Self-publishing and content creation

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing and wrapping up our interview with Amy Harrop. And this time we're going to get a little deeper into this whole idea of self publishing and creating content and what's out there and how we can use the things that are out there, the tools that exist and how those can be leveraged to get us to our objective sooner rather than later. This is something she spent a lot of time on. She's got courses and discussions and all kinds of training in that that she's done in this area. So Amy is a great resource for giving some suggestions on how do you go from, hey, I've got this idea to getting that out there, getting that in front of people and monetizing it. And so let's get back to our discussion with Amy Harrop. It really is. I mean, and now you're absolutely right about Amazon being a gateway drug. I wouldn't be here probably doing this without Amazon. Now I'm not like thinking they're perfect. We know that Amazon has issues with certain things, but the fact is, I probably wouldn't be here unless I'd gotten started selling on their site. My husband also, he's actually a fine artist, but he had a business where he sold merchandise on Amazon as well. And then getting into the publishing. And then even today, I love to read on my Kindle paper white. It's like my favorite thing to read on, especially as I'm getting older and my eyesight's going more and I don't want to get reading glasses. That's like my favorite. I get Amazon Prime. I use Amazon S3 for all my data storage. So yeah, it's definitely still part of my life, my business life in some aspects, and then even my personal life. So I just think it's exciting. And the fact is, they don't necessarily even advertise everything all the time. I mean, one of the things I think that's exciting now without going up on a huge tangent is sort of the beginning of some of this AI generation stuff. And I don't really think it's like, oh, the robots are coming and going to replace everybody. But again, I think it gives tech, entrepreneurs and people who are interested in technology, the ability to incorporate perhaps new processes or reach new audiences in their business. So that's something I'm looking forward to. And the sort of the upcoming is looking more at that and how those types of tools can help people as well generate income and grow businesses and things. Yeah, it's those tools are just amazing. The advances have been made even in the last five or 10 years. For example, they've got the being a podcast and being a purely audio kind of content. I've played around and checked out some of these things that do the transcriptions. And they are phenomenally good. Obviously, it's English. And so there are things that, particularly names and things like that, that your pronunciation or annunciation can throw it off. But generally speaking, it's pretty impressive how close these things can come. And particularly for essentially almost no cost, since it's just a process. You just kick your file through it and it converts it much like you would a Word doc to these days, like a Word doc to a PDF or to a different format of it or copy and pasting into an email, things like that. Some of these things we've come to just expect. And we're just in a growth period where some of these things that today are new and cool and amazing are going to be the things we expect, I think, even a couple of years from now. Yeah, I think you're right. And I'm looking forward to that. It should be fun. Oh, definitely. And particularly from a content publishing approach, because there's so many ways now that you can automate getting some of the templates and things you can use to get stuff out and make it look good. Going back to that 80-20 rule, there's a lot that you can get done in that 80 portion of your effort these days. So it looks really good to some point where it's like some of these cases like why you don't need to do that last 20% and drag it across the finish line. It looks really good and professional from the start. Yeah, definitely. And I love sort of drawing attention to that for people. So people know like that this is available. A lot of times you can work on stuff for free with things that are free or have a free level or the freemium model or very low cost. And yeah, things aren't always going to be the same. There's things that are coming out now that might not be around five years from now, but it is an exciting time to be a content creator, I think. And it's a good time to jump in. It's not a thing of... Some areas might be a bit saturated, but then there's also new areas opening up as well. Oh, that's true. Yeah, it seems like there's always new areas. There's... Especially when you look at niches, there's always a new niche somewhere that somebody hasn't explored yet. Yes. And that's what I enjoy as well. I like finding niches that aren't necessarily massively under the radar because you want to have a demand for them, but just things that look like really good opportunities for people. So I think that's a lot of fun. Yeah, that's a good point is that you want to have that balance. It doesn't have to be... It would be nice if it was so rare that there were five people and they were all going to spend all of their riches on that thing, but it's usually not going to be that level. You've got to get something that's got enough... You don't want to be too far up because then somebody big's going to gobble it up, but you don't want to be too deep into an niche. And then it's just too hard to find those few people that are in that. Right. You want that sweet spot. So this is perfectly... It's almost an unfair question now as we've talked about how much things have changed as you've been going through all of