 Hi there. I just want to introduce our next speaker, Anne Baudet. Thank you. Hello and welcome to the session. I'm really excited to have you here and I want to thank all the volunteers, Jonathan and Alfredo for making this wonderful event happen again. It's so nice to see people in person and to share what we know about WordPress. Hello, hello. We will have a 15 minute Q&A after the session if you have any questions. I'm just going to start with a little bit about me. Shortly after starting my WordPress blog as a non-techie mom of three boys, my blog garnered a million views and 35,000 subscribers. I was pretty surprised but this positive feedback encouraged me to continue. My Loving Yourself blog post got a lot of attention and then writing a book out of those blog posts came later. Pump Your Own Tires, Crossing the Bridge to Loving Yourself, which I self-published. And after that I published a novel, a fiction book, and then I made a course about how to write a book, how to write a novel because I love to learn and I love to share what I learn. WordPress was a really engaging, encouraging environment. You have comments, you have followers, you have people asking you, how do you do this? So you know your market instantly. It's just beautiful and it's free. It's a platform used by 70 million people across the world. And so that encouraged me because at the time I didn't really have any money or didn't have much inspiration. I just always wanted to be a writer and this was the perfect place to start. Okay, so I wrote a fiction book. I'm currently writing my memoir and I'm teaching a memoir writing group at the Cloverdale Library. Once again, learning and teaching. I took a bunch of courses, I've been to a bunch of writing seminars and that's what I like to do, input, output. That's my thing. So in 2012 my three boys were all grown up and leaving the house and I finally started to think about myself. I've been back benched because of hockey practices, band practices, you name it and you know it's just my time now. So I'm going to start this blog. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if anybody will read it but whatever. I'm going to try and at first it takes me a long time to do a post. It takes me a week and you know it's crazy because I don't know the technology and I'm nervous and you know so but I keep going anyways and I'm doing it at three o'clock in the morning after all my other work's done so it's not interfering with anybody's staff or anything. You guys said are moms, no. So I was new to the internet as well and I was an early member of James Altichur's Choose Yourself group. He's a best-selling New York Times author from New York and he started a little online group to help people with business and share his knowledge and he said do something that scares you every day. So I scared myself and started a WordPress blog. I didn't really know you know what I was doing and but birds sing because they have a song. Writers write because they have a story. It's a need that you have to create. I didn't have any money at the time so I washed out a pickle jar and I hid it in my closet away from everybody and I taped a blog onto the jar just a little paper and every time I'd get $5 change at the supermarket I'd stick it in the jar and eventually I got enough money to host the blog and that was really fun because then you get your stats and you see who's looking at your blog and it becomes more than about you. It becomes bigger than you, you're sharing. Okay, so I didn't know what to write so I wrote a post about spring cleaning my backyard. I go to the dump with my dog. The people at the landfill know my dog. They give him a biscuit. It's such mundane stuff and I get 13,000 views on the post. I'm like what's going on? This is crazy. This is just my boring life and it's so surprising, right? And yeah, various, like other just nothing kind of posts and I thought well this is great. Okay, sorry. This is about me and the stuff I've been doing. Sorry, I was supposed to put that up. Okay, I won a contest. I was winning a contest to have lunch with Brett Wilson. I don't know if you guys know him. He's a Canadian entrepreneur and he used to be on Dragon's Den, the show where they go to get funding for their ideas. I think it's Shark Tank in the States and I said I have a blog and he had done a book and I said I'll review your book. So we're at the luncheon and he said, yeah, you know, when I come home I just like reading a blog about an ordinary person like you. Like I've had all these deals going all day and it's so stressful with all this business stuff I do and I just like to read about an ordinary women's day and I thought, wow, like I didn't even ever think of that. A billionaire is reading my blog. Like this is so cool, you know, and I get to meet him because of WordPress. Like it's crazy what WordPress has done when you stay with it and keep on it. It's phenomenal. So he's sent me things I've kept in touch and it's been wonderful. I decided that