In this episode, Mike walks AJ through THE MONEY HABIT’s launch day, a whopping twelve hours of special guests, marketing ideas and more. Not even technical glitches could stop the show! Well, they did, but they got everything back on track quickly, due to Mike’s intrepid team behind the scenes. Listeners will learn the tech used, how the parade of authors and guests were managed, and ultimately if Mike thought it was worthwhile.
In this episode, Mike walks AJ through THE MONEY HABIT’s launch day, a whopping twelve hours of special guests, marketing ideas, and more. Not even technical glitches could stop the show! Well, they did, but they got everything back on track quickly, due to Mike’s intrepid team behind the scenes. Listeners will learn the tech used, how the parade of authors and guests was managed, and ultimately if Mike thought it was worthwhile.
Be sure to visit https://dwtbpodcast.com for more information and add your name to start receiving their newsletter. If you’d like to support this show, rate, subscribe, and leave a review on your podcast app.
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Episode 126: “Twelve-Hour-Launch Day”
Mike Michalowicz:
Welcome back to the Don't Write That book podcast where you can learn how to write your bestseller and own your authorship. Follow along with us as we give you an insider's view of the book industry. Now, here are your hosts, myself, Mike Michalowicz and AJ Harper. So there's like so many juicy stories. What a way to reconvene. So, so wait, you, you, so what we do, just for our audience knows, we record our audio track on Riverside as a general recording, but we do a local backup track. I use Audacity. You use Voice Memo. Now,
AJ Harper:
Well, I normally transferred immediately, but I got distracted by something, which is typical of me. And just a couple days ago I was trying to shut down my computer and I saw voice memo was a voice note was out and realized it was still recording. So that was like two weeks of recording. I,
Mike Michalowicz:
Wow. I had no idea it does that.
AJ Harper:
It was so it's not recording the whole time, right? Because your com you put your computer to sleep, you go to sleep. But it was hundred and 63 hours.
Mike Michalowicz:
Holy cow. That's like 7,000 terabytes. It probably took up the entire interweb
AJ Harper:
Of storage. I would I taught a couple classes.
Mike Michalowicz:
It
AJ Harper:
Was a really good one too. On introductions. Probably the best time I, best class I ever taught on introductions, apple, whole things on there. Meetings with my team, probably, probably
Mike Michalowicz:
Greeley barking
AJ Harper:
Co coffee with my wife, endless coffees with my wife. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz:
You know what's so funny? You know when, when Chris and I get in an argument and we reflect back and say, well, I said this. No, no, I said that, you know, like, there's two different interpretations. Yeah. I think there's a pining for me and perhaps her, and perhaps anyone's in an argument. It's like, well, let's go to the videotape. There's even commercials like that, you know, you actually have the video tape.
AJ Harper:
I do, but that's, that's bad. You know, all those arguments I had with my wife where I would say, I wish you could hear a recording of what you just said,
Mike Michalowicz:
Well, now you have it.
AJ Harper:
No, we can't. There's this thing that if you've been in a long-term relationship, you start to learn, which is checking.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. You don't, you don't wanna record. Can't charter. Yeah. You don't want record it.
AJ Harper:
No, don't, just don't. That's why my first thought was, I wonder how I will extract this first 50 minutes of the podcast. Oh, so funny. And then I looked at it and I thought, no. And I just put in the trash
Mike Michalowicz:
That's the appropriate move. I got some crazy stories over the weekend. Yeah. I'm just gonna do one. I, there's a jet ski story I wanna tell you about, but that, I'll say that for next week. It's, you're gonna be laughing.
AJ Harper:
Were you on a jet ski?
Mike Michalowicz:
We were on a jet ski.
AJ Harper:
You and Kristen?
Mike Michalowicz:
No, you and I.
AJ Harper:
It was. Oh, okay. Okay. This is a text you sent me that. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Michalowicz:
I, I woke up, I'm like, the two of us will be laughing our butts off. I couldn't believe it. It was So Next
AJ Harper:
Podcast.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah, next podcast. The, the jet ski, the micing, AJ, jet ski. The crazy thing that happened this weekend. So today's Monday, I walk out to take our dog Archer out for his morning bathroom break. And because of the snow, I had to go, I usually go out the back into the backyard, into the woods, but I had to go out into our front driveway and I walk by my truck and I'm like, it's, it's got a dent in it, like a massive dent. So I look closer and I'm like, did someone hit me in a parking lot? And I drove here and I looked down and there's all this like, crushed backing lights, you know, like the brake light and stuff of another vehicle below it. I'm like freaking Amazon delivery or some, some guy, it's a hit and run. So.
AJ Harper:
The driveway?
Mike Michalowicz:
Or hit and run in my driveway, there's no nothing. So we have cameras. So we go to cameras. It was a hit and run. Not Amazon, not delivery person. A drunk driver.
moments before our garage, did not hit the house. Thanks, G, backs up, hits my truck, dents it drives forward into a snowbank. Does, does the bizarrest K turn, like one of those hitting
snowbanks bushes. Everything almost hits my truck a second time doesn't, and then drives away and then crashes about a half mile down the road into a tree. I will tell you this I don't wanna share anything.
AJ Harper:
Camera picked up the tree part?
