 a collaborative production between Think Tech Hawaii and the American Creativity Association Austin Global. I'm your host Darlene Boyd and our guest today is Patrick Snow. I have some questions for our viewers Patrick. Have you ever heard of someone respond to questions about a particular situation by saying I could write a book? Have you ever wanted to write a book of your own? Have you ever wanted to unlock the mystique of writing and publishing that book? Today's guest Patrick Snow is here to get us thinking about just how we might perceive and writing and publishing that bestseller of our own. Patrick is an international bestselling author, professional keynote speaker, publishing speaking and book marketing coach. Patrick has electrified more than 3,500 audiences on four continents as he offered his achievements formula for individual and organizational destinies. In fact, Patrick's book Creating Your Own Destiny has sold upwards of one million copies in five languages and worldwide in 108 countries since 2001. His second book, The Affluent Entrepreneur, is well on its way to a similar path as his first. Patrick lived in Seattle for more than 20 years until 2013 when he achieved his lifelong dream and moved to the beautiful island of Maui. Welcome to the Dean of Destiny, Patrick Snow. It's wonderful to have you with us, Patrick. Thank you, Darlene. That could very well be the best speaker introduction I've ever written, so thank you. Well, you do a nice job. I suppose it would be nice to start a little bit at the beginning of your journey and for our viewers to get to know you a little bit more. How did you get started on your journey of writing and publishing books? Well, you know, people say that how'd you become an international bestselling author, and I got to let them know right out of the gate that I'm not an international best writing author. And what I mean by that is I was an athlete in school and always working multiple jobs and playing three sports. And so I got a C in high school English, a C in college rhetoric. And so I tell people all the time, you don't need to be a prolific writer. You just have to have a plan, a system, a mentor, and a subject to write about. So for me, I got started. I was a captain of my varsity football team given the pregame speeches in Michigan back in the 1980s, and I loved it. So I took one speech class in high school, one speech class in college, I graduated from the University of Montana, moved to Seattle and got in corporate sales. And during that time, I moonlighted in the speaking business. But I couldn't get paid to speak to save my life. I got free breakfast and free lunch and free dinner and free pens and free food and free parking. And finally, being a strong man of faith, I had to come to Jesus talk and I said, what am I doing wrong here? Why can't I go from free speaking to fee speaking? And the answer I heard back from the universe completely changed my life. And the message I heard back was this, if you want what others have, you must do what others have done and you will get what others have gotten. And so the way that I got into publishing and writing is I looked at my speaker mentors, Les Brown and Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and all of them had successfully written and published a book. And they use that book as a platform to launch their speaking coaching consulting career. So I spent the next five years and $20,000 writing and publishing creating your own destiny. And that's how all this began. So it wasn't by plan, it was just by like, oh, if I'm going to become a professional speaker, I need to write and publish a book. One of the questions that I had, I think you've answered. I was going to ask you if it is desirable to offer to be a speaker for expenses only just to get yourself out there. But I think I heard you say you need to strive beyond that type of thing because I suppose if you're offering to do as a speaker for expenses only, that will be the kind of invites you get. The next invite will be for expenses only, I suspect. What do you think? Well, what I found out is without a book, you can't really get booked. You'll get the freebies, this and that and whatever else, or you might get $500. But once you write and publish a book, people view you as a celebrity, a movie star. They view you as the authority in that subject matter. So there's an assumption that it's five or 10 or 15 or $20,000 to be paid. So what I've learned over time in Dottie Walters book, Speak and Grow Rich, she says that you need to give 300 speaking engagements before you should expect to get paid. And so the reality of it is in this industry, sometimes we get paid a very high unrarium to go speak. Other times, they say we don't have a budget at all, but you can sell your coaching services from the back of the room. And I remember one trip in particular, they wanted me to speak in Chicago and pay my own air and car and food and expenses. And my answer is, well, how many people are going to be in the audience? And they said, we'll have five or 600 people there. And I said, okay, I will do that. I will buy my air car and hotel, go to Chicago for four or five days, be your keynote speaker. And I did just that. And we did about $20,000 in back of room coaching sales. So the point of it is sometimes we get paid a keynote fee. Other times, we speak for the opportunity to audition or coaching or consulting services. So it's a little bit of everything in between. Makes sense. But it still seems that the key is