EPISODE 27 final
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[00:00:00] To the place so no one can do the Chris Hughes flavor. They have their own flavor of what they believe and what they teach and how they teach it, and from their experience and all that. So never think that the marketplace is oversaturated because in health and wellness it certainly is, but still you're gonna be unique because too many people don't do it because they think it's oversaturated.
Why just do your own flavor and you attract your vibe into what you do.
Welcome to How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business. If you love nutrition and you love helping people and you wanna be in the game long enough to keep doing that, then this is the podcast for you. Let's get into it.
Today's guest helped me write the book. I never wanted to write. Writing that book had such a profound impact on my career that you'll learn about during the podcast. I never wrote a book to be a bestseller. Hell, my parents haven't even read it. [00:01:00] But what it'd done for me professionally as a dietician and for my business was massive.
Nat Deman is the CEO and founder of the Ultimate 48 hour author. If you've got a mindful of content and expertise that you need to get down on paper that you think could have an impact on your clients, then you're gonna wanna listen to this podcast. Let's get into it. Welcome back to another episode of How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business.
Today's guest is someone that may or may not know, had a huge influence on my career, and it was someone who I was quite resistant to having influence over my career, but it happened. Anyway, thanks to my wife, Stacy. Today's guest is NSA Deman, the ultimate, the creator, and CEO of the ultimate 48 hour author.
Now, Nat runs an amazing business. Helping people brain dump all of their knowledge and expertise into books and in a systematic way that's just amazing. That I was extremely resistant to. I'll explain that in a moment. How are you, Nat?
I'm amazing. I can't wait [00:02:00] to hear some of these things. You're probably gonna say I never was aware of.
Okay, so we'll rewind to when Stacey and I started our business seeking Nutrition. This is like 2017, I think a couple years into the business and I. Stacey's a massive fan of you. I think she'd been to a couple of your live events. A mutual friend had been through your program and Stacey was like, you need to write a book.
And I'm like, who the hell am I to write a book? I'm not writing a book. So Complete imposter syndrome. And she kept mentioning it for months and months and months. And then she signed me up to it. Yeah. And I didn't know. I didn't know. So I was like, what? No, I'm not writing a book. And then there was this whole thing.
And anyway, we went through the process and I wrote the book, but. The, obviously your system for writing the book was absolutely amazing. Allowed me to brain dump and now I, I'm really so thankful because of everything that has come from the book, but just that pressure of running a business. We had a young family and then writing a book, I'm thinking, I can't write a book.
Who's got time for that?
Yeah.
And [00:03:00] so yeah, behind the scenes it was a little bit tense at home for a while on that, but the process was amazing and it's really, it, it's. One of the highlights of my career as a dietician is has writing a book. Yeah. And I really owe all that to you, so thank you.
Oh, thank you so much.
I feel like it was such a while back, I think eight or nine years now, and it's good to see. I love the stories that I see when time has passed and some of the things that have happened. Sometimes you don't immediately see the impact and the growth, but I love catching up with authors such after such a long time.
I mean, for me it was that imposter syndrome, right? It was like, yeah. Who the hell am I to write a book for one? You know? So you're constantly actually thinking not about the public, you're more thinking about your colleagues. You know who other dieticians think, who the hell does he think he is? That's the conversation that goes on in my head, yes.
But what it writing a book really helped me with was it made me realize how much information is stored up in this massive head of mind. And I like your process [00:04:00] for unpacking that and systemizing the extraction of that info from my head into paper into a story. Yeah. That is then quite beneficial. This is how big of imposter syndrome.
I don't know if you probably don't remember this that, but I wouldn't put my photo on the book. I know you like if Yes,
yes, yes.
Look behind you. Everyone's got photos on the book. Yes, I was out. My photo's not going on the book. And yet, in our waiting rooms in our clinics, I would have clients come in and say, oh, that's a really good book out in the waiting room.
Oh, they didn't realize it was you.
