371 – He sold 75000 books: Tom interviews Derek Doepker

Episode 371 – Derek Doepker
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody it's Tom here with episode three hundred and seventy one of Screw the commute podcast.

[00:00:29] I'm here with Derek Doepker. Now, I heard this guy on another webinar and I just had to have him on here. I mean, he's got loads of book sales. I mean, you'll hear about that later using very cheap marketing strategies and free marketing strategies. It's just awesome guy and I just had to have him on. So I'm going to be hosting a webinar with him coming right up. So make sure that you get on my list to hear about the announcement of it. And you know what? If you get the free automation book I give away on this podcast, you'll be on my list. So go to screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Of course, everything we talk about today will be in the show notes, but this book we sell for twenty seven bucks. But it's yours free for listening to the show. And I'll tell you what, we figured it out a couple of years ago. Just one. One of the tips in this book has saved seven and a half million keystrokes. We're not kidding. No exaggeration. We kind of estimate and figured it out. And that's just one of the tips. It's got cell phone automation and all kinds of ways that I'm screaming fast, taking care of customers.

[00:01:41] And I actually steal customers off other people ethically because they're too slow to get back to them. People want things now, so this'll help you really reduce your workload and and take care of customers. And that's where the money is now. How'd you like to hear your own voice here on through the computer? Well, if the shows helped you out at all in your business or given your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com, look for a little blue sidebar that says send a voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer. Tell me how the shows helped you out and also put your website in there so you can get a great big shout out in front of thousands of people on screen, the commute podcast and a future episode. While you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's at screwthecommute.com/app and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet. We got video and screen captures to show you how to use it so you can take us with you on the road.

[00:02:40] All right. Now everybody's freaking out. I know about this pandemic and I certainly feel for the people that are hurting, that are sick and and that are, you know, half the time you're lockdown, half time. You're not supposed to wear a mask. You're not, you know, just craziness out there. Well, it hasn't affected me or my students because we know how to sell online from home. I mean, people that have known me twenty years called me up and say, hey, Tom you doing all right? Well, yeah, like, why I've been sitting here for twenty six years selling online. I don't have to go out in the get get covered. So so I've been teaching this stuff for twenty two years online.

[00:03:21] Twenty six years selling and twelve years ago I decided to formalize the training and I have the only licensed dedicated Internet marketing school in the country certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia to go to this school. You can. It's distance learning and it's not the crappy distance learning that the little kindergarten kids are trying to, you know, deal with. It's good quality. We got students making six thousand dollars a month, only four months into the school. You know, you don't have to wait till you graduate from some four year piece of crap college that's going to make your parents mortgage their home and you be in debt the rest of your life and then you're competing for jobs at Starbucks. This is hard core skills that are in demand by every business on Earth, every. But he needs email marketing and chat bots and and shopping carts and text marketing and, you know, all these things. And so they'll throw money at all. Right? I can't guarantee it, but they literally they will throw money at you, a lot of them, just to take it off their back. So and you can run your own business. So I'll tell you a little bit about that later, because you can get a full scholarship to this school. If you're in my mentor program, which I'll tell you about later. But the website is IMTCVA.org. We also give big scholarships to first responders, law enforcement, military nurses too.

[00:04:51] All right, let's get to the main event. Derek Doepker went from being a broke valet. Parker OK, to a best selling author. I can't wait to hear his story. He sold over 75000 books. Using free and low cost marketing strategies, and he now shares these strategies with authors through workshop courses, retreats, and he's going to be on a webinar for us here shortly. And he empowers them to turn their passion for writing into a thriving business. Derek, are you ready to screw the commute?

[00:05:28] I am ready, Tom. All right. Well, I'm glad you could make it. We've been we crossed paths a couple of times to try to get this book, but I'm thrilled that you're on here. Tell everybody what you're doing now, and then we'll take you back and see how you came up through the ranks.

[00:05:43] Right now, I'm mostly working with authors and aspiring authors, so authors who want to sell books and sell more copies of their books, especially the entrepreneurs who want to write a book to take their expertise and use it, to have a book, to position them as an authority to get more clients and using it more for business building. Because a lot of times, as much as I love authorship and selling books, usually selling something on the back and like a coaching package or a product or service like that, it's more profitable. So working with authors and entrepreneurs.

[00:06:16] Yeah, I mean, I've always said that the book is the most hassel least profitable thing you ever do, but what it leads to is the important part. And so many authors don't get that until they run into somebody like you or me and and teach them that. So the bulk of your sales were formative. They've been in. In terms of my business overall, no, the I'm talking about your book sales, though. Seventy five thousand books where the ebooks, physical books, audio books, what were they?

[00:06:48] It was a good mix. And as we've been talking about a big portion, well, probably, you know, 15000 plus of that, as I last check was audio book sales. So a nice little chunk of it. But the cool thing about the audio book sales is a lot of those sales just kind of came in as a bonus, meaning I didn't do a lot of promotion. So I would say most sales come in from ebooks.

[00:07:10] And if I were to look at the total numbers, then kind of a split after that between the audio and print. But I'm seeing just in general across the market, the audio book market is growing. And that's why I've been big on saying, hey, if you just have the e-book, great. That's still where most of my sales come in from. But I'm seeing these audio books catching up and in some cases exceeding e-book sales. And so that's why I've been big for the last couple of years on encouraging people ultimately get it and all the formats that you can.

