Today’s a little bit of a sad day. Mixed emotions for me, because I’m announcing that I’m killing the Revenue Writers Podcast.

Before we get too sappy, I’m not going anywhere. Lord willing. The plan is to sunset the name Revenue Writers in exchange for something else.

It’s tough on me because I really like the term, but I feel inside of me, and maybe some of you feel it too, that it’s caused a little bit of confusion.

Why the name stopped fitting

When I say Revenue Writers, what I imagined were people who want to write for a living and generate revenue. That’s accurate. That’s what I want to be. That’s mainly what I am.

But when I’m honest about how I’ve built my company, and how I passed my insurance adjuster training company before that, sure, writing is a large part of it. Yet some people, myself included, fight the other things that are needed to actually generate revenue because we want to be known as a writer.

While we’re revenue writers, we need to be much more than writers if we want to make money in our business.

I feel like I can teach you how to write a book, but that doesn’t necessarily teach you how to make money. Mini-books will always be a core part of what I teach. It’s one of the best formats to start generating revenue quickly and one of the best formats to transfer expertise to build your business. But both mini-books and revenue writing lock me into this concept of writing.

I’ve written thirty-one plus books and ghostwritten books for big companies, and that’s still not the whole picture.

What I saw when I stopped seeing my business as linear

Over the past decade of writing books and building businesses, I started to see a different picture.

The simple online business model is literally what I would have written down of how I run my business. But since I wrote Mini Book Flywheel this last year, I’ve started to pivot deeper.

Diving into the flywheel is how I get better at what I do as a CEO. I’m trying to understand what I’m actually doing at a more complex level that turns out to be less complex. There are lots of moving parts, things spinning and moving, but it really isn’t rocket science. It’s a few things we’ve got to do. They’re just things we don’t always want to do.

We want to just write. Go write another mini-book. That’s fun. But to build a business, you have to build a flywheel.

Once I stopped seeing my business as a linear thing, I suddenly felt a lot more peace and clarity about what I needed to do.

Flywheel is the glue that puts it all together. It gives me the liberty to talk about podcasts, books, and social media where applicable, all inside a framework that doesn’t feel sporadic. Mini-books are one of the core assets that the flywheel spins around.

The names I bought and buried

For the domain junkies out there like myself, I went through a few names over the last few weeks and bought a few I didn’t end up needing.

• Flywheel Publishing was the working title for a while. Already taken. There’s a publishing company by that name that teaches writing, and I didn’t want to cause confusion, so we’re not going with it.

• A few other names were too close to what other people are doing.

After a lot of research, I’m pushing the chips in. Moving forward, this podcast will be called the Flywheel Builders Podcast.

What Flywheel Builders is

This is where we’ll talk about how to build a flywheel and everything related to it. That’s everything in your business. We’ll focus primarily on spinning around your book.

If you’re a non-author, you technically could do this with your messaging. But the easiest way to get your messaging right is to write a mini-book, and then that’s your bible on your messaging.

Here’s what’s rolling out:

• The app, Flywheel Builder. I’m building it to run my own business actively, and I keep refining it until it’s ready for you. It’ll help you run your flywheel, see what’s working and what’s not, and create new things inside of it. I don’t know how soon it’ll see the light of day, but that’s the plan.

• The cohort, The Core. We’ll all build a flywheel together. I’ll build mine for my business, you’ll build yours for your business. It’s named The Core because at the center of your flywheel is the core.

• The newsletter, The Flywheel. You might have noticed it already updated. Consolidating down on this concept, going all in.

Stick around or don’t

I get really excited when I look at the flywheel and it starts to make sense how a business actually works.

It’s not linear, it isn’t a funnel. Funnels are inside the flywheel, a piece of it, but it’s not linear.

If you’re thinking, “I don’t know, you’re going crazy, Chris,” I get it. No problem. We’ll catch you on a different one.

But if you’re excited about building a business that spins around your books, where you don’t have to restart every Monday morning with a new concept, a new launch, a new funnel, then stick around. We’re going to build ecosystems, weather patterns that attract customers and keep them in orbit around us until they’re in position and ready to buy.

Till next episode, when it’ll be the Flywheel Builders Podcast, keep spinning.

Coach Chris

This newsletter edition was first recorded as a podcast and I used AI to turn it into newsletter form.

While AI was used to repurpose these are my words… I often write the newsletter first and then record a podcast but this is the reverse order to show you all how you can use AI to create while it still being YOUR ideas, YOUR content, YOUR words.

Enjoy,

The book that will grow your business

I get this question a lot.

“What book should I write? What should my book’s topic be? I want to write a book, but I don’t know how to figure out what to make it about.”

If you want to build a business around a book, the answer is very different than if you just want to write a book to pass on to your kids. I’ve done both, and I enjoy both. Today I want to talk about how I approach writing a book to start or grow your business.

It’s not the only way to do it. It’s how I approach it.

Why the book itself isn’t where the money shows up

You’re going to think you’re making money because of your books. It’s more of a catalyst.

Most people say, “I’m only selling 100 books a month,” or whatever it is.

I only make $400 or $500 a month usually on my 8 insurance books’ sales. That’s when it does okay. Most times it goes lower than that.

My business, IA Path, has done really well. It made up to $750,000 a year most years, and it’s mainly centered around my books. But the book sales don’t drive the business. And it’s not always leads driving it either.

The reason a book is so good at helping you grow your business is because you have to understand your topic to such a degree that it makes you truly an expert.

What actually makes someone an expert

I have to understand things to the stupidest degree possible. Otherwise I feel like I can’t talk about it or help other people with it.

Knowledge is useless.

Look at AI. It knows everything.
Knowledge is great, but it’s abundant, so your knowledge is not much of an advantage.

Your experience is part of your advantage.

What makes you truly an expert is if you can replicate the results you’ve had for yourself with other people. You put it together as a package to pass on to somebody,

“This is how I got the result. Here’s how you can do it, too.”

You make it to where someone else can understand it AND get the same result you did.

Now you’re an expert.

Books happen to be one way that’s done.

You can do it through courses, through presentations. But the most easily transferable form of media that exists is books. Because there’s no video, no audio, it’s text on a page. To make it make sense to somebody else, you have to boil it down to its fundamentals.

That’s the power of writing a book.

How to know what to write about

Once you know what you want to write about, that’s the topic and subject matter you’re going to become an expert in.

“But Chris, I can’t just pick random topics.”

No, of course not.

You have to start where you already have experience, because you can’t prove expertise until you can transfer it to somebody else.

Think of a restaurant. You don’t open a restaurant and ask what you want to cook. You ask what you’re already good at cooking. What have you made that was so good people wanted more of?

“My mother is Italian. I’ve made Italian food my whole life. My kids ask me to make lasagna every year on my birthday.”

That’s probably your category.

Wherever your experience lies, that should be one edge of your category.

The three things that form your category

Once you have your big broad topic, figure out three things:

1. The person you want to serve.

2. The problem that person has that you have experience solving.

3. Your point of view, gained from your experience, of how they should solve that problem.

Here’s how it worked for me.

I looked at my expertise,

“I’m an insurance adjuster by trade, so that’s my big broad topic. But I’m not the best at everything in insurance, so I should help new people. I’ve had friends who wanted to get in the industry and couldn’t because they didn’t know how. So my person is someone who wants to become an adjuster but doesn’t know how.”

The problem?
When someone wants to accomplish something, what is stopping them?

For my person, they found there were experience requirements. So the problem is they want to get in the industry, but there are experience requirements stopping them. They feel trapped in a maze.

Then the point of view.

Everyone was trying to become an adjuster a certain way, and I had a different way. My point of view was they should get started with auto claims. That’s the experience I had. Other people got started in property. My experience was different than a lot of people’s.

Your experience gives you the big category umbrella, and your person, problem, and POV give it its shape.

Turn your point of view into a framework

With your POV, make it very different from what most people do.

If it’s the same as everybody else, dig deeper, because a point of view has to be unique. If it’s the same as everybody else, they can get it with AI.

You might be thinking,

“Chris, I don’t have a unique point of view.”

You probably do. You just don’t realize it.

One, it’s unique because of your unique life experiences.
Two, to make it truly sound unique, turn that point of view into a framework.

Here’s how I do that. I come up with the steps of how I would solve the problem with my point of view. To become an independent adjuster based on my point of view, I interviewed 100 people, drew from my life experiences, and found there were seven steps everybody had to do to get work in this industry.

I wrote out the seven steps. That was my unique point of view.

No one else had ever said it that way.
No one else had ever made it that clear.
No one else had my life experiences.

Those steps of the framework became my book.

The whole process

If you want to build a business around a book, or use a book to grow or start one:

• Determine the big category you want to be adjacent to. For me it was insurance adjusting.

• Determine your person, your problem, and your point of view.

• Figure out the unique framework you want to teach people and pass on.

To make it transferable from a book, it has to be something that makes sense like a framework. That’s the book you should write. That’s where you should start.

Sure, there are other ways to do it. But you want my opinion, that’s what you do.

Now go do that process.

Spin it up.

Until next time, keep spinning.

Coach Chris

Someone tests social post after social post, month after month, maybe year after year. Not anchored to anything in particular. Just throwing things out there to see what sticks.

Then something hits.

They’re not even sure why.

Comments flooding in, DMs stacking up, strangers begging to give them money. And they’ve got nothing to send them.

No book.
No offer.
No product.

No core to catch all that attention and turn it into something real.
Just a lame “Follow me and be sure to hit the bell icon to get notified.”

They don’t have a business that spins around that post... so it dies off.

That’s what happens when you build backwards... you chase virality before you build the vehicle.

I want to talk about the map that proves it.

