Today on the Book More Show, we’re closing in on the end of the year, so I grabbed some time with Betsey to talk about one of the Book Blueprint Scorecard mindsets - Beneficial Constraints.

The end of the year is always a great time to plan for the year ahead, but also to look back & realize how fast the last 12 months have gone!

This idea of Beneficial Constraints looks to help us understand that sometimes less allows us to achieve more, and what are the real and artificial constraints we can use to our benefit, to get a book out there, building our business.

If you want to read along with us and think about your score, then head over to BookBlueprintScore.com and complete your own scorecard.

There is a lot to get from this episode, especially at this time of year as we’re looking down the barrel of 2020, and all it’s possibilities.

Book Blueprint Scorecard

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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Transcript: Book More Show 090

Stuart:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Book More Show. Stuart Bell here and today, as we're closing in on the end of the year, I just grabbed some time with Betsy to talk about one of the Book Blueprint Scorecard Mindsets. It's beneficial constraints. The end of the year is always a great time to plan for the year ahead, but also, it's quite scary to look back and think about how fast the last 12 months have gone. So, this idea of beneficial constraints, it looks at helping us understand that sometimes less is more and having those constraints allows us to get things achieved which sometimes, without that scope constraint, might drag on and lead us not completing things. So, really, there's the real and artificial constraints that we want to use to our benefit and help us get our book out there, build up our business.

If you want to read along as we're going through this episode, then head over to bookblueprintscore.com and you can complete your own scorecards. I really think you're going to get a lot of from this episode, especially at this time of year. We're kind of looking down the barrel of 2020 just before Christmas as we record this, and it's great to think about all of the possibilities of the year ahead, so enjoy the episode. I'll catch you on the other side.

Betsey Vaughn.

Betsey:
Stuart Bell, how are you?

Stuart:
Very good, thanks. How are you doing?

Betsey:
Fantastic.

Stuart:
All in the Christmas spirit?

Betsey:
The holiday season... Right? Exactly. Yes, I saw a few, I don't know, they weren't really ugly Christmas sweaters, but they were Christmas sweaters. I didn't buy one, but I thought... I almost did yesterday. For the audience listening, we had our holiday party at the office and I almost wore one and I thought-

Stuart:
You did?

Betsey:
Yeah, I thought about it really. Actually, Mike has one with a reindeer on the front with a Rudolph nose and then it has like the reindeer tail and I could have pulled that one out and just worn that so.

Stuart:
I think to keep in character, I'd have to wear one with a Grinch on the front. Because I just get so... It's not a thing... I mean I'm not particularly anti Christmas but I'm definitely not a big holiday promoter.

Betsey:
Isn't it just, it's not that your anti Christmas... anti, anti, Christmas. It's all the stuff that goes around, right? It's just all the nonsense that... The hustle and bustle and the...

Stuart:
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's anything that involves getting in the way of-

Betsey:
Spending money?

Stuart:
No, that's fine. I'm sure Lisa will tell you that I'm more than happy to do that. Particularly on pointless tech gadgets.

Betsey:
I was going to say.

Stuart:
But, it's more the interruption to the flow of just getting on and doing stuff.

Betsey:
Oh yeah, if there's work to be done or assignments to be done.

Stuart:
Yeah, just things more productive and... So you can see it.

Betsey:
I got you. What are we doing? Lots to do here.

Stuart:
Yeah.

Betsey:
Are we still sitting at this lunch. Like I cooked these yesterday. Yeah, move on. We have to go. We have stuff to do.

Stuart:
It's time to go. Yeah.

Stuart:
I don't mind so much. I'm not sure what it is about it. Even I don't mind so much. Like it's nice to hang out with everyone because we're not always. Particularly with VNL , the team's pretty remote. So, all spread out, so even though I don't mind too much but it's the... I think it's finally, at the risk of turning the podcast into a therapy session, I think it's where everyone has expectations, or they project expectations that they have for other people onto you. Like I think I've got the least amount of time for is no one else's expectations of what I'm going to do.

