Matt: Welcome to another episode of Publish & Prosper. Today we're going to be talking about designing a workflow to support your growing author brand.

Lauren: Well, that sure is a bunch of words.

Matt: It is a bunch of words. It's slightly ambiguous on purpose, because some people might hear the word workflow and go, what the hell are they talking about? Some people might say, well, I already have a workflow, so I'm not sure that I need to design or build a new one. But could use some help with it, whether they know it or not. And some might think they don't have one at all when they truly do. But either way, we've got seven things that you've laid out. To help people design a better workflow that will ultimately lay out a roadmap for long term growth. Right?

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Did I say that right?

Lauren: Yes you did.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: And not just a roadmap for long term growth, but something that will, will help you... I'm so tired of using the word scale, but unfortunately that is kind of what I mean here. I think a lot of creators run into this problem, this is something that we hear a lot from different people, that the more you grow your creator business, whether it's as an author or a content entrepreneur or a content creator or whatever it is. The more the more it grows, and the more attention that you get, the more you start to monetize, whatever, the harder the actual content creation part becomes. Because there's more moving elements, there's more other things that you're responsible for doing.

Matt: Yeah. I don't think it gets harder. I think time management –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – becomes an issue. Because again, you don't have a really good, you know, sort of strategy for how to take care of all those other things –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – that are part of your actual workflow. And I think that's the intention of this, is to help people make more time to go back to the actual creating of content piece of it.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Because there's nothing worse than, like, getting into something because you love it. Whether it's writing or podcasting or blogging or creating Instagram content, whatever it is. You got into this because you genuinely love this and enjoy doing it.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: And somewhere along the line, you've made, like, a business out of it. And now the thing that you originally –

Matt: Whether you realize it or not.

Lauren: Right. And now the thing that you originally loved doing, that got you here in the first place, is the thing that you have the least amount of time for, or it's become a chore.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: Or it's become something that, like, you just Frankenstein all this together, and now you have to figure out some kind of way to streamline this so that it's not taking up too much of your time, but you still actually get to do it.

Matt: Yeah, because the best way to keep it going is consistency and habits.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Right? So.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: That's what suffers when you, when you don't have a solid plan and you're trying to – now you got to do marketing and now you've got to do sales, and now you've got to worry about discoverability more than you ever have. So when you're not actively creating habits and patterns and, you know, things that help you do the stuff consistently, you get punished by the algorithms, you get punished by your audience. And a lot of stuff starts to, to take you in a bit of a downward spiral. So.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Yeah. So we're going to talk through... whether, whether you fall into the category of people that has never considered your content creation to be any kind of systematic workflow. Or maybe you have one, you have been kind of approaching it that way, but you've just, you're realizing that it's not sustainable the way that it is right now or whatever. Whether this is a brand new idea for you or something that you've, you've established, but you just needed an opportunity or a reason to kind of take another look at it and refresh it... This episode is for you.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: What it's not going to be, though, is a list of tech recommendations. I'm going to make the slightly bold claim that your tech stack isn't as important as your workflow. Because your tech stack should be the pieces that make your workflow, like, streamlined and convenient for you.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But you need to know what that workflow is before you know what pieces of tech you need to plug in there in order to make that happen.

Matt: I agree with that.

Lauren: Cool. Love that.

Matt: In a odd twist of fate.

Lauren: I love when you agree with me.

Matt: In a plot twist, I agree with that.

Lauren: Wow.

Matt: I don't think you can even really try to wrap your head around what tools should I be using if you don't have a solid workflow strategy yet.

Lauren: I agree.

Matt: I mean, certainly you can use tools, you know, in your already disjointed workflow. Yes. But you may find better tools, or you may find better ways to use those tools together when you've strung together a workflow that, that makes your, you know, weekly output more efficient.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And more optimized. So yeah, I also agree, we don't need to go through a list of tools for those reasons. And the simple fact that these days it almost seems a little bit silly to recommend tools when they're outdated two weeks after this episode lands. You know, some of them –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – not all of them. I mean, some will be evergreen. There's just some tools that are always going to be, you know, helpful or part of your workflow. And then there's other tools where it's like, yeah, this is great. For a month, and then something else comes out that's twice as good.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And twice as cheap, or free, or whatever that might be. So, yeah, I agree, we don't need to talk about tools and tech right now.

Lauren: Yeah. We also did an episode similar to this. Not, not entirely, but we did an episode recently on automating fulfillment.

Matt: Yeah. Which is just one piece of the workflow.

Lauren: Yes. Which is, which is one, one piece of this. But I don't want people to be like, wait, hang on. Didn't you guys just do something about this? So... Because it is kind of similar in the premise of like, whether, whether you're starting from square one or you're at a position right now where you're like, oh gosh, like, things are not sustainable anymore. I can't keep up with my current workload. I can't keep up with the current demand, the current content creation schedule, whatever it is. And by content, to clarify, I mean anything from social media content to regular blog or podcast or video content, to even something as big as a book. Like.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: This is –

Matt: Well just, yeah –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – your daily writing or creation habits, whether you're writing the next chapter of the third book in a series that you're doing, you know, or it's your next long form piece of content that you're going to be posting on, you know, or through Substack or, again, the next episode of your podcast. Yeah. Content is content. For, for our purposes and what we're talking about, it's all content.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah. All mediums. This is gonna be fun.

Lauren: I think we should just get right into it.

Matt: Okay. So what are the the seven, sort of steps, seven pieces of the workflow that we're going to talk about?

Lauren: I'm so glad you asked.

Matt: Are you going to put this nice little graphic up that you made?

Lauren: I am going to put this nice little graphic up.