[00:07:39] Yeah, it's probably not as saturated as the e-book market.

[00:07:44] It's not. And it's a good thing that there's a little bit of an extra challenge to getting your book out there and and audio because that weeds out all the people who don't know what you might know by the end of this.

[00:07:57] This podcast is some of the things that we're going to be going over at, people who who don't take that extra little step. And it's not necessarily expensive. You can do it on almost any budget. And it's doable because it's not just as simple as doing an e-book that weeds out a lot of the competition at this point while there's still this huge market in demand for the audiobooks.

[00:08:19] Yeah, and just back to your e-books for a minute, were they mostly PDF or Kindle or what the formats for the e-books in?

[00:08:28] Well, of the ones I count, the seventy five thousand I haven't even counted the ones that I sell in terms of PDF on my own for, you know, products that I sell to my own website. This is just this is just looking at Amazon sales. So that's strictly the Kindle book sales right now.

[00:08:46] Are these how many books are we talking about or one book that went big or what?

[00:08:52] It's six, six main books, I technically have more than that, but there's like six books that I mostly push.

[00:08:58] Now they are all under your name or do you do pen names or anything like that?

[00:09:03] Everything's under my name. I have two different accounts on Amazon pen names, one versus my middle initial for my authorship books.

[00:09:10] But it's all if you search my name, you'll find everything has been under my name and no issues with pen names. But I want it to be like if you search me out, you can see what I've done.

[00:09:20] Right, right. And and just go ahead and spell your name for folks that want to look you up.

[00:09:26] Sure. It's Derek Doepker.

[00:09:34] Yeah well we'll have that in the show notes for you. So. So let's get in. You know, I'm very intrigued with the audio books, you know, because I have this podcast set up and I'm a do it yourself. So I do all the editing myself.

[00:09:47] So I'm thinking, man, it's I already got these, you know, I don't know, 20, 20, 30. I don't even know how many books I have. And I have the ability and the equipment are here to do podcasts. So I think, well, I'll just narrate myself. So it'll be by the author. And that's where you're saying you can do a lot of this yourself, right?

[00:10:07] Yeah, once I figured out how to how to do that, do it yourself approach, that's been my preference. And yeah, there's a benefit for some people to outsource. The thing is, like you said, if you have the equipment, it creates a much deeper connection with the the audience. And that to me, as someone who a non-fiction author, I ultimately want to sell courses and coaching and just like podcasting, you know, if you're listening to this and you've gotten used to hearing Tom in your ears, like there's a psychological impact of having someone in your ears, you know, talking to you.

[00:10:42] So that's the power that you also get with audiobooks is when you do it yourself, then you create that deeper connection with the listener. Plus you can do it on your own schedule. And it's really affordable, probably less than one hundred and fifty bucks, depending on Amazon prices to get all the equipment you need to do it yourself.

[00:11:00] Yeah. And you know, I can't tell you how many times I've gone to speak somewhere.

[00:11:05] And people, they feel like they know you already. You know, they could overhear me talking to somebody else and say, what was that? That Tom Antion, you know, because you get a persona built up and they heard you over and over again. So, yeah, I'm more in favor of that than I know there's narration. Let's go ahead and talk about it so people know there are options. You can get narrators to do this in a couple different ways, right?

[00:11:31] Yeah. So ultimately I say there's three main options that you have for audiobook production. The first one is you just hire a narrator outright. And if you're wondering what the price range is, depends on the length of the book, but anywhere from five hundred to a couple thousand dollars plus per book. So I had one book that it was one thousand three hundred and fifty dollars to hire a narrator for, and that was about forty something. Thousand words for that to get some perspective. So that's one option. Now, you know, you're going to get professional work and they'll handle all the recording, all the editing, and they just send you back the final product and then you can upload it, sell it on your own website, sell it through Amazon, audible wherever you want. So that's the that's the first option. And if you do this, you don't have to pay the narrator any sort of ongoing fees. You just pay them once upfront and then you have the rights to do what you want with the book. Second option also involves a narrator, but this time you'll split the royalties with them. So you'll either pay nothing up front or less up front depending on the deal that you that you do. But now you're paying maybe up to 50 percent of your royalties to that. NARRATOR Now, if you want to sell on your own website, if you're trying to use an audio book as part of a funnel, like a book funnel, and it's an up sell or anything like that, if you want to give away the audio book for free as a download, you can't do any of that if you're doing a royalty split and you're kind of screwing over the narrator who took a chance, you know, spent their time doing all this for you and then you're giving it away for free and they don't get any royalties.

[00:13:06] Exactly. It's not fair, you know. Yeah, it's not fair. And it's not the way it would be set up in the contract. And there's things in place to protect the narrator as there should be. So that's it is an option for some people if they just want to get their book out there on an audible or something.

[00:13:20] I personally would rather it's either crowdsource the money and I'll do something to sell it in advance and then hire a narrator, which is what I did for my first book, or option three, which I already touched upon, is do it yourself. And when you get to some basic equipment and I can share some tips on, you know, getting the quality right then now you get all the psychological benefits of the deeper connection you get. You can have it done fairly quickly and you can save hundreds, thousands of dollars potentially, especially if you have multiple books. And I also find that if you're going to be reading through your book anyway, like if you don't have the book done yet and you're you're about to launch it, maybe you get it back from an editor. And I always recommend reading your books out loud, reading and writing out loud for a final proofread. And I noticed I'm like, well, if I'm reading it out loud anyway, I want to hit the record button and get the audio book narrated.

