Today on the Book More Show we’re talking about books to identify invisible leads and books that motivate people to take the next step.
If you’ve followed us for any time, you’ve heard us refer to Dean’s 8-Profit Activators and the before unit, looking at how you attract and engage with future customers. We’ve talked about Profit Activator 1: selecting a single target market in the past, well today we’re going a little deeper into Profit Activators 2 & 3, compelling your best prospects to raise their hand, and educating and motivating them to take the next step.
How you plan to use your book will influence your title, content, and next steps, and understanding the difference between Profit Activator 2 & 3 will help narrow your scope. It will guide your thoughts on the content and help craft a clearer call to action. All of which means you’re more likely to get your book created and out there working for you.
Every book is a combination of the 2, but understanding that identifying leads and motivating people to take the next step are two distinct mindsets (both for you and your potential customer) is one of the most important lead generation tips we can share.
As always, getting any book out there is better than no book, so don't let this distinction be an excuse to slow down. Instead, think about whether the main ‘job of work’ of your book is to identify people who don't yet know you, or to motivate those who do, to take the next step… Then get on with getting on.
Check out these links for the 5 Book Title formulas and 8-Profit Activators books we talk about.
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Don't forget, you can see how your book idea stacks up against the Book Blueprint by going to BookBlueprintScore.com and, if you want to be a guest on the show to plan your successful book, just head over to 90MinuteBooks.com/guest
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Extra Credit Listening: MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com
Transcript: Book More Show 080
Stuart: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Book More Show. Stuart here with Betsey. Betsey Vaughn, how's it going?
Betsey: I'm fantastic. How are you?
Stuart: Good. Thank you. We were just laughing before we started recording, talking about the computers being slow and in a slightly paranoid way I'm hearing 20 different things to try and make sure that in at least one of them and Betsey said that she got a slightly different problem that she needed to clean up her computer because it's all of the images that we save for the various different people that come through end up clogging up the hard drive which is fine, because it takes up space but it's not the end of the world, but with everything being interconnected now here also means that lots of authors bio pictures come floating across the screen savers every now and then is Windows or Mac OS try to be clever and share with you pictures you might be interested in.
Betsey: That could be dangerous. And because my office is also where I am at night. I watch television and stuff and so, my fiancée said, "Why, who is that man? And why are they all there?" It really is kind of weird.
Stuart: Do you ever watch Seinfeld? I can remember years and years ago sending a poster to a friend of mine of, it was the poster of George Costanza sort of leaning back on the chaise lounge. So, he randomly received a poster of George in some underwear.
Betsey: Okay. Let's go back. First of all, I think I saw every man I ever have known can start quoting Seinfeld episodes. They have every single one of them memorized. That is such a guy thing.
Stuart: It's like a gospel according to Jerry. I wonder how much it's a generational thing though. I'm 44 and was in the UK at the time it was airing. We were probably 12 to 18 months behind maybe and it was one of those shows that it was on one of the lesser known TV networks like 11:00 at night on a Friday so it definitely wasn't TV. It wasn't prime time stuff like it was here but even now, when you think about how long ago that was, at the risk you're taking this into the old person's podcast.
When you think about how many years ago that was, there's got to be quite a significant number of people now coming through who have never seen it although having said that Lucy's kids, so the oldest is 19 and then they're down from there. Those guys have watched all of Friends and you hear people quite often talk about a huge Netflix type hit.
Betsey: I think because of Netflix that's why all those shows have come back around. My son's almost 24 and I don't think he would understand or appreciate a Seinfeld reference. They're not big TV watchers either so maybe that's it.
Stuart: Is it bad that I judge people harshly that don't find it funny?
Betsey: Right. I find it funny but I mean, I know that the man in my life will watch like there's nothing else on the 700 channels that we have, he will watch a Seinfeld episode before falling asleep and I'm like, "There are literally 699 channels that you could choose from and all these shows is that generational boy thing. There's a certain age group but yeah. And then let me just say something else. I know we're off topic but you said George was laying on a chase what?
Stuart: Now you're going to put me under pressure to pronounce it. I said it fast last time so no one would pick me up on it. A chaise lounge.
Betsey: A chaise lounge? Yeah, chaise lounge.
Stuart: I think we're both saying the same thing, we're in very different words.
Betsey: Lounge, L-O-U-N-G-E? It sounds like you're saying chaise long.
Stuart: It's French so I think I'm adding some accent.
Betsey: Yeah. So you're being creative.
Stuart: Well, not intentionally. I think I've only ever said in that one way but again, this being the porper way.
