Today on the Book More Show, we're talking to Randy Davis from up near Chicago IL. Over the years, Randy has built and sold 18 companies, and the book he just completed with us, The Bootstrap Billionaire, takes that experience and the insights gain from conversations with his peers, to guide you toward creating a business that scales, and ultimately is a viable business that attracts multiple offers.
It was great to get some of Randy's time today. Not only for his knowledge, but also to listen to his experience of creating his book... What lead him to the decision, the process, and how he plans to use it.
Everyone's background and intentions are different, so it's great to hear what held someone else back, and what's now propelling them forward.
There's some great ideas here to help you get started.
More about Randy: RandyDavis.io
Lisa Sasevich episode (Book > Webinar > Client funnel)
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Transcript: Book More Show 071
Stuart: Randy, how are you doing?
Randy: I'm doing great. Thank you. Thanks, Stuart.
Stuart: Fantastic. This was, like I said, a great opportunity. We've been emailing a little bit offline, and then we’ve been talking closely with them and going through the process, so we've just gotten to the end of getting Randy's book rated. I thought this was a great opportunity because Randy is very established in what he does. He's got some great ideas for how to use the book, had a good experience going through the process, so I really wanted to jump on a call and share with everyone what that journey looked like, what brought you to writing in the first place, and then as I mentioned before, we'll run through the ideas we've got for using it.
Let's start with, do you want to give everyone listening a background on yourself and kind of a quick overview of the Randy Davis story?
Randy: Sure. I started out to be, well I guess I turned out to be an entrepreneur that's just kind of a serial entrepreneur. That was never my intent. I started a company back during my college days, and the first business went bankrupt because of confusing abdication instead of delegation. Then I built another business, and it's like, yeah, I look back on it and I could tell you that it wasn't my fault, but the reality was it was. It was my fault.
As a result of bankruptcy, I found myself without a place to live, went through a divorce. It was all the pressures that come in with it. Then I just lived in a small car for quite some time until I could get back on my feet again. I built another company and then built another company, and with where we're at today, I have built and sold 18 different businesses. I'm now starting number 19. Usually what happens is I build a really great company that somebody wants to buy. I don't want to sell it, and then they-
Stuart: That's a good problem to have.
Randy: They keep after me. Yeah. The price kind of increases. It's like, okay, well, I'd be foolish not to sell because everyone is going to be well taken care of, the constituents and the clients and the staff, so that's what I've done. Then I sold my last business, and that was probably the most successful exit that I had, as it should be. You learn from each one and you build from it. Decided, what do I want to do next?
In the meantime, I found myself helping a lot of other entrepreneurs build businesses. I'd find they could scale to a certain level, and then they couldn't really get past that level. It wasn't just about the ceiling of complexity. It was they didn't have a business set up that could scale. They didn't have the business set up to where they could exit with the highest valuations. I started seeing a need there, and that's what really brought me to writing this book.
I tried to figure out what do I want to do with the rest of my life, because I've had a pretty great life up to this point. What can I do to make a contribution to society? I thought, come up with some different ideas. I want to work on transforming the nursing home industry. I want to transform the financial services industry. I want to do this, want to do this, but I would get excited for two weeks, and then it would kind of wane.
What I found was there was a void there, and that void was I was not helping and interacting with other business owners that wanted to build something and had great ambitions. On those little side hustles I had in the past where I helped business owners, I really, really loved doing that. Then I thought, wouldn't it be neat if I could start over again knowing what I know now? What if I could take the assets I've acquired and have them sequestered where I cannot have access to them? What if I would take relationships that I've built and not reach out to those relationships? What if I started over without using any assets, without using any form of relationships, where the only thing I had was the knowledge and experience I acquired? Could I do that and go from zero to build a company to over a billion dollars in less than seven years working 30 hours a week, taking 12 weeks vacation, and having a great life in the process?
