Unlocking the Power of Self-Publishing with Chris Green

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the work at home rockstar podcast excited for today’s guest He is an Author Entrepreneur. com, which I love that domain name. That’s really cool And what he does is he helps people to learn about opportunities available through self publishing books.

So I’m excited to hear more about that. But, uh, before we get started, hey, Chris Green, you ready to rock?

Chris Green: I am ready, Tim. Let’s talk about self publishing and the opportunity. How about the doors that open once you become an author? That’s if people get anything out of this podcast, it’s like, wait a minute. I learned about some doors that can open, especially some marketing doors and some networking doors that could open simply by having a published book, simply by being a published author, which is easier today than it’s ever been.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. Right on. Well, we always start off here in a good note, but that sounds like a good note. Let’s have another one too. Tell me a story of success in your business that we can be inspired by. Wow.

Chris Green: So I, my first book that I published, I’ve since called it like a self [00:01:00] defense book. And I recommend to people, if you want, like, maybe you have a self defense book in you because you’re answering the same questions over and over. It’s like, Hey, for Pete’s sake, just go read my book. Like, can you teach me how to sell on Amazon?

Yes, that’s kind of complicated and you’re probably not going to keep doing it. However, why don’t you read my book first or read this book first, someone else’s book first. It’s kind of like a litmus test. If you read a book, cool, I’ll teach you how to do X, Y, and Z. But if you’re not willing to read a book, let’s kind of stop right there because I’m busy.

So I wrote this really long PDF specifically about selling on Amazon is when their FBA program came out. I was one of the first sellers on the platform. We made the first set of software tools for the platform. And like, everybody’s asking the same questions over and over again. And it’s like, Oh, for Pete’s sakes, I’m just gonna write this long PDF.

And that’s when I stumbled onto Amazon self publishing platform. And I was like, wait a minute. I could, I could publish this like for free as a book. So I upload this long PDF. It’s broken up into chapters. I gave it a cover file and all of a sudden I published. And everybody thought I was hot stuff. This is really cool.

So I kind of took that. And then later on, I [00:02:00] actually published an online course as a book. So I’m gonna publish a book. It’s just paper, right? So if you have these pieces of paper, you can now have access to these password protected videos. You now have access to these downloadable files. You have access to these PDFs, which aren’t available anywhere else.

And I was like, wait a minute, I can charge more for this. So I charged 300 for a book. In 2014, uh, cause it was an online course. So instead of buying a 200 or 300 online course, you can buy the book from Amazon and you can return it if you don’t like it and you trust the reviews and everybody likes getting an Amazon package in the mail and I was like, this is really cool.

And I just kind of keep connecting these dots, um, around not just self publishing and not just around books, but by the fact that you have physical products instead of digital, the fact that you’re on Amazon as a prime eligible product. Uh, it just gives so much more legitimacy. To things and the fact that all these things that we’ll talk about today are completely free to do.

It’s all print on demand So like if nobody buys your book It just sits there as a digital file like [00:03:00] amazon actually prints it as it’s ordered You could if you order my book today amazon will print it today and ship it today And you can have it tomorrow and I will do no work And amazon will give me a royalty for a physical product on amazon for my selling days That would cost thousands of dollars just to set up plus thousands of dollars of inventory plus the risk that nobody buys your product and now you’re stuck with all this stuff versus print on demand.

This is like the work from home dream, right? No shipping. No, like it’s, it’s almost like a too good to be true. And I, I frequently bump into that where people are like, yeah, yeah, that sounds, it sounds great, but what’s it really cost? I’m like, I don’t know what to tell you, man. Like you can’t spend money with Amazon self publishing program.

If you tried it’s that free, but because it’s free and it has so many upsides. You know, people are right to kind of be skeptical. So maybe by the end of this episode, we’ll alleviate the skepticism and, uh, yeah, have some, some new believers in the power of self publishing.

Tim Melanson: Well, I know print on demand is the thing because, uh, you know, you see a lot of companies using that [00:04:00] for merch nowadays, too. Right? They’ll, you know, they’ll just upload a logo and, you know, someone wants to buy a mug. It just gets put on the mug and sent out at that particular time. Like, they don’t make it and, you know, hold inventory.

So I’m sure they could do the same thing with a book.

Chris Green: What they’ve been doing with books for a long time. It was actually called Create Space when I first published it. It was, it’s been, it was around long before I stumbled onto it. It’s now simply called Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP. Even though it says Kindle, it also includes physical paperback and hardback books.

Uh, but what you’re, what you’re hitting on, and we don’t have time for this in this episode, I guarantee. Amazon has their own print on demand merch platform as well. T shirts and hoodies and phone cases completely free. Upload your logo like you should have your podcast logo on t shirts, phone cases, pop sockets, all these things.

It’s completely free to do. Now you put a little link on your website. Hey, if you really want to support the show, got t shirts here, men’s, women’s, kids sizes, 18 different colors, whatever you want. Prime eligible, free shipping, [00:05:00] free returns. When they place an order, Amazon does all the work. You get a royalty and you do nothing.

You literally do nothing. It’s.

Tim Melanson: a great idea.

Chris Green: It’s that good. Every podcaster should have, in my opinion, their own book, as well as their own merch store on Amazon. None of it’s exclusive. You can still put your merch on Teespring or Zazzle or anything else that you want to use. But the power of being on Amazon where people go to shop, they go there first, they go, even if they’re just reading reviews, that’s where they’re going to buy and it’s prime eligible.

So it’s not, Oh, I got to wait on this guy to ship it. And it’s like, no, I need it tomorrow. I have an event coming up, but there’s, there’s an anniversary. There’s a birthday. It’s prime eligible. So, you know, they’re going to get it fast and they, they just trust the process instead of get your credit card out on your own website, like, these are the two of the most powerful platforms that I’ve ever seen and people, most people just still don’t know about them.