Over the past few months I’ve been somewhat obsessing about the concept of Flywheels.

Last year I wrote a book called Mini Book Flywheel and that is part of why my brain keeps thinking on it. Mini Book Flywheel was my first attempt at explaining how businesses are like Flywheels and how a Mini Book is one of the most powerful ways to spin it.

But like many of my books it was just as much exploration/revelation as it was explanation.

So I had much more I had to sift through.

Let’s dive into this map I keep seeing.

I call it the Company Flywheel.

Company Flywheel

A company flywheel is different from the “Content Flywheel“ I discussed last week.

Think of the two flywheels as different views.

Content Flywheel is for weekly content planning. While the Company Flywheel is more for big picture strategy for your company.

CORE - Category

Like all flywheel frameworks I can’t shake the reality that at the core is your Category.

If you are a Mexican gourmet chef so much of what is thought about you is pre-determined by the type of food you are cooking.

If someone walks into a “Mexican” restaurant we expect certain things... mainly margaritas on the menu and free chips and salsa.

You are boxed in, good and bad.

You change the category, “I am a pastry chef.” Well the category changed and everything changes.

The same goes for us as authors in our own business.

If you write about Sales Funnels... you are going to be lumped in to the Funnel Bro’s crowd and inevitably compared to Russell Brunson because he is the category king of funnels.

So our author business is VASTLY determined by what category of book/business we decide to write.

If you write about how to have great hair... might be a tough sell to sell baseball caps or accounting services.

Your category locks you in.

CORE ASSETS - Ring 1

Once you’ve decided on your category of business and book you have to now create your core assets.

1. Books

2. Products

3. Customers

Without those 3 things it becomes really tough to make your flywheel spin.

Books

The book is your category in tangible form.

It is your Bible... there is hardly a category of religion called Christianity without a Bible.

Your book does the same thing. It evangelizes your category. It spreads your vision and mission.

It puts you as a leader of the category simply by having written the ‘book on it’.

A book also happens to be one of the easiest to promote and transfer from person to person.

“Want to know how to save on Taxes? Here you go.” And you hand them your book. Instant answers if they want them.

A Substack post, a newsletter, a Youtube video is less permanent. It’s more like a newspaper article. Sure it gets catalogued and does last some time in history, but its nothing like the Bible or Homer’s Odyssey. Books that were passed on verbally then written down onto papyrus, paper, and eventually the printing press.

Your book is the greatest evangelizing asset at pulling people deeper into your core.

Products

Often I’ve had people read my book, Independent Adjuster’s Playbook, and throw down thousands of dollars to hire me as an adjusting mentor.

They go to my website click the product and buy.

But if I didn’t have the product I’d never get them to be a customer.

You have to have products beyond your book to have a business with a spinning flywheel.

I wrote extensively about the different ways Mini Book authors can do this in Mini Book Money, so I won’t beat the horse too much.

But my 3 favorite products are,

- Coaching (1 on 1)
- Cohorts (1 to some)
- Courses (1 to masses)

Typically you start with some form of coaching, whether its a done for you, done with you, or DIY advice.

It’s much easier to pull someone from a book into a 1 on 1 relationship than dump them into a digital product.

As AI makes creating digital easier and easier the human element of 1 on 1 human interaction will continue to be valued more and more.

So don’t snub your nose at 1 on 1.

Customers

Every thriving business flywheel must have raving superconsumers, AKA customers that love the product and company so much they’ll advocate for it.

You can go very far in business just based on word of mouth.

But you can’t get word of mouth without finding them and evangelizing them (usually with a book) and getting them to become paying customers through products.

I had someone reach out this week telling me “Someone came and looked at my wrecked car and I asked them how I could learn to do what they did. They referred me to you.”

Turns out someone who paid me $5k to have me mentor them then turned around told a potentially competitor in their market that I was the way to get started...

We have no referral program, no commission, just happy customers referring people who they think we can help over to us.

That’s the flywheel core spinning around the category you operate in.

CONVERSATIONS - Ring 2

Before someone reads a book or buys a product to become a customer they almost always encounter you and your category through a conversation.

I talked some about this last week when I dove into the Content Flywheel.

This ring is about engaging with people that have found your category and your content (Ring 3) and want to know more.

Typically we engage with them in 1 of 3 ways.

1. Sales (DM’s, Calls, Meetings, Webinar)

2. Newsletter (Email/Substack/etc.)
3. Podcast (audio/video)

These are the ways we get someone to raise their hand. This isn’t pieces of content, this is company tools to product content and opportunities to talk to people.

So yes some overlap from a “Podcast episode” that is spun up from a “newsletter article” but in a company CEO viewpoint we say, “How is the newsletter performing?” We aren’t asking about one issue, we are saying how is the company platform of the newsletter going.

What that really means is “How many people are we having actual conversations with?”

Whether its your newsletter, podcast, or sales conversations these platforms provide us ways to get people to “buy a book” to learn more.

Or to purchase product we introduce to them so they can become customers.

CONTENT - Ring 3

This is where most new business owners start, content.

Which makes sense. It is what we notice FIRST about a business. But starting with content before you have the category, your core, and your conversations figured out is just plain backwards.

Your content is purposeless, aimless, and often worthless if you don’t have a category you are pointing people towards.

What is it they are looking for? What are you helping them solve? What is your unique POV of how they can solve it?

All of these things are your category and content without a category is noise.

Social

Your social media channels are there to find new people to have conversations with.

Every post carries your category, your POV, your fingerprints on it. People who like what they hear want to engage more. They join your newsletter, listen to your podcast, DM your or sign up to get on a call.

This isn’t just about posting anything its about being strategic, knowing what the next steps you want an interested browser to do with your company.

Ads

Targeting people directly isn’t simply “social content” it is advertising.

Advertising can be effective at showing the masses your POV whether its your book, podcast, lead magnet for getting on your newsletter, or a direct outreach to DM, to try and get them to have a conversation with you.

But most times social and ads are ultimately directing them to a place that you own... your webpage.

Website

Your website hosts your lead magnet, a call scheduler or something that brings people into a conversation with you.

You’ve moved them from the rented land of social media into your domain. (literally) It is so important to have this as a bridge, even if it isn’t a massive wordpress site, but just a lead magnet page through your email provider. This is your way to know that someone has gone from the outer ring to enter into a conversation with you.

The Bridges

Here’s what I couldn’t unsee once I saw it.

Each ring has a bridge... the one asset that hands a person to the next ring inward.

Website bridges Content -> Conversations.

Sales bridges Conversations -> Core Assets.

Customers bridge your Core Assets -> Category through word of mouth.

Belief doesn’t leap from the outer edge to the core. It spirals inward, one bridge at a time.

We often focus on one piece, but don’t pay enough attention to if we have all the pieces in place and most importantly if someone can even walk across the bridge.

Hope that helps you map out your author business and how to improve it.

Keep spinning,

Coach Chris

Someone tests social post after social post, month after month, maybe year after year. Not anchored to anything in particular. Just throwing things out there to see what sticks.

Then something hits.

They’re not even sure why.

Comments flooding in, DMs stacking up, strangers begging to give them money. And they’ve got nothing to send them.

No book.
No offer.
No product.

No core to catch all that attention and turn it into something real.
Just a lame “Follow me and be sure to hit the bell icon to get notified.”

They don’t have a business that spins around that post... so it dies off.

That’s what happens when you build backwards... you chase virality before you build the vehicle.

I want to talk about the map that proves it.

Over the past few months I’ve been somewhat obsessing about the concept of Flywheels.

Last year I wrote a book called Mini Book Flywheel and that is part of why my brain keeps thinking on it. Mini Book Flywheel was my first attempt at explaining how businesses are like Flywheels and how a Mini Book is one of the most powerful ways to spin it.

But like many of my books it was just as much exploration/revelation as it was explanation.

So I had much more I had to sift through.

Let’s dive into this map I keep seeing.

I call it the Company Flywheel.

Company Flywheel

A company flywheel is different from the “Content Flywheel“ I discussed last week.

Think of the two flywheels as different views.

Content Flywheel is for weekly content planning. While the Company Flywheel is more for big picture strategy for your company.

CORE - Category

Like all flywheel frameworks I can’t shake the reality that at the core is your Category.

If you are a Mexican gourmet chef so much of what is thought about you is pre-determined by the type of food you are cooking.

If someone walks into a “Mexican” restaurant we expect certain things... mainly margaritas on the menu and free chips and salsa.

You are boxed in, good and bad.

You change the category, “I am a pastry chef.” Well the category changed and everything changes.

The same goes for us as authors in our own business.

If you write about Sales Funnels... you are going to be lumped in to the Funnel Bro’s crowd and inevitably compared to Russell Brunson because he is the category king of funnels.

So our author business is VASTLY determined by what category of book/business we decide to write.

If you write about how to have great hair... might be a tough sell to sell baseball caps or accounting services.

Your category locks you in.

CORE ASSETS - Ring 1

Once you’ve decided on your category of business and book you have to now create your core assets.

1. Books

2. Products

3. Customers

Without those 3 things it becomes really tough to make your flywheel spin.

Books

The book is your category in tangible form.

It is your Bible... there is hardly a category of religion called Christianity without a Bible.

Your book does the same thing. It evangelizes your category. It spreads your vision and mission.

It puts you as a leader of the category simply by having written the ‘book on it’.

A book also happens to be one of the easiest to promote and transfer from person to person.

“Want to know how to save on Taxes? Here you go.” And you hand them your book. Instant answers if they want them.

A Substack post, a newsletter, a Youtube video is less permanent. It’s more like a newspaper article. Sure it gets catalogued and does last some time in history, but its nothing like the Bible or Homer’s Odyssey. Books that were passed on verbally then written down onto papyrus, paper, and eventually the printing press.