I started thinking about that, and I started getting more excited. It became more sustainable. I worked out preliminary strategies to do it. That's what I decided to do. I have something that's called the Bootstrap Billionaire project, and that's testing Randy to see if he can get from A to Z under the guidelines that I just mentioned. Then in the meantime I started working with ambitious business owners, and I thought the Bootstrap Billionaire could be a metaphor for business owners that are maybe doing seven figures and they want to go to eight or nine or some were wanting to go to 10, and they want to do something that makes a difference in other people's lives, and they want to have freedom in their own life and never worry about money again and be able to have that dream life.
That's where the book comes in, the "Bootstrap Billionaire: How to Build an Eight Figure or Nine Figure Business You Can Sell for $100 Million or More". I found a lot of people selling businesses, but they ended up with the short end of the stick after the business was sold, you know? I want to try to correct that.
Stuart: We were talking just before we started recording about the benefits of hindsight, particularly around writing the book, but the business approach that you've had the experience. That question of what would you do if you lost everything today apart from the knowledge and experience you've got. I think so often it's the case where you arrive at a situation where you might be either needing to sell or have an office or in a position to sell, but without starting with that in mind, if it's something you haven't necessarily spent much time thinking about, I can imagine it's far, far too easy with all of the complexities of that process of ending up with the short end of the stick.
The kind of knowledge, the framework, the questions that are in the book, the pointers that are given to people is really helpful to guide someone in the right direction, in a direction that they haven't necessarily thought about before. Was that what you mentioned the businesses you sold and then more recently working with other entrepreneurs, business owners that are in a similar situation, was that intentional? Do you go out and look for those guys, or do they just come to you because you're experienced and known within the industry?
Randy: Yeah, initially I'm from the school of thought of like, try to come up with the idea and make it the best you can, and then get it out in the marketplace. Kind of that minimum viable product. Not to sacrifice quality, but just to find out if there's truly a desire that people want it. Yet the other part, if I was going to be working with them individually, when I'm saying individually, in a really small intimate group, it needed to have the kind of price point that would allow for that because I was going to take the proceeds from that money as seed capital to build this enterprise that's going to be over a billion dollars.
In other words, the investment to be part of it was going to be significant. I had to have individuals that had the desire, the ambition, the resourcefulness to be in alignment to where they could get a high ROI out of that right away, kind of that easy win for them. With that in mind, I was looking for individuals that had been in business for at least three years, that they had a seven-figure business or higher, and their goal was to build a nine-figure business. They really, really wanted to do that.
What would happen is we would have an hour conversation on the phone to see if it was a good mutual fit. If it was a good mutual fit, then they would enroll in a three-day workshop that was really an intense workshop. That was giving them a test drive of what they could expect from the program. Then if we both agreed, then the next step was they entered the high end program. I call that the Elite 30 mentor program because it's not a Mastermind. It's a true mentorship program with elements of Mastermind. There's also some personal one-on-one interaction that I do with them as well.
It wasn't someone just starting a company without any experience in the company, of building a business. We wanted someone who's kind of bruised their knees and a lot of them, growth requires cash, so a lot of the businesses were really all successful. I mean, the thing I hear from the people in the group is that they are totally impressed with the quality of people in the program. For every one person that we invited into the program, we, being very polite and kind, we did not accept eight. That was kind of the ratio. We would turn away eight when we accepted one.
Then what I do for the eight is I have some other ways to help them, just so I feel like I'm not being some jerk or something.
Stuart: Yeah, turning people away and not giving them any place else to go.
Randy: Yeah, I didn't like to do that, but I had to do it because we have a small group. The people you hang out with, it's going to elevate the group, plus then the knowledge, and we needed people that were fast implementers that would take action, that they didn't sit around waiting on osmosis, you know?
Stuart: You say a lot of the time it seems like turning people away, we talk about this when we talk about kind of single target markets and in the book context, knowing which group of people you're targeting. It's not that there's anything wrong with the other groups. It's just they're not an ideal fit for this particular process or this particular book in that case.
Randy: Yes.
