How To Write A Nonfiction Book in 30 Days To 10x Your Business with Jake Kelfer

JAKE KELFER (00:00):
What I did have was a message that could help somebody that was behind me. And this is one of the biggest things that I would tell anybody who’s listening right now, is you don’t have to be the world’s greatest expert or on paper, the world’s most successful person to share a message that can help somebody. If you can take somebody on their adventure from a two to a six, not even to a 10, that would change their life and fundamentally impact the direction of where they are headed, all because you took a chance to guide them that first path,

JESSICA BURGIO (00:34):
What is keeping you from growing your business to the next level? I’m Jess Burgio, one of the hosts here for Fast Foundations, the podcast Between the three of us, my co-host Jim, RT, and I have grown several businesses scaling Beyond Seven Figures. And you know what? Not a single one of those businesses came with a blueprint for years. We poured time and resources into our businesses from salons, tech companies, and product-based businesses navigating success and failures on our own. For all of us, though, it began to change in 2019 when we found a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and industry leaders to mentor us. That community was fast. Foundations just like the Mastermind we’re bringing on experts and having discussions to give you tips to not only improve the foundational skill sets you need, but to also fast track your growth. We’ll dive into the core pillars of what will make your business succeed. Whether you have a brand new idea that you’re looking to turn into a business, or you’re already a successful entrepreneur looking to scale, this community is here to take you to the next level. Let’s dive in.

RT CUSTER (01:38):
Welcome back to the Fast Foundation’s podcast. This is another mentor session. I got my boy Jake on with us today. Jake, I’m so excited to get into the idea of writing books, but the first question I wanna hop right into is, you just wrote your fourth book, you just turned 30 years old and you wrote a fourth book already. Holy crap. You tracked your time though writing this fourth one. How much time and energy does it actually take to write a book?

JAKE KELFER (02:10):
Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me, Artie, pumped to be here and uh, let’s get into it. So I just wrote my fourth book became my fourth bestseller, and I did it in less than 87 days. And so I wanna take you straight through it because I think there’s no better way to kick this off than getting into details and show anybody that if you have an hour a day, you can write a really great book that will grow your business exponentially. So in 17 days, I wrote my rough draft. By day 60, I was ready for publication, and by day 87 we launched Amazon bestseller Status. Now, within that, I wanted to see how long does it actually take me to follow the process that I’ve created for others that people use from all over the world to write their books?

(02:52):
How long would it actually take me to do this? And what I found out was, was that I spent 87 days start to launch, and during those 87 days, I spent an average of 40.37 minutes per day. And we factor in only the days that I worked, cuz I don’t work on all the weekends. I have family time, I have what I call my priorities. And I honor those. So on the 66 days that I actually did book related activities, I spent 52.6 minutes. All right. So under an hour a day produced the book that generated tens of thousands of dollars in revenue before the book was even launched.

RT CUSTER (03:35):
Wow. That’s that’s super cool. And that’s, you know, we’ve, you and I have talked about this cuz I have some, some different books that, that I’d like to write. And a lot of our fast foundation’s audience have, a couple of people have written a book, um, or they’re, you know, they, they’re like me, they have ideas. What do you think takes that, that effort? What do you think is the thing that’s holding the most people back? And, and from your experience with all these authors, why people aren’t just starting and just doing it? Like what do you think is the biggest holdback?

JAKE KELFER (04:11):
Well, I think one of the biggest holdbacks is the same biggest holdback for everything else is like, why don’t we just start? Right? True. But we get in our own heads and we start to say for a book specifically, I don’t have time to write this. I’m running a business, so therefore I can’t go lock myself in the cabin in the woods for two years and come back with a manuscript. I don’t have time for that. We hear people say, well, who am I to write this book? We have people that say, you know, everyone, somebody who’s already written on my topic, what makes me special. Right. And so when it holds people back from starting one is the limiting beliefs around, is it possible? Can I do it and do I have the time? But the other thing that I think really stops people from starting with a book, because we know that most people wanna write a book, especially entrepreneurs, we know that the data shows that I’ve pulled my audience and 80 plus percent of people wanna write a book. But the reason that we don’t do it is because we aren’t truly committed to that. Because we don’t know what lies on the other side of the action. Eh, and here’s what I mean by that is with a lot of things in life, but again, we’ll keep it on the books specifics,

RT CUSTER (05:16):
Right

JAKE KELFER (05:17):
Is when people get ready to write a book, they think it’s going to take them years and years and years. And only after the book is launched will they see any type of reward or any type of value. And the reality of it in today’s age, if you are to create a book and use it for your business, not only can you do it in an hour a day with the right process, but you can use it to sell your program during writing. You can use it as a backend course, you can use it as a lead gen tool, and you can use it as your entire social content calendar for three to six months. So that the entire time you’re writing your book on the topic you already sell something about, or the product you already sell about. You are building more credibility, more trust, and more opportunity. And so I think that instead of thinking for most people, I need to write the book, spend all this time, and then I hopefully can reap the reward, we need to start recognizing that writing a book will actually save you time in the long run by doing it right once. And at the end of that, you’ll have an actual tangible book that you can gift, give, sell, and use to grow your business and make an impact at a higher level.

