Cliff Jones: Hello Ladies and gentlemen, Cliff Jones with Harvey Mackay Academy and today with us we have a very exciting special guest, Alex men, dosing, longtime friend, mentor, advisor to the one and only Harvey Mackay and and Alex. Welcome. Harvey calls you the Warren Buffett of digital marketing. I think that’s pretty cool. Welcome.
Alex Mandossian: Thank you. But well that’s because I go back to 1995 then for digital marketers that makes me be g, which is before Google a dinosaur in the digital marketing world.
Cliff Jones: Well, I’ve known you. I’ve known of you for years. I gave you money, have followed you. And then through Harvey in the academy we met. We become friends today. Whether you’re listening to this on the street smarts podcast or watching the video on the academy channel, the focus is how we help authors succeed because Alex, would you. What you’re going to be talking about is virtual book, tour principle, the virtual book tour principle, and this is, this is a very powerful formula based on decades of experience, your direct experience working with authors, writing books, trying to sell books, games changed. So why don’t you begin by telling everybody a little bit about yourself and why this whole book, virtual book project is such a big thing for you right now.
Alex Mandossian: Well, I started on the Internet in 1995 coming from the infomercial and direct response spot television business. The, the first commercial I ever purchased media for Harvey was in and that was a Tony Robbins. I’m the personal power one going back to 1991 if you can believe that. So I saw harvey and he said, there’s three reasons why I recommend getting this program and these were cassettes back then. So I’m dating myself. It’s not eight track tape cassette, no cds. And he said because it works, it works, it works. And I’d never met him at that point and I thought, wow, I like him. You know, it’s kind of like a Warren Buffet’s two rules of making money, a rule number one, don’t lose money. Rule number two, never forget rule number one, so I felt I could relate to him, but my expertise or my training is in direct response.
Alex Mandossian: If there’s no response, then there’s no purpose in doing marketing. I don’t do general advertising like the Madison Avenue people and I just fell in to interviewing authors. I was in Larry King’s home thanks to Harvey and he said he had interviewed 5,000 people. I’m over his lifetime, probably more now. I’ve interviewed 4,800 people since 1993 and what I’ve learned is when someone has a book and they want to establish themselves as an authority on the topic of their book, they will do anything. They will bend over backwards to get on an interview to sell that book because there’s this narrow window, usually about six weeks if it was a traditional publisher, if you’re self published, it’s much, much longer and I wanted to change all of that because of what they would do back in the days and I’m good friends with them or Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield is they would go to bookstore to bookstore, to bookstore to bookstore and and live out of suitcases and travel and maybe so about 20 or 25 books per book signing.
Alex Mandossian: Some people would bring their books and want a free consultation as they’re signing the book. I did that at a learning annex events in Manhattan when I first met Harvey in 1995. So I thought that was very inefficient and ineffective. And so this thing of this process of the virtual book tour where you could be at your, in your home like I am right now, it’s early in the morning as we’re recording this. Or You could be in your office and believe you could get the word out and then repurpose, change the, uh, format of that, uh, interview authors make money, not writing books but selling books. And so you could have a video like we have today and then you can pull out the audio and then you can have a written transcript which you can enhance and that becomes a promotional vehicle for the book that makes you an, a for [inaudible] author authority on that subject.
Alex Mandossian: So my goal is to teach authors how to write one book every five years versus writing a book year after year after year because it’s very, very difficult to do those things. So, um, it’s just a promotional and repurposing concept that started in 2002 when Al Gore visited a bookstore near me. I live in Corte Madera, California, which is just north of San Francisco, downtown San Francisco, about eight miles. And I wondered the bookstore after he and his former wife, Tipper Gore, it was called, joined at the heart. And that was their book, buy our books. Is it how many books did you sell? And the person behind the, um, the um, the counter said, man, it was the best we’ve ever had and I mean I think we sold four or five times as many books that we’ve ever sold. And I said how many? Four hundred and 40. And I thought, Gosh, 440.