Your book is the greatest evangelizing asset at pulling people deeper into your core.

Products

Often I’ve had people read my book, Independent Adjuster’s Playbook, and throw down thousands of dollars to hire me as an adjusting mentor.

They go to my website click the product and buy.

But if I didn’t have the product I’d never get them to be a customer.

You have to have products beyond your book to have a business with a spinning flywheel.

I wrote extensively about the different ways Mini Book authors can do this in Mini Book Money, so I won’t beat the horse too much.

But my 3 favorite products are,

- Coaching (1 on 1)
- Cohorts (1 to some)
- Courses (1 to masses)

Typically you start with some form of coaching, whether its a done for you, done with you, or DIY advice.

It’s much easier to pull someone from a book into a 1 on 1 relationship than dump them into a digital product.

As AI makes creating digital easier and easier the human element of 1 on 1 human interaction will continue to be valued more and more.

So don’t snub your nose at 1 on 1.

Customers

Every thriving business flywheel must have raving superconsumers, AKA customers that love the product and company so much they’ll advocate for it.

You can go very far in business just based on word of mouth.

But you can’t get word of mouth without finding them and evangelizing them (usually with a book) and getting them to become paying customers through products.

I had someone reach out this week telling me “Someone came and looked at my wrecked car and I asked them how I could learn to do what they did. They referred me to you.”

Turns out someone who paid me $5k to have me mentor them then turned around told a potentially competitor in their market that I was the way to get started...

We have no referral program, no commission, just happy customers referring people who they think we can help over to us.

That’s the flywheel core spinning around the category you operate in.

CONVERSATIONS - Ring 2

Before someone reads a book or buys a product to become a customer they almost always encounter you and your category through a conversation.

I talked some about this last week when I dove into the Content Flywheel.

This ring is about engaging with people that have found your category and your content (Ring 3) and want to know more.

Typically we engage with them in 1 of 3 ways.

1. Sales (DM’s, Calls, Meetings, Webinar)

2. Newsletter (Email/Substack/etc.)
3. Podcast (audio/video)

These are the ways we get someone to raise their hand. This isn’t pieces of content, this is company tools to product content and opportunities to talk to people.

So yes some overlap from a “Podcast episode” that is spun up from a “newsletter article” but in a company CEO viewpoint we say, “How is the newsletter performing?” We aren’t asking about one issue, we are saying how is the company platform of the newsletter going.

What that really means is “How many people are we having actual conversations with?”

Whether its your newsletter, podcast, or sales conversations these platforms provide us ways to get people to “buy a book” to learn more.

Or to purchase product we introduce to them so they can become customers.

CONTENT - Ring 3

This is where most new business owners start, content.

Which makes sense. It is what we notice FIRST about a business. But starting with content before you have the category, your core, and your conversations figured out is just plain backwards.

Your content is purposeless, aimless, and often worthless if you don’t have a category you are pointing people towards.

What is it they are looking for? What are you helping them solve? What is your unique POV of how they can solve it?

All of these things are your category and content without a category is noise.

Social

Your social media channels are there to find new people to have conversations with.

Every post carries your category, your POV, your fingerprints on it. People who like what they hear want to engage more. They join your newsletter, listen to your podcast, DM your or sign up to get on a call.

This isn’t just about posting anything its about being strategic, knowing what the next steps you want an interested browser to do with your company.

Ads

Targeting people directly isn’t simply “social content” it is advertising.

Advertising can be effective at showing the masses your POV whether its your book, podcast, lead magnet for getting on your newsletter, or a direct outreach to DM, to try and get them to have a conversation with you.

But most times social and ads are ultimately directing them to a place that you own... your webpage.

Website

Your website hosts your lead magnet, a call scheduler or something that brings people into a conversation with you.

You’ve moved them from the rented land of social media into your domain. (literally) It is so important to have this as a bridge, even if it isn’t a massive wordpress site, but just a lead magnet page through your email provider. This is your way to know that someone has gone from the outer ring to enter into a conversation with you.

The Bridges

Here’s what I couldn’t unsee once I saw it.

Each ring has a bridge... the one asset that hands a person to the next ring inward.

Website bridges Content -> Conversations.

Sales bridges Conversations -> Core Assets.

Customers bridge your Core Assets -> Category through word of mouth.

Belief doesn’t leap from the outer edge to the core. It spirals inward, one bridge at a time.

We often focus on one piece, but don’t pay enough attention to if we have all the pieces in place and most importantly if someone can even walk across the bridge.

Hope that helps you map out your author business and how to improve it.

Keep spinning,

Coach Chris

You can’t let AI say your point of view... only slice it.

Have you seen all the AI backlash? (or the latest Substack AI detection tool!?!?)

Wow, people spend billions convincing us to write with AI and now people are screaming they hate it.

People swear they can spot (sometimes smell) AI content a mile away.

So for those of us who bought into the vision of AI helping us run our content machines... what are we supposed to do?

I wrote a book a few years back called the Simple Online Business Model.

It was the basics of what it took to keep a online business going, even as a busy homeschool dad/CEO.

I’ve been refining my method for years but as I took time off from posting on social and away from writing newsletters I really tried to get a visual image of how I could run my business.

Then it hit me, like a box of rocks (and I’m as dumb as one sometimes), it all made so much sense.

So here is the formula I see and how I’m reapproaching content writing for both my businesses so I can “just keep spinning” content up without becoming AI slop.

I call it the Content Flywheel.

Content Flywheel

Using AI or my own well-worn brain, that still works most days, (didn’t fry it totally with Claude and GPT last year… thank God!) I find a topic.

The topic is the “Core Content” of my weekly content flywheel.

Then out from that topic spins all other content for the week.

1. Core Content (Ideas)

2. Conversations (Newsletter/Podcast/Video)

3. Clips (Posts/Shorts/Carousel/Soundbites)

And it piggybacks on the model I laid out for you a couple episodes back of the Business/Company Flywheel.

1. Core (category/book)

2. Conversations

3. Content

Someone tuning into your podcast each week is having a conversation with you in their ears. There is an existing relationship.

Same with newsletter or YouTube channel. But how does someone typically get into that inner band?

Through content.

No conversation (even one way) happens if they don’t know you exist.

So we use that outer band of the flywheel to pull people into the inner band.

Here is what that practically looks like.

Core

You come up with the idea.

Here is what a core idea looks like. (this is a topic I came up with for my adjuster audience)

“16,000 Tomorrow vs. 1 Maybe
16,000 daily US auto claims against the single predicted major hurricane.”

So you do the same for your audience. Come up with a topic idea and hook.

That one idea is my content flywheel for a week and its rooted in my own book the Independent Adjuster’s Playbook.

Bonus if you find an idea that you can circle that’s from your book you have written or one you are writing.

Conversation

Next I actually write my newsletter… like type it or talk it.... myself... without AI... back in the stone ages I know.

Whether you can chat into a mic with an outline or tip tap on your keyboard determines what works best for you.

I’ve done both, took an idea, recorded it, but most times I type it out.

Doesn’t matter how, point is YOU do it. This is a conversation you are having with your audience.

You can’t outsource this all out to AI. This is where we mess up. We mess up our most important content. The conversation piece to our audience, and we become AI slop.

Studies are showing that people pay more for stuff when a human actually makes it. Like “handmade” but for the digital age.

So take the time to actually write your content.

Now I’m not the only person saying to do this.

, author of the widely popular book Ask and his upcoming book, Return to Real, practices this same concept.

He writes his newsletter, reads it as a podcast, then his team posts content for the week using those as the ingredients.

He is championing the idea of “Return to Real” by actually writing your core newsletter and then and only then using AI to do some repurposing.

Both Ryan and I, and many others are advocating for humanity in our content.

We cannot lose our voice to our AI… so we have to do the hard work to write the Conversation pieces.

Once you have your thoughts, your human thoughts, you can use the leverage of AI to create other content truly in your own voice.

Clips

Once you have your 1000-2000 word Conversation Content (or however long you want to write it) you can use AI to slice and dice and everything nice and be actually reflective of your voice.

You did the thinking, you didn’t outsource that, so we can leverage AI like team members to make stuff.

• Image post

• Carousel

• Infographic

• Soundbite

• Video Clip
  

These pieces of content go out in the world looking for people that will be helped by or resonate with the content.

If they like what they see they’ll sign up for a newsletter (usually through a CTA lead magnet) or follow you on YouTube or subscribe to your podcast.

That’s when you’ve gotten them into your weekly conversations.

They’ll be way more likely to see your content in the future. The job of the conversation content is then to keep pulling them into your Business Flywheel core... to get them to make a purchase.

To become a part of the story of your business.

Because at the beating heart of every successful business are the people who are raving fans.

Your superconsumers.

I hope that helps you think about content in a new way.

Quit thinking about content in “what should I post on LinkedIn?”

The question is what is this weeks “Core Idea?” and “What’s going to help someone and as a result move them closer to a conversation with me?”

Write that newsletter, record that podcast, then what to post on LinkedIn, Substack, Instagram, or Facebook becomes a logical conclusion that has your fingerprints all over it... not Claude’s.

That’s the whole rule I live by now.

Let AI slice it. Never let AI say it.

The saying is the human part, the slicing is just packaging

Guard the line between the two like your voice depends on it... because it does.

Keep spinning.

- Coach Chris

If you want to learn more about the concept of flywheels and how to build a business with one, check out my book, Mini Book Flywheel: How to Design a Category That Makes Your Business Unforgettable.

P.S. Yes, if you were wondering about the screenshots, I’ve been developing a tool around the concept of flywheels… stay tuned... more to come in the coming weeks.