going to be that book, isn't it? Well, yeah. And the reason why Dan Poiner, one of the gurus who passed away about five years ago of the modern day self publishing industry, he said that the most respected career in North America today is that of a brain surgeon. And the number two most respected career in North America today is that of a published author. And our challenge is that I'm not a, I'm not a professional keynote speaker. I'm a professional marketer that sells my speaking services. I'm not a best selling author. I'm a professional marketer that sells my book. And so when we position ourselves to attract speaking, coaching and consulting, what I found one of the best ways to do that is to strategically gift the book away to those people who are looking for speaking, coaching and consulting opportunities. And by giving that book away, it stands you apart from your competition because there's a lot of noise out there on the internet and there's certainly a lot of competition in this space. So the book basically I found has become the world's greatest marketing secret to better market your practice, your business, whatever it is that you do, I found is a book way to market yourself. How do we get started? How do we get to that book? Yeah, I tell people that your book is your speech. Your speech is your book. They're one and the same. Your book is your coaching practice and your consulting practice. They're one and the same. But the problem is, is that people don't get started because we're all perfectionists. We're all trying to write that perfect a plus masterpiece novel or masterpiece self help book. And the reality of it is we don't have the skill sets, the understanding. So the way that we get started with my clients, I have them put together a book outline. And I asked them, what are 20 lessons that you want your readers to learn as a result of reading your book? And those 20 lessons can become the book outline. And then once we get those 20 lessons, 20 chapters down, then the next thing I challenge them to do is to write a rubbish, not very good D minus first draft that nobody's going to see. And then after they get that first D minus draft done, then they can go back and start doing the self editing process because done is more profitable than perfect. And action is an upgrade from perfection, but that's what holds people back. And that's why more people don't do it. So we did hear you correctly. We have to go for that first round for rubbish and D minus. It's a little different than what I expected, but it makes sense. Well, you have to put a quarter tank of gas in your, you know, your automobile before you get to a half tank, before you get to a full tank, before you get to all the way to the full. And everybody thinks, well, I'm going to just, you know, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to write this draft out and it's going to be a best seller. Well, just like pumping gas in your car, it takes time and you have to go through the quarter tank phase, the half tank phase, the three fourth tank phase, and then finally have a full tank. You have to go to the D minus draft first, and then the C draft, and then the B plus draft. And then when you get it in about the B range, then we send it off to a copy editor and content editor who has a PhD in literature, who is a master's in creative writing, who's a novelist, the 20 books themselves. And then they do that deep thorough copy edit and content edit. And people for years been St. Patrick, you are such a prolific writer. I could just hear your soul speaking to me in your words. And I thought to myself, if they only knew that I got to see in college English, the reality of it is, is I have a prolific editor. And if we did this in high school or college that we had somebody edit our work, we'd get an F for cheating. But in the real world, as authors, we take our manuscript as far as we can get it, using our own skill sets. And then we have a world class editor, you know, dust it, polish it, shine it and get it presentable to the world. And that's the process. And that's how it works. So clearly, there's a distinction between a ghostwriter and a professional editor. Yeah, typically a ghostwriter would interview you by phone or interview you by zoom, maybe record that interview, take lots of notes and then construct a book. What I help people do is I give them a writing template for the fiction books. The template is right about love and death, love and death, love and death. And if you look at Harry Potter and Nicholas Sparks and the werewolf, you know, movies and books, all of them are love and death, love and death, love and death. And that's that formula, the template for self-help or personal growth and development or leadership or inspiration. It's all about helping solve problems by taking your readers through a series of lessons and then reflective exercise questions and engaging them through storytelling, case studies, examples. And then with that template, they end up having a great product at the end. So there are two different templates, actually three that I coach and teach. But at the end, they get a world-class book. And all they got to do is literally manufacture or get out 50 to 60,000 words, which is 250 to 300 pages. And some of my clients spend 100 hours writing their book. And others of my clients will spend three or four hours recording their book in a voice recognition software system. And either way, they get their manuscript done. And then we get the professionals involved, the