I Published Over 1500 Books on Amazon KDP: 15 Lessons I've Learned

Here is a brief summary of the key points from the transcript: The transcript covers 15 lessons from an experienced self-publishing author who has published over 1500 books on Amazon KDP. The key lessons include: - Focus on quality over quantity of books published. Invest in high-quality covers, content, and clear communication about the book's topic and target audience. - Find a profitable niche with high demand and not too much competition. Use niche research tools to identify good opportunities. - Outsource writing and other tasks to freelancers to work on the business instead of in it. Build systems and workflows to streamline the publishing process. - Diversify by publishing books in multiple formats (ebook, print, audio). Also consider expanding to other platforms beyond just Amazon KDP. - Embrace AI tools like ChatGPT but still rely on human intelligence for things like fact checking. Be transparent about AI use. - Create unique books that solve reader problems. Identify a specific angle or target audience. - Translate books to reach more markets and increase chances of success. - Enhance Amazon product pages with compelling descriptions, A+ Content, and good reviews. - Build an author brand and audience that drives additional sales. Use email lists, courses, consulting, etc. - Stay driven by uncovering your deeper motivations and creating plans to achieve goals. Celebrate milestones. - Continuously invest in your own learning and education to accelerate success. Work with mentors/coaches who have proven track records. The key focus areas are providing high-quality books, finding profitable niches, building systems and brands, and continuously educating yourself. The long-term mindset is critical for sustainable self-publishing success.

I published over 1500 high content books on Amazon KDP and here's what I learned. My name is Peter. I've been publishing for eight and a half years. I built a seven figure publishing business and in December of 2023 I helped a friend make over $17,000. So he started in May of 2023 and in about seven months he got up to making over $17,000 in December. And if you want to learn more about his story and what he has done, then you can check the interviews on this channel. Now in this video you will discover the right mindset, strategies and insights from over eight and a half years of experience with Amazon KDP and other self publishing platforms. And this video will probably be my most valuable video to date because the purpose is to save you years of not having to make the mistakes that I made so you can get faster results. You will learn everything from the basics to more advanced strategies. We'll talk about time management, outsourcing, leveraging, AI marketing and lot more. And you will get actionable advice on every lesson that we'll talk about. So what do I think about self publishing? I think that it's the best business model for passive income and passive income. There's a debate you shouldn't focus on passive income, should focus on leverage, income, etcetera. Now I've seen publishers that have stopped publishing and their books have made them money for years. And then they realize after they've tried different business models, that the books, that was the thing that were paying their bills. So eventually they usually come back to it and they start publishing again for that reason, because it's so passive. And it's a great way to get multiple streams of income. So you can have different formats. For example, you can have ebook, audiobook, paperback, hardcover, and you can also publish on many different platforms. So it's probably not the easiest business model for scaling to millions of dollars per year. But it is possible. And self publishing, it can be one pillar of your entire business if you're using your books as a brand. For example. Let's take a look at an example. So here we have one publisher that has a brand, and we can see that he also has a website where he sells courses on the back end. So maybe you can do coaching, maybe you can do consulting, maybe you can sell other products or other people's products. You can do affiliate marketing. So if you have a brand, you can generate a lot of different income streams. And publishing can be one of those income streams. And I think that publishing is beginner friendly. It's easy to use the platforms that we publish on and we also leverage an existing customer base, which is Amazon. So it's an easy way, if not the easiest way, to make your first dollar online, in my opinion, to scale. So to publish 1500 books, for example, you need a system for creating profitable books consistently and reliably, because I've invested a lot to create these 1500 books, they weren't free to make. So that means that I have a system for making sure that the books that I do publish are profitable. Let's go over lesson number one, quality over quantity. And what I think and what I focus more on now is making sure that the books that I publish are of really high quality instead of pumping out lower quality books quickly because the market has evolved in these last eight and a half years and everything is of a higher standard than when I got started. So everything from the length of the manuscript, if you're doing high content books, to also the quality of the manuscript. So everything is proofread now. It's edited and the information, it's actionable information or it's organized well and it really helps the readers. So for example, we can put out blog type content that doesn't provide any valuable or practical information. If we're doing, for example, how to book, it needs to be a one package solution. And the COVID designs, that's also