Drew McLellan has written seven books. That’s quite an achievement for a man who runs a busy and successful ad agency, as well as the Agency Management Institute (AMI). 

But Drew stumbled upon a clever approach which meant that writing books was a collaboration, and therefore less work for him. 

Drew has worked in advertising for 30 years. He started his own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, in 1995. He's been featured in or published in Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Ad Age, New York Times, Washington Post, Ad Age, CNN Business Week, and many others. He hosts the Build A Better Agency Podcast. 

COLLABORATE TO WRITE YOUR BOOK!

Drew’s first book, 99.3 Random Acts Of Marketing, was published as a result of writing a newspaper column for a while. He then ran into someone who offered to publish the columns in book format.

Next up came Drew’s Age of Conversation, One, Two, and Three, although at the time Drew didn’t realize that Age of Conversation would be three books. In the early 2000s he read an article about Harvard experimenting with crowdsourced content for a book. This triggered his idea for a core group of around 150 marketing bloggers to produce a book, with each blogger writing one chapter. 

Hundreds of marketing bloggers contributed chapters, and that’s how books two and three were born. Profit from the books - more than $50,000 - was donated to Charity Water. 

“None of my books have I sat down and wrote a book the way everyone thinks you write a book,” says Drew. 

CREATING AUTHORITY, CONNECTIONS, BUSINESS GROWTH

Drew says his books have contributed significantly to his success. They’ve brought clients, given him credibility, and created new connections.

“There is a gravitas to being an author that other people afford you, that's different than if you're a podcast host or fill in the blank; you do some other content. There's something about it, probably because everyone thinks it's super hard. But it elevates you above your competitors and it does say something about you and your depth of expertise,” says Drew.

He thinks of books as content that opens doors. “So whether you're dropping them in the mail to prospects, or you are using it as a tool to get podcasts, a book is absolutely worth it. It is probably one of the best marketing tools for your business that I can think of.

“My book is a moneymaker, not that people pay $19.95 for the book, but that they buy coaching and consulting, and come to workshops, and join our peer groups. That rings the cash register in a much more significant way for me than a $20 book.  

USE A PRESENTATION TO WRITE A BOOK

Drew’s next book, Secrets of Ad Agency Owners, was developed in a similar way to Age of Conversation. 

Explains Drew: “By now, I owned AMI. There were a bunch of agency owners who wanted to be authors, but they don't want to actually write a book. So I did the exact same thing we did with Age of Conversation. I said: ‘I'm going to give you a theme. If you want to write a chapter of this book, send it to us. 

“My agency laid it out, designed it, self-published it through Amazon's self-publishing. So that was the next two again . . .  I wrote a chapter, right and everybody else contributed. And again, what we did with that money is any money we made, we donated to a charity.”

For his latest book, Sell With Authority, Drew partnered with digital marketer Stephen Woessner, and the two offered a two-day workshop selling with authority. The workshop was filmed and transcribed the bones of the book. 

“We had to do a lot of rewriting because how you present is very different from how you would write. We had to augment what we taught with more content,” says Drew. “So of all the books I've written, that's the one that probably took me the most writing. Stephen wrote his chapters, I wrote my chapters. Then I took all of the chapters, and then edited all of them so they sounded like they were coming from one voice.”

When it comes to marketing a book, Drew says it’s essential to have an audience and think about marketing before your book is written.

LINKS

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• DrewMcLellan.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Josh Steimle

Today, our guest is Drew McLellan. Drew has worked in advertising for 30 years, over 30 years, and started his own agency McLellan marketing group in 1995. He also owns and runs Agency Management Institute or AMI. That's how I got connected with him because I have an agency, and he's the expert on how to run agencies. And through AMI, they offer agency management training, consulting, they facilitate some pure networks for agency owners. And they work with all types of agencies advertising, digital marketing, media, and PR. He's been featured in or published his own articles in places like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Ad Age, New York Times, Washington Post, Ad Age, Oh, I go it in there twice. We'll edit that out. CNN Business Week, and many others. And he's also the host of the Build A Better Agency Podcast. And finally, he's the author of seven books, including Sell With Authority and Secrets of Ad Agency Owners. Drew, welcome to the show.