editor, the proofreader, the typesetter, the cover designer, the printer, the ebook, audiobook, global book distribution. So at the end of the day, there's about 100 decisions to make in the process of writing and publishing a book. And my role is to serve as project manager, production coordinator, and to lock arms with them to help them make 100 out of 100 decisions correctly. Sounds a little bit overwhelming. And I suspect a number of people that want to move forward with the book might feel the same, might feel that it is overwhelming and give up. So what kind of encouragement can you give someone like that? You're absolutely right. Or do you have to have that passion at the start? You're absolutely right. It is overwhelming. Again, I tell people there's 100 decisions to make. Anything from hardcover to softcover, point size, font size, yellow paper, white paper, testimonials, introduction, a final note, front page inserts, back page inserts. It's overwhelming. So my goal is to lock arms with them and help them make one decision at a time, one homework assignment at a time, one chapter at a time without ever rereading. And people say to me, Patrick, how did you get your book in Arabic? How did you get your book in Russian and Spanish? How did you do this and how did you do that? And my answer is, we're not going to talk about that right now. We need to talk about how you're going to submit me and turn in a not very good rubbish chapter one of your book. That's what we're going to focus on. We don't need to worry about search engine optimization and book translation and global book distribution. We don't need to worry about that. And that's my role is to help people focus on word count, word count, word count. Let's get to 40, 50, 60,000 words. Then once we get it printed, then we can work on the marketing part, because a successful book is 5% writing and 95% promotion. Hmm. What are some common obstacles to producing a successful book? Well, we got to get people's ego out of the way. We all have an ego. We all have this thing that, oh, we want to put our folder on the front cover of the book. And there's lots of mistakes that people make. And the biggest mistake is they put their mugshot right on the front cover of the book. And the reason why you can't do that, you probably could do that if you were a president, a movie star, a professional athlete, celebrity. But if you're not famous, then when someone sees your book cover with your mugshot on the front cover, they just assume it's your autobiography. And because they don't know you, they don't have any time to read about your story when they're overwhelmed living their lives. So that's a huge mistake. People do that. Another mistake is there's three award-winning title formulas, subtitle formulas, tagline formulas. And without knowing these formulas, they come up with these goofy titles that make absolutely no sense. They're way too many words. They don't speak to your head or speak to your heart. And so they have poor cover design, poor title, poor subtitle. And then, oh, by the way, they promote the book for 30 days and darn it, Oprah doesn't call and Dr. Phil doesn't call. So then they abandon the book and they write book two and this time they don't get on Dateline NBC. So they abandon that book and they write book three and book four and book five. The biggest mistake that people make is in order for the book to be successful, the author needs to spend the rest of their life doing a 20, 30, 40, 50 year book marketing campaign. And when you commit 15 minutes to 30 minutes every day, the rest of your life to promoting your book, it will be successful if you've made some of those other production decisions correctly as well. And that's my goal is to help people limit their expectations and understand that you don't need to be on Oprah to sell a million books. You don't need to have this happen or that happen. There's, I provide a 52 step book marketing business plan, which is way overwhelming. So I encourage my clients to pick five to seven of those strategies on the business plan that best fits their personality and then promote those. So you've mentioned that there are as many as 100 decisions to make in the process of writing and publishing a book. Are people apt to try to want to take shortcuts to lessen the number of decisions? Well, they don't even know that there's 100 decisions. Or they say, you know what, my friend is an editor. I'm going to have my friend edit the book. Well, the friend has got three jobs. It hasn't edited a book in 20 years. So they give the book to their friend who's the editor and it takes them two and a half years to get the book back. And the book is only halfway done. And then they give up and they've lost two and a half years. Where my editing team turns the book in 10 to 14 days. And literally there's a managing editor and then a production editor and another production editor. So there's a whole system around doing everything because it took me five years and $20,000 to publish my first book creating your own destiny. Now my clients are getting published in 30, 60, 90 days, 120 days, six months. And they're investing about half of that amount into the book. And that's my goal is to engineer the time and the money out of the product. And at the same time, they're going to get a higher quality book that comes off the press than even the books that are published in New York. Because the New York publishing industry, they do everything they can to engineer cost out of the