136: Publishing Expert Cris Cawley Reveals Russell Brunson’s High-Ticket Selling Secret

Today, we’re joined by the amazing Cris Cawley, a consulting extraordinaire turned book publishing expert. Cris is the CEO of Game Changer Publishing–a hybrid publishing company that offers a strategic approach to publishing a book for the primary purpose of growing your business.

In this week’s episode, Cris reveals the transformative power of books to drive traffic to high-ticket offers and establish authority, just like Russell Brunson’s success. We also discuss the difference between traditional and modern publishing and how the bestseller book list works.

Plus, Cris breaks down the elements of a successful book launch, what to avoid when publishing, and a whole lot more.

Are you ready to dive into the world of book publishing?

Let’s get started!

Inspiring Quotes

• “You don’t have to be an entrepreneur for a book to bring value to your life in business” – Cris Cawley
• “Sure, you can do paid ads. You can do organic traffic, but a book brings visibility, credibility,  authority, and positioning” – Cris Cawley
• “There’s no added benefit to doing a pre-launch over doing a launch all at once.” – Cris Cawley
• “You cannot conflate the exposure to information with education, understanding, and experience.” –  Brad Weimert
• “The ability to create something is there in the creator space. But as you start to scale, it also becomes clear what some of the shortcomings are of being in that space.” – Brad Weimert

• How Cris got into the publishing space 
• The marketing industry’s evolution 
• Why launch a book
• The truth about the coaching business model
• Harnessing the power of a book
• How Russell Brunson drives traffic with books
• How the bestseller list really works
• 3 different models of book publishing
• Elements of a successful book launch (Hint: It’s not pre-launch!)
• Biggest mistakes people make when launching a book
• Cris’s AI-assisted book publishing software
• Advice for young entrepreneurs
• Keep up with Cris

00:00
Cris Cawley
Russell, his VP of partnerships. Ben just told me the other day, well over half of their customers have come from his books. I can’t tell you the number of doors it’s open for clients. Gotten on a big name podcast that they tried to do for years and couldn’t get on. All of a sudden they published a book and the person’s inviting them on for free.

00:18
Brad Weimert
The different models of book publishing, the through line, across the board is you still have to figure out the fucking marketing 100%.

00:26
Cris Cawley
And the big traditional companies don’t care.

00:28
Brad Weimert
About their marketing, coaching, and being sort of an influencer is not a business model.

00:34
Cris Cawley
Definitely there’s no added benefit of doing a pre launch over doing a. And were outperforming the pre launches like ten to one. It was crazy. A lot of the mistakes are made before they even launched the book.

00:49
Cris Cawley
But the biggest one is, well..congrats.

00:52
Brad Weimert
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine, and even ten figures. I’m Brad Weimert, and as the founder of Easy Pay Direct, I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology, and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics, and strategies that are working today in those multi million, eight, nine, and ten figure businesses. Life can get exciting beyond a million.

01:32
Brad Weimert
Chris, thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have enjoyed your recent journey to Europe.

01:37
Cris Cawley
Oh, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Europe was great. It’s always nice to come home, though, so vacation is always good. Recharge the batteries, but no place like home sweet home. For sure.

01:48
Brad Weimert
I am with you. Before we kicked off, were talking about our lifetime travels and our desire to stay in one place these days.

01:55
Cris Cawley
Yes, absolutely, travel is great, but again, no place like home. It’s nice to come home and have a nice break of my schedule for a few weeks with no travel. And it’s actually, it’s a good thing. So kind of time to unwind and reset.

02:10
Brad Weimert
Well, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts for me. You can do the same for sure.

02:14
Brad Weimert
And let’s talk about business and books. So you have game changer publishing, which has done books for a number of people that I know, a number of clients of easy pay direct. But before we talk about kind of what books offer to businesses, why, that’s something that a bunch of our clients do. What brought you into the publishing space in the first place? How did you get to now?

02:38
Cris Cawley
Sure. Yeah, good question. So, actually, I was speaking on stages and years ago, I started off in 1998, kind of dating myself there, just turned 50. But were speaking and training and doing webinars and traveling seminars. Back in the day, you go to a seminar and there’s 20 speakers, and everybody was selling their own thing and that kind of thing and got connected. After a speech that I did one day with Dean Graziosi and went into Dean’s studio, they offered me to come in and do an infomercial with a book. And we published a book very quickly.

03:13
Brad Weimert
Sounds very dean like.

03:15
Cris Cawley
Yes, very quickly. Put it on tv nationwide. And were selling a book that drew, that drove people to our back end high ticket offers. Again, this is 20 years ago or so, but back then, we would, we had the book were selling, and then inside of the book, were driving people to a $10,000 and $25,000 high ticket offer. So that whole process and that whole experience, I mean, we did very well doing that. But at the end of that, after I sold my business a few years later, the fact that I was using that book to drive readers to a back end high ticket offer to get more clients, bring more credibility, more visibility, really, authority positioning for myself, that was the biggest thing.

03:55
Cris Cawley
And oddly enough, people were asking after that, after I sold my company, people were like, how’d you build a list so quickly? How’d you get all those speaking engagements? How did you get invited to all those webinars? How did you do this? How did you do that? The book was it. The book was the thing. And that’s what helped us drive clients and build our database, ultimately build our company. And so started consulting and consulted on that for some time and then eventually decided to take it under our control in terms of timeframes, quality, all of that. Started our own company, and, yeah, that’s how it was born. So interesting how you meet somebody and one thing changes your whole entire trajectory of your career for the next 20 years.