And even if they know about them, they’re, they’re sleeping on them because they think it’s got to be complicated. They must have minimum orders. It must cost money. Like no minimum order, zero costs. [00:06:00] Start zero. Like, like just, just start and you can do all this from home. Not even home. You can do this from anywhere in the world.

Yeah. Right. This is not a us exclusive type business. This is digital online, international Amazon sites, you know, for all this stuff, not just amazon. com, Amazon Europe and Australia and Japan. It’s a big opportunity.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s so cool. Before this episode started, uh, Chris was telling me that by the end of it, he’ll get me convinced to, uh, to write, to be an author. And, uh, I think the progress meter is somewhere around what, uh, I’m going to say about 35 right now. So that’s, that’s your progress so far. You’re getting there pretty quick.

Exactly.

Chris Green: It shouldn’t take much more.

Tim Melanson: So now along with a good note, sometimes there’s some things that don’t go as planned and some bad notes that we hit. So tell me something that did not work out for you and, and how we can recover from that and how you recover from

Chris Green: I, I use this story and I don’t tell it a lot. Uh, but [00:07:00] I miscalculated, uh, a lot of attention that I was receiving on social media and in hindsight, it’s obvious, right? So, you know, we were first on a lot of things. Like I say, we’re the first book published about selling on Amazon. We had the first FBA Facebook group about selling on Amazon.

We had the first set of software tools. We had the first podcast about selling on Amazon using FBA, like real specific. Uh, but because of that. Especially on the Facebook side. We had the first group, everybody that was interested in Amazon FBA. If you search for anything, you’re going to find this group.

So everybody joined. And so every time that I would post, it’s kind of like this. Kind of pseudo celebrity in the Amazon space. Everybody listened, everybody replied, everybody commented, everybody liked. And I was like, Oh, it must be because I’m awesome. It must be because my content is just stellar. It must be because like, yeah, this is the place to everybody must love me.

No, no. It was just, it was, I don’t know what the exact word is for it, but it was, I was miscalculating the attention, right? There’s a lot of attention for a topic. And I was the only source to, for Facebook [00:08:00] to give that, uh, that content to people who are looking for it. And as people saw, Hey, there’s a lot of good information here.

You know what? I want to make my own Facebook group, not because of like, I need to compete, but just because I want to have my own space. I want to build my own audience. Uh, I want to share my own type of information. So as more and more Facebook groups popped up and the amount of information or amount of attention.

Is the same, the people wanting this information now gets spread out. So now I’m posting it, like half the people are seeing it, a third of the people are seeing it, a quarter of the people are seeing it, and because I didn’t really see this from like the right point of view, I didn’t collect emails along the way, so it’s just like, Oh, and now you’re just out of luck.

Now you have to kind of start over. And I remember people were telling me, dude, you need to collect emails. It’s like, you know, the number one thing is you own your list. You rent your social media, all this stuff. I was like, no, it’s fine. It’s just cause I’m the best and I’m cool. And everybody likes what I have to say.

Um, and no, a huge miscalculation. So I, you know, I missed out on saving a lot of email addresses and like just starting building your email list earlier. Um, So learn from my mistake and it’s not, you know, it’s hard to spot, [00:09:00] I would say in hindsight, because it wasn’t obvious to me back then, like, it’s only obvious because of what I know now, you know, it’s only obvious in hindsight.

Uh, so just for, you know, the advice to people is just kind of be aware and be like, Hey, things are really working well right now. Is this something that I actually have control over? Is this something I can replicate? Let me try to replicate it over here and see if I get the same results. And if you don’t, then it might be another factor that’s actually working.

And it could be something as dumb as luck, right? Sometimes you just get lucky and you’re like, whoa, this is great. Well, don’t quit your job. Cause you got lucky. I, and I saw this in the Amazon space. So you can imagine someone learning to sell on Amazon. They they’re, they’re selling retail products.

They’re going into Walmart. They just happened to walk in at the right time. It’s fourth quarter. It’s two weeks before Christmas. The manager comes out and says, get rid of all this stuff. Forget two weeks. It’s the beginning of the month. It’s got a huge markdown budget. He writes everything 90 percent off.

Get this stuff out of here. I got a new display coming in and you just happen to be there and you buy all this stuff 90 percent off. You sell it on Amazon. You make a quick [00:10:00] 10 grand. You’re like, Holy smokes. I’m quitting my job. I was like, no, that’s a terrible idea. Because in January you walk into a store, you’re not going to, you’re not going to find someone who just marks down everything 90, like you got lucky.

Be thankful you got lucky, learn from it, but just be aware of what was actually driving some of these things. Cause. I don’t know if it’s just human psychology or there’s something where it’s like, Oh yeah, I’m awesome. Did you see what I did? You see me do it. You just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Lucky. And it is a huge factor. And I recommend people to try to be, you know, put yourself in the position. For luck to happen to you, right? Like keep trying things, keep putting yourself out there, keep replying to people, keep reaching out. And over enough time, I can’t guarantee you’re going to get lucky, but you’re going to have a much better chance of getting lucky than if you don’t leave the house, don’t make that call.

Don’t reach out. Like I guarantee you won’t get lucky if that’s your strategy. So you have to flip it around and be like, you know what, I’m just gonna keep trying and you know what? [00:11:00] One of these days I’m going to be in the right place at the right time. And when you are. Take advantage of it. That’s the time to strike.

That’s the time to like, take some action, uh, take some risk. Um, but yeah, just always try to be aware. Otherwise, You’ll attribute some success things to things that you don’t actually have control over. And then that’ll, you’ll eventually figure that out. It’ll eventually bite you.

Tim Melanson: And, and recognize the patterns as well too. Right. I mean, if you got lucky on that one thing and you made a whole bunch of money, but then you haven’t been able to replicate it yet, No, maybe you shouldn’t bank on it happening again. I think that’s, that’s actually really good advice because I do know that a lot of people that I know, even in my own, my own work, you know, they get this great deal, that’s just not replicable.

