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Turn 100 Scattered Posts into 1 Book With AI
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In this AI marketing podcast episode, Dan Sanchez and Ken Freire dive deep into the concept of developing a portfolio of ideas. Rather than throwing out standalone concepts, they emphasize the importance of clustering ideas, identifying a unifying theme, and building a structured framework that elevates authority and impact. Dan shares personal lessons from years on LinkedIn and outlines how AI tools can be leveraged to analyze, group, and package your thoughts. If you've ever felt scattered in your thought leadership, this episode is the blueprint for becoming more intentional, cohesive, and impactful with your ideas.
My Favorite AI Tools
- Tella (AI screen recording app I record all my solo episodes with) - https://danchez.com/tella
- High Level (My all in one marketing platform) - https://danchez.com/highlevel
- Zencastr (Best AI podcast tool) - https://danchez.com/podtools
- n8n (my favorite AI automation tool) - https://danchez.com/n8n
Timestamps
- 00:00 - Dan's confession: years of scattered idea posting
- 01:07 - The value of building a portfolio, not isolated ideas
- 02:20 - Frameworks are collections of ideas, not one-offs
- 03:12 - Questions to ask: what are you known for? What deserves more weight?
- 04:45 - AI tools to cluster and analyze your ideas
- 06:08 - Idea gaps and how podcasting can help fill them
- 07:03 - Finding the unifying theme in your content
- 08:53 - Real-life examples of unifying themes from Tim Ferriss, Michael Hyatt, Patrick Lencioni
- 11:32 - Why a unifying theme takes time to build
- 12:14 - Your theme reveals your core values
- 13:33 - Questions to align your theme with long-term goals
- 16:46 - Why and how to cluster ideas
- 19:11 - Human creativity and idea generation as a superpower
- 23:09 - When to write a book and why it's the ultimate portfolio
- 26:52 - Book structure, chapter quality, and packaging your ideas
Would you like me to move on to Step 2 and generate possible titles for this episode?
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Transcript
Intro
00:00:05
Dan Sanchez
I have a confession, Ken. This idea that we're going to unpack in this episode, I have not always been good at implementing this. And it's easy for a it's even part of the reason why we're having this series for Own the Show to go from podcast to book as part of the AI-driven marketer.
00:00:22
Dan Sanchez
But it's an idea around port creating a portfolio of ideas. I've been working on LinkedIn for five years now and have just been shooting out unique ideas like a freaking cowboy on the range, p
00:00:34
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:00:34
Dan Sanchez
like just, oh, here's one, here's one, here's something helpful. Here's something I experimented with. And they're just all over the place. And I feel like I could have got a lot more traction faster if I would have realized this sooner. So this particular idea has come out of a pain of not doing this for too long.
00:00:52
Dan Sanchez
And it's an idea of collecting all your ideas into one place, grouping them and creating like an overarching portfolio or theme to make it. So the idea itself isn't packaged and easy for people to share, but the whole collection of ideas is packaged and easy for people to share.
00:01:11
Dan Sanchez
Because thought leadership is rarely ever just one tiny idea. It's usually collection of ideas. So for those of you listening, welcome back to the AI Driver Marketer. I'm Dan Sanchez. I'm joined by my co-host, Ken Freire.
00:01:26
Ken Freire
Yo, yo, yo. When you said this is my confession, I just wanted to sing the song, which I have a terrible singing voice, so i'm not going to do it.
00:01:33
Dan Sanchez
I would have let you go, man. And I would have stood back and enjoyed the moment next time.
00:01:37
Ken Freire
This is my confession. All right. alright
00:01:42
Dan Sanchez
So that's the whole thing. This is what we're going to be unpacking this episode is how to do that and why it's important, because rarely do ideas ever stand alone. Like the problems your industry faces, there's still problems for a reason. Like they've probably been tackled before. and Maybe there's some ideas we're patching together in order to solve it, but it's still a problem for a reason. They're not easily fixed.
