Building Better Developers, Episode 500: Interview with Dale L. Roberts

This is Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. We will accomplish our goals through sharing experience, improving tech skills, increasing business knowledge, and embracing life. Let's dive into the next episode. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of interviews, and this time we're moving on to another interviewee. We're going to talk to Dale L. Roberts this time around. It's a couple part series as well within the season. Dale is a self-publishing expert. He has put together over 40 books, maybe now 50. A week here, a week there, he may knock out another book, and has spent a lot of time in the self-publishing space for the last several years. There's a lot to be learned from this. I had a great conversation with him. This is an area we've talked about at times. You should write a book, even if it's an e-book or something, that it's just a practice, an exercise that is worthwhile in itself, not to mention the marketing and branding aspects of doing so. We're going to get into a lot of these and some of the tools that are out there and the platforms and just some things to think about. This first episode, we're going to dive into just getting to know Dale and get started on his story. With that being said, let's just dive right into it. Well, today we're talking with Dale Roberts. This will probably end up breaking this into a couple of different episodes because it's going to go likely a little bit long. Someone that has got a vast store of knowledge up there between his ears and agreed to share some of that with us today. That being said, I think I'll dive right in and just sort of tell us a little bit about yourself, background, and maybe even some little things that a nice little surprise thing that somebody might find out about you. Yeah, I'm Dale L. Roberts. I am an indie author. I've been doing this since about 2014. It all happened by kind of an accident. I'd been working in the healthcare industry for about 20 years as an activities director, meaning that I was paid to play with senior citizens and it was an awesome job. Part of that process of being in that work environment, I had a wellness coach, a corporate wellness coach, and she knew that I was really big into fitness and exercise and health. She said, you should write a book. Now, mind you, growing up as a kid, I'd always wanted to be a writer. In fact, I even went to college to become a writer. My major was journalism because I wanted to be a writer for Guitar World magazine. I got about a year and a half into college before I discovered that I just wasn't happy. I said, I don't know. I don't want to be a writer. And so you fast forward some time later, 20 years in the healthcare industry. This was put across my plate. I don't like to turn away a challenge. So I just said, yeah, let's do it. It probably took me a better part of a year to write my very first manuscript. And when it came time to go and hit publish, initially, I thought to myself, I'm just going to go ahead. I'm just going to publish it at some local printer and I'll give out copies to my friends. And when I was quoted the price of $1,200 to get essentially like a box full of my books, I told my wife I was excited and she's like, yeah, where are you going to get that money from? Therein lies the problem. I didn't have that $1,200 to spare. So enter the modern day self-publishing model that I had no idea about. I ended up getting that book published through a platform called CreateSpace at the time, which later merged with Kindle Direct Publishing and the rest is history. You came into it not sort of like you said, you sort of backed into it. So you weren't looking to do it. So what were your what was sort of your thought process in when you were it was recommended that you go write a book? Was there was there some pushback or was it more the the challenge jumped up enough that you said, you know what? I don't care that I didn't necessarily have fun doing it. I'm going to go ahead and take on that challenge and see what I can do. It was the process of writing the book didn't seem daunting to me at all. All I had to do was sit down and go, OK, I need to take an extra amount of time out of my day every day to devote towards writing because I've never wrote a book before. Never I wrote a lot of short stories and some starts of books and such like that as a kid. As an adult, forget about it. So when I really sunk my teeth into it, it actually was a fun process of writing it and such. Now, mind you, that first book was probably my worst book, and it was definitely hammered garbage on the first draft. But it gave me enough of proof of concept like, hey, I can actually do this if I really focus on it. So when I actually did publish that book and I ended up and you're going to laugh when I tell you this, Rob, when I sold like twenty three dollars and some odd cents, that was my royalty check for a month. I thought that's proof of concept enough for me to go and invest all of my time because I thought if I could just not have a job anymore and focus 100 percent on writing, then imagine what I would be able to do. Now, Rob, I'm going to tell you this is where it sucked because I left my job. It was a great job. Paid me well. I put my 30 day notice in and for the next year and a half to two years, probably closer to two years, I burnt through all of my savings, all of my 401k. I maxed out my credit cards. It was getting really, really, really bad. But when I really committed myself, I hired a coach, had them help me out and start to publish in a way that was strategically correct, that made sense and could reach an audience that would actually start to resonate with me. That's when I started to see that success. But I'll tell you, it sucked in the meantime. I hope that answered your question. Oh, it does. And that actually leads us right into the next, you know, as a nice little follow up. Was the coach that you brought in, was their specialty just general publishing or was this somebody that had self