I mean, just because somebody was looking to get rid of something, you know, and they ended up selling it to you for a great price. That doesn’t mean that you can bank on that and keep on getting that same price Probably you’re not going to get it again. Just you’re right [00:12:00] I mean, there’s a lot of luck but like you say You know if if you are banking on that luck Happening.

Well, then over time. I imagine there will be some patterns that will that will emerge that oh, you know Every few months I do get this lucky deal That’s not something to probably live off of them. Maybe it is depending on how big your your ticket item is

Chris Green: No, but you can, you can learn from the patterns, right? So like a lot of people don’t realize, and you know, I worked in retail for a while. So like, there’s things that I know that most people don’t know. And once you explain it to them, they’re like, Oh, that makes sense. And one of them is generally big retail stores.

The managers get a markdown budget, usually comes from their corporate office. So like, you know, here’s 10, 000. You can do whatever you want with it to help them mark down inventory specific to their store. It might be out of season. It might be overstock. It might be there’s having trouble getting rid of it, but generally they get that budget at the beginning of the month.

So if you have any type of relationship where you’re like, Hey, I’m consistently buying from the store to resell, uh, online, like talk to the [00:13:00] manager, but talk to him at the beginning of the month and talk to him in his language. Right. So like, Hey, if you have a markdown, but like, I’m interested in these, but like, you know, they’re only 50 percent off.

I really can’t do anything. If they were down like 75, I would take all of them. I would solve your problem. I would clear out this end cap. I would give you room for your new seasonal products. And all of a sudden you have a relationship going and you see these patterns and be like, okay, Hey, I’ll be back at the beginning of next month.

You know, and maybe the next month there’s no deal to be made. But if you keep going in at the wrong time with no strategy, uh, then no, you’re not going to stumble. You might stumble onto something one time, but then if you don’t know the why behind it, it gets hard to replicate. And I think like understanding the why, I don’t know if we have time to get into it on this episode, but those are the things that I think people overlook is like, well, why did this happen?

Instead of like. Oh, I see what Tim does for his podcast. He just like presses this button and then he opens this tab and then he turns on his mic. Like I can do that. It’s like, well, yeah, that’s, those are the actions that Tim took, but like, there’s, there’s a lot more to it. Then just these things, but like from the outside looking in, that’s what it looks like, [00:14:00] right?

From the outside, looking into an Amazon business. Oh, you just go to Walmart and you just buy all this stuff. And then you come home and it’s like, Whoa, I have to know what to buy. I have to know how to prep it. I have to know the expiration dates. I have to know when to go to wall. I can’t just go any day of the week.

I can’t go any day of the year. Like these are seasonal type products. There’s a clearance schedule. Like they don’t know all that. They just see you get in the car and go and come back. It’s like, you have to understand the why and like, I really don’t think there’s any shortcuts to that. Some of that stuff is you have to learn by doing it.

And you have to actually talk to somebody like talk to a coach or a mentor, um, or figure it out yourself, but it’s going to take you a heck of a lot longer than learning it from somebody who, who already has all the answers, but generally if they have the answers, they’re probably not going to just coach you for free because they’re busy.

They’re busy making money, right? Like

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Green: you go down a lot of different, uh, rabbit trails on this.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, you mentioned earlier about building a list. And I mean, I think that kind of moves into the whole fans situation, like, uh, you know, cause the, the audience is, is there, right. But [00:15:00] like you said, I mean, if you’re on social media, maybe the audience is everybody. How do you get them from there onto your own list?

How do you do that?

Chris Green: There’s lots of different ways to do it. And a lot of it is like context. You know, like, like people are going to follow people that they know, like, and trust, um, you know, if you’re starting cold with like no following at all, and you’re specifically wanting to build a list, the advice I would give you is make your social media profiles very intentional.

Um, if you, if you have the header image and you have the profile image and you have the link in bio and you have the about section, be unashamedly about your personal brand. So if someone clicks on your profile, remember that if someone does this action, they clicked on you, they should see you and what you want to show them.

And in your header image on Facebook should be like, Hey, I’ve got a book over here and here’s a QR code. You can go straight over there and you can see that I have this many reviews and I’m promoting myself because you didn’t go into someone else’s house and promote. They came to your house. They clicked on you and be [00:16:00] intentional about your description and say, look, if you want more information, I have a free guide, this free download, this free video, the links in my bio, it’s right down here.

You can use link tree. If you want to have multiple links, you’ll just use one link to send them. You can send them like straight to Amazon. If, uh, you know, if you have a book published, however, I do think you should take that opportunity to collect their email address, uh, People’s email is their home base on the internet for the foreseeable future.

Like, could you imagine changing your email address at this

Tim Melanson: Yeah.

Chris Green: Like the number of things you would have to unsubscribe from and, and change the login for every place you’ve ever bought on the internet and all the ones that haven’t emailed you in 10 years, but you still, if you ever try to reactivate that account, you’re going to need access to that email.

So you can’t get rid of it for good. Social media profiles, people change them. You know, they’re like, I’m not really into Instagram as much anymore. I don’t really do Facebook as much or the, the algorithm changes. And just like the problem that I faced were like, they weren’t showing my content. All of a sudden, They don’t show your content to people, even though those people are literally telling Instagram, yes, [00:17:00] follow this person. Instagram can only put so many posts in their feed. And if they got so many follows and they’re engaging with different types of content, all of a sudden your stuff doesn’t get shown, but if you have their email and you send them actual quality content, maybe either once a month or not once a month, I do at least once or twice a week, if you’re actively marketing, uh, which is good content, good information, don’t ask for anything.