Betsey: Oh, the Brit says things the proper way.
Stuart: Well, ironically enough for anyone in Europe, the irony is that Brits absolutely don't say things with any correct European accent whatsoever. I had some friends I haven't seen for years, but I had some friends who owned a snowboarding school in France like on their French Swiss boarding in the Alps. We would go across there quite often and obviously the names of the places are all French or French Swiss or German Swiss.
She was British but living there for years and years and we would regularly run into instances where either A, we couldn't quite decide where we were going to meet because I was pronouncing it in a completely wrong way or B, we would work out where we were going to meet and then when I arrived, she would tease me mercilessly for saying it in completely the wrong way. It's ironic now that we've got it the other way round.
Betsey: Right. That's funny. I hope that people are going to be entertained if we leave it.
Stuart: We're laughing ourselves if no one else is.
Betsey: Exactly.
Stuart: Well, let's say something useful then. The fact that I didn't intend for this to be a bridge but I guess it works. We were talking about the Friends being rerun and the fact that it's 15, 20 years later but there's still a huge audience today than it was before. That's kind of reiterating the point that we were talking about with books sometimes that as the industry insider or as the expert, you might think to yourself, I can't write a book or I can't think of this subject to write on. Everything's been written about already or why would anyone be interested in this because it's such basic understanding but the truth is that that doesn't matter because as I've heard, as we were just saying before and everyday someone's born that's never seen Seinfeld.
It might not be new to you who's been around for 10 years but for someone else who's just started in that journey, this information that we're capturing, even if it has been presented somewhere else, if someone's interested in the subject that you're presenting and requesting and the question that you pose in the title resonates with them, it doesn't matter if there's 50 other sources, the fact of the matter is that you're in front of them at the time that they're interested and are trying to fill that gap and giving them somewhere to get some more information and lead onto the next step.
It really doesn't matter whether the information's been out there before or whether you think it's basic or whether you can't think of a reason why people wouldn't be going to other sources. The truth is they're not going to other sources, it's your information or your potential information that's in front of them in that time and like we said before, really don't undervalue the value of what can seem like basic information to an expert but someone who's just starting that journey, this is where they are in the journey.
Betsey: If nobody gets anything else out of this, I mean, I have no idea what's going to be said in the next 30 minutes but if nobody gets anything else out of this podcast because I get approached so often, our clients have a lot of real estate, financial, we seem to be in a dentist industry pretty heavily right now but let's just say so many people said to me, "Well, this information is not new. It's out there. Anybody can find it." And I'm like, "Okay. It is out there so why don't you give them something that is in your language, in your words, your thought, put it in front of them."
People want you to put it right in front of them. People don't want to search for stuff first of all and so I just had this conversation with a gentleman that we're working with and he was like, "This isn't new." And now I'm hearing people are using my stuff and I'm like, "Was it really your stuff though?" I mean, is it really? He said, "Well, some of it is." And some of it could legit be his stuff because of the wording and the language that it uses but in some of these industries, I mean, how different is financial information? It's just a matter of getting it in front of someone.
Stuart: An IRA is an IRA is an IRA. There's variations on the theme but it's so funny you say that people can't be bothered looking for things. Why would I want to put this information out there because it's out there already and people can go and find it? I was introduced to Dean when we first met years and years ago through Ed who's in Australia at Ed Dale. I knew Ed because I was active in their forums. This was right back in the early days of my marketing career doing things in this space rather than corporate IT history.
In that forum at the time, it was a forum that came back to life after being offline for a while, it was a group of people who were not beginners, it was a paid for and it was a relatively developed group of people, but still in that short window of time that it was around and basically active for, whatever their reputation karma type point thing they used on there had by far the highest count on there purely because I was in a place where I was really interested in absorbing all this information so I didn't mind going off searching for it but the majority of the other people didn't want to or couldn't get around to it.
By being the person that aggregates that information, not only with my answers, I was just going off and looking it and developing opinions after a while but that point of if you translate that goodwill, that karma, that authority, that ability to start conversations, all of that came from just collating information into a way that was used for the people at the time and presenting it in the place that they were which in this example was that form and each piece of information was just an individual piece but translate that to the book, it's you that's in front of them at the time, they're not going off and search anywhere else.
If you can provide them with an answer, if they're on your website and you've gone opting for a download that answers their question, if they're on they're Facebook feed and they see your ad that presents them with the answers to the question they're looking for, then why not do it? The information's in your head. It's a way to group it all together and get it in front of them at the right time. Those conversations It does make me wonder how much of it is well, I think it comes down to two things. One is again, we talk about every single time it seems like.