something that has improved. So we need to make sure that the covers and the presentation of the book, for example, the description, the a plus content, et cetera, is of a higher standard than a couple of years ago. So the actionable advice on this lesson is to invest in high quality book covers and communicate clearly on your cover. So what is the book about and who is it for? So let's look at some examples to exemplify this. So first let's look at a good book cover. So here we see that it's a clear what the book is about. ABC my first learn the right workbook. You can see here the age is included as well. So we can clearly see with not just the text, but also the colors. It's very colorful. So we can guess that this is a kids book, even if it didn't say anything that we are able to understand. Let's say this was in Arabic or some other language that we might not understand. Just by seeing the colors and the font, style, etcetera, will be able to understand that it's a kid's book. So this book cover does a good job of not only communicating with the text, what the book is about, but also with the colors and font style, etcetera, it communicates who the book is for. And with the image, we can also guess that it is a tracing book. And you also see that it has some social proof over here. So more than 1 million copies sold. So this is a very powerful book cover in many ways. Let's take a look at a book cover that is not as powerful. So if we take a look here, then we can at least see that the book is most likely for kids. But we're unable to understand exactly what the book is about because compared to this book cover, we don't see the hand and the pen and everything like that. So it's nothing clear exactly what this book is about. Now, if we read it, yes, we will be able to understand what it's about, but the image is not fully relevant. And I think this can be bigger, and I think it can be better in terms of the font, style, etcetera. So this is a cover, in my opinion, that is not up to the standard of 2024, which is the year that I'm recording this video. If we take a look at the sales rank, we see that it has sold, but it's not selling currently. And compare that to the sales rank of this book. It's number 37 in the entire Amazon bookstore. Now, let's take a look at another cover that's a little bit in between. So, in my opinion, at first glance, this book cover isn't that good. However, because the book communicates what the book is about or who it's for fairly clearly, with the images right here and also with the different images here, we can see right away that it's for kids. It does actually sell. So sometimes the design and making sure that it looks good, for example, a color combination might not be the most important thing, but I think it's. It's still something we want to make sure we get right. But if we take a look here, 66,000 in ranking. So if we put that in the Kindle calculator, according to this one, it's selling two per day. So if we imagine that the royalty is $4 times two, that means it's $8 per day times, let's say, 30. This book is still making $240 estimated. So that goes to show that what you communicate, the images that you include on the COVID that is very important. Let's move on. So lesson number two is finding your niche. So this is the foundation for your success with Amazon KDP. The first two books that I published, I did very well with the research. However, the books after that, I did not do as good of a job in terms of the research. So I did more general topics. Let's imagine a topic such as productivity where there's a lot of competition and a lot of established authors. So I wasn't able to generate many sales for the books after those two books that I did well with. So then I got back to realizing that the niche, that's one of the most important things. So we want to make sure that we target the right keywords, especially if we don't have a brand, the bigger our brand gets or if we build an audience, then where this becomes less and less important. So targeting keywords, that's less important if you have a big audience that you can generate traffic or sales from. So ideally we want to find niches with high demand and not too much competition. But the actionable advice on this lesson is to watch the niche research video on this channel for a strong base and also consider using a software such as bookbeam to speed up the process. So I have a link in the description if you want to check that out. And I think you can get some discounts as well if you sign up to bookbeam with the link that I have in the description. Lesson number three, writing and outsourcing. So in the beginning, I wrote many of my own books because I didn't have the funds to invest in hiring a writer. But I think that once you do have the funds, I think it's good to hire a team. So hire a team of writers. If you're doing high content books or if you're doing more medium or low content books, hire designers or someone who can help you. Because ideally we want to work more on the business than in the business. So the actionable advice on this one is to use upwork or fiverr to find qualified writers or freelancers. So here we have upwork. It's a platform where you can find different freelancers. You can post a job and you will get applications, and then you can interview them and hire the ones that you think are a good fit. And fiverr, you can also search for different services and you will see the reviews of different freelancers, etcetera. So this is another option. Let's move on. So lesson number four is building systems. So when I built a system, that's when my publishing business really took off. So you want to build systems and automate tasks. So work more on the business instead