Drew McLellan

Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Josh Steimle

All right. So you've done a lot of stuff in your career. But take us back, give us the story of Where did you come from? How did you get into advertising and marketing? And then we'll get into your author journey after that?

Drew McLellan

Yeah, so I went to college to be a psychologist. And so of course, I taken a lot of psych classes, and I was sitting with my advisor, my junior year . . . before my junior year of college, sort of planning out what I was going to take, and he said, Tell me what you want to do with your degree? And I said, I want to open up a private practice. And he said, can I give you some feedback, and I said, Sure. And he said, to be a great psychologist, you have to be able to leave everybody's problems in the room when you step out of the room. And he said, from observing you in class, and knowing a little bit about you, and spending some time with you, I think you're going to find that really challenging, I think you're going to want to take all your patients’ home and fix them. You care too much. And you said, so I want you to think about that. So I went to my parents’ house, and I said, You're not going to believe what my advisor said. And they both looked at me and they said, You carry dog treats in your glove box to pick up stray dogs. Why do you think it would be different for people? So I went back on Monday, and I said, Okay, now what if I if I can't do what my plan was? And he's and he looked at the classes, I'd taken all the electives. And he said, you've taken a ton of writing classes, obviously, you're interested in psychology. You've taken a lot of sociology classes. Have you ever thought about advertising? and honest to Pete, I hadn't ever thought about it. But I wanted to get done with school. So I was like, Okay, what does that mean? And he said, well go over and talk to this professor, you have to apply to get into school. So long story short, I ended up getting my undergrad and my graduate degree in advertising. And when I was undoing my undergrad work, one of my teachers was an adjunct professor, from Grey Advertising, I went to school in Minneapolis. And after she asked me to stay after class, and I thought I was in trouble. And she offered me a job as a writer. And so that's how I started in the agency business. And then I left, I worked for gray all through my undergrad and grad. And then I got a job with Y&R. And you know, I just worked for a couple agencies. And then at the perfect age, I call it the combination of arrogance and ignorance. I was 30 years old. And I thought, How hard can it be to run an agency?

Josh Steimle

Yeah, I can do that. Right? Yeah. All agencies . . .

Drew McLellan

Right! And so I left out on my own that was in 1995. And knock-on wood, it seems to be working. We're 25 this year. And so that was sort of the trajectory. And then as I was running the business, I realized very quickly, it's a lot harder than you think it is to run an agency. So I found this organization that was actually the precursor to Agency Management Institute. And under the tutelage of that founder, I really learned how to run a bit how to run the business of the business. I was great at the client facing stuff, but I didn't know how to run a business. So fast forward now 15 years, he wants to retire, he wants to sell his business. And he approached me and he said, I think you're the guy that can take this to the next level. And so I ended up buying the business from him, rebranding it as Agency Management Institute, and that was in 2010. And so now I do both. I run my agency, probably about 20% of the time, and I spend about 80% of my time on the AMD side of the business.

Josh Steimle

Okay. And AMI, I mean, you do events, you do coaching, you do these peer groups, you do a lot of stuff, right?

Drew McLellan

We do. We do everything from one-on-one to one-to-many events, coaching, online courses, workshops. So yeah, it's a pretty broad offering. And then of course, we have a lot of free resources, like the podcast that you mentioned, and things like that. And I'm still writing a lot of content for that business.

Josh Steimle

Hmm, yeah. So you're a writer. How I assume that lead into writing a book, but what was the thought? Or the genesis for the first book? What was that moment when you said, You know what, I'm going to write a book or I need to write a book?

Drew McLellan

Yeah. So the genesis of the first book was, as a marketing tool, my agency was producing what we call the Marketing Minute. And so basically, it was a little 300-to-400-word marketing tip. And this was so long ago, that we fax them to everyone. That's how long ago that was.