this. I mean, obviously your focus has changed, but even in the last 10 to 15 years, since you've really been focusing on the publishing side, things have changed dramatically from when you had the Kindle come out and Amazon is always making new changes. But looking back, is there a thing or some things that you're pretending you're a mentor to yourself 10, 15 years ago? Are there some things that you've learned that you feel you would have loved somebody to have said then to help you in your path? Well, one of the things I sort of realized as I was starting this is that it's good to have examples and case studies and to show people paths to success, but it doesn't necessarily have to be something that I would personally have to do. When I first started this, I thought, well, I'm going to have to do all this stuff and have a case study with my things. But you don't need to do that as long as you can show people, hey, people are doing well with this or here are some steps or here's the pathway. That's good. You don't necessarily need to do every single little thing yourself and make it your own personal case study, because I think that holds a lot of people back. They think, well, I do know how to do this, but I haven't done every little single thing here. And unless you're doing some sort of video demonstration or something like that, you don't necessarily need to have every single case study you share or example, be your own personal one, because there's a lot of great things out there and it's good to shine a spotlight on other things as well. So that's definitely one of the things that I think that I wish I had sort of figured out a little bit earlier. Another, I think too, is don't let technology overwhelm you, but it's also good to know how to do things yourself before you give them out to other people. Like I have a team, I've grown my business, but I do know how to do most of the stuff that other people do on my team, even if I don't do it regularly. Now, I suppose if you get super high up there and you have a huge team, that's not necessarily going to work. But I also think it's good to know how some of that stuff works behind the scenes, just so if you are working with freelancers or service providers, you know what to expect and you know what they should be delivering. So that's another thing as well, I think. I'm sure there's probably more too, but those were two off the top of my head. So that's a good, so based on that answer, how have you, because you have a team, how has that sort of informed or directed you as you've built your team? That sort of approach of, which I agree 100%, it's very useful, almost critical sometimes to understand the process enough before you automate it or push it out to somebody else, because then if you don't quite understand it and they don't quite understand it, there can be disconnects and all kinds of issues. But so in taking that approach, as you stepped into this and said, okay, I'm building this business and I'm going to need a team. How did that, let me talk a little bit about that growth process of how you went, maybe presumably from just yourself to how am I going to build out a team and how you got to essentially the team you have today? Well, I will say it's pretty organic. I did bootstrap it. Again, I wasn't somebody who was like, oh, I'm going to do like a whole business plan and I'll be at this milestone at this part. I didn't really do that. One of the things that did happen relatively early is I did partner with somebody more as a business partner. And so we were able to present products together and divide up a lot of the work, which helped. And then after a period of time, we decided to still work on some stuff together. And we even still do today, but go our own ways. Once we've built a customer base a bit, we were like, okay, well, we have this customer base. We can both have access to the space. Let's just kind of go and go our own way and build up our own businesses more. And so it was at that point that I decided that I wanted to get more of a team, but it was very slow. I did start, first of all, with getting more like one-off service providers and things like that. And then I brought in somebody who was more of a project manager who helped me get things organized a bit more. I held on to a lot of the things that I enjoy doing the most, the longest, but then bringing in like a virtual assistant and bringing in people who can do some of the customer service. So just, I'd say over time, I've really focused more on building my team, probably the last three or four years. So that's really been more the focus. I would say about the first, you know, five, six-ish years, I didn't really have much of a formal team. And it's only been in the last three or four years that I've built a team because, you know, you can get burnt out if you do everything yourself. I mean, and it can be difficult to grow the business as well. So it just, it sort of happened more organically. And then also having, you know, a project manager or an online business manager who was able to help break down what the tasks were and what we could have people do and things like that. So that's really helped. And it's also a work in progress too. For example, I just hired a person who does more technical stuff, who's going to take over some of the tasks that the project manager does so she can focus more on helping grow the business a little bit more. Sometimes it'll just be like that, but it can take time because, you know, you need the right people and things too. Sometimes people aren't a good fit. My team is women primarily, and then we're all over the world. It's all virtual and they're all, you know, I don't have full-time employees so they're all contract providers, but a lot of people have been working