From Idea to Bookshelf - How Dream Starters Publishing is Helping Aspiring Authors Publish Their First Book - Mike Fallat - Million Dollar Book Agency

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Mike, welcome to the show. Thrilled to be here, man. Very thrilled. Thrilled to have you here. You may sound better than I do, which I'm a little mic envy.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Sure, SM7B, very crispy. My client Tim Lyons, he's out there probably listening. He says they're very crispy. He's right. I love these mics. They are very, very crispy.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

So great to see you again, man. We uh we met in the middle of uh the Caribbean on a uh on a cruise with our uh good friend Mr.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Ross B. Williams. Isn't that great to say that we met on a cruise? Like, oh yeah, our life is so hard. We were on a we were on a cruise ship in the middle of the Bahamas and just enjoying life, talking business, brands, books, and podcasts. I mean, what else could we want? It wasn't a bad way to spend a week. No, and by the way, I don't know if you thought about this, but before I signed up for that, I'm like, am I am I a cruise guy? I don't know if I'm a cruise guy because I love freedom. I love being in the woods on motorcycles, all that. Do I really want to be locked up on a ship with people I don't know? And I didn't know anybody except Ross going into that. And thank God I said yes to that because some of the ideas that I got from that one event changed my business. Let's talk about those ideas real quick. One idea came from Chris Weiser. All right. Chris Weiser, I hopefully he's he's listening out there. He told me uh a great strategy in helping uh people that I have not talked to, met, spent any time with to create sub accounts within my Go High Level account. And I'm thinking to myself, how can that be done? Well, he put me in touch with this certain app called Pabli. He taught me a few tricks of the trade, and uh now we've grown our agency tremendously because uh people are signing up to our Go High Level account, which is considered the million-dollar book agency, getting into our pipeline, building funnels so they can have free plus shipping offers for their books, turning into social media, and then eventually into a ding ding ding podcast. Hopefully, we're trying to get people to turn a book into a business into pretty much their whole life.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

All right, so break that down for me again. So you're in game, so talk to me like you're talking to a five-year-old because I act like a five-year-old most of the time anyway. So, how how does this all work? Because as you know, I just uh I just popped my go high level cherry and welcome aboard. Yeah, in the middle of the migration as we speak right now, mildly terrified and extremely optimistic all at the same time. But how how does that all work? How does this all work here?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah, so guys, if you're not uh familiar with go high level, it's basically like a ClickFunnels combined with a Salesforce, combined with a Kajabi, combined with a Hubspot. Just think about all those amazing platforms into one. And why is that important? Is because I don't know about you, but I don't want to do shit when I'm 50 years old. So if I don't want to do shit when I'm 50, I need to have a team that is gonna be able to do it for me. And you need one login, one account for someone to go in or a team of people to access all of the data, all of the automation, all of the uh contact lists, and you know, be able to service clients without you having to do a thing. And so Go High Level does all that. You have the contacts uh in one spot, you have funnels that you can build at at ease. It is just so simple to create a website or a series of websites that create some type of automation. Hey, if this person goes here, do you send them a text message or an email or a voicemail drop or a video? But what's the goal? Do you have a call to action? That call to action probably is guiding them down the pathway, a pipeline we call it, that goes from a listener on a podcast to potentially getting a copy of your book, to potentially jumping on a call with you to maybe become a client, to maybe watching a masterclass, to maybe joining a membership. And the goal with any great software, I think, is to establish very clear communication, but a relationship more than anything. And I've seen Go High Level help me create relationships very easily. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