00:02:06
Dan Sanchez
And it's not going to be like one really good insight. One really clever hack tool framework is probably likely to fix it. It can't just be one thing. It's going to be a collection of things. so And that's where you're going to need a collection of ideas in order to in order to fix it.
00:02:23
Dan Sanchez
It's not enough to just have one
00:02:26
Ken Freire
Yeah, and and and what's different about this is that it's important for people to understand that When you create a framework, right a framework has multiple of these ideas in place.
00:02:39
Ken Freire
But that's why you need a framework. And many of you might have it. But there are some of you who might not be at that place. So if you listen to our previous episode when we were talking about idea creation and developing your ideas, right I was talking about one idea. Now we're saying, how do we take all those ideas and bring them into our portfolio and and really yeah make it concise and something that people can follow.
00:03:03
Ken Freire
So there are a couple questions that people should start asking themselves when it comes to these this idea creation or this portfolio container, right? So Dan, what's the first question that they should be asking themselves?
00:03:15
Dan Sanchez
The first one you should ask is what ideas are you currently known for and which ones actually deserve more weight? You could ask your your friends, your peers that are pretty familiar with your work and read and engage a lot with you if you've been posting on social or have just worked alongside you and know maybe some past clients that have been with you for a while.
00:03:21
Ken Freire
Hmm.
00:03:33
Dan Sanchez
would know and tell you like which ones have been the most helpful for them. A really cool hack is if you have been posting, whether to a blog or a podcast or maybe even LinkedIn, is you can go and take all those different things you post and just ask ChatGPT to analyze it. And it doesn't have to be ChatGPT. It could be Gemini. It could be any of the other ones too. But like,
00:03:54
Dan Sanchez
download a CSV of all your posts from LinkedIn. Google, it's it's possible. Go Google it. it'll Google will find you an article to walk you through the step-by-step process. And you can do that with the blogs. You can do for the podcast. There's a way to get all your ideas together.
00:04:06
Dan Sanchez
And then ask AI, like what are the unifying, what' what are the different individual elements and help me rank stack them according to this particular problem my audience is dealing with.
00:04:18
Dan Sanchez
yeah even You even need to say, hey, group them in different clusters and AI will help you group your ideas in different clusters. You might find that some of those ideas are rough and need to be packaged. Go listen to our past episode. A lot of them probably do.
00:04:30
Dan Sanchez
But if you go and package each different one, you find you'll have quite a collection already. If you've already been in this work of being an authority, then you probably already have it. You just need to... package more of the ideas and then group them together in clusters in order to find that you probably have a whole portfolio already.
00:04:42
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:04:47
Dan Sanchez
We just have to do a little bit of work of organizing it. That way people can actually get more more bang for their buck with each idea because there's parallel ideas that work really well together.
00:04:58
Dan Sanchez
For example, like I have two different ideas we've already covered of being a student and learning in the light. They're pretty similar because they go hand in hand, but they're distinctly different enough that we created two different chapters on it.
00:05:11
Dan Sanchez
But one really is helpful to another. If you want to be a student, it's helped to go and learn in the light so you can actually build authority while you're learning what you need to learn in order to become true expert and lay the foundation to become the contributor.
00:05:21
Ken Freire
Thank
00:05:25
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. So that you can build said portfolio, right? All these ideas a link together.
00:05:30
Ken Freire
Yeah. and And on the flip side, the other question that you could add is which idea gaps weaken your perceived authority right now? So you have this cluster of ideas that you're working with, but there might be some other ideas that are missing that you need to strengthen your frameworks or your portfolio.
00:05:47
Ken Freire
So you've got to start asking those questions. And a great way, when once you figure out those gaps, for you to get those ideas out there is start posting it on LinkedIn. Create a podcast, right?
00:05:58
Ken Freire
This is one of the things that we always talk about is like why if you are a thought leader or an expert to create a podcast is because you can get those ideas that you might be weak at and start strengthening them.
00:06:10
Ken Freire
Be the student. Start sharing those ideas. And also at the same time, share you're the ones that you are really good at. Now, if you're wondering for yourself, like, is podcasting right for me? We actually have an assessment that you can take.