with me for quite a long time now and, you know, it's a good team, I think. That actually speaks volume to have, you know, a team that is for hire, you know, contractors and yet they're going to, you know, obviously they have a, there's enough that they get out of working with you and enough of a positive experience that they want to keep doing that to maintain a team in that kind of situation when they could easily, you know, walk away at any time or, you know, even with, if there's any kind of seasonal side to businesses, sometimes you just, you know, if you have a normal peaks and valleys, if you have a slow time, sometimes you lose people that would have otherwise stuck around just because they've, you know, they've got bills to pay and they have to move on to something else. And then when you try to pick them back up there, they've moved on to something else. So that says a lot for your business model and the approach you take that you've been able to do that. Well, thank you. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I really try to, I do have slow times. I think the summer is slower just for people like that, because people are in front of their computers, you know, they're out doing stuff usually, but I don't really lay off and like, or reduce hours, you know, that's just a time when we work on other things, you know, so I try to keep hours consistent for people. And, and also, you know, just have people grow, grow with their business and things like that, just, you know, doing things like task audits, so we can see what people do, but also what they like doing and what they don't like doing. So if there's something somebody really hates, if I can maybe give it to somebody else, or we can change it, that would be good, because that's going to increase their satisfaction, you know, in the business, I think with that. And I also think going on with that, and one of the things too, and I've gotten better at this is just having standard operating procedures, because people do leave or things change. And that way, it just makes it a lot easier to have people step into the role or do the role, or give it to somebody else, you know, so that's one of the things also I've been focusing on more in the last few years as well is just getting things standardized. Yeah, the ability to have that sort of plug and play approach to your, you know, pieces of your business. And particularly when there's the ones that are not your secret sauce, you know, this, like there's stuff that only you bring to it's your business and that you bring to the table. But then there's a lot that, you know, quite honestly, just about anybody can do to some extent, once you've explained it out, because it's just, it's business stuff. And it's, you know, sometimes it may, there may be more to it than that. But there are things like, you know, project management and systems, maintenance and support and customer support, and some of those things that while you can, you can set a culture or a process and place that makes that something that it's a lot easier for somebody to step into. So you don't have to be the one person and you don't have to worry about being a bottleneck when you're, you know, companies trying to grow and you're, you know, you're having to touch everything. Then that just, that's going to slow that down. Right. And I'm also somebody too, who over the years, particularly I've developed this a bit more into the lifestyle business. I don't really work or like to work much in the afternoon. So I don't, you know, unless it's something very specific, I have to be there for, I like to travel. I mean, you know, obviously with COVID, we were all home for a long time, but this last year I've traveled a little bit more. I wouldn't say it's a total left laptop lifestyle, because I have two cats who are older and they have health issues. So I can't just pack up and leave, you know, with them, but I definitely try to make what I do enjoyable and fun, but it's also, I'm not, I'm personally not somebody who wants to work 80 hours a week either, you know, especially since I've been doing this for a while. So, you know, what's another good thing too, about getting a team is just being able to slowly reduce my hours too. So I can either do something else I want to do or, you know, have to do a hobby or whatever, you know, or build another business or whatever. So. Yeah, it's key to not have, you know, that's, I think a lot of people that's, somebody's been particularly when you get into a side hustle that grows into a full hustle, I guess we'll call it, into a, you know, an actual, a full business, that's your full-time job. It's hard not to get sort of shackled to your desk or to your business because it's, that's your baby. You like, you put all that work into it, you got that growing, and then it, usually you're in it because you want to be in it. Even if they're, you know, facets of the business that you're not, you know, you know, maybe you're, you don't feel like doing books or something like that, but you just know that's something that you've got to do. And so it's, I think, yeah, you have to be, I think intentional to maintain your lifestyle and to maintain those, you know, sort of those like, those firewalls between your, the rest of your life and, you know, your business or your work life. You're right. And I think that's a good point being intentional. I mean, one of the things that I try to focus more on doing is courses and automated fulfillment with courses. I don't do, and I haven't over the years, but one of the things I've sort of stepped back from is, like I said, I don't do much coaching and I'm actually going to be redesigning my site and rebranding a bit next year. And I'm probably going to take the coaching page off there completely. I