04:34
Brad Weimert
The high ticket back end and having a big high ticket offer to monetize any front end has become very popular in business today, specifically in sort of the Internet marketing space online. 20 years ago or longer, 25 years ago, in 98, it was a much longer cycle to make that make sense, to put something in a book as a call to action and sell it from the pages of the book. Very different than today, where you can sort of sell the book and then immediately before somebody even reads the book, tell them to go buy some other shit.

05:10
Cris Cawley
And back then, $10,000 was super high ticket. Like super high ticket. Whereas today it’s like you see people with $50,000 offers, $80,000, $100,000 offers. So it was a different path, for sure. And ultimately we drove them to a coaching program. And then once they enrolled in coaching, we actually upsold to a 25k higher ticket program. But the Internet marketing world, you know, it’s funny when I’ve sold two companies and came back and here we are, and it’s like, it’s changed a lot, but it’s still going.

05:40
Cris Cawley
A lot of the same players, a lot of the same people, which is really interesting to me because I thought 20 years ago when I sold them, like, this is, there’s no way this stuff’s going to stick around for 20 years, you know, and then here we are, people are still doing webinars, still doing all the things. So it’s really interesting, it seems to.

05:56
Brad Weimert
Be true that the fundamentals of marketing don’t change. And, you know, you look at, like you’re talking about a book funnel from 98, and people are rolling out book funnels today as we’ll talk about that crush. And one of the differences is the tempo at which things happen and people build on top of it. So if you back out before 98 and you look at Dan Kennedy and before that, even these really long cycle sales of physical newsletters and still books then, but getting attention and driving it to an offer to monetize the initial cost of the ad, which is how all ads and marketing work, right?

06:45
Brad Weimert
But today we see people spinning up these seven, eight plus figure companies very quickly, and they’re built on the backbone of you and doing those things in 98 and Graziosi and doing that and Dan Kennedy before, et cetera, why go into the publishing space versus just launching another thing where you are leveraging a book and selling a high ticket thing on the back end?

07:10
Cris Cawley
Well, honestly, I got, when I was consulting, like, after I sold my first company, I was consulting, the biggest thing that I was getting asked about was the book and kind of like building the thing, right? And so a lot of the clients that I was consulting for, you know, big names you would recognize, they would say, well, I’ve got this thing over here. I’m selling. I’ve got this course I’ve got this coaching program they were just looking for. I felt like more people even today, you know, there’s a lot of things. People are selling a lot of things and services and products, but they still need a way to drive people to that offer. Remember when we started, there was no social media, there was no Amazon.com comma, none of that. Like, there was none of those things.

07:50
Cris Cawley
Facebook didn’t exist, so there was no paid ads. Now, and there’s Google at the time, you know, Google Ads, but. But now you’ve got. People are like, building a brand. You know, people. More people are interested in the influencer thing and building their brand and, you know, going out and creating video content and that sort of thing. So it’s a different play. But I feel like the one thing that’s remained true the whole time is they still need a way to bring people to their back end. Sure, you can do paid ads. You can do organic traffic, but a book brings visibility, it brings credibility, it brings authority, positioning.

08:21
Cris Cawley
I can’t tell you the number of doors it’s open for clients to get that have gotten on big stages or gotten a TEDx talk or gotten on a big name podcast that they tried to do for years and couldn’t get on without paying thousands of dollars. All of a sudden they publish a book and the person’s inviting them on for free, that sort of thing. But I realized early on, I mean, that back then I had three little kids. Now my kids are grown, but it was tough to, like, I didn’t want to be stuck in, like, coaching people every single week and doing one one coaching. I was doing that, and honestly, I just burned out. Burned out from doing coaching call after coaching call.

08:55
Cris Cawley
And I was like, why not just help people with the vehicle that actually helped grow my own business and show them the way? And people were asking, like, I’ll pay you to show me the way. So after doing that 50 times, I was like, I could just start a company. I’m publishing books anyway. One off here, one off there. Why not just start a company? It’s kind of a random thing. And I did it, and then we published 30 books our first month, and I was like, oh, I’m off to the races.

09:20
Brad Weimert
Yeah. Well, what I heard was, you realize that coaching and being sort of an influencer is not a business model, right? And kind of, it’s a way to make money, and you can make a lot of money doing it. But the burnout, this notion of having burnout and realizing that you were still responsible for doing the coaching, running the calls, etcetera. Even if you had group calls and individuals, you still had high ticket individual. You wanted a more stable business model that you didn’t have to be the.

09:51
Cris Cawley
Linchpin of definitely coaching. I mean, it’s an amazing thing, but it’s a beating. Being the coach and being the face and being the brand, it’s no joke. I mean, it’s definitely, I have a lot of, a huge amount of respect for the people doing it. It’s just not something I wanted to do. And as I grew, my business and my life evolved with kids and family and moving and all those things, I was just like, that’s not, I really didn’t want to spend all of my time doing that. And it wasn’t really, it was one of many things I was doing at the time. When I started, I wasn’t like, oh, going all in, gonna have this publishing company, this is gonna be it.

10:23
Cris Cawley
I was doing a few different things and real estate and some different things and I wasn’t really thinking, this is a full time thing. And now it’s grown into a massive company where we’re, I mean, this is like the thing, it’s the only thing. So, yeah, it’s been good.