Matt: I think you should. Yeah.

Lauren: I am. But we've kind of broken this down into seven steps. Your workflow might not align perfectly within this, but here is a framework that you can use if you need to try to reconsider or build something from zero. Step one creation.

Matt: That's right. Step two is production.

Lauren: Step three is distribution or discoverability.

Matt: Step four is marketing.

Lauren: Step five is sales.

Matt: Our favorite.

Lauren: Your favorite, maybe.

Matt: Step six fulfillment.

Lauren: And step seven insight.

Matt: Yep. Feedback.

[8:14] – Steps 1 and 2 - Creation and Production

Matt: The first two steps are creation and then production. Isn't production a part of creation, at times? Like, if I'm filming a video, the editing or some of the other things I’ll need to do, isn't that part of the creation process? Why is that separated out as production? And, and I guess effectively the question would be what is creation, then?

Lauren: Yes, they are very obviously similar and overlapping pieces of this kind of workflow. But I think that a lot of people that are doing content creation well will treat these separately, because they will do batch creation of content. And I think that it's easier to actually think about this as two separate pieces. If you, if you think about, like... We are recording episode 121 right now, right? I am currently in the process of finishing up the editing of episode 119. And we've already recorded episode 120, but I haven't started editing yet. So technically we are complete on the creation stage of two episodes, and then currently actively in the process of completing the creation stage of a third episode. But the production –

Matt: So what you’re telling me is you’re way behind.

Lauren: No, I'm way ahead. The production of these episodes, the actual editing, getting them polished and ready to publish, schedule, creating the promo content for them, stuff like that, which is all stuff further down the line... we're in different stages there. So if somebody is creating a lot of social media content, if you're, if this is your workflow for how to create social media content. Maybe you are going to dedicate one day to doing a photo shoot, and you're going to do a photo shoot, and you're going to use that content from that photo shoot for the next two months worth of content. Those are two different processes. Like, creating the content. Whether it's taking photos, shooting video footage, recording, podcast, drafting your book or your blog post or whatever. And then separately from there, going in, editing it, fine tuning it, cleaning up the recording, editing, like the photos that you took or whatever you're doing there. I think it's important to think of those as two separate pieces of work.

Matt: Okay. So the difference between creation and production is, you know, in the world of literature, authors, it's the difference between writing –

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: – and editing.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Formatting. Designing.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And then the same with carryover. Okay.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So that's actually parts one and two, or –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – steps one and two in the workflow. It's probably important to point out that each of these carry their own sets of pain points. And more importantly, those pain points could potentially be reasons why your process gets bottlenecked or stalled.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Right? So pain points for creation would be taking too long to ideate or create the actual content. That's one of my big stall points, is I'll just sit there and stare at the screen. And I've talked about before how I've embraced AI to help me get started. You know? Like, I don't have a shortage of ideas. I'm just always at a loss as to how to get started. So I always ask Claude for an outline or something like that to help me get going production wise. You know, again, completing the content. But then often times, like you said, if you're batch creating, you may have some content that's sitting there just waiting to be edited or formatted or, you know, add some design or some graphics to it. And, you know, sometimes that just sits there and it doesn't get done, and you have this content that's kind of getting wasted because you don't have a really good process in place. So.

Lauren: They can also bottleneck each other. You know, this happens with us a lot when we're traveling. If we can pre-record a couple episodes, I can work on editing those while we're traveling. But I can't, I can't create new content while we're traveling, because I don't have the set up with us to record a new episode. But as long as I have that that pre-created, pre-recorded –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – raw footage, I can do something with that. No matter where we are, as long as I have my laptop. So. I think it's just important to think of those as, as separate stages. Maybe it's not for you. This is a workflow that you're ultimately designing it whatever works best for you. We're just trying to give you like a, an outline to help you if you're new at this.

Matt: Well, I think it's a logical break point. I think yeah, there are a lot of people listening who probably say, well, no, I'll write a piece of content. And then, you know, right after that I'll go ahead and edit it down.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Or I'll send it to my editor or whatever, and that's fine. But it's a logical break point. It's a logical place to take a break and stop and move on to something else. So.

Lauren: Yup. Fair enough.

[13:23] – Step 3 - Distribution and Discovery

Matt: Number three is distribution, which is also, you know, discovery. Where is that content gonna go? What's the discoverability aspect of it? How are you getting this content into the hands of other people?

Lauren: Yeah, I was hesitant to use the word distribution here because I didn't want our authors to to hear it and think –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – book distribution. Because we just did that episode too, on how retail distribution works. So it's important to clarify here that by distribution...

Matt: It's the literal act of –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – distributing the content out into the world.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Not the actual, you know, in the sense of books, like, distribution through Ingram –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – or somebody like that. Yeah.

Lauren: Exactly.

Matt: Which can also be part of it, by the way.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: But that's a little more sales strategy versus.

Lauren: It is, which is a little bit further down the pipeline here.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But yeah, this is, this is literally like, where are you going to share your content with your audience? And where is your audience going to find you and your content?

Matt: Yeah. I think distribution is widely used outside of the author community in that, that sense.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But it's also interchangeable with the word discover.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Or discoverability.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But this is also, I think, one of the kind of really big places that people stall out, or like, hit a roadblock or pain point here. Because it's also somewhere that when we're moving forward into the next stage, which is marketing, if you are only doing your distribution on third party platforms that you can't control, you're going to be very limited in your marketing abilities moving forward. And in everything moving forward from here.

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: So this can be a place, the distribution stage can be a place where people really bottleneck because they have no way of doing the things that are supposed to come after this. You can't market to an audience that you don't have any way of, of intentionally reaching.