my blog needs a theme though. I can't just keep writing about my backyard and stuff. I need to do something that resonates with me and other people. And I was getting comments and they're saying, how do you start your blog? How do you do it? And I love reading it and I even got an email from a psychology company. They were doing a big study and a program and they said, can we use your blog as reference? Like we love your posts and we want something that just an ordinary person is writing. But I didn't get the email because I was swimming in emails and comments. So I had to shut off the comments and emails. I was so backlogged because I was doing all my regular stuff. And anyway, so there's lots of opportunities in there, hidden in there. But of course I missed a lot of them because my main goal is to write and share and help. So I would have done it, but I didn't. But I figured when my kids were small, I used to take them to the library every week. And I had had a difficult childhood myself. So when I was at the library helping them read, I'd see all these books about my trauma or whatever that I had to heal from. So I kept checking out books and I'd go home and read all these books about various issues to deal with your past. And it really helped me in my development. And I thought, I think there's other people out there who could benefit from this as well. So I started writing about loving yourself and positive thinking because we're sort of wired to be negative and complain and just gratitude, positive thinking, loving yourself. And that really took off. And it was a great theme for me because I had read all these books and just had all this knowledge in my head about it. And within a short time, you know, I got lots of, lots of action. Who has a blog here? I'm just wondering, okay, awesome, this little core. Are they mostly business blogs or personal? Or maybe some is just business, but just to have, sort of like yours, back in the 2000s. Okay. Just kind of talking to people and just getting, Right. Oh, cool. Yeah. You got a lot of practice from that and then you branched out into business. Yeah. Yeah. But you're here. So you still believe in it. You still love it. That's like me. I'm writing in a book and I'm intense on stuff and I don't blog, but I love the blog still. I still always keep it. Yeah. How about the other people? Is it business? Are you business? Yeah. What are you selling? Do you mind me asking? Well, I'm a web designer, so I actually have two blogs. I have one for potential clients and one to mentor other web designers. Cool. That's really cool. Yeah. Because that's such a, you know, a maze for somebody like me. Like, web design. You know, I'm just, I just have the writing on there and so, yeah, that's great. Thanks to be a teacher. So mine are all education. Oh, cool. What grade did you teach? I was an ESL teacher. So it's like we're teaching ESL or learning. That's amazing. I taught ESL as well and yeah, my students could really benefit from something like that because I found with my ESL students, they would be, they'd have a different language and they'd get in a classroom of 30 and say, the teacher's talking too fast. I don't really know what she said. I don't know if you found that. They'd come to class and say, I have to memorize these 50 cards and I said, bye tomorrow. That doesn't sound right. I stayed up all night and then it was like, the teacher said you have a month, but the language, they didn't understand that. So when they came to tutoring, I'd say, oh no, no, that's not possible. She didn't want this all done tonight. So yeah, really helpful. Okay, so I wrote my first book from my blog post and I just sat down and wrote. I just wrote everything I knew and when you're writing, people are wired for stories since the campfire days. We want to hear a story arc from beginning to end. We want to hear an adventure and a transformation and we love that stuff. We're hooked on that stuff. So I just started writing about my childhood and a little bit and how I was drawn to these books and I just distilled all the knowledge into a few simple sentences. You can read this on your lunch break. It's a 30 minute read. It's not a daunting book to take on or whatever. I didn't know anything about books. So I just delved in like I did with the WordPress blog and I wanted a five by nine. I wanted the cream colored paper. They give you a proof. This is done on KDP on Amazon. Has anybody published a book on KDP? Awesome. Yeah. So how did you find the experience? It's difficult at first to learn all the ins and outs, but once you do it a couple times and it's easier for you to make all the mistakes already. Right. Yeah. They keep kicking it back to you like oh that format won't fit or yeah. How was your experience? Many years ago. So I don't really remember, but I don't remember it being very arduous. Yeah. If you're techie. Yeah. I think it is. They are. They'll just tell you, you know, you need this kind of a PDF or you know, it's pretty, if