[00:14:18] And yeah, the only thing you have to pay attention because there's exacting quality standards for these places that are good places anyway that the put out audio book. So you have to learn a little bit to make sure that you fall in line with that. But still, you know, to me it's worth it, especially you got the if you set up the equipment, you're already set up for podcasting and audio, other audio products. And so it makes the most you know, I always like things that to do with the lowest cost output, because as soon as you start selling a couple, you're already profitable.

[00:14:57] Exactly, yeah, you're not waiting. Sometimes it can take months before you start getting paid royalties, if you're going to a place like Audible, you get obviously quicker if you sell it on your own website. But now you're right away starting to get an ROI and there's not as much pressure to be like, you know, do I really want to drop two thousand dollars on this?

[00:15:16] You know, how is it going to sell it instead? It's something that you can do a couple of afternoons, you get it done. And I don't know, for some reason, for me, it just seems easier to be like, yeah, I can offer this as a lead magnet, but I can still sell it. I can do this. I can do that with it. And it just has this freedom that comes with doing an audio book.

[00:15:34] I don't like people, you know, having me tied up in it. And it's not tied up for six months. Right. It's years, right?

[00:15:43] Yeah. Seven to ten years.

[00:15:44] Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. I hate that thought so. Know so both of us are are encouraging your folks to, to buckle down and do it yourself. And even if you don't like the sound of your voice, get over it. It's kind of it's just probably you and nobody else think twice about it. Then you could be making all this money. So tell us a little bit about the what they need to do if they were going to do this themselves.

[00:16:12] Yeah, and I just thought about this, something I talk about almost as an afterthought, but while I'm thinking about it is before we get into doing it yourself, one cool thing is if you're looking for some side income, something you want to do from home, I know some people started doing audiobooks. They started for themselves, but then they go, this is kind of fun. And they started doing it for other authors as a oh yeah. As a as a business income stream. I actually had a friend who she wasn't an author, but she's just like, can you show me how to do it? And I showed her how to do it.

[00:16:44] And so she recorded like a children's book, got paid to do it. And it's like if you enjoy audio, if you feel like it's something that's fun, like I did that also to get paid years ago. Now I have too many other things on my plate, but like I recorded some audio books because I'm like, I know how to do it. It's kind of fun in a nice little side income stream, too.

[00:17:02] Yeah. Yeah. It's the same with my copywriting course. You know, you want people to learn copywriting for themselves, but other people are too lazy to do it and pay you five hundred, fifteen hundred dollars. I mean the top guys are making fifteen, twenty thousand bucks plus royalties for a sales letter. So it's the same thing. You learn how to do something good and then people will want to pay you to do it for them.

[00:17:26] Yeah, exactly, and funny because that's how I got started with copywriting, never planned on doing it for other clients, always for myself. And then I go, well, you know, once I got to a certain level and people said it was pretty, you know, better than some of the other copywriters that they've seen, I go, OK, I could do this for some other people. So it's not my main income stream. But even to this day, I do some some copywriting gigs. So, yeah.

[00:17:48] So going back to the the do it yourself approach in terms of the equipment, the most important thing is going to be the microphone and you'll want to use a dynamic microphone. So a dynamic microphone is different than a condenser microphone and you don't really have to know what these words mean. The only take away that you got to get is that a a condenser microphone when I don't recommend is very sensitive. And this is great. If you're in a recording studio, if you're like, I got all this soundproofing and padding and something like that, that can work. But for the vast majority of people recording from home, whether it's audio books or even podcasts, you don't want that. So what's one of the most popular condenser microphones? Well, I have one, but I'm not using it. And that is the blue yeti. So if anyone's trying to use a blue yeti to record something, it just picks up so much noise, room noise, the reverb, dog barking, plane flying overhead, whatever is going on, it will pick up a lot of that. So it's a great microphone in general.

[00:18:53] It's too sensitive for these purposes.

[00:18:56] Exactly. For these purposes for when you just want to pick up your voice. A microphone like that is not good. And actually the vast majority of microphones are condenser microphones. So you got to watch out, what I recommend instead, one of the dynamic microphones, like the Audio Technica ATR2100 is a good one. Another one is the Samsung Q2U and the prices, I mean, I've seen them less than 100 bucks. Sometimes the price go up and down, but let's assume less than 100 hundred bucks. Even if someone already has a microphone, I'd say it's worth just dropping one hundred bucks, then you have it. And not only do you have it for doing audio books, you have it for video trainings, podcasting, interviews, anything else that you're doing with audio. People have noticed a really big improvement in their sound quality just by switching the microphone.

[00:19:44] Yeah, and one of my students bought an 8R twenty one hundred brand new offer off of Amazon for sixty two bucks. And the that that microphone, from what I recall, is somewhat unique in that it's USB and cañon. Right. Or Three-pronged. Yes. Correct. Yeah. So the folks that means it's very versatile. You can if you want to up your game and put a lot of other, you know, electronic crap in the system, you can or you can just plug the thing right into your computer.

[00:20:16] Yeah, it's really convenient, you know, to take the little USB, so like you mentioned, you have the three prong cable, the XLR, and then you can also do USB. So whenever I'm traveling, I'll just throw it in my bag with my laptop. And if I'm doing an interview or something, it's really convenient to just put it on a little tripod and use that. I think Tim Ferriss actually would send it to guests if I recall he'd send the twenty one hundred to guess if they needed a microphone. So it's a great podcasting and audio book microphone.

