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You've heard the book publishing podcasts that give you tips for selling a lot of books and the ones that only interview world-famous authors. Now it's time for a book publishing show that reveals what actually goes on behind the cover.
Hosted by New York Times bestselling author Anna David, Behind the Book Cover features interviews with traditionally published authors, independently published entrepreneurs who have used their books too seven figures to their bottom line to build their businesses and more.
Anna David has had books published by HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster and is the founder of Legacy Launch Pad, David is the founder of Legacy Launch Pad Publishing, a boutique, founder-led hybrid book publisher that helps entrepreneurs turn expertise into authority-building books. In other words, she knows both sides—and isn't afraid to share it.
Come find out what traditional publishers don't want you to know.
Dan_v2
[00:00:00] The show where?
So my guest today is someone I shall call a dear friend. His name is Dan Nicholson. He's the CEO of Nth degree CPAs, a financial consulting firm that helps purpose-driven entrepreneurs achieve financial certainty. What that really means is that he has a way of approaching, uh, being a CPA and finances in a fully unique way, a way he.
Very much broke down in his Wall Street Journal and USA today bestselling book, rigging The Game, which I'm proud to say Legacy Launchpad published. So what happened to him after the publication of that book? Well, a whole bunch of things. How about starting to get $20,000 a speaking gig? How about, I'm gonna [00:01:00] just give you the figure making over a million dollars as a result of the book, not through book sales.
So enough for me, I now give you Dan Nicholson. Dan Nicholson, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, happy to be here. So let's talk publishing for profit. Now, I fancy you a man who understands profit. Inside and out. So I would imagine you went into the experience knowing that you could bet your business could benefit from a book.
Is that correct? A hundred percent, yeah. I, I, initially, I wasn't someone who had this like big life goal of writing a book. Like it wasn't. On my bucket list for years. Um, so when I started to get the notion that I was gonna do it, it really came back to is anyone gonna buy this book and does it pencil out?
Because there's a million things I could be doing with my time that would be [00:02:00] less, less masochistic than grinding away on a book. And you determined. Yes, it is worth it. It is worth it. Now what I did was, uh, took a couple of steps to pre-sell and just kind of get a sense of. From my email list clients, et cetera.
Like, if I were to do this, would you, would you buy it and, um, get enough interest in advance where by the time I started working with you, I had collected enough pre-sales to know that it would be profitable. Now, when you talked about it being masochistic, I will say your journey did involve the, a bit of masochism.
You, you were working with a publisher that didn't work out. It wasn't, and you wrote it yourself. Which many people in your position do not? Mm-hmm. Um, so, so what was your journey with it that, well, I tried not to write it myself. Uh, a couple of different times I [00:03:00] tried, uh. Bunch of recording a bunch of transcripts and having, you know, ghost writers and interviews and things, but turns out I'm too particular.
So there's a certain vibe that I was trying to convey. But also for me, who fancies himself, sort of a, as unconventional, the challenge I was having was I kept getting back a lot of cliches and tropes that were too painful for me to put my name on it. So I pre-sold a bunch of copies. Uh, started working with a hybrid publisher.
Not you guys. A lesser one, let's just say a lesser, yeah. Yeah. Nice, nice folks, but just. Uh, and lots of hype going into it, but ultimately, uh, the feedback I was getting. Wasn't particularly useful or helpful, and it just led to a bunch of churn. So, and what, [00:04:00] what I mean by that is I got spun out for a while, like six months, where I just stopped working on the book because I got sideways.
Um, like, I don't know what this, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this, this feedback. Uh. And, and then I tried, tried a couple other kind of ghost writers, and of course that's, uh, costly. The more people you add and then you're kind of start, you, you're paying for them to start over. Yeah. So, um, there were kind of a night and day experience where I had, um, uh.
Uh, starts and stops adding new people, subtracting new people, all of that hard cost, all of the mental turmoil. And then we started working together and it was like three months later the book was published and it was amazing. I, I, I love that. Um, and so, and so, yes, you did pre-sales brilliantly, and I do wanna talk about that.[00:05:00]
But in terms of. Uh, did you raise your prices after becoming a Wall Street Journal bestselling author? Did you attract more clients? Tell me about that. Yeah, ma many things happened almost all at once. So, uh, I went from, uh, doing some occasional speaking gigs, but they were all, uh, with a promise of maybe I'll get clients to, um, charging for speaking and getting.