Matt: Yeah, I would go on and say too for, for authors, I think they're the one group where there's a caveat here that you could actually flip steps three and four. So step three is distribution or discovery. It means the actual act of putting that content out into the world. Step four is marketing. Often if you're creating content to go, let's say on LinkedIn, you will typically post it and then market it, right? Like, hey, check out my new post or check out my new article or whatever. For authors, though in many cases, a lot of times the marketing comes first, right? Because maybe they're doing a preorder for their, their latest book. But, you know, when you're launching a book, marketing has to come before the actual distribution of the content. So for authors specifically, you could flip steps three and four. So.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Although I would still encourage you if you're thinking it, thinking about it that way at all, to still think about the fact that if your marketing comes before the actual book does, you still have to have some way to reconnect with those people. Whether it's you are marketing, you're telling them that this new book is coming out, but they can preorder it here, or they can pre-save it on their book tracker website of choice here. Or they can sign up for your mailing list so that you'll email them and let them know when the book is out, like there's still has to be some kind of way for you to bring it back to them.

Matt: That's the marketing piece. Yep.

Lauren: Yes, but I – but... If you're marketing but you don't have like a distribution point, if you don't have a distribution plan – if you're marketing first but you don't have a distribution plan, then that could that could trip you up.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Okay.

[17:16] – Step 4 - Marketing

Matt: Step four.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Marketing.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So again, as an author, more often than not your marketing is going to come before, you know, the actual distribution of the content into the world. If I'm creating, you know, podcasts, more often than not, I'm going to be marketing that podcast at the launch of that episode. You know, there's evergreen stuff, right? Which means stuff that's running all the time. So of course we have stuff that'll be out there running that just talks about our podcast in general. That's called evergreen. But for each episode we typically don't market it until the episode is pushed live.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: And again, pretty much everybody besides straight up authors, the marketing either comes at distribution point or directly after distribution point.

Lauren: And I think that for authors, the only time that it's ever going to be the case where you're only talking about your one upcoming book is when you only have one book. Or like, I guess when you have zero books. When you're publishing your first ever book, the only thing that you're moving forward and marketing towards is that soon to be released title. As soon as you have one title... Like yes, you can absolutely be doing pre-launch campaign for your next upcoming title, but you should still be doing some kind of evergreen promotion for your backlist. Not as individual titles, but as you as a brand, as an author.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: As a, like, I've got a new book coming out, but in the meantime, go and read all these other ones over here.

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

Lauren: Like that should be evergreen.

Matt: Evergreen marketing around your brand, yeah.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Or, you know, again, if you're working on a series, it would focus on that series.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: You know, and that marketing would include talking about characters, plot twists, whatever.

Lauren: Tropes?

Matt: I was trying avoid that, but somehow or another, you've found a way to work it in. So.

Lauren: You set me up for it –

Matt: Yeah that’s –

Lauren: – what was I supposed to do?

Matt: – that's probably true. Pain points for marketing are too numerous to list, but the high level ones are the obvious ones. In many cases marketing has dollar amounts attached to it. And so, you know, some of those pain points can be you might not have, you know, the budget that you'd like to use at the time. And that limits the amount of marketing you, you can do or you feel you can do, and that can create a bottleneck. There are trends that kind of ebb and flow with marketing that might affect how well you're able to market a particular piece of content. For a lot of people, marketing’s just not fun. It's, it's, it's something they find really hard to do, hard to focus on. I've heard it described as basically walking across a floor of broken glass, barefoot, you know, John McClane style. Some people just really don't like marketing. So, you know, there are obvious pain points and bottlenecks there, but they're too numerous to list. But nonetheless, it's a huge, huge part of this workflow. And it is the part that will also, or one of the parts that really helps you, get back a lot of that time in your day, week, or month to spend creating more content.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So.

Lauren: Which I –

Matt: You really do need to get it right.

Lauren: Yes. And there's always going to be the perpetual trial and error of getting it right, of figuring out like, what are marketing best practices? We just did an episode about how marketing best practices have changed in the last few years as a result of like, more algorithmic control and stuff like that. So it is something, it's not something that you can just have a set it and forget it approach –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – a hundred percent. But if you do take the time to build out a, not fully automated, but a consistent and steady practice for this is what I do every time I'm creating a new piece of content. Including this is my default marketing for every time I create a new piece of content... That is a little less painful than having to start from scratch every single time you have to market something new. Especially if you are somebody –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – who hates marketing.

Matt: And the one thing that the algorithms always reward and always will reward, no matter what else changes, is consistency. So the algorithms update from channel to channel on a pretty frequent basis, for the most part. The one thing that always seems to remain part of an algorithm, whether it's on social media or, you know, through newsletter deliverability thing – it's consistency.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So making sure you're showing up on a regular sort of cadence is really important.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: Yeah. You won't always nail the content. Right? Like, there'll be things that you post, whether it's social media or otherwise, that they just don't land. And that's okay. But you just need to be consistent. You know, they can’t all be winners, but as long as you're showing up regularly, you'll be fine.

Lauren: Which is also something that having a workflow and a routine like this is designed to help you do.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: This is something that it's like, hopefully, if you're doing this correctly, you never reach a point where you say, oh, I have nothing new to put out. At this stage that I was supposed to put something out. Like I really dropped the ball here, I have nothing in place, nothing ahead. Because you've, you've got this automated. Even if it's just a –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – mental automation and not an actual, like –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – systematic automation.

