EW 068 – How CEOs Can Write Bestselling Books To Grow Their Business – Winning with Doug Crowe, Founder of Author Your Brand

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.292)
Doug, welcome to the show. Well, we are just so lucky to have you here. And there were sort of three Cs that struck me from our pre-interview that I need to bring up here that I would describe from having had a chance to meet you a little bit. And that is one, you help leaders communicate at a significantly higher level in so many different ways. Another thing that you do is you build community where leaders can succeed.

Doug Crowe (00:03.406)
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Doug Crowe (00:21.23)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (00:24.64)
and then you build capacity through those ventures and you've helped so many different people and you have so many great stories about the way that you've done that by combining your decades of experience leading into where you are now. there's a lot of, this is just gonna be a terrific interview I know coming up, but a lot of people haven't met you yet. So if you had to describe yourself, what would you say?

Doug Crowe (00:43.398)
my gosh, I am a lighthearted, creative, problem-solving people person. How's that for a whipping some adjectives together?

Gordon Sheppard (00:50.434)
I think it's a whipping sense, but there's also a sense of trying to get a feel for what your current venture is. So when did your current venture kind of start and why did you start it and what are you doing in your current venture?

Doug Crowe (00:56.227)
Yes.

Doug Crowe (01:01.902)
All right, well, I started out, I went to school at Northwestern for radio, TV, and film, and worked at a TV studio and interviewed, I wasn't an interviewer, I was a lighting guy, but I met Robert Allen from the No Money Down days back in the decades ago. Was enthralled with the concept of real estate investing and got involved with that business for 20 some years. 2008 course changed my trajectory quite a bit on that.

Those of you who are around for that understand that was kind of a traumatic moment for a lot of people and during my little boohoo phase with 19 foreclosures bankruptcy divorce clinical depression. I decided to write a book and the the book was awful. I mean it was just so bad. I Couldn't publish it, but I did have the thought like, you know I had some pretty famous people on my radio show I had a radio show for a couple years on WLS and I had Laura Langmeier on Robert Kiyosaki

And I spoke with them afterwards and like, you know, how'd you guys get this book thing done? And Robert said, I'm a bestselling author. I'm not a bestselling writer. And to me, it was like, you know, code for ghostwriting. So over the years we've been refining and developing our ghostwriting process for leaders and C-suite executives to really be a nice combination of journalism, ghostwriting, developmental editing, and now most recently distribution.

To the very very high levels before the book is even written. So that's the that's a shortened version I've got a 10 minute version. That's my my one minute version for you

Gordon Sheppard (02:32.737)
Well, I appreciate that and thank you for putting the effort into getting it done because I think what strikes me and the work that I do with leaders, having interviewed 60 plus leaders on this podcast and having met, you know, worked with people directly in the work that I do, they're not great at expressing themselves. They're genius, right? But you're the one, what is the secret sauce then where you can help them kind of, if we say get it on the page, express themselves? What are you doing to help them do that?

Doug Crowe (02:40.418)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Doug Crowe (02:53.251)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (02:56.846)
Here's the key, this might summarize the whole thing, but expressing yourself only works when someone is interested in you.

And my, key that I unlocked, everything that we do now has nothing to do, sorry clients, you're listening to this, but it's nothing to do with you, has to do with your ICP or your channel partners or who you're speaking with. So we have a very, very defined process called the reverse spotlight method where our clients are featuring their, their value proposition, their ideas in a book, but it's never just them by themselves talking about themselves. Cause quite frankly, nobody cares. Right? So our, our process is one of my friends described it very simply. He you know,

You ever try to pour coffee in a thermos with a lid still screwed on it? Doesn't work very well. Our job is to unscrew that lid and then pour the coffee in. That's the way it stays warm, right? So most people in the entire world of marketing, I'm talking social media, email, podcast, TV, radio, magazines, the works. It's all about what they call it, the attention economy now, right? I need attention. And Gordon, I'm no math genius, but...

AI is making the content game so horrible that there's way too much content already. Now there's 10 times more and I still have eight hours a day or 12 hours because I'm an entrepreneur. That means mathematically speaking, everyone's getting less attention. So the whole process that we do is called reverse spotlight. We put the attention on our client's client. That's it. That means the content, the ideas, the whole thing. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (04:29.173)
And it gets, interesting thing, you're taking me back, I was in acting school a long time ago and someone said the most interesting people are those who are interested. Right, as sort of a catch on to that phrase there. Now you're able to then not just have people blather on where they're not gonna be heard in all the noise, but you're able to focus with your reverse spotlight approach, which you would have honed in and worked on over the years to allow them to create something that people wanna read.

Doug Crowe (04:40.866)
Yes, yes.