Josh Steimle

Faxes, kids!

Drew McLellan

Right, I know. You have to Google that kids, right? So anyway, that led to an invitation from my state’s Business Journal, to write a weekly column that looked just like the Marketing Minute. And so I did that for a little while. And then the publisher of the Business Journal said, have you ever thought about taking all of your past columns and turning them into a book? And so that was really the genesis of the book; I hadn't thought about it. All of a sudden, I was like, oh, now that would be an easy way to write a book, because I've in essence, already written the book, I just have to edit them, reorganize them a little bit, you know. And so that was, that was the first book. And that went pretty well. And so the next set . . .

Josh Steimle

When was that one? Was that published?

Drew McLellan

Oh, gosh, then 1997 - 98? Maybe?

Josh Steimle

So this was pre Amazon KDP self-publishing right? All that stuff right? Yeah. How did you get that published?

Drew McLellan

I worked with what I would call a quasi-traditional publisher, a smaller publishing house that only did business publications. And we, and I got a tiny little advance was like, $5,000.

Josh Steimle

Did you then you pitch them? Or how did you get connected with them and get the deal?

Drew McLellan

Yeah. So they actually they were local, in the same city where I was from. And I just happened to be meeting with the CEO of that company about something completely unrelated. And she was like, what else you're working on Drew? And I said, Oh, I have this crazy idea to write a book. And she was like, so I told her about it, because she, of course, was getting the faxes every week. And she had seen my column in the paper. And she was like, well, we would publish that book. And I said, Oh, okay. I just fell into all of this. Right?

Josh Steimle

That's great. So he comes along, says you should write a book with all this content. You're like, I got it done. Great publishing deal. So . . .

Drew McLellan

Yeah, it was it was it was the most backwards way to write a book possible. But, and again, my goal was never to make a ton of money with my, you know, I didn't want to be John Grisham, right? I knew that I was writing the book as a marketing, you know, a 3d marketing tool. And that's exactly what it was. It's it served me incredibly well. It gets me invited even today. So it gets me invited to speak at conferences, and all that. So that was my first that was the first book.

Josh Steimle

All right. I mean, so this is more than 20 years ago, and this book is still generating returns.

Drew McLellan

Yep. Yep. And I still give them out like business cards, right? I the agency side of my world, it is still a viable business card. Yep.

Josh Steimle

Now, when you were writing it, did you have any idea that, hey, this will be a useful tool for the next 20 to 25 years? Or did you think well, this will be good for the next year? or two? or?

Drew McLellan

Yeah, no, I mean, when I was writing the original content, it was it was marketing content. From my perspective, marketing content, in that it was I was being helpful. I was teaching the audience how to do something they weren't good at. So it wasn't salesy or anything. So I didn't have to edit anything out because it was really just straight marketing, counsel and tips. And then when we put together the book, I thought, Oh, you know, this will have a shelf life of a year or two. And, and . . .

Josh Steimle

Especially with the internet coming out, and everything around that time.

Drew McLellan

Right, right, who knew? Right?

Josh Steimle

And so have you ever updated it? Or has it remained evergreen content that's still just as applicable?

Drew McLellan

Yeah, you know, the, the purpose of the facts, and the column is sort of evergreen marketing tips. So when I went back to actually construct it as a book, anything that I thought wasn't going to be evergreen didn't get in the book, right. So there were a lot of columns that didn't make the cut. But I had so many of them that, you know, I was able to put it, you know, I was able to put plenty in to beef it up to be a book.

Josh Steimle

It's interesting. That's something I'm sensitive with my writing to I try to think, you know, what am I including here that might not make sense to people in 10 years, right? I had an experience reading, Getting Things Done by Dave Allen, famous productivity book. In his original version, he's talking about palm pilots and PDA and all that stuff. And I'm in everything else in the book still applied. Yep. But it was just kind of weird to read. This I think, Okay, this was obviously written 15 years ago or something.

Drew McLellan

It's disconcerting.