Matt: To be clear, this, these seven things, this is almost like basically you could design a checklist of these seven things around each project, or each piece of content you're doing. And then, more importantly, you kind of frame your workweek around this.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So, you know. And that's a whole ‘nother episode. But, yeah, I think everything you do basically would. Yeah. I mean, I can't think of an instance where you wouldn't necessarily use all seven. I mean, maybe, you know, there might be something where there's not a fulfillment piece, necessarily. Because it's just literally a piece of short form content. But yeah, all of these should, should be done with just about every project.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So.

[23:33] – Debating the Practices of Sales, Fulfillment, and Distribution

Lauren: Yeah I – I do, I agree, I think that steps five and six, which are step five is sales and step six is fulfillment. Those are probably, out of all of these, the ones that could most be in parentheses. Because depending on where you are in your brand building, you might not be selling and fulfilling things yet.

Matt: I think you should always be selling. So I'll, I'll agree to disagree with you there. But nonetheless, you know, there's, there's probably a lot of people out there that aren't always selling.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Right? And that's okay.

Lauren: Well – lets frame it in – for, for people that are listening. What's our equivalent of the sales stage in this. What are we selling? If we’re –

Matt: Lulu.

Lauren: Okay. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, I mean. That's what we're supposed to be selling –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – all the time. Now yes, we get sidetracked and we, we talk about other things and we do a lot of stuff. And quite frankly, you and I just aren't hard pitchers.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: You know what I mean? And that's – But that was by design –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – on the onset. We said, you know, yes, this is a Lulu podcast, but, you know, we want to add value at the end of the day.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And we hope that at some point all roads lead back to Lulu. But yes, we should always be selling Lulu. And to a degree we are. Whether it's through subtle branding on the thumbnail on Spotify, or it's through the things that we're actually saying and alluding to. So, you know, again, that's why I say everybody should always be selling. Not everybody can connect the dots on what they're selling or how to do that when they feel like they're they're posting a piece of content that isn't for sale. Or it's not talking about something that's for sale. You should still always be selling. And there are ways to do that.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: But again, where you were going with that I agree with, in the sense that there are a lot of people that will treat number five and six with parentheses. They currently do. They probably will going forward. You know, there's a lot of people that won't always be selling. And certainly won't always be fulfilling.

Lauren: Yes. But that's why we did a whole separate episode on that. So if you are –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – listening to this and trying to figure out how to handle the fulfillment piece in the framework that you're building out here, and one of your pain points is fulfilling books, please go listen to episode 107.

Matt: Yeah, I mean fulfillment for everybody else. You know, again, podcasts don't always have a fulfillment component necessarily, unless you have other things you're selling. Like, a lot of people who run a podcast, they also have a master class that they sell or, you know, online courses or they've got some books or they've got, you know, digital downloads or whatever that might be. Like yeah, fulfillment isn't just like, physical printed books, even though that's our life. Like, it is ebooks. It is audiobooks. It is online courses. It's masterclasses. It's, it's whatever. So.

Lauren: Yeah. I think it's also... Last week I was listening to Creator News Live, which is Jeff Sieh’s podcast.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: And he had Zac Brown on, not the musician, on the episode.

Matt: Not the musician?

Lauren: No.

Matt: What about the Formula One team principal Zak Brown? For McLaren?

Lauren: Also I didn’t know that was a person. But also no.

Matt: No? Okay.

Lauren: No.

Matt: So a totally different Zac Brown.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: A very cool creator who has some really, really cool content out there in different mediums. But he was the guest on with Jeff, and at the end of the episode, Zac was talking about how he's got a book coming out. And he was selling, you know, he was doing the I have this new book, it's coming out in June, you can preorder it. I also have a sample chapter if anybody wants to, to check it out. Like. And then he kind of like, stalled out and was like... oh, I, I guess email me if you want? Like, just send me an email if you want the sample chapter and I will send it to you that way. Because he had the sales, he had the sales thing down. He knew he needed to be able to promote this book. He has preorders set up for it. He's, he's got all of that. But the fulfillment piece was the piece he was missing. And he realized it – Because that, Creator News Live is live. So I watched him realize it in that moment of oh, I don't have a a smooth way to fulfill this. I can sell people on, if you're, if you're interested in this book, please reach out to me and I will send you the, the sample chapter for you to see. But I don't have a quick and easy solution for fulfilling that. So that's where these pieces –

Matt: I feel like that one actually would be distribution.

Lauren: You think so?

Matt: If you're talking about just a sample chapter, it's just a small piece of content that you need a quick and easy way to deliver to people. And so to me that would fall under – Now we're splitting hairs here.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: Right? But to me that's distribution. Because if he knew that he was going to be offering a sample paragraph to get people hooked. Which a lot of people do, they, they'll typically, you know, again, you know, DM me, you know, sample or whatever. Like there's, there's different ways to do it. But to me that's distribution. Because, you know, that's something you're setting up ahead of time. And because he is doing a preorder, he already has his fulfillment plan worked out for the actual book. So he's marketing, he's got the fulfillment plan for the book itself. He's doing his preorders. But that sample paragraph, or that sample chapter, I should say, to me that's more of a distribution – Like, he didn't plan for like, how would I distribute this –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – sample chapter to the people that want to actually read it? You could split hairs and say it is fulfillment. At the end of the day, it's whatever. But it's a good point, like –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – he needed to have that covered, because he was on a live podcast and there's no, there's no do overs there. At the end of the day, it's not the end of the world. But. You know.

Lauren: No, no definitely not. But...

Matt: And, you know, email's not a bad thing, cause now you're capturing email addresses.

Lauren: Well, yes.

Matt: So that might have been inadvertently smart on his part.