RT CUSTER (06:33):
I’ve never thought about it like that, and I think you have another believer on, on this side over here. So I’m, I’m totally sold. I mean, I, I was when I first met you and just your energy about what you do already, but like that logic flow of all the benefit I can get throughout the process, I literally haven’t had that thought before. So thank you. Give me a little bit of feedback and, and process on the four books that you’ve written, your journey. Why, why’d you want to get into this, um, in, in the, in the beginning and like, how did you leverage all of that? Um, I mean that gold that you just shared with us in, in terms of your why for the, the four books that you’ve written so far?

JAKE KELFER (07:16):
Yeah. I mean, great, great question. I’ll break down all, all four books, but it’s, it’s really funny because I was in college, I was at the University of Southern California and I had, I thought I had my life planned. I was gonna go to college, I was gonna become a sports agent. I was gonna be the youngest agent in history, represent a lottery pick. I was going to get really rich really quick. I was going to buy a house, maybe buy an island, get married, have kids, and then, then I would write books and I’d speak as a way of giving back. I thought that speaking and books were only for people that had quote unquote made it. And that you have had to live a full life before you can do all that. But as life would have it, uh, my plan went completely upside down <laugh> before I even graduated college.

(08:01):
And instead of working with an agency to be a sports agent, I actually started my career working for the Los Angeles Lakers. And it was during that season that it was Kobe Bryant’s final NBA season. And I got to see the true impact that Kobe had on this world. People would spend thousands of dollars to watch him play for the final time. People would travel from all across the world to come watch him play one last time before he retired. And I thought to myself, how can I make this impact? How can I be like Kobe? And I realized it might not be at the level that he does it, it might not be even close to the level, but I started to think, what if I could impact one person’s world? And so I came home one day and, and I asked myself, what do I know and how can I help people?

(08:48):
And the truth is, at 22, with one year out of college, you don’t know a whole lot <laugh>. You know, even though I, I thought I’d might know a lot, right? But, but I didn’t know much. All that I did know was how I landed a, a very highly desired job with the Lakers and how I got all the internships I wanted. And I knew that everybody in my fraternity and my younger brothers, three and a half years younger than me, everybody asked me how did I do that? And so I said, I’m doing it. I’ll write a book on this. And so I ended up writing a book. I had no idea what would come of it or anything. And five and a half, six months later, Kobe Bryant retires. I retire and I launched my first book called Elevate Beyond.

(09:28):
And that was the change of my life. Uh, that was a very big moment because it sparked everything that was to come. And what happened since then is, like you said, I’ve gone in to write four books. I had to elevate beyond at 23, elevate Your Network at 25, uh, the Elevated Entrepreneur at 28. And then my most recent book, big Idea to Bestseller, I wrote, um, at 29 years old three days before I turned 30. So that’s a little bit about the book story, and I’m happy to dive into like each book if you wanna know, like why I wrote each book, um, because there was a different purpose and a different technique behind each one. But overall, that was what got me started. And it’s taken me now all across the world. People have used my book as required reading in college syllabi. I’ve spoken in China, I’ve done so many things, built coaching businesses on the back end of it, raised money for charity through books, and done so many really cool things. But it all started because I took a chance on myself at 22 and said, I’m gonna do something that most people aren’t willing to see to fruition.

RT CUSTER (10:31):
That’s cool. And, and I, and I think, I mean, that’s just, that’s you and that’s, that’s your brand. Is is is just that, you know, I think it’s, it’s really cool the the, the tie in and the story with Kobe and, and the inspiration that you had. And you know, I think a lot of us at 20 something right outta college believe we can, we can do anything. And and I know a lot of us, including myself, even though I have experienced a lot in my life, I still feel the way that you felt, which is like, well, I have to, I have to like retire. I have to go like sell a company for a hundred million or take a company public before I can write a book and like share. I don’t know what I’ve learned. But you’re totally right. There’s, there’s still a lot of people that are just a couple steps or a couple years behind us that they have those questions.

(11:19):
They’re like, wait, nope, what’d you learn right now? Like, that’s a whole nother level of, of motivation to, to just write the book. I, I love that. I would, I think it would add a lot of value if you unpacked for us, like where you were in your life and why you decided to write these, these four books at the time you did. Because I, I think for someone like me and probably our listeners, maybe I can put myself in the shoes of, of where you were at one of those four times. And, and that might be my inspiration to write. So, um, let’s start with elevate Beyond, like you were, like in your words, you’re just kid coming right out, coming in hot. Uh. What was, what was the inspiration for that and, and where did that come from and how’d that lead into the second one?

