The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 022: Steve Scott – How To Earn $50,000/Month Self-Publishing on Amazon

Episode Date: June 1, 2015

Episode 022: Steve Scott – How To Earn $50,000/Month Self-Publishing on Amazon I love learning about people with fascinating lifestyles… Steve leads an incredibly interesting life.  I also enjoyed learning about his daily routine and the process for creating successful books. Steve lives the kind of life that Tim Ferriss describes in The 4 Hour Work Week.  Striving to do the activities that he wants… In Steve’s case that involves a lot of traveling, writing, and running! Episode 022: Steve Scott – How To Earn $50,000/Month Self-Publishing on Amazon Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher Radio. The Learning Leader Show “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” – John Wooden Some Questions I Ask: How much money do you make? What is your writing process? What are your daily routines? What is your best-selling book? How did you decide to do this as your life’s work? In This Episode, You Will Learn: $65,000 is the biggest income he’s earned in a month How to focus on “habit stacking” Why Steve disagrees with the typical book publishing model Steve’s travels and climbing mountains How to get out of your comfort zone The elements that define a quality life  “A learning leader is someone who is deeply curious about the world… And sees it as a fascination, not a fear…” – Kare Anderson   Continue Learning Go to Steve’s website: http://www.stevescottsite.com/ Buy Steve’s book on Amazon: Amazon - Steve Scott Follow Steve on Twitter: @stevescott1 You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector With Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 002: How To Take Over And Set Bigger Goals With Chris Brogan Episode 004: How Todd Wagner (and Mark Cuban) Sold Broadcast.com To Yahoo! For $5.7 Billion Episode 010: Shane Snow – How To Accelerate Success Using Smart Cuts Did you enjoy the podcast? I love learning about people with fascinating lifestyles.. Steve leads an incredibly interesting life.  I also enjoyed learning about his daily routine and the process for creating successful books.  I really enjoyed speaking with her.  Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell   Who is Steve Scott? (In his own words from SteveScottSite.com)   I’m a firm believer in the idea of the “Internet Lifestyle.” Money is great and all.  But I think it’s not as important as creating the life that YOU want to live.  The greatest thing about having an affiliate business is the flexibility to do things on YOUR terms.  Don’t believe me?  Well, I just spent seven months traveling through Europe in 2010 (from April to November.)  I literally lived the laptop lifestyle where I bounced from one city to the next.  During this time, each week I averaged 5 hours on my money making businesses and 10 hours writing/marketing this blog. This experience validated all the notions I had about being able to work hard, travel the world, and do what you want to do.   I’m just an ordinary guy who has a relatively normal existence on the Jersey Shore.  I live in a modest two-bedroom apartment on the ocean.  Most of my days are spent working.  And during my free time I like to do fun activities like running, hiking, skiing, surfing, reading and spending time with my loved ones.

Anything you do in life, I know it's fun in your picture that you played football, I'm sure. You probably put an insane amount of effort into playing football and building up that part of your life or pretty much anyone out there listening, anything that you've done successfully. If you really think about it, you probably put a lot of effort and a lot of grunt work behind actually all those successes. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawke. Hi and welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I'm Ryan Hawk. Our guest tonight is Steve Scott.

Steve is another really interesting guy. He is an author, but he has an internet lifestyle, meaning he publishes all of his books through Amazon, Kindle Publishing. His best selling month, he made $65,000, and on average he makes between $25,000 and $35,000 a month. He's completely created this lifestyle for himself and now he's teaching others how to do it. Today we talked about the number of books he's published over 50 of them. Again, his biggest month of being over 65 grand and talking a lot about habit stacking and how people can incorporate these things into their lives. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Steve Scott. And here we are, like I said, with Steve Scott. Steve, a really interesting guy, an interesting internet lifestyle

type of a person. And I just wanted to say, Steve, welcome to the show. Oh, thanks for having me on, Ryan? I really, really appreciate it because I've read a lot about you. I've read a lot of your work. As I said in the intro, Steve has published a number of books on Amazon Kindle publishing. How many is it now? How many are you up to? That's always a hard one to answer. I would say it's 50-ish. I don't actually really know the exact number. But some of them now, the most recent ones, a lot of them are just straight-up translations of previous books. So I always say 50-ish because I don't really have an exact number of unique pieces of content. What's your most successful book you've published from a Kindle perspective?

From Kendall perspective, that would be the book Habit Stacking. I always talk about how that's my most successful and my biggest failure because the book itself, there was a lot of technical things, a lot of things I didn't quite explain as well as I could have. So a lot of the reviews have kind of torn it apart. But financially it's done pretty well. And actually, even though some people absolutely hate that book, a lot of people enjoy it the most as far as the concept. So to actually fully answer that question, it's actually something I'm currently working on to come out of the 2.0 version. Why do you think

habit sacking is the best book? I think it's when I launch it it had just a good hook to it. It's just the title itself is kind of a unique concept and then the subtitle is 97 small life changes that take five minutes or less so I guess it kind of hooked people in and the actual promise itself

made the particular book browser think this is something they can immediately apply to the life so it's kind of full of short wins. Wow. So do you get a lot of feedback from fans, from readers to say, you know, I've implemented these 97 techniques and it's had a really positive influence on my life. Yeah, definitely.