Betsey:
Yeah, I get that. Yeah. We were just talking about this lunch and that lunch and, "Oh, can you bring a meal and can you bring a..." I got a text today, "can you bring dessert on Christmas Eve?" And I'm like, "I don't want to bring a dessert." Like, just, you know, if you want me to bring something let me bring what I want to bring...

Stuart:
Right, I barely want to be there at all, let alone have a set of instructions, which may or may be satisfactory when I actually arrive.

Betsey:
Exactly, so you know, I said... In my head I had already planned something that was easy for me to do. But I get it, this Christmas I'm feeling like... We had a cup... Again, don't want this to turn into a therapy session, but this morning, Mike said to me, "I just want you to be, you know, happy for the holidays." Normally, which I do, I love to decorate. My house is all decorated and the presents and stuff, but it's just become, it feels like, it's a little bit of work this year. And that's what I'm kind of... I don't want to do work.

Yeah, that's where I'm like, well this is no longer fun we should probably rethink this. I'm thinking just a vacation next year, you know, just go away.

Stuart:
Escaping is the gift of peace and quiet.

Betsey:
Exactly. Peace and quiet. Yeah.

Stuart:
Well, that idea of constraints on holiday kind of a ties in with what we were going to talk about today. That's really bridging back into something useful.

Betsey:
Right.

Stuart:
So we're going to look at one of the prophet... The prophet. Actually it's called one of the Book Blueprint Scorecard elements, which is beneficial constraints. So, on our list of eight mindsets that we've got, that we look at when we're looking at creating the most valuable book for business. Number seven is beneficial constraints.

And I think the reason that springs to mind now is because, end of the year, typically people have a bit of a retrospective plan for the year ahead. They'd be looking at resolutions and that type of thing. So, very, very, very often, when we're talking to people, we'll talk to them year after year after year sometimes and it can be the case that the idea for a book is there, but the execution of getting it done isn't necessarily there. And part of those reasons is because people approach as open ended, non defined or ill defined project with no real scope or constraints. So that's why it just tends to drag on and on and on and on. And that, or just as happens with a lot of things, the year goes by before you even realize it. So beneficial constraints is a great way of thinking of a way of narrowing down the scope over many different elements, but narrowing down the scope so that it gets done.

So does that sound like a plan?

Betsey:
Yes, it does. It sounds like a great plan. Let's see what we come up with.

Stuart:
Fantastic. OK, so I'm just gonna quickly read the mindset, so we've got a list of that. And as you're listening to this, if you haven't yet, head over to bookblueprintscore.com so you can fill out your own scorecard and measure yourself against all eight of the mindsets.

But beneficial constraints. So the lowest level, this is where you haven't really considered any constraints at all to the writing. You want to include as much content as possible. You might have all of the other elements dialed in, so you know who you're talking to with a single target audience and you've picked a title and you know where you want to lead them in a call to action. But there's no thought of how you could constrain that into a specific set of time or effort or attention or money or whatever element it is to tie in those other things that you have actually defined. So, the first level, the most basic level, haven't even given any consideration to it at all.

The second level is then you're focusing on the specific problem to answer but you haven't clearly defined the scope of the content. So what not to include, just as much as what to include. So, you might have the outline defined. The purposeful outline that we talk about. But you haven't really tied it in to say, "OK within the outline, here's where I'm going to limit it." And also you haven't given yourself a deadline or haven't really thought of any reason to do it this year versus next year. So, in the second level there, we're starting to think about it a little bit more. We're starting to... The concept of a constraint is there but you haven't really defined it in any way.

So the third of the four levels then is, you have a clear scope in mind and a specific deadline. So, the two main elements that kind of fall into the scope group problem of drift, you've kind of thought about those two things you've narrowed the content down to the things that you are and aren't going to include that delivers on the promise of the title. It meets the outline to get the person from the want... From the start to the end. But you've also given yourself those additional constraints. Really drilling down to the next level.