00:06:24
Ken Freire
If you go to Dan, remind me of the what website for.
00:06:29
Dan Sanchez
Come on, Ken. It's AIdrivenmarketer.com slash pod.
00:06:32
Ken Freire
Oh man, I was so good. It was so, it was like coming right off the tongue.
00:06:34
Dan Sanchez
It's so clean. You almost nailed the CTA.
00:06:37
Ken Freire
I almost know the CPA. Yeah.
00:06:39
Dan Sanchez
And that's why we co-host this show.
00:06:42
Ken Freire
I was actually thinking about another one of our clients that we work with. And that's the only website a name that kept coming to my mind. i'm like, that's not it. But it's AIDrivenMarketer.com forward slash pod.
00:06:49
Dan Sanchez
That's not good.
00:06:52
Ken Freire
And you can take the assessment to see if podcasting is right for you to take all these thoughts, all these ideas that you might either have a great strength in or you might be weak in and start sharing your ideas. so
00:07:05
Dan Sanchez
So I'd gone through this process before, and then we're kind of going through this process now, even solidifying some of the things that have come out of this very show from the AI Driver Marketer. The one thing I find is that once you've created a bunch of unique ideas and you've started grouping your ideas together, you have to actually start finding how to create a like a through line of sorts or a unifying theme across all of them.
00:07:25
Ken Freire
Yeah. yeah
00:07:28
Dan Sanchez
It's probably there. This is another thing that AI's... Very good at identifying. If you give it all your ideas and like, what's the unifying theme across what I do? It's it's pretty dang good at calling it out.
00:07:40
Dan Sanchez
And it'll probably resonate with you and you'll be like, yeah, that's it. Now you'll still want to test it and have conversations with other people about i Be like, hey, is this the thing that you like about what i the information I put out there? And they'll agree or disagree or be like, I don't think it that. I think it's more of this.
00:07:53
Dan Sanchez
So test it. But generally, AI is a great at also finding a unifying theme. If you think of Tim Ferriss, Like he's put out multiple ideas around business then health and then even cooking and all that kind of stuff. But what's his unifying theme?
00:08:10
Dan Sanchez
Well, it's hyper-efficiency. That is his unifying theme. Can you think of any other authors that you love learning from or thought leaders you you follow that have like a strong unifying theme?
00:08:20
Ken Freire
Yeah, i I mean, similar to hyper-efficiency, but I would say like whole life balance. We've already mentioned him and I used to work for him. Michael Hyatt is one of those people who anytime you read his books, it was always like, how do you have whole life balance?
00:08:27
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:08:34
Ken Freire
Or some people like to call it whole life integration now, but that whole concept is there. Patrick Lencioni, right? We were just talking about him before the call. He has, what's it called? Vulnerability-based trust.
00:08:47
Ken Freire
is a through line that he has in a lot of his books, right? Because he's trying to get out of this picture of having to fake it till you make it kind of deal.
00:08:54
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. you know It's funny as I think about other people I've learned from, obviously I'm still working part-time for social media examiner. and I think of Michael Stelzner. I'm like, it's it's not confusing to me that he became one of the people leading the charge on social media from back in the day and still today, because he's honestly one of the most authentically social people.
00:09:14
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Not just in a social media sense, but like the guy is social. Like there's a reason why he does an interview-based podcast. There's a reason why he throws an event and makes it so his event makes it really easy for people to build relationships in there.
00:09:28
Dan Sanchez
So like you'll find that unifying thing across all his work. Now, i don't think he's actually even published that idea. It'll be interesting, Mike, if you're listening to this. I know you listen to some episodes sometimes so if that resonates with you. But that is a unifying theme, whether it's the one you'd capitalize on or not. I don't know. But yeah.
00:09:45
Dan Sanchez
it is It is something I see consistent across his his work.
00:09:48
Ken Freire
Now, there there is a difference between a through line and just an idea, right? Because a through line should last years, not just quarters.