of in the business. You want to focus on high value activities and strategic decisions. So once you get to a certain point, I don't think you should be doing the formatting, etcetera. So all these tasks that are done within the publishing business, they have a different price to them. So, for example, formatting, that might be done for, let's say, five to $10 per hour. However, writing the book, that is usually something that you at least would pay 15 to, let's say $50 per hour. So depending on the task, you pay differently and you want to work on the tasks that are the most expensive or most difficult to do. So I think that doing research, that's one high value activity that we as publishers can do, and also making strategic decisions, hiring key people, that those are all things that we want to focus on as publishers. So what I did was that I hired a manager and I also set up a system so that my editor manages the writer. And once I did that, I was able to work less in the business and more on the business. And at one point, I didn't work much at all because I was preparing for a Muay Thai fight. So I was training ten to 14 times per week. And during that time, I realized that the business was still going, everything was going in good pace, etcetera. However, one lesson from that is that once I got back and I was more involved again, I realized that there were few things that were missed. So I still need to provide feedback from time to time. So make sure that you have a high standard of your team to ensure that everything is being done properly. And ideally, you want checklists for everyone that is working in your business so that they know what is expected on them in terms of the quality. So just like a pilot has a checklist before takeoff, you ideally want your team members to have a checklist that they go through before they deliver the work to ensure that it's without errors. So the actionable advice is to use something like Trello, Asana, Dropbox, Google Drive, or any other preferred project management tools and set up a system where you don't have to be the middleman in everything. So here we have an example of a flow chart. So here it's you as the publisher, and you do the market research and you create the book title. And then, for example, what I do is I add the titles to the guideline creator, and then the guideline creator creates the guidelines, so the chapter names, etcetera, and the instructions for the writer. And then the editor checks the guidelines to make sure they're good and maybe make some tweaks to it. And then the writer receives the guideline and starts writing. And then he or she uploads the first draft to Dropbox of Google Drive. And then the editor retrieves the first draft from Dropbox, reviews the manuscript, and demands revicious if needed, then uploads the file to the same folder, or if it's good to go, then she uploads it to a completed manuscript folder, and then the writer will then make revisions, if it's needed, from the editor. And then he or she will name the file, for example, revised. And that way the editor knows that, okay, this is a revised file, and then this might go back and forth depending on how well the writer revised the manuscript. But otherwise it goes to completed manuscripts folder. And then the formatter retrieves the approved manuscript from Dropbox and formats the manuscripts, and then uploads it to a specific folder. And then we have the manager who takes the manuscript, double checks it, and then uploads the final version to the ready for publishing folder. So this is an example, the book creation process. And then after that we have Amazon ads, we have gathering reviews, etc. Etcetera. So when you break it down like this and you see the different roles, it's easier to see who does what and when. So that is what you want to figure out in your publishing business, if you want to build a system and you want to be able to work more on the business instead of in the business, because ideally you as the publisher want to work on strategic activities or things that will make the business grow, which is for example, conducting market research, or building an email list, or building a brand, or planning out the book launches, etcetera. Let's move on. Lesson number five, diversification. So we want to publish our books in multiple formats, ebook, paperback, audiobook, and hardcover. Now, for some books, for example, if you're doing workbooks, yes, then you can't have ebooks necessarily. Let's say you're doing a puzzle book, then you can't publish that as an ebook. But if you're doing more high content, then ideally you want to publish them in many different formats. And you can also sometimes you need to think, okay, if you're making a cookbook, maybe it's not worth to pay a narrator $300 to create an audiobook, because is probably not going to sell that well. So of course use your own judgment. But it's always good to diversify in terms of having multiple formats and also multiple platforms. For example, Ingramspark drafted digital. You can use ACX or find a way voices for the audiobooks and then you have KDP print, and consider diversifying to draft two digital and Ingramspark after 50 plus books. So after you've published a certain amount of books, then look into other platforms such as drafted digital or publishdrive, etcetera. I will have a separate videos comparing the different publishing platforms if you're interested in that. Lesson number six, embrace AI, but rely on human intelligence. So AI makes our job as publishers easier and faster, and AI can be used for guideline creation, creating images and problem solving. So for example, you have shotgpt, you got mid journey, etcetera. So I believe that human intelligence