Lauren: Yes. Definitely not a, not a bad solution. But it depends... you know, if he gets ten emails from people saying hey, I actually would love to read a sample chapter, like.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You know, let me – If he gets a thousand, that's going to be a lot harder to manually respond to.

Matt: Sure. But again, that's where you get into the tools part of it.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: But.

Lauren: Which we're not. But yes.

Matt: Prior planning would have, would have alleviated some of... yeah.

Lauren: Which I'm – I mean no shade to Zac. He has very clearly some, some very established systems. Also it was a very good episode, on killing your darlings in content creation. I'll link it in the show notes. It was a good – it was, it was a really, really good episode.

[30:04] – Steps 5 and 6 - Sales and Fulfillment

Matt: Alright, so. Steps five and six, sales and fulfillment.

Lauren: Yes. But I think that it's important. I think even the practice of what we just went through here, of disagreeing on where that, that falls into that. I think is important to understand, like, that's why this is so customizable, and that's why we cannot do an episode where we're sitting here rattling off like, this is exactly how you should build your, your workflow. It's ultimately supposed to be something that is tailored and customized to you, to fit you, to do the things that you need help with –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – that you need to streamline, so that you can get back to focusing on the things that you enjoy the most. Whether that is the content creation. Or maybe you've realized the content creation has become a chore and you need to spend more time on marketing, so you need to streamline the production steps. You need to make that go a little faster, so that you can spend more time on, on marketing. Or whatever it is.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: It's, it's something that, you know, we're giving you a sample framework, but it's up to you to decide what... Like, it doesn't have to be an equal distribution of time, effort, stages to each of these. You can customize it to better, to better suit your needs specifically.

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: Actually...

Matt: I think we should talk about –

Lauren: Oh, you want to talk about – ?

Matt: – some of the pain points for sales and fulfillment.

Lauren: Oh, okay.

Matt: For sales and how people get bottlenecked at that sales stage. People just don't like sales.

Lauren: Well.

Matt: That's the biggest one.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: People feel really... they have big feelings about asking people to spend money on their content.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Most people do. And so that leads to a lot of other things, right? In your mind you start creating these scenarios where there's friction around somebody potentially buying your product. Or you want to create the easiest way for them to purchase it, which often leads you to, you know, getting into a situation where you're relying on third party retailers only. You know, there are a lot of other pain points around the process of sales and selling that content. But at the end of the day, it's a business. You got bills to pay. You have to get over those, those pain points. And whether they're pain points of yours, which is usually the case, or potentially some pain points of your your buyers, you've got to find ways around those. You've got to make sure that that's not the bottleneck that's, that's stopping you.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Fulfillment the pain points are obviously a little more obvious. Or obviously a little more apparent.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: Right? Like, if you're fulfilling a physical product, you have to decide how am I going to fulfill that physical product? Who am I going to use? What does that process look like? We've done episodes on this, so we won't go through it, but you need to vet all of those providers and all of those steps along the way. If it's digital, same. You still need to figure out how am I delivering this digital content? Whether it's a course, a video, an ebook, an audiobook, whatever that might be. But then there's also fulfillment in other ways. And ultimately you need to, just like that sales step, like... Avoidance is not the way to get it done.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: If you don't go through all of these steps in whatever fashion fits your, your style the best, one of these will become the main bottleneck. And you'll still find yourself spending a lot of time in an unbalanced workflow. Where it feels like I'm not spending enough time creating because I'm spending too much time manually fulfilling these things. Or I'm spending too much time trying to sell to people, because I just don't like it. And it it's harder and it takes me longer, or... You gotta push past those pain points and find ways to get around them.

Lauren: I think these are, these are the two stages that are the easiest to automate too.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: Especially if they’re –

Matt: Actually, yes.

Lauren: – things that you hate doing.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: These are the two stages that it's the easiest to automate and say, okay, I'm just gonna, I'm going to have this designed best practice for how I'm going to do this, and I'm just going to do that. I'm going to plug this in every time –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – it's gonna work. So absolutely, especially if you hate doing either one of those things, that's a stage that’s worth –

Matt: It does seem like –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – most of the, the tools or things that have been released lately, especially with the help of AI, obviously, are sales or fulfillment related.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So I think you're right. I think, you know, once you get to that point in optimizing your workflow and figuring out, you know... Those are the two, two of the easiest things to automate. So I agree.

Lauren: Which does also make sense to me in terms of like... You know, a lot of people that are creators, whatever your medium of creation is. Of course the things that you enjoy doing the most are the, the creation, production and, and to an extent the marketing. Because I do, I think even when marketing can sometimes feel very cringey, like, if you're proud of a piece of content that you created, it is a little easier to, to go out there and try to get people to... to care about it.

Matt: I think the creative piece of marketing –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – the components of marketing that require creative elements are not hard for people who are creators.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Right? If your thing is writing or creating video or podcasts or whatever, like, yes, there's an element of your marketing that is also creating. So that part is, is amenable. It's fun –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – at times. Like, it's the rest of the marketing stuff, right? It's where am I posting this? How am I posting it? Am I scheduling it? Is this paid media? Is it earned media? Is it organic? Is there search elements involved? Do I have the right keywords? Like that's all the marketing stuff where people are like nah, I'm good bro.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: Like... Yeah. So I agree with you. I think that yes, absolutely. Marketing can also be fun and feel like you're creating, because there's a part of that.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But there's a whole ‘nother part of it, that we've talked about in many episodes, where it's not fun.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: It is work.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: So, yeah.

Lauren: And what's your job title again?

Matt: Me?

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: Which one?

Lauren: Your official one.