P.P.S. Ironic the week I post this I see this as I go to post it. An “AI tool that grades whether it was written by a human or AI”. Ironic. Substack is using AI to judge if it is human or not. But it proves my point! People care if you wrote it or not.

You can’t let AI say your point of view... only slice it.

Have you seen all the AI backlash? (or the latest Substack AI detection tool!?!?)

Wow, people spend billions convincing us to write with AI and now people are screaming they hate it.

People swear they can spot (sometimes smell) AI content a mile away.

So for those of us who bought into the vision of AI helping us run our content machines... what are we supposed to do?

I wrote a book a few years back called the Simple Online Business Model.

It was the basics of what it took to keep a online business going, even as a busy homeschool dad/CEO.

I’ve been refining my method for years but as I took time off from posting on social and away from writing newsletters I really tried to get a visual image of how I could run my business.

Then it hit me, like a box of rocks (and I’m as dumb as one sometimes), it all made so much sense.

So here is the formula I see and how I’m reapproaching content writing for both my businesses so I can “just keep spinning” content up without becoming AI slop.

I call it the Content Flywheel.

Content Flywheel

Using AI or my own well-worn brain, that still works most days, (didn’t fry it totally with Claude and GPT last year… thank God!) I find a topic.

The topic is the “Core Content” of my weekly content flywheel.

Then out from that topic spins all other content for the week.

1. Core Content (Ideas)

2. Conversations (Newsletter/Podcast/Video)

3. Clips (Posts/Shorts/Carousel/Soundbites)

And it piggybacks on the model I laid out for you a couple episodes back of the Business/Company Flywheel.

1. Core (category/book)

2. Conversations

3. Content

Someone tuning into your podcast each week is having a conversation with you in their ears. There is an existing relationship.

Same with newsletter or YouTube channel. But how does someone typically get into that inner band?

Through content.

No conversation (even one way) happens if they don’t know you exist.

So we use that outer band of the flywheel to pull people into the inner band.

Here is what that practically looks like.

Core

You come up with the idea.

Here is what a core idea looks like. (this is a topic I came up with for my adjuster audience)

“16,000 Tomorrow vs. 1 Maybe
16,000 daily US auto claims against the single predicted major hurricane.”

So you do the same for your audience. Come up with a topic idea and hook.

That one idea is my content flywheel for a week and its rooted in my own book the Independent Adjuster’s Playbook.

Bonus if you find an idea that you can circle that’s from your book you have written or one you are writing.

Conversation

Next I actually write my newsletter… like type it or talk it.... myself... without AI... back in the stone ages I know.

Whether you can chat into a mic with an outline or tip tap on your keyboard determines what works best for you.

I’ve done both, took an idea, recorded it, but most times I type it out.

Doesn’t matter how, point is YOU do it. This is a conversation you are having with your audience.

You can’t outsource this all out to AI. This is where we mess up. We mess up our most important content. The conversation piece to our audience, and we become AI slop.

Studies are showing that people pay more for stuff when a human actually makes it. Like “handmade” but for the digital age.

So take the time to actually write your content.

Now I’m not the only person saying to do this.

, author of the widely popular book Ask and his upcoming book, Return to Real, practices this same concept.

He writes his newsletter, reads it as a podcast, then his team posts content for the week using those as the ingredients.

He is championing the idea of “Return to Real” by actually writing your core newsletter and then and only then using AI to do some repurposing.

Both Ryan and I, and many others are advocating for humanity in our content.

We cannot lose our voice to our AI… so we have to do the hard work to write the Conversation pieces.

Once you have your thoughts, your human thoughts, you can use the leverage of AI to create other content truly in your own voice.

Clips

Once you have your 1000-2000 word Conversation Content (or however long you want to write it) you can use AI to slice and dice and everything nice and be actually reflective of your voice.

You did the thinking, you didn’t outsource that, so we can leverage AI like team members to make stuff.

• Image post

• Carousel

• Infographic

• Soundbite

• Video Clip
  

These pieces of content go out in the world looking for people that will be helped by or resonate with the content.

If they like what they see they’ll sign up for a newsletter (usually through a CTA lead magnet) or follow you on YouTube or subscribe to your podcast.

That’s when you’ve gotten them into your weekly conversations.

They’ll be way more likely to see your content in the future. The job of the conversation content is then to keep pulling them into your Business Flywheel core... to get them to make a purchase.

To become a part of the story of your business.

Because at the beating heart of every successful business are the people who are raving fans.

Your superconsumers.

I hope that helps you think about content in a new way.

Quit thinking about content in “what should I post on LinkedIn?”

The question is what is this weeks “Core Idea?” and “What’s going to help someone and as a result move them closer to a conversation with me?”

Write that newsletter, record that podcast, then what to post on LinkedIn, Substack, Instagram, or Facebook becomes a logical conclusion that has your fingerprints all over it... not Claude’s.

That’s the whole rule I live by now.

Let AI slice it. Never let AI say it.

The saying is the human part, the slicing is just packaging

Guard the line between the two like your voice depends on it... because it does.

Keep spinning.

- Coach Chris

If you want to learn more about the concept of flywheels and how to build a business with one, check out my book, Mini Book Flywheel: How to Design a Category That Makes Your Business Unforgettable.

P.S. Yes, if you were wondering about the screenshots, I’ve been developing a tool around the concept of flywheels… stay tuned... more to come in the coming weeks.

P.P.S. Ironic the week I post this I see this as I go to post it. An “AI tool that grades whether it was written by a human or AI”. Ironic. Substack is using AI to judge if it is human or not. But it proves my point! People care if you wrote it or not.

Have you seen all the AI backlash? (or the latest Substack AI detection tool!?!?)

Wow, people spend billions convincing us to write with AI and now people are screaming they hate it.

People swear they can spot (sometimes smell) AI content a mile away.

So for those of us who bought into the vision of AI helping us run our content machines... what are we supposed to do?

I wrote a book a few years back called the Simple Online Business Model.

It was the basics of what it took to keep a online business going, even as a busy homeschool dad/CEO.

I’ve been refining my method for years but as I took time off from posting on social and away from writing newsletters I really tried to get a visual image of how I could run my business.

Then it hit me, like a box of rocks (and I’m as dumb as one sometimes), it all made so much sense.

So here is the formula I see and how I’m reapproaching content writing for both my businesses so I can “just keep spinning” content up without becoming AI slop.

I call it the Content Flywheel.

Content Flywheel

Using AI or my own well-worn brain, that still works most days, (didn’t fry it totally with Claude and GPT last year… thank God!) I find a topic.

The topic is the “Core Content” of my weekly content flywheel.

Then out from that topic spins all other content for the week.

1. Core Content (Ideas)

2. Conversations (Newsletter/Podcast/Video)

3. Clips (Posts/Shorts/Carousel/Soundbites)

And it piggybacks on the model I laid out for you a couple episodes back of the Business/Company Flywheel.

1. Core (category/book)

2. Conversations

3. Content

Someone tuning into your podcast each week is having a conversation with you in their ears. There is an existing relationship.

Same with newsletter or YouTube channel. But how does someone typically get into that inner band?

Through content.

No conversation (even one way) happens if they don’t know you exist.

So we use that outer band of the flywheel to pull people into the inner band.

Here is what that practically looks like.

Core

You come up with the idea.

Here is what a core idea looks like. (this is a topic I came up with for my adjuster audience)

“16,000 Tomorrow vs. 1 Maybe
16,000 daily US auto claims against the single predicted major hurricane.”

So you do the same for your audience. Come up with a topic idea and hook.

That one idea is my content flywheel for a week and its rooted in my own book the Independent Adjuster’s Playbook.

Bonus if you find an idea that you can circle that’s from your book you have written or one you are writing.

Conversation

Next I actually write my newsletter… like type it or talk it.... myself... without AI... back in the stone ages I know.

Whether you can chat into a mic with an outline or tip tap on your keyboard determines what works best for you.

I’ve done both, took an idea, recorded it, but most times I type it out.

Doesn’t matter how, point is YOU do it. This is a conversation you are having with your audience.

You can’t outsource this all out to AI. This is where we mess up. We mess up our most important content. The conversation piece to our audience, and we become AI slop.

Studies are showing that people pay more for stuff when a human actually makes it. Like “handmade” but for the digital age.

So take the time to actually write your content.

Now I’m not the only person saying to do this.

, author of the widely popular book Ask and his upcoming book, Return to Real, practices this same concept.

He writes his newsletter, reads it as a podcast, then his team posts content for the week using those as the ingredients.

He is championing the idea of “Return to Real” by actually writing your core newsletter and then and only then using AI to do some repurposing.

Both Ryan and I, and many others are advocating for humanity in our content.

We cannot lose our voice to our AI… so we have to do the hard work to write the Conversation pieces.

Once you have your thoughts, your human thoughts, you can use the leverage of AI to create other content truly in your own voice.

Clips

Once you have your 1000-2000 word Conversation Content (or however long you want to write it) you can use AI to slice and dice and everything nice and be actually reflective of your voice.

You did the thinking, you didn’t outsource that, so we can leverage AI like team members to make stuff.

• Image post

• Carousel

• Infographic

• Soundbite

• Video Clip
  

These pieces of content go out in the world looking for people that will be helped by or resonate with the content.

If they like what they see they’ll sign up for a newsletter (usually through a CTA lead magnet) or follow you on YouTube or subscribe to your podcast.

That’s when you’ve gotten them into your weekly conversations.

They’ll be way more likely to see your content in the future. The job of the conversation content is then to keep pulling them into your Business Flywheel core... to get them to make a purchase.

To become a part of the story of your business.

Because at the beating heart of every successful business are the people who are raving fans.