manufacturing process and out of the print process. So unfortunately, they do everything cheap, cheap, cheap. And in my system, we do everything world class quality because if you have a book and you give that book away to a meeting planner, you might get a 10 or 15 or $20,000 speaking engagement or maybe a 50 or $100,000 consulting engagement. So we can't go cheap anywhere along the way because those mistakes come back to you and haunt you later because you get looked over and they select somebody else. So clearly, Patrick, the title is going to be very important. And if I think about the title of your book, the destiny book, you could have just or someone could have just used a title saying future instead of destiny. But when I look at that title, it's certainly different. Destiny, I see more of a vision of a future life versus just the future, which can be the future can be going grocery shopping, playing with your grandchildren. It's lightweight is that I assume there's a key to the title. Well, the word destiny means fate. And the word fate means the supposed force that predetermines all events. So I tell people the supposed force that predetermines your entire life is your mind, your belief, your self-limiting beliefs, your discipline, your visions, your actions, your habits. But to answer your question, there's three award-winning title formulas that I spent a lot of money on more than 25 years ago to learn. And the number one award-winning title formula is to take a verb, add an ing to it to make it an action verb or a gerund. And we all learned about gerunds back in school. So my book is titled, Creating Your Own Destiny. And there's no doubt about what that book is about. I have a client in Southern California that beat ovarian cancer. And so we took her title and her book title is now Beating Ovarian Cancer. So what I love about this ing action gerund title formula is it tells the reader exactly what the book is about. We've got another client that's balancing family and work, achieving unlimited success. What I love about this ing title, there's no doubt what that title is. It clearly speaks to the reader. The other thing is that people make a mistake on is they don't buy the dot com of their book title. So you copyright the content of your book, but you can't copyright the title of your book. So the way that you control the brand of your book title is to purchase that dot com. In my situation, I couldn't get Creating Your Destiny 25 years ago dot com. So I purchased Creating Your Own Destiny dot com. And I had to confirm with my grammar expert editor that that was grammatically correct as well. And he said, yes, both are good. So that's what we got to do. If you have a snappy title and it's an ing action verb, then get the dot com of that book title and that controls that brand. And as long as you're using that ing title, you can also use that same formula for the table of contents. And every one of your chapter titles can start with this ing. Every marketing copy that you do the rest of your life can become with an ing. Because if the book was Create Your Own Destiny, then it's a command or a demand. And I'm now preaching and teaching. And nobody wants that. But when it's creating your own destiny, it's a more gentle process where we can lock arms and do it together. I like that. I like that a lot. Handy dandy hints here are just very, they make common sense. And they, but there's something that we really haven't been introduced to. So I really appreciate this conversation. More than you'll know. You've mentioned that you have a five step formula for becoming a best selling author. So in the time in the time that we have, might you be able to give us a quick sketch of the five steps? And I know we've touched on some of them already, I believe. Yeah, everybody thinks to be a best selling author, you got to have the best book on the planet. And there are lots of books that are not very well written, but they're best selling books because they're well marketed. So the number one step to become a best selling author is you need to spend the rest of your life promoting your book. And the best way to promote your book is to speak webinars, tele seminars, keynote, speaking engagements because when you speak, business happens. Number two way to be a best seller, you need to have a world-class cover design. We're taught as a child not to judge someone by the way they look, but unfortunately the only way people judge your book is through your cover design. Number three, you need to have a compelling title that you own the dot com of with the ING rule. Number four, you need to have a hook of an introduction. Everybody writes the introduction, oh, me and I and me and I'm a victim and read my book because I and me, I and me. The introduction needs to be about you and your, you and your. I feel your pain, I've been in your shoes. I want to help you achieve your destiny. And then finally, number five is that you need to have a well written book that's been edited and proofread that's free of mistakes and errors. So how large is your team? If someone, if someone does decide to follow your formula and contract in a manner with you, how long team are they buying into? My coaching program goes for the rest of our lives with no expiration date. And then I have a team of vendors and suppliers that are not employees of the snow group. They're vendors and suppliers that are my associates. So I've got an editing team, a proofreading team, a cover design team, a graphic design