10:37
Brad Weimert
I dig that. Well, I think it’s important for entrepreneurs or people that are aspiring to be, to recognize sort of the different stages. So, you know, coaching can be a really good opportunity even into the, you know, you look at a Tony Robbins who has a nine figure plus coaching industry or company, but that’s also the elite of the elite at that level. But there are lots that are in the eight figure plus and then there are lots that are a million and there are tons that are six figures. And so if youre trading time for money, the ability to create something is there in that creator space. But as you start to scale that, it also becomes clear what some of the shortcomings are of being in that space 100%.

11:24
Cris Cawley
And its the same with courses. Some people will say a lot of people that are retiring, we get a lot of people that want to, like, they leave being a trauma surgeon and they’re going to go consult and speak now. So they want to have a book out there to do that. And they don’t recognize the difference between like courses, consulting, coaching. But with consulting and coaching, yes, you’re trading your time for money. At least with courses, you’re creating something one time, and for as long as that information is relevant, you can make money on it. Again and again. So you do the work once and you make money again and again. I don’t like doing things where there’s a ceiling.

11:58
Cris Cawley
And with coaching especially, I mean now it’s a little different because a lot more people doing one to many, but you still have a glass ceiling. You can, you have only at so many hours in a day, right? So after you have so many clients, it’s like, where else do you go from there in terms of growth? And as a typical entrepreneur, if there’s no growth potential, I’m out.

12:19
Brad Weimert
I’m envisioning a whole bunch of shit talking course creators and coaches in the comments right now.

12:28
Cris Cawley
I’m not down, I’m just saying this was my personal. When you said, well, why this over that? That was my take. But obviously all of our clients have coaching, they have courses. Every single one of our clients have those things. So I’m definitely not bashing it. It’s just, I’m just saying it wasn’t for me because it was. I just looked at the different pros and cons of having courses or having coaching or all the things and where I was for me in my life, I was like, this is, I’m going to take this model instead.

12:58
Brad Weimert
Obviously, like Easy Pay Direct has thousands of clients that are content creators, coaches, consultants, etcetera. I love the business model, especially for people getting out of a nine to five or creating a lifestyle as a human. What I really care about is that people are clear on the outcomes that they’re after and that their actions are in alignment with the outcomes that they’re after. And so being very clear on what that end outcome is super important so that you know what actions have to be taken. And very often people get into a business model with a complete lack of understanding of what actually is needed and then they find themselves mid swing in it and they’re like, oh shit, I didn’t really want all this.

13:41
Cris Cawley
Yes, that’s exactly what you just said. Like in alignment with what, like what you think it is and what you’re getting into is in alignment with what you. How you want to live your life and the time that you have. And I mean, again, I was a mom of three small kids at the time it was tough. It was like, I don’t have bandwidth for all of this, right. So I sold my company and moved in a different direction.

14:01
Brad Weimert
No question about it. Are you still doing real estate investment at all?

14:05
Cris Cawley
A little bit. Little bit. Getting back into the. It’s funny, after stepping away for so many years, stepping back into the Airbnb space. No desire to be like a landlord again with apartment buildings and houses and single family homes. Zero desire for that again. I went through the whole subprime market that crashed in 2008 and the whole thing and had lots of properties, so not interested in being a landlord that way. Not really interested in flipping so much. But the Airbnb market does interest me and honestly more so it’s kind of for selfish reasons, buying Airbnbs in areas that I would want to go visit myself. Have a house here, have a house there, and then just Airbnb them out to, you know, pay the. Pay the mortgage here and there. So that’s kind of what we’re looking to.

14:50
Brad Weimert
Yeah, I’m with you. I’m huge. I’m very involved in real estate and I’m huge on sort of the secondary and tertiary benefits of a given property. So it’s like, here’s the core use case. But what else? What other value does it provide to me? And very often it is a place for friends or family to stay or a commercial location that I have some other alignment with. Right. It offers me some business opportunity. Otherwise, that’s my, that’s the fun thing about real estate to me is sort of like what else it offers.

15:20
Cris Cawley
Yeah, it’s great. It’s great. And I’ll be honest, I’ve been looking at some other models, not on purpose, but I have a daughter that’s getting married in the fall. You know, went to the, we started going wedding venue shopping, looking at all these wedding venues. And once I started seeing that these wedding venues are booked up for two years, three years, five years, I’m like, wow, interesting. So you could go buy this property. They’re charging, you know, ten to 30 grand a day. You know, you rent it up, whatever. Most of them were rented out, like literally five days a week for at least a year out. I’m thinking, I was doing the math in my head, going, this might be an interesting model, too. Like buy something like a wedding venue type space with villas or airbnbs around it, you know?

16:04
Cris Cawley
So, yeah, that kind of thing. Kind of on the hunt and on the lookout for something like that, too. Not that I want to be in the wedding venue space genre, and, you know, that’s not really what I want to do with my life, but wouldn’t be that hard to hire someone and have the manage agenda. So you’re kind of thinking outside of the box that way with real estate as well. And looking for a property like that. So it’s fun.

16:23
Brad Weimert
That’s great. Well, I think that’s a, I think that’s a big part of the game, is first understanding where all the opportunities are, and then at some point it’s like, how many can you actually bite off? And what do you have to say no to stay focused?

16:38
Cris Cawley
Right, right. Well, that’s our entrepreneur type a people brain, you know what I mean? It’s like I’m always looking. It’s funny, my husband always goes, you’re always looking at everything like a business. Like everything we do, everything you look at, it’s like you’re always looking at it through business lens. And I’m like, I am not. It’s not on purpose. I’m just wired that way. Right. I don’t, I don’t purposely. I wasn’t going in going, I think I might buy a wedding venue. But, you know, it’s just, that’s the way our brains work. Good or for good or for Badlanda.