Doug Crowe (04:48.59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Doug Crowe (04:58.604)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And not just read, but connect with you. It's one thing to read a story or to, you know, it's reading a monologue. I'm really interested in dialogues, which is tough to do with content because normally it's, you know, it's just somebody talking about something. And they use the word engagement, whatnot. That's fine, depending on what the content is, whether it's a short form or the text. But having an actual dialogue with a human being is what makes us human. That's what revolves around my TEDx talks in terms of AI.

But is that conversation meaningful? Is it useful? Is it slightly entertaining? Which revolves back around our publishing area of ghost writing books for people. It's gotta be interesting, useful, and entertaining. Just one of those doesn't work. Two maybe, but if you're all three, man, you're gonna nail it. So we translate the book process of being interesting, useful, entertaining into our communication process and developing our channel partnerships, which has to happen way earlier than most people do. Most people...

think about distributing their book after it's eh, you gotta do it way earlier than that if you wanna be successful with

Gordon Sheppard (06:03.019)
I love it. And so this is what's nice is if I was working with you in a sense, I would have a responsible methodology that you're not going to veer away from because I'm not going to say, no, I'm going to write the book first. And then, cause I can hear you would be able to coach the process to success as opposed to letting people get into their own rabbit holes. Is that fair?

Doug Crowe (06:16.014)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Doug Crowe (06:22.702)
Most of the time, sometimes there's a memoir or somebody's really adamant about it and I'm gonna go ahead let them go. But if they have a clear intention, clear purpose, an outcome they want, like why are you spending all this time and money writing a book? What do you want to get out of it? If they've got a clear answer that revolves around acquisition, M &A, more clients, scaling, we got a great conversation. If it's just a memoir and we've done a few of those, then you don't need all that. Then we can have, it's a smaller project, let's go and get your story.

You know gestate it and and really develop it so it's interesting to your family grandkids or even your great great grandkids and all that stuff

Gordon Sheppard (06:59.489)
So you can handle sort of it, but again, it's the minority of your work is in that memoir area space. But in the meantime, the majority is in getting people successfully out to whatever there is. Is there an example that you like to, I'm sure there's dozens or hundreds or whatever it is. Is there one that you can tell it to put some meat on the bones here?

Doug Crowe (07:08.43)
Yeah, there's one. Yeah, there's a recent one. A really wonderful gal came to us last year, Anita Greenland. She wrote a book on sales resiliency. And you know, she's a sales trainer. You know, we love that. And she's also a yoga, big into yoga. And so about resiliency, it's about the idea of salespeople get burnout, but if you take care of your mind, body, spirit, attitude, not just your words, but your body as well, and makes you a more resilient salesperson. Nice.

On Anita, guess what? There are, you know, 10,000 books on sales coming out this year. It's a, it's an interesting differentiator, but it's not going to be enough to have you get anything out of it. So I told her our reverse spotlight method, you can take your ideas, but let's incorporate your. Your clients in your book. Let's take, I don't know. I think we talked about six to eight current clients. And then I said, I also want us to interview the whales.

the ideal that we'll call it, like the Dream 100. Let's get a dozen of those and do not approach them about selling your book. Just we'll interview them as a participant. Instead of looking at your readers as users, I hate that term, or readers even, I call them collaborators. I'm working on this chapter on this ex idea. Hey, can you have any stories for me? You have any ideas on that? You know, get some feedback, get a dialogue going. So, meat and the bone. We're interviewing

her current clients, interviews six to eight potential big ones. While we're building the book, while we're doing it, two keynotes and executive coaching landed her lap for close to 20 grand. The week the book came out, she got approached by one of the prospects. The week it came out, hey, we'd like to hire you. that's great. I'm a sales consultant. What do you need? No, we want to hire you. Like, what do mean? Like full time. I'm an independent consultant. Thank you so much. I'm interested.

They came back a week later. We'll give you 150 % of whatever you made last year if you work just with us. She's like, ah, it's attractive, but I want my autonomy right now. All right. They call back again, a third time. Her husband says, take the meeting. She sits down, go through it. Tell you what, Nita, you can keep speaking, doing what you're doing that. We want you full time with us. We'll pay you 200 % of what you made last year, retirement and benefits.

Doug Crowe (09:36.118)
She's like, well, man, you know, I'm 57. I don't want to this forever. Okay. So imagine taking all this time and energy, having the book being pretty much self-funding while it's being built. Because she picked up some keynotes and executive coaching. And then the month that came out doubles her annual income with one client.