I love it. Yeah, I'm going to uh I'm I'm continuing to to to dive in here and find out what's possible with uh what we can do here at the podcast launch lab because I got I was extremely inspired and uh motivated by the talk you gave on the cruise uh about what your experience is and what we're gonna talk about now, what we're here to talk about today, which is your book business. You help people um write a book, and uh that's a very popular thing these days. Uh writing books has always been a thing, it's never been easier. Um, but how did you get started doing all this?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Man, people think that I'm some type of some type of savant writer or anything. I'm not, guys. Uh I just fell in love with personal development at the age of 22, 23, when I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Have you read that book? Uh I have not. What? I know. All right, guys. Don't be like Sebastian here. Go make sure you read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It'll change your life. But anyway, Sebastian, you gotta check this book out. It's written by Robert Kiyosaki, it's a game changer, and maybe you're already reading books very similar to it. So just to give you a quick little summary, it's about what rich people do compared to poor people. And uh there's the thing called the cash flow quadrant. And people are usually at as an employee, that's where they start out, that's where they think they're gonna make their money. And then they eventually transfer to uh self-employed, right? You have your own business, right? But you're not really a business owner because you're trading your time for money. And then eventually you change the one quadrant into becoming a business owner, and that's the top right quadrant that you want to be a part of. That's a business owner where you're out of the operations, you're managing, and that's really the step, uh step into creating wealth. But there's one step beyond that, and that's becoming an investor in many companies. So your money is now making you money simply because you know where to put it and you're understanding the wealth game at a very high level. So once I read that book, I it changed my life. I thought to myself, why the hell did I go to school? I thought an asset was this. Turns out an asset really is something that pays you monthly. And uh, you could look at your podcast like that because if a podcast pays you monthly, that's a digital asset. That is something you need to protect and probably grow. Uh, a house technically is not an asset because it doesn't pay you monthly. Now you get paid on when you sell it, but Robert Kiyosaki does not classify that as a true asset because it doesn't pay you consistently. And so once I realized that, I'm like, oh my God, let me become an entrepreneur. I bought my first four-unit building within six, seven months after reading that that book. I became a licensed real estate agent, bought my first four-unit building. I was off and running. So then I got a little cocky. And uh, I think, like me, you are into the startup world, right? You love brands, you love talking to entrepreneurs, you love new ideas. That's why that's how I was at 23 years old. So I started four different businesses, one after another. They were major failures. I looked like a complete fool. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know who to talk to, but I just wanted to become this entrepreneur and escape the corporate world. Went into severe debt. My fifth business, though, was the one that made it. And uh, it was called Doggy Surprise. So I'm a big dog lover. I think you're a big dog lover too. Are you a big dog lover?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Um, I'm I don't own a dog, but my sister has one and I, you know, I play with them and take them out sometimes. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

So you don't kick them, you don't ignore them whenever you go there, you feed them every once at all. That's good enough for me, man. So uh I built this company called Doggy Surprise, a direct-to-home dog product service, very similar to Barkbox, if you've ever heard of that. It was just a little different. I made some money with it, and people started coming to me saying, Hey, uh, how did you build this business? And I said, You know what? What you don't want to do is what I did with my first four businesses. You don't want to do this and that, and you know, get the best attorneys and buy the best of insurance when you're not making any money. Start with the simplicity of a business, start to understand demand and get a very clear vision. And these are very general principles. And then that's when the light bulb went on. Wait a second, why don't I just write a book about this? The girl I'm dating is an editor, she she's a librarian, she knows about words. I don't know much about words, but I could put up a blog or two pretty fast. I'll write it, show edit it, we'll put it up on Amazon. And uh, I did that. I turned it into an Amazon bestseller because I asked somebody, what was the strategy? How do you do this? Didn't believe it, it was even possible, but I did it and my life changed. 2016, here I am, an Amazon best-selling author of a book called Dream Starter, the Startup Business Guide for the Die Hard Entrepreneur. I talk about crazy stuff that I did as a door-to-door marketer. I talk about the Goonies and what that movie meant to me. Pretty valuable information. I thought if individuals would come to me asking me for advice on how to start a business. I mean, that's what the book was about. Well, more people came to me for advice on writing a book. They said, Hey, it looks like you had no idea what you're doing. And then all of a sudden, you're an Amazon best-selling author. How did you do that? And that's when the other light bulb went on. And I said, uh, why don't I just write the book for you? I already got this system in place. The system was me and the girl that I was dating at the time as an editor. I'll interview you, I'll write it, she'll edit it, everybody will be happy. So I did that for a bunch of books, and then ever since then, I've grown this to 340, 350 clients potentially of people uh coming to me that are entrepreneurs who have a story to share, who have lessons to share, that are looking to elevate their name, their credibility, their brand awareness, and they want it done in a very short amount of time so they can get this out there and be different than their competitors. And and why should someone write a book? So, what makes you different is not your lessons, by the way. It's not what makes you different is your story, what you went through. This is your competitive advantage. You get this, man. Your voice is your power when it comes to a podcast. People get to know, like, and trust you. They put the podcast down, they put the book down, they want to work with you, join up with you, create some type of alliance. And if you can convey your story in a clear, effective manner, they're gonna fall in love with you as a person. And that's going to be someone that they want in their life. So if you went through a divorce, if you love dogs, if you love motorcycles like me, whatever it is, I am dropping these breadcrumbs, even on this podcast right now, to kind of give you who I am in the clearest snapshot possible without you exerting a lot of energy. I believe in the Jordan Peterson philosophy. If you want to be successful, you need to win lots of games. But in order to win lots of games, you need to be invited to play lots of games. So reverse engineer how to be invited to play lots of games. The way you do that is you make it very easy for people to know what you're all about. Another great quote that I live by is uh is uh Dr. Joe Dispenza's major uh life-changing quote to me. Your personality creates your personal reality. So rather than hide your personality and try to be bigger and better than you really are, just be yourself and you're going to attract the right people. Your message is going to resonate simply because you live these crazy experiences that only you did, that might have some type of connection with someone else out there. And that person might say, I thought I was the only one that thinks like that. Oh, that person's living a life very similar to mine. I really like his viewpoints or her viewpoints on what he's talking about. Man, I want to go to his event, I want to listen to his podcast. I want to do business with that person consistently.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