Josh Steimle

And so he came out with an updated version, and I'm not sure he updated anything other than that he replaced, you know, PDA or Palm Pilot with iPhone or if he's smart he just says phone. But yeah, it's something that authors often don't think about, first-time, authors that hey, like you're mentioning this thing, like a fax machine, right? Or a Palm Pilot or whatever. But that's going to date your book.

Drew McLellan

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I just, I just was judicious about what what made the cut.

Josh Steimle

Alright. So now, this book was kind of easy for you, because you already had the content done, a publishing deal fell into your lap. So then when you when it came time that you wanted to write a second book, were you thinking, hey, it was easy. The first time it'll be easy again? Or did you go into it with a little bit . . . What were you thinking? What was your thinking as he went into the second book?

Drew McLellan

Yeah, so the second set of books was Age Of Conversation, one, two, and three. So I read an article and I shared it, this was back when blogging was just barely a thing. So early 2000s. And it was an article about . . . . Harvard was doing this experiment about crowdsourcing content for a book. So I was talking to another marketing blogger who happened to be in Sydney, Australia We were talking about this article, and I said, it would be interesting to see if we could do that. So back in the day, like 2000, 2005, when there were not that many people blogging, there was probably a subset of 150 marketing bloggers, we all knew each other, we all read each other's content. So we decided we would reach out to see if everybody wanted to contribute a chapter to this book. And so we reached out to everybody and said, Hey, we're gonna put together this book, if you have always wanted to be an author, but you don't want to write a whole book, you can have a chapter in this book. And you can say that you were one of the authors. Here's the theme. And it was really about sort of imagine, you know, circa 2002, circa, 3 04, or five, like, everything was changing with the Internet, and social media was just just coming out. So that was the theme of the first book. And we didn't want to have to worry about royalties and stuff like that. So we said, Look, we're going to do it through lulu.com, we're going to self publish, you can buy as many copies as you want at the author price. But any books that we sell any money that we make, we're going to donate all the money to charity water, because we didn't want to have to divvy it up between the authors. Well, hundreds of people wrote a chapter for this book. And so that was so popular with Age of Conversation. We didn't call it one because we didn't know there was going to be a two to three, but Age of Conversation, one, then bred age of conversation two and Age of Conversation three. And then what it did was that triggered a four-day event in New York City where we all came together, because none of us had physically ever met each other. But we had put these three books together. And we donated over $50,000 to Charity Water.

Josh Steimle

It's fun.

Drew McLellan

In that initiative. Yeah. So again, I had to write one stinking chapter in each of the books. That was how my next three books came to be.

Josh Steimle

That's great. And I hope the people listening are getting the idea here. There are no rules about how to write the book. You can do whatever you want, as long as you get the book in the end. And there are all sorts of different ideas. It doesn't have to be a standard nonfiction book, you can get 100 people involved in crowdsourcing. I mean, there's so many different ways to write a book.

Drew McLellan

I . . . .none of my books have I sat down and wrote a book the way everyone thinks you write a book.

Josh Steimle

So tell us about the next one, then. So we're up to number five now. So . .

Drew McLellan

Yeah, so five and six were Secrets of Agency Owners. And that was exactly the same thing. So now by then I owned AMI. There were a . . . . bunch of agency owners who wanted to be authors, but they don't want to actually write a book. So I did the exact same thing we did with Age of Conversation, which is I said, Okay, I'm gonna give you a theme. If you want to write a chapter of this book, send it to us. And then again, I own an agency. So then we laid it out, we designed it, we self-published it at that time, we did it through Amazon's self-publishing. So that was the next two again . . . I wrote a chapter, right and everybody else contributed. And again, what we did with that money is any money we made, we donated to a charity, because I didn't want to have to divide it amongst the authors. So those were the next two.

Josh Steimle

Perfect, and then you then we get to your latest book, your setup one which is Selling With Authority.

