How To Become A Kindlepreneur

James Taylor Interviews Dave Chesson and they talk about How To Become A Kindlepreneur

In this episode, we cover:

• How To Become A Kindlepreneur
• Becoming a Kindlepreneur
• Choosing your book title using Amazon research

Resources:

• Recommended Book: The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
• Recommended Tools: Headspace
• Official Website
• Amazon Book Ads Course

For More of Creative Life Podcast By James Taylor

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

James Taylor
Hi, I'm James Taylor business creativity and innovation keynote speaker. And this is the Creative Life, a show dedicated to you the creative. If you're looking for motivation, inspiration and advice, while at home at work or on your daily commute, then this show is for you. Each episode brings you a successful creative, whether that's an author, musician, entrepreneur, perform a designer, or a thought leader. They'll share with you their journey, their successes, their failures, their creative process, and much much more. You'll find Show Notes for this episode as well as free training on creativity over at Jamestaylor.me. Enjoy this episode.

Hi, it's James Taylor here. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Authors Summit. This inspiring virtual summit reveals the secrets of making marketing and monetizing a best selling book. If you would like to access the full video version as well as in depth sessions with over 40 Best Selling authors that I've got a very special offer for you just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yeah, that's right. Over 40 New York Times and Amazon best selling authors, book editors, agents and publishers, sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to write and market your first or next best sellers. So just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, but not before you listen to today's episode.

Hey, there is James Taylor and I'm delighted to be joined by Dave Chesson. Dave is an author kindlepreneur, an online marketing ninja Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy, it was during his damn time there, he first got interested in online marketing and search engine optimization. But it wasn't until he started publishing his own books that everything started to come together for him. By linking his online marketing skills for self publishing, he was able to become a number one best selling author across multiple topic areas. Today Kindle printers dot com is his flagship, a place where he does everything possible to show Self Publishers have to harness the power of the internet to sell more books and build their platforms. It's my great pleasure to have Dave with us today. So welcome, Dave.

Dave Chesson
Hey, thanks so much for having me.

James Taylor
So share with everyone what's going on in your world just now.

Dave Chesson
Well, uh, you know, the coolest thing is, is that I used to be in the Navy and today now I am actually at home, my kids are upstairs. I don't have to go to work anymore. And all I do is write and it's it's kind of that dream come true. So been loving every second that especially rekindling a lot of time with my kids since I was deployed so often. So, really great to be here.

James Taylor
I see. Your specialism was like nuclear, like engineering, as well. So so that's so how did you know that took us through that journey moving from specializing nuclear engineering, US Navy to being a best selling author. Talk us through that journey that you had?