and creativity, that's still something that we humans need to use, because sometimes the AI will do a good job if you give them specific instructions. But sometimes you need to provide feedback, and that is something that I believe we as humans still need to do sometimes. For example, if you want chat GPT to write a text, it will include certain errors. So, for example, I did try it in early 2023, I tried to have chat GPT write a text, and I found that one out of 20 times it included an error. Maybe it has gotten better since, but we still want to double check because we don't want to provide misinformation. So it's really about embracing AI, but still relying on human intelligence for fact checking and making sure that we're moving in the right direction. So we're providing feedback if needed. And we can also use chat GPT and other AI's to provide advice on which steps we should take next. So sometimes AI can be very useful in the creative process. So to generate ideas, etcetera, lesson number seven, be productively paranoid. So I have a separate video about this topic. It's from the book great by choice, which is my favorite book, and it's about avoiding shortcuts. So, for example, a couple of years ago, there were some publishers that translated their books using Google translate, and that was something that Amazon did not like. And many of these publishers, they lost access to their accounts. That is one example of not being productively paranoid. We always want to think about what is best for the readers, so we're providing a great customer experience and we want to be honest with AI usage when we publish the books on KDP, and we want to be accurate with the content and the description of our books. So, for example, we do not want to be misleading with anything because we do want to provide a great reader experience. So this, we're doing it because we want to avoid account suspension, but it's also good business practice we want to make sure that we're providing value because when we provide value, the readers will recommend our books to other people and they will come back for more if we have a series of books. So we want to adhere to Amazon's policies and we ideally want to stay up to date to with the Amazon content guidelines. And we want to make sure that we check for trademarks before we decide to publish on a topic. And we also check for plagiarisms and any copyrights with, for example, images. So here we have the content guidelines on KDP. So I advise that you read this one here you can see that we need to inform if we have used AI in the creation of the book. Lesson eight, be unique and solve problems. So one question that I like to answer is, why should people buy this book that I'm creating? So we ideally want a unique angle or superior content. So for example, a simple way to understand this is, let's say someone is doing a recipe book and they provide 50 recipes. Then if another publisher comes out and provides 100 recipes, then you could argue that the one with 100 recipes is more valuable because it provides more recipes. But you can also have unique angles to your book. So the actual advice is to identify and highlight your book's unique selling point. And this could include, for example, targeting a specific demographic. So for example, kids or busy moms or teens, etcetera. Or it could include having a certain angle or unique benefits. So let's look at some examples. So here we have a brand for dummies was started in 1991 and they simplify often complex topics. And that is something that is very much appreciated because people do not like wasting time on the trying to understand the topic because they would rather just do the thing than try to demystify how to follow certain steps in the processes, etcetera. So this is a great example of having a specific angle and something that was obviously successful. Take a look at some other examples. So here we have the busy mom's cookbook. It's targeting a specific demographics of busy moms. And you can imagine that if you build a brand, for example, you can publish many different books for busy moms. So they do not just need to cook. Maybe they need to declutter their environment or they need help with organization or other things. For example, maybe they want a shopping list workbook or something like that. And next, let's take a look at some angles that people have for this topic. So for example, dog training. Here we have aggressive and reactive dogs. So this book is targeting those dogs that are a little bit more aggressive. And here we see that it's a five week program, which is a unique benefit. Okay, I know this is simply going to take me five weeks, and then after that, I will most likely have a well behaved dog. And it's also using positive reinforcement, which is a unique angle. And here we have proven solutions. So we have all ages, reads and mixes. So this book is more inclusive. We can see that all these books are selling very well. Here we have the complete guide with love. So we have different angles. This is more generic, but then no nonsense. So this is no fluff. This is just straight to the point. Here we have a target demographic. Dog training for kids, service dog training. So it's very specific. This one, he can afford to be more generic because he has a big brand. So he doesn't need to necessarily have a specific angle, because he has such a big personal brand. And here's an older book that sells very well, 54,000 was published in 2017. Here we have step by step instructions, which is also a unique benefit that is highlighted in the subtitle. Here we have 118 amazing tricks and stunts. So this creates some curiosity. What are these 118 amazing tricks and stunts? So that's a unique angle as well. Here