00:09:53
Dan Sanchez
Yep.
00:09:56
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, that's right.
00:09:57
Ken Freire
It's something that's staying consistent. So when we talk about Michael Hyatt or Michael Stelzner or Tim Ferriss, these guys, right, it's you can see it over a lifetime that they're doing this and and it's not just a season.
00:10:12
Ken Freire
And why this is important is because it actually filters out what ideas you pursue and how they evolve. Right. So, like, for example, if all of a sudden Michael Stelzner was like, hey, I'm going to now become a person who's going to basketball coach.
00:10:30
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:10:30
Ken Freire
Right. Like it just might be so out of his lane of what he's known for. It's going to take a long time. One, if he actually wants to do that. But two, he could be like, no, that's actually not a part of my portfolio or what I'm an expert at. So I can easily say no to that.
00:10:45
Ken Freire
That might be a fun hobby that he has. And I'm totally making this up, Michael, if you're listening to this. Right. But it could be a fun hobby. But if not, great. He could just keep moving forward.
00:10:57
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, I mean, you think about HubSpot, right, has a unifying theme called inbound marketing, and they have a f freaking huge collection of clusters of ideas that fit under that unifying thing.
00:11:01
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:11:07
Dan Sanchez
Now, they've just switched, but they've been pushing inbound marketing for just almost 20 years now, and now they're switching to something else. Honestly, don't know what the next thing is. I don't know if it's going to be as successful as inbound, but they're going to try. But they're certainly good at building out ideas and unique contributions and caving, creating whole whole new categories based on their unique ideas. So I'm sure they will get it over time.
00:11:31
Dan Sanchez
I do you find that it takes a long time to really build a unifying theme. Like it takes a lot of individual ideas that then become clusters that then become a whole portfolio.
00:11:43
Dan Sanchez
So it just takes time because it takes time to find real problems, find real solutions, test those solutions for yourself and then test it with others and then refine them to become really helpful ideas and then do that one after another, after another, after another. So you can actually have a whole portfolio. I mean, yeah.
00:12:00
Dan Sanchez
this kind of stuff takes years, sometimes decades to see fully through, which is why I'm not surprised that they're now moving from inbound marketing to something else because they've been using inbound marketing for a long time and it has worked for a long time.
00:12:13
Dan Sanchez
So this is big picture stuff, but it's good to start thinking about it. And i also find that the unifying theme usually is tied closely to your core values.
00:12:23
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:12:23
Dan Sanchez
It says something about you personally. It doesn't, like inbound marketing, what does that say about HubSpot? Well, a lot. It says we don't want to inconvenience people. We want to be attractive to people more than interrupt people. We want to draw them towards us. That says something about you know, the founders and what they were thinking and what this could be like.
00:12:41
Dan Sanchez
It's a much more considerate version of marketing than the interruption style we had before. So that so starts to speak to their values. And so I find that those things correlate a lot more, more than unique individual ideas do. The overlying theme is probably going to hit a little bit more close to home about who you are as a person or even as as an organization.
00:12:59
Ken Freire
Yeah. and And even going back to kind of like HubSpot's idea, right? There's a lot of marketers who are drawn to that. I think you and I are drawn to that. Like, oh, yeah, let's focus on inbound marketing versus there are a lot of people who are like, no, no, no.
00:13:11
Ken Freire
We want more of like the Russell Brunson type style. Like, let's just direct sell, sell, sell, sell all the time.
00:13:14
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:13:17
Ken Freire
And some people love that, but other people, as their core value, they're like, that's too intrusive. I don't want to do that. So be mindful that. Dan, as people are processing this, right, and they're thinking, man, I don't want to wait years upon years. It might take that.
00:13:31
Ken Freire
What are some questions that they could start asking now to help them clarify or even get it directionally in the in the right place of what their portfolio might be?
00:13:43
Dan Sanchez
So if you look at all your pieces of content, you might ask yourself, as you even go back through your timeline, if you've been publishing, and read some of the headlines and some of the intros to kind of remind yourself of what you've been talking about, and ask yourself, like, what theme...