Um, you know, up to. 20 grand for was maybe for me was the, the maximum speaking fee. Um, but also one of the, one of the events I sp spoke at was a three day event. And, uh, they do this quarterly, it's sort of like this ongoing mastermind and there's 300 or so real estate investors and they f they structured the entire three days around rigging the game.
So I had books called Reading the Game for Listeners, and it was a three day conference for [00:06:00] real estate investors. On how to rig the game in real estate. And then I was the, I was the keynote speaker, so I went from not, uh, not getting paid to speak to not only charging, but getting, you know, 2020 grand and having events built around you essentially.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, which was significant because then there's client, more client opportunities that come from that. Uh, all the social media. Campaigns that they were running to their lists, email campaigns, et cetera. So yes to all of the things. Um, paid speaking gigs on, uh, podcasts with more reach, uh, more inbound, uh clients, inbound prospects where they were truly.
Uh, sold in advance because they had read the book. Yep. And they were looking for exactly that. Both in my primary business, my CPA business, but [00:07:00] in secondary businesses that I run as well, where people were coming in because they wanted a sense of kind of. To get more of the intellectual property they talk about in, in my book, so and so for the listener, what, what is it, what separates you from just, uh, every other CPA or, you know, what, how, what does your book tell them that makes people want to work with you and your company?
Hmm. So my people tend to be, uh, kind of recovering Type A people, pleasers. They've gotten all the degrees, they've joined all the different masterminds. Like they've been successful in many things and, but there's some area of their business where they have slam keep slamming their head into a wall and they're, uh, looking for the correct or right.
[00:08:00] Answer because they're so used to getting good grades and uh, or like passing everything. And so, uh, what, uh, I attempt to do in my book and I attempt to do in my various, uh, businesses is help them understand complex systems and how to, of which the tax code is a complex system. If you understand it, you can rig it to get the outcome that you want.
But where most, most people struggle is that when they ask a preference based question, but they think it's a fact-based question. So like, why is the, uh, sky blue? Like there's some science about why the sky is blue, but should I grow my business or should I hire my spouse, or should I hire a outsource marketing agency or hire internal?
Like there isn't a right or wrong per se. And so you need a different set of tools to build, uh, to be able to [00:09:00] answer those preference based questions and to unlearn a lot of what you thought was true because business school prepares people to work for a Fortune 500 company, but small business is a totally different game.
So you have to build a totally different set of tools that, um, that work for a bunch of preference based decisions. Fascinating. Fascinating. And so and so the. The, the, to go back to the speaking. So I will say, um, I think a misconception when people are overly confident about their books, they think I'm gonna publish my book, and the next day everybody's gonna reach out and offer me $20,000 to speak.
What I know is that, that I have worked with people who just have a nice thing to put on their shelves, and I have worked with mostly people who know how to take that book and run. So you had to take certain steps for these things to happen. You placed yourself in a position [00:10:00] correct? A hundred percent.
So it, it is funny you mention that, 'cause also a lot of what I write about in the book is about understanding what causes a, a, an outcome to happen and, and what you have to do to create an outcome. Right? So most of us, it's kind of this idea, this quote, uh, every system is perfectly designed for the results it's getting.
I'm paraphrasing. Um. From w Edwards Demming is who most people associate that quote with. Many of us aren't getting the results and we just get frustrated and we get kind of stuck in what I would describe as a victim mentality like. It's happening to me, but you have a choice to either change the system or change your behavior.
So the system with book publishing now, I'm not an expert, but what I thought going into it is the system is such that if you publish it, you're one of millions of other people who are publishing. And unless you already have a massive brand, which I didn't, the system isn't [00:11:00] gonna inherently cause you to have a best seller.
Like you're gonna, there's maybe the. The, what is it, iron that, that iron wing or that series that's been like the, the nonfiction book series. You know what I'm talking about? Iron flame. I think I got it. I, I, I guess, but go on. I'm embarrassed to say I'm not sure. Go on. Um, uh. There's like the, the one off Yes.