I would say I get more feedback from the people getting into self-publishing more than I get from my individual book readers. And that's something I'm trying to improve is the actual relationship I have with the individual habit readers. But I definitely get a, I would say, a couple of emails a day as far as all I'm implementing this or I like this email, that in your sequence, that sort of thing. So I definitely get a decent number of people reaching out just not as much as the people are interested in building a business.

That is interesting to me. So what would you say the percentages of people saying, you know, I want to do what you do, Steve, versus, you know, I get a lot out of the books? Yeah, I would say it's probably 80% to 20% it's along those lines. I guess I guess there's more the kind of sexiness factor of being able to run a business from your home than there is just like a lot of times I just find that people aren't as interested in building habits because it sounds like actually, you know, work. So it's harder to sell the idea that you have to improve your life than sell the, idea that you can run your business from any spot in the world or that sort of thing. Right. But obviously, what goes into your profession is a boatload of hard work, effort, and it

certainly didn't happen overnight. Yeah, definitely. And, yeah, absolutely. I would say with anything you do in life, I feel like I noticed in your picture that you played football, I'm sure, you'd probably put an insane amount of effort into playing football and, like, building up that part of your life or pretty much anyone out there listening, anything that you've done successfully. If you really think about it, you probably put a lot of effort.

and a lot of grunt work behind actually all those successes. It's exactly right. The preparation that leads up, you know, speaking of the football world, the preparation starting literally from the day the previous season ends to all of the wait room, film work, practice, more film work. The Saturdays are just, or Sundays, if you play in the NFL, but the Saturdays in college are just three hours of that time where your preparation leading up to that is going to, you know,

be the determining factor if you're going to be a determining factor, if you're going to be successful or not in the preparation of you and all of your teammates. So I found that's why the sporting world translates so well to the business world because it's really the same thing. The people who are getting ahead, the people who have great home businesses like you, or you can not necessarily home or anywhere you want, they do it because they're willing to outwork everybody. They're probably intelligent. They're probably likable.

But certainly they put in all of the work and preparation it takes to be successful. Yeah, definitely. And I know it's football for you, but for me, it's always been running and training for marathons, the same thing. It's just like to even get to a marathon. It's 10, not even 10 more, like 12, 16 weeks of effort just to train for it. And beyond that, like getting out there, no matter what the weather is just going out there and training on a consistent basis. And like you said, with sports, you can really draw a lot of comparisons on the level commitment you need to have for any sort of business. So you've run a lot of marathons, too? 15. 15. Wow. Where have you ran them? I'm trying to do one in every state that's like a bucket list thing. So I would say 15 different states.

So it's Colorado, my home state, New Jersey, Vermont, Maryland, Nevada. I'm trying to think I off the time I had South Carolina, et cetera, et cetera. Just like I try to run one in Utah in a couple of weeks. So it keeps me motivated, I guess. So you can't really peak. You've got to always really be in marathon type shape, I assume. Yeah, exactly. And that's actually what kind of keeps me motivated to, because exercising, I don't know,

for you or for people out there listening. Exercising on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis can get a little monotonous. I always like to have some sort of goal that's somewhere on the horizon. So I can never slack off. I know that maybe I'll take a week off and just do a little walk in but nothing else. But just knowing that there's something I have to train for right around the corner, it just kind of keeps me getting out there on a consistent basis. So it sounds like that's part of your regular day.

If you could walk me through a day in the life, a regular day of Steve Scott, I'd be very curious to hear what that consists of. Okay, well, it's a little, it might be a little too much for people, but I'm like super regimenting with my time as far as awesome. I'd love to hear, yeah. Okay, cool. I'm serious into blocking out time. So I guess the one thing that I like to focus on is actually there's a book called The One Thing. And you really have to figure exactly what is most important for your business or whatever you're trying to do in life.

And you really want to focus your energy and your whole time around doing that one thing. So for me, a lot of times was writing. And actually lately, as far as the podcast, I know that recording a podcast consistent basis is just something I'm not as comfortable with as I am with writing. So the point here is I have a morning routine. I have a staffing routine. I do a first thing in the morning when it's not covered in ice and snow. Like it has been lately, I try to go for a walk right after my habit stacking routine. So that's by that time it's usually 830 or so.

And then I sit down and do the one thing. So either write for an hour or two or record a podcast or two. But basically, I've just focused on the most important aspect of my business. And I try to do those right away. Then I'll take a little bit of a break. What I call break is just things that don't require a lot of mental energy. So I'll go through email. Lately, I've been setting up Facebook ads.