And then at the highest level of this particular mindset, you really, starting with the end in mind, you know the purpose of the book, in terms of the funnel the campaign in which you're going to use it. You understand, and kind of internalize the job of work that this book is doing, so there's no mistake about whether it's trying to just collect as many leads as possible into quicker time as possible. And then just quickly take people into the follow up process, versus you trying to get access to a particular group of people or address a particular industry or speak at a particular event, or use it for some media opportunities and speaking on local news like we were talking about in last week's show.

So, the highest mindset level of beneficial constraints is all of that is very clearly defined. So you've got a very clear and locked down scope, because you know that any additional work outside of that job of work and purpose is really wasted effort, all the effort that could better be spent elsewhere.

So those four levels, it's a great way of thinking about it because beneficial constraints are... Constraints is often thought of as a negative word rather than positive words.

Betsey:
Right.

Stuart:
But in this, when you think about it as a way of making sure that something gets done, anyone with a project management background will be very aware of that type of thing. So, even though you've gone through the other steps of deciding on who the target audience is, deciding on the title, having a purposeful outline so that all of these elements are very clearly in place. Without the beneficial constraints, there's all the risk of this scope creep, of drift, of not having a deadline, of having no real clear targets or reason to do it today versus tomorrow. And with all of those things, comes the likelihood that it will slip and slip and then we'll get to the show next year, and still be in a situation where a lot of people listening will think, "Oh yeah, I did mean to do that."

Betsey:
Right. Right.

Stuart:
So this is the, thinking of beneficial constraints, this kick to get that done.

Stuart:
As you're talking, I mean, we said before on the show that a lot of the time it's you just talking with people as their first kind of engaging with us. And we've spoken before about this. It's surprising how many people we talk to and when we actually go back and look when the last time we spoke, it was a year or more ago. This idea of constraints in the conversation, does that ever come up? Or is it more people just say, "Wow, surprisingly a years gone by and I didn't actually realize it and here we are."

Betsey:
No, it happens quite a bit. You know what will happen in January, Stuart, is we will be bombarded. I mean I will have lots of calls in January, and there's those who are just ready to get started, mostly because of the people I've talked to last year or the year before. And they had that goal but then some of them, they wanted to try it themselves or those I usually hear from in October. Like, "Oh my gosh. I was going to do a book this year."

But they're definitely sort of across the board, people say our time got away from me, or again there's certain things like, "I know I want to write this book, I need to write this book, but..." It's that "but" you know you, "I can't come up with a title." All the things. There's all sorts of reasons why that they can or can't do it and I think one of the most important things, I always ask this question, "Do you have a deadline?"

"Oh no I don't do that to myself," and I think, "You're the person who needs a deadline."

Stuart:
You're right.

Betsey:
And some people can do that. Some people need that pressure of, "I have to have this finished by February 15," or whatever. So it's always interesting when people come back and come back to us in a year or a year and a half and say, "Wow," you know, "I should have done that. Why should I do that?"

Stuart:
Time disappeared.

Betsey:
Yeah.

Stuart:
I just remember a quote, I can't remember where it was from, but years ago, hearing someone saying, "I love deadlines, it's the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

Betsey:
There's a lot of truth to that.

Stuart:
I think that idea of deadline as a constraint. Well, there's two main parts of constraints that are easy for people to conceptualize. One is the scope constraints of the amount of stuff that goes into it. And the other one is this idea of a particular deadline. I think the challenge with deadlines is that for the majority of us, as we're talking and listening to this, we're in positions that it can be difficult for external people to impose a deadline because at the end of the day, we're often the people responsible for the outcome. So if we don't do it, we're only really letting ourselves down at the risk of sound like a high school teacher.

Betsey:
Right, right, right.

Stuart:
It's easy to come up with the reasons and to justify why a time passes by. So I think the only way of knowing yourself, and knowing that, "OK if I'm choosing that this is an important thing to do and that I should do it and I want to do it. Therefore, if I don't do it, it's just because I haven't gotten around to it."

