How To Create A Saleable Book In 30 Days - Ken Dunn - FHR #245

Why Dave Decided to talk to Ken:

Ken Dunn is an international speaker, author, and the CEO and founder of GoRead.com; a social media and ecommerce community for readers and a support platform for authors. He is also credited for starting a wonderful foundation: GoRead Children's Literacy Foundation; helping to fight illiteracy around the world. Ken's passion is helping experts turn their experience into highly profitable authority platforms. He has written and published 5 books, selling over 300,000 copies in 10 languages. Specializing in book publishing, Ken has developed a structured plan that helps authors and other people create a book in 30 days.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

• Why write a book (1:55)
• Breaking down book writing (9:45)
• The book writing dual with James P Friel and Dean Holland (12:20)
• The 10 minute writing bursts (19:30)
• Dragon Dictate App (20:15)

Quotable Moments:

"When people are starting to write books and they think about it, they immediately get overwhelmed."

"It’s ok to put everything you know in a book."

"Your book will either promote you or expose you."

Other Tidbits:

Writing a book opens up many doors to different avenues of income. Get more tips from Ken on the Podcast: Just The Tips episode 44 - “How To Write a Not-Terrible Book” with James P Friel and Dean Holland.

Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

Speaker 1:     00:00       Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Air. Many

Speaker 2:     00:18       is going to be a fun ride today. Hold on. Tight to. I want to introduce you guys to a dear friend of mine who has been crushing it in an area that's been near and dear to our hearts, and that's an old book publishing area. So Ken Dunn, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Dave can hear me okay? I can. Thanks. So for those guys, you may not know Ken. I basically. He's one of those nice guys from Canada. Every. Everybody from Canada is nice. I don't know what it is. Everyone I know from Canada, every Canadian has a nice guy, but this guy has been trying to figure out this whole digital marketing thing for years. Ironically, he acts. He's been crushing it. He's killing it. He's a CEO and Co founder of [inaudible] Dot com, which is a publishing platform more important that he's an author.

Speaker 2:     00:55       He teaches other people how to write their books and I really want to make sure you guys understand the value behind this. That's why I wanted to have ken on the show today. It's helped me understand not only the value of writing a book, but more importantly falling kind of a system on how to do it quickly and that's one of the things that Ken's going to talk to you about. In addition to that, we're going to talk a little bit about the JSP freel and Dean hollins challenge on book. Writing them down. Will fill the on some of the details there. So Ken, welcome. Let's kind of dive right in.

Speaker 3:     01:21       Uh, thanks a lot. Yeah, I'm excited. I know we're going to talk about some really great stuff about how any entrepreneur could write a book fast and write a good quality book and then why they should do that. But I can't wait to get into the dual. Between James P dot Farrell and dean Holland Lean hollandaise sauce. These guys are just keep trade out of it. Writing books right now.

Speaker 2:     01:42       Alright, so let's tell people a little bit as far as why books. I mean this is one of the things people are like, oh, I don't want to write a book. Everybody always says I got a book inside me, but I just don't want. It's too much pain to get it out.

Speaker 3:     01:55       Yeah, well I, you know, anybody that's in the ecosystem sees what you guys are doing and realizes that if they can get the book out of them, there's just a massive opportunity. The hot thing that everybody seems to be doing right now is a free plus shipping offer and those are going really well for a lot of people, but the challenge is actually writing the book and it's kind of funny. I got to take you back and tell you a little bit of the story in order to help you to really understand my passion for it. Dave, you know, this was a police detective in the past. What if I go back 18 years, I was a homicide cop and the chief interrogator, but major police department in Canada called, it's an Ottawa again and I walked away from policing. I started a business with a really amazing mentor in the mortgage industry in just three short years. We grew it from nothing to $300, million in sales and we sold it and it happened so fast that when I left that I don't know how I got into my mind, but I decided I was going to become a professional speaker, travel all over the world and I was going to write a book and one part happened for me. The other part sucked.

