Should you traditionally publish a book or write an ebook or maybe self-publish a book? I thought I'd bring on my friend Dean Dwyer, a funny guy, Canadian, traditionally published author to tell you about his story, his experience publishing a book, and I thought it would be really helpful, so listen in. Hope you'll love it.
PREFER TO READ? HERE’S THE TRANSCRIPT OF MY INTERVIEW WITH Dean Dwyer.
Sylvie: Hey, guys. It's Sylvie from sylviemccracken.com, and today I have a really special guest with me, my friend, author, and all kinds of awesomeness, podcaster Dean Dwyer from deandwyer.com. Thank you so much, Dean, for being here.
Dean: You're very welcome. I love the fact that you threw in “friend” there. I feel like.
Sylvie: That was the first one I think.
Dean: That was good! That was very good!
Sylvie: That's the most important one. The rest, you're also an author, but you know, whatever. So, I brought Dean on because Dean is a traditionally published author, and that's a question that I get a lot of the time from my readers, which is, why should I publish an eBook? Which is something I teach about a lot and I write about a lot, and I've written about my thoughts on traditional publishing, but I thought, let's bring someone that has firsthand experience on the ground with a traditionally published book and hear all about it and hear what the pros are, what the cons are. Ooh, there we go, it's called Make Shift Happen, and it's still available for purchase on Amazon. No, it's not. Oh, never mind, and so, yeah, so basically, Dean, just tell us all about it. Where do you want to start basically? I guess, why did you decide to do it or how did it come about? Why did you publish a book?
Dean: There was an interesting story with that. I grew up my whole life, well, essentially, I guess from high school on, really thinking that I was not a writer. English was always my worst class, and so I only took it because I had to, so that was like 25 years, where the thought of me being a writer wasn't realistic, but I used to journal all the time. I had some success with the whole Paleo thing, and so I started a blog, and at one point, I'm like, “I have no products. I have nothing to sell,” so I was probably like a lot of your audience, no idea what I was doing, but I thought, I've got to put an e-book together, and so, sat down, did a chapter a day for 12 days, and I had something that was about 1500 words, and then I just kind of sat on it, because I didn't know what to do next, which probably a great plug for your course, because I literally. I didn't know anybody. I was doing this all on my own. No connections at all.
Sylvie: That's tough.
Dean: Yeah, and then literally, I didn't know what to do, so I get when people who have this idea and they get stuck. That was me. It was like, “Okay, I've got …” I don't know. It was probably about 120 pages, but I didn't know what to do with it.
Sylvie: But wait. That's amazing that you did that much. I mean, a chapter a day? That's pretty incredible motivation, I would say.
Dean: Yeah, that was a buddy of mine. We used to get together every couple weeks, and we had both been talking about doing something for like a year, and I'm like, “Okay, seriously. This is crazy. We keep talking about it. We're not doing it,” and so, yeah, I sat down. I would get up at 5:30 and I would write until about 9:00 or 9:30, and so it was about 1500 words that I was sort of cranking out. Yeah, which works really well for my personality. I'm kind of an all-or-nothing kind of guy. I'm not that one that's 500 words a day kind of thing. Yeah, so I had it three months. It wasn't going anywhere, but I had also started a podcast, and I had interviewed Sarah Fragoso from Everyday Paleo, and during our interview, I was fascinated. She was a published author, and her book was a bestseller, and so I was asking her all kinds of questions, and so that had been three months previous, but she had told me about her publisher, and so here I've got this book that I've done nothing with for three months, and then suddenly my interview with her flashes in my mind, and I thought, I'm just going to reach out to her publisher. So I did, and sort of a long story short, I had this e-book that I hadn't done anything with, so I sent it to them. They don't require you to have an agent, which was good, because I had no idea what was going on with all that anyway, so I sent it to them, and we went back and forth over a couple of months, and they agreed to publish it, so that was how that all ended up happening, but almost accidental, really. It wasn't something that I ever thought that I would be able to do.
Sylvie: Did they give you, how did that work from there on? They asked you basically to sit down and finish it and gave you a deadline? Did they give you an advance, or how did that work?