JAKE KELFER (12:01):
So, so the first one, you know, as I kind of mentioned, I was inspired by Kobe wanted to do something different. And the, the truth was on this one, I was not the best career development expert in the world, right? I mean, I had less than one year of career development experience. Um, but what I did have was a message that could help somebody that was behind me. And this is one of the biggest things that I would tell anybody who’s listening right now, is you don’t have to be the world’s greatest expert or on paper, the world’s most successful person to share a message that can help somebody. If you can take somebody on their adventure from a two to a six, not even to a 10, that would change their life and fundamentally impact the direction of where they are headed.

(12:43):
All because you took a chance to guide them that first path. Right? And so the first book for me, I didn’t have a following. I didn’t have an email list. I didn’t even have a real business at the time. Okay. I was just working for Lakers and I had a message and I wanted to help people. And so that’s the first thing is the message that you have to share worth sharing and can it lift somebody up? Okay. Then I launched it All right. Now I launched this book and I’m a best seller. And I’m like, okay, cool. Let’s go back to the sports world, right? And someone tells me, I don’t even remember who it was, but they were like, you know, Jake, people pay money for speakers. Like, you could go become a motivational speaker now. You don’t have to wait. And I was like, wait, you’re telling me that I can get paid money to talk about my book?

(13:29):
And they were like, yeah. So I did what I thought necessary. I found a mentor, and then I made a list of every single community college that existed in California. And I reached out to every single department and person that I think I could possibly speak about. Now, I wasn’t clear on the messaging, I had no idea what I was doing. And I got lucky. And the first gig that I did was on the A colleges. So I was like one for three. I get my first gig, they ask me how much to charge. I have no freaking idea. They say, Hey, we do 12 presentations in two days. Can your voice handle that? Absolutely. My voice can handle that. Right. <laugh>

RT CUSTER (14:04):
sure Thing. Yeah.

JAKE KELFER (14:05):
My first gig, my first paid gig, I didn’t do any free gigs before this. I just made up a price and I did 12 presentations in two days, and I got paid several thousand dollars to do it. And I was like, I’m rich. I made it. This is the easiest thing in the world, right?

RT CUSTER (14:19):
Yep. The island is the next step. I mean, it just, it’s right there.

JAKE KELFER (14:23):
I Was like, oh, I’m only a a, I’m one in three. If I do this and I get 30 clients, I mean, I’m gonna make more money than I’ve ever, ever thought about or seen, right? So, so now I was introduced to, oh my gosh, a book has just created this, my book’s now at Syracuse, Cal State Northridge as required reading for different classes. I’m 23 years old now. I’m speaking to colleges and I have all this, I’m like, I’m onto something here. So I keep building, I keep building, I do some stuff in the basketball world at a really high level. And we don’t, we don’t need to go into that right now, but the next book that I write, I was like, okay, what am I the expert on now? What am I learning and why have I had such great success up to this point?

(15:03):
Why have I been able to help N B A players sign their first deal? Why do I have success with this book? And I was like, networking. So that leads us to book two. It was the next logical book because it was what I had the most experience, the most knowledge about, and it’s what people were asking me the most about. And I knew that I was giving a lot of talks on networking. So I decided, let me write the book on networking, become the authority and that, and see what that could do for my career from a speaking standpoint. Cause I really wanted to grow that. Well, that book was coming out in October of 20, uh, 18. August of j, no, excuse me, July of 2018, I get invited to speak in China on a 10 day speaking tour to debut the book.

(15:49):
And to work with schools and, and kids and, and some of their staff. And I was like, wow. I’m five months away from the book even coming out three months, four months, whatever the, whatever it is. And I just got invited to speak in China on a 10 day speaking tour. We made it right? And I’m, you know, I’m a young kid at the time still, right? And I’m like, I’m 25, about turn 26. I’m like, this is unreal. I’m scoring to China for 10 days speaking tour. This is set <laugh>. I go to China and this book I launch Elevate Network in October. And we start doing really well. I start getting more speaking gigs. Now I have two books, elevate Beyond Elevate Your Network. Both of these are starting to be utilized more bulk orders, increased order value. So instead of selling one, I’m selling two for a little bit discount and people are buying this, right?

(16:37):
So I’m increasing my opportunity for, for revenue and growth. Fast forward to my third book that came out in October of 2021, the Elevated Entrepreneur. This book was a little bit different. Instead of writing about my own experiences, I interviewed 39 of the world’s greatest coaches, performers, and entrepreneurs. And the reason I did this was because the pandemic had happened. I had pivoted everything online because speaking it shut down my basketball event shut down. I said, I need to build my network and I need to build my network faster than I’m even capable of at this point. And I said, everybody does a podcast. Everybody’s willing to do it, does blog posts. If I write a book, I bet I could get the attention of some pretty big people right away. So I say, I’m writing this book and I’m gonna interview people.