Alex Mandossian: That’s about $2 a book. He probably got an advanced and that’s maybe $900 against the advanced. He didn’t even pay for first class ticket from south. Right? So that made no sense. So back then it was teleseminars. It later morphed into webinars with video and then today it’s facebook live because thanks to mark Zuckerberg and his sister, Randi Zuckerberg, who did the first facebook live ever, was that Katy Perry? You can click this one button that is called share, you know. And that five letter word allows you to be on everyone else’s facebook pages. And it’s, it’s a democratizing the broadcasters like bill, just like, I was going to say Bill Gates, I’m just like, I’m a steve jobs did, was I, and with music. So we can dive deeper into that. But I think you just need to write one book every five years because you have an editorial calendar in getting the content out with your table of contents.
Cliff Jones: I notice a today a lot, probably like you do, a lot of successful business owners have a book in them. They’re getting a book out of them onto the market juggling that Harvey did for decades growing a company, leading a company, selling books, unlike arguing cases, sold 10 million copies of seven New York Times bestselling books. And in growing a, unlike the best selling New York Times authors today, the game’s changed her authors. So talk a little bit about how the, what the reality is for authors and even getting one book to sell any number of copies is all about. Now we’re going to go into the formula of your virtual book principal.
Alex Mandossian: Okay, well, this may be offensive to some authors watching right now and it may fly in the face of what many of publishers believe is true. Uh, I think the publishing business out of New York and any other city or part of the world, I think it’s obsolete because of all the different types of media that have come out. So I believe the purpose of the book isn’t so much to make money from the sales of the book in many cases, if it’s a 250 page business card, you know, it’s a, it’s an authority, a, I would call it an asset. It’s an artifact of authority where you hand it to someone and it looks like, you know, you’ve done some work. Uh, so I don’t, I don’t look at making money from the book itself. I at making money. Some different iterations of the book.
Alex Mandossian: I have a colleague, um, his name is Paul Colligan. He and I wrote a book in 2007, which I think 90 percent of it now is no longer relevant and it was called the business podcasting Bible. And the reason is no longer relevant is because podcasting has changed over the years. We sold 200 copies, I believe, maybe 250 if we’re lucky on Amazon, but we made several million dollars from that book because the table of contents, the six chapters turned into a podcast secrets course, which we did a couple million dollars from in the following year. So you can turn a book into a course. You can take a book and put it on eight and a half by 11 inch sheets of paper, drilled three holes down the side, put it on a three ring binder and you know, now you have something that’s much more valuable, the same number of words and content, but it’s more valuable.
Alex Mandossian: You could turn that into audio. We have audible these days, but you could have a how to course. Um, the book can end up becoming a, a two day workshop. The book can be a membership site, a of content. Uh, the book can be a series of a facebook live every week, you know, once a week or it can be a podcast. So rather than changing content, rather than going to the next topic, like many authors do, you done a lot of work in developing a table of contents, contents and you have all the pages, many of which never made the book because you know of the revisions and the editing, and so why not have that radically repurposed for at least a year, you know, week after week after week, and they get this net out to to fish instead of having bait on a hook with one fishing rod, as many authors do, most.
Most authors don’t sell lots of books. In fact, most of the books that don’t get sold, get recycled and they’re turned into toilet paper, which most people don’t know. And that’s not a joke. That’s absolutely true. So if you’ve killed a few trees because you’ve written a book, why not repurpose it electronically so that you become an authority on the topic that the book is about?
Cliff Jones: This is a phenomenal topic and right on point. Let’s just reverse this for a second and just inject my story. I have four of the world’s worst books co-written ever. I invested a decent amount of money, time and energy, getting them through a non traditional publisher to market. What I know is my shelves are full of those books are on Amazon and nobody’s bought them. However, in those books, what were the seeds, the Genesis of my coaching program that became a workshop and I’ve coached, as you’re just saying, coached and trained thousands of entrepreneurs in the system now called clarity, which will become the next book, but right now I’m growing a company. I don’t have time to write a book. Harvey holds me accountable, but the point you’re making is authors, unless you’re a Harvey Mackay or somebody extraordinary, which even today the rules have changed. Harvey’s not getting big advances for books anymore.
Cliff Jones: Like you said, the publishing industry is dramatically different, but if you are passionate about the way you add value to people, your reader and you write a book. What happened to me and no name was, I had instant credibility from the book with the famous names and then people saw me differently in the business world and it was easier for me to promote and sell my coaching programs, which turned into a lot of money. I don’t talk about money stuff. Money is you, you talk about and, and live. It’s a byproduct of the good we’re doing in the world, but I want to take people into your process for this virtual book tour because as long as everybody’s clear at this point that a book serves a highly useful purpose in number ways. Getting us clear and aligned with our vision or message. I’m vetting it through publishers and editors and you know, people who help us make a better product.