you have any technical knowledge at all. Yeah. Maybe you know, up to a week or two, you'll pretty much have all the information. It's selling the book that was much more difficult. Yes. That's a whole other game to a book. Yeah. Yeah. Did you take any Amazon ads out? Yeah. They're reasonable. They're, you know, for five dollars you can get an ad for your book and word of mouth. Mine was word of mouth. I went, I did a book signing, a local bookstore took it and put it on their shelves and I did a book signing there. And you know, you can kind of do a ground level marketing as well. But yeah. So, where are we now? Yeah. So I started to feel more confident with the blog and the book. So then, I did the book in 90 days too. I had, I always have these challenge within a challenge because a book's a challenge in itself. And then I try to make another challenge. So I did it in 90 days and just went through it. And then I did a novel. This is a proof. I thought I'd do the novel in the same size as the book. But then it didn't look right. So then I did a real novel size to make it look better. This was glossy. This is matte. Like, they'll ask you to choose all your preferences. That's, you know, okay. So, okay. Let's do another slide. Okay. Starting my blog, we've already been through that. That's my blog post. Okay. Okay. So, when you have your blog, you build up a body of work and that's the beauty of the blog. You've got feedback from what posts are popular. So you know what you're good at, what aligns with your readers. And you build up a body of work. And from that body of work, you start seeing a theme or a thread. What do I, what do I like? And what are people resonating with? Why are they coming here? Why would they spend their time here? Like I said, about the, my self-help type thread that became popular. And so, once you have the body of work, you can build the book because you have the themes. You also start building a brand, a niche, a tribe. You start feeling, you know, how everything's coming together. It takes time and effort, but it's a cool feeling when, you know, it's coming right out of you and you're building it. And you know who you're writing it for on WordPress, so that's cool too. You can publish a print book or you can make an e-book, which is a really good thing if you have a business. You make a small, you know, 10 ways how to wash your car or whatever it is. And you can give it away as a promotional item, sorry, to your customers. Like, I'll email you my free e-book. It's kind of a, an offer that you can make if you're trying to build a business or a brand. And, you can also go to, like companies like Island Blue Printing in the Victoria area. And for $14, they'll print you a book like this, even a larger book. If you want to write, like your memoir and give it to your kids and your grandkids, you can just, you don't need all the formal, you know, publishing ISBNs or anything. You can print your own book out of your blog and, you know, sell it yourself. You can go to fairs and the thing about, with you do that, you get all the money. If you sell it for $20, you make $6. If you publish on KDP, you get about 40% of the price you listed at. You choose the price to list it at, and then they deduct the printing costs. So, you know, you're getting about 40%. The other option is to go with a traditional publisher and, to do that, you have to send a query letter and say, here's a sample chapter. You're nodding. You've probably done that route, too. I tell people that. Yeah. So, and then if they say, hey, we like it. Send us some more. They'll handle everything for you. They'll, you know, print it, publish it. But you don't own your rights anymore. You give them all your rights and they pay you royalties and even bestselling authors might get two bucks a book. It's not huge, but if they get you on book tours, you can make money and a following and, you know, do other products. So, it can, it's more like a labor of love than a big lucrative business, but, you know, the top people do make a lot of money. Okay. So, I'm going to show you the simple steps that I took to make my book. And, as you know, I self-published. So, I organized my book into 10 chapters, because that was a simple, easy way to keep track of everything. Just boom, boom, boom, 10. You start to finish. And you write, like I say, an arc from introduction to to conclusion. And you want to have a story in there, a personal connection in there, because that hooks people into reading it. You are the main character of this story. If you are writing anything personal, it's just like a fiction book where you're a main character going through a journey. And if it's a business, your idea or your product is the main character. And you can talk about all the pitfalls, all the, you know, challenges, because, you know, a hero's journey is we face obstacles and we slay the dragons. And it's the same in business. You have to solve so many problems and go through so much turmoil, you know, to get