. He rented a motorcycle for transportation. The safety laws in southern Indonesia are not the same as the safety laws in the United States and Canada. UJ was riding his motorcycle one day when he unexpectedly encountered a four way intersection. He had less than a second to react to the car that smashed into him. UJ’s injuries were extensive. He had: Four broken ribs. A partially collapsed lung. A pelvis broken in three places. And blood flowing everywhere. He was conscious throughout the entire experience. He remembers everything. He had a very long and difficult recovery. It took him almost 5 months to be able to walk on his own again. “Just as in everything else, life throws stuff at you. Are you going to let that go to waste, or are you going to use it as fuel to help you become a better person?” – UJ Ramdas Learn from Pain to Make You Stronger Painful experiences can make you a better person. It’s the hard times that define you, not the times where everything is going well. The thing about life is that everyone has dark, painful experiences. Everyone has personal and professional setbacks. What sets successful people apart from unsuccessful people is how we use our experiences to level up both professionally and personally. When you have a difficult personal experience, ask yourself, “How can this help me to…” Become a more compassionate person? Become a more resilient person? Become a stronger person? Become a more peaceful person? Asking that question on a daily basis, no matter what your issue is will improve your life in ways you can’t imagine. Take on a Big Challenge UJ is stronger and healthier today than he was before his accident because he made the decision that he was going to focus all of his energy into becoming the healthiest version of himself. You can make the same decision. You can decide to overcome whatever giant challenge you choose to face with all of your resources, and a single-minded determination. Once you make that decision you’ll be surprised how easy it is to overcome whatever challenge you choose to conquer. Once you make your all-in commitment the universe will reach up to meet you, and help you overcome whatever your challenge is. Creating Great Content It’s important to align with the content you’re putting out into the world. UJ lives the principles in The 5 Minute Journal. “The greatest joy comes in doing work that is meaningful to you. Find out what your values are, what your beliefs are, what you think will make a difference in the world.” – UJ Ramdas Create content around the topics and a

Mike Balmaceda is an author and online marketing genius. He helps authors sell more books and build a massive following of raving fan readers. In today’s show, Mike shares a few powerful marketing tips on how you can sell more books starting right now including: How to use Facebook ads to skyrocket your book sales (while still earning a profit – which is something very few authors have pulled off until now.) How to price your Paperback books to maximize your royalties and help you sell more eBooks (if you’ve already published print books and eBooks before, you will immediately see why this simple free strategy is so powerful). How to get audiobooks produced and published professionally 100% for free, and earn an extra $50 to $300 a month or more per book by NOT doing the narration, production and mastering for your audiobook. Plus, you’ll learn a super-powerful book promotion strategy that can dramatically boost your sales and email list for free. I met Mike Balmaceda through Derek Doepker. When I was just starting to have success publishing on Amazon a lot of people sought me out for advice. Derek was one of those people. Derek and I had several conversations, and I gave him some strategies to launch his future Kindle books. I didn’t charge Derek for those conversations, although some people certainly would have. All I asked was that Derek pay it forward by helping someone else in the future. Derek implemented the strategies I shared with him and became a massive success in very short time. Mike is someone Derek mentored in the same way that I mentored him. Derek introduced Mike to me a couple weeks ago and I’m very happy he’s here to talk with us today. How Mike Started Mike got started by reading information on how to sell books on Kindle. I was one of the first authors he read to learn about marketing on amazon. He began publishing his own books and implementing the strategies he read. Mike was successful very quickly and he found a handful of strategies that got him a lot of sales on Kindle. Mike began to attract clients because of his success selling his own books on Kindle. Each successful step on his journey lifted him up to the next step. Now he is a recognized authority on how to sell books on Kindle. The Four Pillars of E-Book Marketing on Amazon and Other Platforms 1. The Book Title The title of your book is perhaps your most important marketing tool. Amazon isn’t just an online store. It’s a buyer search engine. You want to make sure your title has keywords that people will search for when looking for a book on your topic, or in your fiction genre. This is why you’re starting to see fiction authors identify the genre in the subtitle of their book. It helps Amazon customers find the type of book they want and leads to better conversions for you, which causes you to have a higher Amazon rank and more traffic to your book. It’s an upward spiral to success. 2. The Book Cover Your cover is the second most important piece of your marketing toolkit. The purpose of your cover is to be eye-catching and to get people to click on it. This is why you want your cover to look good in a thumbnail. You want your cover to look like it belongs in the categories you have placed it in. It’s important to do cover research so that you can figure out the best type of cover to convey in an instant what kind of book you are selling. That’s why you need to invest the time to find a good book cover designer. 3. Your Keywords Amazon is a buyer search engine. Choosing the right keywords helps Amazon put your book in front of your target readers. Make sure that your title has some keywords in it but don’t keyword stuff your title. Make it readable by putting keywords in your title that would occur naturally when talking about your subject. If you’re a nonfiction author mention the benefit readers will get from reading your book. If you’re a fiction author mention your specific genre as a subtitle. That way people who are searching for your genre have a better chance to find your particular book. 4. The Book Description This is the final tool in your Amazon sales toolbox. Again, you want to have keywords in here that makes sense. Don’t keyword-stuff. Use keywords naturally as you write. Also make sure you make use of Amazon’s HTML to format your book description so it looks great. Being able to use bullet points, bold, and italics properly on your book page really makes your book stand out from the crowd. Make sure that your book description page looks good before you allow it to go live. Audiobook Royalty Split Strategy You can actually have your Kindle book produced as an audiobook for free. This is how it works. You have a completed book published as an e-book on Amazon. You go to ACX.com and sign up for an account. You choose a royalty split structure with exclusive rights for Audible to sell your book on audible.com, iTunes, and Ama