[00:20:45] Yeah. Like I said, inexpensive, very high quality. Now you've got to have something to hold these folks because you know, you can't, you don't, you don't want to be holding them in your hand to try to do a podcast or book recording, that's for sure. What do you what do you like to use? I use a boom scissors boom.

[00:21:03] Yep. I have something like that. It's like a desk stand. It's it is the scissor design where you can just move it around, like move it out of the out of the way. And I think that cost me less than 20 bucks. Yeah. Something like that.

[00:21:14] Yeah. Clamps right to this desk here. The way I don't have anything sitting on the floor like a mic stand or anything. Now you've got to have some recording software. Right. So it's easy on a Mac you got GarageBand. But what, what do you recommend for PCs so.

[00:21:31] Well whether it's PC or Mac, audacity is free and it'll work with with both operating systems. So audacity I come from a music background where my degree was actually in music and it was music composition, but I took recording classes and things. So I've used a lot of different programs from Garage Man to logic to the studio. We use Pro Tools and I like Cube. So there's all these different programs out there and I get asked questions about it and I just say, you know, for an audio book, actually everything you need is Inside Audacity and it also includes some effects and some some different plugins that help in that are actually essential to making sure that it meets the standards. So you could technically do it in just about any program. But the nice thing is, I know for sure you can do it with audacity, which is free, and Mac and PC compatible.

[00:22:23] Yeah, yeah. Foxo so there's no excuse for not having that.

[00:22:27] And there's a gazillion tutorials on YouTube for both GarageBand Barsotti so you can learn how to do this very easily. Now I recorded Highest Quality Wave and then distribute an MP3. You do that or do you just go straight to MP3.

[00:22:46] So when you originally record it, it's going to be at the highest quality in whatever program and then you can export it as a wave or MP three, if you're when you're ready to upload it to a place like LOL, even just for people to download or for audible Amazon, places like that, they have a certain requirement and it is an MP3 and they have the whole kilobits per second recommendations and all that sort of stuff.

[00:23:10] But that's really easy. That's just a matter of now in and on audacity. You can export as an MP3, so you just export it and you pick all the the right settings or whatever and it'll take care of all that for you folks.

[00:23:23] If you're wondering what we're talking about. I mean, the type of file is going to say the quality level and the size of the file, like a wave file could be 30 times bigger than an equivalent MP3 file. And there's different levels of MP3, I think audible users like one hundred ninety two kilobits per second, which is pretty like CD quality plus is really good quality, but a smaller much file size. Now speaking of audible, that's kind of the best known place now for for audio. Is that where you're put most of your books?

[00:24:02] Yeah. So I have everything on audible all the audio books. The nice thing is, though, you don't have to be exclusive to them, meaning you don't have to only pick them. I choose what's called a nonexclusive deal, which means I can be on audible and I am at an Amazon, which Amazon owns Audible and then also on iTunes, on other audio book retailers. There's places where like I'm making sales on websites that I've never visited, like I've never sent a click a traffic to it. And I remember seeing like hundreds of dollars coming in from some of these lesser known websites over, you know, it's not like a ton of money, but there'd be like an extra 150 bucks coming in one month. And I'm like, I don't I've never sent any traffic to these sites people. It just kind of like these obscure random audiobook websites. So that's another benefit when there's not as much competition. Not to say that there's a guarantee people are going to stumble upon the book, but I just noticed that started to happen like people are finding it on these other places. So all that's to say, I like having the book as wide as possible, meaning as many different places, which can mean you sell it on your own, but you sell it on audible.

[00:25:11] You sell it, you put it out to these different places and you don't have to go upload to like 30 different places. If you use a website like a distributor, find a way. Voices is one of the places and I really like it. So find a way. Voices where you go and you upload it and they say, where do you want to distribute this? And you can just check all the different places and it'll you upload to one website, find a way voices. They push it out to all the other websites. So it's a one time upload, maybe two times if you upload to a couple of different distributors and they push it out to all the different places.

[00:25:47] Yeah, it's very similar to podcasting, like I upload to Lipson and it shows throws it out everywhere for you.

[00:25:54] So it's not hard to do that now.

[00:25:57] Can you talk about how much you can make on this? And is it true that the longer the book, the more money you can make or how does it how do you get paid for this kind of stuff?

[00:26:07] Yeah, so there's a couple of ways to get paid.

[00:26:10] One is before I go into even getting paid, I'll make a note that while I do sell all my audio books, sometimes I will give them away for free as a bonus for purchasing things or as an Opt-In. So I look at books as it's nice when I make, you know, some some extra money from them and and have that, I'm like, they're really a vehicle to something bigger. So that's the one point that I want to make. Then in terms of how much you can make, I actually have a shorter book that sold thousands and thousands of copies of without me doing much of any marketing for it to just the audio book, meaning I just run some ads on Amazon and kind of just let it sit there and it sells. And the the audio book I think is about forty seven minutes long. So the whole idea of longer audio books selling better, it tends to get people will more likely use credit for one of those books. So if you're not familiar with this for you listening, like if you go to Audible you can get a monthly credit if you're a member of them. And so every month you get a credit to download an audio book. Well, people are going, well, if I got my one credit, I don't want to use it to get a book that's like, you know, five bucks or something, like some short book.