Cliff Jones: And then we ended up with his body of work and, and like Harvey said, when we started the academy said, why the heck would you want to do this crazy? And on world’s online stuff. He says, cliff, I want a legacy. I want to change millions more lives and you can figure this stuff out for me and I don’t want to travel in cell account on telling books anymore and here we are and you’re talking about that you’ve taught online for years. You travel all over the world teaching this stuff. Let’s take everybody into the kind of the guts, the blueprint. We don’t have time to go through it all today of the virtual book tour principle. Okay. What a virtual book tour is, is like a book signing that you would go into physical bookstores only. You’re doing it once and you’re giving the back story of the book.
Alex Mandossian: You’re explaining the book. So I’ve done three of them with Harvey and um, I’m the one who went to Harvey originally and said, why don’t we repurpose your life’s work? You know, your son, you have daughters, you know, they’re not going to be your legacy. Content wise, they do other stuff. Why don’t we take your books and repurpose it? And the net result was dot Harvey Mackay Roundtable, which still lives on with the reunions. And then there’s now the intensive that you put together, which are two day events, that’s a repurposing structured from the body of work that he’s done. So the virtual book tour is having a book and launching it now we have Amazon, so it’s I think twenty four cents out of every dollar spent online, goes to Amazon and Jeff Bezos love him or loathe them, you know, it’s true. And so that’s a buying environment, just like Ebay is not google, which attracts browsers. It’s not Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn which had cracks, browsers. These are buyers that are going there. So what we do is the big, the book is written and we recommend self publishing because a traditional publisher doesn’t make it easy for us to do this because they have limitations. They’re usually, you know, multimillion dollar companies. And so you can’t mess around with irresistible offers and things like that. So the book is written and the virtual book tour is an interview. I usually do the interview, which is like a Larry King exchange with the author. I read the book and for about 40 minutes the author explains the book and we take the kindle version, which is the digital version.
Alex Mandossian: That’s Amazon’s a digital version, and we take it down to ninety nine cents and the reason why we take it down to ninety nine cents and we do that for about seven to 10 days. This will people buy it. And so if a CEO has 500 employees, the 500 employees could be reimbursed $1 and now there are 500 sales instantly. Now that creates an Amazon best seller, which isn’t difficult to do, but then it allows you to become a best seller on the Wall Street Journal and USA Today and New York Times is very difficult, but now they’re accounting digital sale. So when you have a car, you have a person purchasing a kindle version for ninety nine cents. Now you’re going to have a certified review on Amazon. So when you get a certified review on Amazon and you have 100 of them that are five stars, now the algorithm kicks in and you start showing up with little pop up boxes.
Alex Mandossian: And if you bought this, then you might want to look at this and you know, Amazon does a really, really good job without even advertising of, of selling stuff. And so you just tip the scales in your favor of selling that. Now you can bring the kindle version backup to the whatever price you have, maybe eight or $9 and then the physical version. But once you have an Amazon best seller than Amazon is working and you have a physical book, if you want to have speaking gigs after the virtual book tour is done, you can say, hey, I’ll speak for free. If you buy 500 books at $20, well that’s a $10,000 speaking fee. Not a lot, but it’s worthwhile. And you can do a four hour talk with, with a break in between the two hour segments, uh, for an entire company. And they have the book, that’s the study guide, that’s the, that’s the how to and you speaking and dive deeper into that book.
Alex Mandossian: And then as a bonus, you have them go to the virtual book tour recording, which I do on facebook live these days, and they used to be teleseminars and webinars and it becomes a bonus gift to drill even deeper and once you have the reviews, once you have the books sold on Amazon, and once you have bestseller status, then you become even more of an authority because of a little starburst that says best seller. That book can be turned into a course and put that into a membership site. That book in the table of contents could be a podcast over a 52 week period. It can be a sequence of articles. So you take the content and rather than writing the new book in the following year, which is a lot, it’s a lot of work. You know, you don’t see your kids for awhile when you’re writing a book that I was writing my book from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM in the morning and then I’d be exhausted going to work.