team, printing, and then ebook and then audiobook and global book distribution, foreign language rights. So I've got about eight or 10 or 12 suppliers that I work with and I've been working with them for up to 25 years. And this team I introduce my clients with and they give the best pricing to my clients and they move them to the front of the line. So it's a really amazing turnkey system. How big is that line? How big is the line? Nowadays, how big is a line to push a book? We publish 1,500 clients in 25 years using about 18 or 20 of these vendors and suppliers and they can take three or six or nine months depending upon how quickly the student gets homework done. What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes that a new writer makes? Is they assume that they're going to burr this book into the world and it's going to grow its own legs and grow up on its own? When we give birth to our children, we spend 18 to 20 years of our lives raising that child. So the biggest mistake is people publish a book and they fail to promote it. That's a long time commitment. So you really need to start this book well before the last phase of your life, don't you? And the reason it's so important is you need to write about whatever you're most passionate about, whatever your passage and your joys and your harmonies and the things that you love, that's what you write about. I had a guy write a book about golf and he was complaining the only speaking engagements he had at golf courses and country clubs. I said, what's the big deal? He said, I hate the subject matter of golf. I said, why'd you write that book? And he said, I thought I could make a lot of money. So really your speech, your coaching, your program, your healing, whatever it is that you do, your business, your practice, if you're a chiropractor, you write about health and wellness. If you're a health and wellness coach, whatever your business is, that's what you write about. And you're going to promote your business for the rest of your life. So why not promote a book alongside it? Patrick, you know that we're speaking on the creative life. And so we talk about creativity and creativity can be recognized as a process. And you've described a very creative process for producing a book, but you've also mentioned passion as have I. And I think you would agree that passion is a very important component to any production, whether it be a book or something of value. And if the passion is not there, I would suspect and be interested in your thoughts that you might abandon the project. That passion has to be there so that when you talk about the rubbish, writing the rubbish as you improve it, you can't, I assume you can't keep writing rubbish. Well, I think the passion helps us discover our purpose. And once we discover our purpose, it gives us the meaning of life. It was Abraham Lincoln who said that the only way the dead can teach the yet unborn is through the written page. And there's another quote that says there's only two things we can leave behind on this earth. One is our children, the other is our art. So getting back to creativity, I believe that creatively we can write and publish our book in the form of a legacy gift that can serve generations for hundreds and hundreds of years to come because books can have shelf lives of 100, 200 or more years. So really this passion leads to our purpose, which leads to our legacy, which leads to ultimately, what is the reason I'm on this earth and what message do I want to leave behind? And that's what I want to spend the rest of my life doing is sharing that message. Love, joy, peace, harmony, and service to others. That's what it's all about. I appreciate that. Is there a distinction in this case between between an agent and the consultancy with you? Because it doesn't set a set. Well, there's three, there's three publishing options that people have actually for. I help them navigate all four of them. Typically a literary agent only publishes people through the traditional New York publishing route. And if you have a manuscript done, you have a one in 1000 chance of them reading it. If they read it, you have a one in 1000 chance of publishing it. I was rejected for 16 years. Before I got my major New York publishing deal done. So the New York publishing deal, maybe a goal for a lot of people, but I don't want my clients waiting 15, 20, 30 years to get published when they can sell published their book in three to six months. Patrick, we're coming to the close of our conversation and there's a lot more to be said. But I'd like to encourage our viewers to go to your website because in particular, you have a special opportunity on that website for viewers of this session. And I believe we're showing your website at this point. So I highly encourage our viewers to take a chance, take a look at your website and see what you think. Patrick, I thank you so much. This has been very enlightening. I think there are many details. Those of us that would like to see a book in our future, perhaps we didn't recognize one being that we never probably thought we would start out doing rubbish. I think I understand what you're saying. You'll never get moving along if you keep trying to improve something and be the perfectionist. So the perfection will come in the end. So Patrick, I thank you for being with us today. And to our viewers, you have been watching The Creative Life with guest Patrick Snow on Think Tech Hawaii. Join us in two weeks with another edition of The Creative Life and until then, aloha.