Stefan James (Stefan Pylarinos) is the #1 bestselling author of several books including Life Mastery. As an entrepreneur, publisher, and high-level personal success trainer and coach, Stefan has achieved a lifestyle most authors and entrepreneurs only dream about. His company, Project Life Mastery, provides life-changing information, advice and tools for people who want to achieve great things in life. The purpose of Project Life Mastery is to be a source of inspiration and change for those who refuse to settle for anything less than an extraordinary life. In today’s show, Stefan shares his journey of going from broke and desperate to being one of the leaders in the personal development community using the power of the internet and new media like YouTube, self-publishing, blogging, email marketing and social media. He also shares some powerful advice and tools for overcoming procrastination and creating a highly profitable and meaningful business as an author and entrepreneur. We also discussed self publishing, overcoming perfectionism, getting started, creating super-valuable products, constant and never-ending improvement, managing your emotional state, some tips he learned from Tony Robbins, and more. His Big Business Started Small Stefan’s journey begins in his friends living room as he’s searching for ways to make money online. He had just read The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. Stefan learned everything he could about information product marketing. He was successful in that market place. When Amazon debuted its self-publishing platform, he decided to learn everything he could about it. He quickly became successful in that arena as well. Amazon is a massive marketplace of customers searching for books and information. These customers are willing to buy now. That’s what makes Amazon such a powerful force in the world. Stefan wrote some books himself and hired ghostwriters to write books for him in different niches. He’s also launched online courses for authors, including Mastering Book Marketing, a course where he teaches people how to market and promote their books to increase their sales. Focus is the Keys to Success “I’ve always believed that success is focusing on one thing until completion. You have got to give it a chance, at least 4 to 6 months. The beginning of anything is always a little slow, but once it is completed and automated, then I can move on to the next project.” – Stefan James The first thing you have to do in order to succeed at selling things online is choose your path. Pick one project and focus on it until the project is complete. After Stefan has one income stream completely automated he’ll start to build the next one. Most people give up before they ever get one thing done well. Another important key to online marketing success is building the right team. No one can do everything on their own. You have to have the right team around you, especially if you want to build multiple streams of income. You need to find ways to leverage your time. Whether that be by virtual assistants or software, one of the keys to success is to have a system for managing your actions. Think of a professional sports team. The owner of that sports team makes far more money than any individual player on the team does. That’s in part because they have the time to think about the overall direction of the team, and they make sure the most important things get done that lead to long-term success. As you build a team of your own, you will find you have more time to make strategic decisions about the direction of your company and your life. Stefan’s Morning Rituals “How you start the day is how you end the day.” – Eben Pagan The more you take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically, the more you’re going to be able to give and do in every area of your life. By spending time with yourself first thing in the morning you’re investing your most valuable resource in yourself, which is the best investment you can make. First thing in the morning Stefan likes to: Read Exercise Reflect on what he’s grateful for Our behaviors come from our mental state. Typically when you’re more calm, confident, and centered, you’re going to make better decisions about what to do in the moment and the direction of your life. It’s best to put yourself in a peak state before you do anything of importance. Stefan puts himself in a peak state before he: Meets with clients Makes a video Sits down to write a book Does anything related to his business Stefan has several techniques he uses to put himself into a peak state. He might: Jump on his trampoline. Go for a walk Listen to inspirational videos Listen to music that pumps him up Focus on what his outcome is Focus on who he’s going to help with this project Time Management Stefan likes to plan out his week in advance. He plans his days hour by hour. When you p

Ari Meisel is a successful entrepreneur, consultant, the bestselling author of The Art of Less Doing and runs one of the world’s top blogs on productivity. Ari has become a renowned expert on productivity, automation, and efficiency for top entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business people. Ari’s Optimize, Automate, Delegate system has helped thousands of entrepreneurs create businesses that run efficiently and effectively, creating more profits and cash flow with less work, struggle, and stress. Ari started on his path to life hacking and optimizing his life when he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in his 20’s. After a serious episode with Crohn’s where he was left in a hospital bed and completely incapacitated, Ari had a huge wake-up call. Even though his doctors told him that Crohn’s disease was incurable, Ari determined to find a way to heal his body on his own. He started a daily regimen of what he calls self-tracking. He measured his blood levels for various biomarkers of health, took numerous medical tests religiously, started testing the results of changes to his diet, sleep habits, meditation, rest, exercise, work schedule and more. In a few months, he turned his health and his life around, and has since started testing and tracking almost every area of his life, creating dramatic improvements not just in his health, but in his stress levels, productivity, income, business growth and more. How to Manage Stress Ari developed a framework of three steps to manage his stress. It’s a framework anyone can use. 1. Optimize Track everything. Discover the processes of your life and record the steps in granular detail. Do you remember what you had for breakfast this morning? How about how many emails you sent last Tuesday? Believe it or not, how many emails you sent last Tuesday may be vital to optimizing your business. The truth is there are 100 things like the number of emails you sent last Tuesday that you don’t know the answer to. All of them contribute to how successful you are in your life. In today’s fast-moving society we have hundreds of inputs and outputs a day that people aren’t even paying attention to. The key to optimizing your life is to record everything you do. That’s the only way you can discover areas of inefficiency in your life. When you discover those areas of inefficiency, you can take steps to eliminate them. You can use software to track your time. You can also journal. The key is to track everything you do for long enough to discover your patterns of behavior. 