635 – Bestseller Secrets Summit: Tom interviews Derek Doepker

Episode 635 – 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 635 of Screw the Commute podcast? I've got a great guest here. He's been here before. He is a prolific author. He is the inspiration to my first getting off my butt and actually doing an audio book. And I actually have right next to me a portable sound booth I built because of him and just really, really excited. He's he's doing a big summit that I'm part of, and it's something that I'm sure you want to be part of. So we'll bring him on the minute. Now, I hope you didn't miss Episode 634. That was about coupons. And coupons are extremely powerful. I tell you the story of how $1,000,000,000 company just reels me in every week with coupons and I spend fortunes with them because of coupons. So you can you can do the same thing in your business with coupons. So anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screw the Compucom slash and then the episode number, which is 634 and I'm sure you're going to want to share this one 635 and get all your friends in on this summit. That's coming up. All right. Let's see what's going on here. Make sure you pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Just one of the tips I need to update the numbers here because we estimated the numbers a couple of years ago, just one of the tips in the book has saved me seven and one half million keystrokes. Million. They're not exaggerating. Probably 8 million by now. You will thank me if you do even a part of what's in this book. And we sell it for 27 bucks. But it's yours. Free for listening to the show. And while you're over there. That's it. screwthecommute.com/automatefree, go to screwthecommute.com/app and pick up a copy of our podcast app and you can put it on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:02:19] All right. Let's go to the main event. Derek Doepker is here. And he went from being a broke valet parker to a best selling author who sold over 100,000 books. That's probably an old figure by now to using free and low cost marketing strategies. And now he shares these strategies with entrepreneurs to turn their knowledge into a best selling book and you can connect with him at bestsellersecrets.com. Derek, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:02:50] I am ready, John.

[00:02:52] Hey, pause there for a second, didn't it? So, hey, we got a big summit coming up now. I've avoided summits in the past because a lot of times, you know, I would be the one sending out all the emails and all the other speakers were slackers and wanting to suck off of my list. So. So it doesn't seem like that because this everybody seems to be participating really well in this summit. So tell us how you came up with this idea for a summit and how you recruited the people and and tell us when it's going to happen. All that stuff.

[00:03:25] Yeah, sure thing. And I mean, just for setting the context, because, you know, I talk about summits sometimes and I still get questions like, what is this summit? I got an email. So where is this at? Is this in California? All these things. And I'm like, Oh, yeah. So it's an online event and a lot of a lot of great speakers. It's really just like a seminar where we can now do it virtually digitally and just listening in, tuning in to different interviews.

[00:03:50] So save the airfare and save the hotel and all the other expenses that goes to go to actual to go to an actual seminar.

[00:03:59] Exactly. Which is nice. Whether you're hosting or attending a summit, lots of savings by being able to do it. And you still get a lot of great information but great wealth of knowledge from different speakers. So the idea for doing a summit, I had known about summits because I had attended summits and back when tele seminars were, you know, bigger or maybe a decade ago, I was an attendee for a lot of these different things. So when I was first getting into the online world, I know how much benefit I got and podcasts are around then too. But just this whole idea I'd be driving around, I'd be loving to listen in to these different summits and events and learning from all these speakers and discovering new people that I had never heard of before. So that was really how I got a lot of my early education as a as an entrepreneur trying to figure this thing out. So in the back of my head, I knew that there was a benefit to doing Summit. So I thought, well, if I hosted a summit, then, you know, you get a lot of benefits if you host the summit because you can now, even if you're relatively early on in your your career, you can connect with a lot of influencers, a lot of thought leaders. You can learn a lot from them if you're a host and interviewing them, and then they can drive their traffic to help build your audience. And everyone kind of benefits. The speakers can build their audience off of the other speakers who are all promoting this this one event and in terms of the specific idea credit.