00:13:58
Dan Sanchez
is there. If other people saw it, what would what would you say, what would you think they would be guessing at? And again, of course, you can ask AI like what it thinks the unifying theme are, give some guesses to it. and It'll probably be able to do a good job, especially if you have a large portfolio. Shoot, you might even be able to add ask it just based on the past chats you've had, what it thinks your unifying theme of your ideas are.
00:14:19
Dan Sanchez
And would probably do a pretty good job there too. But obviously it's going to be a lot better based on things you've published. Something else you can do is does your ask something else you can ask is does your current unifying theme match with what you want to be known for long term?
00:14:37
Dan Sanchez
Because your current unifying theme that's kind of emerging what people know you for might not be the thing that you actually want to be known for. And so you'll have to reconcile that and think like, well, then what do I want to be known for? What can I start baking into ideas? how What approach am I currently taking that's not lining up with those values maybe that I want to be known for?
00:14:56
Dan Sanchez
And then you might want to ask which ideas align with your theme and which ones actually dilute it. You want to create a collection of the ones that actually fit there.
00:15:07
Dan Sanchez
Now, you can make jumps and go up level too. Think about Tim Ferriss. He was known as the four-hour work guy.
00:15:13
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:15:13
Dan Sanchez
And then he came out with a fitness book. And people were like, wait, aren't you the business guy? Same thing with Gary Vee, right? He was the wine guy. and He broke everyone's mold when he came out and started launching an agency around social media. And they're like, stay in your lane, wine boy.
00:15:27
Dan Sanchez
Well... his unifying theme broadened quite a bit. Tim Ferriss went from being the four hour work guy to becoming the efficiency guy. And it broadened out quite a bit. But he's taken to that. Now I think, i don't know where he's at. i I honestly think he's just kind of made it and like wanders all over with this podcast now, but he's still kind of the efficiency guy.
00:15:47
Ken Freire
Yeah, and and he's probably just doing like efficiency in all areas now. and And that's the interesting thing is that when you kind of have a niche of your expertise, you want to be known for that.
00:15:58
Ken Freire
And once you kind of get known for that and you start getting to a place of status that you want, whether it's financial status or academic status or social economic status,
00:16:08
Dan Sanchez
Clout, yeah. That's
00:16:09
Ken Freire
then you can broaden out, right? Kind of like Tim Ferriss. All these guys have broadened out because we, as human beings, right, we're developing all the time. We're growing all the time.
00:16:20
Ken Freire
So I'm actually never surprised for people who are like, oh, I want to transition or change into something. Now, the key is making sure you're not changing so much so fast that people can't follow you.
00:16:31
Dan Sanchez
that's right
00:16:32
Ken Freire
So you want to have that that unifying theme, which then leads to making sure that your ideas, right, are following that unifying theme and they're actually grouped into clusters.
00:16:44
Ken Freire
That's the third thing that we want to talk about is that as you're building out your portfolio, that they're grouped into idea clusters. Dan, walk us through this. What are we talking about when it comes to grouping these ideas into clusters?
00:16:56
Dan Sanchez
So you'll start to find that your ideas kind of are like-minded. Even in the creation of this series and this book, there's different clusters that I've grouped together around the different stages of becoming a thought leader, right? So one of those first stages is one, like, what do you do when you're already a professional and you're trying to get to the idea where you're starting to become a contributor, which is the category we're on right now.
00:17:16
Dan Sanchez
But I gave out a bunch of different unique ideas on what what it takes to do that. right And I clustered those all together. the One, the idea that anyone can be a thought leader. Here's here's what it takes to become one.
00:17:27
Dan Sanchez
The idea of being a student, individual idea. Then the 30-30-30 plan, that's a unique idea. And then learning in the light, that's a unique idea. All of these four ideas becomes one little mini cluster.