2. Automate This is in the vein of set it and forget it. What are the things that you do all the time that you can just set it up and never have to worry about it again? For automation you can use: Email filters Software Services With the way technology is advancing today, chances are you can find software to automate anything that’s possible to automate. 3. Outsource Outsourcing is the final step. You outsource small defined tasks that could not be optimized away and could not be automated by some other system. That’s how Ari approaches his entire life from business to health. Use followup.cc to Help You Optimize Time Management Followup.cc is an email reminder service that allows you to email yourself reminders in the future. You can use a number of time commands to let followup.cc know when you want your reminder. You can use commands like: [email protected] [email protected] The key is that you set a time in the future for the follow-up email to be sent back to you. If you use the BCC feature the reminder will only go to you. If you use the CC feature you can send a reminder to you and your team. A lot of the stress of email comes from wondering if you followed up with somebody and did they get back to you? Using followup.cc on a regular basis removes a lot of that stress. Within five seconds of sending an email using followup.cc it’s out of sight out of mind. That’s how it should be. Another great benefit of using followup.cc is that you can replace your to do list. To do lists are lists of tasks that you can do right now. Anything your brain thinks you should be doing it wants you to be doing right now, immediately in this moment. When you think you should be doing something that you can’t do, it creates stress in your brain and body. By using an email reminder system like followup.cc you remind yourself to do a particular task when you can do it. This eliminates a lot of the stress that goes with having a to-do list. Another great benefit of using an email reminder system like followup.cc is the snooze function that allows you to defer action on items when it’s not the best time to take action. NudgeMail is a similar service that you can use for free, but it doesn’t work as well with teams. “The skill that everybody needs to work on, is learning timing. What I mean by that is, everything we do, there is a better and a suboptimal time to do

Jordan Gray is the #1 bestselling author of several books including The Introvert’s Guide to Dating. As a relationship coach and consultant, Jordan is a pro at helping productive CEO’s, authors, artists, and entrepreneurs create amazing intimate relationships that fulfill them and bring happiness and balance to their life. Jordan has helped thousands of people all over the world create better, more fulfilling intimate relationships. Jordan is like Will Smith’s character in the movie Hitch with a little more class and much deeper insight. His work is profound and life-changing, and his books and blog have changed the lives and relationships for hundreds of thousands of readers. In today’s show, Jordan shares some awesome tips on how to get the most out of your relationships in life, how to skyrocket your productivity as a writer, what to focus on when it comes to marketing your books, products and services, and more. How to Get the Most Out Of Your Romantic Relationship “Our romantic relationship is by far the most important one that we will have in our lives. The way that your partner affects your emotional state affects everything in your life.” – Jordan Gray In a romantic partnership both people bring value to the relationship. Jordan helps couples where both people are driven to be successful. He also helps couples where one person takes more of the caretaker role while the other partner is an entrepreneur/author who pursues success outside the home sphere. It’s important to remember that both partners contribute value to the relationship. It’s important to recognize and show gratitude for the value your partner brings to your life. If you’re an entrepreneur who’s better at bringing money into the relationship than your partner, but your partner is better at bringing a loving and nurturing energy into the relationship, as long as you value those things equally, it doesn’t matter what society tells you is important. If you secretly think that because you make more money you bring more value into the relationship, your partner will pick up on that and resentment will begin to grow. “You can be making one million dollars a month, but if your emotional and relational life isn’t in line, that money isn’t going to save you in terms of happiness. On the flip side you could say the emotive, nurturing, supportive partner could be bringing more value into your life then your bank account, by a multiple.” – Jordan Gray “If I listen to my inner voice, my intuition, my guidance, it’s okay. But the second I start listening to what other people are saying about ‘this is how it should be, and this is the way you need to do things.’ That’s when the guilt, anger and shame comes up, whatever those negative emotions are. And that can totally ruin relationships, whether it’s a romantic relationship, a business relationship, or any kind of relationship.” – Tom Corson Knowles Fulfilling Relationships Recharge Your Energy Jordan’s girlfriend Amy charged him up so much during a recent vacation that he was able to come home and write a book in three days. Using the techniques he learned from Tom, Jordan launched that book to number one best-selling status very quickly. “There are certain things I can do to recharge myself. I can go to the gym, play guitar, read fiction books. But having an aligned loving relationship is such a force multiplier when it comes to recharging that energy. When I get back to my computer, writing a book in a handful of days, I can’t not do it.” – Jordan Gray “A lot of people think ‘I’ll look for a relationship when I get to a certain point. When I’m making 10k a month or six figures.’ It’s such a backwards way of thinking. If you focus on your relational life first that gives you the foundation that will get you to milestones so much faster. Because you’re a supercar with super fuel in it.” – Jordan Gray “As entrepreneurs, as authors, as creative artists our emotions, our relationships, and our social life totally affects our work life. If we don’t have everything else in order, it’s really hard to create work that makes a difference in the world.” – Tom Corson Knowles “If you want to work on your artwork. Work on your life.” – Anton Chekhov Whenever Jordan finds himself stuck on a writing project it’s never about the writing project itself. He is stuck because some energy in him needs to move. Jordan’s Productivity Habits In the last year and a half Jordan has created: 150 articles 8 books Four video courses He gets his best writing done before sunrise. He wakes up every morning at 4:00 a.m. without an alarm clock. Jordan writes with the dimmest setting on his computer screen. He uses blue light blocking glasses which make your vision a bit higher contrast. The glasses also bloc