[00:05:26] So I knew about it a credit to REI Brand I'm co-hosting my upcoming summit with that you're on Tom Ray is has really just got me in kind of sold me on hey you can do a summit and what he did is offered to help out with the technology, with the setup and things like that. And so that is the thing. And we might talk about this a little more time. You're mentioning, you know, one reason for for not doing a summit, kind of the speakers, not everyone promotes it. Well, for me, just the idea of some is great. But man, I mean, just logistical stuff, staying organized contact. That's not my that's not what I love. I want to show up and do my thing right. So I'd say that's a lesson under itself, whether it's summits or other things. If you have a partner, someone you trust, someone who specializes in that area, someone who does understand the logistical aspect of the outreach. If that's not your strength or it's just not where your energy is going, it's not to say I couldn't have done a summit otherwise. It's just it would have been one of those things that I kept. Kept. Yeah. One of these days. Yeah, one of these days. Maybe I'll get around to it. And so I'm fortunate a credit to REI for, for inspiring me. And then I could go on in a moment, talk about recruiting people or anything like that, but any, any questions or comment. Yeah.

[00:06:45] Yeah. So yeah. So again, I'm very interested in because, you know, I was solicited many, you know, literally hundreds of times in the past ten, 15 years. And I in the early days I did it. And then, like I said, I was the only one promoting and everybody else was just saying, Oh, okay, I'll get on their list, but they won't get any on my list. So was there any specific steps you did to vet people and make sure they actually did the promotion they promised? I mean, I even had some big name people that I know you've heard their name. They agreed to send stuff out and then they send it to some tiny little fraction of their list. So they could say, well, I sent it out, you know, but it was really disingenuous. So anything in particular you did to to make sure everybody was playing the game?

[00:07:35] Yeah. So there's a couple of levels to that. One is just the who. And and you mentioned you have some some big name people. Sometimes the big name people, they can be great as a name draw like, oh, I have this big speaker on it and things like that. And also sometimes they, they just are, they're preoccupied or for whatever reason, they're not as committed to doing it. And I found that a lot of the people that I recruited, these are people I've been working with for years. And so there's a bit of probably reciprocity there where I've shared their stuff, they've shared myself, we've worked together. This isn't really our for many of the speakers, not our first rodeo. I mean, you and I, we.

[00:08:11] Used the same.

[00:08:12] Podcast interview and webinars, stuff.

[00:08:14] Like that and stuff over at least to two and a half years or maybe three, I don't know.

[00:08:20] Yeah, exactly. So I feel like a lot of that probably helped. And these are people who they kind of come into it with that preexisting relationship. And then another thing, if you are going to host the summit, a real simple tip that that I'd give and Ray would say the same thing is if you look for people who are already speaking on other people's summits or events and especially, this also helps because I'm as a participant in summit, I see the leader board when I'm promoting summits, so I already know who are other people speaking on summits, in my case, specifically in authorship. And these are some of the top leaders, the top promoters noted it.

[00:09:00] Yeah. So that's a great idea.

[00:09:02] Yeah, yes, yes. See, see other.

[00:09:04] Summits and then see tell everybody what a leaderboard is.

[00:09:09] A leaderboard. So if you're promoting a summit, it's usually for the speakers, although sometimes you can promote a summit as an affiliate, even if you didn't participate in it. But let's say you go speak on a summit, then the way of putting yourself in the shoes is if you were a summit speaker. So you kind of get that perspective for anyone listening. Like if you were to speak on a summit, the way that typically works, they go, okay, you can speak at this event. What we ask is that you promote it usually at least once, if not twice. So your email list and you'll get a special link and you'll get affiliate commissions. If people buy the recordings, it's usually a free ticket and then optional upgrade type of thing. And so they want you as the speaker to promote the event. Well, this is great if everyone participates because now you're promoting it and all the other speakers are promoting it, and if the other speakers are promoting it and now they listen into all those audience members listening to your interview, that's new people who will discover you as the speaker. It's just creating this ultimate win, win, win situation where you win as the speaker, the host wins by bringing together all these people and growing their audience. And then the audience wins because they discover all these these people. So if you are a speaker or promoting a summit, you'll see, how are you doing in your promotion relative to the other speakers? Are you selling more tickets? Are you getting more, more options and stuff? And so what happens is because I've been a speaker on a number of different summits, especially in my space, the whole authorship world, the book writing, book publishing, book marketing type of things.