They didn't know it was me. I'd say, oh yeah, I wrote that book. Like, oh,
that, I didn't know that. So that's really funny. Although nowadays I, we've gone away too much of. Being on the front of the book. Back then it was all about the personal brand, and I certainly still believe that's really important and all that, but definitely at a minimum.
Were you on the back cover? I can't remember.
Nowhere, no. Oh,
okay. Well, that I would definitely still recommend it. You're somewhere on the front of the back.
Yeah, no, [00:05:00] that was where I dug Mc heels in. I'm like, no, but anyway, like it was, yeah, it's great. It's like for me, like it's a business card.
Oh yes.
Like having been a published author, which is something that was never on my bucket list.
Uh, it's a business card that I've written a book. And the really good thing is 'cause we work quite closely with a lot of doctors and nurses in our space, and it was really like some of the nurses that, their chronic disease nurses that would send us referrals, they would read it and say, oh wow. That's a really good book.
Because in the nutrition space it's a little bit. There. There's so much, there's so many books and, what's the word? Like quick fixes and sort of snake oil sold in paper. Yeah. And so there's that real risk of putting something out there thinking, I don't want to be another one of them. But then when people read it and realize, well actually this is evidence-based and I've got a lot of, you know, through your advice, we had a lot of case studies and just really relatable stories in the book.
Mm-hmm. And I think that made it really readable, and that's certainly not something I would've ever [00:06:00] done off my own back.
Yeah. Well, I'm very proud of you and everything that you've been doing since I've seen both of you grow so much through and experience life and really design it the way you you want to.
And with four very tiny children. I think your daughter wasn't even around when I met you.
No, no. Well, she's five now, so that's Shows how long ago it is. Exactly. Nat, what I mean, let's step back a little bit further. Yeah. Tell us about your journey into the 48 hour author.
Yeah, my personality is very, one of impatience, and this is how I've come up with the system, is how can I figure out to do something that.
Sometimes people take years because again, no one wants to spend decades writing a book and things like that, and neither did I. But my first book, actually, my first book was related to health and wellness. It was the seven Ultimate secrets to weight loss. Nothing to do with nutrition, by the way, guys. It was all about mindset.
I really wanted to be a coach. But in order [00:07:00] to coach I needed to solve a problem. And weight loss, as we know, is a very big challenge in this world. And I thought that's kind of what I was attracting. I wasn't even advertising it and, but everyone would come to me. It's, what do you wanna work on? I wanna work on my health and lose 10 kilos and all this sort of stuff.
So that was my first journey into writing books. And the first book took a whole three months, even though that's not long right. For people because it was written just. Doing two hours twice a week, and then I went through a publishing process, so I, where to go was still six months. Right? But how I realized you can do it a lot faster is that if you are an expert in your own field, then you can speak about.
What you do day to day. I mean, if you unpacked your content, your stories, your bullet points, and had structure, which is what you were referring to, chapter unpacking, book unpacking, then you could verbalize your content and then tidy it up after the transcription's been done. And therefore, fast track this.
So I've [00:08:00] worked out the maths, that's 17 to 20 minutes of speaking. When it's transcribed across 12 chapters, it equals 40,000 words. Which is literally the size of the book, like 160 odd pages, the sweet spot. I think your book may have been tiny bit bigger. Maybe on that 40,000, I don't know if you can remember.
I can't remember. I've got no idea. Uh,
maybe it was somewhere between 40 and 50,000. I'm just imagining it physically 40. It looked like it was a little bit thicker than the 40,000 word book, but that's the match. So when we are allocating our 48 hour author retreats, the seven hours towards speaking, that's enough time to pick out all that content.
As long as you've come away prepared. Right? Yeah. Which is, there's a bit of preparation. I say there's about 10 to 12 hours of preparation before you're ready to execute. And I don't know if at the end of the day you ended up typing or you did speak it out. Can you remind me?
Yeah, no, I spoke it out. You spoke it out?
