My Book Writing Journey

I’m excited to talk about my first published book List Building Lifestyle. Although it’s officially my first printed book, I’ve been creating content for years, webinars, emails, you name it, but I realized something was missing, a tangible piece that people could hold and really connect with. That’s why I wrote this book. After scrapping the first dry draft, I spent days in my favorite local coffee shop, rewriting it from scratch. This book is a simple way to share my lessons in email marketing and list building. I’m excited to discuss how it helps me connect with my audience. Let’s get into it.

0:39  

I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, the List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle. 

Well, you know, technically, it’s the first book that got published and printed like a real, proper thing you can hold in your hand. But before I put this book together, I must have produced, like, a couple 100 webinars and lots of content. Actually, this is the second writing of the book, because the first one I really, really hated, and I just got rid of it. I wrote a 32,000 word piece, and then I read it, and I just didn’t like it. It was so dry, you know. So I scrapped it, and then I spent the next 13 days in coffee shops here locally in Toronto. I usually go to this one coffee shop called Lambert coffee shops, like an Israeli coffee shop. They had the best coffee so I would go there about three hours a day. Would take me to write a chapter. So I just wrote it from scratch. But yeah, like, it’s the first ever printed piece, that’s for sure.

2:19  

Why did you write it? Like, who you doing all this other stuff, and you know who wrote it, you know who you wrote it for, and then why they should read it, all right? 

2:40

Well, why did I write it before this, before I wrote the book, I was already, like, pretty famous in my space. So if you looked up things like email marketing, list building, you would eventually come across me, because, you know, there’s a lot of people who talk about me. There’s lots of content. We got a podcast under the same name where we hosted some pretty big names like Joe Vitaly, who’s also actually a big list builder, John Assaraf, just recently, Dr John Demartini, our mutual friend, Matt Baccak, Craig Valentine and like a lot of people who also published books, Chris Voss was a really cool episode. So I was already like, up and coming, right? 

3:07

But I really felt there was a book in me, and it also made sense to publish it, because, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been following people like Tony Robinson and the like for since forever, like the, you know, I owe it to those people as far as, like, making decisions change my life and so many good things happened, and every single one of them has a book, at least one flagship book, and I read it. So I figured, okay, I got all these different webinars and different content sites and articles and blogs and, you know, I must have emailed now, well over I would say 100,000 emails to all sorts of lists, but I don’t have a book, and I figured, I’m not really reaching with my message. I’m not reaching a big chunk of my audience, people who should know the message. 

3:36

Because anytime I would go like, I’m a father, I got two kids, so I would go to like, recitals and all kinds of, you know, practices and extracurricular activities with my kids. Now we get talking with other parents, and everybody wants to know what I do, and at some point I just got tired of explaining, because it’s like, it really requires some explaining. So you know what I said? You know what, I’m gonna write a book in a way where everyone will be able to get it, like if you just read my book, you’ll get it, you’ll get my story, you’ll get my approach, you’ll get my system. And it seems to have worked, because eventually the benefit that I didn’t expect with this book is it sort of became the entry, the doorway, the window into my world.  

4:42

Where, and I track this, by the way, where if somebody gets through the book, if they find me, and they read the book first, before they see anything else, they just stick around. So, you know, there’s this theory about 1000 true fans, where you only need 1000 true fans to have both a profitable business and an impact. Well, the book is making that happen. Like, you get 1000 people to read the book, and they stick around. They know your message, they know your story. They care about what you’re saying, what you’re doing. And I’m loving it, like it’s way better than, you know, doing webinars and, you know, writing long form sales letters and stuff like that.

5:36  

The value of having a book as that first step. It just differentiates you, I mean, and you know this, I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of people talking about email marketing and list building and all that, but they’re not, you know, they’re not book authors. So, uh…

5:51  

Exactly, an author is the keyword, I think, because when you when you know, now my daughter, she’s almost 10, when somebody asks her what her dad does, right? She used to say he sends emails. So basically, my daughter was saying, My daddy’s a spammer or something, but now she’s like, my dad’s an author, right? So it kind of has a different ring to it. So if I’m going to an event or whatever, and I have to meet people and, you know, or attending the JV mixers of all kinds. You know, like, I can introduce myself as a published author, which immediately sets me aside from everyone else, besides one, there’s one exception to this, of course, whenever you go to a JV mixer, that’s purely for authors. In that case, everybody’s the best selling author. Everyone’s like the New York Times, this, USA Today that and it’s like, damn it, I’m not even gonna mention my book now. Now I’m gonna mention my podcast instead. 

6:46  

There you go. Well, yeah, you’re right. It always depends, but for most of the time, or for most people, it’s a big game changer. And the other thing that’s great about a book, and again, kind of the book that you produced, and you mentioned leverage earlier. Your book’s a couple years old and you’re still leveraging it today. Same here. I mean, books that I’ve produced years ago are still, you know, viable profit. Unchanged. Yeah, unchanged, yeah. 

7:10  

Thank you for listening to the List Building Lifestyle. Get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch, plus I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package.