[00:10:35] Then I from years of experience speaking on these events, I know who some of the other speakers are. I know who tends to be the people who on that leader board tend to do well. And so now when I'm doing my own summit, I not only new names to reach out, but I knew people who if you reach out to people who spoke on other summits, you know, they already know how summits work. You know that that's something that they're comfortable with. And if you're ever going to host a summit, a real simple outreach strategy is to listen to some other summits and be like, Hey, I heard you speak on such and such topic, that summit. I really loved it. I'm going to be doing an event to my own, being honored to have you talk on the, you know, maybe that topic or whatever. And I can tell you, when people have reached out to me to speak on summits, it's kind of a no brainer. If they told me that they listened to one of my summit presentations, they loved what I was talking about. They'd love for me to come and speak on something similar. I go, okay, I know they've already done their research and and I already know that topic because it's the same topic.

[00:11:36] It's relatively easy to do, especially if it's not live and you don't have to be there at a certain time and day. And if you're pre-recording, did everybody everybody on yours pre-record?

[00:11:48] Yep. Everyone's prerecorded. And then also going further to that that promoting thing, you know, sometimes it could be like, hey, if it just doesn't work for your schedule to promote it. I understand most people though, they do agree up front like, yeah, I can schedule out an email or two or something to be able to promote it. So getting any sort of agreement up front or having that conversation in advance then also helps ensure all the speakers and participants are willing to share it.

[00:12:14] Now, is there any incentive for the leaderboard? People like I actually I want a motorcycle. One time I didn't even know there was an incentive. I know promoted some big thing for somebody. I won. They sent me a motorcycle. So is there any kind of prize or is this more just, you know, hey, I beat you in the promotion.

[00:12:37] Yeah, there should be a prize. And that's actually something that Ray handles. I've I'm letting him handle all the logistics.

[00:12:42] Because I have no idea.

[00:12:44] But certainly I'm happy to offer prizes. And so if if I'll talk to Ray what our prize is, but I will definitely throw in something for the top promoters. And certainly everyone gets the reward of their commissions right if they're making right sales and stuff that's built in. But then there's that extra. I know I'm, I'm, I get kind of competitive with stuff if I see I'm like number two on a leaderboard and especially if there's a prize, even if it's not always the prize itself, it's just maybe the pride of being number one or at least, you know, getting in one of those top spots stuff. They get motivator.

[00:13:20] So if I win, I want you to park my car for me for a week. I'm not good at it. So tell us about some of the things that are going to be covered on the summit. Who should attend this thing?

[00:13:36] Yeah, well, certainly it's designed for authors. Whether you've written a book or you plan to write a book, and it could be fiction and nonfiction. There are a couple of sessions that are a little more nonfiction oriented, but definitely anyone who is an author and even if you're not an author but you're thinking about writing a book, it can help. So that's the main intended audience. That said, there's certainly some segments and things that we're talking about. And actually our interview, Tom, it's a perfect example of this where definitely, you know, sign up. We'll have the link coming up here for you. Sign up and listen to Tom. Your your interview is fantastic because it's podcasting, right?

[00:14:16] Guess I.

[00:14:17] Got.

[00:14:17] Embarrassed. It was so pitiful because you put it on the last day.

[00:14:22] And we're saving the best for last.

[00:14:24] I was trying to bait you to say that. Yeah.

[00:14:27] People you know, people remember the final thing. So the most important things, right? Either the primacy or recency, the first things in the last thing.

[00:14:34] So did you do all the interviews personally or were they all interviews or some just training sessions?

[00:14:42] All interviews that I did. And for my part, so it's about half interviews that I did. And then Ray did some of the interviews. Yeah. So it's a mix in there and that's another benefit if you do partner with someone that you can. That was, you know, half the amount of interviews that I needed to personally do. So you got that. And then going back to like the topic example of things like podcasting, whether your guest podcasting or hosting a podcast, you know, that's relevant for really anyone, any sort of entrepreneur or anyone who wants to promote themselves online. So there are some segments in there and tickets are free to attend. There's an optional upgrade if you want the recordings that you can certainly check out the the listing of topics and then see which topics might be relevant for you. So I think it's worth checking out if you're in any sort of online market or entrepreneur type of business.

[00:15:32] All right. Now, here's another thing I just thought of is the top of the leaderboard of people that get people to upgrade to the VIP thing or is it the opt in or do you have separate leaderboards for both?