Drew McLellan

Yep. Right. So that that book . . .that book is a compilation of how I believe basically agencies, although I think honestly it's for any service industry, how we should be selling today. The internet has changed has flipped the has flipped everything. We're we're no longer the hunter were the hunted in the ideal world . . . that people would come and find us. So that's, that's the premise of the book: Is how do you how do you become the sought after authority or expert that people want to hire? So when I knew I wanted to write that book, the idea of sitting down and just writing the book, I, honestly, in my head, it was like, I don't have time to do that. So I thought, Okay, how do I make myself do this. So I partnered with my co author, a guy named Stephen Woessner. And we decided to offer a two-day workshop on the basic principles of this book. And we brought one of his team down with us, we taught it in Orlando, Florida, to about 50 people. And we filmed it, and we were both miced. And then we transcribed the entire workshop. And that became the bones of the book. Now we had to do a lot of rewriting because how you present is very different than how you would write. And we did, we had to augment what we taught with more content. So of all the books I've written, that's the one that probably took me the most writing. And the additional challenge of that was . . . we divvied up the chapters, but we wanted the book to be seamless in terms of how it sounded. So actually, one of the toughest parts of that book was he wrote his chapters, I wrote my chapters, and then of the two of us, I'm the writer of the two of us. So then I took all of the chapters, and then edited all of them so they sounded like they were coming from one voice. And, and that was how we created that book. So it started with the transcripts. And then we just basically patchworked what we needed to fill in the blanks that we thought people would have questions about, or where we wanted to go deeper in the book than we had time to go in the workshop. And then that was the book.

Josh Steimle

That's great. Was this a workshop you only presented once? Or did you do it multiple times and refine the content before it started going into the book?

Drew McLellan

Yeah, we only presented that workshop once. And then after the right as the book was coming out last January, we taught what I think of as the post-cursor to that book, which is okay, now that you have the concept, here's the workshop that actually has you execute the book. So then we took them through the book content again, but made them do it along with us as we were teaching it. So . . .

Josh Steimle

Got it. Cool. I love it. seven books all created through non-traditional means that

Drew McLellan

It's honestly the laziest way possible to write books, right?

Josh Steimle

What's that saying? That's attributed to Bill Gates all the time. And he didn't actually say it, but he always gets credit for saying that he hires like the laziest person, because they'll figure out the best way to get things done.

Drew McLellan

Yeah, yeah. So there you go.

Josh Steimle

And the fact is, you got it done. You got seven books done, while a lot of other people are trying to slog through it and write their own book. And they're feeling like, this is so hard to do. Well, yeah. Maybe you need to take one of Drews ideas and implement it.

Drew McLellan

Yeah. There's lots of ways to get it done, for sure.

Josh Steimle

So tell me a little bit more about the response that you've received from these books? What are some of the payoffs you've seen where you've been able to say, because like you said, you're donating all the money for most of these to charity. So you're not making money on a book sales. But these are beneficial to AMI and to your agency? Are there any instances you can tell us about where you had a specific win where you said, I can track this back to that book? Or how do you know that it worked?

Drew McLellan

I think it worked is such a wide variety of what that means, right? So it is certainly garnered me speaking gigs at conferences, they have earned clients, it is a credibility to all it is a great way to connect with somebody who you know, isn't ready to hire you yet., but after they read the book, they're going to get a little closer. So in some ways, it's a . . . . look, you're in kindergarten, you need to be in the third grade before you're ready to work with me individually. But the book will get you from kindergarten to third grade. So there's so many reasons to do a book. It really is a . . . I think it . . . .even in all of the other ways that people can produce content, I think there is there is a gravitas to being an author that other people afford you, that's different than if you're a podcast host or fill in the blank, you do some other content. There's something about it, probably because everyone thinks it's super hard. But it does elevate you above your competitors and it does say something about you and your your depth of expertise. So you know, I can attribute money to it, I can attribute opportunity to it. I can attribute new relationships to it. So it absolutely is worth the effort. And it is probably one of the best marketing tools for your business that I can think of

Josh Steimle

So how do you get the word out there about these books? How do you market these books you use mentioned that you give them out sometimes? What are some other ways that you've succeeded in getting these into the right hands?