Speaker 3:     03:03       I started traveling everywhere, but man, it took me 18 months to write my first book and then I gave up 10 pounds of blood easily. You ever tried to write a book yourself? Dave? I've tried three times, almost four times and I've given up every time. Honestly, I. There's so many other easier. That's why I do a podcast. I can't. I just hate writing. Yeah, it was painful for me. I never had any help. I mean, we're talking 18 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I just sat down and I wanted to write this book that would teach business owners how to create more sales in their businesses, some good old fashioned sales techniques and I'd start and I'd stop and I'd start and I'd stop and even thinking about it. Now I'm getting tongue tied, but what's even crazier is like 18 months later I finally get this book done.

Speaker 3:     03:58       Then I go to the Internet and I'm looking for somebody to help me publish it and I've found a publisher who swore to me that it would become a best seller and I would. They were the right choice for me and Gosh, they had me at hello, and then they paid them $80,000 to edit it, to proofread it, to publish it, to print it and some big elaborate marketing strategy. And, and it was published with 280 grammar and spelling errors and it was a freaking disaster. We sold eight copies, printed, 10,992 copies of this book in my basement. My wife hates me for $10,000 a book is how much it cost to publish those. Oh baby. It was three bucks a copy. So $30,000 went into printing and I only sold eight of them. I still have the other ones though. She keeps telling me to get rid of them.

Speaker 3:     04:56       I guess I should let you know what's really interesting about that is that I, by that time I was already speaking all over the world and so I had to get this book done because I had already started talking to people about it and I didn't know what to do, but I remember jumping onto an airplane. I was heading to Asia on a trip and I went into the Hudson news to grab some snacks in there. In the store was a book sitting on the counter. I mean how many times Dave, have you been in an airport and you're going into the Hudson news or one of the snacks doors and there's a book there, catches your eye and you just grab it and throw it into whatever you're buying all the time. So the. So the book, you may have actually heard of this title, but the book was called how to make people like you in 90 seconds or less.

Speaker 3:     05:44       And it freaking just hooked me. I mean, I'm a sales guy, right? So I'm thinking if they liked me faster, I can make more money. Um, but I, I literally bought this book. I read it on the trip four times. I came back from my trip, it was back in 2006 and I decided I needed to meet the author because the book was so amazing. I wanted a book like that and the author's name was Nicholas Boothman. He's a New York Times bestseller and he just happened to live in Toronto where I was living. So three days after I started looking for my, found him, we had lunch together and he said hello to me and then slapped me in the head in 30 seconds because. Because I started telling him the story that you told me or that I just told you. And when I told them how hard it was to write the book, he started laughing at me and I said, why? He said, what are you laughing at? He said, well, he's. He'd written, he's written five books. He's sold over 3 million copies of them. He speaks 50 to 60 times a year at an average of 70,000 speech, makes millions here because of his books. And he said, I've never taken more than 30 days to write a book. And I'm thinking, yeah, you must be. You must be like writing 24 hours a day. And he said, no, I've never written for more than 20 minutes a day.

Speaker 3:     07:02       Yeah, that's what I thought. So I, I, I convinced him to teach me this and I've, since that day, 2006 I've published, I've published four books. Each of those books that I wrote, I wrote in less than 30 days. I never wrote for more than 20 minutes a day and I've sold 300,000 copies of my personal books and it's using that system. So he actually taught me this amazing system for writing a book quick and writing it without pain and avoiding writer's block because Dave, I don't think there's anybody in your world, in the click funnels world that would argue that if they could get a book out of them, there's tons of value, tons of things they could do with that book. Is that fair? Oh, well, considering the fact we've built 100 million dollar company off to different books, I think it'd be very hard for anyone to dispute that fact. This is what I tell every single one of my clients that I teach how to use this system. I point Rachel Russel Story and I talk about how he used those books, how you guys turn them into free plus shipping offers, how you use them at live events and all the stuff you did and in a $100 million dollar company. I know because we're on a recording that you're, you're under exaggerating with the size of click funnels today.