Don’t tell them to buy anything. Just share information. It’s just a once a week recap, depending on your topic, uh, you know, the subject of your book or whatever you’re, you’re basically using social media for, uh, And then once you have those profiles up there and you’ve, I would set up something through like MailChimp or ConvertKit to collect emails.

Those are both free up to like a thousand members and things like that. Um, you know, it’s very inexpensive to set these things up and then, uh, interact with people. You know, don’t just post like just posting is like going on your front porch and yelling and hoping that somebody like wants to hear, uh, it doesn’t work that way.

Or Gary Vee says it in a good way where he talks about like Twitter. He used to call Twitter, like a cocktail [00:18:00] party. Like you could walk in and you could listen in. And like, if you go to a cocktail party, here’s someone talking about something interesting, like they’re talking about podcasting, or they’re talking about selling on Amazon.

You kind of like, go over close, and like, find a good place to like, bring some value to the conversation. Uh, like an actual person, like actually have a conversation. So when you see people, and you can search for people who are talking about selling on Amazon, or podcasting equipment, or anything you want.

You can, people are literally tagging that stuff on social media. And you can find those posts. And you can reply and answer questions and be nice and thoughtful and not just say, yeah, or cool. And then someone’s gonna be like, who the heck is this Tim guy answered my question. I don’t even know this guy.

And then they click on your profile. They see that you’re a podcaster. They see that you have a proper header and a professional profile image. They’re like, Oh, cool. Follow, subscribe, like, and maybe they don’t click on your, your link right away. Maybe they don’t join your email list. Right away, but they’re all of a sudden now you’re getting connected with people who are actually on brand and actually make [00:19:00] sense to follow like, like, please don’t buy followers.

Please don’t do any of that stuff. You know, and it’s, it’s a slow go, but you can do that by searching as well as my, my second way of doing it would be join communities, Facebook groups, subreddits, discord servers, join, and just be a helpful member. There are so many groups that I’m in where people don’t answer quite like self publishing groups.

If people either have bad answers to questions. And I go in and I, like, thoughtful, you know, write out an actual response as an experienced book marketer, as an experienced self published author, and I tell people the truth. And I give them actual actionable information. They’re like, whoa, thanks so much.

And like, I get likes and comments from everyone else who is also reading along, kind of in the shadows that people forget about. Like, oh, I’m not going to answer this one person. Like, I’ll answer that one person and 500 people are going to see that this stranger. Took the time to thoughtfully answer this other strangers question.

It’s probably a little bit of 80, 20, 20 percent of those people are going to click on my profile. 20 percent of [00:20:00] those people are going to click on my link and 20 percent of those people are going to click on my, or subscribe to my email list. And it’s, it’s not hard, but I think it’s when you don’t have like direct feedback, like I don’t know exactly how many people come from a single post.

Right. I can’t measure that. So am I wasting my time on some of them? Yeah. Absolutely. Some of them I will answer a question and for whatever reason they’ll delete the whole thread. I’ll be like, oh, come on, man. Like there was a good answer in there, but because someone wanted to talk about politics, you deleted the whole thing.

I was like, uh, but you know, like, I can’t control it. So I, you know, whatever I move on from it, but anybody can do that. You can join a gardening group, a hiking group, or like just join these groups that are related to your. You know, your subject matter, your, your topic, your book, if, if you’re going down the book route, but I mean, whatever you’re into, if that’s the type of audience you want to build, that’s how you build it on social media.

And then I, I, I know I’m giving you a long answer to this, but this is the last part of it. Uh, reach out to people who blog about your subject. Reach out to podcasters who have podcasts about your subject. Reach out to [00:21:00] YouTubers who make videos about your subject. Like, yeah, I use the example. You, you’re a podcaster, right?

I’m guessing there are sometimes you’re like, oh, shoot, my guest dropped out. I need a guest. you’re kind of scrambling if you had like someone who was like, hey, this is who I am. This is what I do I’d be happy to come on your on your podcast if you ever need somebody, you know, just let me know You’re like, oh, you know what?

Remember that guy? They’re like and he wrote a book So he obviously knows what he’s talking about. Uh, why don’t we have him on and now like you’re Actually solving a problem for the podcaster, right? Like, Hey, I’ll guest blog for you. I’ll write it and give you full credit for it. Like some bloggers like, Oh, shoot, I’m behind.

Oh, you know what? I can post that, that blog that the guy wrote for me. That’s how you get connected. That’s how you network with people. That’s how you just give value and just help other people without making it about you. And guess what? It ends up coming back to you. You end up on podcasts, you get some exposure.

You, you, the bloggers, like so happy that they give you full credit and post a link back to your Instagram or, or, or website, uh, like just being a nice, [00:22:00] good person ends up helping you. So I hope people just don’t feel bad about it and feel selfish because it’s just what happens. It’s like the law of reciprocity and just flip it around one more time.

Right. If someone does something nice for you, like you want to do something nice for them.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. You’re right.

Chris Green: So I hate to almost frame it as I use that as a marketing tool, but if you just use it as a nice, normal person, you’re going to find that good things come back to you. And now all of a sudden you’re working with good people who want to help other people.

It’s not this transactional type relationship. It’s just, Hey, I’m happy to write a blog post for you. That’s literally my subject matter. I can, that’s not a problem for me. And then see where it goes. And you know, 80, 20 is going to pop up all over the place.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. No, I and I think that this strategy is amazing and it’s very deliberate to that. It’s really like so much about what you just said, because, I mean, if you’re going out there into groups and you’re answering questions and trying to be a resource for them. Then when they click on your profile, you got to be careful.

You got, you got to be deliberate that when they click on your profile, they’re actually [00:23:00] looking to follow you at this point, right? That, or maybe they’re clicking on your profile because they want to know who you are, because

Chris Green: Yeah, who the heck is this guy?

Tim Melanson: right? Who is this guy? So if you make it nice and easy for them to just scan a QR code or click on a link and then it goes, and now they’re on your list.

