The Take Action Effect, Seven Years Later: Scott Voelker on Turning a Book Into Authority

Transcript

Teddy Smith: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Scribe Author Hour Podcast. My name is Teddy Smith, and today we're going to be interviewing Scott Volko, who has had multiple six and seven figure businesses. I actually have been listening to Scott for quite a long time because in my previous life I had an e-commerce business, so I used to listen to his old podcast, The Amazing Seller Podcast, which is why I actually reached out in the first place. But now he works more with coaches to help get leads from YouTube. And today we're going to be talking about his book that he wrote with Scribe quite a few years ago now called The Take Action Effects, where that's gone with his life and where he's working now. So welcome to the show, Scott.

Scott Voelker: Teddy, thank you, man. Thanks for having me. And thanks for being a listener for all those years.

Teddy Smith: I've probably listened to like a hundred episodes or something of yours. So when I was trying to reach out to all people, I was like, wow, I've got to speak to this person.

Scott Voelker: Yeah, no, that's funny. It's crazy. It seems like a lifetime ago. It really does.

Teddy Smith: Yeah. I have to admit, just quietly, I'm quite happy I'm not in e-commerce anymore. I found it very difficult. So you and me both, but it was you and me both.

Scott Voelker: It was a it was a fun little wave that we were on. And I think it got crowded and then things got a little bit more complicated. But yeah, I mean, at the time, it was great.

Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it was. I was. It's fun building a brand. And that was that was the part I enjoyed the most building the brands. I learned loads from that. And that's why I've taken away from it the most. But today we're more talking about what's happened since. And I know quite a few years ago now you wrote the book Take Action Effects, which was published with Scribe. You know, before you wrote that book, we were talking about e-commerce, I think you were working construction before. When you built Take Action Effects, it was built around taking one action at a time and trying to build on that. Why do you think people get stuck in that planning and never get started?

Scott Voelker: Well, I think it's because, well, there's a lot of different reasons. And I mean, I fell into that as well. I think it's just, you know, we want that thing on the other side. Right. Like we if we're in a job that we don't want to be in, we want to be out of that job. And then once we get into maybe something else, then we find out maybe we don't want to be in that. And then we want to move on to the next thing. And so what I have found and really the reason why I wrote the book was because. Every single action that I took kind of built me for the next thing. Right. So it was like that book was, well, part of the reason I wrote the book was because I wanted something to kind of give to my kids, almost like a journal of like my life, of like what I did. But then they're also part of that story. But then also to kind of track where I was and you had reached out to me and said, hey, your book is seven years old. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, really? Like I didn't realize, you know, and a lot has happened in the last seven years. So it's like maybe we got to do a part two. But I think the thing that holds people back and again, I'm guilty of this or I have been guilty of this is that we were afraid that it might not work. You know, we're afraid that if we put the time in the energy in and it doesn't work, then we just wasted a bunch of time. And actually, the book kind of lets you know that that's not the case. Like you might not have gotten to the goal, right? The money goal. A lot of times it's the money goal. Like, how do I make ten thousand dollars a month? And you don't hit that, but maybe you hit two thousand dollars a month. And then you're like, OK, I didn't hit my target or maybe it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. But what lessons did you learn that now built skills that you're going to take on to the next thing that you're going to do, whether that's advancing in your career and in your corporate life or if it's, you know, getting yourself to the next business venture? Like so to me, it's like stop thinking about like, did you hit your goal? Did you learn something in the process? And can you take that with you to use for the rest of your life?

Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. I think you're going to be a good person to ask this question, but it's one of the things that authors always ask us at the time, and it's about finding that why. Because a lot of authors have all these ideas and they're like, oh, I know about this. I know about this. I know about this. But they've got to bring it down to the, you know, the why they should be writing about this story or what it is that they've got to say that makes what they're saying interesting. When you came to write the Take Action Effect, why was it that you wrote that book rather than something different?