Dean: This is probably the disadvantage of not having an agent, and I, literally, I knew nothing about this process, so the fact that they would even, no, there was no advance, and I didn't even think about asking for one. Probably though, again, and I know different people obviously come at this differently, but that advance comes out of whatever monies you make afterwards, and so, in some ways, for them, they were taking a chance on me, so I didn't have a problem with not getting an advance, because they didn't know! They didn't know how that book was going to do, so sorry, what was the?
Sylvie: Well, no, I was just kind of curious as to how that, did they give you a deadline or a time frame?
Dean: Oh, right. Yeah, so, no advance, and essentially I had to double the size of the book that I had, so I had broken it up into 12 big ideas, so I added an additional eight, so there were 20, and essentially took the chapters from about 1500 words to about 2500 words, so it all happened really fast. I did that in a couple of months. I started talking to them in August. I submitted it in October, and then it came out the following April, so it actually, that's really fast in the publishing world. It usually doesn't go that quickly.
Sylvie: Right, and I guess, the combination of the way you work, which is not half in or half out. You're all in or all out, right?
Dean: Yeah.
Sylvie: That combination with the fact that you had some serious accountability, because having a publisher, having a deadline, having someone that's actually waiting for it and the potential to make some money with it, which I guess was the goal, as well, can really light a fire under your butt to get it done, right?
Dean: It's possible that had that not happened, I may never have done anything with that. Again, I didn't know where to go. I had no idea where to turn. I'm making this sound like I'm intentionally plugging your course, which I'm not trying to do, but I literally, I wish I had known you four years ago, because I didn't have any sense of what's next. How do you? Who do I get to edit it? Is this any good? Can I write? All kinds of things that I didn't know what to do.
Sylvie: Right, and so what happens is you do nothing, which is so classic, right? You just have that analysis paralysis. You just kind of spin in circles, and you're like, “Well, I don't know what to do, so I think the right answer is not taking any steps at all.”
Dean: Yeah, it's this sense that, I think, we think something, you know, “I'll just let it sit, and something will happen,” but if you're not actively trying to get it there-
Sylvie: Exactly.
Dean: Yeah, then nothing is going to happen.
Sylvie: I don't know what the next logical step from there is, but what do you think about traditionally publishing versus publishing yourself or would you do it again? What would you tell someone that is interested in traditionally publishing? How would you recommend they go about it?
Dean: Yeah. Again, I guess, if I'm going back in time, would I do it again? No, but was it a good experience for me? Yes, absolutely, because as I said at the beginning, I never considered myself a writer. I even kind of, I noticed it when you introduced me and said I was an author. Like, that's still something that I don't introduce myself as, simply now because the way I look at writing is I'm not out to try and win a Pulitzer prize. What I figured out writing was for me was that I write the way I speak, and I actually work really hard to write the way I speak.
Sylvie: That's how most people want to read it. They don't want this, like, you know, scholarly journal of mumbo jumbo. They just want to read it.
Dean: That's definitely not me.
Sylvie: They want to read something they can understand.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah, and I wanted it to be me. I wanted it to be a reflection. I wanted somebody to read the book and if they met me in person, they go, “You know what? That's the same guy. I get that guy,” so, yeah, for me, it was great because it made me understand that I could write and that there was an audience out there for me, and that actually I'm a good writer in the sense of what I do and how I put things together. In terms of a business model, terrible business model. So with this…
Sylvie: To clarify, what's a terrible business model?