Matt: Chief Marketing Officer.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Marketing. For better or for worse.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: Always.

Matt: I mean, you and I are marketers by trade.

Lauren: Yes. We, we signed up for this on purpose.

Matt: Yep.

[36:23] – Step 7 - Insight

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: Alright.

Matt: Number seven.

Lauren: Yes. It is the step that I think is maybe... I'm not going to say the most important. But it's the one that has the biggest impact if you do skip it. And that's the insight. And that is looking at everything that you've done and actually tracking your efforts. You know, you have to... None of this is worth doing if you don't know how it performs in the end. If you do all of this work to create and produce and distribute and market and sell and fulfill a piece of content, and then at the end you go oop, well, maybe it performed well, maybe it didn't. We'll never know. Then what was the point of any of that?

Matt: Yeah, I think that that – where it's critical, or what it impacts the most, is the speed at which you scale. You know? It will also impact whether you scale at all

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: But less so. If you want to scale fast, if you want to grow fast, if you want to, you know, really get to a point where this is your full time thing and you're not tied to a desk at some corporation or whatever it is you're doing, I don't, you know, changing tires or whatever. You have to pay attention to the feedback that you're getting in one way or another. And you'll get feedback unsolicited and you'll get feedback that you solicit for. But you have to pay attention to it, and you have to make changes according to that feedback or those insights. And really, you have to take that feedback and glean your own insights from it. Right? And you're right. I think most people, they create the content, they do the, the production of it, the editing, they get it, you know, they distribute it in whatever way possible. They'll market it, they'll sell it, and if it's physical they even fulfill it. But you're right. The step that I think gets skipped most often is that whole feedback cycle. Like, did people actually like it? What were the engagement rates of these particular posts? How many people opened that particular email I sent? How many people clicked through on the links that were in that email? How many people bought this book or preordered it or downloaded the, the audiobook or whatever that is? I mean, there's data readily available for just about everything you do. And some people will look at it and just keep moving. You have to look at it, analyze it, and then decide, you know, again, whether it's anecdotal feedback or it's just data points. Did this work? What didn't work? What do I need to change? If you're paying attention to that and you're spending an equal amount of time on that as you are the other seven or six steps, you will grow faster. Because you'll take that insight back to the content you're now working on. Or maybe that insight tells you listen, I should probably distribute this content on this other channel over here, because the engagement rate is twice as what it is here. But yet I'm spending a bunch of time over here, and a bunch of money, I should focus that over here. Because remember, you also don't want to be on all channels at all times. So if you're not paying attention to that feedback, gleaning insights from that feedback and that data, you will grow much slower, if at all.

Lauren: Yes. It's also the thing that makes your content workflow repeatable. Understanding the elements of what works and what didn't is going to be the piece that allows you to say, okay, this worked, so I can do it again. Versus this didn't work, so why am I bothering to waste my time with it? Let me see what happens if I try not doing it this way this time.

Matt: Let's be clear: your workflow can be repeatable if you're not –

Lauren: Oh, sure.

Matt: – paying attention to step seven, but it will be wrong. Repeatedly.

Lauren: Yes. Yes. Successfully repeatable.

Matt: So you are correct. And in a way, also a little bit inaccurate.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: This doesn't make your workflow repeatable. It makes it accurately repeatable.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: You – people repeat the same workflow over and over and over again, even though it's not progressing them where they want to be, even though it's not making necessarily positive impacts at each stage.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But yeah, you're right. Like, this is the only step that's really going to tell you, like, it's working. Or this step is... I'm not doing something correct here, because it's not, I'm not getting the engagement I want to see, or the sales I want to see or, you know, whatever. So yeah.

Lauren: And I completely understand why it is the stage that gets skipped the most often. There are, there are a lot of reasons. Sometimes it's just, especially if you're a solopreneur and you're wearing seven hats and you're doing all the different things, this feels like the thing that's like, I don't have time to do this right now, but I can come back to it later. I, you know, the data isn't going away. I can, I can take a time to look at it later. I have to move on to the next thing.

Matt: It can also be very scattered. And that –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – that's what makes it... That's, I think that's why a lot of people get intimidated by it. Like a lot of people think that this is isolated strictly to your Amazon reviews. Like that's your feedback channel. When in fact that's probably the worst feedback channel you could rely on. You need to be looking at the data points that are inside some of the tools you're using for your social, your email, and those other things. But again, you need to be soliciting feedback directly. Like, forget about your Amazon reviews and the bots that are creating those things, who cares? That's not going to give you a really good indicator of whether your workflow’s working and your content is actually resonating. Like... So, getting insights, gleaning insights, getting feedback. It can be complicated at times. And that's why I think people get intimidated by it. And it's very easy to say, well, you know, I got a few good reviews over here on Amazon, so I must be doing something right. I'm just going to keep going. Without digging into, you know, some of those data points and measurements and KPIs that will really help you better understand, did this stuff actually work? Like, you know. Or going out there and looking for sentiment and analysis. Like, doing an analysis on that. Like, go out there and are people talking about your content on Reddit or on social media? Or, you know, did you get replies to the emails you sent out? What did people say? Or are you at an event and really seeking out feedback around, you know, not just your content, but your whole approach to delivering that content?

Lauren: The other piece of it that I – Again, completely understand why people skip it – is sometimes it can be really disheartening. If you're, you know? Especially depending on what kind of –

Matt: There's that too, yes.