Stuart: Having somewhere else for them to go or knowing that you might get that group of people later, with an offer that's better suited to them, all knowing that they'll be in a better place either from, as you say, there's an investment requirement, there's a time requirement, an experience requirement. Knowing that it's not best suiting them, I think just jumping back to books that the subjects for people that are listening in, it's not a case of excluding other people. It's the case of targeting or refining the offer for the group that it's best suited for.
Randy: Yes, that's correct, because they're great people. Actually what I ended up doing because it was so distasteful for me to have to tell someone that they couldn't do it, I repositioned that what we'll do is we'll find which path is best serving for you because the number one thing for me is value creation for them. I want them to have a tremendous multiple, so I flipped it from them feeling rejected to, "I'm offering two programs. Let's find which one is the best fit for you that's going to make the biggest difference in your life."
By that, then I can, if someone is doing a six figure, seven figure, eight figure business but they're not really ready for that Elite 30 group, then we have the three-day workshops that we facilitate for them so they don't feel like they're being rejected. They feel like they're getting the best path that's most fitting for them. Yeah.
Stuart: Yeah, we do the same over on this side for the coaching side of the business. We've got the three-day events that Dean runs, which are a great introduction and kind of a nice middle layer above just listening to some of the podcasts that we've got out there which are obviously no cost, or we've got some introductory programs like Email Mastery or Breakthrough Blueprint. The three-day event is then great for a small group of people who have a certain amount to invest and come with certain ideas, but then above and beyond that, there's the one-on-one stuff that we do, which is more commitment both financial and time based.
That really works best for people who have either been around the group for a long time anyway so there's a commonality of language, or who have been through the three-day event so there's that baseline, because if we bring people straight in at the higher level then you can spend, I mean, not waste so much of their time, but take so much of their time, which effectively they're paying for, just trying to get to that baseline, that commonality of language, which I think for us is quite a big difference.
We see it on the book side of the business as well. We talk quite a lot about this single target market, and then educate and motivate people towards making the decision, and that step by step, it does actually work better if people have got an understanding of the Breakthrough DNA, the 8-Profit Activators, because there's that commonality of language.
Again, not saying that it doesn't work for people who don't come in through that route, but it's definitely you get to the 202 level a lot quicker than stepping through stage by stage.
Randy: Yes, yes. That's a great approach.
Stuart: The book then is addressing that group of people who've got the interest in the Bootstrap Billionaire. Draws attention, gets people to raise their hand. Was it a particular group of people that you were looking at attracting with the book? Was it people who you knew already who were in that world already, or people who didn't yet know you and this was their first introduction?
Randy: Yeah, that's a great question because I, because of the nature of launching myself on this project called Bootstrap Billionaire, I could not work with people that I knew already. I had to start with brand new fresh relationships that did not know me. I wasn't quite certain which group of people I wanted to target. I do see the value in targeting. Since I wasn't really clear on targeting, what I did was I went out and I picked up some speaking engagements with different masterminds, and then I looked to see which ones I got the most traction from in terms of interest.
That way that worked is I would give a presentation to some masterminds, and then I would offer the three-day, I would talk about the Elite 30 program, and the reason I was going after individuals that want to build an eight figure, nine figure, 10 figure business is there's a lot of companies out there serving people going from 600,000 to seven figures, or six figures to seven figures. Then some people kind of broach into the low ends of eight, but there's this group out there that they're at a point where they could go higher but they don't know how.
I found that was kind of my sweet spot of really adding value in the marketplace, so I positioned myself to speak with different masterminds and then out of those masterminds, find the individuals, any of them that raised their hand, they were interested in building a nine figure business. Then I had them come to workshops.
The other thing that I did on that was that, what I found was if I looked at the makeup of my group right now, about 50% of it, well actually closer to 70% of it is individuals that's doing some form of e-commerce.
Stuart: Wow.