don't do like a group coaching or mastermind because I just really try to limit what having to show up and be somewhere at a certain time. I don't mind, you know, some things, but I don't like having that feeling of like, okay, every single month you have to be here and do this at a certain time. So as I've gotten older and the business has grown, I've started to make more changes like that, where I'm really pivoting toward not having to offer that type of content, but instead offer things, you know, like videos, blog posts, course, automated courses, things like that. So I don't have to actually be somewhere at a certain time and place, which I think is helpful. Yeah, I think it is. And I think it, I find, I think you provide better quality products and services when you do that, because then you can, then you don't have to worry about having a, you know, an off day or, you know, all of the things that get mixed up in this stuff. You can, you can produce something and you can tackle questions and even, I mean, you can still have feedback, you can still have interaction with students, but it's, it's a little bit, choosing your battles a little bit better. It's, it's where you can pick times. And like you said, you know, like if you're a, you know, mostly a morning person, then you can do that stuff in the morning when you're, when you're fresh, when you're ready to go, or if you're a night person, you can do it when you're at your peak. And I think that's, I guess what I'm saying, some people underestimate the value of choosing the, you know, setting up your schedule or doing things at a time that is when you are personally at your best. I agree. That to me is a big perk of running my own business and developing it where it fits into my lifestyle. And yeah, I'm definitely a morning person. So I certainly like to keep, keep that stuff in the morning and use the afternoons for other things. So that, that works best for me. And I also think it like, so it's, it's almost like, um, like a drug, like once you start having that flexible schedule, and I think a lot of people discovered that during COVID, you don't necessarily want to go back. I mean, I couldn't personally imagine going back into an office and working nine to five, you know, I just, I just don't think I could do that. So, I mean, I guess I could if I really had to, but once you get into having your own flexible schedule, it's just really wonderful. Yeah. I went for a couple of years without where I was pure. I think I was the time I was pure remote or close enough to it. And then actually came back and had an offer. It was one of those, like, I really wanted to work with the people in the company and everything. But it was a nine to five kind of job. And it was actually a little bit different than the work I was doing. And that was, it was really a sort of scary time for me because I was like, I don't know if I can do that. I was, when I got through that first week and I'd gone Monday through Friday and I'd gone to work every day and like driven to work and came back home, that was like a, that was a victory for me. I was like, oh, wow, I can do that. It's just, you know, you get so used to not doing it that you wonder if you ever could. And actually now I've gotten to the point where several years ago I decided I just don't want to go back to that. There's just the flexibility and the ability to just get stuff done in life and not have all these, you know, the scheduled interruptions that you have with work. And of course, just for me, not having to deal with traffic and a drive and things like that, just there's just too much time that I get back that it's, I don't know that I could ever go back to an office. It just, it doesn't make any sense to me. I cannot imagine that situation. Yeah, I hear you. So one more, one last thing I did want to touch on just because we've talked really about the content side, but one thing that's always interesting to me because I've played around in this space for a while as well is just because you mentioned in some of your material, the idea of finding affiliates. And so it's not just always selling your product per se, the money that you get for your product, but then there's always that revenue stream that's possible through advertising, through affiliates and having deals and partnerships with companies where your product helps sell their product. Where are some good places to go to find sources? Or how do you address that through your classes? How do you sort of help people, you know, I guess sort of introduce them to the world. And then not only that, but like, how do they take their first steps into finding affiliates for their product or their content? Well, I will say what I do, I think is a little more specialized, but I suppose some of the things could apply as well. Basically in my world, this world that I, a product creation that I do in a specific niche, my affiliates are often what you might call my competition. They're often other course creators who create courses. And a lot of times we are promoting each other's stuff. So it can get a little incestuous, you know, because you have people who are buying courses for me and maybe a lot of other people as well. So, you know, it's important to find people who actually complement what you do and are also have integrity as well, because you don't want to, you know, be promoting something or recommending something to people who, you know, it's not good. So that is pretty easy for me. And in terms of, you know, the people that I work with, unfortunately, unless they're going to be, I think really getting to like maybe doing a blog or a lot of email marketing, it's not necessarily set up for that. Like if you're selling on the Amazon platform, Amazon's going to be recommending