Dave Chesson
Yeah, well, I actually started as a nuclear engineer, and I was on submarines and I'm not gonna lie. I really did. Like that child a lot. It was not exactly, shall we say a wonderful conducive environment. But anyways, I went through it. And at the time the military was like, Hey, we want you to stay on. We want you to do a department head tour on a submarine. I was like, No, thank you. I actually moved over to being a military diplomat. They call them foreign area officers. And so I got my master's degree in East Asia. I'm fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and they sent me to Korea, not China. And so my first assignment was to work with the Korean Navy. And the bummer part about it all though is is that I was sent without my family. So I had two years without my wife and kids. And one day, my wife and I were having a conversation over Skype, because that was our way. And she asked me, so what is your goal in life with this career? What are you trying to do? And I was like, I don't know. She was like, Are you trying to be an admiral? I said, definitely, no. She was like, so you're just doing this career? I said, Yeah. And she's like a career that's constantly taking you away. For us, I was like, Huh, that's a really good point. So we had one of these moments where we decided to define what success was for our family. And success was not being deployed. You know, it was being at home, it was being able to take the kids to the pool on a Monday, like I just did, it was being able to be there for my kids when, you know, they do their dance recital. That was the goal. So my wife and I really started to look at what could I start doing now, that would allow me to build up enough income on the side to be able to get out of the military, and not jump from one nine to five job that deployed me to another nine to five job that deployed me but something that I could do that would bring me home. And considering the fact that I'm on the other side of the world in Korea, and most of the time I was going out to sea on Korean warships. There were there wasn't much I could do. I was really limited, right? I couldn't do a brick and mortar. I couldn't do some big business or whatever. I couldn't do anything that required me to have to respond all the time, because I was trying to build this business on the side, I was trying to work on whatever it was I was doing. You know, who knows, the Navy could send me out to sea for a month. And if somebody was expecting me, I wouldn't be able to deliver because I can't communicate. So in the end, we started to look at it. And I started to build out websites and do this thing called search engine optimization, like you said, and that is the art of basically figuring out what people are typing in the internet, what they're looking for, what they want, what questions they have, answering those questions, and then working with the search algorithm, whether it's Google or Amazon, which we'll get to in a second, but convincing it that what you wrote is the best thing to show to people. So I started ranking on my websites. Number one in Google, I got all this traffic, all these people were learning and growing and, you know, just benefiting from that work. And at the time, I was only making a couple of cents here and there for like You know, add Google AdSense, where somebody clicked on an ad, yay, 25 cents, you know, a couple of clicks and I might be able to pay for coffee. But one day, I realized that while I'm writing all these websites and all these articles to help people, there's something that actually much greater. And that was Amazon. And Amazon is the search engine. It's where people go, they go to that top bar at the top, they type in something because they're looking for something they're searching for an answer, or they're wanting a certain type of book to be entertained by, and then Amazon chooses which book to show them. Now, statistically speaking, if your book ranks at the top of a Amazon search result, you can expect 28% of all people that typed in that term will click on your book. But if you ranked number two, it quickly drops down to 1311 97666, and so forth. So if I were to tell you that 1000 people per month, type in this particular phrase, right, and your business shows up number one in Amazon results. Okay, that's 20 280 people per month will be finding your book just from that one phrase that's every month. And so when I took this principle and I applied it, Amazon, I was all of a sudden unable to find a great source where I knew that I was writing a book that people were actively searching for and wanting on Amazon. And more importantly, I was able to use that same principle to be able to then check and say to myself, you know, okay, yeah, the number one book is Stephen King, I'm not gonna beat that guy, you know, or the number one, you know, insert super famous, awesome person on this subject matter. Okay, yeah, that's not the thing to write. But I would find opportunities where people were typing something in and the book they were being presented wasn't what they were wanting. There was a hungry market that wanted something and they couldn't find it. Or they were suffering over some terribly put together book that you could tell the person didn't Didn't know what they're writing about. And so I was able to say, I can do better, I can serve this market, and I can do better and I can deserve that spot at the top. And then Amazon rewards you by sending people continuously to your book making sales. And when I did that, all of a sudden my income stream jumped. And my books were not only making money, more money than I was in the military, but they were consistently making money. And so I then realize that this is something that nobody's really talking about, how does Amazon work? And so I created Kindle printer calm, and website that's completely focused on helping teach authors sort of the business side of book write writing, right? And no, I'm not discrediting art. I'm all about the art. But if you've got great art, let's get it to the right people. Because people are searching for what you have to say. And if you believe that nobody is searching, or nobody could benefit from what you're writing to while you're writing it, right. So let's find out, let's use Amazon to find Find out what's going on and get your book in front of them. And so Kindle printers, it's been crazy. There's over 200,000 visitors per month to the website. And the the best part was, is that it's been crazy kind of working about how does Amazon work because a lot of people will say, you know, nobody knows what really is going on on Amazon. But I was really happy a couple of months ago, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing Facebook page posted one of my articles and said learn from this guy. He knows how to optimize books for sales. And I was like, oh, my goodness, that was some validation, right? Yeah. And I think the best thing is there are a lot of people will say like you're teaching people how to hack Amazon. And I think the best part was Amazon looked at is like now this helps us get better books in front of our market, which means more sales for them, so it's good for them too. So you know, take that and apply it.

James Taylor
So I'm sure the question of view is, listeners mind just now is so you find these these phrases that people are looking for these problems people have And where there isn't an adequate solution for them just now. And then the next stage is obviously you go to solve that problem in the case of a book. So when it's let's say, if it's if it's a topic area that you have, do all the topic areas that you write about, are they all things that you feel absolutely passionate about writing about? Or the things we just see there's a, there's a big opportunity there. And also, are you writing all these books? Or are you now starting to get to a stage where you're, you're finding where the opportunities are, and then kind of finding sub writers to write for you?