I love it. So you've been doing this for how many years now? Almost uh eight years, seven years. Great. And uh 350, that's that's 350 books that have been published that are now out there for someone else's for someone's legacy uh to to to live on. When I when I first uh decided to write, I wrote my first book in 2013 and um it's a grueling process to say the least. So how how do you encourage people to start writing? Because I find that that's the toughest part of writing a book is starting the writing process.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah, there's a great uh Tom Petty song, The Waiting is the hardest part. I always sing the writing is the hardest part, and whenever I have the guitar out, yeah, it's hard. Uh, first off, you have to understand where you're going with the book. You gotta know what you're all about. When the book comes out, what are you gonna do with it? The reason why people don't finish or even start a book is because they have no idea how much money is on the back end. If you realize that you were losing out on $100,000 a day, for example, would you do everything in your power to get that project done? Of course you would. But what if it's not $100,000 a day? What if it's $5,000 a day? Would you still do everything in your power to get that book done or that project done? Absolutely. You have to realize that once the book comes out, it's going to change your life with podcast interviews, with speaking gigs, with attention, with press releases, with potentially a course, with revenue streams. You're going to try to make it easy on those people out there to invite them into invite you into their life, right? That's the Jordan Peterson philosophy. Make it easy for them to want to do business with you. So if you have a book that's done and the other person doesn't, you are going to look credible. You are the one that's going to look committed. And if that book has a certain title and that title is very clear and easy to understand, you have now given the market clarity on what you're all about. So if I saw Sebastian's book and it said, you know, podcasts suck unless you have one, I'm going to look into it and say, oh, he's the guy that's all about podcasts. Okay. Well, what about the other guy who's all about taxes? If he has a book on taxes and I'm looking for tax help, I'm probably thinking to myself, I have a checklist in my in my pocket that if you cross off more checklist items than the next person, you get my business. Well, that person's a speaker. That person has a podcast. They've been around for a long time. They have a nice fancy car. They they're in at all the events. Oh, they have a best selling book. Ding, ding, ding. Okay, now this person's more committed. Let me hire that individual. So start to realize that there is a lot of money on the back end of the book. If you're very smart, if you know where you're going. And if you can start to realize that every day that your book is not out there, you're losing money. That is key. Number two, start to identify lessons that you've learned in your life that have changed you to help someone get to where you're at now. And if you can identify those lessons, this is the recipe that made you successful. If those lessons will help position you as that ideal version of yourself, now you are going to provide value to the readers. Get out of your own head. Quit trying to be perfect. Quit trying to think that you are your story is either not interesting enough or you're just not ready. Lead with service. So put that lesson sheet down. Now tie a specific story out to what taught you that lesson. If I have a lesson and a story and I'm gearing it towards a specific audience, now this book, this content, this chapter is of value to a reader. So that way, when you start to put all these ideas together, you can do a QA with yourself. You can hire someone to do a QA with you, or you could just start writing, answering the question, how could I help someone get to where I'm at right now? And by me writing that, I'm going to be of service to those readers. And if I help enough people get to where they want to get to, then I will get to where I want to get to. So search identify that, write that down. You can obviously have a ghostwriter do it with a company like ours. You can have your Aunt Sally interview you and just, hey, you don't know my life. But if you were a reader, what would you want them to uh what would you want to know about my life? And just get your thoughts out of your head, record it on a Zoom call, and now you have your life somewhere that's tangible and start to build around that. Once you start to formalize it, it becomes much clearer and it becomes exciting because now you're one step closer to revenue streams. Love it. So walk me through the process.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

What happens when someone makes a decision to work with you?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

