How To Write a Book and Bigger Future | 353

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Dan Kuschell

April 4, 2022

Dan Kuschell is a husband, dad, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He runs Breakthrough3X, a company that gives you instant access to a Fractional CMO Team. Breakthrough3X helps founders and CEOs grow their businesses 3 to 10x and generate more clients daily with a simple system that gets them free from the day-to-day. Dan has owned 12 companies since 1992, building multiple businesses with revenues exceeding eight figures before selling. He is also the Host of the Growth to Freedom podcast, where he interviews industry leaders and experts in a variety of fields.


Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Dan Kuschell shares the #1 mistake most leaders make when writing a book or creating a product
  • Dan’s tips for getting more in tune with your clients
  • How to facilitate revenue-generating conversations with your top clients
  • What is Dan’s tried-and-true process for writing his book?
  • The value of creating several effective systems to grow your business

In this episode…

How can you start planting seeds for greatness? What is your superpower, and how can you share it with the world?

As Dan Kuschell says, you have an obligation to share your unique ability and wisdom with others. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business leader, coach, industry expert, or influencer — if you have a piece of knowledge that can change lives, you should be sharing it. This is the philosophy that inspired Dan to start writing his book. Now he’s here to share his process for motivating other leaders to take that first step toward greatness.

In this episode of Growth to Freedom, Dan Kuschell shares the steps leaders can take to start making a greater impact. He explains how you can get more in tune with your clients, the systems you should put in place to grow your business, and his tips for sharing your superpower with the world. Stay tuned for more!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell 0:03

Welcome to growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation, and leadership, we’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots, and get unstuck. So you can go out and generate more leads more sales, more profits. More importantly, so you can go out and have a bigger reach, a bigger impact and make a bigger contribution. What am I holding here? Anybody want to take a guess? I’ve been busy these last few weeks. And have you ever said to yourself, I’m going to write a book, I’m going to write a book because I want to help more and more people transform their lives. So over the last couple of weeks, you can see I’ve been just a little bit busy. And people have asked me, well, then like, what is the process you’re taking to write your book? Right? Now? I’m going to show you a little bit rather than just tell you and hopefully you get some value from this silly thing anyway, you get the idea, right? These are all chunks of me writing in given days or different time periods. And I’m about 80% done with draft number one. Right? draft number one. So someone asked, well, then how were you writing the book? Well, there’s a lot to writing the book. And, you know, one of the thing I just had an interview on a summit called Entrepreneurs Now Summit. And he asked me a question, he said, well, then what’s the big mistake most people make, right? And the number one mistake we see is a lot of people fall in love with their book, with their product with their service or something like that, right? And it’s great to be proud of your product. And if you’re proud of your product, Jay Abraham says it best he says that, you know, you’ve got a moral obligation to go out there and share it with others, don’t you? And it’s so true, you have a moral obligation to go share your superpowers with others don’t you doesn’t matter whether you’re a coach, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an expert in influencer, you know, media, whatever it is, that you have the ability to change lives, were one of the most exciting times in human history, especially for the small business, because technology opens up so many doors for you, for me to be able to go out there and make an impact make a difference. And that’s what I want to hit on. So the number one problem most people have, is not getting in their clients shoes, you know, Dan Sullivan has a great quote, he says, People don’t buy from us because they feel that they don’t understand us, they buy from us because they feel understood.

The number one problem most people have is not getting in their clients’ shoes. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Do you truly, truly know your clients maybe even better than they know themselves? If and when you do, that’s when a lot of the things in your messaging, a lot of the things in your storytelling start to work? Right?