Stuff that requires a little bit of thought, but nothing really too high level. Lunch and then after lunch, I try to do another solid block of writing. So that's usually anywhere from 12 to 4 or 5 in the afternoon. And I like to go to Starbucks just to kind of get out of the house and just get away from just staring the same four walls. And from there, I just like I would say, four or five o'clock, I try to also get back into doing low-energy tasks, like, again, the Facebook, the social media, all other kind of small things that are on my list.

It just required not a lot of thought. And then usually around 6 to 7 to 8 at night or so I do my evening run and just spend time on a fiancé cook dinner, that sort of thing. And actually, one other thing is I try to block out certain days a week for certain activities. So generally speaking, my Wednesdays, I like to do interviews, conversations, that sort of thing. That's why we're talking on a Wednesday.

I like to block out one single day to do all conversations because I'm more of an introvert. So if I had a conversation every single day, I know that it would just stress me out and cause a lot of men. It required me to spend a lot of mental energy that I really could spend on time on writing and that sort of thing. So in other words, I really try blocking on my time for certain times a day, knowing my natural circadian rhythms for certain activities. So you're writing constantly seven days a week, I have to assume. No, actually, I do take the weekends off. And I know a lot of writers really do seven days a week, and it really works for them. I just find that kind of taking a weekend off.

My friends that she teaches. So we tend to spend the weekend with each other. So I like to just take a complete couple days off. That said, I'm trying to get back into writing every single day of the week because I just do find the more consistent I do it, the better I am at it. Yeah. You mentioned your fiancé. What does she think of your lifestyle and the way that you've been able to build your business? I guess I started this in 2004.

dating in 2011. So it's kind of always just, I've always been like this to her. So I guess she never really saw what it was like before. And I don't know, I guess she finds like pretty neat because she does get the summers off week to premise travel all summer, every summer. So I definitely think she likes that fact. But I know, I just, I think she's just kind of used to it now. I don't think it seems that particularly interesting. When I wrote you, the initial email asking you to come on, I got an auto response and it said you were, I think, I believe it was Europe backpacking for a number of weeks. So I just found that to be really, really interesting.

Can you share a little bit about what that was all about? That's actually something I did in 2010, 2011, but actually I thought when we first talked, I was in Africa. Oh, okay. That might have been it. Yeah. Okay. I was like I did do the backpacking thing, but that was, you know, five, six years ago.

But yeah, I was in, I think I might have read that one on your website and then I got confused with the auto responder. Yeah, I did do that. I think I did post on my office, but yeah, but I hiked up Mount Kilmajaro about a month or so ago, and that was a kind of transformative, awesome experience. Wow, what made you do that? I guess bucket list, and we're getting married in July, and I know that we're probably going to start a family fairly soon after that. So I knew that these kind of interesting things I could do on my own.

It was just kind of a closing window. So I was like, you know, I need to do this now before I, you know, wake up 10 years from now and wish I could have done it. What was that hike like? It was fairly, I don't want to say easy, but it was very slow pace, so it wasn't too bad. The altitude definitely got to me. I'm just not too, I'm not really too comfortable with anything over 12, 13,000 feet because you know, headaches, nausea, that sort of thing. So I had to take the altitude pills and then that caused a lot of almost like that tingly feel

when your arms of sleep or your foot asleep with like a permanent feeling like that and your nauseous all the time. So it was more the altitude that got to me than the actual physical difficulty of it. Wow, that's incredible. That's pretty cool. How long were you there for? In Africa, two total weeks. We did the hike-up Kilimanjaro, then went to a safari in the Serengeti for a couple days and into Zanzibar. So it's a nice little tour through a PeakPlanet.com. They did a good job of really organizing a whole thing. Peakplanet.com? Yeah.

Okay. Did you take your computer and write during that time? I brought my computer. I didn't really do much with it. I tend to like, I like working when I need to work, and I like taking off when I need to take off. I try not to, I just find that if I'm trying to mix it to, it just never works that well for me. Like, I do try to keep up with absolutely mission critical, important things absolutely have to, but I definitely like to create systems and have the kind of systems run things while I'm away. And you mentioned the autoresponder. That was my virtual assistant. She actually probably wrote you back with the initial kind of, like, he's away,

he'll get back to you as soon as possible. Like, I try to have good things in place when I'm away, and things definitely break, but I at least try to do my best as far as letting people know that I'll get back. back to as soon as possible. Some entrepreneurs are scared when they take off for a couple of weeks that their business will either lag, and I'm not going to say fall apart because your business is somewhat automated. It's residual and it's passive.