(17:21):
People end up in that book, John Lee Douma, Chris Ducker, pat Flynn, Lori Harder, the Governor, Nevada, Brandon Cohen, the, the c e o of Liquid iv. Like we end up having some incredible Dr. Nicole lap, the holistic psychologist on, on Instagram. All of these people join my, my book along with 39 people. And that book enables me to build a network at a very, very high level. All right. And it allows me to really establish myself as a legitimate coach in the online space. Right. So you, so I wonder when I was listening to this, like see the different ways you can utilize these books, build your network, increase your revenue, lead ’em into a higher ticket item, build credibility. These are all things that I’ve done from these. And then my fourth book, big Idea to Bestseller is literally my, my newest book.

(18:09):
And it’s all about how to write and launch a non-fiction book to grow your business and make an impact. And this is the book that directly correlates to my current coaching program, big Idea. It’s a bestseller, Where we help people write and launch non-fiction books to grow their business and make an impact. And this book was the one that I mentioned. I wrote in 87 days. I shared the journey every single day on my social. We did a podcast every single week. We brought in tens of thousands of dollars before the book was even launched. We had months worth of social content created before the book was even launched. The book launched. We had our biggest launch yet with the least amount of time and money invested on my end. It goes the power of building consistency over time. And now this book is being read by people every day I’m getting a message every week I’m getting somebody saying, Jake, holy smokes. I always wanted to write a book, but I just didn’t know that I could actually do it this quickly. Or that it would actually help me in all of these ways. And that leads us to this conversation, four books in just Turn 30. And now, um, you know, we’re really focused on sharing these strategies with the world and, uh, helping other people do the same thing.

RT CUSTER (19:15):
Hey, it’s rt. Thanks so much for listening to the Fast Foundation’s podcast. I want to see you in the room. I don’t want you to just be hearing my and our voices. Let me tell you about the Fast Foundation’s Mastermind. It’s a six month long program, and it’s our signature program. It’s how you join our community. Every time we talk about this amazing community of almost 400 people that have gone through our mastermind that we have here on the podcast that we hear from, and our mentors, all that kind of stuff, all the guest speakers, the coaches, all the awesome things that we get to do. It all starts with the Mastermind. It’s a six month long program with two, two day in-person events. One’s in Scottsdale, one’s in Denver. Yes. They’re in amazing, beautiful places. We have them in cool spots because that’s fun.

(20:04):
We also give you six months with a coach one-on-one. And the most important thing is once you go through that mastermind and you learn from all these amazing speakers that we bring in, learn from your Coach, grow with me and Jim and the rest of our team, you get lifetime access to our community. Every single thing that we do is recorded and uploaded into a private platform off of Facebook, off of social media’s, all the credit crap. And it’s saved in one place that you have, again, lifetime access to. So when you join the Fast Foundation’s Mastermind, which you can learn more about at fastfoundations.com, and click on join the community to apply, when you join this mastermind, you are in our community for life. I really hope to see you in the room, and I hope to talk to you soon.

(20:56):
I love it, Jake. And first of all, congratulations on the success. Like, thank you. That’s, that’s gotta feel good. Every time you get one of those messages, every time somebody tags you in a story and you see your own book cover, like, that’s gotta be such a good feeling. And I think we, we should just take, take a moment for you and, and, and think about how awesome that that might feel. And if you’re listening to this, you know, that’s, I I think we’ve, we’ve gone through pretty much every way you could be motivated and every different idea. And so for some people, motivation is money. So it’s like, okay, I’m gonna write a book so I can make some money. Some people it’s like, and for me, this is a big one. Like, I want to be a speaker. I want to be interviewed on big podcasts. Like I wanna be on, I wanna speak at like some of the greatness, you know, with, with Lewis, Howes and I was sitting there at some of the Greatness last year, and I’m realizing everyone on stage that’s at that event.

(21:49):
And if you think about it, everyone that’s on his massive podcast is an author. And then you’re like, at the end of the podcast episode or the speech, Lewis Howes comes on. He is like, by the way, by their book <laugh>, check it out. And I’m like, ah, maybe I, I think that’s the first time. I think I might have texted you after that and been like, I think I might have to write a book, <laugh>. Because it’s just such, it’s such a cool motivation. And then if, if you, if you are, if you’re into other people saying you’re cool and awesome, probably another thing that, you know, you can get by writing a book and people will tag you and like, talk about it. So I, I love it. Thank you for, for the, the backstory. All that makes sense. Um, I think that leads, like what’s, what’s your next book? What’s your next thing? What’s the next thing that you’re focused on and, and working on? Or are you still in like, you know, kind of launch mode and focused on being the bestseller?

JAKE KELFER (22:40):
So for this book, you know, our big focus right now is just pushing it out there, getting it out there. And I have, you know, several other books that we’re gonna do and different experiments we’re gonna try because there’s a, a variety of different books. You know, there’s the guider how to book, right? This is very much like the majority of, of the books, big Idea to bestseller. It’s a guider how to, this is what most online people, coaches, consultants, are going to create. But then you also have the interview book, like The Elevated Entrepreneur. You also have a quote book that you could do that’s a little quicker. Just put your favorite quotes together, add some analysis, and boom, you could do a daily book like The Daily Stoic, right? Where people spend every single day with you reading one page. Talk about a way to get in the mind of your ideal client. Have your book on their shelf every single day for a year. All right. Tell me that person isn’t gonna take action and follow what you got going on. Right?