[00:27:31] I want to get it all like a I don't know, twenty, thirty dollar plus book. That's like a longer book because the pricing is based off the length. So from that perspective it's a longer book will have people more likely to. They use their credit to get it, that said, I don't see a huge difference in personally and I write in fitness and personal development a little bit in business, like I don't see a huge difference in the sense of like a longer book automatically, meaning more sales. I actually just see probably sometimes more sales of some shorter books. It's just that they're less likely to use their credit for those books. So at the end of the day, I wouldn't base base the length on. I want to try to adjust the length of it for anything other than to go when you write a book. How long does the book need to be? If it can be a short book, make it a short book to give me a long book. It can be a long book, but that's not the the basis that I would use for the book length or the audio book length.

[00:28:31] All right. But like from my perspective, we're more interested in distribution than the money because it leads to all my stuff, leads to much bigger stuff. Would it be a good strategy to have a longer book so that the people with the coupons would be more likely to grab it?

[00:28:51] Yeah, if you were trying to maximize the coupon sales, then yes, a longer book would tend to to do that. It really I guess what it comes back to me is I'm always going to go, what's the purpose behind what you're doing? If you want a short audio book that's just a freebie, give away like a lead magnet type of thing that they consume very quickly. That's a different than if you want to try to sell it and you're more on audible and you're trying to maximize the coupons. So I always take a step back and go, what's the purpose first? And then figure out what the strategy is going to be to align to that.

[00:29:22] Right now, you still need like graphics to go with your book, right?

[00:29:28] Tell us about that.

[00:29:29] So so for the the graphics, the one difference with an audio book is it's going to be a square cover. So you can think of it like a book cover. All my audio covers are essentially like my book cover just in a square format. So that's not just like squeezing it into a square space. Actually, you actually need a designer to do it. So it all looks good, but it is that's the the one design element. So typically, if a person is going to have an audio book, you don't have to, but you'll usually have an e-book version. Or I usually recommend having at least an e-book and an audio and makes sense, even a print version of a book. So a lot of times it's either converting your e-book cover into an audio book square with a designer or if the book is yet to come out.

[00:30:21] When you talk to your designers, good to know to say, hey, I want that audio book cover and an e-book or print book cover, in which case they can go in and they can design knowing that, OK, one one's going to be rectangular and one's going to be square and they're all flat for this.

[00:30:36] You don't do the 3-D stuff, right, for this?

[00:30:40] No nothing. No need for a 3D right now. Have you heard of this this thing called WhisperSync?

[00:30:47] Where it kind of combines to the ebook and the audio.

[00:30:54] Yes, so WhisperSync is if you imagine you're reading a Kindle e-book and you finish at the start of Chapter three, then you open up your audible app, or it might even be in an Amazon app, but you open up your audio book and then it'll start like right at the beginning of Chapter three, wherever you left off. So what it's doing is it sinking up the Kindle eBook and the audio book edition. So wherever you leave off on one, it'll pick up in the other. Having your audio book Whisper Sync enabled will this. I have seen a definite increase in sales for your book if it's whisper sync enabled. And the way to do that is really to just make sure that the audio book and the the Kindle e-book largely match, meaning you're not making a lot of changes between the two versions. So you're not doing a much shorter version of, let's say, the audio book or you're not making substantial wording changes or things like that. Now you can take out some of the front matter and an audio book. You don't have to give the whole like a read out, a whole copyright page. You don't have to read out a whole, like, acknowledgment section and stuff like that. So that's OK. The core content, though, just needs to match probably about 99 percent between the audio book and the e-book. It'll sync up and that will tend to increase sales.

[00:32:14] So. So, yeah, I was worried about that. So if I threw one extra ad lib one now and then, it's not going to kick me out of the whole deal right now.

[00:32:24] I've had I can't I can't say exactly how their algorithm works because it's computer based. What I can say is that from my own experience, I know I've had a narrator. Yeah. When I had one book that the narrator did, I know there are some variations between the narration and then the actual Kindle book and it's still synched up. So I've seen that there can be a few little changes and adding in the extra order or so. So for instance, at someone that like the the, the audio book, they had something where it meant to be like an internal thought process. And this is now fiction. But the point remains that she's like, well, how do I convey that they're thinking this and not speaking it out loud? So I was just like, we can just add in in the audio book, like she thought, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, is that going to kick me out of whispers? Things like now and should it not? And not having the occasional little thing that you you throw in there, extra variation is fine, just as long as the vast majority of it is similar.

[00:33:28] Well, there's the. Yeah, this is great. All right. So let's take you back, though. You know, you have an interesting story. You were you were a valet, Parker. The I mean, this is even go back further than that. Were you an entrepreneurial kid or how did you come up through the ranks?

[00:33:44] I was not an entrepreneurial kid. I just wanted to become a rock star. Oh, that was. Oh, well, no problem. Easy, right? Yeah.