Coming up with an external commitment that would add another element of pressure is maybe the only way of doing it. So there were lots of services out there like... I can't remember the name of them. One of them's called like Sticks or something like that. But it's this idea of an escrow account that's arbitrated by a third party. So if I was to say to you that I'm definitely going to do this thing. Or maybe we should have the... Maybe we should make the commitment of in 2020 we're definitely going to record a podcast every week.

So, I would commit that to you, along with a dollar amount and then a charity or an organization which I particularly dislike and then this money would go into the escrow account with the payment details of the organization that I dislike and then you, as the third party, would be the arbiter of truth at the end of the period. And if I did make it then that that money would be returned. And if I didn't make it, that it would automatically go to this despicable charity.

So there's a variety of external services like that, which are kind of the stick side of the carrot and stick argument, where you can almost give yourself a painful outcome if you don't do it, which might be more painful actually doing it in the first place.

Betsey:
Right.

Stuart:
Financially, it's interesting that they then have the extra step of, well the money will go to something you hate as well because oftentimes you can, particularly if you think that that money's been paid already, if it goes into an escrow account then it's out of your account. That the deals already been struck, the money's already gone. So if it was just the money, I think a lot of people just write it off, but the fact that it goes to something that you-

Betsey:
You don't like.

Stuart:
... Find distasteful. Yeah. That kind of adds an extra element to it. But even with those things I'm not sure that, as you're listening to this, I'm not sure if cash or even going to bad service is... A bad charity is... I guess, not a bad charity but a charity if you don't personally like, that's still might not be-

Betsey:
A bad charity.

Stuart:
Yeah. Thinking from your own perspective that's going to vary, person by person.

But, as you're listening to this I'm not sure whether that even would be enough a motivator, but some other things might be. External commitments. So I think for a lot of us cash is one thing I mean it's not... It's easy to justify to yourself wasting cash on something you could have not wasted, and even the charity thing is easy to justify saying, "Well I don't like that charity but someone else does and I'm sure they're doing good in someone's mind."

Betsey:
Very wise. Yeah.

Stuart:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, one of the other things might be an external commitment to something public. So our name and reputation is usually more valuable than just the cash argument. So making a commitment to speak on stage based around this particular subject, to do an event, to it tie in with a workshop or to tie it in with someone else's efforts. If it was a joint project with someone to say, "OK well if we do this thing. You bring whatever element you bring, and I'll bring the book element which we could frame it all around." Then having personal commitments is often much more of a motivator than something else.

Betsey:
It really is.

Stuart:
And that can be tied in with the actual business benefit that we can get from it as well. So if you can have, at the beginning of the year it's often easy to find calendar of events for other organizations. So if you were looking for a small business for your work, or Chamber of Commerce event, three, six months out from now that you commit to speaking to. There's many... What's the name of the business expo events? There are some big events like that.

Betsey:
Oh, Small Business Expo. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart:
Small Business Expo. They do multiple events throughout the city. Getting a booth at that place, volunteering to be a speaker, even doing something at a school or a college as an alumni piece of work, where you're using the book as the talking point. Tying all of those back into the business opportunities of having it done, of matching it up with a product launch, or a workshop that you want to run or a speaking event or onboarding new staff or anything that you can do to amplify this constraint idea, kind of build up a lot of things around a particular date that really means that it's not just one thing that you're losing, but actually six or seven dominoes will fall over if you don't do this. Then, all of that adds this idea of a constraint, a commitment, but with a beneficial outcome because it means you get it done.

Betsey:
Yeah and that's right. And I ask everybody before they come on board to do an event. "Oh yeah, you know what? We have that seminar that we're going to do in three months so yeah I'd like to have..." It sort of reminds them like, "Oh, I can use the..." Even if they weren't thinking about using the book like, "Oh I need to have this finished," but we find the person with a deadline is an easy person to deal with. It's their focus, they're dialed in, they stay on track and then they really get it finished versus somebody who's like, "Nah, I'd like to get a finish in the first or second quarter", kind of thing. Well, that becomes third or fourth quarter you know. It sort of lags on.