we have ten most common dog behavior issues. Here we have just 15 minutes a day. So we see all the different angles. And I think you understand now how you can create a certain angle or target a certain demographic for your books. Let's move on. Lesson number nine, translating your books. So this is something that I've done primarily to Spanish, and this is a great way to diversify your income and to reach more markets than just the US. And it also increases the chances of your success. So, for example, one of my best books is not an english book. And that is very interesting that sometimes you might not have success with a book that is published in English, but it absolutely breaks through in another market or in another language. So that is very interesting. And it is something that I think is worth looking into. If you have the funds. If you don't, then maybe simply focus on you doing english books. Or some publishers, they start with their own native language. So, for example, they might be doing germane, it might be doing only french books, etcetera. So this is something that I think is worth considering. And the actual advice for this one is hire a professional translator and avoid machine translation. So start with the most popular languages, like Spanish, German or French. Lesson ten, enhance your product page. So we want to ideally improve the book's presentation and conversion rate. So conversion rate, that is how many people visit your product page end up buying your book. So for example, if 100 people visit your books product page and one person buys, then that means that you have a 1% conversion rate. So we ideally want this number to be higher because that will show Amazon that our book is popular and it's worth showing because it will make Amazon money. So how can we do that? We can make sure that the book descriptions are compelling and that the reviews have a good rating. And how do we make it so that the reviews have a good rating? For example, five stars. It's all about providing a high quality experience for the reader with our high quality content. According to Amazon, a content has the potential to increase your sales by three to 10%, and it also helps to create a higher conversion rate. So the actionable advice for this lesson is to use Amazon's a content features. And let's now look at some examples. So here we have the book mastery. We can see how they have done the a content. So here they show a new book, and here we see that the style is the same as on the COVID Then here they've chosen to show more books in the series. So they're hoping that people will buy not just this book, but also click add to cart for all these other books. Here's another example. We can see that it provides benefits. It's user friendly, beginner friendly, time friendly, and it explains some more things. And here we see that it provides the result. So think about the result that you want the customer to get. Because people, when they're traveling, for example, they are buying the destination, they're not buying the plane travel. So for example, people do not want to think about the plane ride or the train ride, etcetera. They want to think about the destination. And that's what we want to do in our book descriptions and our a content lesson eleven, build a brand. So harness the power of the compound effect. Because when you build a brand, you have many different ways that the readers can discover your book. So for example, maybe you have social media, maybe you have an email list, etcetera, and people can buy more than one of your book. If you have a series of books that solve different problems, etcetera, then you can have people not just buy one of your product, but several, and that will obviously increase the value of each customer. And you can also sell other things on the back end. So you remember earlier on in the video I showed the example of someone who was selling courses and behind the book so he's grabbing email addresses by providing a lead magnet, and then he sends out emails to his courses so people get an option to buy his courses for maybe more advanced strategies. Or it could also be that people like to watch videos instead of reading to get the information. And you can charge more for courses than what you can do for books. So build your own audience and drive additional traffic to Amazon for increased rankings for your books. So on different places on the Amazon website, when you drive, drive traffic and you generate sales that you don't just get from Amazon ads, etcetera, then you're able to rank higher in categories and you're able to show up in more places on the Amazon website. So for example, the customer also bought etcetera. So the actionable advice is to consider building a brand when you've crossed your 1st $1,000 a month. Of course you can do it from the start as well and also build an email list. So look at example. So here we have a book. Master your emotions. If we take a look at the author, we can see that he has many different books and some of the books he has in the same color. So here we have another one with a lot of reviews, 8012 reviews. And we can see that he's built a series of books. So this is called the productivity series. Here we have the mastery series. So let's take a look at the productivity series. We see dopamine detox, immediate action, powerful focus, strategic mindset. If we take a look at the mastery, mastery, motivation focus, best day thinking. So we can see that this is related to self development. So he is targeting one specific customer, which is people who are interested in improving themselves. And by doing that he is able to build an email list. If we take a look here, we read the sample and we scroll down, we can see