Mike Michalowicz:
Everything. Oh, no, no, no. Not the tree down the road. Not that I tree
AJ Harper:
That was, that's just what you figured out through conversations or
Mike Michalowicz:
With the police. Yeah. So I called the police they come, filed a report. I got my case number right here. I got the, the card with the case number. And I told him, I'm like, oh, this, this looks like the type of vehicle. They said, oh, no, no, I know that type of vehicle. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. You know, he is like, yeah, yeah, we had a little accident last night right down the street from here. So we think it's the same person. Here's what I'll tell you, because I don't want to go into the details. The person came to my house later that day and said it was me and shaken and, shaken and upset. And honest. And I, I, I told them, I said that that's the definition of nobility. Like, I, like in today's litigious world, an attorney said, no, no, no, no guilt. Don't say anything. He's gonna sue you. You're, you're admitting guilt. Then he came and said, I want to pay for the damages I've done, and I am apologize deeply. And this is a criminal offense. Like they, they're, they're gonna get, they're getting processed. 'cause It was the DUI. So, so it, it's kind of weird, but this big thing I'm like, kudos to them there, there's some honor.
AJ Harper:
Well, I hope that person gets some help.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. But that's what I told them too.
AJ Harper:
You did?
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah, I did. I did. I was like, well, that situation, because you, you look at this driving, there's, there's drunk driving and there's blacked out driving where there's no awareness,
AJ Harper:
No one's dead.
Mike Michalowicz:
That's why I told the person, yeah. I said, you're like, you're not dead. We are lucky. No one else was harmed or hurt at all.
AJ Harper:
I would, you know, I feel like if that's happening to you, where somehow by the grace of whatever's in the universe, you've escaped, harming another person or yourself. (Yeah.) Then you need to just accept the fact that you're supposed to be getting help. Like, just get, just go get help.
Mike Michalowicz:
It's a, it is a gift. It's a gift. Sometimes you get one or two mistakes without repercussions, but you, you now have the awareness and it's a decision to be made.
AJ Harper:
That person's contact info?
Mike Michalowicz:
I do.
AJ Harper:
Hmm. I might message you after, because I know someone who could connect that person with some support.
Mike Michalowicz:
Oh, I, perhaps I, yeah. You know, I'm in a weird position. I don't know this person personally.
AJ Harper:
That's okay.
Mike Michalowicz:
Um, Yeah.
AJ Harper:
So you don't have to know the person.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, great. I would love to talk about it separately, but I, I'll tell you what, what started off as disappointment, anger, confusion, this kind of investigatory mindset that kicks in. It's like, woo, well I gotta figure this out. Like there's a clue to, oh man, reparations and empathy and appreciation for this person to have that courage. Questioning myself, if I did that same thing, would I have the courage to, and the nobility. Nobility is the word I'm using to go forward and say guilty
AJ Harper:
I think you would just knowing, you know, I think you absolutely would.
Mike Michalowicz:
I love seeing it in someone else,
AJ Harper:
But I mean, I, yeah. This is a loaded, this is a loaded question. So gosh, so much for my joke! I was gonna tell a joke while you were, while you were talking about how on earth a person could be, you could have a be hit by a drunk driver on your road when your road is like, it would be like getting hit by be like, I was gonna say, like, it, was it a drunk cow
Mike Michalowicz:
#Too Soon.
AJ Harper:
Deer would be better. A drunk, like, because you are in Yeah,
Mike Michalowicz:
We are, we are out in the boonies. Yeah. Yeah. It is. When, when a car comes by, it's actually shocking. 'cause We can see it from our where we watch TV typically.
AJ Harper:
Yeah. So, oh, okay. And then your, then your wife's into this like, true crying. She's probably like looking at every car that comes down the driveway with like that true crime sound in her head.
Mike Michalowicz:
Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, she was, she was freaked out and upset, but I think we followed a very similar arc of emotion around it. And it just came out well.
AJ Harper:
Well, I'm glad everybody's alive and, okay.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So today we're gonna talk about the 12-hour launch day, and we're gonna break it down so our listeners can duplicate it. I first wanna introduce my writing partner, my friend my jet skier. You'll learn next.
AJ Harper:
Oh, no.
Mike Michalowicz:
Oh, it's so funny. And what I admire about you is showing up tired. And I, I know it's not easy. I've been interviewing entrepreneurs and particularly mom entrepreneurs. I notice the difference between male entrepreneurs and females as a general rule. Males for the successor company will sacrifice everything to make it happen, including family, including personal time, anything for the business. What I found with women is they'll sacrifice everything except their family, which then means the only last remainder is sleep. And so I noticed most female entrepreneurs will, will say, I'm not, I'm just not gonna sleep and care, be there for the family, be there for the business, and it's really compromising their health. But it's something I noticed. I, I noticed you show up no matter what, even if sleep, you're sleep deprived. And I, I appreciate that. That shows total commitment and thank
AJ Harper:
You. Yeah, that is, that is, that is a, I did, I didn't sleep much when my son was younger, that's for sure. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. And you, you just keep showing up. And I know the cost for that, that's not, it is not good for our health long time, long term, but it's appreciated that, that you still didn't miss the stuff that we committed to. So thank you.
AJ Harper:
Well, you know why I'm tired, because I got up at three in the morning, and then, now my thing is, I just get up and write because I'm working on a book, so I know I'm pumped. I just went to, I just did some writing and then I went back to bed. Instead of what I really wanna do, which is order DoorDash to bring me some sort of donut,
Mike Michalowicz:
Thank you, my friend. Yeah. So let, let's get into it. Today we're gonna talk about the 12 hour launch. Do you want me to give you a little breakdown of it? Yeah,
AJ Harper:
But I wanna just also say that we, prior to this, we've done three episodes on debriefing on the Money Habit book launch. There's an overview episode, and then we did a breakdown on how you did all of your bulk buy. You know, how how did that work? How did, who did it go to? How, how did you navigate that? We did an episode on how do you ask, what are the asks for influencers, specifically people that you might be nervous to talk to? How do you handle that ask in the context of your own launch and how you handled your ask. And so this is now our fourth episode in this series about the money habit launch.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah.