And so what do you do to do this? Like, it’s really pretty simple. It’s tuning into the question, what is or are the problems of my perfect clients? What is or are the problems of my perfect clients? Now you might, you know, in the beginning, when you’re brand new, what do you do you anticipate you guess? In other words, right. But there are some scientific ways that you can go about and by the way, the scientific ways are pretty simple. If you use them, like for example, do you have access to Amazon? Yes. Do you have access to Google? Yes. Do you have access to like, for example, whatever your industry is, could you type in Google and go Facebook groups for and then fill in the blank LinkedIn groups for? And guess what you’d find links to those groups? Now I’ll share with you what to do once you do that, you could do this inside of Facebook, you can also look at, you know, taking this approach in any community, right? And then what do you do is you go look at what are they talking about? That pisses them off? Essentially, that irritates them? The frustrations, they’ve got the dangers, the threats, and also the things they love the opportunities, the growth places, right? And so what could you do to get more in tune with your clients? Let me plus this even? What would happen for you, you think, if you think of right now, if you’re in business right now, or whatever business you’re in, you think of who are my five favorite clients? Who are my five favorite clients that I work with? Or maybe it’s 10, five to 10 favorite clients. And then you just write their names down, write their first and last name down, right? And then identify some of the characteristics you feel from those five to 10 clients write them down seriously, and I’d encourage you even to kind of make a note or two right now so you don’t forget to come back to this. What you will find is there’s some similarities in them chances are they have some level of appreciation for you that you feel like they’re collaborative, you feel like you know, they they are referral In other words, You could refer them easily they could refer you ease. And ideally they do right though your five to 10 very best clients, your favorite clients, right? Not any clients, but your best, your favorite? And then lastly, is the financial opportunity, chances are some of your favorite clients probably pay you on time. And they pay you well, ideally, right? So those are some characteristics.

So how do you attract more of them? Here’s a way and it’s a way to be a value. Could you imagine? What if you took that five to 10 people and you just call them up? And you said, Hey, I was thinking about you today. And I was thinking about how much I appreciate you being one of my top favorite clients. And I thought I’d reach out to you. Because I have a lot of resources available to me to help our clients that have nothing to do with our business, just connections and a whole lot more. And what if you reached out to those five to 10 clients and you just got in a conversation and ask them things like, you know, hey, what are your biggest? You know, what are your biggest? The biggest irritations you have that are keeping you up at night. Right? What are your biggest struggles? Right now as a business? I’m curious, right? What are your biggest opportunities that you’ve got as a business? What are your biggest opportunities? What are your biggest weaknesses as a business? And then here’s the pinnacle key question ask is what’s the number one thing you need the most help with right now. And then listen. Now here’s the reality, if you do this with 10 clients, like let’s say, out of the 10, only seven give you the ability to do this in the next couple of weeks. But you talk to seven and you ask them, then the idea is once they tell you, you ideally become a conductor, a facilitator almost like a good point guard in basketball, I don’t know if you’re a basketball fan, but a good point guard gets the ball to their scores. So you become a facilitator, like a point guard, and you go out there, what do you do? You try to help them solve their problem. It might be a resource, it might be a connection you’ve got it might be, it might be a tool, you know, of it might be, you might not know, and you might say that? Well, I don’t know right now. But let me find out and you try to connect with someone who you think could help find the answer to that, that solve that problem, right? But imagine if you did that with your, you know, five to 10 best clients top clients. When you ask them that, chances are there’s probably a couple of them that are going to say something related to a service you provide that maybe they’re not even aware of that you provide. And it gets you into a dialogue to talk about how you can help them what, even what more help them even more. Because for most of my 30 year business career During this, what I’ve looked at is, okay, how do I turn support type of activities into revenue generating activities, this just happens to be one of the most valuable things that you can do.