here that he has a free bonus. So if we click here, I can click now, but if we go to this link, we will most likely see a page where he asks for our email and then this book will be sent to our email address. So that is a way that he's collecting email addresses and then he's able to communicate directly to the people who opt in to this lead page. Lesson twelve. Talk about time management. So, productivity, it's not about getting a lot of things done. Primarily it's about getting the right things done, and then it's about getting a lot of things done. So we first want to identify what are the most important tasks in our publishing business. And I made a separate video talking about this but for example, doing the research, we can never go wrong with that. And also making sure that everything is to a high standard. So we first want to remove the tasks that are unnecessary. For example, at one point in my publishing business, I was setting up Twitter accounts, Pinterest accounts, and I was doing a lot of different social media activity, but it didn't yield much results. So I removed doing those tasks and then those tasks that are providing a value, we want to see if we can first automate them. So, using technology, is there some way that we can do it without our involvement? So, for example, let's say you're running Facebook ads or something and you're generating email addresses. Then can you, instead of putting them manually on your email list, is there some sort of software that you can use that puts the email addresses directly to your email provider? So, for example, from the Facebook platform directly to your convertkit or whatever it is that you're using to send out mass emails? And then if we see that, okay, we've automated as much as possible. We've used technology, but we still have certain tasks that need to be done by humans. Then we delegate as much as possible. So there are questions that you can ask, for example, does this task need to be done at all? And if the answer is yes, then we look, okay, can we automate it? And if the answer is no, then we move on to delegate. Then we ask, for example, does this task need to be done by me? And if it needs to be done by me, for example, let's say it's a very crucial task and I can do the task better than anyone else, for example, doing research or title creation, then it does make sense that I stay with doing that task. But if it's a simpler task, for example, formatting, let's say I can do formatting, but is it worth my time? What? How much does it cost for me to hire someone else to do formatting? And then I contrast. That would, let's say it cost me dollar five an hour to hire someone to do formatting. Let's say I pay dollar 30 for paperback formatting or something. Then I can contrast. Okay, that will take me, let's say, 3 hours. Okay, 3 hours. $10 an hour. Do I value my time more than $10 an hour? And if the answer is yes, then it makes sense to delegate that task. So, making sure that we're able to work on tasks that maybe can provide up to $100 per hour, etcetera. So focus on activities that make your self publishing business grow at one point in my publishing journey, this was focusing on building a system. At another point, earlier on, it was writing the books. That was very important because that is what we're doing. We're providing books, and that is how we have a way for people to buy our products and thus send us money, in essence. So we want to make sure that we're publishing books or that we're providing high quality books and a great presentation, etcetera. So that's about working on the right things. And then how do we then scale up the things that we need to focus on? So how can we do more of the things that we need to do? And my best advice is to, number one, turn off notification, because the opposite of focus is distraction. So you want to do what you can to remove distractions. So don't work with your phone next to you beeping, or don't have any social media feed show up. If you need to work on Facebook, for example, or another social media platform, make sure that you don't get distracted. And also, another thing that I like is to work with the hardest tasks, the first thing. So Brian Tracy calls that eating the frog. So, starting with the toughest task that will provide the most value to the business. So the actionable advice for this lesson is to plan your week. Prioritize high value tasks, delegate or automate low value tasks, and value your time more. Don't let tech companies, social media platforms, etcetera, or unimportant news or people who don't deserve it steal your time from you. Lesson 13, tap into your why and stay driven. So uncover the reasons for why you want what you want and swap the I have to with I get to or I want to. And you cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to what happened to you. So we will have things that show up. For example, in 2022, I had my KDP account terminated for wrongful reasons. So I didn't know what to do because I sent emails to Amazon KDP explaining that this is an error, like it's a technical error. There's something in the algorithm that has triggered this. It was something with the copyright issue, and I was able to prove, at least in my opinion, that I was the owner of this book. However, I just got copy and paste emails back and forth. So I could have thrown in the towel and said, okay, there's no way to, to solve this because that's what happened. After five emails, I think they said that this will be our last communication in this matter, but if we stand our ground and we say, no, I haven't done anything wrong. It's like you're putting me in a prison for something I did not do. So I'm not going to accept this. And if we responded that way, and