Dave Chesson
Well, I'm sort of perfectionist, so I've never been able to let go the reins to somebody else to write I have worked, where I've got somebody who helps me to research and I sort of have my own formula, especially a nonfiction. I love to use what I call the Jhansi Maxwell tactic. And that's where every chapter is, is the lesson for more importantly, every chapter is centered around a story to highlight the lesson. So most of the time, like my virtual assistant will go find a great route. True story that personifies what we're trying to teach in this, this lesson. And through that, not only am I teaching somebody something, I'm entertaining them, I found that my reviews are much higher because of that, because people are like getting a history lesson. They feel like they're getting even more instead of just learning how to do it. So storytelling is the greatest nonfiction tactic, whether you know, no matter what you are talking about, put in stories put a realness into what you're teaching, and you will see the readers not only expand on what you do, but they will glorify it, you know, with great reviews and tell their friends about it. So that is one one tactic I'll throw in there. But when it comes to, you know, am I passionate about it? Well, that plays into my research. See, here's a great example of a book I didn't do. And it was only because I dragged my feet too long. And then I saw that things changed in the market. So the first one was, you know, back in the day, Evernote was something that a lot of people were writing about. Okay. Evernote was a phenomenal way to be able to kind of collect your notes and use them and I was using it all the time to do my research for whatever books I was working on. So I figured that writing a book on Evernote would be great. But when I did my research, I saw that there was like hundreds of books on Evernote. Apparently people had done some research and they saw that it was a hot market that lots of people were trying to buy books on how to how to use Evernote. However, though, most people would have stopped either a that well, a they would have written a book found out the competition was too hard and made no money. Be they would have written the book spend a lot of money to do a lot of hardcore marketing and then got it up there and benefit from it. Or see they did what I did, which is I found out what else in the market was there in the Evernote realm. When I did my research, I found out that there were certain demographics that were specifically looking to apply Evernote to what they were doing. For example, at the time it was Evernote for writers, which was awesome. I was like done. Another one was Evernote. For lawyers, that was a smaller market, but there were people typing into Amazon, Evernote for lawyers. Evernote for project managers was actually a big one. Apparently people who were doing project management were truck heard Evernote might be a good thing. And they were just seeing if somebody had written a book for their pain point, which is using it for project management. And finally, I even found that just breaking up. We talked about writers, but guess what Evernote for students, that was another one. So I could have easily have written basically the same book, right, but applied it to the needs and the language of those demographics. And then I assure you if you are a student, lawyer, project manager or writer, if you wrote in Evernote for your demographic right here, you probably 100% buy my book right on the spot because it was the only book that addressed your needs. It spoke to you the most. And you know was Isler. No I was thinking about that one was like that would be the hardest because I really don't know how to speak like a lawyer. However, though, I had a math background in project management. Matter of fact, I have a master's degree in Engineering and Management. So I thought, done, let's talk about Gantt charts, you know, and let's, let's break that out. How do you put that into Evernote? I could do that student I was a student, you know, writer. That was the first idea was using this for writing your next book. So there were all these great ways that I could write a book truly for that market that I knew without a doubt existed. And although I wouldn't make as much money as the person who ranks number one for the word, Evernote, I assure you, I would make money every single month until either a I got more competition and somebody wrote a better book than me, or B until the market died. And in this case, the market did die because Evernote changed the way they work and then it became a paid service instead of free. They kind of mucked it up and then all of a sudden everybody's like move into these other free things. So That was why the book never got written.

James Taylor
So you mentioned they like the research, researching potential, either competent researching the problem or the issue that the challenge someone has been researching the kind of competition. Let me break that down for a second. So you mentioned this idea of finding those search phrases that people are searching for, is that something that's publicly available to any author? publisher can kind of go in and look for that and find out but then how did they can get a sense of well, that that particular term there is trending or that particular trend is that phrase getting more than this other phrase?