Speaker 3:     08:24       Uh, so I, I just. That was, I mean that was the start of it. I started traveling now when people were telling me how much they were struggling writing books and so I went back to nick years later and I told them to write this book and he wrote it in 30 days, less than 10 minutes a day and it's called how to write a salable book in 10 minutes. Madness. This is the entire system, everything that and we've used this book and the workbook that goes along with it now over a thousand to write entire books in less than 30 days. That's crazy. Only because I know the pain and anguish that that Russell's gone through in writing his books. That honestly, if he thought he could write it in 30 minutes, a 30 days at 10 minutes a day, he'd be thrilled. Yeah, and unfortunately I didn't actually meet him until after and I don't know if you'll ever write another one, although I heard through the grapevine there might be another one coming, but it's really cool because what I've found in all my research statement, you might be able to relate to this is that when people are starting to write books and they're thinking about it, they instantly get overwhelmed by it because they're like, I gotta get all this stuff in it.

Speaker 3:     09:39       I should put this in it. Maybe I shouldn't put this in it. I don't know what to put in it. They start writing. They stopped because that. I mean I went through that, but when you use this system, the very first thing that we get people to do is create the chapters, so it's like creating a journey for a reader where you start them at where you want to get them to, and then it's just like built it. As we're talking, I'm thinking it's just like building a perfect webinar. You create the chapters, then it needs of the secrets. You've got to break beliefs and you've got to rebuild those things. Actually what we do with people when they use this workbook to do it and, and it's just amazing, but what I, what I really hope people understand is what life looks like when you get the book done and, and why it's worth trying this system if they've ever wanted to write a book.

Speaker 3:     10:29       Because I mean, look at Russell, look at you, look at what's happened with click funnels because of those books. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. It's literally. I can't even begin to imagine what the true Roi is for us on those books. I mean it's, it's literally millions and millions of dollars. So I was trying to figure out here over here, you know, I joined the inner circle two and a half years ago now, but I had never. I didn't even know what a funnel was when I joined the. I didn't realize this, but I hadn't read either of the books. I just knew Russell from way back in the early days when we're both in network marketing and everybody. I was trying to figure out how to build this company and everybody's saying go to go see Russell, go see Russell and I couldn't get any time with him because he's so freaking busy, so I found this inner circle and I jumped into it and I didn't.

Speaker 3:     11:20       I found out everything afterwards, but the parallels between digital marketing in my world, I just couldn't believe it because what I realized is that if you use this system to write your book, well as you're writing a book, you're actually creating the content for your course. So because every chapter becomes a module and the way you lay out a book properly in our system, it's almost like you're creating the transcripts that you're going to use for the course. So some people are actually doing courses first or live events and then doing books using our system. It's easier to do it the other way. So you take 30 days, 10 minutes a day, you write the book. Then you go into a studio. When you take your time, your chapters, and your record, your modules. Then you launch a free plus shipping offer and you give away the book, you do the audio book, you do the Oto and you sell the course on the last page.

Speaker 2:     12:09       I love it. It's so freaking easy. Well, I want to dive right into this whole dual between, uh, Mr Dean hollandaise sauce and our official James P friel. And only because I was fascinated. I think it was last last Monday. Uh, James wasn't in the office. I'm like, where's James at? And the next morning we hadn't been working out. He goes, yeah, I wrote my book. I'm like, I did. What? Did you write the book? I wrote the outline. I'm like, what are you talking about? And that's when he told me this whole idea as far as what happened when he and dean. So you were on their podcast. People understand kind of what, what it is because they don't want to relate that to what anyone was listening to. This can do the exact same thing.