to the success. So, you're transformed by the end. And that's what people can relate to. They want to be transformed, too. The hero's journey was popularized by Joseph Campbell. And it was used by George Lucas in his Star Wars films. He used that exact formula of the, you know, call to adventure, the unwilling, you know, taking the call and facing all the enemies, getting some helpers and finally crossing a threshold to success. And your intention for writing your book is super important. What do you want to do? I want it to help people that felt depressed or sad in the way I did and make them feel better. But you really have to think about what is your intention, why are you writing and who are you writing it for? Pre-writing. So, we've all been told we have to follow a formula and do everything by the rules. But free writing just frees up your flow. It frees your mind. You just get your take. We all hear about A.I. and how it's writing books and taking over. But A.I. can't do the noticing that you can do. You'll hear about all this fear of, well, why write a book and A.I. can write it. It's true, but it can't write your book. You are the only person on this planet who can write your book. You're the only one who sees through your eyes and has your vision. So, just remember that that, you know, you are the main thing. And if you flow, your subconscious mind adds a bunch of ideas. And that's what I did just for three months. I just flowed out the stuff. Sometimes an outline can limit you as far as you've bossed yourself in and you, I can't talk about that. But when you flow, you get gems. And some people like the control of an outline and there's nothing wrong with that. Each chapter can have, you know, the five main points and you can list them out. Okay, title. Coming up with a working title early on really helps your process because your title pulls you to your goal. You're always thinking about the words, oh, okay, crossing the bridge to loving yourself. Like this is, it keeps you on track and it can change. It can change 20 times, but having the title at the start is a good idea. Just a working title. And you think of a book cover image in your mind, have a picture. We're very visual and think of books that you like and what, what visuals do you prefer? And what visuals do you use on your blog and you've had really good feedback about? Decide on a genre, nonfiction, a novel, a memoir. My book was the self-help category, my first book. Okay. You can, yeah, you can give away a book as a promotion or sell it. It's just cool writing the book. Like it's, who it makes you, you set a goal and you did it. And it's just something no one can take away from you. It's from within you. It's, it's cool. Spelling and proofreading, it depends on your writing skill, but if you're blogging, you get practice and that's the thing. Practice, practice, practice. Get faster, you get better. You read about your topic. That's, that's the goal, you know. So you can hire an editor and I use a site called Fiverr.com with two Rs. I'm not selling anything for Fiverr, but it's really useful as far as editors, proofreaders. And the site started by, everything was $5 years ago. That's what it's called Fiverr. So it's pretty reasonable. You can usually find someone that matches you. I hired an editor and he cut half of this book out. He cut 50, 50% of the words out. And it's my book, my name's going on it. So I called him and said, hey, can I have some of those words back in there? Because I had the title, which pulled me. And it was crossing the bridge and he cut out all the information about crossing the bridge. So I said, oh no, that's my theme and title. So I need that back. So he said, fine. Like, like you have the final say, it doesn't matter who you hire. It's your book. And you can make your own changes. You can even get a ghost writer to write the book. If writing's not your thing or you don't have time. And if you do publish, you're going to have to apply for the ISBN number, which is free in Canada. You just have to get the number from them in the code. Write a blurb and a bio. Oh, it's so hard to write a blurb about your book. It's a one paragraph thing. And people have full-time careers writing book blurbs. It's so hard to make that one paragraph pitch. It sounds crazy, but because you've been writing for months, but to actually sum it up and tell someone what it's about, so yeah, just warning, it sounds easy, but maybe you're good at it, but I wasn't. Sometimes you want to include a photo of yourself on the back or not. It doesn't really matter. So your book tells your hero's journey. You're the hero. You're the theme. I answered questions in my book. What is loving yourself? What is not loving yourself? What are the blocks to loving yourself? Do you have cognitive dissonance? Do you need to replenish yourself? Sorry. I gave strategies for loving yourself. Don't fall into the perfectionism of the ego. Create a new environment. If your current environment isn't supporting, take