17:04
Brad Weimert
Yeah. Makes me want to go look at real estate and destinations I want to spend time in. But before I do that, let’s get back to book publishing. So game changer publishing, why does somebody want a book in their business? And are there certain business models that should do it versus shouldn’t?

17:20
Cris Cawley
You don’t have to be an entrepreneur for a book to bring value to your life in business. But I feel like entrepreneurs, it really does because most entrepreneurs have a really great story. Like there’s all these, you know, remember the, what was the show back in the day with Donnie Deutsch? The big idea, I think, was called the big idea. Like, people come on, these entrepreneurs are like shark tank, you know, these entrepreneurs come on, they tell their stories. They’re doing their thing. So all these entrepreneurs, it’s really cool. It’s actually really fascinating because we work with 7, 8, 9, 10 figure entrepreneurs that have really incredible stories to tell. Like they’ve been to hell and back, right?

17:54
Cris Cawley
And they’ve got this, they’ve come out on top and they’re doing these things and they’re talking about the struggle and what they’re facing, what they’re doing. But they’re using it primarily as a tool to tell their stories because when, you know, facts tell. Stories sell. When people can relate to something, they will engage. Right? So you’ve got that piece of it, and then you’ve got this tactical piece over here. Like people always want to know, how did you do it? How did you get from here to here. Okay. You built a $30 million Amazon business. How’d you do it? How would I do that? Right. So they’re looking at that from that perspective, too.

18:26
Cris Cawley
So we’ve been able to find this kind of, like, niche market where we only serve entrepreneurs, and it’s mostly people telling their stories, but then that they have something over here where they’re driving the client to. So there’s like, there’s a tactical piece of it. Like, here’s the how to of how I did it. Here’s my story, here’s the how to, and here’s how you can do it, too. That’s who we’ve served primarily. But I will say we get a lot of, like, doctors, lawyers, accountants, people like that, too, who’ve left their nine to five or sold their business or retired, but they’re not ready to really hang it up and do nothing.

18:59
Cris Cawley
So they’re like, oh, I’m gonna consult, or I wanna speak, or I wanna do TEDx talks, or I wanna be on that stage, or want to do podcast interviews, or I wanna have my own podcasts. Right? So they’re using the book as a way to get their message out to the world, their story, but also use it as a tool to drive people to a back end, whatever the back end is. And quite frankly, if someone says, I don’t have coaching software, an app, they don’t have anything, it’s usually not a good fit. Those aren’t. We don’t publish their books because book publishing, it’s not like you just quit your, whatever, your $250,000 a year job, and you can publish a book and make millions. It doesn’t work like that. Right. The money’s really made.

19:38
Cris Cawley
I mean, if you sell a dollar 20 book, you have to sell a whole lot of $20 books to make a million bucks. Right. So it’s really using, harnessing the power of the book to drive people to the back end. So. And typically it’s coaching, consulting, some sort offer, a software, an app, something. There’s got to be something there. And the book has to be done a certain way to get the people from, hey, I’m going to read this book to, oh, I’m going to raise my hand for more information, that kind of thing. There is a kind of a method to the madness, I feel like.

20:09
Brad Weimert
Got it. I’m going to summarize. What I heard was game changer is largely about creating a book that serves as lead gen for some other high ticket offer for a given business. Or entrepreneur. The point that’s been highlighted quite a bit is this high ticket nature. It’s a high ticket offer on the back end. But you also mentioned stuff like a software on the back end, which is usually low ticket recurring, a low dollar amount that happens over and over. Are there certain business models that lend themselves to this and certain that don’t. Can you think of some that would be like, hey, if this is your model or if this is how you operate, you don’t want to write a book for a lead gen, you know.

20:51
Cris Cawley
There’s a lot of people that don’t fall into that model that want to, like, tell their story, right? But the people that are looking to tell their story, many times, it’s a legacy play, right? It’s like, I just want to leave my legacy. I want my, all of my company, you know, employees to remember this. I want my children to remember this about me and what I did. We had a guy that, like, invented something with, he didn’t invent the Roth Ira, but something about that. Like he was turning 100 years old, and he’s like, look, I just want to, before I die, I just want to document all this. And it’s kind of like a legacy play. He didn’t care about the money, didn’t care about book sales, none of that. It’s just a legacy.

21:27
Cris Cawley
I mean, I would never say, oh, you should never write a book. I mean, there’s always people that can come and write a book. I just feel like the most, if you’re writing it for monetization purposes or growth or branding, that’s really more our niche. Whereas the people over here who are like, I just want to tell my life story, you know, like a biography or an autobiography. And I’m not downplaying that. I’m just saying that’s really not what we specialize in or what we’re good at. So if someone comes to us like that or they want to write whatever, a certain kind of book that we don’t publish, we try to refer them elsewhere, because really, our sweet spot and what we’re really good at is what we’ve talked about with the entrepreneurs and the back and the high ticket.

22:07
Cris Cawley
And it’s not just high ticket. I mean, Russell Brunson’s. And I know you know Russell, but his vp of partnerships, Ben, just told me the other day that over, well over half of their consumers or their customers have come from his books. So. And yes, ClickFunnels is a dollar 97 software or 297, whatever. Now they have different levels and price points. But I’m just saying over half, that was pretty fascinating to me. I was like, wow. Over half have come from his books alone. And it’s interesting. So it doesn’t have to be high ticket, but you would, why waste the opportunity to. They read the book, they love it, they’re engaged. Why waste the opportunity to not direct them to what it is you have or you’re offering on the back end?