Randy: Then the other percentage is individuals that are doing some service based business. It might be like a retired Navy Seal that retired from the Seals, and now they're starting a fitness company. It might be someone that was, If we look at sectors, I would say that probably 80% of the people in mine, they have some type of a health or fitness business. Then the other percentages, they're dealing with survival preparedness and consulting like doing a digital agency or something. I have a few people doing digital agencies.
That's kind of what I have with this group here. Because it's growing primarily from referrals, for that reason it seems like I'm getting more and more e-commerce individuals into the program.
Stuart: Right, you touched on towards the end there a lot of it was referral based business, so there's a kind of industry grouping from those referrals I guess. Prior to that, do you think that it just resonates with that group of people, or was that a kind of a factor of how you reached out? I'm conscious that as you were saying, for the Bootstrap Billionaire project, the aim of that was to create the business not using existing resources but just existing knowledge, so it's not like you had a big footprint in that area. These are people who didn't previously know you. The gateway into that group, is it more of a coincidence and it's organically developed in that way, or can you attribute it to something else in particular?
Randy: No, I would say that you're accurate on that because again, it was something where I wasn't certain what group of business owners would have interest in this project as far as to market to that group. What my thought was is to try different groups and see who it would resonate with. I mean, I have doctors in there, chiropractors. That's the part that's falling over under the health space. The reason it grew was just because of introductions.
I started out with just this small, small core, and 100% of the business that's come in and grown has been purely from introductions. It's unsolicited. I mean, I'll have them call me up and say, "Hey, I have this guy I think would really be good. Can I set you guys up and you have a conversation to see if they're a good fit for the program?" Now, what I'm planning to do on the Bootstrap Billionaire project, though, is we have to have a larger number of individuals than what I have. This piece that I'm working on is providing the cashflow, the C capital to grow without raising outside capital, the Billionaire project.
What we're going to do is create a program where we'll have 350,000 Main Street type mom and pop businesses that come through our program that does not have aspirations to build a nine or 10 figure company. They have aspirations of building seven and eight figure companies, but what we're bringing to bare is something that I haven't found anyone out there, and I've been told by our existing mentees that what we're offering, there's no one out there showing them how to manage for profit and showing them how to manage for cashflow, to deal with growth and how to hire their employees. For that reason we'll be able to help a broader spectrum, and our goal is to have 350,000 coaching clients within five years.
That's part of where this book is going to be coming in.
Stuart: Identifying the different, narrowing down, starting from a place of this potentially could help anyone within the certain constraints that you knew about going into it, but dialing that in overtime to say, just as we were talking about before with excluding or not excluding people, it's not that as these groups, these natural groups start to form inside it, there's just commonality of language and commonality of experience, and people can more easily see themselves in the examples provided by others. Again, it's not people are being excluded. It's just that as you're trying to reach out to people, and this is why the book does a great job, backed up by the examples in the supporting material, but as you're reaching out to people there's just opportunities to then group people together in like categories so that the things you put in front of them are more likely to resonate than less likely to resonate.
It's not either share something with them or not share something with them. It's just putting in front of them the thing that is most likely to encourage people to take the next step or educate them on a particular point because they're seeing more commonality in the thing that they're looking at.
Randy: Absolutely. Yeah. It's like if I were to have a workshop to teach people how to speak Spanish versus a workshop to teach them how to teach Mandarin.
Stuart: Right.
Randy: The co-mingle of that, you're doing a disserve to both, but in both cases, the language is valuable, right? That's what we're looking at, yeah.
Stuart: That's such a great example, because it's so clearly obviously that someone wouldn't think of co-mingling languages, but in so many other cases, I think Susan and Betsy, they're talking to the guys that come on board to begin with. There's quite a lot of, or in certain circumstances there's some resistance because they do want to include as many people as possible, but that's a great way of putting it. It's not that you're excluding people. It's just that for this particular job, the job of working with this particular thing, we're trying to go for the thing that's going to get the most bang for the buck, the thing that's going to attract most people, the most relevant people, and just really get that dialed in.