Alex Mandossian: So you’re casting a bigger net through repurposing the book, which is in printed form, re purposing it on YouTube, on your YouTube channel, on Twitter with thousands of tweets on LinkedIn with video, one minute videos and um, little excerpt from the book. So you already have the raw material and you’re promoting your topic. You’re not promoting the book. If you look at it, a hub and spoke scenario, like a bicycle wheel. I used to be a professional cyclist. I used this metaphor. The hub is, is the massive, the hub, the wheel is the target market or audience. And then the spokes are the media. All the different media forms. People think the book is the hub. The book is not the hub, you’re the hub in a bicycle wheel, you are the message, you are that whatever topic it’s expressed through you, the spokes are all the different repurposing channels.
Alex Mandossian: And a book isn’t another spoke. So if you have one spoke that’s not a wheel, if you have to, that’s not a wheel. But if you have 24 then that’s what we’ll. So it just redefining what the book stands for. And the net result is making a lot more profit. We’ve done this with Jack Canfield, we’ve done it with Harvey, we’ve done it with the CEO and founder of a business network, international, Ivan Meisner, and many, many, many other people. There’s a lot of smart people who think the book is this message that they’re getting out, and all it is is another vehicle and another channel to get that message out.
Cliff Jones: Ladies and gentlemen will route Alex men dose in a guest here with us at Harvard, the Kid Academy, and if you’re listening to this on the podcast street smarts podcast, we’re talking specifically the authors were talking with Alex about the virtual book tour principle that he focuses on to help authors be successful. And if there’s one, I think huge thing, I’m hearing you say, Alex, that people could take away possibly as the money’s not in the book. I know a, unless you are a major bestselling author there a, there’s way more money to be made in exactly what you’re talking about. Repurchasing meaning taking the core body of work that would go into a book and distributing it in many ways to generate revenue through coaching programs, workshops, a online training courses. All of which happens here at Harvey Mackay Academy happened to at the predecessor of the academy, the university. So if you doubt any of this works, Ladies and gentlemen know Alex and I have lived at Harvey’s lived it. Alex does this routinely, but Alex, this presumes people have a book and some marketable shape or form, doesn’t it? And if, if a person doesn’t have a book, I mean we got a lot of one of the authors. What do you tell people that don’t have a book about getting a book ready to hit your platform?
Alex Mandossian: Well, the those who don’t have a book have a much better advantage because a book is the written word and the written word requires video and audio. If you’re going to be repurposed, if you don’t have a book and you decide to do a video podcast or a weekly video show on youtube or on facebook live like I do every Friday at 12 noon, I’ve done it for the past six years. Then from that content you give it to an editor. I call it a content manager on my team. Her name is Jessica, and from there you pull out the book. It’s a lot easier to write with your mouth then right with your hands, and so I find that I’m having an audio podcast which is audio. There’s no video there in most cases, that’s easy to write a book that way because it’s coming from you.
Alex Mandossian: It’s on a topic and then the book just becomes another spoke in that bicycle wheel, the hub and spoke scenario. So if you haven’t written a book, it’s. It’s even better because then there’s no confirmation bias. You’re not consigned and you’re not putting yourself in a marketing jail of sticking to the content in the book. You can find out, hey, what do people want to get from me? If you blog once a week on a blog and you write a bit, um, do you have a book after six months? If you have a podcast, do you have a book after three months? If you knew video, you have a book after three months as well. And so I’d love video because from the video you can take audio and the video. You can also take the transcript so that you have articles and blog posts and you have audio in the form of a podcast already put audio on facebook as well. And then the video, you have youtube and Vimeo and um, uh, even you’re going to have a youtube channel with it. Linkedin allows you to have video as does twitter. And so if there’s no book, then that’s a good thing because now you’re really in the position of going to heaven without the inconvenience of dying because you’re getting content APP and you’re finding out by curating it through demand. What do your people, what does your tribe want most? And that becomes the book. Okay,
Cliff Jones: I’m thrilled you’re here. I want to assure everybody lives sitting in watching. Alex will be back. If you’re watching this on the academy right now, you’re, you’re on the path of an author and a hungry fighter. Alex, I want to talk as we get towards the end of our time the other day about the real essence of making any of this work. Let’s go back to the hub and spoke analogy. You talked about from your cycling days. I bet you were a hill climber to origin.
