Ryan Levesque talked about "How to self-publish your way to #1 on the Amazon & USA Today national bestseller lists (and how I've generated $100 million with this formula)".
His book, Ask, has turned into a business. It started out in his mind as a small book in which he'd give away a part of his methodology, but he ended up giving all the information away in the book. Why the complete shift? Because of a life-threatening health situation he experienced. As a survivor, Ryan decided that his legacy would be to reveal to the marketing world his secret family recipe.
- cold traffic: LinkedIn and Facebook advertising
- emailing his internal list
- having partners (affiliates, I believe) help launch and promote the book to their audiences
- launching the book as an amazing, transformational book [wow!!]
- getting some pre-launch reviews from well-known people and revealing those testimonials
- podcast interviews.
Lessons learned during the (pre-)launch phase: reviews are the key element in the success of the book, but you have to ask people to review "artfully and with a little creativity". And his secret: there's a way to overcome negative reviews if you think carefully about the objections people may have about the book and address them directly in the book itself.
Monetization? He actually did it in the book, where he used the ask process: steering people in different directions based on what it is they want. The options are:
- a training course that teaches the methodology in more detail than in the book
- software for those who understand the process and just need the technology to implement it
- the mastermind, a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who pay a monthly fee
- the agency, or the "done for you services", for business owners who prefer to have experts do it for you.
Ryan said that he was very conservative in the way he pushed stuff in the book, because book buyers are very sensitive about this (a piece of advice he got and followed). He has calls to action at the beginning and in a few other strategic places, or where it made sense, as he said, but just a few times.
He sees a book as a great example of the long game: invest today to get dividends for the rest of your life.
Parting advice: If you've got advice to give, say everything you know about it and things will happen.
Thanks for a fabulous webinar, Ryan!