[00:15:47] I'll check with how he's running it for this one, because in the past I know I've been a part of it where they do actually both. So there's an opt in leaderboard and then there's a sales leaderboard and keeping track of both of those simultaneously. And then the way Ray has been sending out the emails, I actually have to double check which which criteria he's using in the emails, but we're keeping track of both.

[00:16:11] Yeah. So and get in touch with him, we'll have him on Tuesday to talk about the technology part of it because there was something very interesting I saw today after I had already sent out my first email that somehow I can add a bonus, I guess that's automatically delivered. Is that is that true or is that right?

[00:16:30] Question That'd be a question that I know that we're using Thrive card and I think I've seen that feature in there. This is the check cart shop software. If anyone's not familiar with drive cart, where affiliates, different programs allow you to actually add in your own bonus and then it's all automatically fulfilled once someone gets it. So that's something we should either be able to handle. It definitely can get you in touch with Ray about that. Either way, though, I mean, as you know, Tom, that can be a great strategy if you want to motivate people offering them a bonus for a purchase.

[00:17:07] Yeah. And it can be it's a unique to the person giving it usually. So in many cases people get bonuses that you can't get anywhere else unless you do the initial action of signing up for the summit. So that's a great incentive to do that. So another thing about summits, in the past, I've been involved in summits where to listen to a for instance, on day one, maybe there's five, I don't know how many you have on day one, but you had to be there at a certain time to listen to each one. But I saw on the site that it said all the recordings will be released at a certain 9 a.m. in the morning or something like that. So does that mean that people can listen to any which one they want, any time they want?

[00:17:59] Yeah. So you have more flexibility in this in the sense that you can it's not like be there from 9 a.m. till 10 a.m. for this particular session. You can listen in to whichever ones you want on on your time frame and then you have a couple of days to listen to it and then it expires unless you get the recordings in which you can get ongoing access. So you have the time to listen in at your convenience as long as it's within a day or so of the session going live.

[00:18:30] Right? So that's way more convenient because, you know, people don't want to miss things, but they can't sit there from 9 a.m. till 5:00. You listen to all of them because life happens to get in the way. So so that's a great feature of of this summit. Get more specific on some of the topics that will be covered. Yeah. On your computer there if you can't remember, because there's 25 of them folks out there of all really high end people that know what they're talking about. But the topics are really varied.

[00:19:02] Yeah so high level some of the the different topics you have a few people talking about doing book ads. So this could be things like Amazon ads. That's pretty much the primary thing. So that's a very author specific thing. If you have a book, if it's on Amazon, there's ways of using Amazon ads to to promote it. And as an example, with that topic, one of the things I like to do when I'm interviewing the speakers and so you'll hear this as a as an audience member, it's like I like the high level, you know, kind of the what's the thought process behind it. I also like to get really practical, like, okay, so what can you do today? Like right after you listen to that interview, having immediate things where it's like, okay, you can go up and create your own ad right now using this criteria that the the speakers have found is working really well right now. So for some of the the interviews, I make sure that you get some tangible action steps. That's the kind of things I like where you can actually walk away and put something to use.

[00:20:03] So I wish it had told me that I would have given you some time.

[00:20:07] You're you're the epitome of very practical, tactical tips.

[00:20:14] I don't know any high level stuff I have. I'm a country bumpkin. I just know stuff that works.

[00:20:20] Yeah. Yeah. And so, again, you have things like doing book ads. You have. The kind of high level strategy as well though. So using a book to position you as an authority. So some of the topics are like book sales. And there's also how can you profit as an author with things beyond a book? So for many people, especially if you're in the nonfiction space, you know a book, it's not necessarily about the royalties in many cases. Nice to make royalties and talk about certainly doing that. But what else can you offer? How can you use this book to open up more opportunities? Dale Roberts I'm looking at one great guy. He has self publishing with Dale YouTube channel. He's done tremendously well with YouTube in using video, and so he's giving some of his strategies of video in YouTube marketing that's working right now. One of my favorite sessions was with Andre Corridor. She she worked with Hal Elrod. She's done a lot of things, worked with Hal Elrod and the American Morning Series. She talks about bulk book sales. So we're talking about selling books to schools, to organizations, to companies by the hundreds, to thousands, to sometimes tens of thousands at a time. And we're talking about sometimes six figure deals where a company just comes in and just buys tons of books.