Alex Mandossian: Um, I was a hill climber.
Cliff Jones: I was a cyclist and I hated guys like you, but now I weigh one 70 and I got a shot at being a hill climber. I had a farmer’s Tan. You know, you real cyclist, you guys can’t do anything but pedal those things are all lungs. Okay. Let’s talk about what really counts here. You’re talking about content. You know, people take for granted content as well as I do. Who’s going to write your website? Oh, we’ll do the content for that. Yeah, right. Who’s going to get the content out of your head into the drafts, ready for the editors? How does that happen? And let’s, let’s just narrow it right down to what I think it is already. Harvey Mackay says, hungry fighter, hungry fighter, hungry fighter. If you’re not super hungry and really clear on your message and your purpose and your mission, your way, you want to make a difference, isn’t it almost impossible to get a book put together? Because for me, that’s the driver of the. All the money I’ve made on the articles there, it just flows out of what I want to do as a, as a human. So talk about that. How do people connect with that as authors?
Alex Mandossian: Well, he pitched a very slow fat softball to me. So I’m going to see if I can hit it out of the park where I’m sitting right now in Corte Madera, California, less than 10,000 population in Marine County. I am literally eight point five miles away from the Golden Gate Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge had a blueprint before it was created. Any building has a blueprint. Anything that is going to be physical as a blueprint, a design. The first blueprint for the Golden Gate Bridge didn’t look anything like
Alex Mandossian: the Golden Gate Bridge looks like today. People travel from all over the world for something that I take for granted that I could run to. Now the version two and three and four. Those blueprints weren’t even what the Golden Gate Bridge looks like. It took a few iterations. So you need a plan. You need an intention and prepare to win could be harvest next book because that’s the theme of everything he’s ever done. The way he wrote a swim with the sharks is writing a bunch of vignettes of experience and by putting those vignettes together and weaving it together, um, he ended up, I think a sister was. His editor was very, very talented. He ended up writing a book that people loves, went swimming with the sharks without being eaten alive. So as far as content is concerned, if you have a blueprint where you can dump from your mind with the spoken word or even writing spoken is a lot easier, then I think that you’re in a place where you’re going the right direction.
Alex Mandossian: The only thing worse than going in the wrong direction is doing it enthusiastically, which I’ve done many times in business. So there are four different questions you wanna ask yourself on a specific topic or subtopic. The first is what’s the definition of this thing? So what’s a virtual book tour? All right, that’s the what and the what is all about the head, right? You want to get those academics out of the way because they’re very impatient of what learner. And this, this comes from the work of David Kolb. He got his doctorate degree when I was born in 1964 and it’s Kol be. You can look him up. He calls it different things. But um, I call the what is the, the, had the definition of what the topic is. So virtual book tour is a way to sell your book virtually instead of going from bookstore the bookstore, doing it virtually on a facebook live, that teleseminar or Webinar, etc.
Alex Mandossian: So that’s the what. So you have a topic, you just put what and then colon. And that’s the defining it. Just in a few words. The second is the why now, the why is all about the heart. So you got the head, the what and the why the heart, but why? Why is this so important? So why is it virtual book tour important is because it’s the launching pad that can, it can catapult the book to become a number one best seller on amazon and at the same time it, it gets you out there without you moving from city to city to city, you know the why and the bigger the why, the easier the which is the third thing in the blueprint, and this is what Jim Rohn used to say, the bigger the why, the easier the how and the how usually takes the most amount of time.
Alex Mandossian: The how is all about the hands step by step by step. So how do you do a virtual book tour? Well heck, I could talk to you for an hour about that in detail, but basically you set up a virtual event. You have a book, you put the kindle version down to ninety nine cents as an irresistible offer. You ask them to buy the book and do a certified review, and if they do a review, you ethically bribe them into another bonus webinar where you go even deeper and that’s repurpose content. So what the head, why the heart and how the hands, and that usually is the, that’s the content portion of a step by step by step, you know, seven habits of highly effective people. I interviewed the Dr. Stephen Covey when he was living. I know his son very, very well. His son wrote speed of trust.
