Your Book, Your Life

In my previous two posts, I wrote about my great younger brother Scott who died a couple weeks ago and how devastating it was to me and his kids and grandkids. However, he did something recently that has helped me and others a ton. He wrote a book about his life as a cop, and it was published just a few days before his unexpected death.

Now I’m reading his book, Cop Living On The Edge. It has lifted me so much since his death. It’s very well written and tells of his many dangerous and exciting experiences as a cop living in Denver, Colorado. It brought him back to life for me. That’s the power of books. They can really lift your spirts and your mind.

And this, my friends, is a very good reason for people to write a book. It doesn’t matter whether you can find a publisher that will print and distribute it because you can do that yourself. You can even print just a few copies.

Why would anyone want to do that? Because you could be helping your family, your kids, your grandkids, and, yes, even your great-great-great-grandkids. The book will be there long after you’ve passed on to whatever comes next! (I sure hope there is a “next”!) All those humans can benefit from your words and life experiences. And those that didn’t know you when you were alive can be inspired by your life and your legacy. The book can teach others through the things you’ve learned and experienced, showing them what motivated and pushed you to bigger and better things in this life.

Don’t think you can’t write your own book just because you never thought of yourself as a writer. You simply take it small and easy at first. Just write a little at a time and I think you’ll be surprised with what you come up with.

Personally, I started by writing in a small diary. Back then, I never saw myself as a writer and certainly not a writer that would sell 2 million copies of my first book and write 8 more books since then. I then changed to writing in a journal and, from time to time, I would go back and reread what I had written and make improvements and changes to make it better. I would strongly suggest you do the same. I think you will be surprised and pleased with what you come up with in the long run.

Just think of how your family and friends will be lifted to a higher level and love you even more long after you have checked out of this world because of your book. It doesn’t have to be a how-to or motivational book, just the story of your life, what you have learned that helped you enjoy and lift your life to higher levels, and insight into the things you loved that made you very happy and satisfied!

I challenge you to start on your own book. Take that first step today. I’m pretty sure you’ll be very glad you did!

Investing, Writing, and Being Grateful

Like I said in my previous blog, money has not been the best reward that I’ve received over the years. The best reward has come from helping people and it’s fantastic when they take time to give thanks and tell me how very grateful they are for helping them. That makes me feel great.

A few days ago, I received a wonderful letter from Jay P. DeCima, also known as “Fixer Jay”. I want to share some of his words with you. He begins with, “Hi Mark; I hope you are well.” I was well and his letter made me feel even better!

He went on to say, “You may or may not remember me. I’m a real estate guy. I participated at several of your real estate seminars and conventions during the mid-1980’s. I was a speaker at your week-long seminar at your Salt Lake City home. William Nickerson was my long-time friend and mentor.

“What triggered this letter was a re-listening to the tapes you and Bill Nickerson recorded with Dick Hamilton as the moderator. The tapes were recorded in 1987 sometime before CD’s replaced cassettes. Recordings were made at Bill Nickerson’s beachfront home in Aptos, Monterey Bay, near Santa Cruz, California. Mark, I’m not exactly sure about your age, but your web page shows you graduated from Ames High School in 1962. I graduated from Shasta Union High School, Redding, California in 1952 and I’m one month shy of 87 years old.

“After listening to the tapes, something you said stuck in my mind (what’s left). At 87 years old I’m lucky to remember even playing the tapes! You said, without any fanfare or hesitation, that you planned on living 101 more years until you reached the age of 144. I must say, that’s quite a plan! Nickerson guessed 100 years. If you wish, we could call that a mulligan or I’m totally agreeable with giving you a ‘do over’. But given the water that’s passed under the bridge, are you still sticking by the same estimate? Forgive me, Mark, I just had to ask.

“Your website shows you’ve written a new book, How to Ignite Your Passion for Living. Congratulations. I have oodles of passion, I just can’t tell for how long! I’ll order a copy. Perhaps it will shed some light on this longevity issue.”

 (By the way, I sent him a copy before he could order it.)

“I too have taken up the pen in my twilight years. I write real estate how-to-books. I’ve written six books. Three are self-published. My titles can be viewed on Amazon under the author’s name Jay P. DeCima (aka) known as Fixer Jay.”