The good thing about writing a book is the psychological benefit that it carries above and beyond what it actually is this magic around a book. All of that is benefit. It is also all problem and downside because everyone paints themselves into a corner or puts all of these caveats about why they can't do it or why it has to be a New York Times best seller or why it has to be this huge thing because they've fall into the same spell. Oh, well it's a book so it has to be this. Forget that. Get all of the benefit without locking yourself in to the baggage that comes around traditional publishing.
That I think is one of the elements. People are again, this is a book therefore it needs to be this rather than no, I've got the opportunity to put this into a book and getting all the benefits to the outside world. The other thing is I think it's just an element of analysis for analysis. People that their minds are fighting against doing the work or having the understanding to commit to doing it or to execute it and then they're just looking for reasons for why it can't be done. It can't possibly be that simple because of this or I couldn't possibly include that information because of this. Whereas in reality, just get it done.
Betsey: Yeah.
Stuart: Talking about getting it done then.
Betsey: It's getting done. Let's get it on.
Stuart: Yeah. What we really wanted to talk about today is this idea of the main two types of books that help people create. Not necessarily the main types of books I guess the main jobs of work of what they're doing. You'll have heard us talk before about the eight activators, the breakthrough blueprint framework and if you haven't, if you're new to the podcast or you're not familiar with it then head over to breakthroughdna.com and grab a copy of the book that's the option at the top there. This is Dean's flagship theme work for think about business in terms of the before, during, and after.
I'm going to skip over this relatively quickly because I'm assuming that everyone knows it because we do talk about it so often and it's so fundamental to what we're doing but the before unit, this is everything that you do up to the point of a customer or a lay person becoming a customer. The book breaks down into four of the mindsets. The first one that we've talked about at length is selecting a single target market. The second one is doing something to identify potential customers and that's where we talk about the books mainly.
The third one is educating and motivating people over time to take a decision and the fourth one is having a, what we call an easy way to get started rather than dropping people straight into the full service. What's the smallest step that you can take to get them going? We will look at number two and number three today. That's identifying people versus motivating and educating them to take the next step. The reason I wanted to dive into this a little bit is because it's come up a couple of times as people are talking about the types of books that they want to create.
A lot of it comes back to what's the job of work? What's the reason for creating it. If you've got a known group you're already working with, for us for example, we've got a list of people who've already opted in overtime and the majority of those people have opted in because they've requested a copy of the 90 minute book which is an example of profit activator number two book, a book that's purely to learn to get people to raise their hand. For that list of people that we've now got in our super signatures on our emails, we'll offer them something like the book, the five book type formulas, the five book title formulas book which talks about five different book titles that you can craft in order or through audience.
Two different books there, two different audiences that they're aiming for and we'll go into a little bit more detail of what the difference between the two is but sounds good so far?
Betsey: I think that sounds great because some of these things we talk about titles a lot and sort of how to figure out how to come up with a title. I think this is a simple way for people to break it down and help them come up with it. Is it a how to, is it informative. Are we questioning something? Yeah, this pretty good.
Stuart: Before we get started though, a word of warning to everyone going on what we just said, the kind of analysis paralysis type problem, we're going to share some information as in frameworks and some ways of thinking about it but at the end of the day, if the choice is do anything versus nothing, or just whatever your current idea is, just get that out there and then it's rated up later, then do that. Don't allow this to be a reason why you spend another six months trying to worry about whether it should be in this camp or another camp or fall into this category or another category.
Betsey: We will help you with that.
Stuart: Yeah, exactly. And there's no wrong answers.
Betsey: No, there's not. Yeah.
Stuart: Something is always better than nothing. Okay, let's dive into it a little bit with that being said. Profit activator number two, identifying, giving people an easy way to identify themselves as interested is typically the way that we talk about books most often. Of everything that you could do to identify potential customers, is probably one of the best and the reason it's one of the best is because it comes from a purely giving place. You're giving something of value, you can write it intentionally the job of work of the book itself from the reader's point of view, is to answer a question that they've got but the job of work from your point of view, is to identify those people who are interested from the whole of the population out there.
When you look at what some of the other things that you could do are to identify customers, you could go to a list broker and buy lists of people who fall into a demographic that you're interested in. You could run Google ads that are intent based so when someone types in a particular keyword your ad comes up. You could run Facebook ads that are more brand based, so asking people if they're interested in financial planning then come in for a free consult.