Yeah, breaking this mental model of exclusion or separating people away into positioning it as the most effective thing that can be done at the moment, and then other things can be done afterwards.
Randy: Yes.
Stuart: Let's talk about how you're thinking about using it. As I mentioned at the start, we've just finished the book now. Getting it out there to people, we're saying it's written for the group of people who are interested in that eight to nine figure business. It's clearly for the group of people that it is aiming for, but in terms of how that's getting out there, do you have any ideas going into the project of how you intend to get in front of people? You mentioned speaking engagements. Is this going to be a physical thing? More events, or the referrals, the word of mouth referrals that you get? Is this more of a referral strategy approach?
Randy: Yeah, what we're hoping to use the book for will be as a lead generation tool to attract people to webinars, and the other thing, in addition to some other traditional marketing channels, I'm still a firm believer because of the other businesses that I've built in the past of having kind of a boots on the ground sales team.
Stuart: Right.
Randy: What we're using the book for that group will be when they go into different businesses and offer to give that book free to the business owner and have a way to open the door to get in and start a conversation, and from there we'll target a certain geographic area. Initially I'm doing this, but I have some other individuals that I'm hiring from the National Speakers Association. They want to speak as a profession, and so I've hired them to where we'll go in a certain geographic area.
We might target, say, Tennessee, a certain area around Nashville, and then we'll have our boots on the ground team going in with the book, the hardcover book, to build interest to attract people to a free evening seminar. Then from that seminar, we will offer the multi-day weekend workshop.
Stuart: That orchestrated approach that builds on a small, low-commitment start through to the next step and the next step and the next step is such a fantastic way of thinking about it. I was talking on one of the shows a couple of weeks ago about this idea of thinking about the minimum again, it's a riff off someone else's, but I was calling it sort of minimum viable commitment. This small step to take them to the next stage, not kind of jumping too far in advance.
You're not trying to sell the high end program, the small group program specifically from the book. It's the introduction to the next step. Having that orchestrated approach of getting people to raise their hands, getting a copy of the book, lead them onto material that they can download. The next steps in the book lead to the checklists that you've got. All of these things that help people improve their knowledge, evidence for themselves that they're in the right place, reassure them of what the next simple step is and lead them in that direction.
It's such a better approach than just trying a lot of times I think people think of writing the book as an answer to too many questions. It's the thing that they're creating that will solve ultimate problems rather than it being a great step in the process to move people towards that decision to actually do some work with you.
One of the early podcasts that we did was with Lisa Sasivich a couple of years ago now, and they were doing the same thing, using the book as the cookie, as the introductory piece, and then the follow up sequence that Lisa had was to lead people to their Speak to Sell webinar, and then the webinar led to the event. I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes as well. That's a great comparator to what you're going in that respect.
I think the physical book, when you talk about the physical sales team, so much of what you hear about in the engagement that people have is online and digital and email. The physical element of it is often overlooked, but any scenario that you've got where you're physically able to get in front of people, I think having that as a cost effective way to enhance the relationship a little bit more. I can remember, and obviously I'm dating myself now. This is going back maybe 15, 20 years maybe. A friend that was working with her dissertation at university was on text messaging as gift giving. It's the psychological gift giving element of texting someone. This is back in the day before text messages were too overwhelming and email was too overwhelming.
The psychological component of giving someone something, and I think the book is the same thing. I mean, a lot of the information that's included in everything that we write is available elsewhere, but there's still something physically compelling about handing something to someone that differentiates from the crowd and sets that relationship up in a slightly different way.
Randy: Yeah, I totally agree, totally agree.
Stuart: The guys that you were talking about who are the sales teams that are going to be out there connecting with the people, the lead path that you've got from those guys through to the organization, is that more of a one-on-one relationship that people are going to be building with a small group of individuals? The example that you gave of the initial group that's in there, that seemed to be a very personal connection and a close relationship you have with them.