22:53
Brad Weimert
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, and I think in the case of something like a click, funnels, you’re looking at LTV, right? It’s a $97 product, but for a lot of people, it’s the type of product that you build the business around. And so once you’re locked in with it, usually most software is the recurring die after three to six months. But something you’re building like that on, maybe it’s 16 months, you know, maybe it’s two years, I don’t know. But a lot of people, once they’re locked in for fucking ever.

23:22
Cris Cawley
Yeah, well, it was ClickFunnels. I mean, we’re the same way. We have over a thousand funnels. And here and another account where, you know, there’s several hundreds of funnels, we can’t, it’s like there’s a big stickiness factor. Right. It’s hard to get out of, you know, not that I want to get out, but I’m just saying it’s hard to, it’s built there, so it would be very difficult for me to move anywhere else. So I feel like they have a unique advantage there versus just some random software that you use one time, for one thing, that kind of thing. And some people are like, you know, I don’t really care about products and services in the back end. I don’t even want to sell coaching or courses. I just want to speak on more stages, right.

23:57
Cris Cawley
I want a book that I can send to all these people that are promoting stage promoters and say, with that little handwritten note saying, hey, here’s my book. I’d love to be on your stage. And quite frankly, that’s so grassroots and old school. But it works. It works really well. We’ve had tons of clients who’ve used it to get on certain podcasts that are charging $30,000, and all of a sudden they write this best selling book. They wrote a little handwritten note, send it to the head person that’s doing the podcast, and they’re on the podcast for free. It’s interesting how it works. It does open doors. We’ve seen it open literally thousands of doors over the past 20 years, for sure.

24:35
Brad Weimert
How important is it to hit one of the best seller lists? And what’s the difference in the list between being, like, an Amazon category bestseller versus a New York Times bestseller or whatever?

24:47
Cris Cawley
Last year, in November, the Wall Street journalist actually went away. So we used to get our clients to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. USA Today bestseller list. Well, two years ago, USA Today took away their best seller list, came back six months later, a very changed list. More indie. Just a different, totally different ballgame. And then the next year, there’s a company called Bookscan that has all this data when someone makes a bestseller, because a lot of people are like, oh, I want to be this. I want to be this bestseller, that bestseller. Quite frankly, let’s be honest. No one’s like, oh, hey, Brad, you made the best seller list. Which list did you make? No one really cares. Right. Which list it was.

25:29
Cris Cawley
But with when Bookscan got sold to Circana, and Circana basically supplies that data to the Wall Street Journal, to USA Today, New York Times. They basically say, here’s the number of book sales that these books made tripled or quadrupled the amount of the contract that they’re paying to get that data. And so Wall Street Journal just said, eh, we’re not doing that, right? And so Wall Street Journal, the list went away. So here were providing, getting people, marketing people, until they hit that list over and over. And then it went away. And were like, now what? Right? So really, all that’s left now is New York Times and Amazon. And Amazon. You know, quite frankly, again, if someone hits a bestseller list on Amazon, it’s a different game than it is on Barnes and Noble.

26:14
Cris Cawley
It is a different game than it is on New York Times. New York Times is actually chosen by an editorial team. Yes, sales matter. But there are people like, Ed Milet, for example, is a good one, right? His book had like 100,000 plus sales, didn’t hit the New York Times bestseller list. Why is that? Right. So it just goes to show you can have a bazillion sales and still not hit the New York Times. I mean, there’s a lot of factors that come into play. The biggest one being there’s a group of people that vote whether it makes it or not. So it’s completely out of your control. So we don’t ever offer that or sell that because we have no control. We could go get a gazillion sales and you still don’t make it. So that’s not a service you can sell. Right.

26:57
Cris Cawley
But with Amazon bestseller, we market every single book that we publish to bestseller. And yes, it’s a totally different game. It’s not as prestigious, but quite frankly, again, when they have a book, if it’s marketed and they’ve hit best selling author, they can call themselves a best selling author. That’s really what they’re after. We don’t make it a bigger deal than it is. We’re not trying to out there, be out there and go, oh, it’s such a big deal, because it’s really not a huge deal. But I will say this. Every stage, like every event that I. You travel to, a lot of events. I do, too. Every single person gets up on that stage. Best selling author. Best selling author. Best selling author. Best selling author. Every single one. So it’s just kind of a.

27:38
Cris Cawley
I feel like for a lot of these people, it’s just a, okay, I did it. I hit best selling author. But on Amazon, yes, it’s a different game because it’s category driven and there’s 16,000 categories. Right. And it’s. Their algorithm is set for an hour. Algorithm. So every hour, new best seller, new bestseller. New bestseller. Right. Those lists turn over every single hour so we don’t try to hide or I say, you know, there’s no, like, secret. Like, look, here’s how it works. Here’s what it does. Here’s the value and the benefit. And to some people, they’re really excited about that. Some people could care less. Right. But, yeah, it’s a really good question because they get. We get asked that a lot, you know?

28:18
Brad Weimert
Damn. So Amazon is giving a new bestseller every hour in 16,000 different categories.

28:24
Cris Cawley
That’s right. It’s an hourly algorithm. Now, the thing is that I don’t feel like is, okay, if you’re putting them in a category, like, let’s say, like, we have a guy that a name you would know, he’s been number one in business consulting since last July. Okay, so that’s really cool. Business consulting is a big category. It’s a good category. But what I don’t like about a lot of these little companies that come along and they sell people like, oh, we’re going to hit bestseller. And they put them in, like, the dog category, dog toy category. When their book is about consulting, I’m like, seriously? So that’s like, weird and cheating, but I feel like that’s going to go away. Amazon recently has and Ingram all the places are upgrading from human reviewers to AI.