You could go to expos or conferences and stand outside with a billboard or take a stand and a stall and try and speak to people who are geographically in a place where they're self-selecting but a book is what I want to think about the cheese and whiskers analogy. It's an all cheese way of giving something to people to start the conversation, to start it in a way where you've just added value, you've just answered their question, you've given something that helps educate them.
It's an easy way with no whiskers, with no sales intent, conversion intent in order to raise it. That type of book is all about giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. You don't have to ask for anything there because entirely by the nature of the fact that they've requested the book, it's done its job as far as you're concerned in identifying a customer. You don't then have to worry about trying to motivate people or convince people or give them every piece of information that you could possibly think of.
It's not like you're asking for money for the book again, going back to previous podcasts about whether you should charge or not. The job of work is identifying invisible leads and just the fact that they've requested it does that. What's in it can then again, just be amplifying that good feeling that they've got of you giving them the information of sharing with them the answers. You don't need to hold anything back, you don't need to make it too complicated even, keep it relatively simple and straightforward.
It's not a textbook, there's no test at the end of it, they're not subtlety getting examined so you need to make sure that they're at a certain level. Everything can be about starting the relationship in the best possible way. The other thing that that does, the kind of secondary effect, I think I'm going to take a breath in a second, but the secondary effect is that it also makes it easier for other people to share that book. It makes it easier in the whole referral space or the whole complementary non competing working with supporting organizations.
It makes all of that more beneficial and more likely to happen because there isn't this sales, a closing type intent behind the book, it's just pure information and that, whether it's asking existing customers to share the book with their friends or it's asking other businesses to share the book with their customers, all of that is more likely to happen when there isn't a strong sales intent in the thing itself. The thing that we're trying to do is capture email addresses, identify visible leads so that we can then educate and motivate people in the next step, not in this step. Makes sense.
Betsey: Makes sense to me. Yeah.
Stuart: I think that's something that we get when you're talking with customers, when I'm talking with people, a lot of the questions that come up day to day, that is something that gets lost in translation a little bit and it's not that this is an absolute black and white, it's either one or the other, most books of reality end up kind of blend the two and they can certainly be used in different context and the conversations that we've had about the back of a copy and the call to actions and the next step, all of that do start making that transition into, okay, well what should you do next as a reader and depending on where it sits in your funnel, how you use it in the campaign.
That can vary to the amount of the how close to the close that actually is but just in its purest form in the absolutely at the beginning of profit activator to the very first step of identifying the visible lead, it can just be all about giving something because the book itself, the very fact that they've requested it it's done its job because you now know who that person is. I want to run through what we've got and I'll link in the show notes and yeah, I'll link to you in the show notes.
We do have a book that talks about different book titles. It's the five book title formulas that generate all the leads you need and this talks about the main five types of book titles that captures people attention and as the offer, the book is passing through their stream of consciousness in whatever way you get it in front of them. These are types of titles that they really stand out. Before we move onto profit activator number three and book types that can motivate and educate people to take the next step, I wanted to run through these five briefly and then we can see how these five either sit in one or the other of the categories or they could bridge across both.
Like I said, I'll link to it in the show notes. If you haven't grabbed a copy of it in the past then be able to grab a copy of it from there. The first one on the list is the name it and claim it type book title. This is one where it's kind of putting stake in the ground to own a particular category. The example that we've got in the report is Dave Ramsey's book Financial Peace. As a category title, it's not a how-to, it doesn't exactly explain what it does in the tin, but it's a very clear title that is claiming that space of financial peace.
Now, the book itself could be about retirement planning, it could be about debt management, it could be about investing, it could be about anything in the area of financial peace but financial peace as a name, it isn't a word or a phase that was owned by anyone else at the time, it's something that is like Breakthrough DNA or the 90 minute book. Those words didn't exist before they were coined as we coined them and now because we use them so often and refer to them so repeatedly, it is that kind of tent pole around which lots of other things come out from.
A couple of the other examples here are Tim Ferris' The Four Hour Work Week or books that we've done, the Two Week Divorce or the Adult Acne Cure, all of these things, these name and claim it, are ways to identify a particular thing, own a particular thing. Now, let's look at whether it fits into a profit activator number two or profit activator number three book is this design to identify invisible leads or educate and motivate people to take the next step and as I said at the start, this is where it's not binary, it's not one or the other, it could be either but just bare the framework in mind.
These types of books are probably slightly more 60/40 I'd say in favor of identifying invisible leads. The nature of the title, it really stands out as something compelling to someone that's interested in that. If I offer any interest in my financial security, something called Financial Peace is going to stand out. Me not knowing Dave Ramsey. This book, it's not that this is necessarily motivating me to take a specific step, more it's identifying me as someone in the entire population that's interested in financial security. The same as the Adult Acne Cure. Although this one's probably a bit more gray because the word cure is in the title.