Gordon Sheppard (09:55.307)
This is remarkable. I can tell you in my own past, I went through the agonizing self-publishing route without getting help. And I launched that thing and then the traction took two years and three years easily. Like there was no instant gratitude for that, but there was my six months of hard work and putting something together that did evolve into a lot of, in my case, it was training opportunities. But boy, what a silly, I wish I'd met you earlier.

Doug Crowe (10:08.686)
What?

Mm-mm. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (10:23.742)
Because that idea of the book doesn't start with finishing the book and getting it out the door. The book starts way earlier and your collaborative thing is reflective of what so many of the leaders on this podcast have talked about in terms of the best scenarios where they are working collaboratively with their clients instead of producing their widget and then taking it to market. They're working with their clients along the way and there's just so many good. So the fact that you've got it there with the, I'm going to say the,

Doug Crowe (10:37.773)
Mm-hmm.

Doug Crowe (10:42.934)
All right.

Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (10:53.824)
tone to guide people into your process because you know it's going to work. You've actually proved the proof is in the pudding. You're making it happen. leads to our first. This is really this is awesome. The least our first question, which is if you had to describe one of your biggest wins then in your work over the years, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Doug Crowe (11:12.056)
Yeah, Anita's most recent one. guess the other one that's always fun because when you ever meet a high profile person, it's always kind of celebrity type stuff. It's even better when they have no ego. So one person I met through my method of focusing on other people, right? Sometimes it doesn't take the form of a book. Sometimes it's just how I operate on LinkedIn where I'm just, hey, I like you. That's pretty cool. I'm gonna share that.

No interest at all in doing business. I just do that to people that I find interesting And you know what eight out ten times they're not clients But this guy said hey, yeah, thanks. I'm thinking about doing a book. Can I send you my my resume? Yeah, sure I'm pretty sure it's about five page resume single spaced And I'm like, okay. Wow, this is a lot here. We've had it, you know unpack this book and make it it well So I'm working with him and one of my buddies chimes in after he's taking a look the resume and the draft goes Do you know who this guy is?

And I'm like, really. And I'm starting to peel apart little bit. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He invented the little piece of software you've heard about. What's that Doug? GPS. He worked at NASA and invented GPS. He's basically like, force come from India. He's got such a storied background, it's hard to believe.

He played with Indira Gandhi's kids. He came here with $8, became a rocket scientist, worked at NASA at JPL, also advising, obviously, CIA, NSA. And then went on to like, you know what, I've got this idea about this thing called the internet coming out, so 96, 97. He invented the idea of printing stamps at home called stamps.com and took that public. He's done three of the public IPOs.

Stamps, by the way, got bought by a PE group a couple years ago, so he sold it twice. And we've done five books for him, right? So he does, every year we'd have some project to do and he's, he's the most humble, delightful man I've ever met. And I just, you know, can't say enough about him, but he's, a, he turned into a business thing, turned into a friendship. And it's genuine. We both like each other and like, you know, he's way up here, you know, there's no, I know we're close to being a billionaire, right? It's just, but he doesn't even use that word.

Doug Crowe (13:33.513)
He calls himself an ordinary entrepreneur.

Gordon Sheppard (13:36.585)
Isn't that a wonderful insight? So through your sort of, I'm gonna say farming process of sorts, you had a chance to connect with someone and you're connecting with people that are just sort of good at what they do, don't have the skillset that you have. You're able to bolt that skillset. You he's got, obviously you just described your win here is working with someone who has tremendous skillsets, except this sort of self communication, building out through your process. now, the proof again, being not one book, but multiple.

Doug Crowe (13:41.784)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (13:54.114)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (14:04.274)
opportunities from someone who probably comes up with a new opportunity every year in terms of it sounds like what he's generating or whatever that is. That's a great, interesting win, you know, in terms of one to talk about. Anytime we talk about a win, we talk about, what is the anatomy of the win? So what is the strategy, work plan, people, operations and results behind the win? And when we say strategy, you know, there's a vision, mission, values in a sense that go along with getting this type of win to occur. The vision, I'm guessing you've already sort of heard a little bit. You're like, well, I don't necessarily need to do

Doug Crowe (14:08.31)
yeah. Yeah.

Doug Crowe (14:17.944)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (14:34.036)
business with everybody that I meet, but I want to be interested. So there's something about your strategy or your vision or your goals. What highlight from your strategy to make this win occur would you point out?

Doug Crowe (14:36.866)
Yes.

Yeah.