Dean: For most people, and maybe I'm generalizing, but I'll talk about me, but most people are like me where their book will, now, to be honest, I don't know exactly how many copies this thing sold, and you said earlier, the publisher, it was available for purchase for three years, and then somebody emailed me last year and said, “I tried to buy your book, and it's not online. I emailed the publisher. They never answered me.” They took it down. You can't even buy the Kindle version now, and they didn't respond to me, which is a downside again when somebody else has your stuff. Like, I don't have any control over anything. Now, I do have the rights to my book back, so they were great with it, and it was a great experience, but I still don't know why they took it down. But when I say “terrible business model,” for most people, you don't sell that many copies. I figure I probably sold six to eight thousand with everything, with the paperback, and whatever Kindle editions, and over the 3 years, I made about $12,500, so it's not money that you're going to retire on, and that's, I knew what the average book tends to sell, so I had sort of my own, I was pretty realistic about the fact that I'm an unknown. The book is going to have marginal success, but again, for most people, it's not going to be this runaway bestseller. It's like we said off-air; like a Diane Sanfilippo or someone like that, those are the outliers. That doesn't happen for most of us, so people don't know that going in, and if that's your only way of making money, again, that's $4,000 a year over 3 years. That doesn't …
Sylvie: No, obviously, that's not quit-your-job money. I mean, I just interviewed one of my students yesterday and she, with a list of 2500 managed to bring in $25,000 euros in 3 months, to contrast, and her list, and her audience, and whatever, it's growing, but it's not massive by any means, and she did that herself. I mean, obviously she took my course and she had a framework to work through, and she hired an amazing designer, but really, she sat her butt in a chair and she did the work is really the short of it. So when I talk to people about traditional publishing, and you can tell me what you think about this, but I'm not a traditionally published author. Who knows? I might do it someday. It's not something I'm exploring any time soon, but what I kind of compare it to is kind of a business card in a way. It's a bit of an expensive business card. It still garners a lot of respect, being a traditionally published author, so if you want to do it as like your calling card because you're a speaker, or you have some other way to make money on the back-end and your book isn't going to be a significant source of income and you're totally cool with that, awesome. Go get a traditionally published book deal. But if you want to actually make money from your book, I don't know that I would recommend that. It happens in some cases for sure, but like you said, in my experience, at least from what I've seen with my colleagues, and I'm talking hundreds of people, those are definitely outliers that are actually making legit money from their book. I know plenty of traditionally published authors that are in the Paleo world, which for some of our readers who don't know what Paleo is, it's just a type of diet. You can Google it, but basically, a lot of them have a day job while they're going around all over the country to promote this book that they're making pennies on per copy. That's another question for you. Well, first of all, I guess, what do you think? Do you agree with that or do you have a different thought on that? The second question would be, as far the promotion of your traditional book, whose job was that? How much of it was your job? How much of it was the publisher's job?
Dean: I'll probably forget the second question, but I'll start with back to the whole business-model thing. When I went into this, I thought there was going to be a hard-copy edition of the book, and so when the book, so essentially, this is the way I think you have to look for most people. A publisher essentially all they're doing is they're saying, “You know what? We're going to put the money upfront to basically print the book. Everything else really falls on you. Unless you're a really established name, then everything else falls on you,” and I didn't realize. I didn't know that. I didn't know that, and I didn't have the confidence at that time to be able to actively promote my book. Like I said, it was all kind of a shock that I even became a published author, but I really thought they were going to do all that, and I ended up working with, they didn't even have, again, I was working with a small publisher, but they didn't have anybody that was really working with me, and they weren't really doing anything to really help me do that. I had to sort of reach out, and they were really great with free copies. I could send free copies out, but it was all, like, “Who do you want to send these to?” So it was really all about me doing that. So, sort of knowing that, again, it's, If I have to do all the legwork anyway, it doesn't make any sense to do all the legwork and get, I was getting a little over a dollar on the soft cover and I think it was, I couldn't even figure out what I was getting from the Kindle version, to be honest. It was somewhere between one and two dollars. It was really hard. Like, I'd get these statements, and I'm like, “I don't even know what this means.” There was nothing on it! So when I say that, I mean, you're doing all the work anyhow, and even with the prestige thing, again, unless you're a big name, I'm not sure that it, for me, again, I think it was a confidence thing, right? I could say or people could say, “He's a published author,” but in terms of all the other things that go into essentially creating a, because really what you're doing is, you're not just writing a book. You're building a business around that book, and there are some people out there that, you mentioned earlier too, and I wanted to talk about that was, if your audience knows Brendon Burchard. When he writes a book, he's got a whole back-end series that's going on there, right? So the book acts almost like the card. It's like, he'll give the book away, and you just pay for the shipping, but then there's his course and all these other things, and he makes millions off that. I had nothing going with that, so.
Sylvie: That's something I still recommend, whether you do. I've told my readers as well or my customers and my e-book course as well. I recommend you have a back-end even if you are making a whole bunch of money.
Dean: Absolutely.
Sylvie: Why not, right?