It does suggest something to do but even so, someone interested in adult acne, if out of the whole population that was me versus you who's not interested in that at all, it's a profit activator two book that stands up and helps identify an invisible prospect.
Betsey: Let's talk about that real fast. The Adult Acne Cure. I mean, the Adult Acne Cure, if we took cure out of there. I mean, it would still be the same thing though, right? Because that is a specific market right there. I mean, that is If I don't have Acne, I'm not interested in your book but someone who's struggling, yeah I need that right now.
Stuart: And from a profit activator two standpoint, identifying someone out of the whole population who is interested versus those people who aren't you're absolutely right, the fact that it is adult acne, that is going to resonate with me. if I was someone that suffered from that, that would resonate because those words would stand out. The fact that cure is in the title, that's the thing that it doesn't make it any less valuable as a profit activator two book, in fact it probably makes it more valuable than if it was called the Adult Acne Problem or I'm trying to think of another example off the top my head but something that just sounded like it talked about the problem but now a solution even as a profit activator two book, the fact that it does suggest that there is a cure makes it even more compelling.
The fact that cure is in the title, that maybe bridges it into a profit activator three book. 100% relevant for profit activator two, maybe slightly more relevant for profit number three because it's got cure in the title. If for example I knew that if I'd written this or this was written by Luber, if Luber had a list of people already, she'd been building lists over three or four years for skin care products, a subset of those people are suffering from adult acne sending this book as something that that known group of people where they might already have some idea that Luber is a solution, sending this as a book that talks about the cure could be written in such a way that it was a profit activator three book, it was motivating and educating people to take that next step.
Whether it's a profit activator two or profit activator three book is a little bit more about the content than the title. We talk about titles here just because early in the process, most people have thought about the title before they've thought about the content in detail at least. When we look at the book, blueprint framework, the title comes before the content because in that, we talk about the content being one of the last things to do because it stitches together all of the other elements that we need. So, the title, the single target market, the call to action, the next steps.
The thinking about it as a profit activator three book then, educating and motivating people to take the next step, it's the content that will be slightly different because there the assumption is that we already know these people are interested in the subject, we're assuming that they've to a certain degree already got some education around it, they've already read something, they're further down the funnel.
The content of the book, if it was targeted specifically to motivating and educating people to take that next step, the content would be a little more directed, it would be a little bit more or rather a little bit less about the broader challenges and a little bit more about, "Okay, you should do this now and here are the next steps and here's a little bit more of a push, a stronger push towards taking the next step and taking that next step is to work with me in some way to migrate people into becoming customers."
Betsey: Yeah. I think that's a great explanation of the name.
Stuart: Yeah. And again, the other ones will be a little bit quicker but the difference between whether it falls into profit activator two or three is really around intent. How you intend to use in the campaign and knowing how you intend to use it that's going from zero to identified or identified to acclaimed. Again, the reason we're banging about this quite so much is that often times, people try and combine those two things together rather than try to take them separately and they're just more effective if they're separate.
Okay. The next one then is the just do it category. These are titles like Think and Grow Rich, Stop your Divorce, Double your Dating, Catch Him and Keep Him, Hypnotize your Husband, Drop Three Dress Sizes, all of these things are very specific. And again, this one is the opposite from the last one. It's probably 60/40 in favor of motivate and educate rather than identifying and again, they can be used for both so it's not either or but when we think about that title and the nature assuming what the content is, the assumption is it's a little bit more prescriptive so if you're telling someone Double your Dating, Catch Him And Keep Him, Drop Three Dress Sizes, the assumption there is it's going to be a little bit more specific than something more generic about weight loss or something more generic about income generation.
Betsey: I think my favorite, I mean, we've talked about Stop Your Divorce. I mean, it's a specific market obviously, but I think that is such a great title. It's just exactly what it is. This is it.
Stuart: And that's a good example. As the title, the suggestion is there's some specific actions in there that you can take to stop your divorce. If you had a list of people who were already on a relationship based list, a subset of them will be going through or facing divorce. Using it as an education and motivation book to move people towards your counseling solution, then Stop Your Divorce is a little bit more explicit would be a great motivation education tool and the outcome at the end of these steps in the book is, and also if you need further assistance then contact me for some consulting program.