The guys at the kind of sales teams level, is that similar, working with a small group of people, or are they going to be engaged to work with a larger group and they're looking to bring people into this 350,000 member tier.
Randy: Yeah, what we would do is when we do in for the first free 2 1/2 hour evening event or weekend event that's free from the book, that will be smaller groups that we will then drive into a hub if they get involved in the three-day workshop. Then the three-day workshop will have approximately 100 people in that particular event.
Stuart: Right.
Randy: We don't really want to move to the 300 attendees because at that point it is a workshop to where we'll have facilitators there to help and work with them, but to get the price point down lower, we have to be working with that. It might be something where in Nashville you might have 50 people show up for that evening or weekend event, the free one, or there might be 25 people. We've found that we have a higher closing ratio if we keep the numbers at about 30 or less.
Stuart: Yeah.
Randy: It's going to be kind of a hybrid approach.
Stuart: Develop as it goes along, I guess as well, the Stein hypothesis of how it will work will kind of shake out in the real world. I think the point you were making there, and again, jumping back to books. This is what we try and encourage people to do as much as possible, is the transical nature of everything you're doing. I think you're careful not to just call it a mentor type program. It's more of the workshop and hands on leading people through with specific action steps rather than just the motivational side of talking about it with like-minded people.
Similarly with books, and your book particularly, the call to action towards the end, to have the checklists in there, there's a lot of practical examples. Being in a situation where you can, if they had nothing else, the thing that they've got in front of them at the moment, whether it's the book or guide or report or they're at the event, if they had nothing else, they get value from that individual thing. I think that's a much more successful way of thinking about things.
Jumping back to the books, a much more successful way of thinking about a book. If someone had nothing else apart from that book, that asset, there was absolute value from it, rather than the other approach, which we see sometimes of people not wanting to give too much away. They want to keep something back and almost have it as an extended, like a super long form sales letter where people are talking about the potential and what things could happen but not actually given any nuts and bolts techniques or tactics or way of people to kind of progress at that stage.
I think that's what I really like about the approach that you've got. It's the overall picture is supported because it's moving people in the direction that we want to move them, but each individual step of the process is valuable in its own right. I don't know if you've had that feedback or if that was intentional, but that really comes through in what we've got.
Randy: Yeah. Yeah, sounds great. It's worked out. We tested this enough. Like I did the risk reversal on the workshop. I would tell people initially just make a deposit, and then show up to the workshop, and if it doesn't deliver on the promises that are actionable, value creation promises, then let us know and we will refund twice the tuition to join plus reimburse you all your travel. What we're doing is we've giving them a double your money back kind of thing, and we haven't had anyone take us up on that. Matter of fact, we have a high ratio of people sign up for the program as a result.
Stuart: Right, and that confidence, and we talk about it in the 8-Profit Activators, that structure that as you're converting people or making the offer to convert people into customers, they're going from the before unit to the during unit, of making that mafia style offer of making it as easy as possible for people to get started, removing those resistance points. It definitely oils the wheels through the process and helps people make that decision without feeling too much concern outside of what they're actually going to get value from the thing?
Randy: Right.
Stuart: I always say to people as we start this, we'll kind of go half an hour conscious of people's time and their generosity of coming on the call here to share their story, and then 35 minutes in I look up, and the clock is kind of winding down a lot. One thing I want to touch on before we wrapped up was we've talked about why you're writing the book, the groups of people that it's engaging with. Hopefully as you're listening to this you've got some ideas and bridging across into your own subject.
As far as the process went, were there any particular pain points or points that were more straightforward? I know a lot of people listening haven't pulled the plug and jumped on board yet, in part because they've got some concerns, but is there anything you can do? I always just want to be able to shake people and say, "Listen, just do it."
Randy: Yeah, yeah.