Dean: Yeah, it's a smart business model regardless of which approach that you take with that. What was the second question?
Sylvie: You kind of tied it in. It was basically, whose job was it to promote and to sell? Because I think the misconception sometimes is that you get this traditional published book deal, and here comes this publisher, and they're like, “Dean, come with me,” and they take you under their wing, and they tell you what to write and how to write it, and then they're going to sell it for you. They're going to do all the hustle part before, during, and after to kind of sell it for you. Maybe if you're Cameron Diaz, like you said, but otherwise, I don't know that that's the way it goes. I think that's a misconception, and it's something that you need to know before you go into it, where you need to make that decision. Are you willing to do it? Do you have the connections to do it? Do you have the platform to do it? If you do, if the answer to that is yes, do you want to do it? Really, it's a decision.
Dean: Yeah, again, I look at it now. As I said, it was a great experience, and it wouldn't have got me to where I am now had I not done that because then you kind of realize, I also realized that I like owning my content, because when you give your book away, which is what you're doing, when you give it away to a publisher, you can't do anything else with it. You can't repackage it into a course or anything else. They own that content, and so, I like that idea now of “I own everything.” Again, the list is mine. Everything is mine. Really all they're doing is, yeah. The first thing they're going to ask you now if you're going the traditional route is “How big is your list?” So if that's what they're going to ask, then why is that I'm going with them? Again, I wouldn't say no if an opportunity came along again. However, I would do it on my terms this time, and it wouldn't be like, “Oh my God, I've got to have this out.” It would be like, “I'd be interested, but here are all the things that would have to happen in order for me to do it.” Again, if I didn't have it, I wouldn't do it. But again, that's somebody that can say, I can check that off. It's not as glamorous though as people think that it is.
Sylvie: Right. Right. I guess it's whatever you want to make of it. What I've heard from some of my colleagues who have traditionally published books is that a lot of the big publishers, I guess, to put it some way, expect you to have an audience of, like, close to 100,000 people, whether that's email, subscribers, or Facebook fans, or adding all of that, basically have your reach be of that caliber. I'm talking to publish books with the big five publishers, I suppose. Does that sound accurate to you? Is that in your experience what it is?
Dean: Again, I went with a smaller. I was actually kind of surprised listening to that. That was like, “Oh, wow. I didn't realize that's what it is with the big publishers.” Mine was a small publisher, so again, no agent, so I didn't really, I totally, I'm not surprised by what you're saying although when you look at it. If I've got 100,000 people, why would I give that away to somebody else to get just a fraction? You do all the work and you're not, like, even the way it's set up, it doesn't scale properly, because again, they're putting the money upfront. I'm doing all the work. I'm the one that's going to market this thing, and I'm at the bottom of the ladder in terms of the payout. It really doesn't make any sense.
Sylvie: Right. Right. Makes sense. The other thing I've definitely heard from some of my friends who have done traditionally published books with and without agent is basically the lesson learned there is definitely use an agent. It's worth giving up a certain percentage in order to get that deal tight and right.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah, and I said, under different circumstances, I might have gone a different route, but again, where I was at in my life and the fact that I never thought I'd be an author, I was fine without the agent, and I said I don't think that that. It's a good book, but it wasn't a New York Times bestselling kind of book. One of the other things too was like, so the cover, I'm only showing because you can't buy this, but I'm showing you. The cover, the day before they were going to send it off, he emails me and says like, “So what do you want for the cover?”
Sylvie: A day before?
Dean: Yeah! I was like, “What do I want? I thought you guys were doing that!” I was like, “I don't know! I don't know! What do you think it should be?” So I literally sketched out something like this, and this became the cover, which I didn't mind it at the time. The title of the book, it's terrible by the way, and that was something else that I would have if it was my own book, I would change it. I would've changed the title, because it doesn't-
Sylvie: Well, now you can, because it is your book again, right?
Dean: Yeah. Yeah, and it doesn't stand alone. For people when you're creating a title. Like, your titles for your books are amazing, because people are not, like, the Gelatin Secret, they're not going to go, “What is?” They know what that is! Make Shift Happen, they'd be like, “Oh, that's clever,” but they don't know what it means, and I wanted to change the cover and I sent them an email and got nothing back from them on that either. The inside looks like a big photocopy. I was so disappointed. They sent me 40 books, 40 books that, I took one out. I was so excited. I opened it up, and I was like, “Oh my God. I wouldn't buy my book.”