[00:33:52] So I got I started playing guitar when I was 12 and then that became my obsession. So that led me to go to music school. And I was also gotten to fitness when I was about 17. I went from like eating fast food every night to being a total health nut. So that was all this leads me to. I moved out to Los Angeles back in 2011 to become a rock star, and that's when I was I just graduated music school about a year earlier. I came out and, you know, I needed work. So the one thing I did in music school, I went to Nashville, Tennessee, Belmont University. So I worked at a hotel after I graduated. So coming into L.A., I had a friend that worked at a hotel and got me a job, helped me get a job, valet parking cars. So I was playing in a band, valet parking cars, sleeping on an air mattress, dead broke. There'd be months or I just have to sell stuff to pay the rent on Craigslist. So that was my my background. But it was right around the time I graduated. I got college. I got into reading personal development and it was a very quick transition from personal development to the entrepreneurial mindset and going, OK, you know, maybe I could start a business and do something online. So when I was in L.A., that's when I was really in addition to valet parking cars. I also delivered hot wings. And so I drive around. I took the job on purpose. I'm glad I'm thanking my past self for doing this. I go I kind of either worked at a music store that I actually turned that down, even though it would have been a much better paying and more fun job, because I wouldn't have been able to, like, attend seminars and things that I wanted to go to. So I volunteered at seminars to get a business education. And then I drive around and listen to podcasts and tell us seminars and different things to get my education. And then I go, OK, I'm going to try to.

[00:35:51] But what year was this roughly? 2011. So is that possibly how you saw me at a seminar, it was it was around that time, maybe it was a couple of years later, you could have been volunteering at a seminar that I know that might have been.

[00:36:06] Yeah. And so.

[00:36:10] This whole time, I'm just absorbing this information, and the reason why I mentioned the fitness stuff was because that I go, OK, I get a lot of people asking me for fitness advice, workout tips, diet tips, whatever. Maybe I can turn that into a business. So I'll give a brief version here of the story. But for twenty eleven to twenty first half of 2012, I was blogging, I was doing YouTube videos, all this sort of stuff. It wasn't going anywhere. Like I wasn't making any I was losing more money than I was making just on paying for a ten dollar website or whatever I'm hosting. So what happened was the one shift that happened was I got a package in the mail. And it's interesting because I'm like my life might be totally different now if this package didn't arrive in the mail. And I open it up and it's something I won for posting a comment on a blog. And they chose someone at random and inside as a Kindle e reader. And I just I saw it and it was like this light bulb moment. I go, wait a second. I've been kind of I've been blogging, doing these videos. I tried launching a book and I could barely sell it to my own friends and family as this as a PDF. And I go, but maybe if it's on Amazon, people will find it and buy it. So I launched my first book and I sold I looked at the stats. My first book in the first two months sold two copies and I think they're going copy was to my mom.

[00:37:37] So well, a lot of people would call it a bestseller. Now, if I if I put it in, like some we have, like, you know, this kind of has something to do with ant farming, maybe, you know, rank ninety nine that's on the bestseller chart.

[00:37:53] So that didn't work. Published my second book that actually made some sales. I think I made about like 70 bucks or something. I don't think that was profit considering what I put into it. But then about 70 bucks and I go, OK, I don't think this book thing is going to going to work for me onto the next shiny object. Well, that was about going towards the end of 2012 to November of 2012. I went to a seminar and that's when I actually did pay for it because it took me two years to make payments to be able to attend it. And at the seminar, I learned about nothing to do with publishing directly. It was all about relationships and influence. And when I got that piece, I took it, applied it to everything else I had been learning. And in like one week I just cranked out a book because I had a lot of the content already. I launched it. I leveraged connections with others. I took everything and put it to put it to use. And by the end of that month, so I think December 1st, I don't think I had the book ready yet. By December 25th, about Christmas time, it was number one bestseller and weight loss made almost six thousand dollars in royalties. Eleven days and I go. I finally cracked the code. I saw how everything went together. And then since then, every book I publish has gone on to become the best seller and not not the obscure best seller, but like best sellers. And in personal development, these are not easy categories either.

[00:39:24] Personal development, weight, you know, health and wellness and weight loss stuff and stuff.

[00:39:30] Yeah, my my one of my early headlines, speaking of copywriting, was like, I can I can't remember, but it's like like watch me outrank Tim Ferriss or something because I actually had a screenshot of at the time for our body had launched. So my book was actually outranking. It was in the number one spot on weight loss. So like for our body, all these other big books were actually ranked lower than than my book was. So I was like broke valet park watched the valet. Parker outranked him first, whatever it was. So that was that was my my breakthrough moment. And then since then, as I mentioned, once you have a system for it, then it's repeatable. And I wanted to make sure it wasn't just luck that I could repeat it. And I did repeat it with multiple books, different genres, and have been working with authors and entrepreneurs ever since then.

[00:40:20] Yeah. And that's why I can't wait to have you on the webinar so we have more time and you can show visuals and everything.

[00:40:27] So folks watch for that coming up very, very soon. It could be a day after this airs, I'm sure. But you do not want to miss this because like I said, I have not known Derek. And then as soon as I saw the webinar he was on as a man guy knows what he's doing. So so we got to take a response or break. When we come back, we'll ask Derek, what's a typical day look like for him and how he stays motivated. So, folks, about twenty, twenty to twenty two years ago, I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head. In the guys at my level, we're charging 50 or 100 grand up front to teach you what we knew the problem was. A lot of those guys I knew, though, and you gave them 50 grand up front, putting them in Mexico to try to get them to help you. So I said, you know what, that's too risky for a small business is not right. So I charged an entry fee and then I took a percentage of profits that was capped. So for me to get my fifty thousand, you had to make two hundred thousand.