00:17:38
Dan Sanchez
But then you can cluster it further still across this whole book. In fact, books are out like the ultimate portfolio. We'll talk about that in a second. But this whole book is essentially a larger cluster around the idea that you can that authority is going to be a big thing as content becomes more prolific through AI and everyone can post amazing content all the time. What are people going to lean on? What are people going to trust?
00:18:03
Dan Sanchez
People who have perceived authority. We're going to be looking for shortcuts through all the different information. Sure, we'll lean on AI tool tools to evaluate and look through all the research for us too, but we're also going to be leaning on the ideas and opinions of experts and thought leaders out there.
00:18:20
Dan Sanchez
It's this idea that there's still a human edge, that there's going to be something that is uniquely human, especially for marketers and solopreneurs and agency owners and coaches and consultants to lean on.
00:18:30
Dan Sanchez
And that's the hard-won ideas and frameworks and different things you've put together as an individual. So this this whole book is essentially one cluster. But I have other clusters. around just tactical AI, strategic AI, right? This particular book is more focused on the human element that you need in order to succeed with the more tactical element of AI. So those are two big things. I call it being AI driven, but human first. This book is the epitome of that human first through line that fits really well with being AI driven, which is what we usually talk about on the show is the more tactical AI technical stuff.
00:19:09
Dan Sanchez
So that's that's the example.
00:19:10
Ken Freire
yeah Dan, you know what was interesting is as you were talking about it, I was thinking about how we as humans are naturally created. I believe God created us to be idea generating individuals.
00:19:22
Ken Freire
And no matter what happens in our lives, whatever circumstances come our way or whatever new technology is going to come up, we are designed to always be creating new ideas.
00:19:22
Dan Sanchez
Yep.
00:19:31
Ken Freire
and clustering these new ideas and developing them. So I actually have a lot of hope. You know how sometimes we can, there's going to be challenges and we've talked about it here in this in this series of like the challenge that AI is going to bring to certain job markets, but the also the opportunity where we now can step up as men and women and say, man, what are these new ideas that we need to form in order to better our lives and to help other people flourish?
00:19:58
Ken Freire
And that's the beauty of this idea cluster is like you're trying to figure out what are the things that talk to each other. So a couple questions that we can ask here is number one, like which of your idea naturally talks to one another?
00:20:12
Ken Freire
but So start thinking through those. Dan, you mentioned a couple of those already.
00:20:15
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:20:15
Ken Freire
The second one is, what clusters already exist but you haven't labeled yet? And this might be something that you asked ChatGPT or an AI or someone to just talk through.
00:20:24
Dan Sanchez
yeah yeah
00:20:26
Ken Freire
right And the last one is, which cluster could become your next framework or signature concept? Again, Dan just talked about that of like, hey, the new concept is like a-d driven human first, right?
00:20:38
Ken Freire
When you first told me that, I was like, bro, that's a banger. I was like, that's awesome. Go do that. like And I started watching you and I started using it. I was like, there's no better way to talk about it than this way because we want to use AI as a tool, but we don't want it to consume us like some other people are doing.
00:20:55
Dan Sanchez
One common mistake that I find that up and coming thought leaders are run into is they actually have one framework and they've packaged it, but it's actually a cluster. it's It's a really good framework.
00:21:05
Ken Freire
and
00:21:06
Dan Sanchez
And the reason why it's so good is because there's probably like four or five unique ideas within the framework itself. you're actually dealing with a cluster rather than just an individual idea. So if you have a framework that you use all the time, it's like your go-to, take a look at it, break it into pieces and ask yourself, are there a bunch of unique ideas that make this whole thing work together as a framework?
00:21:27
Dan Sanchez
You're probably dealing with a cluster, which means you probably need to package the individual ideas. You might even find that your clients who are leveraging your framework can actually do it better by you actually packaging the individual ideas within the framework. It makes it much more powerful to break it down.
00:21:42
Dan Sanchez
I know over and over again, when I'm dealing with clients like oftentimes they need more help. And I'm like, it's so simple, but it's simple to me because I've been through the pain. I've gone through it and I know all the nuances of it. But I need to break it down even more granular detail.