Stuart:
Or third or fourth year.

Betsey:
Exactly. So, having that deadline I think that... I mean, I don't want it to be pressure so I don't want someone to say, "Hey, I need the book in four weeks." It has happened. But a realistic time frame if they need it. There's so many potential missed opportunities. Like, "Oh, I am going to that seminar" or "I am going to that conference and I can have it here" and you never know who you're going to miss.

Stuart:
Once it's done, it's done. So that opens up... It's an asset and a tool that opens up many other doors and opportunity further down the track so anything that you could do to kind of kick yourself up the backside to make sure that it gets done. You were talking there about four weeks, I mean that's the idea of... That's where it goes from beneficial constraints to, kind of, damaging constraints. That really causes problems, right? Across the board.

You were saying there that, as we're talking to people and they realize things they haven't particularly realized before, I think that's one of the benefits of the scorecard, is it asks those... It forces you to ask those eight questions, which are really fundamental to using this as a tool to build your business in a way that you might not necessarily take the time or effort to take a moment and answer those eith elements as comprehensively or in a joined up exercise, if you hadn't have gone through the score card. So even if you've got, we've done previous podcasts talking about the mindsets and even if, as you individually listen to them and think, "Well that's, yeah, that makes sense, it's obvious, I can think about that, I don't need to go through a scorecard."

But just to take that time and effort to go through as one exercise and just think about that one question in isolation. It's not that this is rocket science or a magic secret formula, but it does really get you to sit down and think about it in a way that, quite often, you wouldn't do without taking that dedicated time.

The time constraint element that we were talking about and having something that's sensible, and stacking those sensible things, definitely then counters against the not sensible way of doing it. So this is where any good idea can get corrupted into a bad idea, and piling an unworkable amount of constraints. There is a limit to it. So whenever you're thinking about what is the beneficial threshold, it's kind of like the minimum or maximum effective dose idea. There is a range in which it makes sense and a range in which it doesn't make sense. So, just kind of bear that in mind as you think about time as a constraint.

Betsey:
OK.

Stuart:
So the other element that is content constraints. And this ties very closely with the outline, the purposeful outline that we've talked about. But I think the constraint element of it is something slightly different. So, having a purposeful outline and giving value driven content, both of those is adding stuff to it and the stuff he should include. So the constraint really is then looking at the flip side of that and what should you exclude and where do you need to draw the line. And this really talks to the kind of black hole or endless rabbit warren of writing if you don't think about what shouldn't be included. And just think about what should be included.

Because what should be included is kind of what could be included and that is everything. So, if you've gone through the steps of the score card previously, you know who you're talking to, you know what it is, what the promise of the title is, the thing that you want to deeply, but narrowly answer. You know where you want to lead them, you know what their motivations are what information, what content is valuable to them. All of that helps to define everything that should be excluded.

And this is really just an exercise in discipline of saying, "OK, I need to not write about that." I know that as an insider to this business, if I start talking about choosing a title of the importance of title, then what seems like a straightforward question of just picking some words, does this sound better than that, is really, that's the tip of the iceberg. All the elements, under the water, are things like, who is it we're trying to resonate with? What is it that motivates them? What's the... Might have heard Dean in other podcasts, talking about this idea word cloud. What is the language, the words, the terminology, the tone that is specific to the user in this context? And what or why is this particular phrase more important than that?

So if we just come in and talk about a title in isolation, to those things, then we're not really doing as good a job as we can do. The same with creating all of these elements around the constraints. Knowing very clearly the subjects or the question that we're trying to answer at the, kind of, 101 level, but knowing that we could be talking to someone 20 levels down about all sorts of other things that are still relevant but not on that immediate... Not immediately answering that question.

Thinking about that a little bit more is just as valuable as think about what should be included.