29:08
Cris Cawley
And so that’s actually stopping a lot of that, which is good. And there’s some good and some bad that’s coming with that. But the good news is that the cheating and putting someone in, like, a dog toy category when their book is about business, ridiculous, right? But that is, I feel like that’s for sure going away now that things are more AI driven versus driven by a human being having to review every single book.

29:33
Brad Weimert
Yeah, but to your point, and that’s obviously a ridiculous example, putting them in a dog category.

29:39
Cris Cawley
But it happens all the time.

29:41
Brad Weimert
Right. But doing something like a smaller business vertical than business consulting is probably an easy win to get somebody on the best seller list.

29:55
Cris Cawley
It’s an easier win. Yes, for sure. And honestly, people will say, well, how easy is it? Or how hard is it? And quite frankly, because it changes so frequently and it’s every hour, you don’t really know that until right before they launch. Right before they launch. Like, for instance, if were in self help or personal development and Tony Robbins decides to launch his book in self help that week, he’s going to win because he’s got a 18 million person email list or whatever it is, right? So he’s going to be, he’s going to get the number one person in sales. He’s going to get all of that. But it depends on, you know, what, how many affiliates you have, what email marketing has been done, what ads have been done.

30:33
Cris Cawley
And the thing is, once you hit bestseller, it’s actually not that hard to maintain if you do ads and not even Facebook or Instagram ads, but Amazon ads. So Amazon is more favorable. We’ve seen more of a, about a seven to one return on Amazon ads overall in general, versus a two to one return on, like, a Facebook and Instagram ad. So I feel like Amazon favors authors who are doing that and then coming back and advertising on their platform. So it’s easy to maintain and keep it there, which is, I mean, it’s not easy, but you have to spend money to do so. But still, if you’re spending, like, I’ve got one client spending, you know, 20 grand a month, but he’s making, you know, six figures a month. So he’s getting like a seven to one return. So it makes sense, right?

31:20
Cris Cawley
And then he’s got this best selling book. And so when people decide to come in and join his $50,000 mastermind, they look him up and it’s like, oh, he’s everywhere, right? Best selling author, best selling book. He’s got all these things and it helps him grow his business.

31:34
Brad Weimert
How important is it to pick a publishing path? Meaning does it matter whether you self publish versus use a traditional publisher? How does that weigh into kind of the book launch model?

31:48
Cris Cawley
Yeah, great question. So there’s three paths. There’s kind of like traditional old school path and the traditional old school path. I feel like a lot of people are like, oh, I want to write a query letter and send it out to my agent and him, send it out to all the publishers and somebody pick me and pay me $100,000 advanced. And I will tell you, I mean, we work with some of the biggest names in the business, even some celebrities, celebrity athletes, people like that and big names. And if they don’t have an email list or some way to sell books like our massive following, they’re not getting an advance. And what many people don’t realize is that advance is a draw against book sales. So you’re getting an advance and then you’re going to actually owe them money.

32:30
Cris Cawley
If your book doesn’t sell, you’re going to have to pay back some of that money. So it’s a draw against how many sales you make. So it’s like the old school way to do things. And it’s very, very rare if you’re not a Tony Robbins, it’s very rare that you’re getting an advance per se. But there’s that model. And I feel like that model, obviously, it’s traditional. It’s been around for 100 years, but it’s very outdated. It’s been around people since the eighties. They don’t do things differently. They don’t market your book, they don’t care about if it hits bestseller, they don’t care about what happens to it on the back end. They own and control your content. So there’s that model, right? And then there’s self publishing. Pretty obvious.

33:09
Cris Cawley
You go onto Amazon, you self publish your book, you upload it, you wait for sales. Unless you’re a marketer. It’s cheap, it’s easy. But I will say a lot of clients, when they self publish, once they hire a good editor, once they hire a designer, once they hire someone to build out their funnel, once they hire someone to format their book and do all of those things, you’ve spent more money than you would have spent if you just gone to a publisher. And then the third option is hybrid publishing, which is what we basically take. What? Like we’re an actual imprint. You’re not self publishing. We actually have an imprint, but we take the both the best worlds, the both of what traditional old school publishing has to offer, the best of what self publishing has to offer.

33:49
Cris Cawley
Combine the two to give the biggest and best outcome for the client. Like our clients, as entrepreneurs, they want to own and maintain control and the copyright to their content. Obviously they want to be able to change it. They want to be able to client that. They turn her book into a movie, a lifetime movie, whatever, they want the rights to it. So whatever happens, they own and control the copyright. Their rights. They can change the content. They pay a one time fee, but they don’t pay whatever 30% to 60% or 80% of their royalties in the back end to the publisher. So it’s like they’re still paying a one time fee, but they get the lion’s share of the income on the backend.

34:26
Cris Cawley
And then the other thing I would say is unique about what we do is our clients aren’t really writing books, they’re actually recording them. So we actually write out a detailed outline. We speak the book, we transcribe it, and we do what’s called a developmental edit. So it’s a really heavy, not just, hey, check the spelling. It’s like syntax, tonality, flow, readability, all the things. So that’s like the third way and third option. And there’s all three of those options, but there’s a lot of confusion because when people go to publish, they’re like, oh, I’ve got to go get an agent. You know what I mean? Well, maybe where are I going to self publish? And this is what I’m expecting.