RT CUSTER (23:33):
A hundred Percent. Yeah.

JAKE KELFER (23:33):
You could do a business fable, right? Patrick Glenn sealing five Dysfunctions of a team, John Gordon training camp, the Energy Bus. These are other great books, fictional stories around real world business principles. And then you have like your legacy books. So I have many more books in me, uh, many partnerships to be created on these different books. But for right now, we’re really focused on trying a bunch of different strategies and new strategies to really help sell books, to bring in leads. And I’ll give you a little sneak peek right now. Um, for everyone that’s listening, cuz you guys are all growing your businesses is I’m getting leads for a dollar. Okay? And this is a strategy that doesn’t require paid ads, it doesn’t require webinars, it requires good social content. And then I’m literally gifting my Kindle book to people. It’s 99 cents. So I will buy it for people and I will gift it to them and they’ll receive it from Amazon and they’ll be able to read it on their Kindle, their, their tablet, their their Mac. Their phone, whatever. And I’m bringing in leads every day for 99 cents because they’re giving me their email and I’m gifting them my book. And so it’s a really, really great way. Like, what other thing can you do to get leads for a dollar? Not much.

RT CUSTER (24:45):
Not not much. Yeah. We, Jim and I talk about that all the time on, on the podcast and in our, in our events and stuff, it’s like, okay, let’s, let’s talk marketing, let’s talk paid spend. So yeah, that’s, I didn’t even think about that. That’s so cool

JAKE KELFER (24:57):
So, so that’s just one thing. But if you look at it like, I got this book, right? I spent 87 days, 52, 55 minutes a day working on this. Now I have this book. Okay. Now I’ve been able to use this to pitch myself for podcasts, I have about 50 plus social posts already created that are gonna come out over the next few months from this book. Right. I’m giving this away to people’s masterminds. I’m being invited to speak in people’s coaching calls. I’m invited, you know, to be on podcasts because of this story. Right. We’re bringing in leads because there’s resources in the book that people can go download for free that’s converting at over 65% right now. So there’s unlimited ways to use your book once you have it. And that’s the thing I really want everyone to know is, look, we are in a unique time period.

(25:45):
We’re coming out of the pandemic, we’re headed into a recession, we’re already in it technically, and we have to find something that will differentiate ourselves from everybody else. And we have to figure out a way to do that fast. The fastest way to do something that will give you the opportunity to leverage your business for the next five to 10 years is a book. You write a book in three, six months and then you could use it for the next five years, build a course, social content, high ticket consulting, mastermind retreats, physical products. You can do all of these things with the book affiliate referral partners, free plus shipping funnels. There’s endless ways to use one product. All you have to do is put in the time once and then you can use it over and over again in different angles. And that’s how you maximize your time.

(26:29):
And on top of that, you have a freaking book. How awesome is that? Like that’s, that’s question’s thing, right? Is after all of this, that most of these marketing strategies, you do one and you get one benefit or two, and you get two benefits. This, you get all of those benefits, onboarding gifts, persuading clients to, to know that you’re the right person for them. Right. Building that, no, like, and trust, I mean, it’s, it’s unbelievable. And the best part is you don’t have to do any of the distribution or fulfillment on your end. Amazon will do all of that for you. You just need to get it up there and get to that point. So a book is really, in my opinion, you know, and what we’re seeing is it’s the fastest way to differentiate yourself in a crowded space. And it’s the easiest thing to do the work once cause you have to do it right. And then you can leverage it into so many other avenues and aspects of your business.

RT CUSTER (27:16):
I love it. Now I think a question that, that I have and a lot of people have is, okay, so I can do it quick. You did it in 90 days or less. That’s amazing. Financially, what are the costs associated with writing a book? And wh where do they come from? You know, because I I, I’m sure, besides my time to write it, do I need to hire an editor? How does publishing work? How much does Amazon charge for the logistics and all that kind of stuff. What should I expect to spend on marketing when I launch? God? What am I missing? <laugh>, you know, cost wise, uh, what does does that look like for most people?

JAKE KELFER (27:54):
Sure. So, I mean, me and you, we think the same way. When we want to get something done and we wanna get something done fast, we look for a mentor, um, and a person to work with. So, one thing that will help speed up your process and save you thousands of dollars in the process, and we see this time and time again, is to work with somebody like me or another form of a book coach or company that can help you bring your book to life. Right? I’ll give you an example real quick of why this is so important. We had a client, she spent over 20 grand piece piece mailing all the different pieces, months and months and months, spent over 20 grand. She ended up working with us and in just a short period of time, about a month or two, we had her book up on Amazon ready to launch, and she became a best seller.