Derek Murphy is the bestselling author of several books including Book Cover Design Secrets You Can Use to Sell More Books. Derek has a wealth of experience in the publishing industry as a professional editor, cover designer, consultant, keynote speaker, and bestselling author. In today’s show, Derek and Tom discuss what it takes to create a bestselling book cover for eBooks and physical books, and what to look for in a professional cover designer. You’ll learn some key insights, ideas, and strategies for getting the most out of your book covers using fonts, images, and designs that stand out from the crowd while connecting with your readers. Derek started working in the publishing industry in college. During his senior year he worked as a freelance editor for several authors. He began designing covers around the same time. Derek knew the basics of Photoshop and began offering free cover design services for his editing clients. Derek’s cover design skills were in such demand that he started a second website to offer his cover design skills to the market. It’s a very successful business because authors are willing to pay quite a bit for cover design because it’s the face of their book. There’s not much competition for artists who are doing high-quality cover designs for books. Why Your Book Cover Matters A book cover is brand packaging for your story and author brand. A lot of authors see the book cover as just one element of many that they have to get right to publish. A book cover is the packaging that goes on the digital bookshelf. If your book cover isn’t good people will just scroll by your book and they won’t pick it up. Your book cover is the presentation of your story to the world. It’s your: Marketing Hook Attention grabber Media First impression Having a professional cover is more than just one piece of the publishing puzzle. It’s the entry-level cost of putting your book on an equal footing in the indie marketplace. If you don’t have a good cover for your book no one will help you market it. Think of a book cover like a movie trailer. If a movie trailer isn’t any good, chances are you’re not going to go see the movie. The same principle applies to book covers. If you don’t have a good book cover people, probably aren’t going to take a chance on your book. Book covers are especially challenging because people make split second decisions about what they like and don’t like. When you ask for feedback from friends on Facebook, they’re going to really look at and pay attention to your cover. But when your cover is on Amazon, people are just going to scroll by without thinking about it—unless it grabs their attention and makes them want to click it right away! What a Professional Book Cover Looks like A professional book cover: Looks like a book cover that fits the category the book is in Looks like one piece of art rather than random elements smashed together on the cover image Looks like the text was made to go on the artwork The way you put text on the artwork, and the way the text looks on the cover is one of the most important elements of cover design. A lot of authors get concerned about the details when it comes to cover design. Details are important, but the only thing that really matters is whether or not someone clicks on your cover. Once a customer clicks on your cover they don’t care about the cover design because they’ll be reading your description, the reviews, previewing the book, or buying it. How Derek Designs Book Covers A book cover should look like other bestsellers in its category. There is a myth in indie publishing circles that your book cover should stand out and look different than other books in your category. The truth is you want your book to look similar to the top twenty bestsellers in your category. You want your cover to use similar elements of design, because readers need to be able to tell which genre your book is in just by looking at the cover. If your book looks completely different than other books in your category, readers aren’t going to trust that your book is a book they will like. If you’re writing a paranormal vampire romance it should look something like twilight and other best-selling paranormal vampire romances. It should NOT look like a bloody horror novel, because that will turn off your romance readers. “When designing a book cover, choose something that is a representative of that category or subgenre. Make something better but not totally different. Give the reader an idea of what the book is about.” – Derek Murphy You Only Have One Second to Grab Someone’s Attention It’s important to remember that book covers flash by in a second. That’s why you have to be sure that your cover represents the genre of your story. You want the book cover feel like it belongs in that category. People aren’t making conscious

Rachel Aaron is the bestselling traditionally published novelist and author of several books including the Eli Monpress series, as well as one of my absolute favorite books on writing, 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love. Rachel always wanted to tell stories. But the types of stories she wanted to tell changed as she grew older. As a little girl, she wanted to draw comics and manga. Later, she thought about writing movies. Ultimately, though, when she thought of stories, they always showed up as books. Rachel isn’t a visual person and drawing doesn’t come easily to her. For her, writing books just makes sense. By the time she got to college, Rachel knew she wanted to be an author. She got an English degree because she thought that would make it possible—that she’d become an author with that credential. However, her English degree made her really good at writing essays, not novels. In 2004, Rachel graduated college and was trying to figure out how to actually be a published fiction author. That’s when she discovered Holly Lyle’s website. Holly’s advice was: “If you want to be a writer, start writing.” Just Start Writing—The Rest Will Follow Taking Holly’s words to heart, Rachel spent the next year writing a 220,000-word YA novel. In 2005, self-publishing didn’t exist in the form that it does today, so Rachel went to New York with her behemoth young adult novel. She tried to publish her first novel for two years. She was rejected by every publisher that she queried. Finally, she gave up trying to sell that first novel