So now let’s flip back to this book that I was showing to you. This book is a culmination of client work over the last 30 years, helping over 5000 founders and CEOs describe their problems as helping them problems. You know, we’ve had some successes, a lot of successes, we’ve also had some failures. And a lot of the stories I’ve never ever shared before are going to be in this book. Right. And all in an effort to help more founders and CEOs that I’m not able to get to just through the you know, through the model of our business, right, this book allows you to have now you might be saying, Well, Dan, what does this have to do with me your book your book? No, I’m hoping that you’re inspired. Number one, by focusing on your problem or focusing on your clients problems and getting in their shoes first, to offer up a solution number two, is to be thinking how can you be resourceful to your client, or another word is invaluable from Cal Newport, be invaluable? Right? Go to those five to 10 top favourite identify the characters because you and by the way, the other thing that will happen when you interview those five to 10 clients, if you ask them similar questions, you’re going to notice some consistencies. And now what you’ve got is you’ve got the language of your clients, you’ve got the language of your clients, which then can be used in how you talk to more potential future clients. And then another strategic byproduct of that is you’ll likely find yourself in a situation where they probably want more of what you have to offer. Right now back to the book. You may not be in a place where you want to write a book, maybe you’ve got a few books, maybe you’ve written a book, but whatever it is, right? I don’t know if you feel like at a place where maybe you feel invisible or like you’re the world’s best kept secret it whatever it is you do or maybe you feel like golly, If only more people knew about how good I can help them. What would it be worth if you could help more people transform their lives? Right? Right now you could do that. Right. So there are so many tools to be able to do that. And by the way, if you’re inspired a little bit, maybe to think about writing your next book, it’s so much easier than you’ve been led to believe. So let me just share the process with you. These handwritten notes come from the fact that I transcribed a video I recorded, not that dissimilar to what I’m doing right now. And then I took those trends, you know, Trent, and I and I recorded it, I sent it to a dictation service transcription services, got it back, and then went through and highlighted some of the key points in it. And then I started handwriting my notes, and now we’ve got 1, 2, 3. I won’t go through all of these because I think there’s probably at least 16 That’s how many I’ve written in the last couple of weeks, 16 sections of the book, then what I’m doing is I’m actually taking now by the way, in a previous segment, you may have seen that what I did up front was I wrote, I tested the headlines, I talked about how we tested the headlines, not only with our clients, but then we also went one step further and Facebook. And we tested the headlines for the book. In other words, the titles of the book for less than a couple of $50 $60, we tested about eight or 10 different titles, combinations, to let the AI let the technology tell us what clients might like best. Right?

Then what we’re doing is I take these notes, and I send them off to one of my team, and they can type them. And now we’re getting our draft. And I’ve got a handful of people helping support that. On top of that we’re in the process of developing sample covers for the book, by the way, would you want to see a sample cover when it comes out? If you’d like to see a sample cover just you know, hit yes, or something in the chat. I don’t know, if you have access to the chat, maybe you’re driving or whatever the case might be. So be Be safe, be careful. But if you’d like access to the to see the cover, see samples of the covers, see samples of some of this as it goes, right, we’re actually getting ready to launch the site, at least the first version of it, they have availability to get on the waiting list plus get a few extra bonuses. If you’d like to learn more about that type. Yes, in the chat window. I’ll have one of our team private message you how to go about that. Right. Or here’s another simple way go to [email protected]. [email protected] just say, Dan, I’d like more info on the book, right? The waiting list, right? Or other resources. Because we’re putting together a series of things that go with this. It’s more than just a book. Right now, by the way, part of how the book evolved, as we wrap this up here in a second part of how this book evolve, was creating little mini checklists like this, by the way. So let me just show you this is a checklist that we make available. It’s called the CEO checklist, stop struggling and start profiting now. Essentially, I originally created this, I don’t know 1516 years ago for me. And it’s evolved over time. And I still have want my version up on the wall. Not from 15. It’s evolved, right innovated. But I have the version up on the wall. Because what this does for me, for someone who’s more, maybe you know, someone creative, maybe you know, someone who’s like, some could suffer from shiny object syndrome. I definitely have that ability. So I have to be on track. So I have a checklist up here that keeps me on track daily, weekly, monthly, and year.