Drew McLellan

Well, in the ideal world, you would have already built an audience of some kind, right? That's, that's the ideal world that you that you are already assuming you're writing a book about your expertise, that you didn't just flip a switch and become the expert in that yesterday, that you've probably done that through your career, and whether it's on LinkedIn, or you have an e-newsletter list, or whatever it is, but you do have an audience already, that finds value in what you say and do. So that's the easiest place to go, right. And, you know, there's all kinds of tricks about book launches, and getting on Amazon's bestseller list for you know . . . you know, whatever it is, and all of that's fine. But honestly, I think the easiest and best way is to think of the book as a wedge you can put into a door you're trying to walk through. So whether you're dropping them in the mail to prospects, or you are using it as a tool to get on a bunch of podcasts are other shows, which then triggers you know, I don't know about you, but I, if I've, if I've been on a podcast, specifically about the book's content, I can, once that podcast goes live, I can watch the Amazon numbers tick up. So that's one of the easiest ways is to, again, share your expertise by getting booked into shows. You know, I . . . . we've never bought ads or done anything like that, although I know some people do that. My goal with the book was to make sure that it didn't cost me money, right? So once I broke, once I break even financially, then I think the book is a success, because I know it's gonna do all the other things that we've been talking about in terms of bringing opportunity. So my book is a moneymaker, not that people pay $19.95 for the book, but that they buy coaching and consulting, and come to workshops, and join our peer groups and all of that. That rings the cash register in a much more significant way for me than a $20 book, right? I'm always happy to sell the book. But that's that was never my intention. Right? Yeah.

Josh Steimle

Is there anything specifically you do in the book to lead people into that marketing funnel to coaching and such? Do you mention that in the book, do you have any specific techniques that you use to move people from the book to your services?

Drew McLellan

Yeah, I today, I don't know why anybody would write a book that doesn't have a reference to some sort of tool, or something that people can download on your website at a special URL, I don't know why anybody would produce a book that doesn't include that. So we had a whole resources section, a whole, I don't know, eight or 15 pages of the book. In the book that we said, Look, here are some of the resources. But the minute we print this book that this list is going to be obsolete. So go to this URL to download an updated version of all of these tools. And so we capture email addresses there. And then of course, they go into, you know, whether they may go to we list both of the both companies where we have them. So sometimes they go into Stephens funnel, sometimes they come into my funnel, but we both capture their names. And so then we do whatever it is we do in terms of the sales funnel with those folks. Yeah.

Josh Steimle

Gotcha. Now you've told us a lot of the things that you did, right with writing your books, what were some of the lessons that you learned along the way, things that you would have done differently if you had only known?

Drew McLellan

I probably would never . . . early in my career, I thought the book had to be published by a more traditional publisher, you know, because of the name recognition and all of that. And what I've learned is, in today's world, that's kind of irrelevant. So I would not do that. So while I don't want to be a bazillionaire from my book, I also don't want somebody else to make a bunch of money on my book and me to make, you know, $3 total. So I really like either the self-publishing model or working with somebody who has sort of that hybrid model, where they're more of a partner than a publisher. I wouldn't I wouldn't make that mistake again. I do think there are some interesting challenges when you write a book with someone else. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again. But I underestimated the complications that come with two different people contributing to a single piece of writing. And the editing as I mentioned, that was that was probably the most labor intensive part for me was going back through the whole book. editing it. So it was in one voice and then working with the editor that we had hired to sort of, you know, polish up the book.

Josh Steimle

Yeah. Well, speaking about writing with somebody else, anybody who's ever crafted a mission statement, which is super short, or the about page for a website, and they're trying to get everybody on the team to agree to that content, that's hard just to get people to agree to a sentence or a paragraph. But imagine writing a book with somebody, and all the places that you could disagree with things on or just have differences of opinion on the style or the tone or all that. So yeah, it can be a nightmare to have a co author, but it can also be the best thing ever.