35:02
Cris Cawley
I feel like we, because were marketers before were publishers, we understand we’re trying to help the client monetize and maximize the lifetime value of that book and the back end and the whole entire, you know, as many leads as possible, as much money as possible from the act of publishing the book.

35:20
Brad Weimert
Well, I think you’ve got, what you outlined is one for you. It’s not just the book publishing, right? For your company. It’s not just the book publishing, it’s about the monetization engine. But relative to just the different models of book publishing, the through line across the board is you still have to figure out the fucking marketing. And people have this misconception that if they get a traditionally, and I think it’s eroding a little, but they think that if they get a traditional publisher, they are buying the marketing. And the fact is they’re not at all there was a time when they were buying distribution, but now, because everything’s done online, you’re not even really buying that. You might buy your way into a couple stores, but not really.

36:06
Cris Cawley
You’re buying your way into, hey, when you’re done, here’s five PR firms. Go hire one of them. And all of them are like 90 to 180 day contracts. You’re going to pay ten to $25,000 a month and you’re going to pay that money to a PR firm and see what you get. And the big traditional companies don’t care about the marketing, but everybody thinks that’s what I’m going to sell millions of books and I’m going to get millions of dollars and it just doesn’t work that way.

36:31
Brad Weimert
Nope. That’s been my experience, too. So tell me what the elements are of a good book launch.

36:38
Cris Cawley
The one thing that’s most important, because a lot of people are like, stuck in this, we hear it all the time. They’re like, yeah, I want to do a pre launch. I’m like, you want to do a pre launch? Because you saw someone else do it and you think that was like successful for them, but they don’t even know why they want to do a pre launch. And pre launch is kind of like, again, it’s sort of like an outdated model. It doesn’t do you any. There’s no added benefit of doing a pre launch over doing a launch all at once where basically any affiliates you’ve done any ads you’ve run getting everybody, we get everybody together on. We do like a Zoom launch. We started doing these in Covid and were outperforming the pre launches like ten to one. It was crazy.

37:20
Cris Cawley
But now what, and what it is, it’s just the biggest because Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all of these platforms where you sell these books through distribution channels, because we also put books into distribution channels and it’s like 40,000 places where they sell their book. But once you have all these different places, they favor hourly sales.

37:39
Cris Cawley
So the more sales you can get in a small period of time, you don’t have to be start pre selling your book and then all of a sudden turn it on to publish and then all of a sudden, okay, all those sales count, you can actually invite everybody, build up the hype, invite everybody and do like a Zoom launch, do the same thing, and then continue that momentum with ads and an email marketing list at the same time, which is what we do, and it accomplishes the same thing. And honestly, it’s better because the longevity of it is longer when it’s done that way versus over time.

38:12
Cris Cawley
Like, hey, I’ve been inviting people to a funnel for seven months, but if everybody’s emailing, posting on social media, texting, doing all their sms, all their campaigns at once, that’s where you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck. That’s the big, that’s like where they get the best results. And then to maintain that, it’s doing Amazon ads. The other thing is when you do an email campaign, you’re sending out a link. So to Amazon, it looks like, okay, they came from a link. But when you do a launch and people are organically searching for your book, searching for the name of your book, searching for the title of your book, purchasing it, and then at some point also leaving a review that’s a verified purchase and review that actually behooves the author in a big way.

38:54
Cris Cawley
So there’s a lot of these kind of minuscule, silly little things that all add up to a big thing, but that’s where they get the biggest bang for their buck and the biggest results. It’s just people don’t know what they don’t know. It’s nothing hard or complicated. It’s just these dumb little things that after you do a few thousand of these, you go, oh, here’s the thing. Here’s what, here’s the magic sauce.

39:16
Brad Weimert
What are the biggest mistakes people make when they’re trying to launch a book on their own?

39:21
Cris Cawley
Oh, for sure. Well, like you said, most of the people aren’t marketers, right? Or they have some marketing experience, but they think that the way they market their webinar is how they’re going to market their book, right. So it’s a little different. Book marketing is a little bit different, I would say, too. The one thing we see a lot is people don’t put as much consideration into their title and their covers are everything. Like the first impression of your cover. And people like, we see people now that will bring us covers like, yeah, I created this in canva and we’re like, ugh, ouch. Or I edited it myself, you know, my brother in law edited it. I’m like, ugh.

39:57
Cris Cawley
You know, or you see it formatted and, you know, when you open a book, like, the chapters are supposed to start on the right side and their chapters are starting on the left side. I’m like, who formatted this book? You know, they do dumb things like that, and it’s like, it’s a credibility play. Right. That you put that out to the world, you globally distribute it. Now it’s in 40,000 locations. It’s hard to take back, right? So it’s out there and every, in everybody’s hands. And if it’s got typos or a crappy cover or it’s formatted improperly or wasn’t edited, well, it’s a bad look. It actually has the opposite effect, you know. So I feel like the mistakes are, a lot of the mistakes were made before they even launched the book, but the biggest one is, well, oh, I’m a marketer.

40:36
Cris Cawley
They don’t understand the ins and outs and the nuances of a distribution platform and of Amazon itself, even the settings and how to set it up and the SEO and the meta tags and just again, dumb little bitty things, but little bitty things that add up to be a great big thing and determine the ultimate success or the lack of success of their book launch.

40:57
Brad Weimert
Yeah, that’s super helpful. You mentioned before we kicked off that you are working on a software right now. Tell me about the software.