Betsey:
So, when we talk about the value of the content constraints, I think when I look at the scorecard. Oh, you've got your target audience and you have a great title and you know subtitle and you've got a good call to action, people I find quite often that do so, they want to include everything. I mean, they just want to... They have a hundred ideas in their head and they want to cram all this into a book, and I think that's one of the most difficult things that I sort of have to combat with someone is give them good valuable content without giving them everything, you know?

And I think that's when people start to trip over their feet because, "Oh OK well, this is my audience but they need to know all this. They need to know these hundred things," you know, or whatever that number is and my biggest thing is giving them all of it, they don't need you. If you give all the information you don't need it, but I think people really struggle with that.

Again, they make, come with all the other things, look good on paper but that's...

Stuart:
That point that you mentioned there about having... About not giving everyone everything because why do they need you. I jump to a slightly different perspective and it's so interesting and this actually is a subject we could do a whole show just on this, but it's less about holding information back because why do they need you because at the end of the day, we talk about creating books and this is episode 90. So we've got 89 other episodes talking about it, so we've given pretty much everything that we can give.

We've talked about beneficial constraints before so now we're talking about things twice. So we've given as much as we can possibly give, but still people need it because it's easier. If you can do the service for people, if you can get them the results that they want, that's why people want to work with you because it's better. But what is a very relevant point is they don't need it now.

Like, a college course runs over two or three years because there are building blocks going from A to B. You don't try and give all the college course information on the first day or you don't have a lecture that starts and then continues until you've delivered everything all in one go. So I think it's all about overall and thinking about the stepping stones in a process. To get someone to the point that they're happy and comfortable and know I can trust you enough to do business with you. The stepping stones, well, we only need to know this today. You don't need to know the step five steps down on the first step of the process. So I think it's almost more that. Not overwhelming people and...

Betsey:
Yeah. I think that's true. I think that's true. Sometimes, depending on, let's say we're speaking about someone who's the financial... You're probably hearing everything going on in my house right now. That's my husband.

So, the financial, look at the financial person. That kind of information to someone who's not in the industry, is extremely overwhelming and I think that's what we hear from some of our financial guys. They try to... Those guys do try to give just enough information so that not to overwhelm the potential client. So yeah, I think-

Stuart:
It's interesting, this almost comes back to the problem that we're almost demonstrating our own problems, because there are so many nuances and levels that kind of add to what is enough information and what's too much information to this very difficult... As the insiders, as the people talking about it, knowing, being able to see all the picture, it's very difficult to know where the line is. I mean, to a certain degree this whole conversation could be, "Hey, give yourself beneficial constraint. Use the psychology of less is more so that you can kind of write yourself into a hole and find it very difficult to just keep writing more and more and more and more. Just decided before you start what is the correct level of information to share, and then just share that. Don't find yourself going on and on and on."

Even in this conversation, so the financial advisors, very often, they're at the other end of the spectrum. They're not giving enough. They're being to superficial. So that's just as much as a problem as going too deep.

Understanding the breadth versus depth element of constraints oftentimes, people are writing too much because they start going wide. So it's not so much that it's going too deep and sharing the information 10 levels down but still on that particular subject. Quite often it's, "Well, here's the 10 levels of this particular subject, but actually you also probably could do with knowing this thing over here to the left or this thing over here to the right."

It's such an interesting... getting to this point of the conversation, it's such an interesting demonstration of exactly the problem. If we were recording this as the book, we should have stopped 10 sentences ago. Now it's fine in podcast form obviously because people are just listening to this and that kind of is just additional information in the background and hopefully as we're talking about some of the broader constraints is triggering people to think, "Oh yeah that's what I might have done had I not thought about it in the past."

But that's where it's fine in the podcast but not fine in the book format. This is why people saying, "I'd love to use a... I've recorded this talk that I gave on stage," or, "I've got this webinar content, can we not just use that?" The problem is that it's not... Or the challenge is it's not fit for purpose. So, where it's perfectly fine to speak more broadly in a podcast, if we were just going to take this episode and turn it into a book, thinking about the constraints beforehand, and when we're writing the book, and we get to the beneficial constraints chapter, OK, we need to just talk about these things, and that'll start talking about people using webinars.