actionable steps. Make new friends. Simulate loving yourself as if it's already happening. Take it easy on yourself. Tough loves, one thing, but real love is what makes you strong. Real love for yourself. Create a bridge. You're never going to go back to that past that you're transforming from. Create that bridge in your mind. No, I have new boundaries. I won't tolerate that. Have a conclusion that shapes your, you know, because your conditions shape your decisions. Your decisions are the things that shape your life, not your situation or conditions in life. You can't change the past, but you can move away from it. And so I had a lot of quotes just to reinforce the idea. A poem by Charlie Chaplin about loving yourself that was quite beautiful. My three main tips for writing your book, find three reference books you like, either for the content, the look of the book, or the structure of the book, how it was done. Add value before trying to sell. Share what you know. Help people, because we all need help. We don't really know how, but when we read something useful, and it can really change your life, it can really set you on a new course. So, you know, it's fine to sell things, but always add value. People can tell when, you know, it's not authentic when you're just there to sell. And you don't feel the same fulfillment either. It's really meaningful when you share with them. People buy from people they trust. So, if you can build that rapport, and they will buy from you, because it's a law of reciprocation. They just feel like they've had so much value, they want to return it to you. Teaching people about my blog, I rented a coffee shop and taught a blogging workshop, and it was really cool to have that in person. I had had the online experience, and I was into, like, Bitcoin and stuff at the time, and everyone was like, I was blogging on a Bitcoin site, so they were like, whoa, what, you earned Bitcoin? Yeah, there's all kinds of things once you get the experience on WordPress that you can do and expand out. So, it's really helped me to become a writer and share. Yeah, your book will take you to unexpected places, and I've talked about the hero's journey and how you arrive at a transformed place, and how George Lucas did his movies based on it. So, I went on a Zoom call. I had a lady in a writing group contact me, and she said, let's go on a book coaching call. And I said, okay, I didn't know much about her. Her name's Sarita Patel. She was the assistant to George Lucas for 25 years at the Skywalker Ranch. So, all of the movies that were being created, all the props were made there. She dealt with him on a daily basis, so, you know, your blog can take you to unreal places if you keep with it. Like, you know, you'd be so surprised that I'm helping her write her book, which the guy's a legend, and, yeah, it just floors you. Okay, thank you for attending. I'm gonna start the Q&A soon. I've slashed the price on my course. It's 90% off for today because of a WordCamp WordPress special, and I have a workbook with the course that you follow along. So, thank you very much. You've been a great audience, and we're gonna start with the Q&A if you guys have any questions. That's on Instagram? Or, sorry, X, Twitter, yeah. Right. Sex? Yes. I wanted to ask you three quick questions. I guess one of them was that when I came here, I thought you might be sharing some technical detail about how you used your blog to connect to the book. But from what I'm hearing, you used the blog as kind of a medium to explore and develop your writing. Yes. And then you transferred that into a book. So there are two separate activities. You didn't bother trying to find a bridge that would automatically create your book from your WordPress. No, but I imagine you could. There's programs like Scrivener and that people use. Just an artsy, fartsy, airy, fairy type. So I just like glean all the information and start writing it. But yeah, a lot of people would like it more structured. And if you're blogging about continuous things, it would be just perfect for a book or an e-book. Yeah. So the second question that you touched on was this ISBN number, because there's two ways of approaching it as you probably know. If you go to your own ISBN number before you go to Amazon or anyone else and that way you've got that control on the ISBN number. If you go to Amazon first, then they'll establish their own ISBN number. So you looked into that and decided best to go with your own. I got a hundred. You can get a hundred. You can reserve them. So I just thought, that'll spur me to write some books. So then you don't have to worry. And back when I actually, when I wrote this book, it was Create Space. Amazon didn't even have KDP in 2016. And yeah, so I had to get my own because they were going to get it. And it was I think $10 or $20 back then. So Canada's freed it up. They want people to create. So it's awesome that they're free. The last question is to say I question because in many ways it's like the