I could have gone the tele-summit route because it was gaining so much momentum at the time, but I really didn’t want to do that for a few reasons. In a tele-summit you are limited to a certain number of time slots during the summit. I didn’t want a schedule to mean that a great person I loved would not be able to share their knowledge with people.

One of the ways that tele-summit organizers get around having their speakers dictated by a schedule is by prerecording seminars and then playing it as “live.” Often the organizers will not disclose this and I feel the omission is a little inauthentic, so I was not going to do this with my project.

It was also really important to me that the product I was creating did not have to rely on the contributors to promote it to be successful. To successfully do a tele-summit with a limited amount of time, you need as many people as possible working to promote it. I was not about to make promoting the project to their list a condition to take part. I truly wanted the contributors to share their content and then not feel obligated to do anything more. I wanted them for their minds, not their lists.

I had to think of an idea that would not be a burden on time to the contributors, that would work for the speakers, authors, and coaches market I wanted to place myself in front of, and that would create so much value that it would almost be a no-brainer for people to pass along to other people.

This is why I decided to use an e-book format called, “If you could go back.” The premise was simple. For each area that a contributor was an expert in, I would ask them a simple and important question: If you could go back to the start of your career, what three things would you do differently? It’s actually a really great question to ask yourself to reflect on what you’ve learned. The answers are useful to pass on to other people who were new or even currently in the field.

I gave the option to people I wanted to include in the book to either e-mail their answers or give them to me over the phone. Personally, when I am asked to contribute to projects like these myself, which happens all the time, I don’t usually send it back if it has to be an e-mail. I just get tired of typing. Don’t make me jump through hoops to give you content. Nor did I want to be transcribing and typing if I were doing a phone interview—I want to enjoy their answers.

Because most of these people were friends of mine by this point, we really had a good time. The majority of the contributors chose the option of a phone call. I ended up using Skype to do the phone calls and more than half the people who contributed also used Skype. According to Wikipedia, Skype is “a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service and, in some countries, to free-of-charge numbers, are free, while calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing.” The phone quality is excellent, as good if not better than any phone I have ever used for interviewing. When both parties are using Skype, there is a special program called “Pamela,” which is a third-party software, that you run alongside Skype that will record the call. I then took the MP3 file recording that was generated from the conversation and had it transcribed.

When I initially launched the e-book I simply put together these transcribed conversations. What I learned quickly was that the spoken word did not always translate well into the written word without editing. I feel that the lack of editing at the beginning may have kept some people who were willing to promote the project from passing it along. I did complete this step later, when one of the people who downloaded the e-book read it. Traci Feit Love¹¹⁶ dropped me a line to say how great the content was but that she felt it was not of consistent quality. She offered to edit it for me at no charge, in exchange for a recommendation if I liked her work. I thought this was genius of her! She did a fantastic job and I ended up recommending her to all the people who contributed to the e-book. She got business right away from one of them and I ended up hiring her to edit another book I wrote that was more than 20,000 words.

After getting the recordings transcribed, I had my assistant contact each contributor for a photo and a bio to add to each page. The results were amazing! I had collected more than 40 contributors and 120 pages of great reflective content. You can go check it out for yourself at BuildYourFollowing.com.

Some of the contributors did end up promoting the e-book because they believed in the quality of the project and the value to potential readers. I also made an affiliate link for it available to them, not because there was some kind of up-sell when they downloaded it, but if the reader ended up buying something from me down the road, the contributor would then get credit for it.

If you go to BuildYourFollowing.com you will also notice a few important things. I decided people would have to double opt-in to receive the e-book, which was sort of their payment to get it.

I could have just given the e-book away for free with no opt-in, but that would mean that I lost my pull-and-stay possibilities with them. People who opted in were also added to my newsletter list, on which they were informed in a video on the web site.

You never want to add anyone to any kind of list that person didn’t ask for or know he or she was going to get. If you want to have a look for yourself, go to the web site and sign up for the e-book. Have a look at the process I use to ensure people confirm their e-mail addresses.

Building a list was only one goal for this project. I really wanted people to read the e-book because of the content. I didn’t want them to sign up and then forget it was there.

After the first video, when someone clicks on to sign up for the e-book, up pops a second video thanking that person for requesting the e-book and asking that he or she please go check e-mail or the spam folder to ensure the customer bought it.

I want to make sure that people get the e-book. Confirmation rates are so hideously low nowadays that you need to do everything possible to make sure people immediately confirm.

Once they confirm,¹¹⁷ there is a third video along with the downloadable link that thanks them again and also encourages them to pass along the e-book. They are encouraged to pass along the web site rather than sending them a PDF copy of the e-book so that their contacts will also receive e-book updates. I’m constantly updating the e-book with new people contributing, therefore, I can continue to send out the fresh content to everyone who subscribes. This is currently getting me a 90 percent confirmation rate, which is about 40 percent higher than most lists.

If this is something you want to do within your industry you can use this exact technique. Go ahead and use it for real estate agents or financial planners or professional organizers, or whatever it is you want to be an authority in. You know other people in your industry who would be willing to contribute. If you would rather not have your direct competitors in the e-book, then find people outside of a geographic area who can contribute to it. For example, if you are a real estate agent you may not want other real estate agents from your area in your e-book. You might consider getting other agents from across the country to mention three things that home sellers do to get the most money for their home. You could interview people in general, asking them that if they went back and bought their first house, what would they do differently.

You just have to make sure that you promote and sell it properly, both to the contributors and to the potential readers. I suggest that you make it as simple and easy as possible for your contributors to share, but give them the choice of how they can give you content. Demonstrate your appreciation to them by giving them a bio and exposure to people in lists they would never be in front of. After all, without their content, your project would not be valuable. Make sure that it is filled with great content. Sell it to the market as a content-rich e-book and it is sure to do really well.

This is why I didn’t go after the top of the game of speakers or coaches or authors—mainly because many of them would just have a pitch-heavy contribution. I wanted pure, honest content.