Scott Voelker: It's a great question. And probably looking back at it, if I was doing it just as a business play, like if I was only doing it to get more business, that wouldn't have been the book. So I think there's a couple of different reasons why you want to write a book. And at that time, like I was really, I was on a high, like my business was cranking. I actually launched the book at a live event pre-COVID, so it was just before COVID hit. And I launched it to about 250 people that flew in from all over the world, in Texas. And so it took me about a year to put that book together with my scribe, who I'm actually still friends with. Actually, I had her come out. I don't know if you know this, Teddy, but I had her come to the event and come up on stage and present the book because I honored her for what she had helped me create. And I just got on LinkedIn and, you know, you see me a little bit on LinkedIn. I'm not really much of a social media guy. And I connected back with her. And yeah, it's just crazy because, yeah, she's just how life happens. But I think if I was to do it over again, looking back at it, like that probably wouldn't have been the best book if I was doing it only for the goal of like getting more business. Now, does it create or does it put me up a little bit more in authority because I've written a book? Yes. So you have that. But I think that book was more of like, OK, I want to get this book written because I want people to realize that if they get stuck, they're never going to be able to see what they could have achieved. And I also started being known for like the take action guy, like every podcast episode was like, take action, take action. I got a sign behind me. This is take action. I've got a poster here. This is take action because that's what I was known for. People were like, I was the take action guy now. So I was like, well, it makes sense that I should probably kind of go through my story on how I started with my father's construction company for seven bucks an hour and how I eventually got to a seven figure business like seven dollars, seven figures. It's kind of like, OK, but what happened in between? So I don't think it was the best strategic book, but it was a book that I felt I needed and I wanted to put out into the world. But I would say if you're an author and you're just writing a book to write a book and you don't need it for money, it's a whole different conversation. If you're doing it because you want it to help you with your coaching business, then we got to be a little bit more strategic as far as like, well, what is the message? Why are we writing this book? What are they going to gain from it? So I think there's two different people that we're talking to as far as like who thinks a book is right for them.

Teddy Smith: Yeah. I think that's that last point you made is a really good point about talking about if I say you're a coach and you want to write a book, the positioning that book in the right way is really important because I know a lot of people think, OK, I can just write a book with AI and just like pump it out. But that's going to be essentially a really bad decision for your business, because if you write a book and it's not good, you're forgetting that people actually read it. You don't build authority by just having a crappy book. If anything, it like brings it back down again.

Scott Voelker: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I think, like I said, there's a couple of different reasons why you write a book. I actually now now that I'm where I am today, it's kind of funny how it does come full circle. So like what we do now is like we help. We help authors, we help coaches, we help consultants, but what we do is we help them build their authority. And part of that is a book. We don't help them with a book. We would say, hey, maybe you should go talk to Teddy. Maybe that's what we would do. But like to me and I just actually did this with an author because they have a book that's a great authority piece. And you're speaking on this one topic that you want to be known for. You probably have an audio book if you're doing it right. And then the next question I had was, do you have a video book? And they're like, no. And I'm like, why not? So that's where our whole thing now comes into like we take like just imagine you have a video book. Let's call it. I call it a video book. It could be a keynote. Like if you have a book, you probably want to speak on stages, right? You probably want to get invited and go, can you speak on this topic of your book? And you're like, yeah. And then you're like, you probably have five steps of your process or seven steps of your process, whatever. Well, that becomes what we call your anchor video. That's technically your book. And now what we do is we deploy that on YouTube. But more importantly, now it lives outside of just the book. And so now that also builds your authority because now we have more ways for people to consume it. People that are maybe book readers, like I'm not a book reader. I'm a book listener. I like to listen to audio books. I don't like to read them. Although I do have a lot of physical copies of books because it's almost like there's something about holding the book. Also something about having the book in your possession. And sometimes it's funny. I'll look at a book and I'll be like, hey, I should probably go listen to that book again. It's almost like a reminder, you know, on my bookshelf. But I think a book can do so much for your authority and your expertise to really like, you know, put the put the stake in the sand and say like, I stand for this or this is my thing. And then I think when you put other things around it, like now you're going to be on a podcast. Here I am with you on a podcast talking about this topic. Well, you guys all know now that I'm an author. So you know, you're like, oh, I wrote a book. Yep. And I've also got videos that support what I talk about. Right. And that's another way we call it becoming bingeable, where people like if they read your book, they probably are going to try to look for a podcast of that you were on and then start to listen. And then if they can't find any more, they're probably look for other videos maybe they can watch or other things that they can consume of yours. And if you don't have that there, you're doing a disservice and you're also not leveraging the authority that you just created. Does that make sense, Teddy?