Yeah, I spoke and then, yeah. So you, we had meetings about the unpacking and you [00:09:00] gave me that structure. Yes. And then, yeah, so I worked through that, spoke it out. Yeah, the transcription come back and that, that part of it, the bit, this is probably not relevant to all your authors, but the thing I really loved was that part of the revision and the speaking out was, I've been a dietician for a number of years before that, and you are telling clients about stuff, but it makes you go back and then confirm in the evidence what you've been talking about.
Yes. So yes,
we're an evidence-based. Profession, but it's, hang on, let me, I need to update this. I'm putting this in print. I need to make sure that this is still the latest data. And so just that whole process, it was, that part of it was a little bit timely, but what would've done for me as a dietician was just gave me tons of confidence.
You know, I could go in and talk about things and I would present after that, and we can talk a little bit about that after as well. Mm-hmm. But it was like just that confidence in what I was doing.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that the cleanup process is definitely the one that I also dislike so often when my husband Stuart, like you have your Stacy [00:10:00] will do, because he knows me inside out how I would speak, so he would clean up some of my stuff so that it's almost ready.
Nowadays with introduction of ai, you can actually. Utilize it, but be, I wanna just put a disclaimer here with a lot of caution. It can definitely summarize and change things, so I purely use it for basic copy editing when I send it some text, just because sometimes the transcription can look like a real blob of text and then it can tidy it up to a point where it's not changing you or summarizing and all that, as long as you've prompted it correctly.
Which is again, yet another way of just making our job a little bit easier to get to that final product.
I'm glad you said that 'cause I was gonna ask you about ai 'cause I, I often think about the process that we went through was efficient. How much has AI improved that? Oh,
so put it this way, transcription.
We remember we used to send it off to a guy and we had this guy in Canada that. To do it for us and then we'd send it back to you guys. And he was this [00:11:00] one guy that was transcribing lots and lots of books for us. And it was a time timely process because everyone was in a queue. But nowadays with Char ai, which is an app on your phone, which is free to use, you are getting transcription done immediately and you can email it to yourself and starting the cleanup.
But then now we check GPT. As long as you prompt it correctly and you just get it to do a bit of the basic copy editing and tidy up, but then you go through your own self edit to add more things in it. It's just shortcutted this it just less and less time on the author's part. Again, do not get it to get, write your own book.
You wanna come from your own expertise, your own case studies, your own everything, but can you use it to do a little bit of tidy up and clean up so that it doesn't just look really best like a blob? You definitely can, and I encourage it. And something that I just spoke about moments ago before we jumped on this interview, then we have now introduced an AI clone of your voice [00:12:00] that is can create your audio book.
This like Chris hot off the press. I only announced it like half an hour ago. 'cause I've just now cloned my own voice. I've done three of my books and it's a service now that we're bringing because who wants to spend two days in a studio? No one. I don't know about you, but I don't have the time, don't have the desire.
I don't personally love audio books. But now a lot of people do. If I can have my book now as paperback ebook at audiobook, and I'm selling all three versions on my website, that's just a whole other game changer again.
Well, I've also, I've often toyed with, because mine's not in audio format and I actually haven't read a book in probably a decade, I've only listened to books, right.
With traveling and kids and whatever else. I never find myself sitting there, but I, I'm often in the car, so that's when I'll listen to a book. Yeah. So that's fascinating. Um,
so now you can come and if you want your. I just need literally two or 20 minutes of your voice, depending on the type of clone [00:13:00] you want.
There's standard clones and then there's high fidelity clones. And I probably would recommend the high fidelity one because it's more true, but I was just, yeah, playing it to people and they're go, nah, that's exactly you. And I go, yeah, because it is my voice and it's crazy. You know what we can do now and again, eliminates that time consuming nature of the way we understand books.
Like need to be. Well, they don't need to be. If you have a system, a structure, and a process like you said, and the tools and you know how to use them,
yeah. Makes life easy. Now, you were fairly pivotal for us. We like you planted that seed with Stacy first, but with the book was then about building like an online course of your content.