(28:37):
So it’s really about making sure you spend your time and your money wisely. So that’s one area. Okay? Now you can get a ton, a ton of this stuff, YouTube, videos, free content, my free content, whatever the actual tangible costs that come with a book, again, are this number one, do you want someone to write the book for you? Okay. So do you want a ghost writer or do you wanna write it yourself? All right. I normally encourage most people to write it themself unless they really don’t wanna write it. English isn’t their first language and they want it to sound from written from a, a native English speaker. Um, sure. Or they’d rather trade money for times at a time for money. Sure. So that’s the biggest thing. Do you wanna write it or not write it yourself? That’s, that is a potential expense.

(29:21):
Uh, most people that we work with write the books themselves, but we have a lot of people that we do ghost writing for. Then couple other expenses that are gonna be across the board you’re editing. Okay. I highly encourage everybody to hire a professional editor. Don’t hire your 10th grade English teacher. Don’t hire a friend with a PhD in English unless they are editors of nonfiction books. And an editor can range between a couple hundred books to several thousand dollars depending on your word count, depending on the quality of the editor, depending on the types of edits that you need. Right? So this is very, it fluctuates. All right? But that’s a ballpark. So if you wanna do a low end, like a five or Upwork freelancer, you can get it on the lower end. If you want to get a really good, uh, individual editor, um, you know, a thousand bucks, 1500 bucks could be really great.

(30:13):
And if you want to get somebody who’s done some of the biggest books, it’s gonna cost you, you know, 2,500 to five grand. Then let’s talk about cover design. Similar thing, huge range. I know people that have spent five grand on a cover and I know people that have spent $200 on a cover. It depends on what you’re going for, who you want to, to utilize with, but that can range. Yep. And then formatting. Formatting is making the interior design of the book, so making sure that the margins are legitimate, making sure that it looks like a real book and not like an amateur just took a Word document and resized it and threw it up on Amazon <laugh>, right. And that’s, that’s why self hosting gets a bad rap. But in reality, if you have the right formatter, and again, this can range several hundred bucks to several thousand dollars depending on, on the person, um, I like to say a sweet spot is 600 ish on formatting.

(31:08):
Now again, all of these things you could piecemeal together or you could just work with someone who can do all of this for you, right?. So you don’t have to go through the hassle of finding the right person, because we see people get burned time and time again. And in my book, I’d literally break down what makes a good editor, what makes a good cover designer, what makes a good formatter, how to select them, where to find them scripts. We give away scripts in the book. Like, this is all in the book because I don’t want people to have to have these questions anymore. And I know that by doing this, I’m gonna solve the problem for them right away. But I also know that they’re gonna be people that are like, this is amazing, Jake, can you just help us out and do the rest?

(31:42):
And so that’s why I really think a book is where you, where you give it all. And then I know you mentioned about publishing and I’ll, and I’ll bring it up here, um, as like one of the last final potential expenses in launching publishing is free to publish. Anybody can go on Amazon, create an account and publish your book. Uh, and you can do that for free. And the coolest part is you own all the rights, the royalties, and the order ship. Amazon does all the fulfillment for you. So let’s say your book is $18, you might get 10 bucks after Amazon ships it and f and distributes it and fulfills the order and does everything they do. You don’t touch it again. All you do is you get a royalty check. So that can be really great, but you actually don’t have to pay money to publish if you’re using Amazon.

RT CUSTER (32:25):
does Amazon print the book too? I’m sorry?

JAKE KELFER (32:27):
Amazon prints it on demand Print.

RT CUSTER (32:28):
Print and shit. Basically those print on demand companies for t-shirts and stuff, that’s what Amazon’s doing for books.

JAKE KELFER (32:34):
Exactly. It’s print on demand. So if anybody’s looking

RT CUSTER (32:36):
That makes sense

JAKE KELFER (32:37):
Yeah. Buys my paperback right now, it’ll show up on your doorstep tomorrow. And I will have done nothing other than the fact that the book is live. And then I will get a, a royalty check on the backend for every one of those, those book sales. And then the last thing I’ll leave you with here is launching, launching is probably the most variable aspect of this because people, some people wanna do massive lunch parties. Some people want to do podcast tours, press releases, um, some people wanna tap into an audiobook for their launch. There’s a lot of different things. Some people wanna do a TV tour. There’s a lot of different things that, that go into a launch. Um, so that pricing is really dependent on your budget, but you could do it for as little as a couple hundred bucks. Or you could spend, you know, some of the big names, spend tens of thousands of dollars on their launch ensuring that it’s super, super successful.

(33:25):
But ultimately, I’ll leave you with this on the pricing first you have to ask yourself, what do you actually want the book to do for you? What is the ultimate goal of writing this book? Is it clients? Is it business? Is it professionalism? Is it credibility? Is it, holy shit, I did it. What is that? And then you have to really get clear on, okay, what’s the fastest way to do the best job? And that’s the aspect that I would encourage everybody to do because you can write a book if you have an interest in it, you just need to write process and you just need to take that first step.