Your superconsumers.

I hope that helps you think about content in a new way.

Quit thinking about content in “what should I post on LinkedIn?”

The question is what is this weeks “Core Idea?” and “What’s going to help someone and as a result move them closer to a conversation with me?”

Write that newsletter, record that podcast, then what to post on LinkedIn, Substack, Instagram, or Facebook becomes a logical conclusion that has your fingerprints all over it... not Claude’s.

That’s the whole rule I live by now.

Let AI slice it. Never let AI say it.

The saying is the human part, the slicing is just packaging

Guard the line between the two like your voice depends on it... because it does.

Keep spinning.

- Coach Chris

If you want to learn more about the concept of flywheels and how to build a business with one, check out my book, Mini Book Flywheel: How to Design a Category That Makes Your Business Unforgettable.

P.S. Yes, if you were wondering about the screenshots, I’ve been developing a tool around the concept of flywheels… stay tuned... more to come in the coming weeks.

P.P.S. Ironic the week I post this I see this as I go to post it. An “AI tool that grades whether it was written by a human or AI”. Ironic. Substack is using AI to judge if it is human or not. But it proves my point! People care if you wrote it or not.

Every business needs a system that finds customers, brings them into your orbit, and solidifies you as the right product.

Most people think of this process as sales funnels.

Usually goes something like this.

→ Awareness → Interest → Decision → Contact → Sell

or

→ Social Media → Lead Magnet → Sales Page → Order Bump → Upsell → Downsell

You get the idea. But here is a graphic to make sure you feel how crazy it can feel.

This shows the two extremes I see funnels take.

1. Over simplification (it never feels that clean and straightlined)

2. Over complication (see all that swirling going on inside the image?)

Sales funnels always felt like I was missing a piece of the puzzel.

I learned sales funnels from Russell Brunson. Best in the biz at funnels. But I never could make sense of how his whole ecosystem worked with his funnels. I understood sales page funnels but then people got dumped into something he never could explain.

The messy backend of swirling nonsense.

So I started looking at my own business and how ti worked.

Rarely was it → Lead Magnet → Sales Page → Sale.

It was months or years from someone raising their hand as interested to spending $$$ with me. When they spent they’d jump straight to the $5000 package.

So sales funnels don’t fully explain how that works. That always bugged me.

Slowly I began to realize a funnel is for a single moment in time, or a compressed moment in time. It’s the checkout process.

But the messy backend? The ambiguous blog that actually made Russell Brunson and so many online marketers successful wasn’t the checkout page of their sales funnel.

It was their flywheel.

While a funnel looks and acts like a tornado, it spins up fast, pulls people in, spits them out, bada bing, bada boom.

Flywheels are like hurricanes. Still pulling people in, but at a much slower speed. In nature hurricanes last 10x longer than tornadoes so this is the weather system, the business ecosystem that drives our businesses.

But I wanted to explain it clearer than I ever had.

It’s the invisible force behind the drawing of your customers into orbit around you and keeping them in orbit around you until they are ready to buy.

Having been running an online business for 10+ years I try really hard to simplify everything… for me.

Because I get overwhelmed if my white board or notebook gets too complicated.

Today I want to peel back what makes a flywheel spin and what the layers of the flywheel is actually made up to make it practically to you and your business.

3 Layers of a Business Flywheel

I wrote a book called “Mini Book Flywheel: How to Design a Category That Makes Your Business Unforgettable” and in there I break down a flywheel, but it was still too complicated. (see below, I was so close, yet so far)

This past week I’ve started building Flywheel Publishing, the first flywheel builder that I know of.

While building it I had an epiphany… basically a re-realization and an idea for simplification.

There are 3 layers to a flywheel.

1. Category

2. Conversations

3. Content

Ahhh much simpler and they are all “C’s” so, that makes me happy.

Let’s look at these 3 layers quickly.

For those that read Mini Book Writing or Mini Book Model you’ll know I like to break things down into 3 points and 3 subpoints.

So yes, the 3 layers are my points and now they’ll each have 3 subpoints. (this is a very meta teaching moment)

Category

When building your category there are only 3 things you have to do. (only being very tongue and cheek)

1. Name your category

2. Frame your category

3. Claim your category

Claim Your Category

This is the basis for your Flywheel.

Ryan Levesque calls it being a Category of 1.

Even if you don’t invent the next Uber category, you still need unique positioning, a way for people to understand what category you sit in.

Being intentional about this is so important.

I’m not a self publishing guy. I was the Mini Book guy

I wasn’t an insurance instructor. I was the auto guy.

So first you have to name what category you belong to. This is know as languaging and its harder than it sounds.

I’ve spun and spun and spun around the idea of mini books, smart publishing, category publishing… then WHAM… flywheel publishing hit me.

There is a lot to languaging a category but one you have named your category you can begin to…

Frame Your Category

Think of this are you core framework.

Uber set the stage of how ridesharing worked. Users have an app, they request a ride, it looks like this. The drivers get set up like this. They get a notification. blah blah blah.

The blueprint for the category the framework of how it all worked was decided and now you can’t imagine a ridesharing app looking or working any other way.

As authors we do this through written frameworks (like the one I’m diong right now). I’m framing what an author flywheel is made up of.

That’s me framing the category of an author flywheel.

Claim Your Category

Claiming your category is becoming known as the king or queen of it. (according to it often results in earning up to 76% of the market share)

My favorite way to stake a claim is with a… mini book.

5000 - 15,000 words that define your category and show you have expertise in it.

Then the rest of what I’ll lay out moving forward is the process of continually “claiming” your category.

Conversations

Once your category starts spinning you will start off first with direct conversations with people.

This could be,

• DM (direct message)

• Sales calls

• Newsletter emails

• Events

• etc.

This is how you get moving in the early days.

When you want to go to the masses to find more people to have conversations you move to layer 3.

Content

This is what most people think about when they want to get their flywheel spinning.

Content.

• Social Media Posts

• Blog Posts

• Podcasts

• Video

• Website

• etc.

But if you start with content you are missing the big opportunity!

Why Category → Conversations → Content is the Right Order

Your category and the problem it solves fuels your conversations and makes you attack the problem for people you want to serve.

That inspires conversations and shows people you care.

Those conversations bring up questions which spins up valuable content ideas.

When you follow this pattern growing your business gets so much easier.

Can’t wait to hear your feedback

Coach Chris

Every business needs a system that finds customers, brings them into your orbit, and solidifies you as the right product.

Most people think of this process as sales funnels.

Usually goes something like this.

→ Awareness → Interest → Decision → Contact → Sell

or

→ Social Media → Lead Magnet → Sales Page → Order Bump → Upsell → Downsell

You get the idea. But here is a graphic to make sure you feel how crazy it can feel.

This shows the two extremes I see funnels take.

1. Over simplification (it never feels that clean and straightlined)

2. Over complication (see all that swirling going on inside the image?)

Sales funnels always felt like I was missing a piece of the puzzel.

I learned sales funnels from Russell Brunson. Best in the biz at funnels. But I never could make sense of how his whole ecosystem worked with his funnels. I understood sales page funnels but then people got dumped into something he never could explain.

The messy backend of swirling nonsense.

So I started looking at my own business and how ti worked.

Rarely was it → Lead Magnet → Sales Page → Sale.

It was months or years from someone raising their hand as interested to spending $$$ with me. When they spent they’d jump straight to the $5000 package.

So sales funnels don’t fully explain how that works. That always bugged me.

Slowly I began to realize a funnel is for a single moment in time, or a compressed moment in time. It’s the checkout process.

But the messy backend? The ambiguous blog that actually made Russell Brunson and so many online marketers successful wasn’t the checkout page of their sales funnel.

It was their flywheel.

While a funnel looks and acts like a tornado, it spins up fast, pulls people in, spits them out, bada bing, bada boom.

Flywheels are like hurricanes. Still pulling people in, but at a much slower speed. In nature hurricanes last 10x longer than tornadoes so this is the weather system, the business ecosystem that drives our businesses.

But I wanted to explain it clearer than I ever had.

It’s the invisible force behind the drawing of your customers into orbit around you and keeping them in orbit around you until they are ready to buy.

Having been running an online business for 10+ years I try really hard to simplify everything… for me.

Because I get overwhelmed if my white board or notebook gets too complicated.

Today I want to peel back what makes a flywheel spin and what the layers of the flywheel is actually made up to make it practically to you and your business.

3 Layers of a Business Flywheel

I wrote a book called “Mini Book Flywheel: How to Design a Category That Makes Your Business Unforgettable” and in there I break down a flywheel, but it was still too complicated. (see below, I was so close, yet so far)

This past week I’ve started building Flywheel Publishing, the first flywheel builder that I know of.

While building it I had an epiphany… basically a re-realization and an idea for simplification.

There are 3 layers to a flywheel.

1. Category

2. Conversations

3. Content

Ahhh much simpler and they are all “C’s” so, that makes me happy.

Let’s look at these 3 layers quickly.

For those that read Mini Book Writing or Mini Book Model you’ll know I like to break things down into 3 points and 3 subpoints.

So yes, the 3 layers are my points and now they’ll each have 3 subpoints. (this is a very meta teaching moment)

Category

When building your category there are only 3 things you have to do. (only being very tongue and cheek)

1. Name your category

2. Frame your category

3. Claim your category

Claim Your Category

This is the basis for your Flywheel.

Ryan Levesque calls it being a Category of 1.

Even if you don’t invent the next Uber category, you still need unique positioning, a way for people to understand what category you sit in.

Being intentional about this is so important.

I’m not a self publishing guy. I was the Mini Book guy

I wasn’t an insurance instructor. I was the auto guy.