It also works as a profit activator two book having that out there as a, let's stick with the Facebook ad example, pushing that into a news feed. Two people who are in a relationship and who have been married for more than five years then having that book passing the feed is still going to do a good job of identifying those invisible prospects but understanding that depending on the context on how we use it, whether we want to use it as a profit activator one or a profit. Sorry a profit activator two or profit activator three book just to identify people or to move him along into some consulting.
That informs again, not just the title but the content of it and how we then go on to use it because the downside is understanding that it could be both and it's not necessarily either explicitly is important. It's more about how you plan to use it but it's at the extremes of the spectrum where it starts to stand out. If you read a book that was called stop your divorce and it had a couple of basic tips in there about don't be nice to each other and then says really, you need to come in for counseling and here's my phone number. Schedule an appointment.
Using that as a profit activator two book is identifying leads because of the strong sales intent, it could leave a bad taste in the mouth as opposed to writing the book that was entirely focused on helpful advice knowing that you're capturing the lead because you're identifying who they are and then following up with more additional supporting information and stuff that does start to educate and motivate people towards making a decision, separating those two jobs of work, it just makes the book more effective at the job of work that you wanted to do.
Either you wanted to collect leads or you wanted to educate and motivate. If it tries to do both, there's just more of a risk that it doesn't do either as well as it could do.
Betsey: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Stuart: On the flip side, thinking about it just as a profit activator three book, you've already got a list of 10,000 people who are having relationship problems. You want to write something that really motivates and educates them, compels them towards coming in for counseling, then you can write something that actually starts off a lot stronger because you already know that you've had some interaction with them. They've already got some understanding, you've already got some kind of relationship with them so you can just amplify that a little bit more and go in for the harder, "Hey, listen guys, you've been trying to do this for six months now. You're getting towards the, you're having more relationship problems so let's cut the BS and you really need to cut to the chase and do this."
It's just that fit for purpose nature of it. Okay. Jump through the other two quickly because it's going to be more of the same. Book titles fall into the how-to category. How to influence people is probably about the most famous how-to. How to be the best bare foot skier on your lake or how to be the best bare footer on your lake. That was Lane's book that we did locally. They had great success with that over a good number of years. How to get high paying consultants even if no one has ever heard of you. That was a book that Frank did a while ago. How to sell your house for top dollar.
These types of books much more specific, very much a single purpose identifying that single group of people. Again, where does that fall on our scale of whether it's profit activator two or three? It's probably a little bit closer than the others may be. It could really be either because it will come down to the content and how sales you're making and what your relationship is with the people but those titles, if you've got a very specific niche in mind, and if you've got a clear funnel of how to move those people towards making buying decision to work with you, then they're great as identifiers as profit activator number two because it's very specific and if the rest of the funnel is very specific as well, so there's a clear line for how to sell your house for top dollar, that's a very clear lane of, "Okay, someone wants to list their house and I'm a realtor. List it with me."
On the flip side, the educating and motivating, again, a title like that you can go in a lot harsher, a lot more direct, a lot closer to the sale. You've got a relationship with them already and then how to do a specific thing. You could be very bang, bang, bang. Here's what you need to do and the absolute next step is that you need to do this with me. The last one of the five just briefly then before we jump back into the others is information goldmines. These are books, and this is almost one of my favorite but it's almost one of the ones we do the least because I really like the idea of bridging, of using data so just presenting it in a different way.
Information goldmines are books like the 2019 social security benefits guide. Anything that is specific and has a time element to it. We did a whole show a couple of weeks ago about the time based nature of certain types of books and this can fall into it. If you're an expert in the field, that level of expertise that you've got is valuable, it's a goldmine. There's knowledge that an outsider might find difficult to bring together. If you've got access to data that is difficult for other people to get hold of, again, that's a goldmine that you're sitting on top of.
If those things change annually or even they don't even need to be that regular but if you've got information that changes regularly, then the ability to update it regularly and present the latest set of information is even more valuable and these ones are really fall pretty heavily in the profit activator two, identifying invisible leads camp because this is much more around here's the subject that I've got access to some knowledge on you don't necessarily. Let me present it to you and by virtue of the fact that you don't have this knowledge, this is probably going to be information that's pretty close to the top of the funnel.
This is a new subject that you're learning about or there are changes this year from inflation that you haven't got from previous years so here's the new stuff that you didn't previously know. That falls pretty much at the top of the funnel.
Betsey: Is it always a dated guide? Does it have to be? I mean, the examples we're giving and I'm not a fan of the dated anything unless it is truly somebody who I feel like we get through with the book in July and the 2019 book is basically not useful anymore. Does it need to have that? Catch on that again real fast.