because she wanted to write another book. She sat down and wrote the story that spoke to her—the book that seemed fun to write. That became her first published novel, The Spirit Thief. She used that manuscript to get an agent, who sold her book to a publisher. In today’s episode, Rachel shares her secrets to writing higher-quality books more quickly…while still enjoying the process! After applying Rachel’s lessons from 2k to 10k, I noticed a huge increase in my personal writing speed, and I was able to overcome writer’s block almost completely. She’s the real deal! Rachel is a master when it comes to plotting and writing novels that draw readers in, and she’s one of the few masters who can actually communicate her system, sharing it in a way that lets you take her ideas and immediately implement them to improve your own writing. Rachel gained her expertise in plotting the hard way. When she decided to write a book back in 2004, she began as a pantser. After 5,000 words, she gave up on that manuscript and began building a world. She went overboard on world building and threw out her second attempt as well. That’s when she realized she was going to have to develop a system. How to Plan Your Novel in Five Steps Planning a novel is all about knowing your destination. 1. Write out everything you know This is the very basic first brainstorming session where you figure out everything you already know about your story, and what inspired you to write it. You don’t have to know anything specific at this point. This part of the process can be short or long, depending on what you already know. 2. Work on the major parts of the story Outline the characters. Who is in your story? And how does the story affect them? When it comes to characters you’ll need: The protagonist. This is the person whose actions move the story forward. The antagonist. This is the character who works against the protagonist. The power players. These are people who are important to the world, but who aren’t the protagonists of the story. Think supporting cast (like Dumbledore in Harry Potter.) Create the setting of your story. Where does your book take place? What we’re doing at this point in the production process is setting the stage and casting your characters. Outline the plot of the story. What events are going to make up your story? And in what order do they occur? In particular, this is where you decide on the end of your story and the beginning, in that order. You can change the end of your book as you’re writing it, but you have to know where you’re going in a general sense. Is this going to be a standalone book or part of a series? Life is much easier if you answer this question now and start planning for it. If this is a standalone book, you’re going to need to make sure your ending ties up all the plot threads. If this is a book in a series, you need to figure out the larger meta-plot and where this book fits into it. Remember, writing a series is the easiest way to build an audience and make money as an author. Step 2 ends when you have a solid understanding of where your story takes place, when your story takes place, and what your story is about. This step should be fun! You’re using your imagination to create a world that you’re going to tell a story in. If you’re not havin

Matt stone is a best-selling author, professional blogger, and owner of Archangelink, a publishing company that helps new and independent authors succeed. He is also the owner of Buck Books, one of the top e-book promotion sites. Matt Stone began his publishing journey in college. He majored in writing, and was able to adapt his senior thesis into a book and sell it to a publisher. He didn’t see any income from his published book and put his dreams of being a professional writer on the back burner. He’s quick to point out that this was before self-publishing became feasible for indie writers. The Beginning of a Great Writing Career In 2006, he began blogging about nutrition and health because that was his major area of interest. He dove in feet first reading hundreds of books and studies. He was so computer illiterate that it took him 2 years to figure out how to insert images into his blog posts. Matt was able to build an audience using his blog. He wrote a number of books for that audience. He also bundled his books together along with audio and video for his blog followers, and sold those as packages directly on his website. In 2012 Matt hired Rob Archangel. Rob convinced Matt that they should put his books up on Amazon. Matt always wanted to make his books available to Amazon customers but he was intimidated by the technical aspects of publishing a book on Amazon. On November 30, 2012 Matt Stone and Rob Archangel launched all the books Matt had written on Amazon. In his first month Matt pulled in $16,000 from book sales. From that point on he’s been hooked. He continues to expand with different translations and formats. Matt isn’t an “overnight success.” He wrote his books beginning in 2006 over a number of years. He built an audience on his blog. At the same time, he built up a backlist of content that he was able to publish on Amazon when the time was right. Matt would sell his books at a higher price point on his website. So when people went to Amazon, they were getting a huge discount to buy his books there. It’s also important to remember that he had a huge audience when he began to offer his books to the public. Around the time he began publishing on Amazon, his blog posts would get hundreds of comments regularly when they went up on his blog. Matt gathered an engaged audience without a huge social following or mailing list. Matt didn’t even have a Facebook page set up when he started publishing his books on Amazon. Book Release Strategy In November 2013, Matt published Eat for Heat: The Metabolic Approach to Food and Drink. He published the book at $0.99 right before Christmas to maximize the number of downloads from his existing audience. Then after Christmas, he raised the price of the book, because that’s when a large number of new customers are searching for new content. The book reached #87 on all of Amazon. It’s also important to remember that health books do very well in December and January because that’s when people are making their New Year’s resolutions, but that’s still a huge accomplishment. Publishing on Amazon gives the author real credibility. Matt was able to show the audience that already believed in him that he had a powerful reach. Being able to out rank books by experts like Jillian Michaels really helped cement Matt as an expert in his field. The Beginning of Buck Books When Matt launched his book at $0.99 he didn’t realize what a great marketing strategy that was for Amazon’s algorithms. Selling your book at $0.99 can get a lot of people to download your book and tell Amazon’s algorithm that you’re an author who converts browsers into buyers. When that happens, Amazon will begin doing marketing for you by featuring your book prominently on their website, and emailing customers who fit the profile of customers who’ve already bought your book. The key to the $0.99 promotion strategy is to do it when your book first comes out. That’s the best chance you have to convince Amazon that your book is truly popular. The first month you have a book on Kindle is the most important time to put your effort on promotion. That’s when Amazon’s algorithm is looking. “80% of the promotional effort you put into your book should come in the first thirty days.” – Matt Stone When Matt had success pricing his book at $0.99 he decided to help authors do the same thing. That’s why he launched Buck Books. Buck books is a website that promotes $0.99 books to its mailing list. In the first ninety days that Matt went live with this idea he helped fifteen authors get into the top one hundred on Amazon, and he even helped one author get all the way to number one. The basic strategy buck books utilizes is cross promotion. Matt will do a promotion with twelve books in similar genres, all the authors of those books will promote the flash sale. And all the authors get