Doug Crowe (14:45.944)
Genuine curiosity. I, I, in the mornings when I do my morning walk and stuff, I'm looking at Instagram, YouTube videos that have nothing to do with my business. Nothing, absolutely nothing. I study science, physics, art, woodworking. I mean, everything. just, have an insane thirst for learning anything about anything. It's just, and that, that spills over into LinkedIn and my, my family and my friends and my business connections. And like I say, a lot of my business connections, I have no,

I might have done a book for them. I had one gal, Olympic coach. She's trained in the women's basketball team. And she's already been doing these compilation books, Gordon, where she put like 10, 12 authors in a book and publishes it to promote them a little bit on herself. Works pretty well. And we got on a call a couple years ago and she was investigating doing a solo book for herself. Like, all right, that's good.

And I talked to her about the, you how's it going and what their current process and adding this new one on with the investment required and the results and the timeline. And after about 15, 20 minutes, I said to her, Hey Sherry, this is a, you've got a good thing going on there. Um, do you have the bandwidth to do another one or do want to just transfer it? I probably try to do both. sounds like what you've got going on right now is working. don't you just keep doing that? And she said, okay. I said, by the way, let me just send you a PDF on some publishing thing that might help you a little bit.

But I didn't talk myself out of a deal. I served a human being's needs authentically with what she actually needed. She didn't need a solo book. It wasn't necessary. It's not always necessary. Two years later, I get a call from a guy in New Hampshire. Hey, dog, this is Richard. Richard Sherry said I should talk to about doing a book. There's a $36,000 deal. So another year two passed by, another guy comes up with $18 billion.

company and asked to do a book. Sherry told me to call you. So I got my

Gordon Sheppard (16:44.509)
and all from genuine curiosity. you know? Yeah.

Doug Crowe (16:48.032)
Genuine curiosity and service. I sent her a PDF.

Gordon Sheppard (16:52.635)
No, but you can hear when you say the genuine curiosity thing, that's at the root of the whole thing. Funny enough, that's unusual in today's world, honestly. Like that thing of somebody actually, you're doing it with me now, you're dialing in, you're listening, you're reading me in this call, I can see it. So I can see that when you meet these people and not everybody has that skill set or interest.

Doug Crowe (17:01.848)
Yeah, people can refer to this out here.

Gordon Sheppard (17:15.219)
to make that happen. But not only do you get to be genuine and curious, it also is driving your business as well. So when we think about strategically pulling things together to get wins to occur, that makes total sense. Anytime we have a strategy, we need a work plan. Now it sounds like your work plan isn't necessarily always on a rigid timeline. There's sort of a starting and there's an ideation or a planning of seeds of sorts. And then timelines could be, I'm sure, very rapid turnaround, or they could be, like you said, multi-year. Is there anything you would comment on terms of work plan to make some of these things get into action?

Doug Crowe (17:22.242)
All right.

Doug Crowe (17:33.678)
Right. Right.

Doug Crowe (17:43.47)
You know, I usually ask the client what their plan is, Hey, how soon do need this? know, during, there's been some events, event-based productions that we needed to be in line with. Most of time, there's no timeline. It's whatever works for them in terms of their operating schedule. The worst one was one of my clients was a former VP of Fuji, and she had retired, but still taking touch, consulting a little bit, and we did a book for her.

It's called Short Woman, Tall Order because she's a short woman, but she's a powerhouse. We spent a good, I don't know, year or so building this thing out, publishing it, getting it all ready to go. She gets a call from Fuji in November saying, hey, you're to be at CES speaking. Yes, I am. Please bring your book. Like great, problem. How many copies you want? Well, the, you know, the book is about social media. So she says, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold. What? What? You're talking. They mentioned a different title.

that she had mentioned in passing through one of her conversations with them. It wasn't the book that we had produced. There was a new one she was thinking about doing. We want to bring that book to CES in like 44 days. And true to form from all sales people's like, okay, no problem, we'll do that. She calls me up in a panic. Hey, thanks for doing that first book. We gotta have another one done in the next month and a half, little less than a month and a half. And so that means you're gonna be on the phone with me every single day.

So the world record for me is producing a full-size thought leadership book, quality, good stories, value proposition, hooks, character, everything in 44 days. That's horrible. We generally take, you know, six months. And of course a few people have taken a couple of years to do it. So it's just their different agenda.

Gordon Sheppard (19:27.357)
I can't imagine, I remember sort of my own process, just getting 30,000 words down was six months because it wasn't even, it was just sort of the thoughtfulness that went with it go back and think and back, right? But 44 days, incredible or multi-year. So again, your strategy, genuine interest, the timelines and work plans can fluctuate depending on the client, client capacity and whatever those circumstances are. Anytime we have this strategy and work plan, we always need people to make a win happen. How would you describe your attitude?

Doug Crowe (19:33.134)
Yeah!

Yes, right.

Doug Crowe (19:46.582)
Mm-hmm, right.