So first you have to name what category you belong to. This is know as languaging and its harder than it sounds.

I’ve spun and spun and spun around the idea of mini books, smart publishing, category publishing… then WHAM… flywheel publishing hit me.

There is a lot to languaging a category but one you have named your category you can begin to…

Frame Your Category

Think of this are you core framework.

Uber set the stage of how ridesharing worked. Users have an app, they request a ride, it looks like this. The drivers get set up like this. They get a notification. blah blah blah.

The blueprint for the category the framework of how it all worked was decided and now you can’t imagine a ridesharing app looking or working any other way.

As authors we do this through written frameworks (like the one I’m diong right now). I’m framing what an author flywheel is made up of.

That’s me framing the category of an author flywheel.

Claim Your Category

Claiming your category is becoming known as the king or queen of it. (according to it often results in earning up to 76% of the market share)

My favorite way to stake a claim is with a… mini book.

5000 - 15,000 words that define your category and show you have expertise in it.

Then the rest of what I’ll lay out moving forward is the process of continually “claiming” your category.

Conversations

Once your category starts spinning you will start off first with direct conversations with people.

This could be,

• DM (direct message)

• Sales calls

• Newsletter emails

• Events

• etc.

This is how you get moving in the early days.

When you want to go to the masses to find more people to have conversations you move to layer 3.

Content

This is what most people think about when they want to get their flywheel spinning.

Content.

• Social Media Posts

• Blog Posts

• Podcasts

• Video

• Website

• etc.

But if you start with content you are missing the big opportunity!

Why Category → Conversations → Content is the Right Order

Your category and the problem it solves fuels your conversations and makes you attack the problem for people you want to serve.

That inspires conversations and shows people you care.

Those conversations bring up questions which spins up valuable content ideas.

When you follow this pattern growing your business gets so much easier.

Can’t wait to hear your feedback

Coach Chris

Hey Revenue Writers,

Big update today.

This newsletter is being renamed to The Flywheel. (wait I’ll explain)

And I’ve finally named the discipline I’ve been building for 7+ years.

It’s called Flywheel Publishing.

This is when your business spins around your book, turning one manuscript into the assets, content, products, and services that grow the business.

Now let me explain where this is coming from…

Ghostwriting for a Billion $ Organization

February 16th I got asked to ghostwrite a billion dollar organizations category defining book.

I said yes, terrified to not be able to live up to what a billion dollar organization expects.

What I found through the process of not just coaching, but actually getting in the writing trenches then producing the book start to finish, was that a billion dollar brand struggles with the same things we as Revenue Writers struggle with.

They were publishing a book to place a flag in the ground for their category. They wanted to be remembered for something.

They are doing events now using the books as content that spins out from the manuscript into talks, content, and giveaways.

Their category is their core and out of that category sits a Mini Book and from that core asset everything flows.

Why I’ve Been So Quiet

Now as I reflected the last 3 months as I was in the actual contractual work time frame on what I’m doing here, with you all.

I dialed back writing because I was stretched thin and farming it out wholly to AI felt, well not right.

I heavily use AI for brainstorming ideas, verbal processing, editing, and some writing in a pinch when my brain is stuck.

But I found my brain was stuck too much… I was too reliant on AI.

So I just stopped.

I started reading my own old work, drinking my own Kool-Aid all over again.

I saw the pattern of how I was searching for terms of what it was that I did, how to explain it, how to present in a way that made sense.

As a category designer at heart, I’ve never felt “Mini Books” was the be all category I would sit in. It’s always been about more than that.

So you’ve seen me use Mini Books, Revenue Writing, Category Publishing (close), Smart Books (more on that soon), etc. in my search for a category my philosophy of business building would fit in.

But I didn’t want to be bound to a single asset, Mini Books, Smart Books, etc. I’ve been building my businesses with Mini Books at the core. I wanted the philosophy I talked about to fit, but I haven’t been able to figure it out, but I keep trying.

Then when it came time to publish the book I had ghostwritten. I had to go through the hell of working with an organization to publish a book through print on demand companies for bulk books and on KDP.

What I’ve Been Building

I got so frustrated with the process that I started coding my own tool. I’d tried before and failed. But this time was different.

The last four months I’ve been Vibe Coding for my primary company IA Path. I built an app that generated $10K in its first month. So I knew I could do it right this time.

The app isn’t ready to go live, but lets just say in 10 minutes you go from manuscript in your word doc to published on Amazon with almost no decisions from you.

But I didn’t know what to call it so this agitation and confusion around how all the pieces fit together in my brain turned into a raging inferno of confusion.

The final piece clicked when I re-read my own book “Mini Book Flywheel: How to Design a Category That Makes Your Business Unforgettable”. I knew what I’d written was right, but not refined.

I got so excited I started testing word combinations of what this future app would be called… and what happened across 2 days of agony was a word combination that didn’t just describe the app but finally described the way I approached business.

Flywheel Publishing.

What is Flywheel Publishing… Really?

Flywheel Publishing is when your business spins around your book turning one manuscript into the assets, content, products, and services that grow the business.

It’s like a hurricane, feeding itself. Not like a tornado that feeds off an existing weather system. Flywheel’s are self sustaining.

Flywheel Publishing is what I’ve been practicing for 10 years with my own Mini Books at IA Path.
Flywheel Publishing is what I’ve been doing here writing about Mini Books.
Flywheel Publishing is what I’ll be teaching here on newsletter.

Because of that I’m renaming this newsletter “The Flywheel” where I’ll share how to build a business using your book(s). You’ll see the name update coming soon.

Lastly Flywheel Publishing is the app I’m building that’ll help you build and manage your own flywheel for your business… all centered around your book.

I’m glad to be back, excited to be writing every word again.

Your Flywheel Coach,
Chris Stanley

P.S. I welcome your thoughts. I’ll be changing the name before next weeks edition.

Create a POWER Promise to the Reader

The number one thing you can do to make your book successful is to make a strong promise to your reader.

This promise to the reader is a promise of what problem you are going to help them solve. This promise is made through your title, your subtitle, and your book cover. The reader will decide on purchasing and reading your book based on these three things alone.

The success of your book is determined long before you write your first word; it’s decided when you choose a problem and make a promise.

You communicate your promise in 5 different ways:

• P – Problem the reader faces.

• O – Offer of the solution to the problem.

• W – Words that create a great hook in your title.

• E – Expectation of transformation stated in the subtitle.

• R – Reveal the genre and overall theme with your cover.

We’ll break each of these down.

Problem & Offer of a Solution

Every good business and every good book starts by solving the correct problem for the customer.

When starting a business, you must know your customer and then decide what problem you want to solve for that customer. This is no different with your books. Each mini book you write should solve one singular problem your customer has.

It should help them achieve the big promise that your company aims to fulfill.

For instance, I help people write mini books, and this book is helping with the problem of getting your first draft done in 7 days or less.

Choosing a Problem

If you are having trouble choosing what problem to solve, consider these 3 growth catalysts:

1. Bigger is better: The bigger the problem or the pool of people that have a problem, the better.

2. Smaller is faster: A smaller promise that is quicker to experience makes the reader have a win fast and causes good reviews and viral word of mouth.

3. First in series bonus: If the problem you help solve is the first problem they will encounter, they will come back to you for additional answers.

The more of the growth catalysts your problem has, the better for your book and business. (You can find more on this concept in my book Simple Online Business Model.)

Choosing a Solution

Your solution doubles as the category of your solution.

You can solve a problem in several different ways, but how you choose to solve that problem defines your category of solution and book. To get a book written without taking a lot of your time, you could hire a ghostwriter, use ChatGPT, or write a mini book. My solution and therefore category is mini books.

Your solution is very important because it speaks a lot about the content of the book.

If you are having trouble knowing what solution or category your book should fall into, you may be trying to write the wrong book. The problem you are helping someone solve should be one you’ve already solved yourself. Then, the solution and category you are writing about should be the way that you solved that problem!

This is how you take the mystery out of writing a non-fiction book.

The book will practically write itself if you are just telling someone how you solved a problem in the past with a particular solution.

Timeline

Determine how soon the reader can expect their problem to be solved with your solution.

Going back to the “smaller is faster” point, it is easier to sell a book on how to write a non-fiction book in 7 days compared to how to spend 2 years writing your next book. You’ll want to set realistic expectations and have real-world experience showing that their problem can be solved or at least begin to be solved in the amount of time you promise. Look back through your journey and see how fast you solved it. If someone else you know solved it quicker, then look at why and try to incorporate how they got faster results into your book.

Determining how fast someone can accomplish this, along with the problem and category of solution, will prepare you to come up with a killer title and subtitle in the next section of this chapter.

Title & Subtitle (Words & Expectation)

Title

A good title is the hook of your book.

Think of some of the greatest books of all time: Tipping Point, Snow Leopard, Start With Why. Each of these titles drives your curiosity and pulls you in, making you want to know more. Just like a good copywriter knows that a headline makes a sales page or that a headline can make an ad, the hook of the book—your title—can make or break the book.

This is why I believe you must start with the title & subtitle before you ever type a single word.

Having a good hook or a good title can actually birth a book all by itself.

I’ve written several books that were inspired by simply coming up with a hook. My books PDR Cash Box, Simple Online Business Model, and Misleading Money Mantra all began because I stumbled across these titles or hooks. This proves that the title is more than just a title; it’s a hook for the reader and a hook for the author.

You will find it much easier to write a book when you are captivated by the title.

3 Different Types of Titles

There are 3 common types of titles I see expert-based nonfiction books utilize:

1. One Word Titles: Examples include Ask by Ryan Levesque, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and Margin by Richard Swenson.