Well, they’re going to do that because they just got a great answer from you in a group. But I mean, if you’re sort of like worried about, Oh, I don’t want to put all this, you know, I’m going to just chase people that aren’t interested in this away. Isn’t that kind of the point?

Chris Green: I, I think people, they don’t want to self pub, they don’t want to self promote, which I get, right? What, and there’s the difference. You’re not going into the group and posting your header image with a QR code. You’re not posting, you’re not asking them to do anything. They are coming to you. They are free to not click on your profile.

They are free to not click on your link in bio and they are free to not sign up for your email list. And if they do, they’re also free to unsubscribe, right? They’re coming to you. And if they come to you, it’s like you can put whatever you want on your [00:24:00] house. Like, if you come to my house, you’re gonna, you’re gonna see some, you’re gonna see my stuff.

But you came here. I didn’t go to your house with my stuff and said, Hey, why don’t you check this out? Like, no, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, that’s not how you work in real life. And maybe if people could think about treating social media like real life, then it would make a lot more sense to be like, Oh, I would never do that in real life.

Well, then don’t do it on social media.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s exactly what they think. Like it’s all backwards, right? They think that putting all that stuff on their own social media page is like going to someone else’s page and clicking on it. But funny thing about it is that, and I’ve seen this, is that the people who don’t have that on their personnel page are the ones posting their links and other people’s pages.

It’s literally the opposite, you know, you know, they’re, Post your links right on your page. That’s where people are going to learn and then don’t post it on anybody else’s page Just answer questions. So then when they go to your page, they see your link they click on it, right?

Chris Green: I think people are in love with, you know, the get rich [00:25:00] quick, you know, and there’s no ways to get rich quick. I mean, you can get lucky and get rich quick, like you could win the lottery, but that’s, that’s luck. And it’s nothing you have control over. And people are looking for the quick business, right?

They’re like, how do I get a thousand followers quick? How do I get a thousand dollars? How do I get a thousand subscribers? Like you can’t. You know, and if you do, it’s not going to be real. And like, again, you could get lucky and like someone retweets you at the right time, but like, you can’t control that kind of thing.

Well, you can control is sitting down for an hour and being a helpful person on the internet, specifically related to your topic. But you position yourself, but like, look, I’m going to be intentional about my, my profile. If you go to my profile, you’re going to get me, you come to my house, you get me, man,

Tim Melanson: well and and

Chris Green: it.

Tim Melanson: when you think about it Like when was the last time that you saw somebody spam your your post or saw somebody’s link in there? And went in there and clicked on that and went and added yourself to the group like like maybe it

Chris Green: even

Tim Melanson: I don’t know

Chris Green: I I’ve run a lot of groups over over the [00:26:00] years and I kind of like went more hands off more recently because Members are smart members will report the spam posts. They don’t click on the spam posts They warn other people don’t click on this. It’s spam like it’s not like oh my gosh I gotta like delete it.

Like what if someone clicks it and I just don’t know what these spammers think Uh of like it’s I mean If you’re, I hate to even say dumb, because it’s more of like inexperienced, like if you don’t realize how things work and you think this, you know, cause I’ve been there, I’ve been dumb, oh my gosh, uh, I have done some dumb

Tim Melanson: I think it’s desperate. More than dumb. I think I, I, I really do. I think it’s like they’re struggling and they’re just like, maybe I’ll just run the numbers. If I post this on a million sites and I get one click,

Chris Green: It’s still not worth it, like you’ll get one click doing something else in a lot less time. But like, you know, sometimes people have to learn their lesson the hard way or take the long time, you know, they just haven’t learned it yet or they don’t believe it. Yeah, they think, oh, that’s, that’s what they say, but you know what?

[00:27:00] I’m, I’m different. I’m going to find a, I’m going to find a new way to do it. And people are free to do whatever they want. They, they can try it out. But when it doesn’t work, I guess that’s my advice I would give anybody. If something’s not working, uh, stop doing it and try something else. You know, instead of just keep doing things over and over.

Tim Melanson: Well, and, and you got to think too that the amount of time that it took to go and surf around and post that link on, you know, 100 pages or whatever it happens to be where you’re trying to get your, your numbers. Well, that time could have been spent. You’re an expert. I mean, you, you, you have a business.

That’s, that’s why, like, answering a question in a group would probably take around the same amount of time, you know, just to thoughtfully answer a question. And then that gets viewed by a bunch of people that are actually in that group looking at that same question and that same answer. It’s just, it’s a bigger bang for your buck.

Chris Green: I think that’s what people are forgetting. And I, and I honestly just talking through it with you is kind of reframing how I think I would, I would kind of lay it out. [00:28:00] Because it’s not just the one person, the one person is going to be like, cool. Thanks. This person answered my question. Uh, but it is, you know, cause I, I see some of my, my replies, like in some of these groups get hundreds of like, like, like the thumbs up and all this stuff.

And like people are like, Oh, that’s really good. Thank you. And I kind of, I don’t do it for them as intentional, but now that I think about it, like that That’s such a huge benefit from it because how many people are reading it and not liking it, right? Like there’s, there’s these unmeasurable metrics that are in there, but you know, they’re there.

There’s not like a hundred people saw this and a hundred people like, we know that’s not the case. Is it 101? No, it’s probably more than that. Is it 10, 000? Eh, it’s probably less than that. You don’t know, but it’s more than zero. If it’s more than zero, that’s the free exposure that you’re getting, assuming that your answers are good, right?

Like, like we should probably put a caveat on this. Everything we’re talking about only works if you’re good only works. If you know what you’re

Tim Melanson: only works if you know what you’re talking about. Yeah.

Chris Green: Cause I, sometimes people like to hear about this book stuff and self [00:29:00] publishing and like, Oh, I’ll get chat GBT to write me a book. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, did you not listen to anything we were talking about?