Doug Crowe (19:52.428)
Right. Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (19:55.888)
in making this type of wind happen. You talked about your genuine curiosity and is it sort of peaks and valleys when you work with somebody or is it a nice easy sailing?

Doug Crowe (19:59.255)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (20:03.694)
Oh, well, come on. There's always a, there's always a little, little wind blowing here and there or, or a tsunami. But in terms of people, I could talk about my team and I talk about my clients, right? There's two different types of people here because they all, they're all kind of a, to be successful on my team side. I have gone through, I probably have interviewed well over 500 ghost writers and you know, there's a, there's a personality side and the tactical side and the strategic side for human beings. So.

Personality wise the worst one the guy like he wouldn't get on a zoom call with me or at the time maybe Skype call So I'm I don't I don't I don't talk I just write Like what that's great. I saw your samples. You're a good writer, but I need to have a conversation I don't do that. Like okay, that takes a whole reclusive writer thing to a new level, right? Not gonna work for me Sometimes I've had people who are like, you know, they're Hollywood screamers very good very very expensive

My, highest quote I got was $300,000 to go straight to book. The lowest was 500 bucks. And I'm looking at the quality of these samples from 500 to 300 grand. And right around the 15 to 20,000 mark, it's like, you know what? There's no difference between that upstream downstream. Yeah, you can see it, but right around the 15, 20, like, you know, that's, that's pretty good. You know, a couple of 25 or zero, my God, you know, but other than that, it's just like,

Like I don't charge a billionaire any more than I charge a $250,000 a year consultant. They get the same fee structure. So ghost writers are artists. I'm, they're very happy. have to be very good at storytelling. And what they're not always good at is interviewing people. So generally there's a two functions. There's an exception now, cause I've been a writer and a reader for my whole life. So I've done plenty of journals and interviews and then my, my absolute best ghost writer, sounds.

like nepotism, but it's my son because he's able to go, he has corporate experience and writing and he's brilliant. He's able to communicate with my clients and really get deep into their stuff as well as articulate it in a better way than they could in print. Operationally, I've got, you know, great, great people doing the production side on the client side. I'll tell you what works best for our company or for your audience.

Doug Crowe (22:25.902)
You want to find people who are not necessarily your personality or beliefs, but align with your values. That's like an Adam Grant thing. You know, I mean, if we have the same values of respecting each other's time, like I'm not going to talk to you on a Sunday night type of thing, or, um, Hey, uh, when you got, uh, you, when you got feedback for me, it should be constructive criticism, not just criticism, right? Cause yeah, you can't say I hate it without telling me why you can say my baby's ugly, but you gotta give me a

what is it about that that is ugly so I can fix it. So there's some things set up for my client side that have to work. And I apologize for going negative, but the only people I don't work well with are like active surgeons or physicians. They're just not a good fit because of reasons.

Gordon Sheppard (23:15.571)
Yeah, and so isn't that lucky that you've spent the time to be genuinely interested not only in the clients that you're dealing with, but also in the people that you're hiring in to get these processes done. You're able to oversee the thing, and also you're giving us insights into what does it take. And that's fun to hear about. It's funny having worked with a bunch of people in the freelance world, around the world, and it's the hourly rates don't have a lot to do with quality. A lot of it is what is their dedication to the craft, whatever that is.

Doug Crowe (23:20.77)
Yeah. yeah. Mm-hmm.

Doug Crowe (23:31.736)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (23:43.437)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (23:44.124)
And are they willing to sort of put in the work and do the thing? And it's funny, it's interesting to hear your understanding around price points and dialing that in. And then we've heard your attitude towards this thing as well. And then also your son's ability to help people articulate themselves better than they can themselves, that is like gold. That is absolute genius because so many leaders I know that I meet can't articulate a win. They don't know how to do it. They've got plenty of wins. They've got all kinds, but the world.

Doug Crowe (23:49.517)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (24:10.094)
When I moved him over into those roles, I was on some of the first calls and we had an Inc 5000 three time award winner, just brilliant, brilliant person saying, I could not have written this book without you. You are so good at getting into the why, why, why. He's asking questions that, not rabbit holes, like architecture and foundation of what that means to you and how does it relate to your customer experience and all these things. He's really good at understanding them.

better than themselves sometimes because people say, want a book, I don't know why or what. And he's able to pull that through.

Gordon Sheppard (24:43.081)
Well, and getting back to capacity building, when your son or you does that process with these people, their best parts, their best genius gets out in the world at a wider level. And again, there's all kinds of good things that would occur from that, whether it was them gaining new insights, reinventing things or whatever, would be able to hear themselves at a better level. Wow, strategy, work plan, people. Operationally, we've heard quite a bit about your operational ability. So you come into my system in a sense.