So if they say, hey, I'm ready to go, Mike, I send them an invoice, it's $5,000 down. They get on my schedule. We do a two-hour interview one day, two and a half hour interview another day. And I say, right before that Zoom call, send me an outline of 15 lessons that you want to teach your audience. Send me the outline. I look at it and say, Wow, vision, simplicity, demand, create a podcast, work with Sebastian. These are your lessons. Great. I'll see you on this day at this time. Here's a Zoom link. We have a simple QA conversation for two hours one day, two and a half hours another day. Just keep you on that train track. I just want you to keep you talking, man. Just get all your thoughts out of your head. And if I have any questions, I interject. And during the conversation, you'll hear me say, Hey, Sarah, take note of this. Bring this to life. It's actually me talking to the writer while I do the interview. Once that's done, your job is done for a little bit of time. My team goes to work. We help you out with title and subtitle. Then we put together a bunch of cover designs for you. Day 40, after the second interview, you receive the first draft, which is about 120-page book, 25,000 words. It's about a two-hour read and about 25 cover choices. Pick your favorite cover, fine-tune it, read your book, fine-tune it. You do, uh, we do a little uh back and forth with you. It's about two edit run throughs. Once you're happy with it, you send it back, clean edit, clean format, upload to Amazon. Amazon prints it for about $4 per copy. You get it in the mail and you say, Holy shit, Mike is right. This is a real deal book. I don't believe it. Go through it one last time, fine-tune it, give us the thumbs up. We put you on the schedule and turn you into an Amazon bestseller. Sounds like a scam, but it's actually very easy to do. All you have to do is understand that Amazon is the free market. And if you have leveraged positioning and timing, you can win in the free market. We'll leverage our network. We'll position you in a certain category, and then we'll have a consolidated push on a certain day at a certain time. Boom, eight hours later, you're an Amazon best-selling author. Social evidence that they'll never be able to take away from you.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Love it. So, what are you excited about for 2023?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Most exciting part for me is by far the agency side. We get the books done. Now we have the complete cycle of what do you do with it next? We're growing the million dollar book agency uh tremendously. We are now having individuals go around and find authors all over the world, offering them the million dollar book agency, which is basically all the funnels, the automation that we talked about earlier on. It's amazing what can be done with a book. If you have 25,000 words already written, what you could do with that is create emails, text messages, voicemail drops. AI is able to take your written word. We could take voice copy or a voice recording of you from a podcast or from a YouTube video, or just a recording you send us. And now we can have an AI read your own book, turn it into audio books, turn it into YouTube videos, turn into social media posts, all organized to create brand awareness fast and effectively, to create some type of call to action that establishes a relationship with the author. And if the author can build a tribe, you probably talk about this all the time. The goal of anybody that's an entrepreneur is to assemble a tribe, a tribe within internally, but a tribe externally with you know great clients and great allies. If you have a tribe, there's really not much you can't do. You can start to really invest in all kinds of uh properties fast, in businesses, you can solve problems fast, and life becomes fun when you're around people you know, like, and trust, and they do the same with you.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Absolutely. Well, uh, it's been great to uh to chat with you again and and learn more about what you're doing over there in the world of books. You know, you and I talked a lot on that cruise that uh we got a lot of the same customers. So people that want to start a podcast usually want to write a book, and people that write a book usually want to start a podcast. So I'm excited to see what you and I can can figure out uh as far as being able to best serve our customers in in both those capacities. But man, I'm encouraged by your story, uh, by the business and brand that you've built. It's great to call you a friend now and be uh connected with you. And I do appreciate you taking some time out of your day to to hang out with me, putting the book down for a minute and picking the podcast, Mike, up and uh to chat with me for a few minutes. Any final thoughts for our listeners, Mike?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Well, I gotta say, man, we're on that cruise, and uh, I believe you were the last speaker, second and last speaker, or something like that. But uh, I really didn't know much about you and uh your speaking skills blew me away. So uh, dude, you're an incredible, um, incredible event speaker. And uh I was just thrilled to talk with you afterwards about what you do because I don't see anybody out there talking about podcasts with the enthusiasm that you have and uh with the the want to help other people. So what you're doing is pretty special and uh you know your your branding is on point. Whenever I saw the sharp podcast suck, unless you have one, dude, you catch you catch people's attentions with that stuff. And some people don't have the courage. And what I've noticed in you is you're a great communicator, you can articulate your message very well, but you have courage to say what you really feel. Phenomenal stuff. So it's it's an honor to work with you, and hopefully we get to work with you uh at a much higher capacity in the future.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

I agree, and I appreciate your kind words. I'm humbled by those. I really, really am. I was trying to make it all about you on this episode, but uh you jumped in there with some accolades and uh I gladly uh received them. So I appreciate you, brother. Uh and uh thanks again for being on the show. Okay, thank you. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. I'll talk to you next time.