Speaker 3:     12:50       Right? So I was on just, just the tips, which is an amazing podcast for any entrepreneur to follow. It's, it's really a wonderful job that they're doing together and it's fun because those guys are at each other's throats. Anytime you're on the show, right? There's a lot of this going on and so this happens a lot. Whenever I get a chance to be on a show like yours and I started talking about how easy it is to write a book, it automatically creates skeptics, right? Because you've tried to write a book for so long and I'm telling you, Dave, you use this system. You can write your entire book in 30 days. It will write for more than 20 minutes a day. It'll be ready to be edited right after that. And so I, I, I said that to these two dudes and they're just absolutely adding each other right away. Like I couldn't do it. I could do it. I turned it on them.

Speaker 2:     13:42       I said, well,

Speaker 3:     13:43       it'd be really cool is why don't we have a competition? Were you guys both use the system and whoever writes the best book wins a prize and we'll get everybody to vote on which book is best and the winner gets an all expense dream vacation

Speaker 2:     14:01       and, and as soon as I said it, it was really cool

Speaker 3:     14:08       because I write on their podcasts. You can hear the episode. Maybe we ought to put that into the shows.

Speaker 2:     14:16       I'll make sure she puts it in the show notes. Just the tips episode. Perceive Dean Holland and James p Friel when Ken done was on, it was probably about a month or two ago. It was really good.

Speaker 3:     14:28       Funny because all I had to do was just drop the idea and they were at each other. I can write better than you. I can read these both guys and just told me that both of them tried to write books for years and struggled.

Speaker 2:     14:39       Now they're like the gods of writing. Both of them actually are very good writers. I mean, Jay's p Friel is doing a ton of writing all the time. Uh, and dean just, I mean he's a master at free plus shipping offers and does a lot of writing as well. So it's kind of funny when I was talking to him, they're like, a book's different though. Books not like copy, it looks not like this. And so all of a sudden the excuses came up.

Speaker 3:     15:05       Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, and that's what's happening. We're meeting once a week on the phone just to discuss their progress. And that's exactly what's happening with them too. There's always excuses that are starting to

Speaker 2:     15:18       let's combat some of the worst, some of the most common excuses you're dealing with when people. Let's try to eliminate all the excuses and take down all the walls here for anyone who's listening to this podcast to make sure that by the time they get done listening to podcasts, they have total belief. They can write a book and use your system or whatever else it might take.

Speaker 3:     15:33       Yeah. So, so look, the, the number one biggest challenge that I have to deal with with people is for them to understand that it's okay to put everything you know in the book because when people are thinking about writing a book, the biggest and first mistake they make is they think that they have to hold back. They think that they shouldn't put the actual, you know, their experience, their expertise into the pages of the book, that they're confused because they say, well, if I put it all in the book, who's going to want to buy the course or who's going to want to hire me as a consultant? And what I've had to show them through Russell's example and others including my own, is the more you give, the more they want. And, and this helps, like we've helped hundreds of consultants to build six figure consulting businesses because they write a book first and they use the book as the calling card. So that's a big deal is just. Yeah,

Speaker 2:     16:26       I was listening to this. This is probably one of the biggest mistakes I see people do in books or even courses where they feel like there's something else I want to sell them, so if I give it to them, all right now I won't. I basically preventing someone from buying more from me and I can tell anybody who's listening to this, what Ken just said is honestly the secret sauce to having success in any venture you're doing and that is the more that you give and the more that you put out. First of all, you always will have more. You're never going to be able to give everything away, and if you do, what it's gonna do is cause you to get to the next level where you create more anyways. So I'd highly recommend you take the advice can just said, and that is you make sure that when you're writing that book, you give absolutely every single thing away.

Speaker 3:     17:06       Yeah, absolutely. The second is the time, as you can imagine, especially entrepreneurs that are just trying to get their legs under them and trying to make things happen, they can't. They always. It's a. it's always a struggle to convince them that they accept, they have the time and it's so just so everybody knows it. Here's the system and you still need the book and the workbook in order to do this, but essentially all you're going to do if you use this system to write your book in 30 days is you're going to start off by creating the. I call it the reader's journey. Think about trying to cross a river. You have to get across the river, but you can't fall into the water and there's a series of stones that if you safely jumped from stone to stone, the stone you'll get from one side to the other.