(Note to readers: I too started by self-publishing since it can be so hard to get a publisher. After you have self-published a book or two, however, that gets their attention and then they are more agreeable to publish your books for you.)

“Both investing and writing have worked well for me. I had 300 screaming tenants at my high-water mark. I stayed so long I even miss the tenants. Senile perhaps might offer a better explanation. Mark, I’d love to hear from you sometime. We can talk about real estate, book publishing or even aging. Your choice—I’m open.”

So, I called Jay today and had a wonderful, long conversation with him. What a terrific guy! Managing Tenants & Toilets is one of his book. What a great title! You can order it by calling toll-free 1-800-722-2550 or send a fax to 1-530-223-2834.

Employing the AB Split

Yesterday I sat down with a young man who asked for a little mentoring from me.  He had started writing a novel and wanted some coaching as to how he could get a publisher and or a literary agent.  I explained to him, first of all, how tough it was to get a publisher.  There are over 200,000 new books published every year and probably 10 times that many books that try to get published but are turned down.  I told him how I eventually got my first book published and how that didn’t happen until I had sold several hundred thousand copies by myself. Of course, he wanted to know how I did that. What I told him is something that can help anyone to achieve great success with almost any venture they are interested in pursuing.

Many years ago one of my mentors introduced me to a very simple but very powerful method of marketing.  In simple terms it’s called an AB split—it’s an easy way to measure anything from what price is the best price to charge to what words in an advertisement, book title, product name or anything else will be the best to use to grab people’s attention.

You can test two prices in a newspaper ad, for instance, by spending just a few extra bucks to have one ad show a $25 price printed in half the newspapers, then list a $45 price in the other half of the print run.  After looking at the orders you receive, you will know which price your customers preferred by simply counting up the orders you received for each price listed. The same AB split can be used with snail mailings or internet marketing, radio, TV or phone solicitations. And that’s just the beginning.  You can test what title would be best for a new book, or the best headline for an advertisement or the best words and story to tell in the body copy of a lengthy ad.

When I couldn’t get a publisher to take on my first book I began using the AB split method and quickly and quite inexpensively found out that the “How to Wake up the Financial Genius Inside You” title of the book and the headline in my advertisements was far superior to the headline “How to Become a Millionaire”.  I then used the AB split to discover what price was best, using newspapers, mailings and TV ads.  Wow, once I found the best price and the best headlines and body copy to use, things went crazy as I began advertising just about everywhere, in newspapers, radio, TV and mass mailings.  The orders came rolling in by the thousands and eventually that money led me to publish a newsletter that morphed into a magazine with over 50,000 subscribers.  All of that, plus some, coming primarily from the use of the AB split method.

I don’t know what the young man who wants to be a big time novelist will do with what I told him but if he applies the AB concept to getting his book out there and sticks with it, I’m pretty sure he’ll soon see huge numbers for his book along with many lifetime rewards and a ton of satisfaction.

Write Your Way to Credibility

We’re building up to the final step in building your wealth as I had advised a very motivated young man not too long ago. The key to this is leveraging your success by bringing financial partners into your plan. This will be the fourth and last step which we will get to next week. But right now, let’s talk about what you need in order to put Step #4 into practice.

A real key item to have in order to bring people in who can help you leverage your efforts is to have a great calling card. You need something so you will be remembered and more importantly that you gives you some instant credibility.  Putting things into print is a sure way to show you are serious and this automatically gives credibility.  It could be a magazine or newspaper article or, even better, a book on the subject or a closely related subject.

I’ve found that the best calling card I’ve ever has been in the form of my books.  Anyone really can write a book, even if you can’t seem to find an agent or publisher or even if you don’t feel that you are much of a writer. There are individuals, businesses and plenty of books and websites to get you started in self-publishing. You don’t even have to do it all—you can hire on people to do any of the work you don’t feel you can do well or don’t have time to learn.

I self-published my first book, printing only 1,000 copies in the beginning, but wow … selling or even just giving the book away gave me a giant boost in credibility and even a little fame. It got me on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and even on NBC’s Today Show. That made it terrifically easy to get potential investors interested in my projects.

In today’s computerized world you can write a book of any length and print just a few dozen copies or a few thousand for a rather small investment. Then you can hand these out like calling cards, use them to start a conversation and list the publication as a credit on anything you post or print up, for anything. Everyone will take you seriously with your name on a good publication.