No, you can’t just have a crap product and make all this stuff work. It ultimately all goes back to, you have to actually know what you’re talking about, provide value, have correct answers. Uh, and if you have that, which I believe most people do around several topics, usually most people have like that one topic they’re really knowledgeable about and they put together.

A business and you use the books and social media and podcasting and Facebook groups and like use these pieces I believe I have yet to meet somebody that I don’t believe has a six figure passive business model that they can do not just From home but from anywhere in the world If they put the pieces together and are willing to take the time to be patient and build it because that’s the thing I’ve yet to see someone I have an example of how you can fast track something but The entire process can’t be fast tracked,

Tim Melanson: No, I agree. I agree.

Chris Green: not that I know of.

Tim Melanson: you got to think as well to the person who’s asking the question, they might be a do it [00:30:00] yourselfer. I think this is what, what, what scares a lot of people. They’re like, well, if I answer that guy’s question, then he’s not going to hire me. You know, and you might be right. You might be right.

Maybe that guy’s a do it yourselfer. He asked a question, he wants the answer. But you gotta think that all the people who read that question and that answer, many of those people are not do it yourselfers. Most people are actually going, that’s an excellent question, I got that same question. And rather than asking it, they’re looking at you, answering it and going, I’m just going to hire that guy.

So, so like you say, I mean, it’s not necessarily for the person who asked the question for everybody else who’s watching this and going, this guy knows what he’s talking about. I’m going to hire him. Right.

Chris Green: No, 80 20 shows up everywhere. You know, it might be 80 percent of people are going to be doing it yourself and 20%. Like if you’re on Facebook looking for answers, you know, sometimes I think, am I, am I wasting my time here? Is this where like, I’m actually going to find clients. And arguably I probably could find more clients on LinkedIn.

And I’ve actually been trying to be more intentional. Like if you’ve already written a book and you need help marketing, I am [00:31:00] the guy that you should, you should talk to. Um, If you’re thinking about writing a book, I can certainly help you in pointing the right direction for self publishing. However, if, if you are not good at word and you really can’t write very well.

And you can hire someone else to help you with that part, right? Like that’s not where I can best serve people. Um, but I can point you in the right direction, but like I’ve helped people. I don’t know how many people I’ve helped. I mean, I’ve probably over 50, um, like hands on get their book published. I know what it takes.

I’ve seen some clients like, Oh my gosh, what am I doing? Like they should hire someone else who’s just like a little word, you know, magician. Like I’m, I’m good at word, but I’m not a, Like a magician with it. Uh, and you can find a word magician on Fiverr for like 10 bucks an hour. So, you know, depending on what you need.

So I do try to like, Facebook is where I go to kind of encourage people to say, yes, the opportunity is there. Uh, and then LinkedIn is where, Hey, you’ve got a book, you know, it’s your business card. You want to use it for marketing, [00:32:00] but you’re, you’re an author and you’re a financial expert, but you’re not a marketer.

I’m like, yeah, you should talk to me. Cause I’m a, I’m a marketer. And I would say even more specifically, I’m a book marketer. Do you want to market yourself? Yeah, there, there’s no one better to talk to. I guess that sounds a little arrogant, but I’ve done this for a while. If there’s someone better, I want to meet them so that I can talk with them.

I would love to learn more.

Tim Melanson: Produce you. Yeah. So, well, speaking of, so let’s talk a little bit about how you get the information that you have now. Like, where did you learn these things? Do you hire people? Do you hire coaches? Do you have mentors and like, how did you get to where you are?

Chris Green: I did a lot of kind of trial and error and experimenting and just kind of following, I hate to say my passion, but it was just like things that I was interested in. Like the internet like allows you to follow as many little rabbit trails as you want. So I originally got into eBay. I was working for a power tool company.

I was in basically a home centers, uh, all day, every day. So I would see these clearance cycles and this was not [00:33:00] long after college. So I saw this clearance. It was a 550. It was the most expensive product in the tool category, uh, at home Depot. And it was, they clearance it out, I think for one 49. Um, yeah, I think it was one 49.

They sold the batteries in this kit for one 49 each and had two batteries plus a drill. Two different saws, flashlight, giant radio. Like I had a ton of pieces and charger and a bag. And so I called my friends on a little flip phone back in the day. Right. Like guys, I know you just bought a house. Like you probably need some tools, man.

Like this is a sick deal. Go to your local store. It’s going to be on clearance. And my friends were like, nah, man, I don’t need it. And there was some part of me that was like, I was mad that they weren’t as excited about this as I was. So I was like, well, forget it. I’m just going to buy them and sell them on eBay then.

So I started buying them up at every store that I went to breaking them up in as many pieces as possible and selling all the individual tools. And at the time it was kind of like, like, what, that doesn’t make any sense. Like who would buy a Milwaukee drill with no battery and no charger was someone who already has Milwaukee [00:34:00] and they don’t want to buy another 300 drill.

They don’t need two more batteries and they don’t need an eighth charger. This is another drill. Cause they got a new guy coming on to do a job. And like eBay was, was the only place you could do that. You could special order that stuff at home Depot, but it would take forever. And it was, it was more expensive than just buying it off the shelf, uh, with the batteries and all that. So I’m doing all this money making like, like. Like, this is, like, I shouldn’t be making this much money, uh, on eBay. And then Amazon came out, and I started selling on Amazon, and like, this all while I’m still keeping my regular job. And then Amazon’s FBA program came out, and I was already a Prime buyer. At this point, I was what, I was Prime buyer the first month that Amazon Prime came out, back when it was 79, which is a Prime number, by the way.

People forget that. Um, so I see this FBA program, and I’m like, wait a minute, my inventory is now gonna be Prime eligible? Boom. And I look at the fee structure and I’m like, I’m going to make more money. My customer’s going to get it faster and I don’t have to do any work.