Speaker 3:     17:51       Well, that's the reader's journey. Your reader starts off on the left side of the river and each stone represents one of the chapters. If you just simply ask yourself right up front, what is the journey I want to take the reader on? Who is the ideal reader? Where are they going to start and what do I want to get to them? To them them to by the end of the journey, and then you reverse engineer the chapters first. So in other words, what is the first step in any journey? There's a first step. Then the second that they could logically learn it, and once you figure those things out, the rest is really simple. The next thing you do is you assign free essential elements to each chapter. The first is the training. So for each chapter you're going to literally just decide what are you going to teach.

Speaker 3:     18:36       The second is one of your stories. You always want to have one of your personal examples in each chapter and the next is two to three stories of either people you've helped or people you can use as examples. That's a book, that's what Russell did. That's what any expert in the world does. And if you, if you do your chapters first and you think about that in a logical order and you get all that organization done first, everything else is really simple. And here's the coolest part. The workbook that I created that goes with the book is what you use to do everything. I've just said, and you can do it less than an hour. Then all you do after that, Dave, is once a day you just sit down and you just look at one little part. It could be so each, each, as I described them, 10 minute writing burst. Each burst is one of the three things that I said. So one day you're going to write the teaching part of the first chapter. The next day you're going to write your personal story. The third day you're going to write two or three examples and you do that each day for 30 days and you've created a 10 chapter book.

Speaker 2:     19:39       So since I hate to add, congratulations. Awesome job. So two things. First of all, I hate writing, so can I just record it and have someone else transcribe it

Speaker 3:     19:49       even easier than that with technology today, and I actually talk about this in the book, you can actually record it into one of three different apps and the APP will spit out the transcription for you. So when I was three,

Speaker 2:     20:04       those was one of those apps out. So people listening going, oh my gosh, I gotta, I gotta get this stuff.

Speaker 3:     20:09       So there's a new dragon dictate that that is a simplified version of the dragon dictate that we all know and love and it literally will spit out the transcription of what you say within 24 hours, send you it, sends it to you an email.

Speaker 2:     20:25       Super Cool. I got rid of mine. So if a person wants to get the workbook or the book, where do they go to get this?

Speaker 3:     20:33       Well, it's really simple. I created a really cool link because we're doing this together. They just have to go to click funnels. Freebook just like it sounds like, and it's a free plus shipping offer. Everybody in this community should know that. It's a real book. I'm going to send the workbook is there and it will do everything that you need to happen.

Speaker 2:     20:51       Awesome. Super, super cool. I know that's probably one of the biggest hurdles most people have is, is what you just said. I, again, I love the idea as far as the training, a story of your own, because we always talk about you need to be creating a story inventory anyways and so start writing even as soon as you get off this podcast to start writing down the titles of what some of your stories would be, you can always put these into the book later and then I love the idea as far as two to three stories of other people who they're, you've helped or have gone through the same type of

Speaker 3:     21:20       process and ideally if, if you're doing, if you're writing a book about something, most times you're already an expert in it or you're already getting there, so you've already helped some people and if you want to talk about, let's say you turn this into a free plus shipping offer, you want to talk about the most amazing affiliates, you know, the, the early movers on your dream 100 list. Put your students' stories in the book and then ask them to promote your free plus shipping offer.

Speaker 2:     21:49       Oh, that is awesome. The story about you. So, uh, that's, that's exactly right. Yep.