publishing as sort of their focus or their niche? Yes, self publishing was their focus and their niche. The gentleman's name is Jason Brock. He actually had a pretty successful YouTube channel at the time. And I was consuming a ton of YouTube channels and a lot of these quote unquote gurus and experts that were on there. I bought course after course thinking, oh, this is going to solve my problem. This is going to be the thing that gets me successful. But it wasn't until I just I gave up. It was like July of 2015. My wife and I, we got some round trip tickets to meet up with my mentor and coach at the time in Chicago. And we spent an entire day with him and he analyzed everything I did and said, you're doing this right, this right and this right. But this right here, this is definitely wrong. And he would just point out all those things that were wrong. It was kind of like a fire hose just flailing wildly about in the wind and no direction. I wasn't putting out any fires, but it wasn't until Jason stepped in that he was able to point that fire hose in the right direction and get it to where it was putting out fires and becoming, you know, getting some results of some sort. So yeah, he specifically was just into the whole Kindle direct publishing space. You fast forward to now where I'm kind of in the whole self publishing niche as a whole. I don't just focus on Kindle direct publishing. I look at other platforms. So to this day, Jason and I are really best of friends. He's no longer really in the business of publishing, but he gave me enough information and motivation to kind of keep me going for years to come. And it's so funny, we will meet up every now and then. And he's just like, did you ever think it would pan out like this? And I'm like, no, not really. I never imagined it would. That seems like that's how a lot of good success stories turn out. It's those kinds of things where you didn't really... There's a few that they had a vision when they were young and they just followed it and chased it and everything went well. And then there's so many others that there's something, you take a turn, you do something a little bit different. And then next thing you know, you're like, wow, this is not only doing great. It's what I wanted. You know, I would have never guessed this is where I would be, but I love being here. Yeah, it really is. It's honestly, when I left my job, I had delusions of grandeur and I think that I needed to be humbled. I needed to eat a lot of dirt. You know, for lack of better words, and I'm going to keep this family friendly, I had to eat a lot of poop sandwiches. So and start to enjoy and like it, because honestly, I had to stick around for a while. And when I finally humbled myself and got that overinflated sense of self-worth out of the way, put my ego on the shelf and say, you know what, I'm going to learn this and do it right and start, you know, thinking, stop thinking of myself as being this rock star when I haven't done a single thing to help the world out. I think that's when I really got some great traction. And, you know, I'm not going to ever say that I'm in a position right now that I feel like, yes, this is it. I'm constantly trying to improve what I'm doing, not only as a self-published author, but also as a video content creator. So this is that actually brings up a real something I had not thought of to discuss, but just digging a little deeper. When you did that, when you went that through that sort of self-realization or self-actualization or however you want to look at it, there is with a lot of people, there is a sort of a target audience that they have in their head when they're creating a lot of content producers will talk about. They have somebody that's sort of their primary target, sort of the voice that they're that's on the other end of, you know, whether that whatever that content medium is. When you made that change, that change a little bit, what you how you saw your audience or what the audience in your head, what they were. Drastically, drastically. Actually, it was this is even before I had a coach. I had a friend of mine named Mark Stafford out in Arizona, and he's a marketing expert. And we went out to lunch and I was excited. I was going to hand him my book. I was like, yeah, I was so proud of this, even though it was just it's so bowling shoe ugly looking back on it. But I was proud of that. I handed it to him and he's like, who's this book for? And I was like, it's for everyone. He's like, no, no, seriously. Who's this book for? It's for everyone. And he goes, OK, you got a fitness book. You're trying to tell me that has fitness advice that's good for children as it is for seniors. And I'm like, yep. And he go, wait a second. There's no way a senior citizen is going to be able to do the same type of exercise a teenager or kids going to be able to do. It's a vastly different thing. And I was almost slightly put off, like almost offended. Like, how dare you tell me I can't have everyone as my audience? But the fact of the matter is, it once I actually dialed in my ideal reader, the people I was having a conversation with, that I really started to see more momentum and focusing on that audience every time, every time I'd go back to the well. That's the people I'm talking to. I kind of liken it like this, Rob, where you go into a party and there's a ton of people there and you got those little clicks like people are all meeting and they're all having their conversations. If you go into that party, start screaming on the top of your lungs about what it is that you have to share with everybody at the party. Everyone's going to stare at you and wonder what the heck kind of drugs are you on? The same thing can happen when it comes to actually writing and creating content. If you don't know who you're talking to and you're trying to talk to everyone, you're talking to no one in the process. So, yeah, any time that I sit down and I create some form of content, I almost always have this mental representation of who I'm having that conversation with. And it's dialed in to everything