AJ Harper:
But it's not just what did you do, it's how you as a listener can, can do this as well if you want to. And so this is the actual day that we're talking about.
Mike Michalowicz:
Correct. And what I just did was I shared this file. We have kinda a master launch day breakdown. Sum the plan summary, I think it'll be helpful. So I send it to Adayla, and Laura and, and Sadé help produce this show. I ask Adayla to put this on the website. So anyone that goes to, don't write that book, our website, and DI think it's d wtb podcast.com is the actual page. If you go there request a free resources, and when this episode's live, that document will be there and you can just kind of rip, rip this off, or as I say r and d rip off and duplicate. So you want me to give the overview, the basic overview? Is that.
AJ Harper:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Mike Michalowicz:
Okay. So it was a 12 hour event. We ran it on Tuesday. Actually, I wanna have a question for you. Why do books launch on Tuesdays at least most?
AJ Harper:
Well, so it's, I mean, it's, it's partly related to the tracking of the lists. Although they track from, I think it's, I think it's Saturday to Sunday that they track... Yes. Tracks from Saturday to Sunday. But I don't have a really specifically good answer for you. I should probably find the original source of why our book, why do books release on Tuesday? But they do.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. I almost wonder if it's kind of like, well, that's the way we've always done it. Answer. Like, there's, there was logic that faded. Well, this happens on a Tuesday where published through page two simplifies the imprint. And this was the first book. This is the imprint that I am a co-founder of with page two. And this is the first book in this imprint. This year I think we have four more books coming out from the imprint, and now we have some traction. We have more authors coming on board. The, what we do with marketing is we evaluate like, what's all the marketing we've done that works in the past? What's the marketing we've done that doesn't work? And I'll tell you, AJ, I question the value of guest appearances on other people's podcasts. The majority. I question how much value there is. But of course, the exchange is, and what we've done is instead of doing an hour interview, what many people request for is we limit it to 25 minutes.
Mike Michalowicz:
So, you know, in theory, I can do two to even three times the volume of podcasts, but we're much more selective. We go through the evaluation process. I will tell you, having your own podcast and spending the time in to make it effective is extremely powerful. So I'm not saying podcasts don't work, I'm just questioning guest appearance. And so we said, let's, let's downplay that. The prior launch for the prior book, all In, I did over a hundred podcast appearances. And this one for Money Habit, we did about 25. The, the higher return ones. We also say, what, what's the thing that we haven't done before that we've seen perhaps work for others? And we've mentioned Selena Soo, she's done these kind of launch day things. If you watched Alex Hermosi's launch recently with yeah, he did a, a live thing. And we also looked kind of historically the the QVC shows and stuff like that.
Mike Michalowicz:
They're, they're basically this, this live, so launch process, like, well, let's do that. The second thing I said is, I, I have a lot of favors. I'm putting air quotes around that, that I can call in a community of authors that I've built rapport with that I trust, and I think, trust me, and I always like to do something that is a win for the participant, beyond the feeling of, Hey, I'm helping Mike. So for 12 hours on Tuesday, the launch was on the 27th of January. So this is a ways back now from 8:00 AM Eastern. We picked that time specifically because that is the morning hours on the East Coast. That's the early, you know, really early risers on the West Coast. At 5:00 AM we ran to 8:00 PM on the East coast, which everyone's pretty shutting is shut down for business already. But the West coast is shutting down by 5:00 PM It also covers Canada and Mexico, where we have large contingencies of consumers. And I would say the US is 80% of our consumption. Canada is the next 15%, and then Mexico would be a one percenter or whatever. And then global is the rest of the 4%. So we really wanted to concentrate in this area. We weren't targeting lists, we weren't trying to get on the New York Times bestseller.
AJ Harper:
I just interrupted you. I'm sorry. This shows you how tired I am. It's Tuesday because the New York Times tracks from Tuesday to Monday.
Mike Michalowicz:
Okay.
AJ Harper:
I'm just so exhausted, I feel. Are you
Mike Michalowicz:
Saying, is everyone kowtowing to the New York Times?
AJ Harper:
Well, well, yes.
Mike Michalowicz:
AJ Harper:
Yes. But, okay, good. Okay. Sorry, I had to interrupt you. No, because I was like, why did I say, okay. Yes, that's super helpful. You know the answer.
Mike Michalowicz:
It's super helpful. Okay, so we weren't del we weren't our, I take it back. Our primary goal was not to get on the list.
AJ Harper:
No, it's just would to, it's just you also have traditional distribution through McMillan, and so they're only going to publish you on a Tuesday.
Mike Michalowicz:
Okay. Correct, correct. So thank you for answering that. So our, my pri i, I could almost care less about, I care less about lists
AJ Harper:
Mike Michalowicz:
But we did, we did make a list, but Leslie, on page two was coordinating with Andrea on our side and said, Hey, we know no one, Mike doesn't really care, but it does bring credibility for other factors of business. If, if we can help it happen, let's not ignore it. So they structured and, and I think one thing that influences list appearances or not is the distribution of demand. Yeah. So, so they intentionally were directing people to, instead of one source, buy everything on Amazon. They're encouraging people to buy on the platforms they feel most comfortable with. And admittedly, I saw something from Seth Godin a long time ago about his SEO model. He said, it's real simple. I do what's in the best interest of readers. And I just assume that back then Google was a hot platform that Google will optimize their algorithms to serve their readers best.