music industry was a decade, well many decades ago, four decades ago, where the writers and musicians really lost all of their rights to the corporations. And now the AI is doing the same thing. So they're coming along and they're gobbling up your blog and everybody else's stuff and using that to generate their own AI engines from large language models. So have you worried about that at all or thought about putting a terms of use on like some people are saying that you know, I'm not granting you rights to use this for developing your large language model? I'm personally, I'm not worried about it. I've been using AI for about two years now. I've been studying it. I listen to podcasts of company owners that use it. And to me it's a tool that's very useful if you're stuck on a concept. Because AI is a large language model. It's not a human being. We're the humans. We're the noticers. We're the creators. We program AI. Now until it starts programming itself, we're good. But the thing is, Amazon actually has books on there that have been written by AI. And Amazon is refusing to take them off. And the reason is because the laws haven't caught up with AI. And they've been doing this as well. And when Napster came out, I don't know if you know in the 90s, bands were sampling all the music and they had 20 samples of some stealing people's music and they got away with it and they made a lot of money until the lawyers caught up. And then people were getting fined and charged. So I think currently the legal system is just going crazy on trying to figure out how to regulate AI. Yes. The ISVN number is attached to a copyright organization in the world? Correct. It's an international standard book number, something like that's what it stands for. And it's connected to the government. They want to know what you're publishing and where it's going. Like my book was in the library, the public library. And yeah, you have to have that if you want to sell it commercially. If you just want to have your book for clients or for clients, you don't need it. It's just your personal book. But yeah, any type of published online on KDP or with a publisher, you need it. So is there any advantage that you don't ISVN instead of going to Amazon? Amazon requires an ISVN and like this gentleman said they will give it to you if you don't have your own. But I prefer to have my own. I just don't want Amazon having control of my ISVN. I might want to publish on Apple books. I might want to change and now it's an Amazon ISVN. I think it's better to keep control. Keep your material, your rights, your stuff and not outsource it to them. All ISVN is it's just a number. It's like a barcode. Yes. And code. So it's not like the government. The government does not track you by your ISVN. No. They have microchips for that. Right. Yeah. The Library of Congress wants your book though. They'll email you and say hey, what's your ISVN? So nobody should be afraid of getting ISVN. No, no. It's also the case that if you can get 100, that's better. Yes. Because if you have one book, you just got one book. You're not an author yet. Authors write books or... Yeah, true. Very few people have one bestseller and then they retire. True. And then if they decide to charge, like in America it's probably about $40 or $50 for an ISVN. They charge. They charge quite a bit in America. We're lucky in Canada. And I just grabbed 100 because then it's free. I've got it. You never know. If you have the opportunity you might as well. And then it kind of like, okay, you know, I've got it. Yeah. Yes. You don't think you're going to make $40 on your book if you're from the States? Then maybe you shouldn't publish your book. Yeah, I mean... If you can't afford, you know, $100 a year for posting, maybe you shouldn't have a black... That sort of thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the point. Like if you want to make the money back if you're not just using it as an exercise to develop... Then you don't need one. Yeah. No, you don't need one. You have an ISVN through Amazon. They also take some of the profits when you book through KVN. But if you get your ISVN, you don't have to share profits with anyone, right? Right. Yes. You want to keep as much. And there are best selling... Like I went to Bowen Island to a Writers Fest and there was a fellow there that he totally makes a great living from writing. He's done five commercial books and he self-publishes and he's allowed to by his publisher and he said, whoa, hey, why not? I can get all the money. With his publisher, he has certain restrictions and they take a cut and they own his rights and you own all your rights on KDP. With the ISVN is not an issue of copyright and ownership. It's a product idea. Correct. And essentially if you're using ISVN, most people realize you will use up three ISVN numbers and you've got it as an e-book as a software and a hardcover. So it really only gives you that. I mean as far as actual publication and distribution, Amazon is still probably