Alex Mandossian: Dr. Covey wrote the seven habits and we did a virtual book tour together, right? Even though he was a best seller at the time. And then they merged with franklin. Uh, and now it’s franklin covey. So what, why, how, and then the final part of my blueprint of writing content is what if, what if, and that’s about humanity. Well, what if you do this? What will your life look like 30 days from now, 90 days from now, one year from now? What, if so, what, why, how, and what if, and these are different learning styles, but if you hit each of these four learning styles, which I learned from david kolb and he called them different things, now you’re agnostic in your content because if your why I’m focused, then your book is all going to be about why, start with why, right? That’s a famous TedX talk with Simon Sinek, but if you do what, why, how, and what if and do it in that sequence because the what and why learners are the, they’re the most impatient, you know, so when I’m onstage, I define my topic, I tell them why it’s important, and then I get into the how and the howl learners. They’re methodical, you know, they, they want to know the step by step. You can’t leave it out, but if you’re a how learner, then you may start with the how and then you’ll lose all the what and why people. And then the what if, which I’m a what if learner. Okay, great. So what if I wrote a book, then what should my life look like five years from now? That’s the humanity of how you’re having an impact on others, so head, heart, hands and humanity. What, why, how and what if?
Cliff Jones: Wow, you just keyed up a big fat a balloon for me back because you, you just concluded your blueprint with impact. The key word I take away from what you just said, beautiful impact because the entire premise of the academy is if we can be legendary leaders and we all have that potential, but in the context of your formula, writing the book, making a difference, building a company, being the best employee you can be at work. That why that, that formula and talk about it basically keeps us going through anything that might hold us back because let’s go back to the hub and spoke. Where we’re saying is if, if you can follow a formula as as you being the hub of the spoke of the. We’ll talk about the spokes as we get to the end here because people come to us and they’re like, hey, can we. Can you do an interview? Is from the academy. Can you email your email list? And the point is, when you get into this spoke, there are many different ways as content gets distributed, use free, paid, monetize, so address, if you could, the top three spokes in the wheel that you suggest authors with a good body of work and the energy that push own you fired. They gotta do they gotta focus on
Alex Mandossian: The interesting thing about a hub and spoke. And um, I give my radical repurposing talk, which is a keynote I give. I, I, I have a wheel builder that I hire from a local bike store and you know, I, I give him $100 bill. And then his Job is to build the wheel in less than an hour, which typically does. So I showed the hubs, the hub, I showed that spokes, they show the wheel and I, and I tell my audience these things are worthless when they’re disconnected, but once they’re connected, now they have purpose. And one of the greatest inventions of humanity, you know the wheel. So the hub is where the spoke is getting threaded from. so there’s a, there’s a little nipple on the end of the hub. So That you can thread it through the hub, but then what’s interesting is each book is a media format, so that means a book is a spoke.
Alex Mandossian: That means a youtube channel is this boat, that means twitter, your twitter channel. That means your facebook channels as well. That means a public speech spoke. That means a monthly or weekly teleseminar is just another spoke boastfully. Could you do it consistently? The message is coming through that spoke and through that media, which is not that important because they become obsolete. If you’re my expert, you’re out of business these days, right? And so the idea is to have at least 12. Now you said top three, well, top three would need would be number one, it would be LinkedIn, number two, Facebook, and number three, YouTube. Why? Because all three allow video. Why is that important? Because if I do video, I just have to create the content once and then my repurposing team pulls the, the audio out of that video and also pulls a transcript of the video.
Alex Mandossian: And I do one thing and I get three things. I get visual word, spoken word and I get written word. What’s interesting is on the wheel, that’s where the wheel is true. Do you have a little truing fee? If you build wheels and the wheel is true by turning the the other part of the spoke that the other nipple on the other end by truing it until it is nice and clean and is turning in a true way, so you true it not near the hub, you true it near the wheel and the wheel itself or the rim is that’s the market. So you want to constantly survey your market. Did this work for you? What was the biggest takeaway? What was your aha? What could I improve? What was disinterested in to you and that’s truing that wheel and you got to stay close to the market.