Doug Crowe (25:07.188)
Yeah. Right. huh.

Gordon Sheppard (25:10.629)
and we're able to get you doing the pre-work along the way. We've got some steps where we're interacting not only with your clients, but also some other people that might be down the road for what that looks like. We want to be then co-creating this book with a values-driven approach that you've said. It moves towards this publishing date, and then you've got that post-publishing piece as well. Anything else you'd to say about the operation part of this?

Doug Crowe (25:19.394)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Doug Crowe (25:30.722)
Sure, I gotta give kudos to my Philippine team because like a lot of people try to outsource overseas, there's always cultural nuances there. And I learned way, way long ago that my values were not the same as theirs. I'll give you a quick story on that. The first guy I did a small project for me, hired him for a second one, and each time I increased the complexity of it, by the time I gave him a third one to do, he said yes and then ghosted me.

Gone and about three months later he pops up again the internet. I'm like, hey what happened to you? Doug, I'm so sorry. I was just so embarrassed. I couldn't I couldn't do that. I was too embarrassed to tell you What You understand Asian culture Doug it was embarrassment is worse than failure and I said I spent some time in Japan like my god didn't realize that was you know, not just Japan but over everywhere else I said, okay. I say what I will learn and embrace your culture on one condition

Yes, what is it? You guys did same with me. You all are my culture. So eventually he learned to, you know, to bring things up and not be afraid. And it's okay to fail, make mistakes. Just don't make the same mistake twice and communicate better. So that's one thing I learned there. And then almost right away, I can't stand the hourly time clock thing. had the whole, you know, you log in and look at people's screens and that doesn't always work. I've caught people, you know, having two screens and doing stuff and

playing games and all that, so forget it. But if you interview well and know the culture, everyone's on salary and even some output-based bonuses. So I've been fortunate to have a wonderful team working with me for the past 15 years that they just, they get some.

Gordon Sheppard (27:15.006)
Well, and you can hear what it takes to dial it in. Didn't we just hear 15 years? I tried somebody, it didn't work out. Then I had to learn culture. So when we talk about operationalizing something, it's not just like writing the book, right? There's so many components to this. And you, thankfully, we're getting lucky to get the inside scoop on your process. But you've earned that because you've put in the work. And it's not easy to replicate what you're doing. You've created a moat around your process and your own individual approach and this team that

creates a high value and you're delivering on that high value. So strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results. There's quantitative results, qualitative results. Quantitatively, you could tell me about number of books written. You could tell me about number sold, number clients reached. Any quantitative highlights that you'd like to point out about this?

Doug Crowe (27:57.471)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (28:04.982)
Yeah, you know, it's kind of a weird thing, but I would say that most people may or may not know this, but know, books don't make money. To go into the process of crafting a well-thought, well-positioned book that sells for 20 bucks, I mean, to make anything significant, you have to sell tens of thousands of copies. And most nonfiction authors that I've worked with, they kind of understand that. So I say, listen.

You're going to make money because of your book, not from it. But not just because you've got the book anymore. mean, years ago, maybe, I'm an author. You can speak now. No, you've got to be well positioned to make that happen for you. So that's why we embed the ideal channel partners, not just clients, but channel partners in the process. So when the book comes out, you can expect 10,000 copies on desks of people. They may or may not be free or paid. doesn't really matter at that point because if it's a

Most of my clients doing high value operations and consulting and whatnot. one guy, gosh, quantitatively he called me up. He wanted to do a book about his company. He said, what do you do? I write software for digital displays. And you can probably tell I don't accept everybody. I'm about to not hang up, I'm about to tell him to go elsewhere. I'm like, well, Dave, that's interesting maybe, but can you tell me a story about digital displays?

The book has to be visual, know, and software is not that visual. He tells me a story about looking at displays at McDonald's. And McDonald's has little displays that say, how did you rate the cleanliness of the restaurant today? And you push a button in there. He said, guess what the dirtiest part of the restaurant was? Was it the frying machine? it the bathroom? Was it the parking lot? No. The dirtiest part of the restaurant was the pad that you touched.

So I said, Dave, great story. We're going to do this, right? So we got a deal going, did his book. I called him up when it was all finished. Hey, I'm gonna put you on a podcast, give you some PR and get going. No, I'm too busy. You just spent a bunch of money, like a lot on your, on your book. You don't want to promote it because I'm too busy. What did you do? I mailed it to all my 250 clients total. got so many referrals. I can't have time for any more marketing.

Doug Crowe (30:30.678)
He sold his company one year later.