Mike Michalowicz:
So I'm not, I'm not trying to hack the algorithm, which many people try to do. I'm just trying to serve my readers and how we did this list appearance, it was A-A-U-S-A today. What we did was we invited people to choose one of five major platforms, bookshop, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Powell, I think books a million, I, I can't remember what the five were, but something like that. Libraries, you know, buy, buy it, where you want to get it. And that natural distribution seems to be a great way to get on a list. Couple more things. So, so what was the format? I, I spoke for a little bit in the very beginning to introduce people to the book concept, what it's about. And then I invited on over 50 experts to come on generally for 10 minute segments where they just presented their perspective on profitability and influence, not profitability, on financial independence and achieving it. But Phil Jones, who talks his book is exactly what to say. He's not a financial guru or defined that way, but he's got a perspective that really influences it. Communications key. Mm-Hmm
AJ Harper:
I know you had Garrett, I know you had--
Mike Michalowicz:
Garrett Gunderson,
AJ Harper:
Tiffany Aliche.
Mike Michalowicz:
Tiffany did not appear. There was a snow. There was a big snowstorm that went through Nashville. And Nashville got shut down.
AJ Harper:
Oh, okay.
Mike Michalowicz:
And so she
AJ Harper:
Scheduled to appear.
Mike Michalowicz:
Two people didn't make it. Tiffany Aliche and Aaron Walker, both in Nashville, Tiffany traveling through, Aaron, a local resident, and they were navigating massive, massive damage that that went through Nashville
AJ Harper:
Later in the show. Let's talk about how you guys handled that. But yeah, so you had a 12-hour event where you were talking and other people were talking, and it was live, just to make sure people know it went on for 12 hours without interruption, except for one thing that happened that was outta your control.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. Which was actually perhaps one of our highlights. We had a total technical shutdown, and I can't remember what the trigger was behind that, but I remember my mind saying, you know what? We've been going till it was two in the afternoon, three in the afternoon while you and I were on the segment together. Coincidentally. Yeah,
AJ Harper:
I was, I was on when you guys shut down.
Mike Michalowicz:
And I'm like, okay, you know what? We, we had on average five, between five and 600 at any given time. So let's say 550 people live viewing. I think we had 3000 registrants, maybe four. I don't know that number. I gotta ask Andrea. And it surprised me how many people were there. We had high degrees of engagement too, so it wasn't like this. People turned it on and ignored it.
They were coming back to it, maybe watching it live, commenting. We moved, I can't remember now. You know, and I wish I had the stats in front of me. Hundreds of books. I want books. I wanna say we moved over 500 books as That's
AJ Harper:
Right. I've seen the spreadsheet. Yeah,
Mike Michalowicz:
You did see it. Yeah. Yeah. 500, maybe 700 books from this one event. The, the benefit was not moving the books alone, but I'll tell you, it triggered a lot of individual sales. There was something far greater and it was unexpected. I'll, I'll hold that till later on. But there was something unexpected that came out of it. So I know we wrote down some questions. Do you want us to kind of go through those things
AJ Harper:
I'm curious about? Okay. So you decide you're gonna do a 12-hour day. First of all, what kind of immediate reaction did you get from your team when you said, Hey, let's do 12 hour day?
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. Not surprised.
AJ Harper:
So when you sit down to plan it, you know, what are some of the, what were some of the early brainstorms? Like, did you know right away I'm gonna bring in my pals and what you wanted them to talk about? Or were you, you know, tell me more about the brainstorming.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah, the first thing was, oh, let's emulate a QVC thing. And so it's, that was kind of the initial version. And then it morphed to the, remember the PBS fundraisers where they would show like a part of a show, like say a concert, Tina Turner, you know, here's her epic concert. And they would show one or two songs, they cut back. It's like, you just saw Tina Turner, and this is brought to you by PBS at no cost because of our donors phones are ringing right now, and you hears the phones ringing. So we're like, oh, maybe we can bring that back, because that's super compelling. So rich deep content, and then breaks to pitch. And then it morphed to instead of a show where it's one or two presenters, entertainment, whatever, for a long period, I have a lot of friends who could introduce an audience that we've never met before.
Mike Michalowicz:
So the primary driver said, can we get people discovering the money habit, who are not familiar with my prior work? So the biggest goal was to get fresh audience in. And that came or turned to who are the people that I know who have an audience that probably doesn't know me. And that's
why Aaron Walker and Phil Jones and Jean Chasky, who
AJ Harper:
Yeah. Okay. So I see that. And then you didn't have any conversations with, so it was all people of some sort of quote unquote influence in that way as opposed to readers.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. We didn't bring readers on or case studies. Yeah. It would've been interesting to have Sam Horton on or another person, maybe Tyler Schneider Travis Schneider, yeah. From a one they crossed our mind. But when Andrea said, you know, what's our key objective here? It was to build a new audience of followers. We, we also assumed that the people who registered, it sounded unfathomable that people would stay for 12 hours. Now, at the end of the event, one one little surprise at the end event, I said, who here has been absorbing the entire 12 hours, including the technical glitch where our entire site went down, we had to rebuild it. The whole team built the whole new platform. I mean, same platform, but the whole new experience within like 10 minutes. And we were back live. So the only person that got sacrificed, you're the sacrificial lamb. There was people that jumped to the new platform. And then once the new platform was up, we had an average 250 folks there. At the end of the event, at eight o'clock in the evening, I said, I just gotta know who hears the weirdo who was here for 12 hours straight and weirdo after weirdo said, proud to be a weirdo
AJ Harper:
Oh, nice. You know, we did end up talking, right?
Mike Michalowicz:
I don't recall. I you, I barely, it was such a blur. Yeah. And
AJ Harper:
That's part of, yeah, I got an, I got an, I got an email and they said, can you do this time? And I just happened to be able to do it. So I got, I, I did talk to you on that day for the launch.