Yeah, and because we, in our model of care, the way we would provide service, we were mostly Medicare DVA, which means that the consults were government funded for the best part and fairly you had to be efficient, really short, and so. I was always [00:14:00] wanting more. This, you never had enough time with a client to really help them.
Yeah. And that's where the online course idea was really perfect. 'cause I thought how good if we could then help our clients to just have that extension of our consult.
Yes. And so
with writing the book, it was like just that natural progression. You've written a book with all these chapters. There's an online course.
Absolutely. Why would you not like, seriously, I think the leverage with a book and my latest book that I released about six months ago, it's called Book Sales, won't Make You Rich. The Real Truth, how Authors Become Millionaires, and that's the whole idea. If you wanna be a millionaire author, one of those just gets rich from book sales.
That's a one in a billion, probably like the Stephen Kings or some of the people, probably more the fiction writers, I would say sometimes develop that. But they're writing lots of books. Right. But you could write one book like you have, right? And turn it into an online course, turn it into a lucrative, build your credibility for your business, then eventually with your business.
I don't know. [00:15:00] You guys did sell the business, didn't you? We
did. Yeah. Yeah. So we did, and we, we, the course was quite useful when we had the business. Right. And when we sold the business, we kind of shut the course. We were actually burnt out for a while, just from the business, but, yeah.
Yeah. But it,
it was really helpful
selling your business.
Did you guys benefit from selling your business?
Yeah, we did. It probably wasn't as clean and it was a little bit messy in the end, but, uh, that, that's a whole nother podcast. But we benefited in that our mental health. We were just at a point in our life where we were over it and we had young family and elderly parents, and we were just like, we wanted to travel.
And that's when we decided to travel.
So that's the, that's a huge benefit to allow the time and the space for you guys to do that. And now you've, you've got your app, is that, so all of these ideas about content development. Probably with a seed from developing the content for your book and all that sort of stuff.
It was, yeah, absolutely. NA and what it was, I think the book was the line in the sand for me because it was like, hang on a sec, I [00:16:00] can do this, I can do that. Whereas Stacey's the entrepreneur in our relationship and she's got that thinking and has dragged me along with her like I was, yeah. I was probably just gonna follow the path of I'm a dietician, I just see clients back to back like this.
Yeah. This is what I do. So it's like writing a book was something that she dragged me into and then it, that then opened up my mind thinking, hang on, what else can we do? And that's when you really start to, to explore and innovate. So yeah, it was great.
I love that. And I love that you listened and you did more because you can leverage, reduce yourself so much more beyond.
Time for money and create more value into the world. That also gets left behind as a legacy as well, especially what your book would represent.
Yeah, absolutely. And like I, I touched on before, like speaking gigs that would come from it and primarily locally, like I, I, um, was probably a victim of my own.
Like self-sabotage and not promoting that I had a book, but certainly within the network I had up [00:17:00] in, in our area. Like I would often have speaking gigs as a result and a lot of that I can, can't say it was tied directly to the book, but a lot of it to go up after publishing a book. So you would think there's some sort of correlation.
But what it done for me was, like I was saying, it was the confidence to get up on a stage and just present to a hundred nurses or heap of doctors or whatever it might be, whereas. Before I would've been shitting myself about that. Yeah. But that, I love it. That process of putting it all down on paper and reinforcing what I was talking about was really beneficial.
What I often say, it's actually not about writing your first book, it's about the person you become at the other end of it. And that's a quote I've been saying for more than a decade now because I see that growth in confidence. Sometimes people think, oh, it's about the book, or it's about how many units am I gonna sell and all that.
I go Sometimes like it's not about that. You become a new version of you. You have this own personal transformation. So I completely get when you're saying you're speaking [00:18:00] and how confident you were in front of people, same thing happened with me. Before I had my weight loss book, I was like selling hot air coaching.
What does that even mean? But then I've got this book and then they come and bundle it up with a ticket for the event or whatever and then they read it or whatever. And people would say, oh, my coach is a author and all this sort of stuff. And people would like make me feel super special. That's what I had behind my profile and that in itself, and once you write your content down, it's so much easier to externalize and speak about it 'cause you've already structured it.