Stuart: But that's obviously not…
Randy: Well, I think that's a good approach. Shake them and tell them to do it. The funny thing is I've had some of the better known authors out there in the business world, probably for 15, 20 years they kept saying, "Randy, you need to write a book. You need to get this out of your head and onto paper." I said I will someday. It wasn't part of my plan. I would say one thing that I did something where it was unintentional at the time, but looking back hindsight is 20/20, that old adage about burning a ship where you can't retreat? I kind of put myself in that position accidentally, and all of a sudden, like wow, I have to get this book done by this date, and I don't know how I'm going to be able to do that right now with everything else.
I had a gentleman that I have a mentor call with every other week, and he had worked with your company. He said, "Randy, you ought to take a look at 90-Minute Book." He said, "I think they could solve your problem," because he knew I was totally stressed like how am I going to do this. I was already overcommitted. I contacted your company, and I had just the most crazy deadline that anyone, to the point that I even felt guilty contacting your company with the deadline looming.
I spoke to Betsy, and it's like, she says, "Yeah, it is tight. Yes, it would be better if... But you know what, we're going to make this happen." I go, "Well, I don't want to cause problems for you." "No, we're going to make this happen." It's been that way all the way through. Your team, you have such a great system set up and a process that this thing runs through, and every person I worked with it was like they had a can do attitude. They had an attitude of wanting to do the absolute best. They wanted it better than, and so the only cog or problem with the process was me.
What was great is you have such a great team that they could take my incompetencies, they could take my ridiculous timeframes that I've set out that I've backed myself into that corner, and they made it all happen. Hopefully not everybody is like me, because that would not be fair to your team to have to deal with a lot of people like me. The bottom line is I got myself into a mess. Your team got me out of the mess, and they did it in the most first-class way that you could imagine. I mean, above and beyond, and so the reality is, like I said, I've been resisting for 15 to 20 years.
It's kind of like when you remodel a home or build a new home or whatever. You could look at it and say, "Well, if I had to do it over again, I'd tweak this or tweak that." That's all my own stuff. I just love it. What I do know is I would not have the book done, and I would have some companies mad at me for not having that book done if it wasn't for your team.
It was great. If anybody is sitting on the fence and procrastinating like I did, because now what's happening is I go wow, now that I know that process and how you guys are doing it, I could hire you to build another book, and it could be something where I actually have a better timeline to pull it off instead of doing the crazy stuff that I did. I'm already seeing ways to leverage that. It's just like you probably have a lot more books inside of you that you want to get out there for different markets and targets and stuff, but the bottom line is they cannot go wrong by working with your team. I'm not saying that because we're on this call, because if I didn't feel that way, I just wouldn't be saying it.
It's just like my life is awesome right now, and it's because your team really helped me create a product that I could be proud of.
Stuart: Like I said before, as we started the call just before we started recording, it's a reflection of you particularly and the people that come through the process that we're able to move so quickly, because people are responsive and a can do attitude on that side as well really helps it move through. I think the key thing that if I could shake people and get it in there is that the first one is always the biggest step, the biggest unknown and things seem like more of a challenge than they turn out to be, but again, that first one not that everyone needs to write 10, but exactly as you said, the majority of people then have further books that spring to mind.
Knowing that we can make the process straightforward and help people get what's in their head down onto the page just really means that there's more knowledge and information out there, and if we can share people's stories and experience and the expertise that they've had, which means that customers and potential customers reading it are going to get a better experience because they've got knowledge and understanding that they wouldn't have otherwise. As quick and easy as we can make the process to get that information out there, I think it's a win-win for everyone.
Randy: Yeah, you know a shortcut-
Stuart: I think we're just passing... I'm sorry.
Randy: You made a comment about, to most people it looks more daunting than it has to be when you're looking at your first book. I know that I felt that, but I think something that has to be said there is that it could be that overwhelming and that daunting if they try to do it alone.
Stuart: Right.
Randy: Because to accomplish what I was able to do with the book and getting it done, if it was left to my own device, it probably would be a two-year project and it would have been a sloppier product at the end. It truly is painless for the very first one, because this is my first one, of doing it with your team. Your team makes it painless. They make it seamless. They make it effortless. I mean, yes, you have to apply yourself. You have to be responsive. You have to do some thinking, but they really take all the really hard stuff that you have to do and they have a process and a system to do it for you.