Sylvie: Oh, wow.
Dean: It looks awful! It really looks like a big photocopy, and so I had 40 books that I kept for about a year and a half. I didn't even give them out. I was too embarrassed to give them out.
Sylvie: Oh my God.
Dean: Yeah, and again, it's a lesson learned in terms of how I want to do business, but it's, like, design is important to me, and I want something to look great that people have their hands on, and I had no control over that.
Sylvie: It's funny because with an e-book, what I always tell my students is, you've got to, we talk about titling a lot. We have a whole module on design and title and cover and all that stuff, and we also have the sales page where you have kind of an extra chance to put in more images, give more info, but with a traditionally published book, you have the front cover. You have the back cover, and you have the spine, and you're out of room, so if you're not using that real estate to, really, sell your book, if people are at a newsstand or at the airport looking for a book to read on the plane, they see the spine first. If that calls their attention, then maybe they look at the front, and if that calls their attention, then maybe they look at the back, and if that didn't do it, and they flip through it and they don't like what they see, then you're done. Your whole message, they haven't even gotten that far, so that's even more critical I think in a traditionally published book.
Dean: Right. Back to you're talking about e-books. That's the advantage, too, is you create an e-book. You come up with a title and a cover and whatever else, and you put it up, and if you find it's not working, you get to change it! Have you had a chance to talk with Hal Elrod?
Sylvie: Not personally. But I was on his round table. You and I were probably on his round table together?
Dean: Right.
Sylvie: He introduced me to some people, so yeah, Hal's amazing.
Dean: Yeah, and he-
Sylvie: That's an example of self-publishing gone well. He does print books, but they're still self-published. He doesn't do traditional publishing with them, so there's a good example as well.
Dean: Making about $7 a book, and yeah, he's a great story to follow. In that round table, he mentioned the fact that he was going through all the reviews, the one- and two-star reviews and taking that feedback and updating the book, and again, that's the power.
Sylvie: That's pro right there. That's pro. Because you know, a lot of the times, you can go the route of “Oh, haters gonna hate,” but that's another thing that I tell my students as well is, definitely. There's definitely some haters. You're definitely going to deal with some negative people, but before you kind of dismiss it, see if there are any nuggets in there that you can actually improve upon, right? Any of the bad feedback that's actually applicable, and if you start seeing it more than once, you should probably pay attention and actually make some tweaks.
Dean: It's funny. This is not a plug for the podcast, but that's what yesterday's podcast was. It was about criticism, because that was something else that was new to me too. Again, I didn't have an, there's 54 reviews on there, but there was only one one-star, but the one-star was like a punch in the face, like, you forget all the five-star ones, and you're just reading that one-star, and that's something. This is a different podcast or a different message for people, but there is going to be criticism. It doesn't matter how great your stuff is; someone's not going to like it, which is startling, and I wish that somebody had prepped me for that as well too, that it doesn't, look at all the great people on the planet that have done great things, there was always somebody that was opposed to what they were doing, whether it was Gandhi, it was nonviolent freedom, and he gets assassinated! There's always somebody out there that's not going to like what you're doing, and that was a harsh reality for me to kind of understand this like, “Yeah, it's a mathematical certainty. It's going to happen.”
Sylvie: Totally, and it's part of putting yourself out there, and I think it's why so many people don't. It's definitely.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly why they don't.
Sylvie: Yeah, or why we hesitate. A lot of what happens with my students sometimes and with myself as well, is, you get to that, you kind of procrastinate a little bit before starting, with the whole, “Who am I to write this book? Who am I to” You know, all those Who-am-I's, all that mindset stuff that comes up. Then there's the next hurdle of, you get it two-, three-quarters of the way done or 90% done, and then it all comes up again, where you're like, “Oh, I don't know. It's about time to go out onstage,” and you have all those hesitations again, right? So, I think that those procrastination can be because you're going to put yourself out there, and a couple of people are going to throw tomatoes, and you're going to have to deal with that.