Teddy Smith: Yeah, it makes perfect sense, because I know, say, when you're writing a blog or something like that, the more backlinks you get to your blog posts, it builds up authority in the eyes of Google. So they rank you higher. And it works exactly the same with your personal authority. The more places you're being spoken about and the more ways people can find you, the more ways that the world is going to throw up those those options where people can come find you again in different ways. So yeah, I agree totally with that.

Scott Voelker: Yeah. And I would say the other thing now in the world of AI, we have this thing called AEO, which is basically now being searched and found in AI citations. And actually, they just came out, I think it was Digiday was one of them that came out with a report recently. And they said that YouTube is like one of the top citation sites. So when you put out a video, they're automatically transcribing that video now. Right. I started on YouTube 18 plus years ago, like before it was anything close to what it is now. But now they have like transcripts and they have an AI engine behind it and the algorithm that's picking all this stuff up. And basically, now you're found in an AI citation. Well, if you're on a podcast about your book, you got another citation, right, and another proof piece and another piece of authority. So to your point, the more places that we could put our authority also is going to come into now, not just on Google searches, but it's going to become in an AI search, right, which is really, really powerful. It's something that we're focusing on more ourselves. We're not an expert in it, but we are seeking out experts that know about that because I know it's important moving forward. We're in a whole new era of like content.

Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. If you go into Google search console now, you can actually see like your performance in AI and I'm seeing like mine go up like with different posts I do. It's like, it's really good, especially when you're targeting it in the right way. When you did the Amazing Seller podcast, you started out doing the podcast as well. You're doing YouTube as well, but the podcast, that was quite big, or at least that's how I know you. What's the difference do you find between doing a podcast and doing a video in terms of like your reputation and like getting your name out there?

Scott Voelker: Well, I think there's a bunch of different things that come off of, you know, just showing up. I think that's the first thing. But I started so just to kind of give people a little bit of the backstory. So when I started the podcast and it was titled The Amazing Seller back in the day and then it's since been rebranded. But it was it was a podcast talking about private labeling. So e-commerce for Amazon and the thing took off. It was only audio for like the first probably six months. Then I said, well, I'm not shooting video, but maybe I'll just go ahead and I'll put it up on YouTube. And I actually did what they told you not to do. I basically put a static image, not even the wave form that you see nowadays where people are doing that. That's a little bit better. But this was just a static image. And I put it up there and I said, you know, it's another platform. Let's just publish it there. So we did. I got like 16000 subscribers from just putting up an audio. And that was back in 2016, 2015, 2016. And then I'm like, well, maybe I should start paying attention to this YouTube thing. And that's where we started to kind of like be a little bit more on video. And since then, now we've we've really kind of like dialed that in. But I think and this is this was the feedback. And you can attest this because you were a listener. You when you listen to someone and you're on a walk or you're on a plane, you have no other way to be distracted other than what you're listening to.

Teddy Smith: Yeah.

Scott Voelker: Right. And so I had so many people, they would come up to me. They would tell me things that I shared about my dog had surgery or my son just had a championship volley or a basketball game. Right. And they lost. And they're like, oh, man, my son had that happen, too, man. That was that sucks, you know. So it was just I noticed from just that experience that, man, if you can connect with someone through audio and video, not just a written word, man, it accelerates the trust. It just accelerates it. And so that's when I said, OK, no matter what I'm doing, that's good for me because I don't like writing. Like I know some people are like, I'm going to lock myself in a cab and I'm going to write a book. That's why I hired Scribe. I didn't want to do that, but I did want it to be my writing and my style and my stories. And that's why, you know, for Scribe, when I when I was part of doing it seven years ago, like I met with my Scribe a lot and we would just go, I mean, hours upon hours. And what was cool about it was I was just telling stories. It was like I was telling I was on a podcast and I was just telling my stories. And then they actually shaped it into to what it is today. But I just think audio and visual and being able to see someone and see their their inflection in or listen to their inflection in their voice, like people hear me and they hear excitement, they hear passion because that's the kind of guy that I am. So some people like it, some people don't like it, but that's great because now you can decide, do I do I want to be a part of that that person's world or don't I? And so that's why I love adding audio and visual to it. I think that can accelerate. So if you are a book author and you're listening to this, get an audio book if you don't have one and put yourself up on video or start a podcast or be on other people's podcast, that would be my recommendation.