Dave Chesson
Well, back in the day when I was doing this, the only way you could get an understanding of what was being typed and what was not, was doing Amazon suggestions. So when you go to Amazon, I highly recommend being an incognito mode when you do this. And incognito mode is a chrome thing. So go to Chrome right clicks like incognito mode. And what that does is it stops Amazon from using your previous search as well as your own account to present to you ideas. I will then start typing in a Certain term, and then Amazon tries to guess what I'm going to finish that term with. So it adds suggestions. Those suggestions are not magical things that come up with that is a list of what people have typed in beyond what you've typed. So if you type in something like Space Marines, it's going to try to fill in the blank, right. And a tactic I used to do back in the day was I'd be like Space Marines, and then I would put an A, then I'd erase the A, then I put a B, then a C, and a D, and I would write down everything that it showed me. And the problem about this tactic back in the day was that I had no idea if it was like 10 people or 100,000, you know, and so I kind of had to, like do this round about hardcore nuclear engineering calculation that I had, I was like an Excel wizard, to be able to figure out the popularity that existed of the terms um, based off some crazy parameters. And so that was like my own way and I tried it back in On kindlepreneur, like, Alright, here you go guys. And Surprise, surprise, but most authors are not, you know, mathematical whizzes. So in that case, we actually program we created a program called KDP Rocket that does all that for you. So you just plug in, it pulls all the keywords that everybody's typed in Amazon, and it will actually tell you the estimated Amazon searches per month. So now without a doubt, you can look and say, hey, look at this, a lot of people are typing in this keyword phrase compared to this one where nobody's typing it in. And so that that just kind of gives authors the understanding of what's really going on in Amazon. And they can make sure from day one that the book they're either potentially going to write, the book they're writing, or the book they just wrote, has an existing market on Amazon that they can market to.

James Taylor
So once they've the fan Oh, this is a this is a great phrase. There's something around this this phrase, this is what people are looking for. Then you can also see this maybe other books have kind of been written about the area maybe not specifically, how do you get a sense of well How many copies is this, these competitors selling what's hot in this area,

Dave Chesson
that's another thing we do on on KDP Rocket is it will tell you the average amount of money that books are making that show up for that keyword. And you can even look at the individual books and know how much money they're making. So you can actually see the number but you can also do this for free. You don't have to have KDP Rocket be able to do this. And we have a calculator on kindlepreneur.com it just go to like Google and type in KDP calculator, it'll show up number one. Gotta love that SEO. But you take the Amazon bestseller rank of the book and you put it in that calculator and you choose whether it's Kindle or whether it's book and then you click Go get them and it will tell you how many books that day that author sold. So now takes the guesswork out. You can actually look and see hey, look at that. nobody's buying these books or man. A lot of people are buying these books and it is crap. You can just see for the ratings everybody's given poor reviews. The book cover looks like it was put together by five year old That's the sweet spot. Man, people want this answer so much they're willing to pay for something that doesn't look good, doesn't present itself well. And even with the bad reviews, they're still buying it. Golden,

James Taylor
and I'm guessing also, you mentioned using your an assistant to help find stories to support things you're saying. But you can also use an assistant on the other end, in terms of go and find me some gold go and dig me gold opportunities. So I can then review these opportunities every week or every month in terms of thinking about future projects.

Dave Chesson
Yeah, that's definitely one thing I know. I know, there are a lot of people, a lot of authors out there who have their virtual assistant and they literally send them KTP rocket and like, go, here's my parameters I want, you know, find me every keyword that has this amount of searches that's making about this amount of money. And by the way, we have a competitor score that helps you understand what the competition level is like for that keyword. And it's a score from zero to 100. So zero meaning if you write it, you're there 100 meaning may the force be with you Their virtual assistant can literally come back with a giant list with all the numbers. And authors can kind of scan through it and see if there is a topic that they want to write about. And, or, you know, for me, I'm kind of like, I like to do it myself, but that's just kind of my own thing. But what the tactic I love to use is that I don't like sit myself down and be like, Alright, Dave, for the next 48 hours, you're gonna work your butt off until you find the perfect book. Instead, what I do is like, I'll be looking or like I was talking to somebody, and I heard them mention how they're struggling with something. And it was like a certain situation. I was like, Huh, I wonder what that's like. It's all bust, open KDP Rocket type in a couple of phrases, see what's going on and be like, okay, nope, not a good idea. Or, at one particular case, they were talking about this. This situ, what funny situation that they're in, shall we say, and I actually didn't know The answer that and so I started doing research and I found that there were unique terms that people were using to describe that situation. And when I typed it in to KTP rocket, it turned out it was hot. And I was like, Wow, that's pretty cool. So you know, that's one of our next

James Taylor
projects. And then as you start to your writing your book, you're working on your book, imagining choosing your title, your descriptions, and then there's this kind of thing, which is more specific to Amazon in terms of your, your keywords and your categories. What should authors be thinking about when they're at that stage with the stage of kind of really setting titles and descriptions?