So to get up and just even talk off the cuff. It's probably easy because you've already done that hard part, and that's what a book often enables you to create.
Yeah, I, I love that because like in that nutrition space, there's so many niches that I see that I think like seeing people online, people I follow who are dieticians or nutritionists, that there's so knowledgeable in their area, like just what unpacking that into a book would do for them.
Yeah, absolutely. I think I've worked with quite a lot of people [00:19:00] in health and wellness, and I think they do benefit from going through the process. It doesn't matter. There's a lot of competition out there or whatever it is. No one does the flavor that you bring. Yeah, to the place. So no one can do the Chris Hughes flavor.
They have their own flavor of what they believe and what they teach and how they teach it, and from their experience and all that. So never think that the marketplace is oversaturated because in health and wellness it certainly is, but still you're gonna be unique because too many people don't do it because they think it's oversaturated.
Why just do your own flavor and you attract your vibe into what you do.
Yeah. Look, I, and for me, I, that was never an issue 'cause I was never doing a book to make money. And I, it's funny, I had mates that said, oh yeah, hoping it'd be a best seller. And I'm like, I actually don't really care if I never sell a book.
Yeah.
It's not, we, I think as part of our thing, you get a thousand books we had and we got rid of [00:20:00] all of them. No problem. You know, so it's like. That actually paid for the program and whatever else. Yeah. So it was, but for me it was actually, yeah. I never ever thought about the total number of sales. It wasn't about selling the book, it was about having a book.
Exactly. And that mindset is so much more relaxing when someone puts that pressure for them on themselves to go, oh, but I'll need to sell this and I'll need to make this much money. The focus system completely in the wrong spot. Same thing when I was writing my first one before it came out, I remember a lady at a networking event said, oh yeah, many people self-publish but don't hold your breath kind of thing.
And to me, in my head, I said to, I thought to myself, I don't really care about how my book actually does. I just wanna do well as a business owner and to be helping people. Through what I wanna help them. So I just wanted to position me rather than this $20 product that might be purchased. Yeah. And so similar [00:21:00] mindset, and as a result, I got speaking gigs from those picking gigs.
Those clients came in, paying clients and all that sort of stuff. And then it's, yeah, I couldn't care. That's why sometimes when people ask me, how many books have you sold? I go, really? I don't know. I really don't know. I know my main book, ultimate 48 Auta. Goes, I sell lots all the time, probably 500 to a thousand a year, get moved around because I'll do a lot of events and people buy them at the events and at the speaking gigs.
And I know I'm always ordering that one the most because that's my main book. But I don't count that. To me it's not, it's just a supportive structure and, and something that can help people who may not be able to afford to work with me at other levels.
That's right. And I was similar in that rather than a, like a lead magnet, which it was in a way, but for me it was more an extension of our consult.
Yeah. I, I could give it to a client and say, yeah, look, just have a look at chapter three. This is sort of reinforces what we're talking about here today. And whether they [00:22:00] bought the book or I just land 'em a book. And some clients I'd give a book depending on their financial situation Exactly. But it was just like.
But we don't have much time today, but here have a read of this. It'll, you can read this at your own time and pace. And so often they would come back and they being able to read and reinforce what we'd just talk about and the case studies we used in the book, they really found that. Beneficial. Like I had that comment multiple times.
So it was really, yeah.
And at the end of the day, the book's costing you seven or $8, let's say, to produce. That's how much that generally cost to print nowadays. You are, you are building goodwill, relationships, referrals, even giving it away as a door prize, that at speaking like a networking events, that's all shows you off so often.
Yeah. I always want people to think bigger and I love the fact that you guys have. And didn't just focus on, and you looked at how you can add value to people, which is why you've had the success that you've had. Yeah.
Well, I firstly owe would order Stacy Nat, and then we [00:23:00] both owe it all to you because the process, like we're talking eight or nine years ago now.