Teddy Smith: Definitely. Before you mentioned about doing a video book, that's not I'm guessing that's not just you reading a book out on YouTube. What does that look like for you?

Scott Voelker: Yeah, so you're talking about like the video book. Yeah. Yeah. So the video book is more like think about it like a masterclass or think about it as a keynote. So I always tell people, like when I'm working with a client, I'm like, OK, and I actually I'm working. We're actually in the about halfway through one of our cohorts right now, which we teach this. But the basics, the basics around it are and thinking like this, if I was to tell you, Teddy, you know who you want to serve, you know your audience. Like, let's just say that you helped men that were going through a messy divorce because you've been through it. But now you've come up with a system that allows them to be able to get through it and thrive. You're going to an event maybe where there's men are there and they're struggling with their relationships and they're there to try to, you know, kind of revive their life again. And then you have the opportunity because you wrote a book on it. And now I'm saying to you, hey, Teddy, I got a spot. It's a 45 minute keynote. I want you to come here and I want you to present a condensed version of your book. Can you do that? And you'd be like, heck yeah. Right. I get to be in a room of 100 people or a thousand people of my ideal audience. So now what you would do is you'd have to hunker down a little bit and figure out, OK, what am I going to present here? How am I going to deliver a transformation in a 45 minute window? That becomes your your video book, as I call it. It's a masterclass. It's as if you were it's not a webinar. Don't get that confused with a webinar. Webinar is like agitate, agitate, you know, strike a problem, give a little bit of like what can happen if you fix it. And then if you want me to help you, I will, you know, and you can pay me for it. That's not what this is. A masterclass is pure value. Now, we are also giving opportunities for you to download something like a free resource so you can get on our email list and things. But the masterclass is basically that's what we call it's kind of like your video book, where it's going through your process just in a condensed version, as if you were to if you were going to present it at a conference that you would love to speak at. That's kind of what that looks like.

Teddy Smith: So say if we were doing it for Scribe, that would look like going through exactly how the book writing process works, the ghost writing process works, but also giving value about how you can do it yourself. So it's just pure value then. So you're saying we're the experts at it. But if you want to go and do yourself, this is exactly how you could do it. Is that how you'd position us?

Scott Voelker: Exactly how I would do it. And like, so let's just say that you were at an event where people are trying to like maybe it's an event not just for authors, but you're at an event for people that want to grow their authority and their personal brand, let's just say. Right. And a lot of these people are coaches. Right. And so you might have one that says, like, how to build your authority with a book without spending 12 months in a cabin. That'd be the title, right? And now inside of there, you're going to like, you know, one of the you would talk about like why a book is good. Right. But why people don't write a book hard, got a slave away at the at the keyboard and all this stuff. Right. But there's a new opportunity on this thing. Right. So it's like, here's what can happen with this opportunity. But it's hard. That's why I haven't done it. But there's a new way to do it. And I'm actually going to walk you through five steps on how you can literally write a book yourself. Right. And then obviously, if you want us to help you with it, we've got a service that helps you with it. That's it. Right. So you would just walk through like, here's how you do it. You know, outline your thing, then record yourself, then hire an editor and then, you know, whatever. Another editorial thing. And you go through all the steps that if they walked away, they could do it. But most of the time, people are like, you just do it for me. Will you actually help me with everything? The marketing, the, you know, the putting on Amazon and putting it on brand or Barnes, Barnes Noble, like all of the different platforms like I want to do all that. But you would show them everything. Like, don't hold that back. You would just present like this is the opportunity. You might be thinking it's hard because it is hard, but we found a way to make it easier. And if you want us to actually help you with it, we will. That's what it looks like.

Teddy Smith: What would a video like that look like for brand creators?