RT CUSTER (33:53):
Okay. So if, if you were to sum it up, let’s, let’s forget launches. Cuz like you said, it’s massive variable. Um, but from start to finish, if we say finish is pre-launch on Amazon, ready for me to click buy? What do you think is like the cheapest I can possibly do it for if I do it all myself and I hire some random people from Fiver, and what do you think is like the most anyone should spend? And then what do you think is like, average and what like it should cost? Um, if you’re, you’re willing to share and, and gimme a range, but I just, I I think that’d be valuable for people to be like, all right, this is what the budget is. And then for someone like me, I take all the logic you just gave me and say like, okay, I’ve budgeted way more than that from my last marketing campaign and I’m just giving Facebook all those dollars. So this is interesting.

JAKE KELFER (34:43):
Yeah. Lots, lots of variables here, but, but I’ll, I’ll keep it as transparent as I as I can. My first book, okay, 22 years old. Remember I was working for the Lakers, living at home with my parents. Your boy was Brooke. All right. <laugh>, I had, I had no cash. <laugh>. All right. So, so I did it as, as bootstrapped as possible. I spent every minute that I could on that book because I didn’t have any idea what I was doing that book. I, I really shortchanged it on the, the design. I, I had a friend design it who’s a professional designer Okay. But wasn’t a book designer. So there were some hiccups there I did, but she was really good. It was really, really good. I was really happy with it. But then editing and formatting, like I, I skimmed out on that. So I, I finished, you know, the first book spending less than a thousand dollars. But it was a very painful process. <laugh>

RT CUSTER (35:30):
Yeah. And a lot of your time

JAKE KELFER (35:31):
process. Yeah. And you know, it, I wouldn’t encourage someone to go through that like I did. Okay, Now, moving forward, you can spend, you know, you could find, if you want to get a ghost written, have it completely done for you, like we charge $48,000. We’ll write the book for you. We’ll edit your book for you. We’ll format your book, we’ll design it for you, we’ll publish your book, and we’ll actually help you launch it all the way to Amazon bestseller and show you what to do next. So that’s $48,000. There are people that are higher than us, lower than us. And in between, that’s if you wanna professionally ghost in and completely done for you all in under 50 K, beautiful chefs kiss

RT CUSTER (36:10):
That, that doesn’t seem like very much to me. So I’m, I’m sure there’s somebody listening to this like, oh, okay, <laugh>, I’m, I am writing my next book with <laugh>, right?. Like, that’s pretty cool. Love that

JAKE KELFER (36:20):
yeah. And the cool thing about that from a time perspective is you just have to show up for interviews for a couple months. Talk, talk for an hour and a half <laugh> We’ll write down everything and we’ll do it all for you. Right. And then it’s in your voice, in, in your words. So that is one aspect of it The majority of people. Okay. The majority of people. If you don’t have a coach, here’s a, here’s a sample budget that you could do. First you buy my book for 99 cents on Kindle. Check, as a matter of fact, DM me that you heard me on this podcast, and I’ll gift you my book and you’ll be one of my $1 leads. Okay? That’s how I’ll do. No, but,

RT CUSTER (36:54):
but you Heard man, dm, dm, Jake, what, what’s your Instagram? Let’s just

JAKE KELFER (36:58):
at Jake Kelfer, Jake Kelfer dm me, tell me, you heard us chatting about this. Tell me you’re interested are writing a book. I’ll literally give you a copy. I’ll give you a copy on Amazon, okay. And I’ll, you’ll literally, I’ll show you what I’m doing in real time, why you get this book. You wanna go the cheapest, you read this book, you follow the process step by step, that’s gonna cost you 99 cents, or actually it’s gonna cost you $0 <laugh>. Then you’re gonna hire a professional editor, you’re gonna hire a professional cover designer, and you’re gonna hire a professional formatter.

RT CUSTER (37:26):
Hmm.

JAKE KELFER (37:27):
Depending on what you do, hopefully you don’t get screwed over, okay? But if you follow what’s in the book, you should be able to do this at a very, very good price. Okay? Couple thousand dollars. All right? Now get, some people will spend 10,000 on this. Some people will try to go even cheaper, but couple thousand, three to five is a good sweet spot. Um, love it for a lot of people. Uh, and again, this is very general. There’s, there’s pros and cons to, to all of this, but, you’re gonna spend that, it’s gonna be free to publish, okay? And then your lunch budget. So if you do this really entirely on your own, just for reading my book, you could do it for a couple grand, okay? Now, if you work with someone like me, for example, or a coach, we charge $7,500 to coach you through this entire process, give you the editors, designers, and formatters that we recommend and that have discounts for our people so you don’t have to spend time or money thinking about it.