But the process was amazing for someone that was going in there resistant. It was awesome. They're easy to do. We then went down near Geelong somewhere and had a retreat and that was awesome. It's a
physical retreat. It's changed. It is online now, but that's because you can, you remember. There was quite a lot of socializing and shenanigans in the evenings, and I found that once Covid hit and we went online, we actually realized that the online model was more productive so people were in their own space When they were sent off for writing, there was no kind of wasting time because it's 48 hours, right?
It's very quick in an out. And, and so we've kept the model. Now we did 28 physical ones, which is one of the ones that you came to, but it still runs the exact same way. And the timings, however it is, via Zoom and, and we've done 22 now that way. And the beauty of it is people don't get tired [00:24:00] flying into.
Us and having to go to a venue, like there's a lot of logistics when you're face to face. But as a result, I've developed a bond and beyond seven night all inclusive shindi where people can come away. The community, we're actually heading out to Bintan Island in a few weeks time, and that's where we are doing like a seven night socializing and a little bit of sessions like around beyond lifestyle book and business, but, but I am keeping that version now, the three day or the two and a half day online.
Nice. Yeah, well, I, I certainly would've done the online given that we were in Central Queensland and blown away. That's right.
But yeah, it was the way it was. We now have people from all over the world joining from Canada, USA, Singapore, New Zealand, all of that sort of, all that's the convenience and rural people.
And one of my biggest points of advice is, Hey, hi, hi. Go to a hotel nearby within an hour of your house. Take yourself away, but log into the program with us during that time so that you're away from your family [00:25:00] if you have young children. Yeah. So you don't have to think about cooking or whatever, and you actually devoted and invested in yourself to have that time to smash this out.
Actually did that as part of the, like when we were reviewing, I went away for two months. Oh yeah.
Perfect. In your P,
like I literally went a kilometer. It was really beneficial. You set the time
and that's what it's for, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. Good on you.
Nat, thank you so much for coming on today. As I said, I cannot thank you enough for the influence you've had over my career.
Anyone listening to this, how can they best follow you? Get in touch with you.
Yeah, so I've got a couple of gif. One is just go and download the shut up and write your first book. It's the first in a series of four that you would need to read. If you want to get going with this for yourself, and I'm sure in your credits, wherever, they'll pop the link there.
Yeah, do that. Yeah. Our main website is just simple. Write a book.com au. If you go onto the event tab, guys, we are always either doing an online or an in person event. If [00:26:00] you're in a major city, you can see where they're happening next. There's usually about 35 of them a year, and we've been doing this for 12 years.
So the event that Stacy came to back then, it was like in Brisbane and it was one of those events and that evolved. And obviously with everything that's changed, we keep updating the information in them. But it's a wonderful four hour event, source of free. Come along and meet me in person or come to the next slide, but via Zoom because we've got a few options of those as well.
And then we can see if we can help and help you become the next version of you.
Amazing. Thank you, Nat. Yes. I think Stacy more to go to a couple of your events. Um, yeah,
she actually flew down to Melbourne once for a planning day I think that we did. Yeah. Um, like for the day and then flew back home. It was like a nine to five day at my home.
That's when we just got this house where I'm at now. It's funny, we have a big history and I absolutely love that because that's what my biggest values are when people come in my life, but they're not here just [00:27:00] for the three or four months that would take to bring out. Because the publishing does take three months, a month in editing, month in layout, month in print production.
I see my people and I, it was lovely. Yesterday, I was in Canberra and people I haven't seen for five years, they're coming and helping me and yeah, it's really cool.
Oh, well, look, I, from all my dealings with you now, easily one of the most authentic, lovely people. I, there's two people that would potentially end my marriage.
Stacey leaving me for one's. Jamie Oliver. She would leave me for Jamie Oliver and you. Oh yeah. You're the other one. I reckon. She's a massive fan.
Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that. I love you guys too.
Alright, now, thanks for your time.
Thank you guys.
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