Mike Michalowicz:
You know what? It was probably Aaron's spot or Tiffany Che's spot. That, and we did have a contingency plan, so thank you. Yeah.
AJ Harper:
So what, okay, so now that we know, and you know what, I did a three hour launch for my book. Right. I must read Nice. And most of it was me talking to either authors that I work with, meaning highlighting their experience, or I, I did a lot of laser coaching sessions where I did ,
Mike Michalowicz:
Oh that's cool.
AJ Harper:
And so that brought a lot of attention to the event because I was getting, people were signing, trying to sign up for that.
Mike Michalowicz:
We--
AJ Harper:
Love that. And then it's very interesting to watch somebody talk their way through it. I remember, well, we did a podcast about your TV show, and one of the things that you said was, I wish I could have had a chance to s-see how it turned out for them.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go.
AJ Harper:
So I just offered to you, you could do follow up little, they don't have to do 12 hours, but you could do follow up live events for the money habit that are about you coaching readers. I like that. And just like 10-minute increments. And I think people would be riveted to that because they wanna hear your answers to these challenges.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah, I just wrote that down. What if we did effectively hot seats?
AJ Harper:
Yeah. That's what I did for my launch. And yeah. So
Mike Michalowicz:
Hot seat Monday, do it once a month. And bring on readers and, and have a dialogue back and forth and allow 'em, you know, we make it live. Make it live. Yeah. And that's, I, it is brilliant. So it's, I have a call with Andrea and Kelsey. We do a marketing planning session on average once every two weeks, and we have a list of ideas. And so I'm just gonna add that in for today. And
AJ Harper:
Especially in this age where people just need real things happening as opposed to ai. I, I hope that you do that. I think that'll be great. I
Mike Michalowicz:
Was on, I'm on YouTube. So in the morning I like to, I, in our little exercise room, I have a TV up and I'll have guitar lessons playing in the background or Virginia Tech, football news or ai. Like, this is the three things. I'm like, you know, what's the new AI things, robots or whatever.
And so that's playing in the background, but they run these commercials and some of the commercials disclose others don't, that they're using AI actors. I get this stupid Tai Chi and it says, men over 50. I wonder why it says that. Who wanna be in shape? I wonder why it says that are doing chair Tai Chi. And then it does this really pervy. It's disgusting actually. And then it shows a young woman, of course, 24, but she's like, my dad wants to get back in shape. And they're just trying to show it's just gross. And I'm like, oh, this is all AI ized. It's there, there's such this fakeness out there now. 'cause It's so easy. Where therefore I think the opportunity is realness. So I love this idea of doing hot seats, the hot seat, but I'm gonna do the hot seat while doing Tai Chi to cheer.
AJ Harper:
So on your team, you had these two part-timers that you added to help you with logistics of rounding everybody up. Yeah. But then who else on your team was focused on it?
Mike Michalowicz:
So Andrea was communicating the messaging. So for each guest appearance, I wonder if I can pull up the guests and stuff. But for each person that that came on there she was just giving the logistical information of what you're gonna present on. How do, a lot of people said, well, is Mike gonna interview me? I'd rather Mike interview me. And she said, we prefer that you do a straight presentation, because otherwise I would be, have to be fully present and not be able to sit down and take a break. It was physically difficult, by the way. I was right here. I mean, it was
AJ Harper:
12 hours.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. Oh. And always have contingency plans. We had two studios, if you will, ready to go. This one, my home and the office, I was gonna do it from the office. We had meals planned. Amy was running logistics to get meals, anything I needed. 'cause If I had a bathroom break it was gonna be when someone's presenting. And while they had 10 minute slots, I had to do an introduction. And then the, the kind of the whatever, the post introduction. And on average I was, I had a seven minute break. So everything was scheduled, these seven minute breaks, including lunch. So we had it all planned out. Well, I get to our office. I can't believe this. I start my computer and it says, updating
Mike Michalowicz:
And I'm like, I'm outta here because it takes me 15 minutes to get back home to get set up. And so I came back here the updates on my office computer finished an hour later, so it wouldn't have worked. We're broadcasting from here and the team's like, okay, we're gonna get food delivered DoorDash equivalent. But I can't leave the student. I can't even go upstairs to answer the door. So Amy drives here and she's guarding the door, delivering food. So the logistics was very difficult. So Andrea was doing the coordination with individuals, explaining and answering their specific questions. Once we had that, Marco and Aiden were the ones just kind of managing the slots and kind of the, the surface dialogue. Andrew's doing the more detailed answers. Amy was actual physical logistics, food block and tackle for, for bathroom breaks. Like literally when a bathroom break is coming, go into the bathroom. 'cause There's a one person bathroom was the plan. Because stand there so that when break is coming, Mike can run to use the bathroom and no one else has it occupied. But since I was back here, there's no problem.
AJ Harper:
Well, yeah, I was gonna say, who else is in your house?
Mike Michalowicz:
Kelsey was on commenting. Aaron, my assistant was, well, once we went live, Marco and Aiden and Kelsey and Andrew are all on the live dialogue, managing the chats, getting guests in and out. The technol technology was a little bit complex. We didn't use Riverside. We used stream yard for that.
AJ Harper:
I used my stream yard for mine too. So that, it's very cool. It puts people in a waiting room, like a green room before their time to go on. It has internal chat capabilities, external chat capabilities. What I like about it is the look of it and how it can bring quotes from the chat and other things up across the screen while, you know, so I think streamer's great. And then it's broadcasting to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, wherever you want it to broadcast. I,
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. Yeah. Live broadcast. ADE was there. She was managing our guests as they're coming in getting them pumped up. It was good networking for her. She did a fantastic job. So, so yeah, it was, it was a, a large team to pull it off. I will tell you. 'cause It's intimidating if you're an author
listening and saying, I don't have that team. Well, we have an existing team, but, but it's interesting how many people are willing to help out just for a project or gig basis.