from the demographics, of course, but even more on a emotional level. Like, what is this person's problem? How do I have their solution? And can I continue to provide solutions to their problems so they become invested and want to join my tribe for the long term? Now, you've written several books and you've got several mediums that you use for content. Do you have the same sort of audience for each of those? Or do you have a different areas or different ways that you talk to different... Is it one tribe or are there different, maybe even cliques within that tribe that you slightly alter your focus for some of the various things that you're putting out in the various books that you've written? Yeah, so if you were to look at... Let's see, I'm at like 50 plus books now since 2014. Now, keep in mind, a lot of people will look at that and go, oh, my gosh, that's a lot. When you focus on it full time, you're going to be putting out a great deal. And on top of that, a lot of that is all workout books. And the thing is, I was a trainer for about four and a half years during a small respite between, you know, stays within the health care industry. And I had these books pretty much already written because I had all these workout plans. So it's a simple thing of just, OK, let's format this into a book. So I knew the audiences that I wanted to. For the most part, most of those books that I put out were beginner workouts, like people that are just brand new to this and just need to kind of know the fundamentals to kind of get going. But then I as I started publishing more, I started figuring out other little subsets. So where I originally wanted to speak to everyone in one publication. Now I separated that out to two different publications. For instance, instead of just having the home workout plan for everyone, I had the home workout plan for men, the home workout plan for women, the home workout plan for seniors, chair exercises, so on and so forth. So it started to break out to all these different things. Now, nowadays, though, if I were to go back and do it all over again, I would probably just pick one audience and go all in on it. So, for instance, last year was when I made the massive pivot from fitness books to talking about self publishing information. And I published right about five. Yes, five titles in September of 2020, all the way to January 2021. Focus just on self publishing. Right now, those books kind of encompass the current audience that I work with over on YouTube, where I show people how to self publish. These people already have a basic and fundamental understanding of self publishing. It's not something like, for instance, I've got a book called Amazon Keywords for Books, not promoting here. It's it's not geared towards someone who's brand new to the business, because as soon as they open that up, they don't know what the difference is between a KDP and an ACOS for an Amazon ad, they're going to be like, what, what, what am I right? How do I go? That's not going to be as applicable. I knew who my audience was. So then I was able to kind of really dial it in. And it also helps from a marketing standpoint, because as you start to put out marketing collateral of some sort, you know who you're talking to. So you know how the ads are going to be put out. And then you're going to be able to drive marketing and promotional type stuff through email, social media and such like that, specifically to that audience. They know that when they pick up Amazon Keywords for Books. All right. I already know what's going on, as opposed to someone's brand new going. But I don't get it. And that will wrap up this episode. I hated to break it off there, but we actually continue talking about advertising and marketing and target audience a little bit. And it's a long enough conversation that it felt like it needed to spill over into the next episode. Now, there are some things that have been mentioned as far as contact information, it's things like that that would just sort of, you know, ancillary. But those will be in the show notes. So there'll be several links that you can get a hold of Dale. You can see his books, his products. If you suddenly have an itch to get a nice little workout regimen. He has several books in that area, as he mentioned, and is very personable. So I'm sure that if you have any questions, he'd be happy to, you know, kind of to send you some responses and help you out with that and point you out to point you towards his his channels and his various content that will be most useful to you. We will wrap it up there. And we're going to come back around next episode and just continue our conversation. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And as always, go out there, have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noor podcast. For more episodes like this one, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon and other podcast venues, or visit our site at developernoor.com. Just a step forward today is still progress. So let's keep moving forward together. There are two things I want to mention to help you get a little further along in your embracing of the content of Developer Noor. One is the book, The Source Code of Happiness. You can find links to it on our page out on the Developer Noor site. You can also find it on Amazon. Search for Rob Brodhead or Source Code of Happiness. You can get it on Kindle. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can read it free. A lot of good information there. That'll be a lot easier than trying to dig through all of our past blog posts. The other thing is our mastermind slash mentor group. We meet roughly every other week. And this is an opportunity to meet with some other people from a lot of different areas of IT. We have a presentation every time we talk about some cool tools and features and things that we've come across, things that we've learned, things that you can use to advance your career today. Just shoot us an email at info at developernoor.com. If you would like more information, now go out there and have yourself a great one.