Exception to the norm that some, some random James Clear James Clear, yeah. Busted outta nowhere with this massive bestseller. Yeah. They've somehow it just. Yeah, the right person at the right time shares it on social media and all of a sudden you're selling millions of copies. Like that's, that is such the exception to the norm.
It's like so many dec, so many, uh, numbers to the right of the decimal point of like percentage of people that get that, um, [00:12:00] uh, re. A hundred percent. Uh, so you have to make it happen and you can't, even if you go traditional publisher, you can't assume that they're going to have this market machine do anything.
Yeah. What's that? Do anything? I speak from experience. You can't assume they'll do anything. Right. Yeah. So if you want your book to be successful, then you're not committing just to writing a book. You're committing to a series of activities up to and after the book launches to get enough momentum that maybe you sell some copies without doing the hard work.
Like at some point the flywheel, um. And, and you don't have to sell a book to make money. So what I mean by that is like I give away a lot of free copies of my book, and so that costs [00:13:00] me money to print it or buy it from Amazon or something to send it. But it is. Like any other marketing investment that if they come back later or they hand it off to someone else, right?
So there's a lot that you need to consider about, um, publishing a book That's if you want. Success. But yeah, if you publish it tomorrow, someone's not gonna email you the day after and say, can I pay you to come speak at an event? Yeah. I, I think, and, and in terms of, in terms of these one-offs, you know, it's, it's a lottery ticket.
Who knows? Maybe it was their karma. Who knows why it takes off usually. Even with those random successes, there was a whole lot of work behind the scenes. We didn't see. Sometimes not, and I think many, many people believe themselves to be the exception to the rule. They hear that and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I know it's rare, but I'm different.
Somebody like [00:14:00] you, who's a very logical thinker, probably went in going, okay, I'm probably not gonna be the exception, so what can I do to take steps where I will guarantee success? Mm-hmm. Correct. Is that how you went in? Uh, that's a hundred percent correct. And it, it is sort of a, if you, if you're pretentious enough to write a book called Rigging the Game, and then you put it out there and no one buys the book, it's like, this guy doesn't know how to rig the game at all.
Like, what? Why would I, it al almost becomes like a self perpetuating a joke about, right. So. One of my sort of principles, again, from the book is this idea of like, well, if you eliminate all the downsides, then you're only left with upside. So the biggest downside is you don't sell any copies. No one reads it.
Um, and so, uh, and nobody shares it on social media. Nobody, uh, [00:15:00] so maybe it happens, but that might be luck or. Right place, right time. Uh, and if that happens, that's all what I would just call plus sum. It's like that's just all like the cherry on the top. Um, but you can't count on that. Yeah. Uh, I mean a hundred percent.
And so, and so, you went in and, and I mean, at my company, that's why we really won't work with people who don't understand this. We have a form and the, there's a question, how do you, what do you want from this book? And one option is to make money off of book sales, and they're automatically, we will not even talk to them.
Um, I always say it's better to sell a hundred books to my ideal clients than 10,000 of people who won't care. And I think traditional publishers don't look at it that way and don't set their people, their authors up for success. So you, we were, you, you came in needing no education about this, you knew this and so and so, you already had, uh, you know, several businesses set up.[00:16:00]
How did you, what did you do in order to. Get those speaking gigs to get more clients. You sent out copies of the book. What else? So what I believed is that, uh, that I can't assume that people want to do anything for me. So true. Uh, I've got friends. Sometimes the hardest people to get, uh, to leave a review are like your closest friends.
You're like, really? You still have not Yeah, I know. To review. So if you're closest friends, you have to work pretty hard or your family members or loved ones, you gotta like work really hard. Like why would people who hardly know you. Do anything for you. So my default assumption is like, you gotta make what's their incentive and it has to be more than just, uh, helping you out.
Yeah, because that's. Not really, that doesn't necessarily help them. So I had designed a [00:17:00] series of activities leading up to the book and afterwards to get people to leave reviews, share it with, uh, their email lists and, um. Culminating with a sort of like live event where I brought on, well you were one of the people who came on.
It was lovely and there were some other giveaways and stuff that didn't really cost me anything that I gave to get people to take an action and. And you led me to this in some way in your team because you said, look, it, I think the ratio is like, uh, 30% out of out of 150 people who say they will leave a review, you're gonna get like 30.