00:21:55
Dan Sanchez
And this is something that I think would help a lot of coaches and consultants. Take a look at your framework, break it down into smaller pieces, and go with that go and individually package. Go listen to the last chapter on packaging ideas. But if you individually package the unique ideas within a framework, they're much more powerful. And that's part of the reason why you want to have clusters in general is because it just makes it simpler and easier for people to grasp.
00:22:17
Dan Sanchez
all great ideas can be broken down into smaller bits and pieces. I mean, they can go only go so far, but oftentimes great frameworks do that.
00:22:26
Ken Freire
Yeah. You know, we I'm thinking about ourselves, like one of our idea clusters is all around like AI driven podcasting. right there's a framework behind it but there's it's a cluster of a whole bunch of ideas that you have been developing over the last two years that are now coming into fruition.
00:22:44
Ken Freire
So when we even talk about being an AI-driven podcast, people have a question like, what does that mean or what does that look like? And we have to expound on it. But each part is the right like the pre-production, the production side, the post-production, the distribution, all of those, there's a unique idea within it that we talk about.
00:23:05
Dan Sanchez
So the last thing I want to talk about is how oftentimes when you have a portfolio, it's actually a fantastic opportunity. When you finally have your ideas and a couple of clusters that has an overarching theme, you probably need to write a book.
00:23:20
Dan Sanchez
I am frustrated over and over again because there are certain thought leaders out there who don't write books. and I'm like, freaking like write the book. The reason is like I've like one person that made me really frustrated that he didn't do this was Chris Walker.
00:23:34
Dan Sanchez
Like he had some banger ideas on demand gen.
00:23:34
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:23:36
Dan Sanchez
He was flipping everything and he's kind of like in the post phase going after something new. Now his unifying theme has changed dramatically now. And a lot of people, I don't, I don't, I don't know anybody who's watching him as far as marketing goes. He's gotten into the like some other,
00:23:52
Dan Sanchez
fluffier concept row around motivation and stuff. But he had a lot of fantastic ideas around demand generation as a marketing principle.
00:24:01
Dan Sanchez
The problem was if I wanted to introduce somebody to that idea, well, I had to go and find them like, where would I point them to? Because this podcast is talking about the latest questions people are asking him.
00:24:13
Dan Sanchez
He's already moved on from some ideas and it's talking about new ideas, even though they all come back to the, his idea around what it really means to be due to demand gen. And I'm like, he needs to write a book to take all these different ideas, formalize them, and then give it into a nice little package that I could be like, Oh, you should check out Chris Walker stuff. Here's his book.
00:24:33
Dan Sanchez
It's nice, it's vetted. You don't have to weed through all the different years of social content in order to get the main ideas in one nice little package called the printed book or an audio book. It doesn't really matter what the format is, but it's a condensed version of all the best ideas.
00:24:47
Dan Sanchez
And that's why I think a book is still kind of like that ultimate hallmark of authority. Hence, all the people who sell book services are like, you can't spell authority without author. You're like, ha, ha, ha.
00:24:57
Dan Sanchez
But at the same time, they have a point because the book is the ultimate portfolio and collection of ideas packaged in one tight yeah little, I don't know, package. I don't know how I'm using words to describe words now and falling apart. Help me, Ken.
00:24:57
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:25:15
Ken Freire
We're packaging the book. We're talking about a
00:25:18
Dan Sanchez
Packaging the package.
00:25:19
Ken Freire
Packaging the package. But that that is the beauty of it. So here's a couple of questions that you want to ask yourself if you're like, are you ready to turn the book into it? Right? Like take all your information. So number one, if you're turned your ideas into a book today, what would the chapter list be?
00:25:37
Ken Freire
i So just start writing it down. Start playing around. If you want, ask ChatGPT. Hey, I'm thinking about writing a book. Help me create the outline. Here are some of the chapters that I'm thinking about writing based off of all my ideas.