we really aim to be resourceful and we think, okay, but what are the different ways? So, for example, I was calling us attorneys or lawyers in the US, and try to figure out what did other people who were in this situation, what did they do to solve it? Because if someone else had found a solution to this, then it makes sense that they, some of them, will probably have documented it. And then what if I do the same steps? And for me, I was able to find one way, which was replying to an old email. And that way I was able to contact someone else who wasn't in the Amazon content review team. And then I was able to finally get a hold of what I saw as a human, because I didn't see the responses before that as humans. So that is something that we can do. We can be resourceful. And I think that successful people, they do what they need to do, whether they feel like it or not. So at that point, I didn't feel like calling people. I remember I had a fever. I didn't sleep for several days, barely. And. But. But in those moments, we need to realize that, okay, maybe it requires more from me at this certain period in my life. And that's okay. We can. We can allow ourselves to be a little bit unbalanced for a while, because after that, I was able to recover and I was able to be recharged again. And another thing is that successful people, they don't always make the right decisions. They make their decisions right? So, for example, with self publishing, there are many different people that have started self publishing. And some people will say it's not for them, and maybe it is not for everyone, however, if you stick with it. For example, what I did, even though I strayed for six months, eventually I realized that, okay, I need to go back to publishing. It's what has proven to work for me. So I will simply make publishing work or go under in the process. And by not giving ourselves any option but success, we're in accordance with my favorite strategy, which is the death ground strategy, which is burning your boats and putting your back against the wall. Because then you will really fight to succeed when you don't have another option. So we ideally just want to have one option. We don't need a B plan, we don't need a C plan. We just go with option number one or a, and we make that right. And if it doesn't work, then we will then consider course correcting. But we do one thing at a time and we make sure to do it to the best of our ability. So the actionable advice is to dig deeper into your why do the seven level of why exercise? I will show you and start with your goal or desire and ask why seven times the succession. So let's look at an example. So identify your goal or desire. I want to become financially independent as an example. So ask why? Because I want to feel secure. And then you ask why again? Why do you want to feel secure? Because I don't want to rely on others for my needs. And then you ask, why don't you want to rely on others for your needs? Because it makes me feel vulnerable. And then why does feeling vulnerable bother you? Because I've been let down before when I depended on others. And then why does being let down affect you so deeply? Because it brings up feelings of betrayal and abandonment. And then you go again and you ask, why do feelings of betrayal and abandonment drive you? Because they remind me of a past time when I felt unimportant. And then you go to the next one. Why does those past experiment experiences motivate you? Because I want to prove to myself that I'm capable and worthy, and I want to ensure that others never feel the same way I did. So that is an example that when you dive deeper into your. And why, you're able to tap into something more powerful and something that can keep you motivated and something that you can remind yourself of. And that can really be powerful in terms of making sure that you're, you stay driven. Because that is what this channel is called. It's called driven publishers. So I think it's, it's a good topic to, to discuss this. How do we stay motivated? How do we stay on track? And this is how I do it. I have some other techniques. I've discussed this in another video as well, if you're curious. But this is the great way to stay motivated. Lesson number 14, create goals, a plan and celebrate milestones. So we want to create process goals and result goals. So process goals. Those are more goals related to activities. So, for example, if we sit at the beginning of the year, or let's say at the end of the previous year, and we plan, okay, for 2025, let's imagine that it's fall, we say, okay, for 2025, I want to publish, let's say, 15 books and that is an example of the process goals, because the result goals is more so what we're going to make from publishing those 15 books. And then, okay, we can also break it down further. So if we're writing the books, then that might be writing a certain amount of words every day or every week, or it might be other things, such as making sure that certain things are built, for example, the email list, or we have the covered them by this date, et cetera, et cetera. And then the results goals, that is income goals. So in the beginning, I had a goal for every month that I wanted to hit. And then at the end of the month, I always checked, okay, the goal for this month was to make $3,000 and I made 2700, let's say. And then I tracked that, and at some months I was able to exceed the monthly goals. And sometimes it was a little bit short, but I always had goals for every month. And I like setting smart goals. So, smart goals, they're specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. So you can look into how to set these exactly. But I like setting smart goals and set goals for every year, quarter