But I'm curious as to, do you have that fear when you go away for weeks at a time and kind of shut it down that you have a lag as far as maybe your next month's earnings are lower than previous month because of it? Yeah. For people listening, I definitely don't want to burst any bubbles. But when you go away and you take extended periods, times off your business does take a step back. And I want to be very honest to people that the idea that you can work four hours every single week and grow a business really is a myth in my opinion. I've actually seen my specific Kindle sales.

I've seen the – it's never the month after, but generally it's like two, three months after I see that dip. And that dip is because I'm not keeping the consistency and the continuous marketing that would normally do if I'm sitting in front of a computer. So I do think it's a balance. I don't think money's the end-all-be-all-to-life, but I definitely think if you want to be successful, you have to keep at it. You have to be consistent. What do you think of Tim Ferriss's, you know, the four-hour work week and his models on working to be efficient and automating businesses?

Obviously, I'm a big fan of his work and listen to his podcast and read what he writes. What do you think of his stuff? I honestly have very mixed feelings. I think I get the message that he was trying to. send out there. I guess, oh, shoot, it's been almost 10 years now since he first came out of that book. I totally, and I love the idea. The Pareto Principle, the 80-20 rule, he really does a great job. I think a lot of stuff he explains about running a business is very dated. I think it's, like, I think he used a specific example of using Google Ads, and that's really something you can't do anymore.

The core foundation of what he's trying to teach is a great idea. I just don't think, I think that some people might just look at the specific title and think that's all you need to do is just work four hours. But the message there is you really want to automate everything as much as possible. So I guess, like I said, I've mixed feelings. Some areas I think are absolutely great. Some areas I feel that people might have paid attention to what the message is and they might kind of lose out on the value of building a business that's kind of location independent. How many hours a week do you work on your business? I would say in a good week it's anywhere from 35 to 45.

So I would say I put in a solid week. But there's some weeks where I'll do 20 and then there's some weeks where I'll be upwards of 50 or something. 60. But once I hit 50 or 60, I realized that I'm trying to do too much. And I just, as much as I enjoy, I know that the quality of my life decreases if I'm just always constantly working. So I really tried my best to have as much balance as possible. Is the bulk of your revenue coming from book sales? Yeah, I would say I'm at the point where I had a bunch of affiliate marketing sites and I recently shut them all down. I would say the last one was shut down a couple months ago. So it's almost all, I'm pretty much all in now with Kindle publishing.

That said, I would say 80% of it's the actual Amazon Kindle marketplace. Another percentage is the actual physical version. So books sold through CreateSpace. A substantial portion is ACX that's Audible, just audiobook versions. And I'm starting to generate some decent revenue from direct translations. Books actually all sell my rights to foreign publishers, like simplified complex Chinese, Thai, Russian, Poland, that sort of thing. So it'll be anywhere from $900 to $3,000. So not a huge amount of money, but for me, that's kind of found money.

So I really am trying to find a little bit of affiliate marketing with actually the people interested in my books. I do promote some affiliate offers them. But I am trying to find a little bit of a little more well-rounded as far as my income. So I'm not just solely relying on just one stream. Do you do one-on-one coaching to help? I mean, I got to believe that listeners and like I said, I've heard you on other podcast, I have to believe people said, wow, I would love to learn exactly what Steve does so that I can. can do the same thing. And I feel like you could you could charge a good amount to help people do

that one-on-one. It's hard because I actually don't do coaching nor consulting. And specifically, I think actually even Tim Ferriss talked about this is the idea of exchanging time for money. Yeah. And I really try to be very cognizant of that. I don't like investing into any project that requires a huge amount of time. But if I, well, I guess a huge amount of continuous time expenditure. So if I work on project, I want something that has a open and close end to it, that I can work on finish and have

that generating income. Whereas as much as I would love to do coaching, it's not scalable. And I am working right now as far as the information product, and I would love to absolutely dump everything I know into one single product. And then perhaps there might be some sort of, I'm going to sound a little bit like Dan Kenny, but some sort of

silver, gold, and platinum level or something along those lines. But I would like to be, I would like as much as possible, everything I know to reach as many people as possible instead of one-on-one. Yeah, or maybe doing like a type of webinars like Lewis Howes or something and then upselling from there. It feels like, I don't know, just because you've built a name for yourself, that that could open up another revenue stream that's also could eventually be passive.

I mean, you do it one time and then continuously get paid for that one-time thing, much like writing a book. Yeah, definitely. And I guess for me, I kind of naturally gravitate towards books because like I kind of mentioned, I'm introvert and did the idea of. doing webinars in continuous basis. That sounds, for me, that sounds horrible. I know for some people that, like Lewis House does a great job of webinars, building a whole brand and he does a wonderful job. It's just, I'm more kind of the sitting in the back of the room kind of guy listening to stuff.