Scott Voelker: Well, we have one. It's called Steady Leads, and it's basically how to get steady leads from one simple YouTube video per week. So what that instantly says is like what you want. So a 2 a.m. problem for a lot of business owners is like, man, if I could just get some more leads, man, I mean, like you, Teddy, right? Like you're you're working for Woodscribe right now. Like you're you're working with them. I guarantee your hope. You're like, how do I get more leads so that I can tell people about scribe? Right, so that's like a thing, right? And that's like, OK, if I get the leads, how do I convert the leads? Well, I need people to get to know like and trust me. So ours is like a one to punch. Ours is like put it up on YouTube. You get that distribution. We also can maybe go on some podcasts and now they're going to join my email list. And now I get them to watch some of my videos. I get them to binge my videos. That's what we call it becoming bingeable. Right. And now every video is going to have a call to action to join my email list. Right. So so like when people wake up in the middle of the night, we're looking for that 2 a.m. problem. Right. What's the 2 a.m. problem? Now, your book doesn't solve if you just present your book like, oh, you want to write a book and be a bestselling author. But why? What am I getting from it? I'm getting more opportunities to speak on more stages. I'm able to now get keynotes. I'm able to get on bigger podcasts. Right. So that person's like, man, how do I get on more podcasts? If I get on more podcasts like this, if I had a book, if I had a book, I could get one. I wonder how to. I don't know how to write a book. Right. You see, it started with like, I want to get on more stages. That's where it came from. So for us, steady leads, that's the main thing. Right. So our book, our audio book is steady leads. How to get steady leads, actually how to get qualified steady leads from just one simple YouTube video per week. And the reason why I put in from one simple YouTube video per week is because immediately you're going to say, oh, so I don't need to post on social media every day. And the answer is no. And we actually are are, you know, every everybody normally usually wants a villain. Right. Who are you against? Our villain is social media. Like, I don't want to be on the content hamster wheel. Right. I don't want to be posting on TikTok, on Instagram, on all these different platforms, doing all these shorts in the reels. We're against that. We're like, no, just do one simple YouTube video per week. Strategically. And you can have all the benefits of doing all that other stuff without doing all that other stuff.

Teddy Smith: Yeah. And you actually live by this. I know, because when I went to connect to your LinkedIn, I was like, oh, man, you've got hardly any followers considering how famous you are. So you actually are living this exact thing.

Scott Voelker: Yeah, I'm not posting on Instagram. I don't even have Instagram on my phone anymore because it was a distraction. I don't have TikTok. And the only place that I'm posting right now is a little bit on LinkedIn. And that's very, very natural because that's where my audience is. So I picked one platform, which is YouTube, build an email list and podcast guest or podcast publishing. So it's like I'm using my podcast and other people's podcasts to get people on my email list. When they get on my email list, then I bring them into my content, which my content gets them to watch more and gets to know, like and trust.

Teddy Smith: Yeah. For authors who are thinking about doing something like this, how long does it take to do like one video per week?

Scott Voelker: OK, so the hardest part in this whole thing is really just getting everything mapped out. And then really the first we call it the anchor video, which is your masterclass. And we call it your we're building your authority binge blueprint is technically what we're doing. And inside of that, we have so just so just think about it like this. Number one, we have to get exactly who we're targeting. I see even though people are wanting to write a book or they're wanting to get started like, you know, with lead generation or whatever, they don't really have a clear definition or a target of who they are, like really wanting to serve. So we spend probably. The first week or two, just dialing that in because that's the most important piece. So once we get that dialed in and then we get the blueprint built out as far as like what we're going to be creating, which is basically your masterclass, which is going to take the longest, which doesn't take that long, but it's like, let's let's figure out what we're going to do. It's like you were doing a keynote, right? You got to spend maybe a few hours building it and then you're going to record it and then you're done. But what comes from that now is underneath that we have a layer which is basically there's five pillar videos or seven, depending on how many steps you have in your keynote or in your masterclass. And then from there, those those are like eight to 12 minute videos. And then from there, below that, we have five questions that people ask. We have five problems that they're experiencing, and then we have five myths that they're hearing. Those become eight to 12 minute videos. And then below that, we have another layer, which is your your proof layer. That's where you would tell client stories or you would tell stories about things that you've been able to accomplish. And those become proof videos. So with that all being said, as you can see, like we're kind of mapping everything out and then we're just kind of carving out like an hour, maybe two hours a week. That's it. Once you get a rhythm like right now, I spend probably an hour a week on on creating video like that's it.