[00:21:45] And so I was blown away by some of what she was sharing because it's like it also gets you thinking about like, okay, yeah, you can set up ads and sell books here and there, but sometimes you just thinking different like, Wait, what's a company that would buy my book? 10,000 copies at a time in putting together one deal like that? That was one of the most eye opening sessions. And nice, cool thing, if you ever host a summit is you learn things from the speakers and it's like, wow, this is this is good. I need to go do this. So I had a lot of those moments interviewing people where I'm taking notes myself as the interviewer tik-tok social media things. I'm not big on social media in the sense of like I'm big on the potential of it. I just go, I don't want to be on social media all day doing stuff like that. And so I like when Jonathan Green is talking about like these are like these 15 second videos he makes, you know, we're talking like, what could you do in 10 minutes a day for some of these things? Oh, is this Jonathan Green?

[00:22:46] How do you spell his last name? Is it got an E or it doesn't have any?

[00:22:49] No. E.

[00:22:50] And is he the serve? No. Master guy? Yep. Oh, yeah. I was just on his show.

[00:22:56] Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Jonathan lives.

[00:23:00] In some island in the Pacific, living the lifestyle, you know, business. Just beautiful.

[00:23:09] Yeah, absolutely. And he's done a lot of stuff in the Internet marketing world. And so I like when I'm talking to someone like him where he's testing different stuff and he's going, okay, here's what's working really well right now. So there's kind of a mix. Some of these things are going to be evergreen strategies, like, I believe, podcasting and the power of podcasting that's going to be effective ten years and beyond in the future. Some things like Tick Tock, I think it'll be around, but it's really cool to hear like, hey, you know, for the next six months at least, if you do this, there's a lot of traffic potential with somewhat minimal effort in terms of creating these videos. So those are I could keep going on. Tom, any questions or comments?

[00:23:50] Let's keep going. Keep going if you have it up in front of you there. And I know there's 25 sessions, right?

[00:23:57] Yeah. Yeah. And some more things.

[00:24:00] So that's that the first one dropped.

[00:24:04] Yet. The very first date is going to be on Monday, August 22nd of 2022.

[00:24:11] All right. Now if somebody listening to this a year from now. What options would they have? Because a lot of this stuff is going to be very pertinent for years.

[00:24:22] Yeah. And that's one of the things I like to do. At least 80% of the content, you could get access to the recordings a year from now, several years from now, and you're still going to find it equally relevant. So there will be recordings and there should be a way that if you're listening in a year from now, by the time it's done, we'll have a way where you get the recordings packaged up and get access to the recordings.

[00:24:43] Great, great, great. All right. Yeah. Keep going, man.

[00:24:46] All right. Yeah. As we as you go into day three, that's not quite every session, but a few of the highlights here. Jeff Affleck. And every time Jeff has done a training, it's been some of the best feedback I've gotten on optimizing an Amazon book page. And so this gets into some nitty gritty. Like when you go if you have a book and it's on Amazon, there are specific things with the keywords, the metadata, the, you know, the obvious things like the cover of the title, the description. And he breaks down what you need on that that sales page to attract buyers. And this is one of the biggest things when I'm working with authors is that a lot of times they're going, you know, how do I market the book? How do I get more eyeballs on it? How do I get more exposure? And a lot of times I'd say maybe even the majority of the time, there's usually something they need to tweak or change on their Amazon page first in order for it to be effective at converting. And Tom, I know you have a background in copywriting. That's just one example. It was a copy. Good. Is the description good. Let's make sure that is optimized first as well as the other factors I mentioned. So Jeff, does a breakdown of what your Amazon page needs to have in order for it to sell?

[00:26:00] Great. Great. Hold on a second. So so, folks, if you're if you're already sold and you want to get get in on a ticket for this, screwthecommute.com/bestsellersecretssummit. Right now if you're listening to this when we first dropped this thing and the tickets the free. Tickets are available till when?

[00:26:29] Free tickets are available. You should be able to get up until at least that Monday, if not beyond. It's just that it's just if you get it later in the middle of the event, you wouldn't have access to the earlier things unless you've upgraded to get the recording.