[00:41:33] Well, people just love that. And seventeen hundred plus students later. It's still going strong 20 years later, and I call it the most unique, longest running, most successful mentor program ever in this field. And, you know, nobody's challenged me on that because I actually dared people to put programs up against mine, feature for feature, benefit for benefit and see who wins.

[00:41:59] And nobody's had the guts to challenge me on it because I'm a fanatic. I work day and night helping people. I threw a seminar tell a class on Thanksgiving one time because I didn't notice it was Thanksgiving. So sometimes it's good to have a fanatic working for you.

[00:42:17] But anyway, you have an immersion trip to this big estate where you actually live with me for an immersion weekend with just a tiny small group, usually about five people. We have a TV studio where we shoot marketing videos for you. All are included in the deal and everything we do is one on one other than that for this year long program.

[00:42:40] Because, you know, if I have a group, you know, if I'm talking to the advance people, the beginners are lost. And if I'm talking to the beginners, the advance people are bored. So that's just no way to get get ahead, especially since I need to move people forward. So I get my money, they get their money and everybody's happy.

[00:42:57] Plus, if you're in my program, my mentor program, you get a scholarship to the school, which you can either use yourself for extra training or gift to somebody. That's what this one guy did. He joined the mentor program.

[00:43:12] He had spent 80000 bucks on his daughter's crappy education and she's working some crap job. And so he gifted the school to her. And after one month, she's making a thousand bucks a month on the side, three months she's making 3000 bucks. And after four months, she told me she was making six thousand a month on the side, hadn't even graduated yet. So this is a very powerful stuff, folks. So if you if you're interested in any of that, as though big machine gun nest or high pressure out here, give me a call and you can check all the details out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And we'll be glad to talk to you.

[00:43:55] All right. Let's get back to the main event. Derek Doepker is here with us, and he was a valet Parker. And I want to ask him about his rockstar days that his fingers ever bleed. It was he that fanatic that he played the guitar enough to make his fingers bleed. That's that's the the key there. But he sold 75000, probably more by the time his bio was written than and done really great things with low cost marketing strategies. We're going to have him on a webinar here just coming right up. So so, Derek, what's a typical. Well, tell me if your fingers ever bled and then tell me what a typical day looks like for you now.

[00:44:33] I don't I don't think my fingers ever blood. Oh, well, you didn't make it, man. I'll tell you why I didn't make it and I didn't go that extra mile.

[00:44:44] So what's a typical day look like for you nowadays?

[00:44:48] Oh, I was one of the things and I wouldn't say this is every day, but I do send pretty much near daily emails to my to my main list. So I kind of have this whole thing, like I'm going to wake up and write an email. Sometimes I have them scheduled in advance. But that's usually the one of the first things I do in the morning. And I also like it because it's a creative act. You know, I learned that if I get into checking emails too early in the day, I'm now responding to everyone else that I lose my focus. So I like to do something that's proactive, like writing an email then and after that, I don't know if there's typical some days his coaching calls, I'll do I have a group coaching program. I do some one on one work I have.

[00:45:35] Well, you're into fitness, though. I mean, what's your morning routine for breakfast or workout or meditation? What do you do in the morning?

[00:45:42] Yes, I do. Meditation have like a five minute morning meditation. And I think beyond that, I mean, that's my my main thing. My workouts usually afternoon and I actually do these the Tom workouts we you eat in the morning. Not usually the first hour, but like within within an hour or two, I'll have a smoothie usually. So I get like Kiefer Berry's protein protein powder, make a smoothie and then. Yeah, so then I'll be working on staff afternoon, I do a workout and I have these bands that I do and so that's nice. I've actually got my workouts. I'm not not as big and muscular as I used to be, but I've maintained on about ten minutes a day of resistance and resistance bands. Yeah, yeah. Pretty heavy duty ones with a bar and stuff.

[00:46:38] So where do you get those. Because a lot of the I had some like they would like to get dry rotted and break and hit you in the face and yeah, this is what's called an X3 bar.

[00:46:48] That's when I breathing. Yeah.

[00:46:51] Actually, bar, so it's a heavy duty and there's different resistances, right?

[00:46:56] Yeah, so there's different resistances. So I do that for total body and I used to not since quarantine, but I used to a couple of days a week do Brazilian jujitsu make evenings. So that hasn't happened.

[00:47:09] But maybe one of these days to get back into that, not only are you aware or not, but I have a site called Brutal Self-defense. So I've written it all my life. And I had a nightclub. I was in a hundred violent altercations with bikers trying to kill me and stuff.

[00:47:25] So I've been doing this my whole life and a lot of it for real.

[00:47:31] Yeah, do you get to train at all?

[00:47:33] Well, not right now, but I've got some Blackbelt guys that would come over the house on Sundays and they got a kick out of me because I played major college football and I'm so I'm about 300 pounds and all the stuff that would work on their guys. At the dojo, there were one hundred and sixty pounds. And going along with it, they're trying them on me and it's over and it's a whole different it's good to work out with a, you know, smaller people, bigger people and everything, because some things are just different. And you're, you know, having that experience gives you more success in the long run because you're not surprised if somebody is hands bigger than your whole head.

[00:48:13] Yeah, exactly. Training with different people. And it's kind of a mindset thing, too, is that I found, like, as much as I enjoy the confidence boost of training with people who I can who I can beat, let's say most of the time when I'm training, I'm going up against people who are better than me. And it's just like constantly being beat. But going I'm getting better because of that.