Betsey:
Right, Right.

Stuart:
But it's so interesting. That level of and going through the scorecard and thinking about these elements, that's where the value is because this type of conversation, you wouldn't have this, just going into it. You might think to yourself, "OK, title, content, call to action. I know that it needs to be specific and lead people through. OK, go."

Stuart:
But without thinking about this additional element now of constraints and how you know where the warning signs for drifting off onto a tangent, as far as the book goes without having gone through the scorecard you might miss that.

Betsey:
Very true. Yeah.

Stuart:
To get the podcast back on track, so those two constraints and many other constraints as well that you might want to put into it. So, like the time of day you've got to write, whatever the work schedule is it, depending on what's coming up there. You might know that "OK, if we're a financial advisor firm, really, this time of year is challenging because everything's happening this time of year. Whereas in the summer, a lot more time. If you're a lawn care business then the winter is maybe a better time of year to do something than in the summer. For obvious reasons."

So, all sorts of other constraints we talked about the two big ones but don't let that limit. Whatever you think of. In fact there might be an exercise to go through and just take 10 minutes and write down as many things that could be a constraint as possible. Take that exercise of just dumping it all onto a piece of paper and then separately as an exercise, kind of cross reference that with the book that you're planing to try and think, "OK well, is this a real constraint? Is it beneficial and how can I lock it down to make sure that it gets done?"

Betsey:
OK. That's good. Yeah.

Stuart:
Yeah, I think it's definitely worth doing that. So the other exercise that's worth doing as well, is around... So the time one's obvious. I think it's straightforward but the content one... The other exercise that you can do is think about it almost like, I don't know if you ever run, like, an AdWords campaign. So and AdWords campaign kind of pick the keywords that you want to target, but you also pick the keywords that you want to exclude.

So thinking about all of the phrases that are relevant to your business to exclude is an interesting exercise because it forces you to go that one level of deeper. Everyone can come up with 10 phases to include off the top of their head because it's their business.

Betsey:
Yeah.

Stuart:
The list of 10 phases to exclude is a little bit more challenging. It's not really difficult but it's just not as front of mind.

Betsey:
Right.

Stuart:
So, if we've established that we've gone through the score cards, we've picked the subject of the book, we know that we want to answer one question as... Or a narrow set of questions as deep as possible, but not go wide, because people can always go wide when they're in the follow up, when they looking for more information. So knowing and going deep, then go through that exercise of saying, "OK, in chapter two, I want to talk about this particular element of it. But if I find myself starting to talk about X, Y or Z, then that's outside of the scope. That's going wide, not deep".

So, as you've already gone through the... One, two, three, four, five. The fifth mindset of the purposeful outline, as you've already determined what you want to include, then as part of this constraints step, going through and saying, "OK for those five chapters, here are the red flag words that I want to be careful of. That I don't go outside and start drifting down that because that's a separate subject, and if it's important, then I should include that in the follow up, and not include it in the book in the first place."

Betsey:
I think that's a great idea. I mean, really and truly I don't think I've ever thought along those lines. It's always what should be included. We're so focused on that but then thinking about what needs to be excluded, that's a great exercise for people to do.

Stuart:
And I think, because we're always thinking about what's... It's almost, we're in this creation mode and the creation mode is adding, adding, adding, adding. Because that's seen as the biggest job of work. It's almost like, the book itself, I mean this is why we go through the exercise of doing an outline with people and talking to them is because us, as we're helping people create them, we're naturally doing some of these other steps because this is part of our internal stuff. We don't have to have the conversation with people about beneficial constraints because from a time base we're following up with people because it's difficult to get stated again.

And from a constraints base, we're naturally doing this because we've got a fixed amount of time that we want a recording or there's a window at least. And doing the outline with people, we know our own process so we're naturally building into these constraint conversations. I mean, that's almost one of the things that I would say to people, whether you work with us or trying to do it yourself, is just turning up on call and the actual recording of themselves, should be the... Everything is known already, it's just the execution of the plan that's already been defined. And as much time as you can put into those prior steps, almost, the easier it is.