Stuart: Yeah. There's a couple of things I'm probably more interested in this than I am with other ones because I know how easy it is to update it year on year. If we do get done with the book in July, then there is the argument to say, "Okay, well come September and certainly come December or January, it's then immediately out of date." Because I know how quick and easy it is to make up dates, that fact that there is an expiration on it, doesn't bother me so much. I mean-
Betsey: And I get that because I know how easy that is as well but I just don't think, yes, go ahead.
Stuart: A lot of people I think don't know how easy that is because again, like we started off they fall into this trap of a book is a big thing written on the stone carved at the top of the mountain, it's going to be impossible to make any changes which through us is the exact opposite. It's super straight forward. Put that to one side then, let's forget about how technically easy it is to make changes to it. Then comes the validity question and the time question. If the information never changes, then you artificially point a date on it, eventually determine it's bad in the sense that everyone else is also going to know pretty quickly how pointless the data is.
If they receive something and there's clearly no difference year to year, then I'm just tripping over words I actually want. Not deterrent but it becomes disingenuous or artificial. It's like faith scarcity versus real scarcity. I think most people these days have come across things where I'll go to a website and they'll say there's only 10 places remaining when actually you go back three weeks later and Oh there's only 10 places remaining. The false nature or the disingenuous nature of it comes out quickly but if there is anything that does change, even if what changes is only relatively minor, then I think it does add value to it because whether it's data that changes so therefore, the numbers are different this year or whether it's policies and procedures that change, even if that-
Betsey: Yeah. That's true. I mean, if legit things are going to change, even if it is a small something that you are the person that's going to stay on top of it and change it, then yeah I think it is absolutely valuable because it's fresh. Oh, wow, this is the newest information, this is the 2020 information.
Stuart: Again, going back to a lot of other people fall into the same camp. They don't want to make those changes whether they use a print model like us where it's easy to change but they just don't want to or they just never get round to it, there's lots of reasons why they could change but they don't but equally then a lot of people are stuck in the old model, the old publishing model of actually it's so expensive, it's a lot of time consuming to write this book, I need it to be valid for 10 years because I never want to even think about it this again for another 10 years.
The fact that other people don't almost makes it more of a compelling fact and the reason that you should. When I think about a couple of the examples that spring to mind, we've got real estate books that talk about pricing guides for particular areas. There is the lake fun homes pricing guide or the yacht pricing guides that we do for listings. Those have data that show underlying change. There's data in terms of the number and there's kind of anecdotal changes in terms of market analysis and sentiment. The 2018 guide to lake front home prices or the 2018. The 2019 guide to fly bridge cruises or to yacht prices, that's going to be valuable because there is underlying information.
Things like the social security guide or the immigration guides, the 2019 version of that, although the underlying legislation hasn't necessarily changed, the interpretation of the rules and so stick with the immigration option person going through that a lot recently, knowing the 2019 version of the book, although the underlying rules haven't changed but actually how they're being interpreted and some of the reasons for rejections and some of the things that you might not have been such an issue in the past but now are hot issues, all of those things make it much more interesting that I would request the 2019 guide to fiancé visas versus the guide to fiancé visas.
Those really stand out and I think the timing issue is an issue. If you're doing this and you're expecting the way that it's running through is that this is going to come out in September then writing the 2019 guide in September, okay, well you might want to reconsider that and either accept that it's going to have a shorter shelf life and you're going to have to update it even if it's just updating the cover within three to four months or in fact, I would do that.
I was going to say or the alternative is you could hold it back for a couple of months and then just release it in November because the 2020 guide in November is probably fine but actually, that's a stupid idea because getting something out there for two months even if you collect one lead, the majority of people that we're dealing with, and we always say the book isn't the product, the service is the product and for most people, even if they went through all of this process with us and just got one client from it, for a lot of people that we deal with, that one client given that there's some referral and additional... The lifetime value of that client and their referrals is probably more than the effort of creating the book in the first place.
Even if you got only one person out of it, it's still worthwhile. Okay. Just for a change, we've gone on longer than I anticipated. Let's just touch briefly on wrap up with looking more specifically at profit activator number three type books. We look at the identifying profit activator and identifying people from the whole of the rest of the planet. Profit activator number three is educating and motivating people to take the next step. We talked about it in a couple of these examples looking at book titles of how if the aim of the book, if the job of work is in the funnel at profit activator number three stage.