But I also think that might be lazy thinking on my part that I need to, you know, I need to evolve as well. And I can't get comfortable with what I'm currently doing. So I definitely am thinking about that. It's just I would like to get the product out there and then figure out how to sell it or how to actually leverage the kind of brand that I've built. It makes me think of comfort zone, which is something I talk about a lot here with people and guests. And comfort zone, it's funny, there are some people who are comfortable getting outside of their comfort zone, which is a really weird thing to say. But then others who are not, and it feels to me like you're saying that leaping outside of your comfort zone is not easy for you to do. I would definitely agree to that.

I also, I'm kind of going back to the idea behind the business, I also like a lot of freedom in my own life. So if I felt that every single week I had to be like totally on at a certain time, I think that would almost be like having another job. It would be like get back to 9 to 5 or I have a bunch of appointments and things that's setting up. And as much as I admire the people who do consistent webinars and calls and all that, I think for me, I just like the idea that any pretty much every day, any day of the week, if I decide to wake up that I don't want to really work that day, I can just do that

without any sort of guilt. That makes a lot of sense. Do you have mentors that you lean on to discuss what you, you do and to help you grow on a daily basis? If I was going to be honest, I think that's definitely another, another fault of my business. I don't necessarily have a coach or anything. I do have two mastermind groups that I'm part of. And I definitely get feedback from now as more of a kind of or on the same level type of feedback,

but I don't have someone that's above me kind of kicking my butt. And that's definitely something I should do. And it's been on my list and I really quite haven't pulled the trigger on that because, again, it goes back to almost me wanting to do what I want to do when I want to do. and maybe as short-sighted, I just, I like to kind of run things my way. But I've actually had on the list to actually go out and get a coach. So it's probably something I'm going to do sometime down the road. What area would that coach be in?

Because you have a specific niche that you've almost, I don't know if I'd say created, but you've had a big influence in the niche that you're in. So how would you go about determining that? Because you could probably be the coach to a lot of people. I would say bigger picture thinking. I'm fairly structured, but sometimes I, I tend to actually a good example would be the book, The E-Mith. And I've been, oh, yeah, I'm actually rereading it right now.

And the idea there that I tend to work in my business, not so much as owning my own business. And I think that's maybe some of the things that might be holding my back because I tend to do the day-to-day stuff. As much as I have an excellent virtual assistant, I tend not to always give her stuff that she could do instead of me having to do it. So I would say maybe a coach would help me kind of look at, all right, why are you doing this activity? like does it really add value to business? Someone almost kind of like question everything I do on a regular basis and help me kind of see the larger picture. Yeah.

Do you get your virtual assistant off of Elance? No, that's Chris Ducker's virtual stafffinder.com. Great, great service. I absolutely loved to. Actually, I could have hired all three of the people out, all three candidates. So I would highly recommend that to anyone listening. How much do you pay them? I pay her.

I've been kind of scaling up her. salary over the last year or so. So I think we're now at the 1100 per month mark. Okay. I think what Chris and his crew recommended is anywhere, a good virtual system, anywhere from $600 to $800, but that might have expanded over the last year or so. But they actually have a little salary chart as far as their service kind of showing you how much you should pay. But she's almost at the point where I could have her be a project manager and potentially even hire someone else that she could manage. So I'm trying to get at a point where she really is

forward thinking. And she really does. great job. So again, I'd highly recommend their service. That's huge. And I'm really curious about the financials if you're okay to get into it. Because as far as the money coming in and the money going out, so what are your total revenues and then what do you net at the end of the month if you take out the expenses? See, that's hard because Kindle sales are way up and down. It's especially when you're depending on one platform, it could be very schizophrenic. I would say my best month, it was in May where I was generating, I think I hit $65,000 for the month. Recently, it's around 25 to 30.

So still, in my opinion, I'm more than happy with that. I'm pretty easy going. I don't really require a lot of financials in my life. But I would say the outgoing, as far as, that's actually, honestly, that's gross. So that really depends on the month. But I would say I outlay $1,100 in my virtual assistant. There's 300-ish for my Aweber account because I have a pretty large email database. obviously web hosting all that. I would say all that stuff total is 100 a month. And what I've

gotten into lately is I actually work with a couple of not only translation partners, but also writing partners who do a 50-50 split. So there's sometimes upwards where I'm sending them, you know, $4,000, $6,000 a month. So it's, it's, I'm very careful with all my finances and keep track of it. But I would say in a given month, it could be anywhere from two grand all the way upwards of eight to nine grand. So it really, it really depends on the specific month. Well, so you have writing partners, you mean in other countries or the people that are translators or people literally who you just write with and you guys throw ideas back and forth or they help you write? How does that work?