Gordon Sheppard (30:34.516)
my goodness, that is a stunning, stunning story. And you just happened to catch him at that right moment with the right vehicle and then the right consolidation of what that looked like, along with helping people get away from old expectations of what a book should be and getting them into the reality of what it could be, along with again, another, you've already told another proof in the pudding story already and you've got a bunch of those along the way. That is just stunning. I'm just.

Doug Crowe (30:57.598)
I got a bunch of them like that. Right. And they're never about book sales is the thing. It's like, I got to pick up a client. I sold my company. Some people have a couple of bills sold thousands of books. One, you know, one of my buddies that sold he's, he's done five now. And, he went from his first year before he wrote his first book, he had like four to five speaking gigs. When his book came out the very first year, he had 60 speaking gigs from it. And does as a solopreneur, it does over 2 million a year as a solo guy.

Gordon Sheppard (31:25.438)
my goodness, I can't imagine the rates he's negotiating on those speaking agents. That's incredible. I love hearing that. And the other thing I'll add in sort of having had the experience of having written a book is you're getting them to consolidate their thinking. There's a massive benefit. I only knew it after I got it done to getting your thinking down because then when you go out to a client call or when you go out to present.

Doug Crowe (31:27.095)
Okay, use it.

Doug Crowe (31:31.096)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (31:40.78)
Yeah. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (31:45.958)
You're way better organized in what you're doing because you've got those things at your fingertips, you're better articulated, there's so many good things going on. Qualitatively then, how does this whole thing feel like when you think back on it?

Doug Crowe (31:56.814)
You know, the other thing that keeps, that surprises me, because I've been studying marketing like you my whole life, so I look at this stuff, I'm surprised how many people don't realize the value of their content. Like, you know, you've got a great book now, like, let's turn it into a curriculum. Let's take it to the universities. Let's break it down into a, you know, there's so many things you can do with the content. I've got a PDF that has like 35 or 37 things you can do with your book that aren't the book.

know, curriculums is one of them. I mean, you can put, you can sponsor characters. You can, you know, create your own play out of it. There's so many things you can do with the book. People don't understand the value of your content.

Gordon Sheppard (32:38.042)
I love where that's going, because again, your ability to help them. There's a woman named Shafina Mohammed who runs her own family business here in heavy duty machine lighting. Like those machines that run in oil sands and whatever, that lighting's got to work. Their company's been doing it for 28 years or whatever. And she said, at the beginning of the interview, she said, make it easy for your customer to do business with you. And she goes, I know that sounds common. And then she started to describe how she does it. And mainly in the backend when nobody's looking.

Doug Crowe (32:47.479)
Mmm.

Doug Crowe (33:04.174)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (33:07.302)
and she got into that and we started to talk about that very thing. your ability then with your 37 suggestions to help people again, not only think about their content, but also how many other places are their content gonna be so valuable for people? Again, like you said, from a thought leadership point of view, because so many people that put in these decades are genius.

Doug Crowe (33:14.04)
Mm-hmm.

Doug Crowe (33:26.894)
Yeah, one of the things to do for that for that to that and making it easy to business with us recently is a lot of people aren't ready for a full-size book Okay. Well, let's just talk about what do you want to do? Would you like to I'd like to you know, get into Nabisco or the National Association of chiropractic or something like okay So my team will go ahead and build a database like a hundred dream clients for them names companies LinkedIn profile email phone numbers everything

And what they'll do is what we actually do this before. We do this before a sale. We actually do this for free for people ready? So we'll build a database for them. I'll build a channel partnership map for them. I'll go into their profile and some of their content and create an avatar. and then I'll actually build a dashboard for them. put these assets in the dashboard along with the first few pages of a white paper and say, here's what this can do for you.

dashboard, white paper, avatar, database. And we'll convert that into a Kindle book and an auto book for you. And they look at all this stuff and go, this is amazing. This gives them clarity and direction and purpose, everything. Do you want to keep going? Well, okay. Let's talk about the engagement. You don't want keep going? Okay. Don't worry about it. We'll spend a week with them building their program out before we even bring up, know, payment structures.

Gordon Sheppard (34:52.958)
That is unbelievable. Sorry, what I mean to say is what I've seen also a lot of fatigue for entrepreneurs is they're being asked, they know their technical thing. They can probably sell something, but they don't know what you just described. That week that you're putting in, the ability to accelerate them through that process. Because when they're off in those seminars trying to learn out what's their avatar, who do they go for, whatever, and they don't have an expert like you to expedite that. But what you said, you're taking that as sort of a moment in time just to help.

Doug Crowe (35:10.21)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (35:21.234)
like you said, be genuinely interested and win them, you know, win their business and in a way that is such high value for them because they just don't even have that ability to think in that manner.