[00:26:43] Right. Right. Okay. All right. Go ahead.

[00:26:46] Cool. Yeah. And I do a couple of sessions, actually. Ray and I, we interviewed each other, and so I'm big on email marketing. I think that's the foundation of any online business is email marketing. One of the challenges is how do you build an email list? And then how do you what do you say? Especially working with with many authors who are like, Well, I got a book out. I don't have another book coming out in a while. What do I what do I say? Or I don't have a book out yet. It's not coming out for another three months. What do I say? What do I say to my audience? And besides, just here's my book, go buy it. So I do a deep dive into some really practical things. Well, it's just how you think about doing email, really, partly to motivate more authors and entrepreneurs to really value email and just getting the focus of like all roads leading back to your email list and then building that relationship with the people on your list.

[00:27:43] Well, here's the thing, Derek. I've been you know, I've been in here since the beginning 28 and one half years online. And still to this day, everybody at my level, the big money is from email. All the social media, all that other crap is necessary evils to get him off of there onto your email. So I am right there with you.

[00:28:05] But yeah, and I'm so grateful that I learned from from experts like you, Tom, back over a decade ago on the importance of building an email list. That's actually what got me into writing books was, Oh, I'm going to write a book, publish it, because that will be a way to bring people back to my email list. And so it really is all roads lead to to email and then see Joshua Sprague. He talks about what to do before you launch a book. So what are the things you do pre-launch? And this is about the psychology of how do you build anticipation? How do you build buzz for your book? Think about like a Hollywood movie. They don't just go, Oh, here's a new movie out. They give you trailers in advance. They they have campaigns to get the excitement going. And so it's the same thing. If you're going to launch a book or relaunch a book, you have more on social media. Let me see a couple other highlights. Nick Stephenson I interviewed Nick. I was one of the verses. Ray interviewed some people and I interviewed others, as I mentioned. And so Nick talking about email, he's got some great strategies for email list building, especially things that are author specific. So for instance, connecting with some fellow authors and doing joint promotions or cross promotions, you can get together with some authors and you all offer your free ebook or a free lead magnet, and you do this big cross promotion thing. I'm actually in the process of setting up one right now in like the personal development space, and Nick kind of breaks that down and he breaks down several other strategies. And you mentioned one author added 140,000 new email subscribers from using some of these from using strategies that he talked about in that session.

[00:29:45] Amazing.

[00:29:46] Yeah. Got a Jackie Le Pen talking about how to secure speaking gigs. So if you want to do any type of speaking, whether you're using a book to get speaking gigs or whether you're using speaking to sell your book or anything else, it's about how to land speaking gigs, a couple of slumps, and also talking about building your email list. So a lot on audience building. And then as we mentioned going into the final day, your session Tom on podcasting for authors guest podcasting hosting your own podcast mentioned briefly Hal Elrod Hal said that his out of all the things he did to promote his book, The Miracle Morning, which went on and sold over a million copies over the course of about seven years, he talks about he went on news shows and, you know, doing just about everything you could do to promote a book. And he's like, my number one thing was guest podcasting. And and so that is one of the things I'm like it's it's free publicity. It's not, you know, it's not some instant, you know, overnight fix. I don't know of any instant overnight fix when it comes to building a sustainable online business. If you're willing to, you know, go on a couple of interviews a month minimum, then that's a great way you can get the word out there. Go back to the topic of take people from the podcast to your email list and then build that relationship. And what I love about podcasts is you might be experiencing this now as a listener. I just think about how well you've gotten to know Tom as a listener through this podcast. Think about how well you've gotten to know certain guests, right? And so this is why I say. Kind of a default thing where authors are coming to me. How do I how do I get the name out there? How do I start building my email list? I tend to, for many authors say podcasting, you know, it's not. You might host your own, but for sure you could go on other people's podcasts. And so.

[00:31:45] Yeah, I'm trying to remember that. And we cover both sides of the coin on that. That interview I did with you.

[00:31:52] Yep. Both sides of the coin. It was.

[00:31:54] Your own. Because you can really open some doors if you're and get to people you could never get to. In fact, I got invited to the White House. I think I told that story on the on the part on the recording. But you can. I mean, it's a little bit of work. Yep, I agree. But the thing is, it's just opens doors like crazy. So if you do both while you can, you can own the world.