You've identified these people already, now you're just motivating them to take the next step, the nature of the book or the leveraging of the relationship you've got and being a little bit more direct with it, you can position it knowing how it's going to be used. Score cards are ones that come up quite a lot. We work with a lot of strategic coach clients, the coach score card method is something sold a couple of years ago, making the suggestion that everyone should write a score card for their business. As you're listening to this, you've probably seen or experienced our own score cards.
We've got the bookblueprintscore.com and profitactivatorscore.com ,which talks about the book looping framework and the profit activator's framework. Those are really squarely in the camp of profit activator three books. I don't think we ever really use them at all as lead generation books although they can work for that purpose but I would say they're probably 70/30 in the camp of, it's a profit activator three rather than a profit activator two book. Part of the reason is just the complexity of the writing and where they get positioned.
If you're in a situation where you're having to explain the concept and then present a school card, it's trying to do two things. You're trying to introduce an idea with the kind of manifesto type book and you're trying to evidence to people and motivate them to take the next step. You trying to do two things is less effective than you trying to do one thing. When you look at the school card books that we've got, there's really no explanation about the framework. Look at the eight profit activator scorecard book. It doesn't really explain what the eight profit activators are, it just presents the score card so you can score yourself against the profit activators.
The expectation is that you've already read the Breakthrough Blueprint book or you're already well and truly familiar with Dean's framework and therefore you're just coming in to score yourself against it and then the suggestion on the back of it is to take the next step. Some other types of books that fall into that category, I've already hashed what we've already talked about but basically, it's setting them up with the premise of, "Hey, look you've already been on this relationship list for six months now. You know you've got a problem. It's not getting fixed therefore you need to do this."
And that might be that the content in the book is a little bit more higher level, it's a little bit more complex in its expectation of what you understand, it's a little bit harder to achieve, it's a 202 level book while they need a 101 level book and the strength of the call to action, the "Okay, now you really need to stop messing around and just pay me to work with you." The expectation is you've already got something of a relationship. You can position it a little bit stronger down that funnel. Again, it's not that it can't be used as a profit activator two, an identifying tool but with all of the other psychological cues being a little bit more around conversion, it just isn't quite as effective. It could leave a bad taste in someone's mouth if it gets very salesy, if that's the first time that they've come across you.
Do those two make sense?
Betsey: Make complete sense.
Stuart: I think again, ours is always the case with most of the things we say. It's never that it's one or the other, it's just here's some additional things to bear in mind when you're thinking about it. Not to the point of not doing it because you're over thinking about it, something is always better than nothing but this will give you an opportunity to refine it and it's definitely the case that we've talked about how easy it is to make updates and amendments and later versions of your book.
You might have started off by doing something but now you've got some feedback from the real world, you think about things in a funnel in a campaign sense of where the book fits in. It might be the case now that you want to revisit one that you've written previously and make some updates to it or you've got one that's out there that's clearly serving profit activator number two so you're thinking now I should write the book that sells profit activator number three. Of all of these leads that I've generated let's create something that educates and motivates and to take the next step.
Betsey: Wow. That was good stuff.
Stuart: Alrighty. I was convinced that we would just be going for 30 minutes today, we're just passing 50.
Betsey: Yeah. We had the whole Seinfeld conversation and-
Stuart: That's true. Should start leaving introducing chapters into the podcast episode which I'm not going to do that but we can just skip the intro and just get into the meat of it.
Betsey: No, I think the intro is pretty fun.
Stuart: Well it keeps us coming back for more.
Betsey: Right. Fun. Okay, well very good. I think you said at the beginning, don't let the idea that the title you're hung up on the title, on which category it falls into stop you from getting started. We do see that a lot. I hope that when people are listening to this, "Okay. I have this idea. We'll work out the title, we'll work out where it goes. Where does it fall into later?" So get started for sure.
Stuart: It's funny, we were just talking about a particular book just before we started and someone's just come onboard where we've been talking to the chap for two years. It's crazy. Think about how many leads could've been generated in those two years even if it was the worst book on the planet, it was going to be more than one.
Betsey: Exactly.
Stuart: Okay. Let's wrap that. I'm going to make sure that the five book title formulas book is in the show notes. This is episode 80. Head across to 90minutebooks.com/podcast and episode 80 and I'll make sure that that book title's formula book is in there but really as we always say, the best thing you can possibly do is just get started whether it's by yourself or with us. To get started with us just head over to 90MinuteBooks.com and follow the Get Started links. We can definitely help you dial in the idea of whether it better fits as profit activator two or three books but really the main thing is just to get started and get out there.
Okay. Thanks as always for your time Betsy, thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you in the next one.
Betsey: Take care.