Dave Chesson
Well, I call the book cover title and book description and keywords, a symbiotic relationship, okay, all four of those should work together. Otherwise, you confuse your readers and if you confuse you lose, okay? So when you've done your research, and you find that, oh my goodness, these are the exact phrases that people use when looking for your kind of book. I make sure to send those words to my cover designer so that my cover design knows that they're designing a book for these people, okay? Because when somebody types in this phrase, that's the cover they're gonna see it better fit what they're thinking. Next I moved to the title and if I if I'm trying to be creative okay if I'm trying to have that super cool witty, you know, title or whatever, cool, but I better explain it enough in the subtitles so that there's they, they typed in the phrase into Amazon they saw the book cover that looks like it fits they see the title and the title reaffirms This is the place they go. They click the link, they land on my books landing page, right? You know the sales page on Amazon. And then guess what, it's up to my book description to convince them to buy and that book description. The best kind of sales copy you can ever write is using the market's own words. If they describe their lower back pain as like sharp needles digging in under their skin, okay, and you say, are sharp needles digging under the skin in your lower back Question mark, I think you just want them. All right, you use the exact word that they were thinking. And you have reaffirmed that this is the book because you as the author are thinking like that. Another thing too, is that in bullet points, I love to list the benefits. And guess what? People love to list the benefits. They're either listing the the pain points, or what they what it is they want to accomplish. Are they trying to make money? Or are they trying to live a lifestyle that's free? You know, well, they need the money to live that lifestyle. See, there's a lot of parts to it. So here's a great example that kind of personifies everything we just talked about. I had an author who had written a book about going back to school, okay, they had done the research and they found out that there were a lot of people who type in how to go back to school. And he created a book cover that showed a young girl holding books and smiling and his title just said going back to school, to get the degree you know, or or going back to the school to live the life you want or something like that. And the book description kind of talks about, you know, this is how you go back to school, this is how you get into the lifestyle, etc, etc. Here's the thing, his book was not selling at all. And when we done when we did a little bit of research, we found out that there were so many demographics, to the type of people that would type this in. And each demographic had their own pain point. They had their own reason for going back to school, they had their own purpose, and they had their own benefit they wanted to gain. So you know, for example, some people are just going back to get their GED. Some people are currently in the corporate world looking to step up in the ladder and get your masters or their doctorate or some kind of certification. And then no kidding, the biggest demographic was older people who have retired but want to go back to school to get that college degree they never got so they can have something to tell you know, their friends at bridge club. When we did the research, what we found was that it would have been probably more profitable. To write a book centered towards going back to school in a retirement age. And the fact of the matter is, if I was the old person typing and go, you know how to go back to school, and I saw a picture of a young girl smiling. And I read the book description, and it doesn't speak to me or my pain points or why I'm doing this. Might as well turn away. Yeah. And so in his case, he was trying to shotgun and reach everybody. And by trying to reach everybody, he was reaching nobody. So granted, does he cut down his market size by choosing one? Yes, but guess what, because he would have been the only one re reading or writing to the older generation looking to go back, he would have nailed those cells and had a lot more success than what he had by trying to go after everybody.

James Taylor
So he could have actually gone off to the elder demographic first, and almost written that you said like write this similar kind of book again, but write it for let's say one of those other groups. The business executive is looking to rescale or The person is younger. So you can almost write three different books there. And different covers, you know, different stories, you'd obviously different examples you'd want to give, but maybe the core lessons might be the same.

Dave Chesson
Well, I almost feel like that would be those three books would be very different books, right? Why would a, you know, the older generation probably doesn't want to go and hang out with the 18 year olds, right. So they're going to be more apt to, you know, to choosing an online school. The other thing too is do they really care if it's Harvard? Or do they, you know, and then they just kind of go after? Was that Arizona? Or, you know, Phoenix, University of Phoenix? Yeah, University of Phoenix. Yeah. I mean, they just want the degree. Yeah. However, the person in the corporate ladder on the other hand, okay, they might need to do night school, they probably don't have the time and it's all about Time, Time issues for the person in the middle, where's the retired person don't care. Um, the other thing too, is is that the degree the level of the degrees huge, you know, it's probably better that they don't go After the University of Phoenix, but then they go after insert prestigious online school. See, I mean, those are completely different chapters. Okay, you would. So in that case, I think it would have been a bit harder, you can't just kind of tweak it a bit to fit the demographics. However, though, as you can see, the book itself is going to be completely different based off at the knees, the demographic, and it would have failed if you tried to write one for all and they know this. If he had done his research, he would have known this and realized that and, again, coming down to understanding that the demographics exist, that was huge. But to tie back to our original point, though, you understanding what the market is typing in should go into your book cover your title, your subtitle, and your book description, because you're reaffirming to the market exactly what it is that this book will present to them and if you know what it is that they want, then you better be presenting that