Yeah, it's a little bit of both. I'm working with a German translator and a Portuguese translator. Sorry, Brazilian Portuguese translator. And they literally take my book and just put it into their native language and I post it up onto Amazon, but it sells obviously in Amazon, Germany or Amazon Brazil. And there's actually, like you mentioned, I've actually worked with Rebecca Livermore. on two books. We're working on the third book. And another person in the personal development space, Barry Davenport, we're working on a book together. So it's one person kind of takes

lead and they'll write the outline and pretty much the rough draft and the other person kind of cleans up. It is a little bit of idea bouncing back and forth. But to be perfectly honest, I'm not as good working with someone else as I've seen other people do. Like I know the guys that the self-publishing podcast, two of them are really into working with each other and they're constantly bouncing ideas back and forth between each other. But I'm trying to get to that point. It's not always harder when you have multiple books going on at the same time. It's more just one person handles an aspect of the project,

then they pass it off to the other person who handles their aspect of the project. It's not an idea bouncing around like I've seen other partnerships work. Interesting. Very interesting. Now, I recently spoke with Noah Fleming, and Noah is an author. He wrote the book called Evergreen, and he went a different route. So he had said his mentor, Alan Weiss told him that the highest form of credibility is had by having a professional publishing company publish your book. And when you hear that statement, what do you think?

I disagree with it. And honestly, I think there are, let me say, I disagree with it. But they will take a step back and say that there are a lot of huge benefits you get to being traditionally published. That you definitely have the development mental editor. That's the person who really goes through your book and kicks your butt and says, all right, this doesn't work, that doesn't work. This needs to be changed. So someone who really does a high-level critique of your book, not just the kind of line edit. So to be honest, the way I keep my consistent schedule, I try to get a book out every six to eight weeks.

I just don't really have time for a very in-depth developmental letter. So I think that's something you gain with traditional publisher. That said, if you want a book to do really well and you want to spend a year on it, you can just hire your own developmental. editor. You can hire your own copy editor. You can hire your own line editor, hire your own graphic artists, et cetera. You can pretty much hire to do everything a traditional publishing company can do. You get to keep a lot more of the income, so I keep about 70% of the income. And it's gotten the point that really traditional publishers don't do as good of a job marketing your book as you could do on your own when you build your own platform, build your own following. So I think there's

something to be said also for being a traditional publisher that you can walk in any Barnes & Noble and just point out to your family. There's my book. I finally arrive. So there's there is that marquee. And I would say if you really want to get into a lot of big time media, so obviously if you want to get, I guess Obers not around anymore, more, I guess the Ellen Show or something like that, if you want to get into a lot of speeches and stuff. Yeah. Like it's a lot more credibility if you have a traditionally published book. But I would say that the line between traditional publishing, self-publishing is really getting very, very, thin nowadays that even the self-publishers out there, they're really trying to treat it like

a business like you would with a tradition to publish book. Yeah, I'm on Amazon right now looking at a number of your books, you know, and I see, you know, how to discover best-selling nonfiction e-book ideas, the bulletproof strategy, how to write great blog posts that engage readers, how to write a nonfiction book in 21 days that readers love. So who comes up with both the titles and the covers, the artwork, all of that? Do you do all of that? Do you farm that out to some people?

How does that work? Oh, definitely. Actually, the kind of my later books can be found at habitbooks.com that actually has all my habit-related books. So that's kind of my iteration. Because what you just described are kind of my first attempts that I just really focus on internet business books. Why are those the first ones, though? If you go to Amazon and you go to your Amazon page, why are those the first few that pop up? Because I made the mistake of going with a pen name for my habit books.

I went with S.J. Scott. And if you enter S.J. Scott, you also get, which I didn't know at the time, the erotica romance author, J.S. Scott. Uh-oh. Some mistake on my part. Does that help? Does that help or hurt your sales? I have no idea. I'm kind of afraid to ask.

So that's why I have like to redirect habitbooks.com. It's easier to tell people than to say, hey, go look on Amazon because, you know, you might get more than you bargained for. But to answer your question, yeah, I definitely, I definitely use a lot of teams behind my book. I come up with what's called the hook, so the actual title and the premise of book. I come up with that myself. I'm trying to figure out a system of actually having people help me with my hook because I feel that sometimes that's the best that can ultimately determine your book sales. Like I mentioned before, Habit stacking, that was a really good hook.

So generally speaking, that book sold a lot of units just because they had to do good hook. So that comes from me. Most of the writing, I have my VA do a little bit of research. But besides that, most of the writing is done by me. and everything else as far as the editing, the actual formatting, the cover design, that's all done by members of my team. And what I mean my team, these are like freelance people that have their own business. But I consider them team members because I feel that they're really valuable to the services they provide. And you're using the same ones for just about every book.

Oh, definitely. Yeah, I believe in being very loyal to the people that help you build your business. Yeah. So I'm curious about how you come up with these ideas. I know you talk to James Altasurer, and he's a big. on writing your ideas down every single day and something I try to practice. Has he had enough influence on you and how you come up with your ideas for your books or just for whatever you're going to do in your life?