Dean: I'll tell your audience this: The first book that you write should be an e-book, just to learn what it is you need to learn, but it is the greatest personal development program that you will ever partake in because it will prey on every insecurity that you have, and there's one of two ways to look at that. Someone's going to say something, and it's going to flatten you, and you're not going to get up and you're going to quit, or it's going to flatten, and it does flatten. You're going to get flattened, but you get up, and you, like you said, you take a look at it. “Was this helpful or not?” And you know, some people are just mean, and you dismiss those. You dismiss the ones that just aren't helpful at all, but some people have valid points. And yeah, I said that there's no better way to grow personally than to come up with your own idea, put it out into the world, and ask money for it, and then be willing to sort of step back and say, “Man, I am going to learn. It's going to be scary. It's going to knock me down at times, but I am going to learn so much about myself.” Then when you do your next one, it'll be 10 times better than the first one, and it's a wonderful, it's scariest thing you'll ever do, but once you get. I tell people the first time that I started writing, I was writing to friends. This was before I even got to the book. I was writing 12 friends, and I would send an email out. Scared the bejeebers out of me, and it was just email. Then I would refresh my email to see if anybody responded. It was so terrifying, and now I'm at the point where it's like, “I don't need, I don't even.” If I could take reviews off a book, I would, because I don't need someone to tell me it's great or it's awful. They get to choose, but that's again, sort of, the process that over four years, five years now of writing.
Sylvie: Yeah. Amazing. Obviously, for people listening, your story is one story of many. Some people have had great experiences traditionally publishing a book. I have a feeling that your story is not all that unique and what's more likely though is that you're unique in that you're so open about this, because I feel like people like to sugarcoat it. People don't really like to admit that they have to hold down their full-time job because their traditionally published book is just not cutting it. Instead, they sort of, it's a bit of a, they create a bit of a façade. I've certainly seen that in a handful of cases, for sure, so I appreciate how open you are with this whole journey.
Dean: You're very welcome. Yeah, there's a lot of ego involved in the whole traditionally published thing too, which people probably don't want to say, right? But you get to be able to say, “I'm a traditionally published author,” which only lasts for a little bit, but it. Again, you're not just writing a book. You're building a business, and so, I do think that e-book route is a far, especially when people are just. If you do the e-book stuff first and then you created a platform where you, now, you have all the control.
Sylvie: I would say even if you plan on traditionally publishing a book, I would almost say, I mean, I definitely have students who are considering at some point shopping their e-book to a publisher, which, hey, if you want to do that, totally great. But you have a lot more negotiating power when you go in and say, “I've sold this many thousand copies, and look at the testimonials, and look at the fan base around this.” That's a whole different ballgame than walking in with a list size of zero saying, “I have an idea,” because ideas, you know, everyone has an idea, but the execution really is where it's at and where you prove your ideas, when you really put it out there, and people are responding positively to it, so.
Dean: I have one final story just on that. I have a friend in the Paleo space. She's a big name. I won't mention her name, but she is a big name. She self-published her first book, and it was doing really, really well. Publisher approached her after about a year or so, and she had sold, I don't know, 20,000 copies of her book on her own, and so they agreed to publish it, and she regretted that decision afterwards, because again, first of all, money comes in once every six months and it's like three months backdated, and again, it's a fraction of what she was making with her self-published book. So, there's a few advantages, really, for the big players, but for most of us, we're not going to be the big player. It just makes a lot more sense to think about this, I think even sometimes the idea of an e-book does the e-book an injustice because you're building a business around gelatin, or you're building a business around whatever topic. You featured Holly last week. She's building a business around sauerkraut, and that's a better way to look at it, and the e-book helps facilitate the business and grow the business and get.
Sylvie: It's just the start, but it's a big start, and I don't know about you, but I don't have six months to wait to get a check for what sold last spring or whatever. I don't know that the bank will appreciate that when it comes time to pay the bills, so.
Dean: When you get your money, like, I had no idea. I didn't know where sales were coming from. There was no way to, you can't optimize that! It's like, they, how do they even come out? I honestly think they were just like, “You know what? Let's give him this much this month. I don't know. What do you think? That sounds fair. See where he is on the scale. Yeah, that's good enough. Give him six grand this month. It'll be fine.” He doesn't know. He's just happy to be a published author! He'll take whatever we give him.