James Taylor
you mentioned Stephen King, earlier there so we think that you know, the, he talks about his ideal reader Writing for your ideal reader, I guess that that research you're doing advance also inform if you know that that you're writing for elderly persons that just want to go go to University College to get some skills to brag at their bridge club, that's a certain type of person that you're writing for. So that they can then inform inform the kind of writing which should hopefully give you better reviews because that reader can can actually say, I feel this person's writing for me, he's writing to me, he's talking to me, or she's talking to me.

Dave Chesson
I have added chapters to a book I was reading because I found research that proved that the market wanted a certain answer. I was working with an author who is writing a book on how to sell art. Right. And I mean, they had a great book, it was beautiful. Mirror fact, I think they're still they're still crushing it on Amazon. But the key factor for them was that when I think we saved save this person's career, was that we realized that the biggest keyword wasn't how to sell art. It was how To sell Art Online, them like that's what the market wanted. And this, this author had not even thought about the online component. They were thinking in the traditional way of like how to set up these sorts of, you know, art galleries, how to promote, like how to, you know, potentially an agent like all of these things. And I was like, Look, the market shows that the majority of people are really want the online part, how do I sell it online? And that caused the author to have to go back and add almost another half of the book before publishing, by the way, thank goodness. Because Can you imagine like how pissed off somebody would be if they were choosing your book, and they want to learn the online aspect and you don't even talk about it? Like, I'm sure that person would have gotten some one stars, just because they didn't cover the most important thing in that markets mind. So in this case, it can absolutely help you write a better book because you know what people are looking for what they really want. Want, and not, you're not trying to, you know, pull the wool over their head here, you are just understanding what it is they want. And now you know what you should write to so as to fulfill the need of your market.

James Taylor
And when right is at the stage of looking to publish to self publish, we have things like KDP or create spaces is two big options. Can you describe what's the difference between those two and have you? Why would you go for one as opposed to the other

Dave Chesson
but for KDP print versus CreateSpace? Yeah, Unknown Speaker
well, nowadays, you definitely have to go with KDP print because CreateSpace is shutting down. And Amazon is moving all the CreateSpace people over to KDP print. So, and personally, I've got a lot of books on CreateSpace anybody listening to this, don't panic if your book is on CreateSpace I'm not doing a thing. I'm like, Alright, Amazon, you make it happen. And a lot of people think that I'm crazy or being naive, but here's my take on it. I don't know the exact percentage I'm pretty sure that the majority of books being sold on Amazon right now are print on demand from CreateSpace. And would Amazon be stupid enough to all of a sudden make a majority of those books not sell anymore on their marketplace? Not they'd lose so much money. If it's if it's a money issue, I trust Amazon, you know, if it makes more Amazon more money, they'll do it. So in that case, let them I'm letting them worry about it. I'm sitting back and enjoying. But yeah, pretty much all my books will be moved over to KDP print.

James Taylor
Okay, so as you've gone through your own journey as an author, can you tell us about maybe a key insight, an aha moment a time when you said okay, in my writing, this is what I want to be doing with my writing, oh, this is who I want to serve. Well, you just made an important distinction and what you want to do with your writing