your best bet for your initial reputation because of their reach. But having that same ISVN when you then publish it on another site, whether it's Apple or something else, you're linking your product. So one product regardless of what channel it is. That's right. Yeah. Correct. Good point. Yeah. Yes. We came in late and we apologize for that because this is really interesting. Oh, I'm glad you made it. Thank you. I was wondering, because I'm actually in the process of writing a cookbook, are there any sites that you recommend to put it all together? Because I've got, of course, recipes and pictures and stories. I would suggest there's a lot of Facebook groups for writers and I'm sure there's one for cookbooks. I've never been on one, but cookbooks are very popular and there is one just featured in the Globe and Mail. I don't know if you saw it. The three F-words we weren't allowed to say food, family and friends. I thought, what a title. The F-words my mom wouldn't let us say. And I thought, man, that's great. Like, have you can grab a catchy title like that? Because everyone's like, whoa. Yeah, she's been on TV shows. That's awesome. Because food is something we share through our history and our family. It's so important to our culture and socialization. Yes. Worry more about your title than your ISBN. Yes. Oh, man. Yes. Yeah, the cover sells the book. I went into Indigo and I thought, okay, I'm going to look at that wrap. Well, I want my title to be big. This is just a proof. I want people to see it, you know. I want my name to be big. Like, you got these little miniscule names on books and you're like, oh, who wrote it? What's the title? Like, I don't know. To me, it's like, you know, my eyes aren't that good anymore. I like a big, big print here, you know. Yes. Do you recommend to write, like, three books and different volumes or one big book, 400 pages? Oh, three books. People's attention spans are like eight seconds these days and their time, you know, they have to be on their phone for four hours, you know. They can't, they don't have time to read a book, right? Yeah, I would say, write three. You've got much more chance that, you know, one person's going to like one book or, you know. Yeah. Or a book. Which one will fix according to your opinion? Oh, whatever you prefer. Whatever your passion, if you are good at writing movies and dialogue, write that one. Yeah. Whatever your heart is telling you, that is the thing to go with. Like, yeah. Because it'll come out beautiful. Yeah. Yes. You said you started with a WordPress blog? Yes. And you were able to make your audience through the comments? Yes. But that comes, like, you were able to make a community through them and then you were able to sell the books through the blog? Do you use WordPress at all? Yeah, I don't really know who buys my books. Like, you'll, on Amazon you'll just get a check and I don't actually know. They'll just be from a different part of the world or whatever. Yeah. The Karate Guy Chuck Norris wanted to be in the movie. And he, nobody was interested in this obscure Karate Guy until he said, I'm a national Karate Champion. There are 5 million people in the National Karate Association. Right. Every one of those will buy a ticket. Yeah. And so, the, that was, like, before the internet. Yeah. But the point is that sometimes when you want to get a publisher, if you can say, I have 35,000 followers. True. If I have, you know, some of my posts got a million likes. Yes. Or things like that. What you're doing is you're establishing authority. Correct. Yes. And that's what is needed to get picked up just in a bookstore. Definitely if you want to get a major publisher to be interested in having a blog that with analytics you know, an extensive content totally is telling people that somebody is interested in what you have to say. Yes. And that will get you through, in the door a lot more places. And if you have a, the other thing somebody, another client told me, if you have a blog, you've got an opinion. Yes. If you have a book, if you author a book, then you have authority. Yes. So the difference is between somebody with that opinion and authority and say, got a book. Yeah. I mean, you're putting it out to the whole world. Like when you go on your stats on your WordPress blog, you can see every country. I had 50 countries, you know, Estonia. Like you wouldn't believe what the reach is on your blog. Like when you get your blog hosted, it's incredible. And like now I'm teaching a memoir class in person. I have about 14 people and it's instant feedback. If you bring your story in, oh, no, no, no. That doesn't make sense. So if you can get anybody to read your writing, it's so valuable for feedback. Like not only online, but in person too. It just, and read, when you're doing your writing, read it out loud. Because if it doesn't read well, it's not going to read well for them. Yeah, that's really valuable. Just say, even your blog post, just read it out loud. It's got a flow as if, you know, your