2. Framework Titles: Examples include 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, Simple Online Business Model by me, and Atomic Habits by James Clear. These use the name of the core concept or framework inside the book as the title.

3. Brand Titles: Examples include Business Made Simple by Donald Miller, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, and IA Path Playbook. These titles establish a company name in readers’ minds.

Picking which of these to use will eliminate the name overwhelm many first-time authors face.

(Framework titles can be an awesome launching point for a new business or a new product. If you don’t have your own framework, you can easily create one based on the topic you’re looking to write a book on. Download my FRAMEworks worksheet to create your own at Minibookstraitjacket.com.)

Subtitle

While the title, as a hook, can be vague, the subtitle must be clear.

This is where you clear up any confusion or ambiguity in your one-word title. Even with framework titles like Simple Online Business Model, you need to clarify what will happen when your framework is applied. The reader wants to know: if I follow your framework and read your book, what will happen?

This is the job of your subtitle, to eliminate any questions that remain after the title.

The ambiguous one-word titles become perfectly clear when you add the subtitle:

• Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Method to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy . . . Create a Mass of Raving Fans . . . and Take Any Business to the Next Level

• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

• Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives

You might have been unsure what you’d get out of “Ask,” but now you know exactly what the author is promising.

Our framework and brand titles zero in on the transformation someone will experience if they apply their framework:

• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

• Business Made Simple: 60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity, and More

A good subtitle offers a clear transformation that the reader will experience if they pick up, read, and apply your book.

Cover

Your book cover reveals to the reader the genre, theme, and feel of the book.

Is it going to be a female power book? Or a book written by a manly man like Bear Grylls? Is it an intellectual or a straightforward how-to book?

Letting the potential reader know will help them decide if this is the right fit for them, which increases the number of happy readers and the average rating of your review.

My framework for creating book covers is the QUICK Book Cover Model:

• Q – Qualify what a good selling book cover looks like by finding three you like the feel of on Amazon.

• U – Upload those designs to Canva or Bookbrush.

• I – Insert the elements and recreate the book cover as close as possible.

• C – Customize the cover by changing the title, subtitle, author name, images, and colors to match your book and brand.

• K – Kindle ready, ensure your cover meets Kindle requirements and is ready for publication.

Let’s run through these quickly.

Q – Qualify a Best Selling Book Cover

Head to Amazon and search the non-fiction best selling books in a broad category like business or self-help, that will match the big category of your book.

Find three books with hundreds if not thousands of reviews. These will serve as your bestselling models. If your title is one word, try to find one-word titles.

Once you find a title that you feel you’d like the look and feel of something similar, right-click and save it to your computer.

U – Upload Designs to Canva/BookBrush

Take your three designs and upload them to your design software of choice, something like Canva or Bookbrush.

You’re going to select an ebook cover as the template and dimensions. You’ll use each of these designs you’ve downloaded as the background of your design. Simply lock it in place so you can manipulate things on top of it without moving it around.

This will serve as something you can model after.

I – Insert Elements

You’ll add text and images to recreate the book cover.

You’ll need to determine the style and size of the font. Match the colors on the background, images, and text. Find images that match any on the cover.

Most book covers are simpler than you first imagine, so get it really close to the original, but don’t stress if it’s a little off.

C – Customize the Cover

Now you change everything to make it your book.

Change the words to be your title, subtitle, and author name. Change the images to be your own unique ones. Change the colors to match your brand and vibe.

In the end, you’ll have something that drew inspiration from but doesn’t look exactly like the original cover, like the ones I did for my friend Jeff below.

K – Kindle (KDP) Ready

You’ll need to make sure your cover is ready to upload to Amazon’s publishing service called KDP:

• 1,600 x 2,560 pixels

• Under 50 MB

• JPEG file type

Download your file, make sure it meets those requirements, and you have your book cover DONE!

You now have a POWER promise to your reader. You are hooking the potential reader with your title, communicating a clear transformation they will experience if they buy, read, and apply your book. Plus, you have a cover that communicates all of that and the theme and feel of your book in an instant.

This will guide you every step through the rest of your book creation journey.

Action Step: Craft Your POWER Promise

1. Identify the Problem:

   • Think about the main issue your book will address for your readers. Write down this problem clearly and concisely.

2. Formulate Your Offer:

   • Determine the solution you are providing to solve this problem. Make sure your offer is compelling and actionable.

3. Create a Hook for Your Title:

   • Brainstorm a list of potential titles that hook your readers’ interest. Aim for something that is intriguing and directly related to your topic.

4. Draft Your Subtitle:

   • Clearly state the transformation or benefit the reader will experience by applying the content of your book. Ensure it complements the title and provides clarity.

5. Design Your Book Cover:

   • Sketch out ideas or use design software to create a mock-up of your cover. Include your title and subtitle, and think about the imagery and colors that will best convey your book’s theme and genre.

By completing these steps, you’ll have a strong POWER promise that hooks your readers and sets clear expectations, making your book more attractive and compelling.

Hey Revenue Writer,

Look at that first cover.

It’s fine. It’s not embarrassing. But it’s not stopping anyone mid-scroll either.

Now look at the second one.

Bold yellow background. Vibrant woman. Red circle popping. Script title that actually reads on a thumbnail. That’s a cover people click.

Here’s the kicker — we built both of them. Live. In under an hour.

Colette came to the Quick Book Cover Workshop with a Bible study book called Squeeze the Word and a cover that looked like a thousand other self-published books. Good concept. Lame execution. The kind of cover where you know, you just know, it was made in Canva by someone who isn’t a designer.

By the end of the workshop, she had a cover that stood next to bestsellers.

Her words, not mine: “Nobody would imagine that’s what we started from.”

That’s the goal. Every time.

The cover’s job isn’t to be pretty. It’s to stop someone in three seconds on a thumbnail-sized bookshelf called Amazon and make them click. That’s it. And most self-published covers fail that test before the book even gets a chance.

We ran Colette’s final cover through the thumbnail test, the click test, and the three-second test. It passed all three.

If you want to see exactly how we got there — the method, the tool I built to speed up the process, and the live Canva build from ugly to awesome — the replay is up now.

Watch it before it comes down.

Replay Link

— Chris

P.S. The method is called QUICK. Five steps. One to two hours max. And you don’t need to be a designer. I was an insurance adjuster for 15 years. I figured it out. You can too.

Hey Revenue Writer,

What you’re about to watch:

Colette came in with a Bible study book called Squeeze the Word and a cover that looked like ten thousand other self-published books on Amazon.

In under an hour, we rebuilt it live, from scratch, using a five-step method calle…

Read more

Three hours, live. I’ll be teaching how I’ve created best-selling covers for mine and other authors book.

Live I’ll be building covers from scratch in Canva. Step by step through every letter of the QUICK Book Cover Model.

You bring your title. I’ll walk you through building a cover that belongs next to the bestsellers in your category.

Here’s what you walk away with tonight.

• A finished cover concept for your book.

• The exact reference workflow I use for every Mini Book I publish.

• A tool to find great covers that are proven and well reviewed in seconds

• Replay of the event

Three ways to join.

Revenue Writers Member. $35 a month. Attend free. Replay through end of week. (then cancel so there is no monthly membership if you want)

À La Carte. $197. Lifetime access to the full course. Goes to $247 after tonight.

The price on the À La Carte option goes up after the event.

Click below to grab your seat.

Register for the Workshop

See you at 6.

Coach Chris Stanley

Last year I built a cover in one hour for my most popular book on writing.

I used a method I’d been refining for years.

Five steps.
Predictable result.
I used my favorite hot pink color and modeled the cover after Atomic Habits.

That cover has been my Mini Book Model cover ever since.

Last week I got curious.

AI tools have come a long way in twelve months.
Canva templates have multiplied.
Maybe the hour-long manual method was overkill now.

So I ran an experiment.

I gave Gemini one hour.
I gave a Canva template one hour.
I put both up against the QUICK Method cover I’d already made.

Same book.
Same hour budget.
Three very different results.

Here they are.
You be the judge.

Cover 1. Gemini AI. One Hour.

I opened Gemini and went to work.

Wrote prompts. Refined them. Tried different styles, different palettes, different layouts. Iterated for a full hour.

This was the best version I got. (Check out the ugly one I got without massaging it for 1 hour)

The shapes on the original have movement. The pink and navy palette feels somewhat modern. The exploding book in the center is a clever visual metaphor.

A cover has one job though.
Sell the book.

This one doesn’t. It is art.
The title fights the artwork for attention.
The subtitle disappears into the chaos.

Gemini gave me a poster. Not a Mini Book cover.

I could sell some books with it… but I’d be fighting uphill.

Cover 2. Canva Template. One Hour.

Next I opened Canva.

Searched book cover templates.
Picked the one closest to my brand.
Spent an hour swapping fonts, adjusting icons, tweaking the layout.

This is what an hour of template work looks like.

The pink is on brand. The little circular icons feel relevant to the Mini Book idea. The type is clean.

The cover still feels safe.

The icons are stock. The layout is template default, but I did make a few decisions that made a big different.
Nothing about it claims a category.
Nothing says you HAVE to read this book.

It isn’t BAD. Mini is big enough I like it better than my original one from years ago, but not it.

A reader scrolling Kindle thumbnails sees ten thousand covers like this every month. They swipe past in half a second.

Templates skip the work that wins sales on Amazon.

Cover 3. The QUICK Method. One Hour.

This one I made last year.

Same hour budget. Different process.

I modeled it after Atomic Habits. The number one bestseller in self-improvement. Millions of copies sold and counting. (of Atomic habits… not mine)

Here is what QUICK stands for.