41:10
Cris Cawley
Yeah, it’s really cool. It’s been in development for about a year and a half. It’s called publish AI, which is really cool. Everyone’s like, how did you get that name? We had to pay a good amount for the domain, but super excited for what’s to come. Ultimately, we set off thinking were going to help publish a, or help create a book publishing platform, just a tool to help people publish books, a tool to, not again, we talked a little bit about this before, but not something that generates, I’m not looking for, hey, pop yourself into this AI algorithm and it’s going to spit out a book. Nobody wants to read that, right? Nobody wants to read emails written by that. Nobody wants to read social media content just written by AI with no humanity, tonality or stories or emotion behind it, right?

41:58
Cris Cawley
But were thinking, hey, let’s publish a book publishing software. Let’s create a book publishing software that would help people. It would be AI assisted, not AI generated. So it helped them create a really solid table of contents, help them create a winning title, help them rework their subtitle, things like that. And as we got, like, I would say halfway along were like, we use these guys from Google. There used to be AI engineers at Google ten years ago. So I know everyone’s like, oh, ChatGPT, Claude. But guess what, Siri and Alexa, all of those things are AI too. And these guys have been in AI for ten years at Google. So they’re based here in the US and they’re really good prompt engineers. Right. They’re really good at prompt engineering.

42:41
Cris Cawley
And they were like, you know, the book piece is cool, but really, the content overall is really what people are. You know, the emails, the newsletters, the social media content, the videos, courses, all of these things. And so we sort of, like, instead of launching it and just doing books, we waited. We’ve been in development for about a year and a half, and now we’re going to make it just a content publishing software which will help people. It’s AI assisted, but we’ve got other, like our own language model and some things built in, some really amazing prompts. And it’s kind of like wizard driven, where it pulls them through, but it’s going to help them create good content. Again, not something that just spit out by AI, something that actually used a little bit of their brainpower.

43:23
Cris Cawley
Combined with our prompts, it’s going to create an amazing product that it spits out at the end. So, yeah, I’m really excited. It’s been. Software development’s no easy thing. It’s a beating, I’m not going to lie, but we’re really close to getting to beta and excited to just bring that to the world and bring in for us, it’s a continuity model, or bringing it in as a continuity model because we don’t have that in our business, but excited to just help. It’s going to bring a lot of value to the people that we serve, and we’re excited about that.

43:57
Brad Weimert
Cool. Yep. Software development is an interesting game.

44:02
Cris Cawley
Yeah, it’s brutal. It’s brutal and it’s never done well.

44:06
Brad Weimert
You have been involved in a bunch of businesses over time. You’ve been doing this a while. A lot of people that listen are starting on their journey, or there’s a wide range, but what advice would you give a 25 year old entrepreneur starting something today?

44:25
Cris Cawley
I think the biggest thing that helped me initially, and it’s kind of cliche, but was investing in a mentor that showed me somebody who I know who I knew had been where I wanted to go. Right. He had been where I want to go, and he had done it already. So I, you know, I just. Learning from people because there’s a lot of courses and things, but. But I feel like you need the ability to ask what you’re gonna fall, you’re gonna fail, you’re gonna, you know, mess up and you’re gonna, you need someone to ask questions to like taking courses and such. It’s great to read books and do courses, but you need someone, whatever, a coach, a mentor, whatever you want to call it, that you can go to and say, hey, this didn’t work out.

45:09
Cris Cawley
I did this, but I need to do this. Can you walk me through that? Or whatever you need that kind of support, right? It took me a while to gain the confidence to invest money in myself, but once I did, I was like, God, what was I waiting on? Like, that was the best thing I ever did now because I got there way faster, you know, just, and it was like way easier, you know, it’s falling down, but it was like, oh, here’s how you get back up and here’s what you need to do and here’s who you need to call. And I was like, had I known that early on, I would have invested way earlier, I was just too chicken because I thought, oh, it costs a lot of money and it might not work.

45:43
Brad Weimert
A lot of entrepreneurs are afraid to invest in a mentor or a coaching program because of the unknown outcome to it. And also, in fairness, there are a lot of shitty ass people out there selling information. You know, I think the part of what reinforces that belief system, and I hear this a lot from the youngest entrepreneurial generation, is this idea that they are the most educated group that has existed yet, because information is everywhere and they grew up with information being everywhere. And I will say, while that statement independently is true, you cannot conflate the exposure to information with education and understanding and experience. And so what you’re buying with mentorship is somebody that has actually been down that road. I want a brain surgeon that has done 1000 surgeries, not one that has read books about it to no end.

46:50
Brad Weimert
Well, Cris, I love it. It’s great to get some time in. Where do you want to point people? Where should people find out more about you or Game Changer publishing or the new software or whatever?

47:01
Cris Cawley
No, absolutely. Gamechangerpublishing.com or www.publish.ai. We’ll have more information about the software on the website soon. Or just follow me on Instagram @OfficialCrisCawley is my Instagram handle. And yeah, I would love to. Absolutely. Any way we can serve people or help people in any way. Even conversations like this, you know, just having a conversation sometimes about things like this, anything with marketing, entrepreneurship, all the things I very much appreciate and value. And of course, if someone wants to publish a book or market their book, you know, we know a few things. So happy to serve or help, however we can.

47:39
Brad Weimert
Great. Cris, thank you so much. I appreciate the time.

47:43
Cris Cawley
Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me here today.

47:46
Brad Weimert
I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I enjoyed doing it. I need your help. There are three places you can find Beyond A Million, the podcast itself beyondamillion.com, which has some cool free resources, including a free course. And we finally launched the Beyond A Million YouTube channel. I would love it if you would go there and subscribe. And if you don’t want to, you still would probably enjoy seeing the visual content. Check it out. YouTube.com/beyondamillion.