Yeah. Is that right? Is that close? It's usually, yeah. 30% roughly. One out of five. Yep. Give 30. Okay. 30%. And so. Uh, I tried to create this feedback loop and I got something like 80% of the people to [00:18:00] leave a review because there was a series of, of, uh, like reminding them, but then having them add their name to a form where, and they were like checking a box, a series of like yeah.
Uh, questions to get access to other things. Uh, and so I just found that giving them a clear incentive beyond just asking them to leave a review led to success. So those people sold most of the copies actually, because they were emailing their, they were emailing their lists. I had hundreds of people over a couple of days leaving social media posts on several different platforms and tagging me.
And, um, so it's creating a feedback loop basically, where. They got something cool. Yeah, it got success. It got better and better as the week went on, uh, for them to continue to do stuff. Yeah, it's smart. And I mean, to [00:19:00] me, an Amazon review matters so much more than a book sale. I, I feel that people do not understand that an Amazon review is your marketing for the rest of your book's life.
Mm-hmm. So if you have 70 reviews, that's better than getting 70 reviews and newspapers that people aren't gonna see. It's the first thing people are going to see. And it is very much undervalued by the average person, certainly undervalued by traditional publishers. Yeah, and I would argue that, um.
Someone buying 50 copies of your book or a hundred or 250 copies of your book looks really cool for vanity metrics. And I've done this for friends, I have a few friends who've like, you know, done their push for New York Times and they got it and I bought 200 copies and then I had like 195 of them, uh, picked up by one 800 junk.
'cause I'm like, I don't know who I'm gonna, I just, yeah. Uh, friends of mine who want this book have [00:20:00] already bought it off Amazon or if I recommend it, like they don't, yeah, so you can juice with a bunch of vanity numbers, getting people to bulk buy, but I think at the end of the day, back to your comment about you'd rather have a hundred people buy it, you want them to read it.
And, um, I think that's really important. You can get caught up in the vanity metrics, but it's like, I want people to help me market it to people who want to read it, who then have an incentive to read it and then like report back. And it's that, that kind of, so I got the speaking gigs because people in my network were promoting it to people who.
Read the book. Yeah. And then fortunately they liked it versus buying hundreds of copies and mailing it to people who just like threw it in the trash. Yeah. Yeah. I think, and so did the, the speaking has continued. How, how many speaking, uh, opportunities have you had since the, the first book came out? I do.[00:21:00]
Um, maybe like one a quarter. Mm-hmm. But, uh, mostly, uh, I could do more. Um, maybe, I think I could do more. I mostly say no to a lot of opportunities, and this is not intended to be virtue signaling, although it might come across that way, which is. I ha my daughters are nine and 11 and I feel like I have this very small window where, where they still want to hang out with me.
Yeah. It's closing very quickly, especially for my 11 old year old. Yeah. So I, like I say no to almost everything that's travel related, uh, because of that. Yeah. And in like two years when I'm just. When they're off with their friends 24 7, it's like, then I'll say yes to more. If people still want me at that point, maybe the window of closed at that point, but I dunno, the trade off's not worth it.
You'll have to do another book and [00:22:00] then, I mean, I owe you another book. We know this. You're very kind not to bring it up very often, forever. Um, but so, so you, I got you to be callous over text and I said, what is the number that you believe you have generated as a result of this book? And you did throw out that seven figure number.
Yeah, I've definitely generated an excess of seven figures from the book. Um, again, because I use it as a, I'll give it away so people, uh, will come in, like I can just measure the difference in our close rate and show up rate to calls, uh, before I gave away a book and after I started giving away a book, and then they, they come in having consumed part of it.
Yep. They're ready to and And it's different enough from what they're expecting from a cpa. Yeah. That when they've read part of it and we've [00:23:00] said, we're different, they're like, okay, this isn't just what everyone says. Yeah. It's like everyone says they're good at customer service, so when you say it, it's like, it doesn't mean anything.
We say we're different, and then I have something that proves that I'm different and every prospect. Gets a PDF copy, some amount of them go and buy the audiobook and physical copies and all of that. Um, but it's dramatically increased our close rate, how much we can charge, um, how many more referrals we get.