[00:48:38] Right? Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And you could do a lot of stuff at home with visualization. And I got a Bob in their body opponent bag and and we, you know, I don't have any particular system.

[00:48:50] I started out and sure. Through karate when I was a kid, but then totally all different systems and it's kind of a hodgepodge of things. And I actually got into it with some of the big name. I won't say it on here jiu jitsu people, because they were trying to tell me, oh yeah, I'm going to lay on top of this guy and tire him out.

[00:49:14] And I'm thinking, oh, OK, give it a try because I'm going to pull my folder out of my right hand pocket and disembowel you while you're trying to tire me out.

[00:49:23] So some of these are kind of things. You know, they when they try to say it's real, certain things are. But, you know, real is different than the mats, that's for sure. Yeah. All right. So so how do you stay motivated? You're working out of your home by your I don't know, by yourself, I guess. So how do you keep cranking out all the stuff?

[00:49:49] Well, I mean, the first thing big picture wise is just I love what I'm doing and I'm really grateful that I love coaching, I love creating trainings. And in doing this, I mean, you don't miss parking cars.

[00:50:06] I mean, sometimes I dream of giving up the whole entrepreneur life and, you know, going back to working minimum wage parking cars. But I've learned to let it go. Oh, that's good. That's good.

[00:50:17] We need you. We need you here in the entrepreneurial world.

[00:50:22] So, yeah, the same motivated I mean, loving what I do not to say it's always the most fun, but in general it's like I enjoy this. So that's one of the reasons why I worked hard for years and just had this mentality, like, I'm going to make it, I'm going to make something work because there is something inside me that was calling me to do it. But I also just I couldn't imagine parking cars for the rest of my life or doing whatever, like I knew I wanted to be doing this, speaking and coaching and training and creating these these courses. So that's part of the motivation. And then on a more granular level, when it comes to specific things, especially if I'm kind of procrastinating or like how do I don't really feel like doing whatever today I have the technique that. Most helpful thing for me, probably the most helpful thing I share with the clients and readers and anything else, what I call the three magic words technique, and this is based off of research. A Stanford researcher, B.J. Fogg. And what it is, the three magic words are, can I just. Then you insert what's called a like a micro commitment, and B.J. Ford calls it tiny habits, it's just anything that's so small and easy that you're guaranteed to say yes to doing it.

[00:51:39] So if I'm thinking about writing something, I go I want to write a chapter of a book. I don't feel like it. Kind of what I can. I just write one paragraph. Can I just open up my word processor and type, you know, a few words. And what happens is you psych yourself into doing it and once you get started, momentum kicks in. Why aren't you already into it? So I actually had this happen. I was doing my books like for my accountant, my bookkeeping sort of stuff. And this is one of those kind of like managerial sort of task to like get stuff ready for my accountant. And I'm just like and it's not the fun work. Right. But like, OK, well, you know, let me just do, like, I don't know, ten different things in there. And I got 10 done and I'm like, well, OK, I got like 70 more to go. Maybe I get it down to where I only have 50 left and I kind of turn it into a game and then I get in and I'm like, wow, to kind of knock this out, maybe I can just get the whole thing done in like now I'm like enjoying it, right.

[00:52:36] Or cleaning my place. Like, can I just clean my desk off over here and then I can quit after that I clean the desk on my desk. Looks good, I'm cleaning, I got my headphones going listening to something. I'll just clean my bathroom now and then it just the momentum kicks in as long as I can get started. So that's the technique I find worked for a lot of people. Just thought everyone I share it with anything that you're procrastinating, you're not feeling motivated to do, even things that you maybe enjoy. But you're just like, I don't necessarily want to do it right now. If you get started and you go, can I just do the littlest thing? And it is OK to stop after that. But then you go, can I just do a little more? Can I just do that extra little step? And you often find there you go, a whole podcast on the psychology of this. But if you just tested, see it, prove it to yourself. Essentially you'll see that so often getting started is the hardest part. So if you make that the easiest part, then it just snowballs from there.

[00:53:32] Extremely powerful. Can I just love it? Love it. Love it. Well, I'll tell everybody how they get Horia.

[00:53:40] Yeah, so you can check out the work that I do for authors at bestsellerSecrets.com, and so I have a free ebook for you, why authors fail. And that's also how you get on my my newsletter. So whether you're an author right now, whether you want to be an author or if you're just an entrepreneur and want to take the same concepts and apply it to your your marketing, then that's where you can check it out at bestsellerSecrets.com.

[00:54:02] All right. What's the name of the freebie you got?

[00:54:05] Why authors fail, why authors fail or write.

[00:54:10] All right, can I just read that? All right, all right.

[00:54:15] Can you just read just read the opening chapter? Yeah. And just not and try to not keep reading it.

[00:54:23] Yeah, just download it. So just go to that website and then see how it goes. All right. Well. Oh, boy. It's been so, so great. We went longer than expected because you were just full of value there for our listeners. And so I cannot wait, folks, to get this guy on a webinar so you can see the whole thing that I got to see. Oh, you think this was good? Wait. Is that so? Thanks so much, Derek, for coming on. And we will. We can't wait to get you on that webinar.

[00:54:54] I appreciate it, Tom. Thanks.

[00:54:56] All right. Everybody will catch y'all on the next episode. See ya later.

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