One of the best ways to learn is to observe others who’ve gone before to understand how they approached the task that you’re about to undertake. The same goes for building a Book Blueprint.
In this episode of The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast, your host Scott MacMillan does a Book Blueprint Teardown of Work Less, Make More by James Schramko to help inform and inspire you to build a Book Blueprint for the book that’s going to change the trajectory of your business.
EPISODE LINKS
Work Less, Make More on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0648206009/
Work Less, Make More Book Blueprint Teardown 1-Pager: https://entrepreneurtoauthor.com/resources/
James Schramko: https://www.jamesschramko.com
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scott@grammarfactory.com
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Episode Transcript
Please note: The transcript is produced by a third party company from an audio recording and may include transcription errors.
Scott A. MacMillan:
You're listening to The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast.
Mike Manz:
Welcome to The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast, the podcast that brings you practical strategies for building authority and growing your business. And now here's your host, Scott MacMillan.
Scott A. MacMillan:
I want you to imagine something with me. You're on vacation. It's a well-earned break from the day-to-day routine of serving your clients, running personal errands and well living your life.
You promised yourself that you wouldn't check email. This is me time. You remind yourself, but in your excitement, your anticipation, you neglected to turn off notifications on your phone and instinctively like Pavlov's dog. You glance down at your screen mere milliseconds after you hear your phone buzz.
Thank you. Reads the subject line. I just finished reading your book and I have to tell you.dot dot, but that's where the two-line message preview ends. You'd promised yourself not to read work emails, but your curiosity is peaked. Okay, just this one. You unlock your phone and pull up the. And pick up reading where the preview left off.
I have to tell you, it continues. Your book really spoke to me. It was like you were inside my head. It's like, you knew exactly what I'm going through. And more importantly, it's clear that you know what I need to do to fix it. I read your book, start to finish and reread chapter five twice. This is exactly what I needed.
Thank you based on what you shared. I now know what to do, but honestly, what I'd really love to do is work with you directly. Is that possible? Can we make this happen? So now you've gotta decide. Do you respond now or wait till you're back from your holiday? well, that's a good problem to have, isn't it.
Look, I get messages like this all the time. Many authors do. But it requires that you write a book strategically coherently, logically in a way that solves your reader's problem and connects with the work that you do in your core business. The book blueprint is what I use to help guide exactly that. And if you've been following along, you'll have already learned about book blueprints back in episode.
But sometimes it can be helpful to see how other authors have put the book blueprint to good use. And that's exactly what we're going to do in this episode of entrepreneur to author.
This episode represents a new format for the podcast. One that I expect will be a popular one and that I'll bring back regularly. It's what I'm calling a book blueprint tear. What's that you ask? Well, in a book blueprint, tear down, I take a popular expertise-based nonfiction book and break it down into the core strategic parts that make up its book blueprint in doing so.
My hope for you is that it will both inform and inspire you to build your own book blueprint for the book idea that you've got itching, the inside of your. Although some of the titles I'll cover will be titles that we've published at grammar factory. Part of what I'd like to do is show that the idea of a book blueprint is quite universal.
That even if the author didn't explicitly use the book blueprint framework, that a well written book can be reverse engineered using it. And that by extension the book blueprint can and should be used to forward engineer a well written book. These episodes will all follow the same format in which I'll extract the key book, blueprint components of the book we're looking at, including the ideal reader, along with the current state they're in and the future state they'd like to be in we'll then pull out the reader's core need.
And then convert that into a question. The central question that the book answers for the. And then finally we'll summarize the solution that the author provides to answer that central question, which is effectively the big picture brainstorm stage of the book blueprint process. So with that in mind, let's get started with our first book blueprint, tear down episode.
In which we're looking at a great book published in 2017, titled work less, make more the counterintuitive approach to building a profitable business and a life you actually love written by Australian business, coach and podcast host James Schramko. Okay. The ideal reader for work less make more is a small business owner.
Their current state of affairs is that while they're exhausted hustling to earn a living from their business. They may be earning decent money or not, but in terms of return on their time effectively hourly rate or EHR ASCO calls it well, they're overworked and underpaid. Okay. So that's where they are today, but where do they want to be?
Quite simply, they want to enjoy their life. They don't wanna give up the financial security that they've built or are striving to build through their business, but they do want to work fewer hours for it and free up time to spend with their family, their friends, and on other personal goals and activities that make up a balanced life.