Lauren: – Right. You know? Like if, if you're not somebody who handles criticism well, or if you're, if you put out something that was very like, like sentimental and close to your heart and something that you worked very hard on, and you're afraid of seeing the negative feedback or the criticism or seeing that people hated it, or that nobody ever watched it or whatever, like that... Yeah. Yeah, that sucks. And that's like, a really, really terrible part about being any kind of creator at all. But it's also kind of something that you have to rip the Band-Aid off and do it, because that's how you get better. Is by processing that and going, okay, that didn't work. What can I –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – do differently next time to make it different?

Matt: You won't always have the luxury of that, that bad feedback, including helpful things. Like –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – sometimes you're just going to get feedback like this book sucked.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: And that's it. Okay, great. That's not helpful. And whatever. That's that person's opinion. Move on.

Lauren: Absolutely, yes, but there are also different ways that you can use feedback that – even if it's not, even if, even if it's just pure data. Like if, if it's discouraging to you because you're like, oh, only five people watched my Reel.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And zero people liked it. Like, that hurts my feelings. It does. And that's not – those are just numbers. Like, those are not, like that’s –

Matt: Those are valuable numbers though.

Lauren: But those are value numbers, yeah.

Matt: You gotta move passed the emotional investment.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: And look at the data.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: If you're lucky enough to get actual data. And again, not some losers just like this book sucks. Like, that data is very valuable. So you got to move past the emotional hit and just take that data and use it for what it is.

Lauren: Right. Because if it's something like, okay, I posted a piece of content and it has 15,000 impressions and two likes. That's grim. That means that there's something wrong with the content itself. That means you've gotta, you've gotta do something different in the piece of content moving forward.

Matt: Yes. Or, you know, there's something going on with the algorithm that you've not figured out. But either way, that data is telling you that something's not working and you need to dig in deeper.

Lauren: Right. Opposite of that is that if you put out a piece of content that only has five impressions and it has three likes on it, those three likes are sad if you don't put it into context. But if three out of five people saw that post, liked it, that's actually like an insanely good engagement rate. And what's going on there –

Matt: That's a good silver lining.

Lauren: Right. Right. So what actually happened there is that you're doing something wrong with your discoverability. Like you're – like your content isn't being delivered –

Matt: That’s right.

Lauren: – for whatever reason. So you have to figure out what you're doing wrong to make the algorithm share your content. Like, looking at those numbers, like, both of them are like, oh, my numbers are sad. But getting over the –

Matt: Why?

Lauren: – emotional part of it and understanding why.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Is going to influence what changes you need to make –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – next time, so that you can have better results next time. Hopefully.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: So it’s important.

Matt: So what you're saying is get over it and move forward.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: I like it. Use the data.

Lauren: Harsh but fair.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: Don't bring an opinion to a data fight.

Lauren: Ooh.

Matt: Or I would say don't bring emotions to a data fight.

Lauren: Ooh. That's terrifying.

Matt: Is it?

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Eh.

Lauren: I'd lose.

Matt: No. I don’t –

Lauren: No it's great, that's great advice.

Matt: I don’t remember –

Lauren: That is incredibly good –

Matt: – where I first. It's obviously a take on the –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. But somebody actually said that years and years ago. And I just remember thinking –

Lauren: I believe that.

Matt: – I love that. Like... I use it a lot though. I like it. Anyways, let's move on.

Lauren: Yes.

[46:27] – Actionable Steps to Take Today

Matt: So, we had seven steps to, to a workflow that we think will help you, you know, build and scale your author brand faster and more efficiently. Creation, production, distribution, marketing, sales, fulfillment, and then the insights or feedback, right?

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: Basically you could design that into, to being, if nothing more, a simplified checklist for every piece of content or project you work on. But these things tend to work together harmoniously, with some of these steps being interchangeable depending on who you are or what you do. And I think astutely earlier you pointed out, you know, this is going to look different for everybody, but these seven core things are still kind of the same. Like it's kind of the same roadmap, you just might do them differently than your friend who's also an author. Or, you know, your friend who does a podcast, but you do a newsletter or whatever that might be, right?

Lauren: Yes. Yes, it's going to look different no matter what. It's going to look different no matter what your, or depending on what your priorities are, what your goals are, what your strengths are. Maybe there are some things that come really easily to you, so you can spend less time on those. You don't need to worry about automating those. So this isn't necessarily something that you should be comparing yourself to other people on, but you should be comparing yourself to yourself. Realistically. You should go through it – So that would, you know, if we want to go into advice a little bit for for how to take what we've talked about here and apply it... I know you don't like the word audit, but I'm going to say it again.

Matt: I don’t like the word audit because I can't stand the IRS –

Lauren: I know.

Matt: – and paying taxes.

Lauren: I know.

Matt: That's a whole nother thing.

Lauren: But this is, this is where audit is, is a useful word, because this is what you should be doing right now.

Matt: I like the word review.

Lauren: Sure, we can say review. I've talked about this in the past, where I went through at the end of last year and I wrote out the step by step of my entire workflow for creating a podcast episode from start to finish. Like really, really every single step of the details, including what tools I use, what tools I used to use, what what I need each of those tools to do, what I'm doing manually, whatever. And I threw all that into ChatGPT and said, what, what do you make of this? What, what am I doing? What's redundant? What's overkill? Are there things here that I'm only using one tool for one thing and I'm like, I'm wasting time by using this tool for just this, literally, this one little thing? Is there something here that I can streamline? Am I doubling up on steps without realizing it? So this is a great opportunity for you to do that and say, okay, what is something that I can I can reduce this here and buy back the time over here instead? Or what is something that I'm using, I'm, I'm paying for this tool that I use that I'm only using it for this one single stage of this workflow. And it actually turns out one of these other tools that I'm using over here can do that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And I didn't think about it because I'm thinking about my my software as siloed.