Alex Mandossian: Many authors aren’t. Many novelists aren’t there, curmudgeon. You know, I know many, not a fictional novelist that they’re just, they’re in very reclusive, but they have to have a great publisher and they know how to distribute, you know, their books. But if you stay close to the market, through public speaking and through social media and even through your company, because hopefully your team will read the book, then the wheel will be true. you put a tube and tire and then you build another one. I think you only need to build one wheel every five years and that’s offensive to many authors, but you know, there’s so much work. Why not focus on multiple channels and and consistently through radical repurposing, getting that message out versus writing a book every year is putting the focus on the message versus the book which is just the media form.
Cliff Jones: And we go to my example as living proof of what you’re talking about. If you have a body of work and you put enough air in the tire, right to propel a true, we’ll let the air to me is the purpose. The wheel is true. How we’re getting that message out, which is a function of studying your market and knowing your customer. And then we get traction because tire pressure and the trueness of that wheel as a my fat bike in the wet dirt yesterday. Right? That affects hoW we roll or don’t roll and how we role affects the time we get to the finish line and people who come to the academy, they get the benefit of education and knowledge and awareness like this. The reason Harvey and I love having you as part of our network is a, you’ve helped Harvey credit. I mean we’re living what you’re talking about. I have lived what you’re talking about. You could have a crappy book or books and as long as you’re out there rolling that we’ll forward proper you get traction and you can make a great living and most important you can make an image.
Alex Mandossian: You can have a. That’s a great point. Cliff at you could have a crappy book, but a world class speech write the book could be crappy because it wasn’t written well, but the top could be world class worthy, worthy of devotion. So it just part of the message and if you take anything from this interview and the time we’ve had together, you are the hub. The book is not the hub. You are the message, right? And the media or mediumS, you know, media is plural. Those are all the folks that you know, connect with the wheel and people. some people are readers, some people, our viewers, some people are listeners. I don’t watch broadcast television anymore. I watch youtube. So my behavior has changed over the years because of social media and that may change in the future. So if you have this message, why have more than one in five years? Why not build it out for five years? And most businesses go out of business in five years. Most small businesses I’ve heard up to 80 percent go out of business because they run out of cash. I think they’re running out of cash because they have too many messages. You’ll be bored of the message. And like David Ogilvy, who’s one of my idols, it was an advertising mavin. He said, you’re not presenting your message to a grandstand of people. You’re presenting it to a moving parade of people. so you’ll be just tired and sick of your message long before the market will be.
Cliff Jones: Well, it’s a great point in wrapping up, here’s a very self serving, uh, reiterating, reinforcing elements would talk about, you talked about a blueprint, it had four parts. What is it, why are you doing this? Uh, the how part, right? Which is where you start a satisfying the more methodical learner and then you get into the what if the possibilities of making an impact and the truth of it is powered by the purpose and you really desire to make a difference. You can make a great living. We’re here to help you. Um, and the underlying blueprint we teach at the academy is called clarity. It’s my entire body of work. It’s, it had many different names, but it’s, it’s a strategic blueprint for leadership. The personal part of this and then the business transformation, the business of being that hub, the personal brand. Unless you’re leading a bigger company brand and the team like all of this fits in together and you will come back or you’re going to come back and help us out because this is big stuff and I want to extract as much as as we can from you because you’re living it, you’re breathing it, you’re teaching it all day long. Helping some of the best names in the business.
Alex Mandossian: Well, on your website, cliff, for the academy, what is the academy? Define it in less than 50 words. Why is it important and relevant to them?
Cliff Jones: Yeah, you want me to do that?
Alex Mandossian: Yeah. Well, let’s do it right now. Why is it relevant and important? So you disqualify the people. You can’t sell hamburgers to the vegetarian, so it’s not about prequalifying. It’s about disqualifying the people that don’t belong there. How does it work? Step by step, and what if were an academy member for a month? What would life look like? What if you were a member for three months? What would it look like after a year? What? Why, how and what if so, go for it.
Cliff Jones: No pressure guys. Right now it’s just put me on the spot, but we, we, we, we live, eat and breathe this stuff. So what the harvey mckay academy is, is it’s a leading online platform for people all over the world to get really affordable. Twenty four slash seven, uh, pennies on the dollar. What are we normally charge? 30 five grand for a keynote. $10,000 for an event. You an intensive $75 mastermind for 18 bucks a month, wherever you are coming to home or your office on your phone. Twenty four slash seven. You can get training and knowledge like this because if you’re watching this, you’re in the academy. Uh, and if you don’t have a free membership and you’re watching this, get one. So what, what it is, is it’s a learning platform. It’s a network of influential leaders.