Tim Melanson: well,

Chris Green: I don’t see how this is. This is like a winner of a program.

And I remember at the time [00:35:00] people were, the online seller community was like, no, I don’t know that FBA is going to take off. Uh, you know, I can ship better than Amazon. And I don’t trust Amazon to do it. And of course they were all wrong, you know, and I could have been wrong. But at the time I was like, you guys are crazy.

FBA is going to take over and it absolutely did, right? Like if you don’t use FBA today, you’re, you’re, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. Uh, and then I, I found a software partner and we created the first set of tools, uh, for, uh, for specifically for FBA sellers. So that was fun. Now I’m like doing software as a service business.

I’m doing customer service and I’m a, I’m a marketer. And I’m like, I’m now I’m an author at this point too. And I’m like, because I’m an author and like the only guy in this space, people are asking me to keynote different events. And I’m like, sure. I’ll keynote like, sure. Why not? Uh, I’m a vendor at different events.

It just like, none of this was intentional. It just kind of piecing these things together. And then it, it kind of like fell on me. I’m like, wait a minute. This self publishing thing through Amazon is physical products, which I’ve been very familiar with shipping products, eBay and Amazon. [00:36:00] It’s prime eligible, which is like, Oh, for Pete’s sakes, it has to be prime eligible.

It’s on Amazon. I see the reaction people are giving me simply because I’m an author, even though I just feel like a regular dude. And I’m like, you know what? This is the sweet spot right here. Uh, but it was because of my history as a prime customer or yeah, as an Amazon prime customer, my history as an FBA seller.

Uh, and just seeing how people reacted to people who had published books and how, like when I wrote my, uh, I wrote online arbitrage, I sold that book for 300. It included a one hour phone call and like access to 40 videos. It was like, who publishes 300 books? And I was

Tim Melanson: I don’t know.

Chris Green: If you put 300 worth of value in a book, you can sell it for whatever you want.

Like it was an online course, but instead of going and spending 300 on an online course, you get the course content through the book. And I was like, there’s opportunity here, both for me and to help other people. Um, and then, you know, the marketer in me. It’s like, Oh dude, if you have a book, doors are going to open, you’re gonna be able to offer your Kindle book for [00:37:00] free and use it as a lead magnet with a call to action to join your community or email list, and who’s not going to download a free book.

Right. Especially if it’s Kindle, not here’s a free PDF. Here’s my Kindle book on Amazon. Look at the reviews, right? These aren’t like five star reviews from my mom on my own website. Like, no, these are trusted reviews. If you don’t like it and you can review a bad, you can return it. If you want. There are just so many cool things you can do as an author. And we got to check in. You’re at 35%. What are you at right now?

Tim Melanson: Oh, actually we’re pretty close. I’d say we’re probably about 90, 90%, but that’s only because I don’t want to say a hundred.

Chris Green: Well, the show’s not over yet. So we’ll, we’ll get

Tim Melanson: Well, we’re getting there. It is time for your guest. So it’s exciting. Your business.

Chris Green: Well, I recently, uh, partnered with someone named Nick Hutchison, who I know you’re,

Tim Melanson: Yeah. He’s been a

Chris Green: familiar with Nick. Uh, so yeah, some of your, your listeners will maybe remember Nick’s episode. Uh, so he actually lives really close to me. So we, we’ve met up, we partnered up on Authorpreneur and [00:38:00] it’s combining self publishing with marketing and just becoming an author and using it in your business.

So as an author and as an entrepreneur, uh, he’s excited about it. I’m excited about it. You can probably hear it in my voice. Like I love talking about this stuff. Uh, it is just such a wide open, like blue ocean. Like if you publish your own book, you’re not competing with anybody. Right. It’s you and your book.

If people are going to look at you different, they’re going to treat you different if they’re looking at like, Hey, should we hire this guy to speak or this guy to speak, well, this guy literally wrote the book just because of that, now you have, again, your book has to actually be good, but it is easy. It, the minimum page count is 24, right?

That’s 12 pieces of paper in order to be on Amazon. Um, yeah, I recommend writing more than that, but, um, It’s not, it doesn’t cost money. It doesn’t have to be like the most perfect book in the world. I recommended people to write a top 10 book, like top 10 things you should know before starting your own podcast.

Tim Melanson: I love

Chris Green: I’m guessing you could write that in an afternoon, right? [00:39:00] I could not. I could Google. I could go talk to people where I could research it. But even if I did, that’s not my, my jam, right? Like, Hey, I wrote this book about podcasting. Are you literally a podcaster? Like, no, whether it doesn’t matter. Like I have nothing to back up on back end, but if you wrote that book and now it’s on Amazon for 999 and your Kindle book is, I would make the Kindle book 999 too.

You can give away your Kindle book. And the book says, Hey, if you want more information, join my email list, you know, join my free Facebook group, join my. Whatever. Follow me on social media, uh, join my email list and I will send you a bonus chapter or a private welcome video or whatever it might be. And now you have something to give away at the end of every one of your episodes.

Um, like those are the types of books, top 10 things you should know before doing. Most people can answer that for their specific, you know, vocation, their level of expertise, their profession. Um, And if you can do that, you can write a book and you can be on Amazon and you can open up all the marketing doors that are simply not available.

It doesn’t matter how much money you got. If you don’t have a book, you can’t [00:40:00] open the certain marketing doors. You’ll get on stages. You’ll, you’ll get on, you know, you can book yourself on so many podcasts simply by having a book. The podcaster will be like, Oh my, the host. Oh, this guy’s, he wrote a book.

And he’s, he’s saying we can give away 10 copies. Get this guy on. Right. And now you get exposure and again, you have to be good. You actually have to provide value. You can’t just go on and self promote. Um, but it’s, it’s, it’s a fun game to play. And I think it, it stumps a lot of people because they think they’re not allowed, not allowed isn’t the right word, but there’s something in them that pushes back when they’re making money, doing something that they actually like and enjoy and would do anyway, and they would do it for free and they’re like, they feel they shouldn’t make money.