Teddy Smith: Does it take a lot of time to edit them and things like that or how would you know?

Scott Voelker: Because we're doing actually less editing that we used to because less editing is more effective than more editing nowadays. Really? Yeah. Yeah. It's like the flashy graphics, you know, the you know, the B-roll and all that stuff. Immediately when you see that, you immediately think sales like sales pitch sales. Right. If you have something more like this, maybe you have some visuals. Right. It's OK to have some visuals. But you don't want to heavy with the B-roll where it's like a guy's like this and he's all like depressed when you're talking about something sad. And it's not you. It's just the B-roll clip. You know, that stuff immediately signals sales.

Teddy Smith: Yeah.

Scott Voelker: Right. So we have found it's like for me, like it's either sitting here or maybe I'm sitting out by the pool or maybe I even record in the car like it doesn't like. But it's like, what is the takeaway? Like, why is that person going to want to watch that video? So you got to give them a good reason. And so for us, it's the packaging to its title, thumbnail and intro hook. It's your 30 second hook. And then deliver on the promise, sprinkle in a couple of calls to action like, hey, if you want our playbook, just comment playbook down below. We'll send it to you or you can find it in the description. So we're always adding in those little slight call to actions so people can get on our email list because then they get to consume more of our content, which then gets them into that binge loop, as we call it.

Teddy Smith: Awesome. Who are the ideal customers that you're looking for at Brand Crasers?

Scott Voelker: Authors that are that are coaches or consultants primarily and also doesn't have to be, but we prefer high ticket. So anything above like two thousand dollars or more, because what we have found that if you find the right audience for your offer, let's say, and you're able to show up consistently and build your authority, build your know, like and trust, you don't need a lot of views. Right, you don't need a lot of views and you don't need a lot of subscribers. Actually, we don't even look at subscribers as far as like YouTube subscribers anymore. We look more at who's the view, who are the viewers and did they get on our email list? And if they did, who are they and are they the ideal target that we would like to work with or potentially work with?

Teddy Smith: That makes sense. And where can people find you if they want to come and join up?

Scott Voelker: Yeah, well, there's a couple different areas. One would be just go to Brand Creators dot com. If you go there, you'll see a very simple web page. It kind of tells a little bit about myself and my son because my son is a partner, our partner of mine in this brand. And if you wanted to get the playbook, it's about thirty one pages and it basically goes through our entire strategy. And I have the masterclass attached to that. So again, I'm practicing what I'm preaching here. Right. I'm giving you a resource, which is the playbook. And then there's the masterclass, which is about 90 minutes. And you can just go to Steady Leads Playbook dot com. So if you just go to Steady Leads Playbook dot com, you can you can find everything there.

Teddy Smith: Perfect. And I think your book, you're you're writing a new book on you, Steady Leads at the moment. When when's the plan facts come out?

Scott Voelker: Yeah, well, right now I am working on that. And that is a more strategic book. It's not as thick, let's say, but it's literally going through our process in a written form. Our playbook is more of the playbook. It's like you can kind of there's some exercises in there and the book that we're writing will also go along with that. It would be like a companion. But yeah, it's called Steady Leads. You know how to get steady, qualified leads with just one simple YouTube video per week. And that's it.

Teddy Smith: Brilliant. Thanks so much for coming on. It's been great. I'm happy I got finally a chance to get on your podcast.

Scott Voelker: Yeah, yeah. Teddy, I appreciate you, man, and I appreciate you reaching out. And yeah, man, it's just it's great to to to know that, you know, you were someone listening years ago and here we are. And again, it's like if I didn't take action, we wouldn't be here today. Right. Hence, take action effect.

Teddy Smith: Very good. And I wasn't able to get on your podcast before. I was too small. So now it's payback time and you get to call mine.

Scott Voelker: Cool, man. And who knows? Maybe we'll get you on mine.

Teddy Smith: That'd be great. Thank you very much.

Scott Voelker: Awesome.

Teddy Smith: Thanks for coming on. So go to Brand Creators to find out more. We'll speak soon.

Scott Voelker: Appreciate it, Teddy. Thank you.