Transmedia and story engineering were hot topics at this year’s Willamette Writer’s Conference in Portland, Oregon. Tom shares his key takeaways, insights, and lessons learned from speaking at and attending the conference. In the show, we discuss transmedia and the future of media. Content is the greatest marketing tool you will ever have, and transmedia is how you maximize the impact of your content across various media platforms including books, film, TV, digital video and online digital content, social media, video games, merchandise, and more. Tom also shares some key takeaways from a workshop by Larry Brooks on story engineering and how to craft a great story that readers will buy, read, and share. Great stories share some common elements, themes, and techniques, and learning these key concepts can help a writer go from good to great. The future of publishing includes a lot more than just books. An Unlikely Success Story Look at publishing success stories like Game of Thrones. It started out as a mediocre series of novels, barely holding on to a midlist position in the publishing industry, and the franchise then turned into one of the most successful TV shows of all time (which subsequently caused sales for the novels to skyrocket as well). The Game of Thrones books weren’t successful because they were published or marketed in a unique or novel way. Rather, it was the entire transmedia marketing campaign used to market the TV show that turned the books into a massive hit. So, what’s the lesson here? If you want to create a serious business as an author and publisher in a world where publishing is changing rapidly, you have to be willing to change. Instead of just publishing books or novels, consider adding in interactive websites, social media marketing campaigns, apps, video games, TV shows, YouTube shows, songs, music, merchandise and apparel, and other forms of media not just to create additional streams of income, but to serve as tools to help market your books. In the future, authors won’t think of themselves simply as the writers of a book. Instead, the authors who succeed and succeed big will think of themselves as the creators of a brand, of a movement, of a transmedia business. Those authors who simply publish a book and call it a day will fade into obscurity along with the millions of other books published every year, but those who create engaging and powerful transmedia content will be able to earn significant incomes, create jobs, change the publishing industry, and exert a massive positive influence on the world through their work. There has never been a more exciting (and profitable) time to be an author. Transmedia Storytelling Luke Ryan is a successful film producer. He is very talented, and his talk at the writers conference was about Transmedia Storytelling. Our readers are consuming content in all forms. If they’re reading our books they’re obviously reading text. But people are also: Watching movies Watching TV Listening to podcasts Playing video games Browsing websites Streaming video on other sites Using social media platforms Buying merchandise on other websites They are experiencing stories in an ever-growing number of forms. The entire idea of Transmedia storytelling is taking one intellectual property like a book, and developing all kinds of products around that intellectual property. Star Wars and Harry Potter are great examples of this. In 2017, the Harry Potter theme park opened—an entire theme park based on a book! Publishers use these Transmedia products as marketing tools and extra streams of income. Another way to look at it: your book is both an income generating tool and a marketing tool. Every new book you write has the potential to attract new readers to your author platform. Every book you write has the potential to sell every other book you’ve ever written. This is why authors who write multiple books have the best chance to make a living as a writer. If you have book and a movie, every person who sees your movie has the potential to go buy your book, and every person who reads your book has the potential to go see your movie. Expand Your Content “The concept of Transmedia is that our customers are consuming media on a variety of platforms, and the better job we do of getting our content out on these various platforms, the better our business is going to do. Not just in generating additional revenue on these platforms, which can be huge, but also in the fact that we’re engaging our customers more and building a deeper relationship with them. Each content piece we have out there is doing marketing for us.” – Tom Corson Knowles This is also true in the online marketing world. Every piece of content you create is not only a potential income generating tool, it’s also a great marketing tool. That’s why I do this podcast. It’s totally free to you, but it increases my author platform, because it increases the nu

In today’s show, Tom Corson-Knowles shares data, facts, and insights into global ebook and print book industries and the future of publishing. If you don’t understand the numbers, it’s hard to make good decisions as an author or book publisher! Global print book sales are predicted by PWC to decline by over $10 billion by 2018 (that’s a $10 billion decline in a market of only $80 billion!). Those sales will all be replaced by sales of eBooks, which means the industry is stagnant as a whole. In fact, after inflation, the publishing industry in the United States is actually declining a little bit each year. Yet, even in a declining industry, there’s a massive opportunity to earn a huge amount of money, especially for independent and self published authors. Why? Because there’s a huge wealth transfer happening right now, and anytime there’s a wealth transfer it creates opportunities for new entrants to earn a fortune. That’s why we’ve seen hundreds of success stories of self published authors like Hugh Howey, Amanda Hocking, John Locke and many others. Most of the sales for most self published authors come from eBooks, and it makes a lot of sense because