months, and review the progress I talked about that. Make a plan of yearly projects. So, for example, this year, I want to create a brand, I want to make it an email list, or I want to publish these books on these dates, etcetera. And then you break it down. What do you need to do on a weekly basis? So every week I plan my next week. So every Sunday I plan my next week and I break it down into different tasks that will move the business forward. And then I circle those tasks. So the most important tasks, I make sure I do them first. So we eat the frog, we do the tough thing the first thing in the morning, and then we have the other daily activities. Answer your emails, etcetera. And also enjoy the journey. Celebrate achievements and milestones. So the actionable advice is to set both progress and result goals. Make the plan and reward yourself when you hit the milestones or make progress. Lesson 15, invest in yourself. I've spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in self education. So I believe that business, it's a knowledge game. You don't know what you don't know. And if I compare, for example, if I were to have the knowledge that I have now, when I got started, where would I be now? So, for example, I look at some of my old books and I compare them to the books that I publish now. And sometimes I'm a little bit embarrassed, but it's because I didn't know what I didn't know. One thing that I like is what is the cost of not knowing how to make a million dollars? If we take, for example, let's say we're making $100,000 a year currently, then the cost is $900,000. So if we, for example, we want to go through a course or mentorship, then obviously we want to check. So the course has provided, ideally results for other people, or at least the course creator, or that the one that is doing the mentorship has the results that we're looking to get. So we want someone who is ahead of us, who can see, okay, these are the steps that I took and these are the things I see now from my elevated point of view. And these are the things that you want to avoid, etc. Etcetera. Then we're able to save a lot of time and we're able to save a lot of money. For example, with my friend, there has been so many times where he would have ended up spending a lot more than he needed to, or he would have made mistakes that could not only in the worst case lead to, for example, account suspension, but also it can lead to bad reviews or the book not selling at all, etcetera. So if we're doing high content books, especially, then we might invest, let's say $1500 in some books. And if we're publishing lot of books, $1,500, a failed book, that can rack up the costs fairly quickly. So we want to make sure that we have a profitable system for creating these books. And as of the recording of this video, I don't have anything to, to sell you if you thought that this was a sales pitch. But maybe I will do something in the future. We'll see. Right now, I don't have the time to do it, but if I do, I know that I will be focusing on providing client results. So that is one thing that I think has shifted in the course. And mentorship, swear, if you can call it that, is that I think that previously a lot of course creators and coaches, etc. They were focusing on making money for themselves. And I think that now the market has evolved where it's more so about making sure that you provide a lot of value for the client in terms of results. So that is what I would be focusing on if I were to. To start helping people. Because at the end of the day, yeah, these YouTube videos, they're very valuable. But if I really want to change someone's life, for example, then working one on one, or having a course with even more specific and advanced lessons, etcetera, that would probably be something that would really help someone. So if I do create something, I'll put it in the description of the videos or something like that. So keep a lookout for that if you're interested. And what I believe is that if you do what other successful people do, nothing to stop you from eventually getting the same results as they do. So this quote by Brian Tracy, and I've said this in other videos, that if you produce like the top publishers produce, don't you think that eventually you will get similar results? So that is something that I really believe. And Brian Tracy is one of my favorite people to learn from when it comes to success. He's very logical and I like to believe that. I'm very logical myself. So that is one person that I recommend that you listen to. If you want to get more of the mindset of success actionable advice, consider getting a course or mentorship to speed up your learning and success. Now make sure you check the track record. Ideally, you want someone who's doing publishing actively. So they weren't publishing three years ago and now they're only focusing on teaching. Ideally, want someone who's in the game, someone who knows the pulse, like they have their finger on the pulse, the market. They know what's working. So that is ideally what we want when we select our courses or mentorship. So the conclusion is to focus on quality, build systems and think long term. Solve problems, outsource, embrace AI, target high demand niches, innovate publishing multiple formats, translate and enhance your product pages with, for example, a content, or making sure that book descriptions are compelling, etcetera. Consider building a brand. Focus on the right activities. Find your why to stay driven, to stay motivated and create goals and plans and celebrate the milestones. Keep learning like you are now and invest in yourself for faster success. Hit the like button because it helps a lot and subscribe for more videos. Thanks for watching.