Sylvie: I'm dying. That's one thing I should've said at the introduction. Dean is funny as heck. I don't know if you noticed on the whiteboard behind, he left a message for me and all of you, so this is just part of Dean's humor. Oh my God. Dean, you just started a new podcast. Tell people what it's a little bit about.
Dean: You know what? It's sort of, one of the things I learned from the book. So here was the other thing too was, I kind of got in the Paleo space. This isn't a Paleo book although I do have a chapter on there, but it was really more just about mindset, but from that, I started interviewing, I mentioned I had interviewed Sarah, but I wasn't interested in Paleo. I was interested in how people develop their lifestyles, and so this podcast is really just sort of lessons on the journey. It's kind of directed at creatives, people like us, who got something else we want to do, and just, I'm only four episodes in, but the last episode was that, was on criticism, and some counter intuitive stuff, stuff that I wish that I had known. Like, in the episode I just talked about, again, because the criticism thing-
Sylvie: Yeah, we'll link to that specific episode, as well.
Dean: Yeah, nobody ever told me that, again, you're going to get it. You're going to get it. It's shocking that you think, but I'm trying to change the world with this! I'm trying to do good! Someone's going to find fault with that is a shocking thing to learn. Yeah, so it's just about that. I kind of, it's personal growth for people with a sense of humor.
Sylvie: Love it. Definitely have to have a sense of humor. That's definitely what comes with hanging out with Dean. Dean, thank you so much for sharing all of this. You were so candid and open and honest, and I'm sure people will have all kinds of different reactions. Some people might agree; some people might not agree; some people might have different experiences.
Dean: Which is totally fine, right? You take this stuff and you think, yeah, it was a good idea, and that guy has no idea what he's talking about with that, and you just sort of, that's …
Sylvie: Take what serves you, and whatever. At the end of the day, it's everybody's decision. My whole thing is, have the information and then make whatever decision you want to make for your route.
Dean: Absolutely. Although, in fairness to me, everything I said, you're going to want to take it. All of it.
Sylvie: All the time.
Dean: It's all good, people!
Sylvie: Dean’s prescription. Awesome. Cool. Dean, where can people find you and where can people learn more about you?
Dean: Just deandwyer.com right now is the best place to go.
Sylvie: Awesome. I will put that link below this video so you can go check out Dean. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Thank you so much for sharing everything.
Dean: Yeah, no, it was great. Your audience is going to get so much great. First of all, you have an amazing story. Are we still recording?
Sylvie: Yeah.
Dean: Can I do a little plug for you? Because you have, for people who, first of all, you've got not one, Like, you can create one e-book and make six figures off it. To do it twice, there are not many people that have that story, because it's not, you can lucky and do it once, right? You've got to know what you're doing to do it twice, and so I think that what you're going to show, it's going to help them immensely.
Sylvie: Thank you, Dean. I really appreciate it.
Dean: Good for you that you're putting this out in the world so people can change their lives, and she didn't pay me to say that, folks! That was me! That was all me!
Sylvie: Check's in the mail, Dean. Yeah, no, I mean, thank you. I appreciate you sharing that, and I think a lot of the times we talk about money, and obviously passive income's in the title of my course, but you know, as we were talking with some of my students, like the interview that I have coming out soon with Edurne. She's changing so many thousands of lives with her book. Her book is in the health and nutrition space as well, and so that can get pretty cheesy, and we can get pretty serious and whatnot, but honestly, that's freaking amazing. Obviously she's making a full-time living with it, and that's incredible as well. Her life has changed. Her family's life has changed, but she's impacting thousands of people with this work, and she's able to do that because she's able to support herself. If she had to have a full-time day job, then she'd be impacting a few less people, so that's pretty good stuff.
Dean: Well said. I have nothing clever to add to that one. I'll just be quiet.
Sylvie: The end. Okay, we'll cut it there then. Alright, folks, so if you want to learn more about creating passive income with eBooks, you can find me at sylviemccracken.com. The links will be below the video.
Dean: Woohoo!
Sylvie: Thank you for joining us.
If you love that interview let us know. I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.