Alex Mandossian: Right. To me it’s getting access to 50 years of sales and marketing knowhow in a, for less than 50, 50 minutes a week. Okay? So that, that could be the truncated version. So, so why is it relevant to business owners? Why is it important?
Cliff Jones: Because if you’re in the top 20 percent of what we call the hungry fighters, you’re craving for knowledge and access to people that have been where you’re going. So it gives you instant access very affordably to the resources and the human beings. We set the table for each other.
Alex Mandossian: And if you’re not in the top 20 percent, it’s the fastest way to get there.
Cliff Jones: It’s the fastest way to get there. I love that. Yeah,
Alex Mandossian: And then how do you consume it? How do you think?
Cliff Jones: So the way people consume this is half of our customers, tens of thousands of people all over the world, they’re on their smartphones consuming and that number is growing each and every day. You know, everybody else is on a computer from home in their office. They log in, they have one log in,
Alex Mandossian: So hang on, let’s do it. Step one, you have a user password. Step two, you log in. Step three, what do you do first?
Cliff Jones: You choose the content, the learning track, whether it’s leadership, networking, sales. I want to be an author. I want to be a million dollar speaker.
Alex Mandossian: Right step step four, I say carve out 30 minutes a day to log in with your username and password and study so that you have spaced repetition and you ended up making it a habit that would maybe be step four. That five could be connecting with other members. Step six could be reaching out to Harvey. Step seven could be going through an intensive or $10,000. So you see the progression, the how is the step by step by step because if you don’t give it a, they don’t give them a clear roadmap. They won’t know what to do. And then what if they did that? What if they were an academy member? What would a member’s life looked like before and after three months from now, short version.
Cliff Jones: So what you learned from every legendary leader who came from maybe terrible circumstances or not, they they, they read books, they attended workshops. They injected themselves, were out of their comfort zone to meet people like you and Harvey Mackay. that’s how I did it. I started buying Harvey’s books years ago. Reading them here I am today and nobody from New Hampshire business partners with Harvey Mackay is in my virtual mastermind group for for many years along with the other people in my respect. We all learned that from thinking grow rich and ladies and gentlemen, if you’re stuck, if you’re just getting started, if you know you have a book in you, a powerful way of changing the world, making a difference. Hang in here because we will help you get where you’re going. we know how tough it is. We’ve all been knocked down. Our has been around the world a million times like you have Alex and and I mean how fun is it to wake up and make a difference for people everyday doing stuff like this.
Alex Mandossian: So the what if for me, the what if for me would be. I’m sorry I had a call coming in and my dogs barking in the background. I got to cook breakfast with my kids.
Cliff Jones: I’m going to let you go.
Alex Mandossian: Life is happening. So the one for me is if you follow these steps, then you put your self in the position to double your profit. Not revenue, revenue and profit are different. Many people don’t realize that and they get into tax trouble, um, but you double your profit and you triple your win rate. What’s that? That means harvey’s made all the mistakes, and so whatever’s in the academy and everyone else who has content, they’re my biggest terror is going in the wrong direction enthusiastically, which I’ve done a lot. So if anything, if you stop losing money, which is warren buffet’s rule, number one, don’t lose money. Rule number two, never forget rule number one. So if you start making mistakes because you’re being spoon fed the path to go to the promise land, then you’re going to triple your win rate. So I say double your profits and triple your win rate. And I would measure that because they stopped making mistakes as a result of consuming the content. And that’s a very clear, concise and easily transferable. You know what? If
Cliff Jones: Well you just nailed as we wrap up with Alex Mandossian, is you just nailed knowing what not to do, how to focus on what to do. That’s the essence of all great strategists, war, business in life. This is psychology. This is math. As Jason Fladlien teaches us. Alex, thanks for being with us and hope to have you back, and if you don’t have a free membership and you’re watching this video, go to harveymackayacademy.com and get on the bus absolutely free and then you can see all the other great things we do.
Cliff Jones: Thanks Alex.
Alex Mandossian: You’re welcome.