that’s where the growth is happening. Print Book Distribution Physical distribution is almost completely locked up by major publishers. Most print books in the trade market are now sold in big box retailers: CostCo, Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc. The Big Publishers pay millions for prime placement for books, and they’ve pretty much shut out the competition. But with eBooks, there’s a brand new, totally open playing field. Amazon dominates the US and UK eBook markets (the two biggest eBook markets in the world currently), and anyone can now publish their eBooks on Amazon free. No more gatekeepers. No more monopoly. No more big profits for major publishers. And a whole lot of new opportunity for authors who take advantage of self publishing. This show will give you some key insights into what’s going on right now in the industry, why eBook sales are still growing despite a global economic slowdown, and why print sales are declining globally. Becoming Successful as an Indie Publisher It’s important to recognize trends in the marketplace. You should be aware of what formats of books are selling, and in what genres. In general look at: E-book sales Audiobook sales Paperback sales Large genres and subgenres where a lot of books are being sold Tiny genres and subgenres that aren’t worth your time to pursue “It’s important that you understand the big picture and where the market’s headed so you can be in the right place at the right time.” – Tom Corson Knowles Know Your Market size “At TCK publishing our goal is to help every author we work with earn a full-time living from their royalties.” – Tom Corson Knowles When I first started publishing books at TCK publishing I thought that anyone could make a living in any market on Amazon, because many of my books and books from our early authors did so well. But I soon found out that the poetry market and the children’s book market on Amazon are particularly hard to sell e-books in. That’s when I decided to look at the different categories on Amazon and do my market research. Publishing Industry Sales Data Every study I reference in this episode has some sort of bias built into it. Some studies only take data from Amazon, other studies only take data from traditional distribution channels. The publishing marketplace is so vast it’s impossible to get a clear picture of all the sales from all the distribution channels. Even though you should to take all the data with a grain of salt, there are some trends that are important to understand. The Global Book Market In 2014, more e-books are being sold then print books in the US. But the average price of an e-book is less than a print book. So people are still spending more money on print books than e-books, but print book sales are declining while e-book sales are growing. Price Waterhouse Coopers did a study on the growth of tablet sales, and how that growth will drive the growth of the e-book industry. Their study found that the publishing industry is currently worth about $60 billion. From 2013 to 2018, the industry as a whole is going to grow slightly, and the revenue from e-books is going to double and reach $20 billion a year in 2018. Over that same five year period sales of physical books will decline by $10 billion. So the fastest growing sector of the publishing industry is the e-book market, followed by audiobooks. That’s a huge decline in print book sales. Print book sales will still be a big market in 2018, but it’s a declining market. And the trend doesn’t look good. The other thing to consider is this isn’t a declining market because of something like obsolete technology. It’s also a declining market in general as inflation is growing faster than the industry itself.

In today’s show, Tom Corson-Knowles answers your questions about self-publishing and book publishing. We cover questions about formatting, publishing, marketing, pen names, free vs. paid books, creating audiobooks, and much more. Q: Does it matter what font, font size, paragraph and margin settings I select when formatting an eBook for Kindle? A: Okay, so basically here’s the jist of how it works for e-books. Every e-book reader I’ve seen allows the reader to customize what kind of paragraph, font, and style settings they want for their text. Now usually, they’re just selecting the device defaults. And all the kindles I’ve seen have an automatic default font type for the device. Amazon has a standard font type for each device it sells. When a person buys that device, they usually use that font type. In order for the reader to actually read your document using the font and style that you used, they’d have to choose your exact settings on their device. That, I’m guessing, happens less than 1% of the time. I’ve never wanted to use the exact font and size that the publisher of the book used when reading a book on my Kindle. So as far as I can see, it’s almost completely irrelevant what font, size, and style you use when you make your ebook into a .MOBI file or whichever file type you use. What I use personally for my books is a standard 12 point size normal font. The font type should be a simple, plain, common font type that everyone knows and understands and can easily read. If you watch the training videos at ebookpublishingschool.com you’ll see I just use the simple style set in Microsoft Word to format my font and spacing for eBooks. Paragraph spacing does matter. Your settings should be different depending on whether you’re formatting a fiction or nonfiction book. I have a free video series at ebookpublishingschool.com that goes through the formatting process in detail. The video series covers Mac and PC users who want to use Microsoft Word to format their Kindle book. I also go over the differences between formatting a fiction book and a nonfiction book. Nonfiction books have no indentation at the beginning of their paragraphs, and a space in between paragraphs. Fiction books have an indentation at the start of each paragraph, and no space between paragraphs. Q: Should I use standard single spacing or 1.5 line spacing when formatting my Kindle book? A: I believe the standard is 1.5 spacing. But again it doesn’t matter, because the Kindle device or e-reader device will deal with how the text appears visually to the customer automatically. Q: Should the margin be right justified or loose? A: You can do either one. Some people do no justification. Some people choose to right justify their text. It’s really up to you, and what you think looks better. I used to prefer right justification, and now I prefer no justification. There are arguments and pros who do it different ways. The customer will notice the difference on any e-reader. So, it’s just a matter of personal preference. Q: If I use bold, italics, or underline something, does it show up in the e-book formatting? A: Absolutely. If you bold, italicize or underline text it will show up in your formatted document that way. Make sure you use these different font styles sparingly, when you need to use them. If you use them too much it will lead to a poor reader experience. Q: what about all the AutoCorrect lines that appear in my Microsoft Word document? Will they carry over into my e-book? A: No. Your e-book will have no AutoCorrect lines in it. Your customer will not see any AutoCorrect lines in the finished e-book. Q: What about the cover? I have someone working on the cover design for my new book. Should I embed the cover image in the Word document? A: When you publish an e-book you upload your cover separately from your manuscript, and then the platform you upload your book to will include the book cover within your manuscript automatically. If you embed your cover in the Microsoft Word document, you’ll simply have two cover pages in the final document. It’s unnecessary, and you shouldn’t do it. Q: Is there a cover page and a title page? A: No. The first page of the book is going to be your title page. It’s going to have the title of your book, and then usually your copyright information as well. Q: What goes on the copyright page? A: The copyright page should say the authors name, the year, and whoever owns the copyright. After that, you should have the phrase “all rights reserved,” and a standard legal disclaimer for books that explicitly states the book can’t be transmitted in any way without your consent. If you’re concerned about what to put on the copyright page, study the copyright pages of other books you own. You might also want to consult with an attorney who specializes in intellectual property and copyright to ma

Successful authors do things a little differently… In today’s show, Tom Corson-Knowles shares the 15 habits of highly successful authors and shows you how you can apply them right now to your own life to speed up your path to success. This podcast episode is based on the article Tom wrote called 15 Success Habits of Professional Writers and Authors. If you’re looking for a little motivation, inspiration and education, this episode is for you! So grab your pen and paper and get ready to take notes because you’re about to learn how to earn some serious publishing profits. The post 031: The 15 Habits of Highly Successful Authors, Writers, Artists and Entrepreneurs appeared first on TCK Publishing.

Hollis Carter is an online marketing superstar. As a product creator, marketer, consultant, and coach, he’s worked on several million-dollar online product launches. Hollis has appeared on Mixergy, Entrepreneur on Fire, Smart Passive Income, and other major podcast shows on online outlets for entrepreneurs. For the past few years, Hollis has taken his experience in marketing and applied it to the publishing industry as a coach, consultant, trainer and publisher. Hollis has planned some incredible book launches, and helped many thought leaders, experts and novelists take their exposure and marketing to a whole new level. He founded Velocity House, a publishing company that creates huge book launches using email marketing and innovative online marketing strategies to help authors create massive buzz and exposure in a very short period of time. In today’s show, Hollis shares his marketing system for success that any author can (and should) apply right now to their business to sell more books, attract more raving fans, and create an active community of readers who will support you. Hollis got into Internet marketing almost by accident. He was in college when Facebook came out in 2004. His college was one of the first to be invited to the Facebook network when it was still exclusive. Hollis quickly saw how Facebook was changing the way people interacted in the real world. He was able to stop going to class because he connected with people in his classes and got their notes. He also saw relationships ending because of pictures posted on Facebook. Hollis and a roommate hired some people in India to create a Facebook clone, and they sold it to K-12 and Montessori schools. It was an opportunity for kids, teachers and parents to be connected through the Internet. They were making some sales, but it was a very time intensive process. That’s when Hollis and his roommate decided to convert their Facebook clone to a business opportunity. They sought advice of an online marketing expert who helped them figure out how to set up an affiliate marketing plan and an email list. He also helped them craft a 30-minute video presentation which became the video sales letter for the product. It was one of the first video sales letters on the Internet. They went to market in 2006. In the first two months they made $1.2 million in sales. At the end of the first year they had just over $2 million in sales. They went to market with the right product at the right time. They didn’t end up keeping the money because they were young dumb kids who didn’t set up their business the right way. But it was a glimpse at what true online marketing success can be like. The Next Step Hollis moved to Colorado. He and his roommate kept running their software as a service business, and they build a bunch of other software products. Hollis got bored with his company because he got really good at being successful in that marketplace. He’s the type of person who needs to be in a newer marketplace, with areas to explore. That’s why he decided to start working with authors. Hollis has always enjoyed reading, because the ability to learn from the books you read is limitless. He wanted to find a way to be of value to the authors that he admires so that he can learn from them directly and hang out with them. It was a way for him to have a direct connection with people he wanted to learn from without paying thousands of dollars for their seminars. He began to build systems around creating blogs and using Kindle for lead generation. The key to being a successful info marketer on Amazon is creating products that you sell at a low price point to get them into your sales funnel. Hollis developed his system for customer connection and engagement after three months of binge reading several books. He wanted to stay connected and communicate with the authors that he admired, and he noticed that those authors made it difficult to stay connected with them. How to Build a Relationship with Your Readers “You have to build a quality relationship with someone before you get the transaction.” – Hollis Carter Every book you write is a relationship building tool. At the end of your book you should have a link to a free video or some other kind of multimedia experience so readers can connect with you on a deeper level. Readers don’t like opting in for another piece of text because that could have been delivered in your book without making them go through that process. Hollis created an opt in offer with a client who wrote a recipe book. The opt in offer was 10 videos of the author cooking her 10 favorite recipes. 36% of the people who bought the book opted in for the offer. These people are far more valuable than people who opt in because of a free report they see on your website. They’re more valuable because they found her book AND read it to the end, and then decided to opt into her email list to stay connected with her. Fro