Yeah, I definitely also firmly believe in writing down every idea. I do have my kind of weekly to-do list. And actually on my little, I have like a weekly to-do list and I have like a little sticky note as far as like the three or four things absolutely have to do that day. But on that list, I'm always writing down ideas if I don't have any, if I don't have any, if I don't have my phone in front of me. But what else to do when I'm out and about if I'm running or if I'm on a walk or just, I'm in my car.

I have the Evernote app and I'm constantly other writing down notes or audio recordings or just I really emphasize the point of always capturing ideas. It might seem like a silly, stupid idea, but you never know what the next million dollar idea is. And my entire Kindle business was a seven-week trip with my fiance across the United States. I published two books at the time and one of them started selling well. and the idea started out what if I decided to completely focus on Kindle publishing instead of blogging

and that was one idea down in Evernote and I delete it and I wish I captured that as a screen grab because that would be the most awesome thing to put up on social media because it just really was for me the foundation of a multiple six figure business just that one idea put into Evernote

Evernote and Google Docs are things they live by and some people say negative things about technology or that we look at our phones too much and I understand that at times, especially with, you know, if you have family and things going on. However, having it right there so that you can quickly get a note down into one of those apps. I use both of them. Has changed a lot.

Like for you, you know, we booked this a few weeks ago. And then whenever I was either listening or reading something that I thought, well, I'd like to ask Steve about that, boom, just pop it right into my Evernote document with your name on it and said, oh, this is something I'd like to ask. And there's no other, if I was just walking down the street and didn't have anything, I guess I could write it down on a piece of paper if you have a pen and paper with you, but the apps just make it so much better for situations like ideas, for preparation for interviews, helping with podcast and writing. It makes it so great. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm still a little bit of a low-tech. Like, I definitely have my project folder, which is an actual folder printed out sheets. But I also do use, I don't use Google Docs as much. I definitely like Dropbox because I'm just able to sync with my V and other people I'm working with. And I definitely pop stuff from my phone. And that's the cool thing I ever notice. It syncs automatically with any device on your laptop, tablet, phone, that sort of thing. So I like that functionality to it.

But, yeah, like you said, I try to balance this technology with non-technology. I don't even know if that's a word. But, yeah, I try to balance as much as possible. But really, for everyone, listen, I would say whatever works for you, if you have a good mechanism, a good system, then that should work for you. But I would definitely look into using apps. specifically like Evernote. Oh, they help so much.

They really do. I know you're big on your email list. What are some strategies you use to grow that list? And what's it currently at? Right now I have 23,000 for my habit list and I think around 15,000 for my internet business self-publishing list. And really for me, what's really grown it was early on, at least for the internet business, which kind of helped me build up the habit list.

But early on, it was just blogging on a consistent basis. I really, I'm a firm believer in having a lead magnet and that's just a free piece of content that's specifically interesting to that audience and giving that way in exchange for their email address. So mostly what I've been doing lately, mostly been building up is the actual, the blog itself, the actual Kindlebooks, those do really well as far as building up an email list. I would say 70 to 80% on my list is from previous Kindle book readers. What I'm actually doing now and actually I really, I don't want to be one of those predictors, but I really think that retargeting is really good. to be the way to building the email list. It is right now, and I think in a year or two, it's going to be more important. So I'm really trying to do a deep dive and learn as much as I can as far as Facebook retargeting and getting people to check out a piece of content, then present them with

a lead magnet offer on Facebook. So I'm really, honestly, I'm trying to figure all this stuff out. I don't really have any good piece of advice for, but I think ultimately pay traffic retarting and it's almost going to be a paid-to-play model to start building your email list I feel down the road. Really? You think so? I think so. This is all pure conjection on my part, but I'm trying to build an email list with my podcast, but people really just don't, I find that people don't really go list my podcast and go join my email list. They're different type of audience than a blog reader would be or a book reader. So I'm still trying to figure that out.

So I would say maybe take a step back with my prediction as far as pay traffic. I would say creating good content and using paid targeting, get those people to check out your free content to join your email list. I think that's where it'll ultimately be at. Is your podcast just to get your content out on another? medium. It's not necessarily to make money directly from it. I would think it's a little bit of both. Ultimately, I would like to monetize it with my own product. But right now, I literally there's no ROI for me on the podcast. I'm trying to do

a couple things with it. I get a little exposure for my Kindle books, definitely. I'll build on my email list. And when I come out with an information product, I'll have that whole foundation of people interested in that topic. And actually, I'm trying to use it as a time management hack that I get a lot of questions on a regular basis. I get a lot of questions that are very similar to one another. So what I'm starting to do now is I have my VA every time she actually filters through my inbox. So she finds a question that I've already previously answered in podcasts. So she at least lays the groundwork where she'll have a paragraph that says, all right, this was discussed here. This can help you. And I'll just go in and I'll write like a couple sentences

that kind of personalizes at least see if there's something there that I could add to the conversation. So I'm trying to use it to save a little bit of time and not spend so much of my day-to-day life just answering emails. Wow, that's very interesting. I like it. I'm a big fan of getting your content out there on multiple different platforms, and it seems that people who were previously just writers or bloggers are now trying to get in the podcasting space because it's just, I think it's growing by massive proportions.