Dave Chesson
Well, you know, the funniest thing about it is that I've never, even when I was a kid, I thought I was the worst writer in the world. I remember in high school I once I was given This assignment and I was like, I'm gonna pour my heart and soul into this thing and I'm going to do the best paper ever. And my teacher who is an amazing, funny person, she comes out to me she hands me back my papers. She says, Dave, you're gonna go study physics, right? I said, Yes, ma'am. And she goes, good call and I look, it was a D minus. I was like, and I mean, she's a great person. She said it jokingly, but I was like, Yes, I am. I'm going to physics because I suck at this thing. So I've never spent my life believing and writing. I'm also dyslexic too. So I have a real issue with words. So for somebody who's dyslexic, who has been kind of told his entire life, he's not a great writer. It's crazy. It's crazy that I'm here today. I only say that because if anybody ever feels that they're inadequate, or that they aren't meant to be a writer. I'm living proof that that's not the case. Now, I found that when I if say you go to a party and everybody wants to know the answer to something and you're the only guy with that answer. It doesn't matter how well you present the story because you, you gave them the answer. You're the man of the night, I sort of started off with that thought process and writing my books. And that gave me courage to be able to write over time, as we've all learned, the more you write, the better you get in time studying the great writers spending time understanding it. That's why I did the john C. Maxwell tactic You know, that's something I learned why do I care? Why do I like his, you know, irrefutable laws of leadership when I've read so many other leadership books, but his sticks out? Oh, yeah, you story. Why don't I just do that? And um, you know, I've read so many things about style points and and how to grab a reader's attention. And that's all built up over time. So if you're struggling or you think that you're not a good enough writer, I love the tactic we talked about because I know that I'm serving existing market, and that gives me a bit of leeway to grow as a writer but now That even if you're dyslexic or not, the more you write the better you get.

James Taylor
Now we've spoken quite a lot just now about your the marketing because that's what you kind of known for the the marketing and the kind of search engine optimization, only marketing of the books and I'm really finding those challenging problems. But I'd be remiss of me if I just didn't ask you one question about in terms of the craft piece. What is your daily ritual look like? What is your writing ritual look like?

Dave Chesson
Well, okay, so I'm not gonna lie. I'm a morning person. And I was forced to be that way because I was doing this on the side. You know, in the military, I had to be there at work, you know, Monday through Friday, you know, from 8am to 5pm. And sometimes I was gone on the warship, right? So I was like, all day. So the only way that I was going to be able to build this business, shall we say, this writing career was that I needed to make sure that I didn't try to fit it in my busy life. Instead, I got up at 4am every morning and that was my Time from 4am to 7am. Okay. And I it was amazing because nobody was up. Nobody bothered me. Nobody was talking to me on the internet, right because everybody's leaving. And that was my time. Every morning, Monday through Sunday. Now, I started I had to cut out movies. I no longer watched movies during that time, and that meant I would go to bed at a decent hour. I also did this thing to where I would only reward myself with coffee if I got up at four. So if I ended up hitting that snooze button, okay, and I snooze till five because I felt like well, it means I went the whole day without coffee. It was very masochistic. I'm not gonna lie, but it really trained me that I needed to earn that coffee. And that cough that time. Right. It was like reverse Pavlov's dog here. When I had my coffee, I mean, I needed to write. Now, fast forward later and I do this all day. still get up at four because it's just a wonderful period, I don't have the kids asking for anything, I don't need to make breakfast. You know, I get my time. And I think that that was one of the biggest Keys to Success were most authors fail is they believe they can fit it in here fit it in there. I just said, You know what, I'm going to get rid of the sleep period. And to make up for that I'm going to stop watching movies and TV shows.

James Taylor
So that's a great thing for you to be sharing as well. Because I think for a lot of people probably watching listening to this, they're there when the biggest challenges is time the saying where do I find the time to do this. So the example you just provided there, hopefully will give some people and as you say, you have to cut out other things. Netflix has to get this to go for a little bit. But what you make up for that is is invaluable, both in terms of obviously your the business but but what we're writing gives back to you as well. So that's great, a great example. So thanks for sharing that. As we start to finish up I'd love to know what tools do you use what more tools you find very useful in your In your writing and your publishing

Dave Chesson
Well, I I'm not gonna lie. I'm a big fan of Scrivener. I love using Scrivener to help kind of plan on my books. The thing about Scrivener, though is that it's got a very high learning curve. The but once you understand it, it's really cool the things you can do. I used it to write my thesis way back in the day when I was doing my masters. I've written it for used it for all my books and even for courses to help plan out courses. So that's been fun. I'm biased, but I also love KDP Rocket, that the coolest thing about being an author and having a programming team is every time I come across something that I'm like, Ah, man, this is such a pain in the butt to do. Oh, yeah. Hey, guys, let's automate this script. That's right. Yeah, we were able to like a ms ads. I love doing ms ads. Because advertising to people through MS is advertising to people who've decided they want to buy a book, they just need to figure out which one they want, right? If you're doing Facebook ads, you got to convince somebody to stop scrolling on Facebook. You know, stop watching that cat video and come over and Amazon and buy your book right then they're much easier when they're already on Amazon trying to find their book, you just say, hey, this one. So I've been doing a lot of AMS ads. And so I was like, man, there's there's this part that just sucks. Hey, let's automate this. So we have an MS keyword feature on on KTP rocket. And same thing too, is like finding the best category for your book where you have really, you absolutely have a great chance to rank number one. Yeah, we automated that too. So