So it is, it's been significant. Because you're a numbers guy, could you tell me, uh, the, the percentage, the increase in terms of close rate, in terms of interest, in terms of. Anything. Everything. Yeah. I would say, um, about a 10 percentage point increase in close rate, having also increased our rates by. [00:24:00] 30% so you can sort of extrapolate out 10%.
Doesn't sound like that much though. 10 percentage points. This is where I'm a math nerd. Yeah. Yeah. So if you have 20 to 30, 20% to 30%, oh yeah. 10 percentage points anyhow. Math, math nerd, you can't just throw those numbers at me. That's crazy. So, okay, so 10, then you used the number 10, but it really more indicates 30%.
Is what you're tying going from say, 20% to 30%. Got it. And then a 30% increase in rates in what you charge. Right. Would you recommend that, um, entrepreneurs who are authors should always increase their rates?
Well, no. No, I wouldn't. As a universal principal, I, I think it depends on what your offer is and, uh. If you have a transactional, it's like relational business versus transactional business. Like I have a re relational or relationship based business as a CPA [00:25:00] and a lot of stuff I do is requires, um, more of a one-to-one or smaller group type type things.
And so there's a lot of, uh, misconceptions about 10 xing someone's business. Like it's very hard to 10 XA relationship based business. At least in a like one year timeline. Yeah. Um, and I have some of the data and receipts on this, I think in, in the book, um, where I ta talk about this idea that you can't just 10 XA relationship based business.
You can a transaction based like. Uh, e-commerce store, but if you're transactional, then you're probably, um, business to consumer pretty widespread. Yeah. And people, when you're mass market, they, am I getting too nerdy? No. The I, because I, because I, I like this because i's relevant to me, so I can, I can keep paying attention.
Okay. Yeah. [00:26:00] Just to summarize, yeah. If you have a relationship based business and you have more credibility, you can raise your rates when you, when your credibility goes up. Yeah. You're a transaction based business or mass market and uh, most of the time people are buying off costs, like you have a little bit more credibility.
In the short term. You probably can't off a book. Yeah. If you have some major brand event, maybe you can at that point. That's my belief. Yeah, I would agree. And then, but I mean, possibly with this mass market brand, if you're exiting at some point, then probably you could exit for a lot more because you're the person who wrote the book on the topic completely.
Yeah. Um, in terms of media appearances, what, uh, uh, what would you say the number, the year before you, the book came out versus the year after the book came out in terms of podcasts and anything media related? I did at least twice as many podcasts in the year after the book. Some of that was people reaching out more.
Some of that was back to what we were [00:27:00] talking about earlier of not assuming that people are gonna reach out. So there was a intentionality on the podcast side. Mm-hmm. And same thing on, on, uh, the publishing side. I probably did four or five times as many, uh, things on the publishing side. But also I wasn't doing a whole lot beforehand.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we have proven my point. Good. Which is always my, that's what this is really about today. Right. I mean, all my conversations, frankly, a little bit, um, is, so this has been fascinating and fantastic. What, um, if people wanna find out more about you find the book, all the things, where should they go?
Yeah, probably the easiest place would be to go to rigging the game.com or if they want to check out the book, this was Your idea and people still get a kick out of it. If you go to rigging amazon.com, it will take you to the Amazon page. I love it. How long are you gonna, that's the best idea you've ever, that's the best idea you you've ever given me.
That's that. That's saying quite a lot. Are you gonna keep that domain forever? Because it is [00:28:00] like $10 a year and I think you should keep it. Yeah, no, I keep renewing it. I keep hoping that I'm so successful at some point that I am, I get a cease and desist from Amazon. Like that's, they're like, we, I dunno if they'd have a real claim, but I want, I want to get to that point where they're like, you can't own rigging Amazon and have it redirect to our side dream of a lawsuit.
Right. Um, I'm, I'm gunning for it. Um, well, Dan, thank you so much. I appreciate you so much as I hope you know Yeah, you too. Thanks for listening. Thanks for help.
Thanks for listening to Behind the Book cover. If you loved it. I hope you'll consider liking and subscribing because it helps more people find the show. And look, you can like and subscribe even if you only liked and didn't love it. But if you hated it, you can skip the review. Or who am I kidding? I'll take one from you too.[00:29:00]
The questions that you've always feared.