And I, I’ve narrowed it down

Tim Melanson: Yeah. You’re talking to a musician.

Chris Green: Exactly. I’ll ask you this one. Musicians, I’m guessing you like to practice.

Tim Melanson: I do. I like to play.

Chris Green: Yeah, like you don’t do it just, just so that you can like get screaming fans and all that stuff. Like, like [00:41:00] you have to do that to like get paid, but like you have to like practicing. If you don’t like practicing, you’re not going to get good enough to perform, you know?

So people put the wrong, In my opinion, you know, the wrong emphasis on the wrong things. Um, and they, they box themselves in and, and like, maybe it’s like a mindset thing to where they think work is something I get paid to do. Uh, I don’t like it. If I wasn’t getting paid, I wouldn’t go. And the stuff I don’t get paid to do is the fun stuff and stuff I want to do.

Um, but like great musicians, people will pay to see you to do stuff that you like doing and enjoy. And you’re like, it’s cool guys. I mean, I appreciate you guys paying me, but like, I would do this anyway, but you have to be like, look, yeah, but I also have to pay myself. I also have to pay the bills so I can continue to do this.

So it is, I’ve seen it kind of spin in people’s heads and it makes them not take action. It overwhelms them with, with options and choice. And you know, that’s where I think they should look out for a [00:42:00] coach or a mentor or something where they could join a group or community and say, Hey, I’m just getting started in this.

You know, I’ve got questions, you know, Hey, you, you’ve been a musician for, for this many years, you’ve played this many gigs, you’ve actually made money doing, you know, I have some questions. Can you kind of walk me through these things and you’ll be able to learn from their experience instead of having to like go through five years of doing your own gigs and, you know, You know, selling your own merch out of your trunk, trying to make ends meet.

It’d be like, Oh, this is a better way to do it. You know, if you go in with like an open mind and like a humble attitude, I got to believe a lot of people are more than happy to open up and share their experience around, I guess, a topic that they’re also interested in. Um, We got to kind of humble yourself and put yourself out there like I feel people are anxious to help people who are looking for help, and they’re trying instead of just asking for answers.

And I use this analogy and sorry if I’m giving you long answers. But if you go overseas you go to a country where like they probably speak English but like [00:43:00] say Italy, right, most people in Italy. They speak a little English, but if you just go up to them and expect them to speak English to you as an English speaker, less likely, they’re really going to want to help instead.

If you go up there with your English, Italian dictionary, and you’re looking and you’re trying, they’re gonna be like, Oh, it’s cool, man. I speak English, right? Because they see that you’re trying. And it’s just one of those things. If you just, if you have that attitude about you, I think you’re going to be a much more attractive person to, to help where people are like, Oh, I’m happy to help this guy.

Like I’m happy to help people. With this stuff, but if they’re being lazy, like I’m less inclined, you know, because it’s, I feel it’s going to be a little waste of time on me as well as on them. If they’re not actually going to take action anyway,

Tim Melanson: Yep. Right on. So, so how do we find you?

Chris Green: I’m pretty easy to find. I am Googleable, chrisgreen. com, authorpreneur. com. Those are, those are my main, my main jams where I can be found. [00:44:00] Um, I specialize in. Self publishing and book marketing, uh, as well as, you know, I can give advice on anybody that wants to make money, you know, work on the internet.

They want to work from home. If they want advice about when to quit their job first, I’d say, no, don’t. If you’re asking that question, you’re probably not ready. Um, but if that was the question, it would be like, are you, you know, what’s the worst case scenario? Can you go back? Can you go back and get another job?

Uh, like, how much more money can you make if you freed up that time? That kind of thing. But also, you know, we talked about this at the beginning. Make sure you, you are responsible for, you know, the actions that you’re taking. And you’re not potentially relying on, on luck or things that are outside of your control.

So if you get another eight hours, You know, can you make twice as much money or three times as much money? Um, but a lot of it’s like your worst case scenario. Can you go back and get another job? If so, you know, consider taking that risk. Um, but if it’s incredibly risky, then no, I would not [00:45:00] keep your job and just hustle, hustle, hustle more on your side hustle, uh, until it’s like a no brainer, like I have to leave, you know, I’m making too much money, but everybody can work at home, in my opinion, you know, they, they have that six figure business within them.

Uh, they just need the structure. And I’m convinced that having a self published book, it could be a huge, that’s the fast track I was, I was mentioning earlier.

Tim Melanson: Nice.

Chris Green: publish a book and become a published author, you can fast track relationships, you can fast track, uh, networking, um, there’s that is the fast track.

You still have to write the book and there’s no fast track for that, for the foreseeable future published author status is the fast track.

Tim Melanson: well Chris, I’m excited because I’m going to be a published author apparently.

Chris Green: I will help you do just transcribe your top 10 episodes and publish it as a book. Right? There

Tim Melanson: Oh, I, I loved, I love to write. I’ve, I’ve done a lot of writing. I’ve got some PDFs, but I’ve never actually, I didn’t realize this whole self publishing situation that you could publish on demand. That’s really cool stuff. [00:46:00] Right on.

Chris Green: Kdp. amazon. com. Anybody that has an Amazon account already has a KDP account. They just don’t know it. It’s easier than people think. It is completely free and yeah, I hope people get motivated and kind of look for ways to use this in their work from home, you know, business and their, and their plans

Tim Melanson: I think they will. Thank you so much for rocking out with me today. Chris, this has been a lot of fun.

Chris Green: rock and roll. Woo.

Tim Melanson: Right on to the listeners. Make sure you subscribe, rate, and comment. We’ll see you next time with the work at home rockstar podcast.