[00:32:19] Yeah. And it's the kind of thing I mean, we're talking about some it's, you know, I mean, I would think anyone listening to this, if you're interested in this, you would at least sign up as an attendee for a summit. Your wheels might also be turning about going, well, maybe, maybe a host a summit, maybe I want to do that. Well, the nice thing is if you host a podcast, that's a great way to kind of build those chops, build the relationships with people. If you were to then do a summit at some point, and I just love the idea of being an interviewer as well as an interviewee, being an interviewer as a host. Like you said, Tom, it's it's building these relationships with people, getting access to people and opportunities you might not otherwise get access to and kind of spring boarding off of that. Thinking about this joint author deal that I'm putting together and I'm like, how do I know these people? Well, some of them are people that I've interviewed or that I've talked to.

[00:33:13] Look, I got probably more than 400 people that, you know, because we've done 600 and what is this, 35 episodes? And, you know, I've done a couple of hundred just training sessions with just me, but there's 400 people that I made look great on a on a podcast and expose them to trust me. They would return my call. All right. So, so but a lot of them wouldn't if I was just coming cold to them. So. So, yeah, both the podcasting can be really, really powerful.

[00:33:46] Yeah. And then when you have experience as a podcaster, that ties into something that we've been talking about here. So if you want to learn more about doing a virtual summit, I've mentioned Ray and I could. Tom, if you want to connect with REI, I'm happy to make that connection.

[00:34:02] Tell him. Tell him to get in touch with me and we'll have him on talking about the back end stuff that you said that he's he's running for you, which he's doing an excellent job, that's for sure. So, yeah. So, folks, you ought to be sold by now to get the heck on this thing, for nothing to have access to 25 top people in the world on book marketing and writing and all these other peripheral topics that make it successful. So. So, yes, go to screw the Compucom slash best seller secrets summit. Screwthecommunity.com/BestSellerSecretsSummit. And of course, we'll have that in the show notes. So what the final word you have there, Derek?

[00:34:45] The biggest thing I say is, you know, it's it's worth checking out, see what it's all about. And I would say, you know, you can learn in two ways. You can learn from being an attendee. And this is high level. This isn't just limited to my summit. It's going to things you learn from the speakers. And then I also like to go in and kind of reverse engineer. Oh, isn't it interesting how they kind of they're all working together. Who are maybe I could put together an event, maybe I could collaborate with some other speakers. And whether you want to host a full on summit, right at this point or not, I've done things prior to this kind of going back full circle to start the conversation. I have done kind of almost what you might call a mini summit. And it was actually on on the topic of email marketing. I got together with about seven other speakers and we're all just kind of sharing our best email marketing for authors strategies. And so that was a way of creating like a really valuable course and training that I was able to put together. And it was a way of kind of doing a sort of a smaller version of this. So you might look at this and if you want to create an information product or offer for people, remember you don't have to be the one doing all the work you think. Who are other people I can interview, connect with, partner with, collaborate with, and that'll make your life a lot easier.

[00:36:02] That's for sure, folks. So so this is just a great opportunity to get, I mean, probably over $1,000,000 worth of training just for signing up for this and showing up because all of these people are highly accomplished and and they're willing to share their secrets with you. And I don't think it's a it's not a big pitch fest. Right.

[00:36:24] No. I mean, there's not really much of of any pitching people might share. Hey, here's my website if you want to find out more. But it's not it's not like a constant it's not one of those things you get on for like 3 minutes of of insight and then, you know, 57 minutes of the sales pitch. It's not that at all. It's it's pretty much all just straight insight, strategies, takeaways that you can apply.

[00:36:48] Beautiful, beautiful. Thanks for coming on, Derek.

[00:36:51] Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Tom.

[00:36:53] All right. So, folks, the drops on August 22nd, but sign up as soon as you hear this, that screw the compucom slash best seller secrets summit and take advantage of this. I mean, like I said, these people are high level. You're going to get $1,000,000 easily worth of training out of this and you put even a portion of it into play. It could change your course of your business life. All right. We'll catch all on the next episode and I will see you on the summit.