AJ Harper:
Yeah. I think people could still pull it off if they don't ha I think, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good. You can, you need a person that can handle rally and have logistics handled for you, but sometimes you can get somebody to volunteer to do that.
Mike Michalowicz:
Exactly. I'm looking to see if I can find the spreadsheet on this. I oh, here it is. Here it is. So I was supposed to see, oh, oh, and the other thing was guest promotion. So this was a big thing. So guest promotion was managed by Andrea, facilitated by Marco primarily. Once, so here, here's the, here's the sequence of getting guests on. I went through a list of people I know we prepared a spreadsheet that included literally hundreds of people I know. Then we went through a second pass and said, who are the people that have a community that I want to gain access to that I wouldn't typically have access to? And then who are the people that I know and have a rapport with? I could reach out and ask this appearance and they would come out winning.
Mike Michalowicz:
Like, so the, we kind of filtered it down. And that got down to about 55 to 60 people. Literally an over 95%. Heck yes, Mike. I'm in on this. I'm doing it with you. The 5% that declined, all of 'em were because of scheduling conflicts. Everyone got back. No one said, no, sorry, I gotta pass on this. Like, none of that stuff. Ramit sat was in Japan and said, dude, I'll do this for you. But it's the time hour difference and so forth. Why don't we do a big private interview? And so I did it with his community, and that was massive for the money habit. So he, he didn't appear on this live one, but, so everyone came back and some peoples came back with a alternative plan if it didn't work out for them. So we had this guest promotion. Each person got a dedicated page, we,
AJ Harper:
Oh, something wrong. Move your mic a little bit.
Mike Michalowicz:
Is that better? Yeah. Oh, I, yeah, I moved away so I could see the screen. So everyone got a dedicated page that they would go to. So money habit.com/aj Harper, that would be your link. And that page had a picture of you, because I know your community knows you and had a picture of me to do a, what I call a transfer of trust. So associate someone they already know you and trust to someone new that they can now link together a description of the event, and then a list of the other guests to build authority and credibility had a prominent registration features. So what I asked people in my initial communication, I said, I'm doing this event. I'd love for you to be a guest, but before you say yes or no, I also have a bold ask with that, would you be willing to do two promotions to your community that, that you're doing this?
Mike Michalowicz:
And all the yeses said, yes, I'll do that. The as for promotion was about a week prior. And then the morning of, and I'll tell you, when you're promoting events, particularly now, nowadays it, it's a lot of this last minute stuff. So you, you wanna give people notice. That's why we did a week in advance. But if, if you start doing this six months advance or whatever, it's very difficult to get people to block out time. Ironically. And then last minute, Charlie's for, for what was, it was really a passive event. Like you turn it on and you, you can leave it running in the background. And I think most people did. Mm-Hmm
Mike Michalowicz:
300 plus were one book purchase, but they got the bonus, which was interfacing with our AI system that was programmed and is programmed just for the money habit. This has been extraordinary for us because now I see the questions people are asking about the money habit that aren't answered in the money habit because we get the AI feedback and it says here, these are questions that not answered. So we created a dashboard. There's a website called Infinite Use. It's a company I invested in by Sandy Waggett Infinite Use. They created this dashboard and we start seeing this feedback coming in saying, oh, this resource, people want this number one resource and cannot find it easily. Fix this. And so we're, we're getting this dynamic feedback. So that was very powerful. 200 of the orders were three or more, the majority being three, some being like the next level. I think it was 14 or something. I think we had two to eight orders. I I still remember the numbers for 55, which was our max.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. And here's the list. I'm just looking through. I have so many spreadsheets. Yeah. Mike Budzinski of Buzzworthy Marketing came on. Like, why, why would he come on with a personal finance book? Well, he's got a big community of small business owners, marketing agencies who have two or three employees. And we're like, he's perfect for it. But he spoke about how when you talk to your employees about personal finance, you're talking about the most intimate thing in their life. It's a little bit awkward. It's like saying, Hey, have you ever had herpes? Like you, it's very awkward. How, how do you communicate that way? And it's, it's a marketing. If you wanted to empower your team financially, how do you market to them? So just unexpected connections, but people I know, like, and trust.
AJ Harper:
Cool. So we already talked about some of your strategies for the day, but I'm wondering about other things, like how do you keep your voice? How'd you not lose your voice in 12 hours?
Mike Michalowicz:
There is a tea that has marshmallow, which it, it's called like speakeasy or Oh no. Throat, coat throat, coat throat or throat coat. One of the two Coat, throat Coat. I think so, yeah. And it's a little bit of that occasionally, but really just staying hydrated. Tons of water. Tons of breaks when my camera would cut off. So for, I don't know if I can show. Yeah, I'm gonna show the wide view. That's the nice thing about our new YouTube channel here, as you can see the office, but, oh, you still can't see. I'm on my wide view right now, but to my left, to your right on camera, right where you see the end of this d there's a chair there and it's my little meditation section. I gotta show you some stuff. Hang tight. I got my little singing ball there I use in the morning, got my little Buddha and that, that's my middle medi. It's the meditation station here at the Macal house
AJ Harper:
Meditation station.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. So I would sit there and I'd just close my eyes. I'd be listening to the guest. I would sometimes do a little prayer or whatever. Other times just deep breathe and sit, sometimes stretch my back. And that these little mini recoveries, I, I played sports in college in high school. And what happened is you'd go out in the field, I played lacrosse and you would run, and in many cases you'd run all out. And how can you run all out during an entire game? You can't. So you would come off the field and take breaks and they would run what's called lines a group of players, and then the next Yeah, it's, it's identical. Yeah. You're the big hockey gal. Yes. It's hockey. It's hockey. So you sprint and you recover. That was how I did it.