Drew McLellan

Yeah, I think the book is better than it would have been if I had written it by myself. So I do think the content is stronger. And we didn't really have a lot of disagreements. It was just it just took more time. It was just more work.

Josh Steimle

Yeah, you get more quality, but you give up some control and control of your timeline.

Drew McLellan

Yeah, right. Yep.

Josh Steimle

Yep. So in terms of lessons learned from the process, now . . . Well, I guess the next question really is what's going to be book number eight? Do you have another book already in mind?

Drew McLellan

I don't know about you, but I, for me, I need like a year and a half or two years. It's like people who have babies too close together, right. So the book just came out a year ago. And we didn't really get to launch it the way we wanted to, because of COVID. So the audible version of the book is going to be out in the next week or so. So we're going to use that to sort of trigger the launch we would have done a year ago. So the book is, for me, that book is probably got another two years before I really start thinking about another one. So I don't know yet what it'll be. I I suspect, given my history, that it will be, it'll have very little forethought. And I'll sort of stumble into it in some way. And I will figure out a way to do it in an unconventional way. So I don't know yet. I'm sure there's another book out there. But I don't know what it is yet.

Josh Steimle

It kind of becomes addictive.

Drew McLellan

Yeah, right.

Josh Steimle

I mean, once you've done it, you're like, well, I did that. That wasn't that bad. I could do that again. Yeah. Yeah. Um, let's see. I had another question. We'll have to just set it this little part out. I'm trying to remember what it was. Let's see. Okay, so tell us a little bit about how COVID interrupted your plans, because it's interrupted a lot of people's plans, a lot of author's plans. And the thing is, no matter when you launch your book, something can get in the way something can happen. That's completely outside your control. So how did that go down? And then tell us a little bit more about how you're dealing with that and planning around that?

Drew McLellan

Yeah, so the so the book came out in late January. So our plan was to start launching it at the end of February. And we just started kind of gearing up and then COVID hit and honestly what happened was when COVID hit my clients, agency owners, you know, went into complete freakout mode, rightly so, because you know, a lot of them lost 60 or 70 or 80% of their business overnight with clients calling and saying pause, pause or cancel, cancel.

Josh Steimle

Yeah, we saw this at my agency, there was one week where my partner called me up and said we had 15 clients pause this week and for us 15 clients is was a lot of clients. Yeah. And I think we were down 80% and revenue for a couple months or something. And now it's thankfully, mostly come back. But it was a scary time. And when you get that scared, it's like everything gets caused that you're doing as an agency to write

Drew McLellan

Well . . . and for me, imagine, I have 250 or so agency owners that I work with on a regular basis. All of them in panic mode, and all of them looking for counsel, a shoulder to cry, on a plan for the future, all of that. So I really, I had to say to Stephen, you know what, I have no bandwidth. I'm on the phone from seven in the morning till midnight, seven days a week right now, trying to help all these guys figure it out. And I can't, in good conscience, promote a book right now.

Josh Steimle

It would just kind of fall flat. It wouldn't . . . I mean, who wants to learn how to sell when you can't even keep any of the clients that you already have? Right?

Drew McLellan

Right. So you know that for me that season a buisiness lasted really through the summer until everybody was sort of back on their feet again. And by then, we knew we were going into the studio to record the auto audible book. So It definitely was like, you know what we're, we're nine months out, let's just wait till we have the audible book. That's a good reason to talk about the book again, as opposed to, hey, we should have talked about this last year, but we didn't. So we just decided to wait until that came out. But that was really why I mean, we were ready to go. And it just . . . I think your writing would have fallen very flat would have sounded very tone deaf. I didn't want to be trying to sell anybody anything at that moment, I just wanted to try and be as helpful as I could be. And I didn't really have the bandwidth. So . . .