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: And not as part of an overall workflow. So whether it's an audit or a review or whatever. If you want, if you want to start redesigning, reframing, streamlining, whatever, the first thing you have to do is actually sit down and break down exactly what you are currently doing. Honestly, it was actually kind of fun.

Matt: What's next?

Lauren: I would say next you want to make sure that while you are going through and doing that, don't make the mistake of saying, I'm going to change everything all at once, because overhauling an entire system overnight is just a, a great way to make it collapse.

Matt: It’s a bad idea.

Lauren: Around you.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Yes. Yes. So, you know, I would say maybe pick the top three pain points that you would like to streamline for yourself, and then choose one at a time. Okay, I'm going to try to focus on smoothing out this stage of the workflow. Or I'm going to focus on, like streamlining, like having a productive streamline for this stage at the workflow, whatever. And build it piece by piece like that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And if you're not sure where to start, think about where your – I mean, like I said, biggest pain points, but also where your biggest bottlenecks are. Because that's going to be the thing that slows you down the most and that stifles your growth the most.

Matt: Yeah. Think about the thing that you just detest doing.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: That you – I mean, you create the biggest bottleneck for yourself because you don't want to do it. We all have that one thing. One of these seven things I guarantee everybody is listening hates –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – at least one.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: I definitely hate at least one of these. I'm sure everybody does. And that's probably where your biggest bottleneck is. So that's where I would start.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Personally. But. That's where I do start every week. And I just don't make a whole lot of progress. But – that's not true, I do make progress.

Lauren: Is that why we record on Mondays? You get, get over the most painful part first?

Matt: Maybe.

Lauren: Early in the week?

Matt: That might have been it. Subconsciously I was just like, I got to get through this at the beginning of the week. I don't know. Yeah. So if I was listening and I wanted –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – to do this, you know. We talked about the seven steps, you just gave a few pieces, you know, some pro tips on kind of like what the approach might be. And you know, kind of how to do it without getting overwhelmed. But, what’s the fastest, easiest way to get started with this? Like, if you were to walk out of this room right now and want to do what we just talked about, would your first step be to, to figure out that bottleneck and then do an audit? Or would you just go in with a full scale audit or, you know?

Lauren: I think that I would go... I think I would go in with the full scale audit. I think that would be my first thing. Because I, I do – because in the same way that like if you start with the bottleneck – So I'll say using the podcast as an example, my least favorite step of the of any part of the podcast is editing the transcript. It's the most annoying, it's the most tedious, it's the most time consuming. But if I was to say right now I am going to overhaul my workflow right now for this, and I'm going to start at that stage. Then my solution would be to go out there and find a tool that would make that work faster. But if I do that without auditing the rest of the workflow, then I'm going to wind up doing that thing where I'm using, or finding and using a tool that is a single solution tool that might not help with my overall workflow –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – and might actually slow it down.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So I do think that it's important to know where your bottleneck and pain points are, but still take the time to take a high level look at everything that you're doing and say, okay, you know, these are the things that I need to fix immediately.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But at least then you can still be somewhat aware of, like, alright, if I'm – while I'm fixing that, make sure I don't break this thing in the process with whatever solution I come up with for that.

Matt: So you think do the audit first, then attack each one of the pieces one by one?

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Fair enough.

Lauren: Agree or disagree?

Matt: I mean, it sounds logical to me.

Lauren: What would you do?

Matt: Probably that.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So that's our advice. And you can try using our framework or create your own. It's gonna be tailored to you, whatever your content creation is.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But if you're writing a book and selling books, this framework will work for you. I'm telling you that right now.

Matt: It's a pretty bold statement.

Lauren: Just saying.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: Prove me wrong. Go ahead.

Matt: Yes. Prove her wrong.

Lauren: Yeah. By, by implementing it and finding out it doesn't work.

[54:43] – Episode Wrap Up

Matt: What do your bracelets say today?

Lauren: What do your bracelets say today?

Matt: You noticed.

Lauren: I did.

Matt: It says What's for Lunch?

Lauren: Oh, good question.

Matt: Because I'm starving. Says Niche.

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: And then I have one that you made me that says Live Fast, Park Pass, Die Fun.

Lauren: You want to know what's really funny?

Matt: What?

Lauren: Out of all of the bracelets that I have, I'm also wearing that one today.

Matt: Are you really?

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You sure are.

Lauren: I sure am.

Matt: Look at that.

Lauren: And I had no idea you were going to put those on, so. Pure coincidence.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: And my other two say You're On Your Own Kid. And Old Habits Die Screaming.

Matt: Those are repeats, for sure.

Lauren: They are all repeats. I haven't had time – Well you know now how long they take to make. You learned that lesson the hard way.

Matt: Ridiculous. Yeah. Thank you BookCon.

Lauren: So yeah I haven't had time recently to, to make any new ones.

Matt: Maybe you should work on that.

Lauren: I'm working on a –

Matt: Maybe you should design a better workflow for –

Lauren: I'm working on a –

Matt: – making bracelets.

Lauren: – bigger and better project right now.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: Yeah. Well. Let us know if you have any bracelet ideas.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: I'll make some new ones for Matt.

Matt: Yeah, that'd be great.

Lauren: And you can do that by leaving a comment on any of Lulu's social media channels or Spotify or YouTube. You can email us a podcast@lulu.com. We got a great email this morning for an excellent episode topic idea that I'm looking forward to adding to our calendar –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – very soon. So, absolutely please do email us if you have questions, ideas, things you want us to dive more into. We love to hear from y'all. And you can come back next week for another new episode.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Cool.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: Until then, thanks for listening.

Matt: Later.