AJ Harper:
Yeah. Okay. So you, we already, you already gave us some results, but now I kind of wanna hear a little bit more. You, what were the goals going in though? So you said you sold probably about 500 books that day. But what, you know, what was that the, was that the goal or had you not set any
Mike Michalowicz:
No, no, no. So the, okay, so the goal was we wanted to move books. We wanted to move 10, 10,000 books for the launch. I think all said and done, bulk orders, everything. We've moved between 7,000, 8,000 for the launch. That day we sold, I think minimally 500, 300 were one order, and then 200 were multi order. So if you add that up, it's gotta be more than 500. But we
minimally moved 500 the, and, and some people, it's hard to attribute it. Did they buy it because they were in that event? Or did they buy 'cause an email and they came to the event and they submitted their book and their receipt? We, we can't tell what the source was, but that wasn't the primary. We, we wanted to move books. We wanted to build a list. That was the primary goal, but it wasn't the primary benefit at the end of the day.
Mike Michalowicz:
So we added to our list three to 5,000 new individuals that are not familiar with us, with my work, our work. But here was the big one, aj. This is the big reveal now is the relationship with these other influencers has been amplified. Like thank yous from them. Like, that was awesome. Thanks for sharing my work. We promoted each person that appeared, their work, whatever it may be. And the gratitude. And the connection. I, I'm gonna harp on Jean chassis 'cause she's a, a great example. Someone I did not know prior to this, we interviewed her for the book. She's inserted in the book, the audio book. Like I interviewed her and she inserted the book that came about. 'cause I said, Hey, I'm doing this event. I'd love for you to be a presenter and I'm gonna promote you. She said, yeah, I'd absolutely do that.
Mike Michalowicz:
Hey, I'd love for you to be in the book too. Okay. And now she's coming down and we're meeting up in Nashville this summer for a couple days. That's just one example of a, a level of rapport that came about that's just extraordinary. And there's something special about when, when n have an opportunity to be face to face with, with these influencers. Some folks I would never have in the past. And I wanna do a little pitch here for people to join the top three book workshop. 'cause We haven't mentioned it yet, and there's something magical that happens when you're face to face. So do you mind before we continue on just mentioning how people can sign up for that?
AJ Harper:
Well, I have a, the workshop is an annual workshop. I only work with about 15 to 18 people in this workshop. It's about 14 weeks, I think when this airs. There will still be a, maybe a couple slots. So, but right now we are over half full.
Mike Michalowicz:
Oh, I love it.
AJ Harper:
For, it starts in August and that's my signature program that I've been doing since 2018 that has produced some amazing books from some truly remarkable authors.
Mike Michalowicz:
And the site's aj harper.com? Yes. Okay. Thanks for letting me do that pitch. You know what I don't, what I'm afraid of is people miss this, 'cause I, I've actually had people say, oh, AJ does workshops at her home. I'm like, yeah, we talk about it.
AJ Harper:
It's also not at my home.
Mike Michalowicz:
That's your vacation, isn't it? In Madeline Island?
AJ Harper:
So the workshop is you said top of your book workshop. So that's what I answered about Yeah, that's my virtual program. That's still face-to-face, but it's virtual.
Mike Michalowicz:
Oh.
AJ Harper:
Um but if you're talking about my retreats on Malin Island, I do three of those a year in the summer. And there may be a spot you should probably run to check because we're recording this on March 2nd, and I believe it's going to air in April. And I am, I'm filling up very, very fast for my Editing workshops, but they're in person at my place on Madeline Island. They're week-long editing retreats and and they're amazing, but they're also popular. So, and I only do eight people at a time, so get it. Gotta check it out right now. If it's something that you wanna do,
Mike Michalowicz:
I conflated the two and (that's okay) So I've, I've had people say, oh, AJ does stuff at her home. You know your, you original.
AJ Harper:
I do. I'm so excited. Like, excited about, I'm like this, can I just say, just pause for a minute? Yeah. I, I'm, it's only, it's March 2nd and I called 'cause you know, we had a flood in the--
Mike Michalowicz:
I know, I know.
AJ Harper:
They've had engineers out there try because now, you know, they're arguing with each other. Like the manufacturer of the thing that broke that caused the problem. The plumber that installed it, my contractor, because it's not probably my own insurance company, is probably not actually gonna have to foot the bill. Right. Because it wasn't, it was the fault of the manufacturer. Yeah. And the Right, yeah. So all these guys are out there all the time. They have to drive across on the ice road right now to get there. So I'm just imagining these like crew of people like driving there or they have to take the wind sled. But it's gotten me so excited because they think that the ferries are gonna kick up again in about three, four weeks. And that means spring is coming. (Yes.) And that means that we're gonna get to go soon.
AJ Harper:
Yes. And it's just such an amazing, like it's the most magical place. And right now it's frozen over, but pretty soon and then the retreats will start. And when people pull into my house for the first welcome dinner, it is like a magical moment. I can't even tell you. So see, you've got us way off track, but you've got me jacked. 'cause I've just, I've been ta I've been hearing a waiting for the ice to break up because of this. Because when that happens, they have these big icebreakers that come from Duluth and they break up the ice in the bay, in Harbor, in Duluth. And then they come around and they break it up the ice in Bayfield too, so that the ferries can start running. And that's the sign that's like ready, it's starting, it's
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. Yeah. Spring is here again. Yeah. When the ice is broke. Yeah. The reason I brought the whole thing up and I did conflate the two, the retreat and the best three workshop is some folks have said to me, oh, AJ runs events at her home. And I'm like, yeah, we talk about every single episode. Like, and so what I realized is, oh, the last, when we say at the last minute, then people
are like, fast forward.