00:25:47
Dan Sanchez
Yep. Just make sure to say, go preview past conversations or this document with my ideas in it to see how you would format my ideas into a book outline. And it'll do pretty good.
00:25:57
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:25:58
Dan Sanchez
It also makes some stuff up. So you have to go and check. I mean, it certainly helped me outlining this book and made up chapters that i'm like, no, that's not a thing. Or at least that's not part of what I've said before. And you have to eliminate and come back to what you've actually said.
00:26:10
Ken Freire
Yeah, which then leads to the second question, which is which chapters would be weak or fillers? Like, i Dan, you and I joke around about this a lot. Like two thirds of books sometimes just feel like a filler book.
00:26:23
Ken Freire
And you're just like, I could read the intro.
00:26:23
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:26:24
Ken Freire
I could read maybe one or two chapters and then the the conclusion and I got the whole book. You don't need that.
00:26:29
Dan Sanchez
An author who had published multiple books told me once, he's like, most business books are only worth two chapters. so The reason why there's more chapters is because they have to hit the 200 word page count to hit the price point of a normal book. That's changing because I'm finding that I'm reading more business books and they're much shorter.
00:26:46
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:26:47
Dan Sanchez
They're 100 pages sometimes. Or I listen to a lot of audio books, the preview books. They're often getting down into the four-hour mark rather than the seven or eight-hour mark. So they're half. They're like little mini books. They're 30,000-word rather than 60,000-word, which is the normal marker.
00:27:01
Dan Sanchez
normal marker And honestly, I find I'm getting irritated by listening to 60,000 word books because again, most of it's like, you could have said that in much less time. You didn't need so much backstory.
00:27:11
Dan Sanchez
I'm also the kind of guy who reads a lot of the same types of books. So I get bored with the same repeated information, but I don't think we need to be that long anymore. I think you can, if as long as as long as there's not like gaps in your thinking, that's like, oh, we have a gap here and it needs to be addressed in order for this cluster to work.
00:27:31
Dan Sanchez
you probably have to go find a unique idea and it means your portfolio is not done yet. Cool. Go finish the portfolio and then fix that, find fill the gap and then cluster it up and and then pull it all together to create your book.
00:27:44
Dan Sanchez
And the last question you should probably ask if you are thinking you might be there yet is, would the book reflect your true unique and unifying theme or expose a missing one?
00:27:54
Dan Sanchez
And that's the big question. If you have a lot of ideas and you even have them grouped into clusters and those clusters go up, What's the unifying theme? Generally, i you can anchor a unifying theme into a specific problem, or you can find what maybe all these all these ideas together are saying about what how your general overarching theme or approach to the problem is.
00:28:17
Dan Sanchez
There's probably something there. Again, ask AI. It can help you find it or at least come up some ideas of what that would be. But you need all of them. You need all the individual ideas. Generally, one idea per chapter can work pretty well. That's actually how we're unpacking this whole book slash series ourselves is I'm just taking to each idea. Each idea becomes an episode, becomes a chapter.
00:28:37
Dan Sanchez
The chapters are grouped into sections and then the sections all together become the book on the show.
00:28:43
Ken Freire
And that's the beauty of what we're doing. That's the beauty of what you can do too. So if you're listening to this, I'm hoping that this would encourage you to step up, to actually be at a place where you're like, I know I have these ideas.
00:28:56
Ken Freire
Listen, I know some of you are listening to this right now and you're feeling inspired because you're like, I've had these ideas for years. I cannot tell you how many times I've talked to people who say that. They're like, oh, I've had this idea.
00:29:08
Ken Freire
I've had this idea. Go take action. Go take this stuff. Start crystallizing it. Start writing them down. Go post them. Go create a podcast. Go do something with it because you may never know. You may have a book inside of you waiting to be released for someone to be impacted by.
00:29:26
Ken Freire
And that's why I'm always excited about this stuff because I'm like, I want you to go out there and I want you to go do the thing that's been placed on your heart because so many people's lives could be changed for the better.