It's going to be in every single car here coming up within a year or so. I mean, it seems to be a space a lot of people are playing, and part of the reason why I'm doing this because, well, one, And the coolest part is getting to talk to really interesting people who have inspiring stories like you and some of the others I've spoken with. But yeah, I think that's what the neat thing about podcasting is. Oh, yeah, definitely. And I find even from the other side of the fence, like from a listener standpoint, I absolutely love listening to podcasts just because it's almost like a precursor to good blog content. Like I almost listen to a podcast and I really like what they actually have to say.

Maybe then I'll go check out their blog. but I just find it it's you can listen to a lot of content get a lot of Intel and then if you really want to follow up with some written stuff then you can go put it in an ever note and just go check it out and I guess specifically I recently discovered John Loomer's podcast and he talks all about Facebook ads and retarget and all that sort of thing so it's like really doing a deep dive and all the stuff that he's saying and probably I'll end up paying his you know I think it's like 97 a month for his core product or something but it almost is a good a good like segue into here's what I have to say check it out and if you like it I have other things to offer

I really think it's expanding technology. I really feel a lot of people, especially with the popularity of cereal and other Start-up. Yeah, all those stuff. I feel that everyone's going to be listening to the podcast really soon. Yeah, have you listened to those, too, Serial and Startup? I don't know why I said that because I haven't listened to it. You should.

I'm telling you. Not to cut you off, but the best things about both of those for me, well, there are two different things. One, cereal is just like your best TV show that you love to watch, but you're just using, you know, you're just using your listening skills and you can do it obviously working out or whatever. I listen to it on airplanes, things like that. And then startup is kind of similar, but it's purely, you know, Alex Blumber just telling his true, true story how it's going. And that thing just, you know, skyrocketed from just an idea and his brutal honesty to then just exploding by the. end of it. So I didn't, I didn't listen along with it. I listened after the whole first season was done.

So kind of like binge, you binge watch House of Cards or something, I binge listen to startup. And it was a, I was just shoveling snow all winter I felt like. And I was listening to startup. And it reminded me of what I was doing. But it's really, really good stuff, man. Nice. I heard one of my friends was talking about action on the trip to Tanzania. She was saying how they actually, like, he went in for a pitch or something like that. And the guy actually like ripped the pitch apart. show what you could have done or something like that. It's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, I haven't written that. I tend to only, I'm really big into the just in time learning. So I really only try to listen to a podcast that I can immediately listen to and take action on. And for me, it's not, I don't want to, it's not like I don't enjoy it, but I don't really view podcast listening as an enjoyable activity. Like, I don't want to use it like I would watch a TV show. I want to like be something that I learn and immediately apply to my business. So it's not time for leisure for me.

It's time for like, you know, to get things done and to learn about. something new that I can use to grow in my business. Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that's how I got into podcast listening to them and taking notes and doing the whole thing. And then I guess it's just kind of branched out from there. And now it's, now it's like the difference between reading a novel, a John Grisham novel, like Sycamore Row or something, or, you know, reading a book, a nonfiction that will help you in your business. It does a little bit of both for me, I think. Yeah, definitely. And maybe if I have a little more time, I might start listening to the more actual enjoyable stuff. But for me, honestly, I just like, I listen that. I listen

that 1.5 to up to 2 point speed. I just want to get this stuff as fast as possible, learn the techniques and immediately take action. That's awesome. I love it. Well, Steve, I feel like we covered a lot here, and very, very quick, it went by super fast, and I really appreciate you taking the time on a Wednesday out of your day.

I know, like I said, you have a lot going on, you're regimented, and I appreciate that I was able to be a part, and our listeners are able to be a part of your plan for the day. And where can people go to find you and find everything you do? I would say two places, just if there's, If they want to check out any of my Kindle books, that's habitbooks.com. And like I mentioned before, I have a podcast, and that could be found at self-publishing questions.com or just type in the word self-publishing questions and Stitcher

iTunes and just my show will pop up. Awesome, man. Well, again, thank you so much. And I would love to keep talking and check in maybe, you know, six months a year from now and see how things are going. Definitely and awesome. Now it sounds like a plan. All right.

Thanks, Steve. Thanks. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show. I absolutely love doing this show, as I hope you can tell by the passion that I bring to it on a daily basis. If you enjoy this episode, I'd like to ask one thing of you, you could go to ryanhawk.net. It will launch the show in iTunes. iTunes is the best way to grow the show organically.

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