AJ Harper:
Oh, thank you for doing that.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah, I don't wanna miss that. So let's get back to the 12-hour event. I kinda wanna give you kind of the, the afterthought of it. When I was done historically, what I do is I'd, I'd hop online and see like what's the rankings on the different platforms, particularly Amazon. Do we do, we break into the hundreds and so forth. I cra I crashed, I was tired and exhausted. And the next morning I woke up and saw that we cracked into the top one 50 on Amazon. And it, it was almost anti-climatic. The, the, the exciting part was the new level of engagement with authors. I was reflecting, reflecting on this and why I do it again. The answer is hell yeah.
AJ Harper:
Really? For 12, would it be 12 hours or would you modify it?
Mike Michalowicz:
I I don't, yeah, I, that, that's a question. The, the engagement with my fellow authors, other influencers was so unexpectedly positive that I would do something like this again. I think I would do a higher quality production that I would have the full studio in effect. As opposed to just doing it here in my office. I, I, I think it could have been more engaging that way. And I think there could have been more. Oh, we were also reporting book sales as we're moving along. And one thing how, I'm gonna tell you how we did that. So you would see bottom screen in the, so the bottom of the screen says, sold 50 bucks, a hundred bucks. And we moved along, we, we cracked 7,000 books or whatever. Well, what we knew in advance, and we were telling people live, we know how many pre-orders had come in and we had over surpassed 5,000.
Mike Michalowicz:
So we knew 5,000 books were moving that day period. We were then you, you don't get live reports from Amazon or anything. So our team is looking at the bulk order receipts coming in from Amazon and making guesses based upon our history of the percentage of bulk orders to
actual live orders that don't get reported in. And don't quote me on this, I think it's about a one to five ratio during the launch day. So for everyone that buys one book, four more books or maybe five more books are being purchased elsewhere. Some way that, that aren't engaged in the launch
roughly. So if we moved 500 books, we think about 2,500 books in total sold throughout that day. And Amazon has moved back to updating its rankings more frequently. They used to do it hourly, then they moved to daily, and now they're somewhere in between. So there was actually movement on the right.
AJ Harper:
23 hours.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah. So I wonder, it's so weird. So that's that coming to 2,500. So we're like, okay, 5,000 plus 2,500 is 7,500 and and more. The other thing we did, and it's a little bit of a trick oration, is we're making our best guess at the number, but we're not, we're not gonna do round numbers because that's odd. So make our best guess and whatever that guess is, don't round it up, put the number. So we'd report where we've accounted for 517 book sales instead of 500 or five 50. Now we've accounted for 1,282, whatever the number came out to be, we agreed not to try to round it. We did report that this is our best estimate, but it was our best estimate. And the specificity just give it more, I guess, credibility. But we also disclosed that this is our best guess as we move along.
Mike Michalowicz:
The, the interesting thing is it's still hard. This is now a month and a half later. I still don't have the exact numbers there. There's always different reporting sources. What's interesting with Penguin who, who we used to work with, i I, I now have a much greater appreciation for the reporting. They have a really detailed system that's aggregating all this data and then presents a final number to the author where with page two, they're collecting all the numbers, but they don't have this automated systems refining. It's actually manually reported in. So it's actually a little more difficult to get the numbers. We have 'em, it's just more difficult to get 'em.
AJ Harper:
So you would do a live in studio version, what you're saying, where people would show up in person?
Mike Michalowicz:
I don't know if it'd be No, I think we'd have a Hi, a higher end studio here. I probably have a second person. Kind of like the dialogue we have. Th this podcast I suspect is far more engaging because it's me and you as opposed to just me talking or just you talking there. There's human connection and discussions and banter. We didn't have that on the show and I think it's more of a show. That's what I would change. Talking about studio, I actually just heard the contractors come in. We are now, we are less than weeks away. We're getting the technology's starting to come in, they're starting to install that. So I think the next don't write that book may physically be here if you're not back in Madeleine Island.
AJ Harper:
I mean, that's what I'm gonna say is by the time you get it done, I'll be up to date
Mike Michalowicz:
AJ Harper:
Well, yeah, we'll use it in the fall.
Mike Michalowicz:
Yeah.
AJ Harper:
Okay. Well I think it's, I think doing these big launch events are, are great ideas. I think for our listeners, I don't want you to be daunted by the fact that you might say, I don't know who I would ask because like I gave this idea to Mike. You could be talk, you could be doing coaching, you could be doing laser sessions, you could be doing hot seats. You don't, if you don't have influencer friends, that's okay. You don't, you don't have to, you don't have to have that kind of event. You could also pull from everybody you interviewed for the book and ask them to come and talk. There's so many things that you could do. You could make the whole event about being of service, which is what I was focused on for mine. You could turn it into a fundraiser. You can, there's so much, you can do so much, but don't feel like you have to do it. You can only do this if you have fancy friends. You can absolutely still do it. And it doesn't have to be 12 hours. It could be a shorter run. But I think it's, I think it's, I always encourage people to do something on their launch day.
Mike Michalowicz:
I, I, I'm, I agree. It was the biggest thing we've ever done on launch day there. I think you could do readings. Also. There's some other marketing we did. I'm gonna save it to next week's episode, but there's something we've done that I don't know of any author ever have, have done this. And we just went live with it yet on Friday, and we're seeing results already. So I'll tell you what that is too. I think we're done, aj. Okay. But you're, you're not done with this reader or listener, I should say,