Doug Crowe (35:30.766)
Yeah, break it down even deeper. Think about all the time and money people spend on advertising, social proof, all this stuff, persuasion, sales teams, get them to buy, you know, all that crap. I can't stand it. So all that energy and time. What if I just go ahead and spend a couple thousand bucks for free on qualified people, mind you, I'm not gonna do for anybody, but if you're qualified, I'll do this for you. Cause that eliminates sales pressure. It eliminates testimonials really. And I have them, but if you want them.

but it makes the process like, is, I'm already working together without the money. So now I guess got to just, you know, when you're, when you like it, keep going.

Gordon Sheppard (36:11.09)
That's a great way to go and again for them the impacts on the rest of their business and there's so much noise in marketing, so much noise. But what you've said is we're gonna consolidate your expertise. That's the way we're gonna help you get a win. By the way, we're not just getting you to blather, we're gonna get you to be, get people interested in you and we're gonna help you find those pieces to be interested in you to get that win. You've got the process down, you've got the people in place and the machine to make this occur along with the proof in the pudding.

Doug Crowe (36:28.194)
Right.

Gordon Sheppard (36:37.842)
Boy, it must be just easy to sleep at night and fun to get out of bed in the morning.

Doug Crowe (36:41.846)
I don't have a lot of sales pressure anymore because I have so many people that want this. Okay, well, here you go. It's easy.

Gordon Sheppard (36:48.742)
And it's at a time when I think if we look at age and stage, just of populations and the loss of a lot of people going to their graves without ever getting this out, which is a sad thing, because we have a whole boomer sort of cohort that got to, know, essentially drive the world and they just aren't making necessarily, but you're getting sort of at least a few of them to take the time to get it out there in the world.

Doug Crowe (36:59.319)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (37:10.594)
I am. It's a sad thing when I have some stories of people that I think they'd be a great author. really, it's great stories. There's one gal, you know, escaped an abusive relationship and she told me stories about Army Ranger rescuing her. And I said, my God, this is so, it's a beautiful story. We need to save other people for this, right? So I put together the database for the shelters and like, you know, we need a two prong system here. We need to have the content for the women in trouble. And then in marketing,

area for the brothers, sisters, uncles, fathers over here marketing here, store here, we'll put it together. We can save lives with this, right? Lives, not just make money. Sounds good though. Okay, I'll get back to next week. Okay, great. We'll talk about it. Yeah. Okay. I, I'm maybe, I'll maybe do it in a few months. I said, all right, I don't try to talk her into it. That's her journey, her thing, but I'll tell you what, and this is, I'm not mentioning names for reason.

I guarantee you some women died because she didn't write her book. And that's this harsh thing to say, but I feel like, man, that could have saved lives. And, you know, maybe she got busy, okay, but someone's had the calling to do something about it. And it wasn't her. It made me sad.

Gordon Sheppard (38:23.774)
I agree with the calling side and that's interesting and that's a very dramatic example obviously of some, you know, what sort of the impact that we could have. What I'm finding just generally again even doing this podcast is getting people to articulate their wins. Now I'm putting people together that didn't know about those skills that that other person had. I've noticed that as a real trend, like, oh wait, you're a water genius expert and you work with the city of Los Angeles and oh, you work with the city of Toronto and you pull, oh, now they know each, like how do we get that capacity building?

Doug Crowe (38:26.968)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (38:52.242)
to go even further. So isn't that nice that you're not in just a sort of a profitable business, but you're in a genuinely interested area where you're, and this is, it'd be fun to talk to you in five or 10 years, because as your business grows, some of these impact stories are gonna get even more and more. wow, what a great interview. Really appreciate that you've taken the time. I was gonna say, anytime we get someone like you on.

Doug Crowe (38:52.398)
Yeah.

Doug Crowe (39:03.534)
Yeah. huh. huh.

Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (39:16.21)
the show, I was like a few sentences at the end, if you don't mind. You know, if you were speaking to that next leader who's listening to this, and you had a few sentences of encouragement about why they should write their book, in a sense, what would you say as a few sentences for them?

Doug Crowe (39:21.87)
Mm-hmm.

Doug Crowe (39:26.766)
Mm-hmm.

Two things. I was asking on a previous podcast. What's the best book I've ever read right? Doug you've written a bunch. You've read a bunch What's the best book, you know, give me that give me that one and my answer is very clear The best book you'll ever read is the one that you write

Gordon Sheppard (39:49.31)
That's a great spot to end. I could talk to you for another five hours. Thank you for all the great stories, your good energy, your genuine, genuine interest. Doug, thank you so much for being on the show.

Doug Crowe (39:54.616)
Bye.

Doug Crowe (39:58.574)
Thank you.