Q. Qualify three bestselling covers in your category.
U. Upload them to Canva as your blueprint.
I. Insert and recreate the elements that matter.
C. Customize everything to your book and brand.
K. Kindle ready, with the right specs to publish.

The hot pink dominates the thumbnail. The splatter texture borrows a complexity from a different proven cover.
The font is HUGE (which I love).

When a reader scrolls past this cover, their brain whispers something familiar.

That looks like a book I should buy.

That is the whole game.

The Verdict

I’m sticking with Cover 3.

AI got faster.
Templates got prettier.
Neither beat a method built around how readers actually buy books on Amazon.

The thumbnail decides if your book gets clicked.
The cover decides if the click becomes a sale.
The whole funnel runs on seconds of visual judgment.

The QUICK Method puts your book next to category winners on day one. It puts you in the same visual conversation as the books readers already trust.

You don’t need to be a designer. You need a process.

I’m Teaching It Live This Tuesday

Tuesday May 4th. 6 to 9pm Eastern.

I’ll be on screen building a Cover 3 from scratch. Live in Canva. Step by step through every letter of QUICK.

You bring your title. I’ll walk you through building a cover that belongs next to the bestsellers in your category.

Three ways to join.

Revenue Writers Member. $35 a month. Attend free. Replay through end of week.

À La Carte. $197. Lifetime access to the full course. Goes to $247 after Tuesday.

Founding Member. $400 one time. Full Revenue Writers membership for life plus the complete course.

Click below to register.

Register for the Workshop

Talk soon,

Chris Mini Book Guy

I had some family events come up I didn't expect and I have to delay the QUICK Book Cover Workshop until next Tuesday.

I apologize for the confusion and delay.

Looking forward to helping you all make your book cover live.

Not only so you have a cover but that you know how to design covers forever moving forward.

We'll meet Tuesday May 5th 6-9pm

Coach Chris Stanley

I’ve been designing my own book covers for years.

Never really talked about it.

It felt like one of those things that was just part of the process — find some covers I like, open Canva, figure it out, ship it.

Then a client asked me to find them a professional designer.

I found one. A good one. The quote came back at $3,500.

For one cover.

I paid it, it was the right call for that project. But it made me realize that most authors don’t know there’s another way. A way that produces covers that look just as professional. That convert just as well. That don’t require a designer, a budget, or any design experience.

I’ve been doing it for thirty books.

Tuesday night I’m teaching it live.

Three hours. Start to finish. I’ll build covers on screen so you can see every decision in real time.

The QUICK Book Cover Workshop, Tuesday April 28th, 6–9pm Eastern.

Three ways to join:

Revenue Writers Member — $35/mo Attend free. Replay through end of week. Not a member click HERE to register.

À La Carte — $197 Full course lifetime access. Templates, tools, replay, everything as it’s built. Goes to $247 after the event.

Founding Member — $400 one time Full Revenue Writers membership for life plus the complete course. Full access for a year. Already a member? Click HERE to register.

Buy a Ticket & Lifetime Access to the Course

Buy Lifetime Access

Chris

P.S. If you’ve ever looked at your cover and felt like something was off but couldn’t explain what, Tuesday night you’ll know exactly what it is.

I just paid $3,500 for a book cover.

For a client project, and it was worth every penny for that situation.

But most authors don’t need to spend that.
Most authors shouldn’t spend that.

You need a cover that looks professional, signals the right reader, and doesn’t embarrass you on Amazon.
Trust me, you don’t need to spend thousands to get there.

I know because I’ve designed most of my 30+ covers of my books. I’ve also hired people off Fiverr, 99 Designs, tried to use Canva templates, even AI Covers… none of it works for me.

Tuesday April 28th from 6–9pm I’m walking through my exact process live, start to finish, so you never have to pay $3,500 for something you can build yourself in an afternoon.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. How to find a cover idea that will actually sell

2. How to build it in Canva so you never have to hire a designer

3. How to make sure it connects to your brand and ecosystem

4. How to turn it into a physical and digital cover Amazon accepts

Three ways to join:

Member · $35/month Become a paying Revenue Writers subscriber and Tuesday’s workshop is included free.
Replay access will only be available through end of week, five days to rewatch and apply it.

→ Already a paying member? You’re in. Just register at the bottom of this email and show up.

À La Carte · $197 Just want the course, no membership required. Full replay, every template, the tools I’ve built to speed up the process, and the complete course as I finish building it. Yours forever.

Price goes to $247 once the course is fully built.

Purchase a Ticket & Course

Founding Member · $400 one time One annual payment. No monthly fee for the year.

Full Revenue Writers membership for 1 year plus the complete QUICK Book Cover Course included. Every workshop, every resource, everything going forward the rest of the year.

Register below at the bottom of this email and you’ll be registered for the live event and receive the full course after its complete.

Tuesday April 28th · 6–9pm Eastern

— Coach Chris Stanley

P.S. $3,500 is what a professional cover costs when someone else builds it. Tuesday night I’ll show you how to build one yourself and know it’s good before you ever upload it to Amazon.

PAYING MEMBERS REGISTER BELOW

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In 2016 I was running a region for someone else’s company.

Good job. Good money. Not my thing.

Then I read Play Bigger.

I remember sitting with it thinking, this is exactly what I’ve been trying to do without knowing what to call it. I didn’t want to build another adjuster training company. I wanted to build something that didn’t exist yet. A category nobody had named.

I went back to work Monday morning thinking differently.

A few months later I started IA Path.

From day one I built it the way Play Bigger described.
Not better than the competition.
Different from the competition.

I named a category, Virtual Adjuster Mentorships, then evolved it into EXP Free Career Paths. I stopped talking about training and started talking about a new way to start an insurance career without the experience requirements that kept everyone else stuck.

People started calling me the auto guy.

Others tried to copy the model. Most couldn’t figure out why it worked for me and not for them. Some customers complained we were the only option in our space.

That last one is how you know category design is working.

Here’s what Play Bigger taught me that no other business book had:

The goal isn’t to win the competition.
The goal is to make the competition irrelevant by creating a category they can’t follow you into.
If they do follow you into it they are playing by your rules.

Most businesses design a product. Some design a company. Almost nobody intentionally designs the category at the same time.

That’s the Magic Triangle, company, product, and category designed together simultaneously. Whoever aligns all three first becomes the category king. And the research behind Play Bigger showed that category kings capture 76% of the market. Everyone else splits the remaining 24%.

The math on competing suddenly looks very different.

Four authors wrote this book together.

Al Ramadan, Christopher Lochhead, Dave Peterson, and Kevin Maney. They used category design to write the book on category design, as I write a category publishing article about it, which is about as meta as it gets.

The book itself was their lightning strike.

They’ve gone on to do different things since.

built , the newsletter and podcast empire that has become required reading for anyone serious about category design.

runs Play Bigger advising founders and CEOs on how to apply the framework at the highest level.

just released a new book on category design and runs a consulting firm around it. They’re not all in the same room anymore, but they’re still the dominant force in the category they created.

Nobody has displaced them.
Nobody is close.

That’s what happens when you write the book on the category.

You don’t just lead it at launch. You lead it permanently.

This is Vol. 04 of How They Claimed It, the series where I break down how the books that changed my thinking actually claimed their categories and what it can teach us about how we can do the same in our own categories.

Named it.
Framed it.
Claimed it.

The Category Publishing Law applies every single time.

The person who writes the book on a category gets remembered as the leader of it.

Coach Chris

P.S. Play Bigger is still in print. Still relevant. Still the best single book on why competing is the wrong game. If you haven’t read it, read it. If you have, read it again. I’m on my 10th pass.

It’s the foundation I’ve built the concepts of Mini Books and Category Publishing on… you won’t regret reading it.

They look at royalties. They look at downloads. They celebrate when a number goes up and panic when it doesn’t.

But they never ask the one question that actually tells them whether their marketing is working.

Did my BookBub ad sell books?

Not, did I sell books the week I ran ads. Not, did my royalties go up this month.

Specifically. On the days my ads ran, did more books sell than the days they didn’t?

What did each sale cost me?
That’s the number.

That’s the only number that tells you whether your ad spend is doing anything or just quietly draining your account while your book stays invisible.

Here’s what I found when I finally tracked it properly.

On days I ran BookBub ads, 9 books sold per day on average.

On days I didn’t, 5.

Same book.
Same Amazon page.
Same price.

The only variable was the ad.

That’s the LAZY principle in action. You’re not trying to make the ad profitable. You’re trying to prove the ad is working.

Once you know it’s working you keep it running.

Once you know it’s not, you stop and test something new.

Z — Zero In With Targeted Ads, is the chapter in the LAZY Book Launch Model that covers this. (coming soon)

The whole point isn’t to find a winning ad once. It’s to build a system that tells you when an ad is working and when it isn’t so you never waste money guessing.

Most authors guess forever.

I built a tool so you don’t have to.

It’s called the LAZY BookBub Ad Tracker.

​

You upload your KDP sales report. You upload your BookBub ad report. It analyzes both and tells you exactly what happened, cost per book sold on ad days, units sold with ads vs without, and what the data is actually saying.

I’ve got some upcoming additions to it, but this alone I would have killed for these past 9 years of book marketing.

It’s included free for everyone who grabs the LAZY Book Marketing Masterclass.

Seven chapters. Twenty-six lessons. The full system for marketing your book without it taking over your life.

And now a tool that tells you whether any of it is actually working.

Get the LAZY Book Marketing Masterclass →

Your Book Coach,
Chris

P.S. 234 books sold. $428 in ad spend. $3.15 cost per book on ad days. That’s what the LAZY BookBub Ad Tracker showed me about my own book.

Now I know exactly where to keep spending and where to stop.
Now I can actually decide if its worth it or not.

And you can to.