(38:19):
And we help you go from big idea to bestseller. So we coach you through that entire process over six months. And I just share that one because obviously I want everyone to know how they could potentially work with us. But two, I really share that because I want you to see that, uh, you know, writing a book doable for you. You know, everyone that’s listening to this, like, you can write this book and you can use this book as an opportunity in a vehicle to life you’ve always dreamed of, I call it the fast pass to success, but that’s kind of a nutshell, different pricings, kind of how we price ourselves, um, and various other things that kind of go with it.

RT CUSTER (38:52):
That’s wonderful, Jake, and, and thanks for sharing that because I, I think that’s, I I just want to try to demystify the process and, and make it feel accessible. And honestly, even the $50,000, $48,000 number you threw out still feels accessible if that’s truly, you know, if that’s how much you value your time and you want someone to completely do it for you, soup to nuts, that feels really good for me. And, and, um, if I had that kind of cash, I’d be, I’d already be working with you. Um, and, and like you said, all the way down to free, just buy this book and I’ll teach you how to do it, and you figure it out yourself. So, um, ton of value. Thank you. Jake.

(39:30):
Random question I want to add onto the end of this before you wrap up, is all this crazy awesome stuff with AI and chat G p T and Jasper and like these robots researching and writing for us. What do you think that’s gonna do to authors and, and how can, how can we either leverage that or, or what are your, what are your, like, your thoughts on, on all of that new really interesting stuff?

JAKE KELFER (40:01):
Uh, I, I’m having a great time. First of all, I’ll just say I’m having a great time playing around with Chad, g p t. I mean, it’s, it’s a blast. But here’s what I’m recognizing, both as I experience it and as I’m talking with different people around the book industry as well as the entrepreneurial industry, is this, as of today, it can do some really amazing things, okay? It can give you tons of social content ideas. It can give you an entire outline to your book if you have the right formula and you know what to do. But here’s the biggest thing of all chat. G P T is going to separate the people who can ask great questions from the people who can actually implement the things. And that’s where I see it being the biggest, the biggest difference. Because if you don’t know what to ask ai, it will not be able to do the thing you want it to do at the level you are hoping for it to do. However, if you could ask the right question, you’re going to give it an opportunity to perform at the level you want. And I’ll give you an example of this is I heard someone that literally wrote their book on ai, 25,000 words. They just wrote it with ai and they were like, great, but it was nowhere near ready based on the prompt they had given them. It was nowhere near ready for editing or publication. It was like a rough, rough, rough draft.

RT CUSTER (41:17):
Sure. yeah

JAKE KELFER (41:17):
Okay.

RT CUSTER (41:19):
It’s by a robot

JAKE KELFER (41:20):
<laugh>. That being said, that being said, that’s an incredible headstart that people didn’t have access to very recently. And so I would encourage you throughout any type of ai, this is what I’m personally doing as learn more about it, is I’m sharpening my question, asking skills. I think this is the one of the biggest skills you can have in life in general. But I’ve seen it specifically with this AI, is if you have a vision, you need to ask the right question for it to be able to give you the right answer. And oftentimes it’s the answer that you didn’t know you need it, but if you ask the right question, something new will come up and that will be better than the answer you were kind of hoping for originally. So that’s kind of my, my 2 cents so far on it.

RT CUSTER (42:01):
I think that’s a life lesson in general, not just about AI and, and copywriting. So thank you Jake. So much value. Where can people find you and what’s the best way to connect with you and support you if they want to?

JAKE KELFER (42:16):
The best place is gonna be on my Instagram at Jake Kelfer. And like we said earlier, you know, I wanna gift you guys all my book. So just message me, tell me you heard me on the Fast Foundations, and I’ll make sure that we get you a book in your inbox as soon as possible. I will get you the Kindle version, uh, as soon as possible. And there’s links on there. We’re doing live events this year on how to write your book and get more done in three days than you have in the last three months, three years, or even three decades. Uh, we’re doing all types of things, tons of free resources training, so find me on Instagram and, uh, let’s connect there and let’s have some fun.

RT CUSTER (42:50):
Well, thank you for being here, Jake. I appreciate you, appreciate your time. Thanks for being on The Fast Foundation’s podcast. That was another mentor session for you. If that was valuable, hit me in with a comment here on YouTube. We’re over on the podcast platforms. Let us know your thoughts, give us a review, and then, like he said, connect with Jake on Instagram. Connect with me and Fast Foundations on Instagram. Let me know who else you want to hear from. We’ll see you next time.

JESSICA BURGIO (43:21):
Thank you so much for tuning in. For more free business tips like this, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and follow us on Instagram at Fast.Foundations. What was your biggest takeaway from this episode? We wanna know, tag us on Instagram, share this episode with a friend, and leave us a five star rating and review so we can reach more incredible entrepreneurs. Like you. We’re so glad to have you as part of our community. Go to our website fastfoundations.com for details on our next in-person event. This podcast Is sponsored by Carter and Custer agency at carterandcuster.com.