James Taylor
And what about what about a book if you were to recommend one of your own books, but a book by another author could be on the craft of writing or the the business the marketing side? What would that book be?

Dave Chesson
I'm going to be a bit off because I'm sure a lot of the authors are going to talk about author books, but one of my favorite books that helps me understand the business side and how to present and package and communicate is called story brand by Donald Miller. Now, I think it's like how it's how to write a story brand or something like that, but just typing So

James Taylor
yeah, I had him on my podcast Dolan's fantastic, I love I love what he does about the grunt test, as well. That's a great book.

Dave Chesson
Yeah, the grunt test. He lives like down the street for me here and I yet I haven't actually run across him. I'm in Franklin, Tennessee, which I think is like the biggest hotspot for like online marketers, because we've got Dave Ramsey, Michael Hyatt, Jeff Goins, Tim gras, like the list goes on and on. But yeah, I think it's a wonderful book and understanding like if you have an online presence, you need to read that one.

James Taylor
Now, I want you to imagine just for a second, there's one last question I have for you that you woke up tomorrow morning. And you're going to have to start from scratch. So you have all the skills you've acquired, but no books are out there. You can have to start again, no one knows you, you know, no one, what would you do? How would you restart things?

Dave Chesson
I guess kind of the way I started, which was researching what people are looking for in Amazon so that I know that the next book I write is going to make sales. And best part is that same book, we'll be making sales 23456 months down the road, and then I can just build more and more books, build more assets. And then that brings me in a monthly income that I can continue to use to grow the business, apply towards marketing and just see everything grow out instead of what I see a lot of authors doing is that they write this book. And then they gotta hustle really hard to do this book promotion stuffing. And then the moment they stop hustling really hard to say move on to another book, all of a sudden, their sales start dipping, I sort of call it like blowing air into a balloon that already has a hole into it. So long as you keep blowing into it, the balloon will stay but the moment you stop blowing. So

James Taylor
that's what I do. That's wonderful. And if people want to connect with you to learn more about Kindle printer and everything you've got going on, where's the best place to go and do that?

Dave Chesson
Yeah, well, so there's two things number one is that if you have any questions about what we talked about today, or so just go to kindlepreneur.com. Find the contact me page, click there and hit me up even though we have 200,000 visitors And, to this day, I still answer every one of those. It's just one of those personal things I've had when I first started, I would send out an email to, you know, somebody I was following and nothing against them. I mean, I get it, there's a lot of emails, but they never respond. And I always was like, you know, a gut punch to me. So I always make it a point to answer every one of those emails. Also, too, if you guys are interested, and you want to learn more about Amazon marketing services, AMS ads, I have an absolute free course that will teach you everything you need to know about AMS ads, and it's a video course professionally done. It's not one of those, you know, here's the course And oh, by the way, now you got to pay me to take the extra CT is straight up everything I know. And you can find that at ATMs. course.com such a creative URL, isn't it but pretty easy to

James Taylor
enter you know, if you're looking for so we're going to put all of these links here below. So if you're anyone's watching this just now, you'll find all these links here and you'll be able to go and check all those out as well. They thanks so much for coming on today. It's been absolutely been a pleasure speaking with you and Learning about part of boot publishing and writing I didn't know too much about so as you gave some great advice, and I'm sure most people can go and check out, check out your site.

Dave Chesson
Awesome. Well, again, thank you for having me.

James Taylor
If you're interested in living a more creative life, then I'd love to invite you to join me as I share some of the most successful strategies and techniques that high performing creatives use. I put them all together in a free downloadable ebook that you can get by going to jamestaylor.me. That's jamestaylor.me. To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity.

To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity. If you enjoyed the show, please rate it on iTunes or Stitcher and write a brief review. That would really help get the word out and raise the visibility of the Creative Life show.