Josh Steimle

And I think I mean, the jury's still out on your book, and how this kind of relaunch or second launch or late launch will go. But I think we can see from some of your other books, I mean, like the book that you wrote, 20 years ago, that's still going strong . . . I think we get locked into this mindset that I need to launch my book really fast right now I need it right now. And if I don't launch it right now, then the moments gone, and I'll miss my window of opportunity. But if we focus on writing a perennial seller, like Ryan Holiday advocates, we can write a book that's good for 20 years, and then there's, there's not that rush. And sometimes it's good to have the rush, it pushes you to actually get it done. But this stressing out over, oh, if I don't launch it within this three month window, then all is lost, right? That's just not really the way it is.

Drew McLellan

Well, and you know, again, if you already have an audience, even without the launch, people start buying the book, they start talking about the book, obviously, I talked about it on the podcast and other places. So it's not that we didn't sell books, because we have been consistently selling them. Week, I gave away a lot of the books. So for a lot of agency owners, they had to rethink about how they were going to sell their services. So it was easy for me to pop a copy of the book in the mail with a note. So again, it's out there in circulation, and people are talking about it, people are leaving great reviews, we just didn't have the sort of traditional expected, big build up launch with, you know, all of the emails, and all of a sudden, we just didn't do that. And I honestly don't think it hurt the book or the book sales that much at all.

Josh Steimle

So I've run an agency for 20 years. In my first book I wrote because I wanted to help the agency grow; it was purely for the agency, for marketing for the agency. And for you, similar path. Now you work with these hundreds of agency owners, you said a lot of them they don't want to write or they don't have time to write, they don't want to write a book, but have some of them written books. Have you seen them write books? Do you ever ever write books?

Drew McLellan

Absolutely. I think I have three clients right now who are in the middle of writing their book. And again, some of them doing it themselves, some of them working with a ghostwriter. So lots of variety in the way they're getting that done. And all for the same reason, which is to establish themselves as an authority, which brings the right fit clients to their door, and helps them grow their business; they're all doing it for the I want to . . . this is not, I am not an author as my business. I am an agency owner, who also happens to be an author, and the book serves the agency. And I don't think that's agency specific. I think a lot of businesses and business owners can write a book and boost the sales of their business. And the other thing is, it's not about only just making sales, it's also about shortening the sales cycle. I believe that you handing it to a prospect, a book that you've written, shortens the sales cycle, they they don't wonder if you know what you're talking about anymore. They assume because you have a book in your hand, that you really are the expert that you say you are.

Josh Steimle

Right, or on the other side, sometimes they read the book before you even meet them. And then they come to you and say I read your book, I'm ready to work with you, which is the best. That's the ideal sales cycle. They say I want to contract give me a contract right now.

Drew McLellan

Yeah. And I and I think it happens to authors all the time.

Josh Steimle

Yeah, I mean, we've seen that happen with the book that I wrote for my agency. So. . . this is great. Drew! Is there anything that I'm missing from your experience that would be helpful for agency owners or other entrepreneurs out there in terms of writing their books, getting them out the door marketing, their books, any other words of wisdom?

Drew McLellan

Hey, think there are two big barriers that keep people from writing a book one, I don't have time. And two, I'm not a great writer. And I think you can, I think you can overcome both of those. I've proven that you can write a book without sitting down and writing a book in the traditional way. It doesn't have to consume all of your time. And in fact, many people do have a book already written. It's just in pieces like mine was and to if you're not a great writer, but you have great ideas, editors can turn anything into beautiful words. So if you can get your ideas down on paper, somebody can help you edit that book to be something you'd be super proud of. So don't let either of those excuses If you really want to do this and you think it would be good for your business, don't let either of those excuses get in the way because they can both be overcome.

Josh Steimle

Perfect. Where can people find you and learn more about AMI, learn more about your agency, and about you?

Drew McLellan

Yeah, so I'm very easy to find on all the social channels, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, all of that Instagram. And my my user ID is the same as drew McLellan and McClellan is MC l e, l l, A n, you can go to agency management institute.com and shoot me an email. Or you can shoot me an email at drew at Agency Management Institute com. So I am not hard to track down I don't think.

Josh Steimle

Perfect. Thanks so much for being with us here today on the published author podcast.

Drew McLellan

Thanks for having me.