Each person I worked with on your team, there's several that keep working. They're incredible. Each one is a master in their own area.
Stuart: I think we're just passing 500 or so books now, so I was talking to Glenn, he's one of our designers, the other day. He was saying that he was talking about someone else's books out there that he'd seen and he was talking about their expertise. I was saying, "Wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second. How many have you done personally?" He's been around for the longest, so the number is over 200-something. I'm thinking, who else out there has done 200 book covers out of the whole population of designers? Don't undersell yourself. You're one of the leading book cover designers out there because of this wealth of expertise that he's got, so it's funny that even the team don't necessarily take that step back sometimes to think about just how much work they've done, and I think we're four years in now. Yeah, almost five years in.
Yeah, it's easy to forget, and now we're falling into the trap sometimes of forgetting, exactly same as we say to you other authors, don't forget how much the basic information, how much stuff seems run of the mill to you, but to people out there, potential customers who are desperate in this information gathering phase, how much those basic things are still very valuable to them because they haven't been though that experience yet.
Randy: That's right.
Stuart: We are conscious of not falling into the same trap, and the stuff that we do day in and day out seems straightforward, but it's daunting and not a unique ability and a pain in the neck for some other people, so the more we can facilitate that, the better.
Randy: Yeah, if they hire your team, it's going to be easy for their first book, and then the second one if they choose to do it, it's just going to be a no-brainer.
Stuart: Yeah, hopefully easier and easier and quicker and quicker. We're just finishing another one at the moment, and I think I've maybe got a call scheduled in a couple of weeks. They're on book five or six now, and the last one, the most recent one, we barely touched the sides on the process. It really flew through because everyone was... this isn't the first time for either the author or for the team working with them particularly. Yeah, definitely, some of them you really see fly through.
Fantastic, okay. I'm super conscious of your time. I really could talk a lot more about this, but I'm conscious of letting you go. Before I do, where is a good place for people as they're listening to hear more about the Bootstrap Billionaire project and is there anywhere that people can listen to...? I'm tripping over my words. It must be time to go. Is there anywhere that as people are listening they can go to find out more about what you guys are doing?
Randy: Sure, and I need to preface it by saying I've spent my entire life up to this point flying under the radar, trying to be private, so I'm just now stepping out into the digital... I intentionally did not have a website by design because I wanted to be private, so the best way for them to reach out right now, and I'm saying it because it's still a work in progress, the website, but it's just randydavis.io, so www.randydavis.io. I'll have free resources on there. It's just I'm going to be building off of that. I'll have a podcast with information I'm sharing. I kind of shared the behind-the-scenes trials and tribulations of the Bootstrap Billionaire project that I'm working on, and the main thing is we wanted to just help people that come there. That would be a great place for them to start out, just www.RandyDavis.io.
Stuart: Fantastic. I'll be sure to put a note of a link in the show notes as well. As always, head over to 90MinuteBooks.com/Podcast and Randy's episode will be there, latest one there. Let me audibly shake you if I can't physically shake you, and just say, "Get started." Head over to the site and follow the "get started" links, and we can get your book out there.
Randy, it's been an absolute pleasure. I know this isn't going to be the last time we speak. I'm looking forward to checking in in the weeks and months ahead to come and see how the book's turning out and how the project is turning out as well. Again, many thanks for your time. I know people listening to this will have gotten a lot out of both your story and your experience, so again, thank you, and looking forward to speaking to you in the future.
Randy: I am as well. Thank you, Stuart. Thanks to your team. You're all fantastic, and I hope everyone listening, if they're sitting on the fence like I did, they get off the fence, and they give you guys a call. I look forward to meeting you in the future. I know we're going to touch base and that's exciting, and thanks for having me on the call today.
Stuart: Fantastic. That's great. Okay, thanks everyone. We will catch you in the next one.