a lot of their other stuff to your customers. And they're not really going to let you do that. But let's say you were able to build an email list with your niche, with people, you know, maybe who went to your site or something, then certainly you could recommend people who are offering complimentary products. But I will say that the affiliates that I work with tend to be more small business owners like myself. They're not necessarily big companies. They just tend to more offer, you know, products or courses that complement what I do. So I suppose that would be my takeaway to people would be to look at your competition and see if there's a way that you can actually work with them as opposed to just putting them in the competition box. Excellent. Good answer. And that, you know, that that actually gives it a nice, you know, sort of ties a nice bow on that, that idea that you mentioned at the start that you as you're deciding on your product and you're looking for how to position it basically in the market, then then, you know, you're looking at your comp, what is potentially going to be your competition and where can you place yourselves within there. But then sort of that sounds like, you know, you sort of maintain that that knowledge is useful all the way through to the end, because then you can always circle back around at the end and say, okay, this is, I found this hole that I'm plugging in and I can actually reach out to some of these other people that are organizations that are in that space and say, Hey, you know, you've got these holes that you plug, I've got this different hole and we can, you know, we can work together so that everybody wins so that the people that want to really understand that that space or that want to work in that space can get all of the gaps that they may be in there addressed and maybe not necessarily by one company, but you know, through that loose organization, almost of competitors that at least have that common goal of, Hey, let's help people out in this space. Right, right. And that's the way I look at it. And I think that can be a good way for anybody to get started, especially if they're not necessarily thinking they want to approach big companies and things like that. Yeah, that's, that's really good approach. So as we're wrapping this up, I want to be respective, respectful of your time. And so, but I do want to ask, is there, so if anybody's interested in your courses or, you know, learning more about what you do or they, they want to get started and, you know, so these low content areas, what are some of the best ways to get ahold of you? Sure. You can certainly check out my website. That's amyharrop.com. A-M-A-Y-H-A-R-R-O-P. I have some free training on there. I have an overview of all my courses. I have a lot of great blog posts. I also have a YouTube channel that you can also, I believe it's linked there as well. So I just suggest going to the blog. It's a great way to, for the site, it's a great way to see what I have to offer. There's a lot of free resources there too. Excellent. Yeah. Free resources are always good. Everybody. That's the internet is full of those. Everybody likes to have a little bit. And that's always the right price. Thanks a lot, Amy. You have a great day and a great week. Thanks you too. Bye. All right. Bye bye. And that will wrap it up. So I want to thank Amy for spending some time with us. I want to thank you for spending some time going through this. Hopefully this is one of those where you, you know, again had pencil and paper and there are some ideas there that came out for whatever your side hustle or thought of doing some like, you know, ebook, low content, or even high content, you know, self publishing book, things like that, because there are so many ways to do it. There's so many, it's just the barriers to entry are almost just non-existent these days. So if you've got something, if it's a, a presentation, if it's a white paper, if it's just some problem that you solved in a new or different way, think about taking that and turning it into some sort of, some sort of content that you can produce and provide to others. It's something that will help you refine that knowledge and refine that process, but it's also an opportunity to generate a couple, you know, a couple extra bucks, get some revenue in, start that side hustle, see how valuable what you know is to other people, because I guarantee you, I don't care who you are, there is something that you know that others people have a different point of view or they don't know or haven't been through it the way you have, and that's going to be valuable to them. For that person that hasn't done it before, because you have, you can give them that information, you can provide them something, and that gives them value. Don't keep it to yourself. That being said, we are going to wrap this one up. We will come back next episode, yet another interview. We're going to continue just moving around with these for a while. There's a lot of great people I've spoken to. I'm really itching to get this in front of you so you can get some of the same experience and knowledge that I've gotten through all of these discussions, but come out there and 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 Develop-a-Nor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Please check out school.develop-a-nor.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. We've taken the lessons, the things that we've learned, all of the things that make you a better developer, and we're putting it there. We have a range of courses from free short courses up to full paid boot camps. All of these include a number of things to help you get better, including templates, quick references, and other things that make us all better developers.