And constraints, is one of those things it's the most dramatically different... If someone turns up on a call having gone through all of these steps and done some additional work, and put some thought into it beforehand about what they're going to say and what they're not going to say, keeping in mind the call to action and knowing where they're guiding people, so that all the words that come out of your mouth are fit for purpose words and do the job of work.

That is night and day different from the occasions that we get someone joins us for the outline, goes through that and thinks about it and then look in the diary and think, "Oh in 10 minutes, I need to jump on this call. Well, that's fine. I know my subject, I'm just gonna talk about it." And then tries to do it on the fly. Not that that's completely unsuccessful, but it's a very different picture from... Those two cases are very different.

Betsey:
Very true.

Stuart:
I don't want to over commit, or put up $1,000

Betsey:
Oh, you're cutting out.

Stuart:
Oh, sorry, I walked away from my computer.

Betsey:
I know you did.

Stuart:
I was kind of drifting away and thinking about possibility.

Yeah, sorry. As I was saying, not that what they put anybody on the line for this commitment, I'm about to make but one of the things we haven't done is, we've got the scorecards, the people can follow through and do that themselves. So as a reminder to go to bookblueprintscore.com and do it there. But for anyone who has done that we've obviously... We know who's completed it obviously because they submit the... It's an online form that's filled in and then you get an immediate response back with some ideas. But what we could do early in next year is then create a follow up for exercises for each of the mindsets. So, we talk about it quite a lot but we don't specifically give people exercises, but that might be useful. So for anyone that's thinking about doing it themselves, here's the score card, this will get you thinking about it, but in addition we can follow up in January with a couple of specific exercises, which you may or may not have done already when you were going through it by yourself but that might be-

Betsey:
That's a good idea. Yeah.

Stuart:
Yeah. So, I mean, I guess we're coming up on time but as an exercise if you haven't done your own scorecard then head over to bookblueprintscore.com and that will take you through the process of answering... Presenting you with stages for the eight mindsets.

The easiest way to get it done, with all of the constraints in place for you and then those guiding you through the process, is obviously to get started. And in there we've got a show that's in the pipe for next week anyway so the next time we record, it'll actually be released next year and it'll be interesting to feed back and see how many of those conversations we've had with people who are getting started now where we've talked to in the year before.

So, if you are, as you're listening to this run up to Christmas, the opportunity to get... head over to the Get Started pages on 90minutebooks.com and jump on board and make sure that we're not here next year, having the same conversation about it not being done.

Betsey:
That'd be good.

Stuart:
But anything... I've been talking for a little bit towards the end there, was there anything that we haven't talked about that you wanted to raise, or...

Betsey:
No, I think we're good. I think we've got it there.

Stuart:
Fantastic. Well, in that case, thanks again for your time, Betsey. We'll talk obviously but have a fantastic holiday and for everybody listening, just again thanks for listening over the last year. 2019's been very exciting and 2020 seems like it's not going to slow down or will be any less exciting. Lots of opportunities, lots of calendar based opportunities to get ahead of the curve. It's an election year, there's all sorts of peculiar things going on in the UK at the moment. So kind of globally there's going to be a lot of change and change, whether it's for good or bad gives opportunity.

Betsey:
Absolutely.

Stuart:
Yeah, 2020's going to be exciting.

Betsey:
Very good. Yeah. I'll look forward to that.

Stuart:
Fantastic. Well, thanks guys. Head over to the show notes. There are gonna be a couple of links and things. 90minutebooks.com/podcast and this is episode 90. One last time, head over to bookblueprintscore.com to do the score card. We'll be following up with people who do that a little bit more directly in the new year. And as always if you've got any questions, then just shoot an email to podcast@90minutebooks and we'll be will be here ready to answer them.

Betsey:
OK, good.

Stuart:
OK, Thank you. We will catch you the next one.

Betsey:
Take care.