thoughts are going right into their head or so. Any more questions? Yes? Have I thought of doing a podcast? Have I thought of doing a podcast? Yes, I've done a podcast. Yes. I've done a few episodes. I've been interviewed. I was interviewed by an Instagram expert and I said, I don't know much about Instagram. And he said, it's okay. I need people. So I went on just, I just dive in, even if I don't know. Because it's great to talk to people. I have an astrologist friend and she, I met her at a, we did a vision boarding and she has a great podcast and she had me on and said, talk about your vision board. What do you, and I said, oh I don't like my hair. I want to fix my hair because I'm trying to get out and speak about my work and she goes, oh your hair is fine. Like, you know, yeah just various, I'm interested in all kinds of different things. So, and I did do a few podcasts myself. I got all the, all the stuff and yeah, it's good, but I need to focus more on writing because that's what I love and I find if you start a podcast, mostly all your time's going to that, really, because you have to get people to interview. I think it's great. I listen to podcasts while I'm working but you know, you have to get all the right gear and appointments and plan your interviews and read their books and you know, if there's a lot to it, like these social media people they make it look so easy but that's really their whole day, you know. Yeah. Have you done audio books? I have not, but I would like to, yeah. There's a company that you can hire in New York. I don't know, probably now it's more expanded. They're pretty reasonable and my son's a musician so we have a recording studio, so it's perfect. I should do it, but I just keep going on to the next thing and changing my my path and stuff. That as well actually has a service that you see at x.com and you can submit your manuscript or whatever and then people will do a little audition and then you can choose your narrator and then you pay them per production hour. Oh, cool. It's like something like 300 USD in them. It's actually that's the easy way to do it. That's amazing. You can do it yourself, but I mean to read your ebook to that high quality with no mistakes and stuff. Yeah, you have to keep editing. I have the microphone because I have a podcast but I don't want to spend days doing it. I'd rather just pay $300. Yeah, it's hard. I recorded my course and I thought it would be out in a few months and it was six months of editing. It's like a Hollywood movie. I'm not kidding. There was a dog barking 80 times during one of my things and we had to remove all the dog barks and like just on and on. You asked me about six hours I think for professionals though it's four to six hours per hour of reading. Oh, yeah. Into creating a book. Yes, I believe it, yeah. Even very good narrators. Yes. You have to read it. The famous thing is halfway through the book a character says in their big German accent and then suddenly you've got to go back because you have a new journey back. Yes, I mean we all want Morgan Freeman reading our books. He's got the acting inflection. They have to read through the whole book to make sure that they have all the action. Yes, it has to sound. It's a lot of work so it's worth under $500. It is. It's worth the money, yeah. And I think like writing books, it's who you become as a person or writing screenplays or cookbooks. It's just you know you're so like, whoa I'm an author and it's like, whoa I'm a blogger like you know in this day and age the gig we don't all have regular jobs we're always trying to get a side hustle it's expensive to live and also you want to realize your true purpose in life and discover what you love and have a legacy for your kids, your grandkids. Well and that's the point during this world that we're just texting and it seems like in the missing that human sound someone is addressing and reading the book. Yes, good point. It causes you to turn in the next page and so that's what it's all about and we're all in such a treadmill go, go, go, go, go we are, oh I got to get this oh I got 17 emails, I got to go I'm missing a passion we are, you need to just rest, be still and know that go within, like it's not all outer stuff it's within us that's what hooks people in totally in the business world when women go shopping and touch a piece of jewelry put it on the clothes they don't buy something just walking around they don't go to a car lot and just drive by they have to go in they have to feel it from the gut they have to sit there oh wow that's what our message is in our writing it's wrapping them embracing them and holding them taking them through our eyes see the world through our ears our perspective yeah, AI can't do that they can't be you never, no next year you called it okay, well we're going to be wrapping it up now and thank you very much I really appreciate you guys, you're awesome and I hope you're all going to write books and take advantage of my course if you want to