Now framed as a need. They need both free time and financial security time and financial security. Doesn't that sound nice. It sure does, but that's a big, broad topic to write a book on. Isn't it? And what's the solution to that? Well, that's right. Let's reframe that need as a question. The central question that the book will answer for the reader.
Now remember the important thing with the central question is that it be short and simple, that it be written the way the reader would ask. Not some double speak that the author jams together to. Cramon a dozen marketing buzzwords that they want to hit on for work less, make more. The central question is pretty clear from the title, but let's put a little bit more behind it without going overboard.
So how about this? How can I free up time to enjoy life without sacrificing the financial benefit that comes from owning my own business? How does that. Well, it feels right to me. It's in plain language and has just enough detail to guide the task of writing the book. Without trying to answer the question within the question itself.
Okay. Now on to what becomes the meat of the book, the solution, or the answer to that central question. Now, if you recall, The way you'd approach this. If you were creating a book blueprint from scratch is to write the central question in the middle of a whiteboard or a big piece of butcher paper, you'd then start to brainstorm the topics that you'd need to cover for the reader.
In order to answer that central question. In some cases, these steps would be sequential steps that the readers should follow. And in other cases they'd be major themes that aren't sequential, but are necessary in order to answer the central question for the. In many instances, these steps or themes can be grouped or named as a methodology or system, which in turn might make a great book title, but whether or not this is the case, these top level topics become the topics of the chapters for your book.
And that way we are assured that the book answers the central question and steps through the content in a logical order that brings the reader along. Now when reverse engineering, a book blueprint, we look at the structure of the book. At the chapters and the topics that they cover and in doing so can reassemble the themes or steps that the author is covering to answer that central question, the table of contents is an excellent place to start, but often we need to dig a little bit deeper, especially when chapter titles have been rewritten to spark curiosity rather than to clearly describe the chapter topic.
So here are the major topics that James Franco covers in work less, make more as best I can tell. Personal effectiveness. This is about being effective rather than productive using EHR as the central theme, as opposed to throughput, planning and goal setting, or creating a vision for where you want to take your business and using it to be proactive in seeking out and creating opportunities rather than reactively, responding to those that come first focus doing fewer things better.
And here, the author introduces the idea of 64 4, which is an extension of the Pareto principle or the principle of 80 20. Next is building a team and that's about creating leverage through hiring a team who can do the work more efficiently than you can a key tactic in increasing your EHR and reducing the number of hours that you work offers that convert this topic is about how you craft your offers so that they are irresistible.
Next is cash flow and the profit formula, which covers the fundamental financial literacy concept needed to operate a profitable and viable business customer lifetime value. This topic lays out how to think about the value of a customer and how you can use this to focus your business on the right types of customers and on expanding the value of those customer relationships.
And then choosing a business. Which is focused on how different business models lead to different demands on the business owner's time and how by selecting the right business model, you can reduce the time you need to spend on the business while still generating significant value and profits. Now often when building a book blueprint, there are a bunch of smaller topics that may not warrant their own chapters, but are nonetheless important to cover for the reader.
In this case, they might be grouped into a single chapter and covered in quick success. In work less, make more James Tramco covers a number of topics in chapter nine, grouped within the topic of no compromises and covering four compromises that readers should avoid one going for the big one time launch money, two single source dependency, three, building your business on a platform you don't own.
And four sacrificing your physical or mental. The end result of covering all the above topics is nine chapters of high value content that truly does answer the central question. How can I free up my time to enjoy life without sacrificing the financial benefit that comes from owning my own business.
Now I've created a one page tear sheet that summarizes all of this visually, and you can grab that for free over at entrepreneurtoauthor.com/podcast/resources.
And I'll put that link in the show notes too. Well, I hope this sort of book blueprint tear down is helpful for you in understanding how and why to build a book blueprint of your own.
And as you. Remember this
examining the structure of other expertise-based nonfiction books can be an excellent way to improve your own writing. Start by identifying the books, ideal reader, where they're at before reading the book and where they'll be after finishing it, then identify the reader's core need and convert that into a question.
The central question that the book will answer and finally using the content page as a starting point, take note of the major topics. The author covers to answer that central question doing this will not only make you a better writer. But we'll also save you time when you get down to building yours.
Now is the time, time to write time to publish time to grow. I'm Scott McMillan until next time.