Speaker 3:     22:01       And it really, really, it works so well to help people. But you know, the other thing that's really important if you do this right, so there's, there's an old saying in my business, your book will either promote you or expose you because I've seen a lot of people that write shitty books and I'm on a quest to stop people from writing shitty. Well, could we use this system? It won't be Shitty, but because look, you heard as soon as you realize what I was telling people, you went, oh, because that's what Russell did, right? He did some teaching. He did one of his own stories and then lots of stories of other people. Every great book is done the same way, but if you don't use this system, if you don't get this free book, you're going to end up writing a shitty book. And what most people do wrong, Dave, is they all think it should be just one long meandering journey. They actually don't write books that help. They write memoirs that hurt in there.

Speaker 2:     22:55       Okay? I have to tell you a quick little story here because one of my very first things I ever did the internet marketing space years, Gosh, it's actually 10 years ago to this year was this program called legendary marketers and I went out and interviewed some of the most amazing marketers in the world and one of these guys actually had a book and I was so excited to read this book because I was so impressed by this guy and that's exactly what it was. It was as long memoir. I think honestly all he did was he took a Webinar and just had transcribed, put it together and that was his free plus shipping and it was the stupid his book and I'm like, really? You get so much more, so much more you could give and that's going to be their first real tangible thing they get from you. It was just a. I was just heartbroken.

Speaker 3:     23:39       No know that I know who know. You and I are both avid readers, so we could probably sit here for the next hour and try and debate who first said facts tell, but stories. Probably one of the oldest, oldest in the whole sales world, but it's true and if you use the style we talked about it. A book becomes one quarter telling and three quarters stories. It's all about the stories that are in the book. Stories break belief stories, rebuild beliefs. I mean stories handle objections. It's everything and it's, it's. I think it's the most important part.

Speaker 2:     24:18       I love it. Well, again, I think that your dips and everything else had been fantastic here. As we kind of get close to wrapping things up, what are the things would you. What are some other value nuggets want to make sure people get or where can they reach out to make sure they contact you?

Speaker 3:     24:31       Yeah, so, so the, the biggest thing for any entrepreneur who is trying to attract attention in the crowded space that we live in today, the things that you can do with that book, what we could list in the end of this show, it's going to raise your credibility. It's the fastest route to going from, you know, an average authority to a true spurt. As Russell describes it. It's not that you should or shouldn't do it, you can't do it, there's a double negative for you. You really need to. And this book that I've put together, we've already helped over a thousand dollars. Authors write books using the system and it's super simple and at a bare minimum, just read through the book and you'll get it and the rest will take care of itself.

Speaker 2:     25:20       I love it. Alright, so again, one of the great things Ken's providing you here is a resource that you can actually get this book, so can work and they actually get a copy of your book App.

Speaker 3:     25:29       So of course for a limited time we don't have many left. We've got a free plus shipping offer. I want to help as many people as possible to avoid writing shitty book. So if you jump over to, it's really simple. It's W, a s free book dot Com. It's the initials of right? A salable book was be freebook Dot Com and grab a copy of the book and it'll lead you through a link to our open facebook. Got

Speaker 2:     25:59       Questions. I'd be happy to help you. Awesome. Again, it's a free plus shipping off, which is always cool. I always recommend you guys check out other free plus shipping offers. We're huge advocates of these, of this type of a funnel that really works and so again, it's w a, S, b freebook.com, so w as in Whiskey, a as in apple, s as in Sam, b as in book, Freebook Dot Com and again, go ahead and check that out. Fall. Ken, you can reach out to him on, on facebook through that link as well. Again, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure talking to you and I appreciate just again you did exactly what you're telling him. What else do and that as you told everyone exactly how to do it, same type of thing you should do in your own books and now you need to go out and get Ken's book to figure out exactly how to do it for yourself. So again, I appreciate it a ton. Oh, it was great to hang out with

Speaker 4:     26:44       you, Dave and I love to do more for you anytime.

Speaker 1:     26:46       Thanks. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me. We're trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few hundred thousand so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people. At the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if people you'd like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this. Share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or you can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.