I have a checklist that keeps me on track daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

And now you might say, Well, Dan, like I could never operate that that regimented. Right. And it’s not a regimented system. It’s a system to keep you between, you know, keep you on the tracks, right, still gives you freedom and still gives you flexibility. But that checklist started for me. And then I decided to write the checklist. And I decided to make an event. We’ve literally had 1000s and 1000s of founders and CEOs, just like you get the CEOs checklist, right? And all it was was like five pages, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 pages.

And that’s how your book can start by the way, think about narrowing it down to little mini chunks in our programmes because we built our business to run like a franchise. It’s a bunch of systems that operate we have a lot or no 40, 50 tools now that help us run our business. And then when we work with our clients, we give them access to the very best tools in the world to help them run their business. Get them free. Get out of the day to day do it with a lot less stress systems that you know, I learned that from a guy named Michael Gerber. Do you know who Michael Gerber is if you know who Michael Gerber is give a thumbs up type? Yes in the chat. Put a heart up there, whatever. Michael Gerber was someone I got a chance to learn from in the 90s. And, you know, in his book, The E Myth, right, the E Myth which I know he’s got about 400 Different versions now in different languages, all kinds of stuff. He’s made a huge impact in the world for business owners. What I took from the book is this simple frame: systems, run your business, find good people to run those systems, right systems, run your business, find good people to run those systems. And for me, I got really fascinated with marketing and selling systems. Because to me, it’s the ultimate lever. It’s the ultimate lever, when you agree, it’s the ultimate lever. Right? It’s like a little hinge that can swing a big door, I usually have no, I do have a hinge here, little hinges swing big doors. So if you want to swing big doors, put the tools in place like systems to run your business. Right?

Little hinges swing big doors. So if you want to swing big doors, put the tools in place, like systems to run your business. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

So think of whatever your superpower is, how can you create little mini education guides or checklists or tools to make available? Literally 1000s 1000s? I don’t know, five 6000 people, I think you’ve gotten this, we’ve got a series of a couple others similar numbers. Right? Those were the beginning stages of now what’s become this book, right. And so ideally, it gives you a couple of ways to be thinking about your business be thinking about creativity, thinking about how to create content, like literally this is, you know, true. Truth be told, this segment here is kind of like a great version of seeing add, working at its finest, with about four different segments of topics to be talking about certainly wouldn’t fit a TED talk, that’s for sure where you’re supposed to have one main focus and one main core thing anyway, that’s me, What You See Is What You Get plain and simple.

So ideally, this serves you, I encourage you to take action. Take action with what we talked about, right? Seeds of creativity, that probably be the best theme or title for this segment seeds of creating, what do you need your seeds of greatness, your seeds of creative excellence? Your seeds of creative excellence starts with one step, one step at a time, what’s the first step you need to take? On what we’ve shared with you? Could it be that you call your five to 10 favourite clients? And give them that survey?

Your seeds of creative excellence start with one step at a time. What's the first step you need to take? - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Ask him some of those questions we talked about? Ask them the most important question, which would be the last question in the sequence, what’s the number one thing you need the most help with, and then be committed to help them solve those things, to the best of your ability at this time? On top of that, what could you do to create something a tool, a mini system that helps people make their life simpler, make it easier, make things go faster? help it be less stressful? Right? Eliminate suffering in the real life? What could you do to create something like that? Those not only become the seeds of greatness, but they also become a little hinge that swings big doors for people. Anyway, take action, seize the day, we’ll see you on another segment. And I’ll keep you informed as I go with this book, which has been quite a fun, fun project to do. And a lot of amazing things that obviously, it’s my book, so I’m gonna call it amazing, right? A lot of just the process of this has just been so amazing for me as a human being I’m being selfish right now. Find something that fuels your heart, makes you sing, makes you want to write, whether it’s making a difference in someone’s life or start with you. Right? It’s okay to be selfish. Give yourself some self love, and be selfish. To go out there and sing a song you love to do that thing that you know in your heart you’ve been called are meant to do. Now is your time. Enjoy your day. See, thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free Small Business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com, that’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

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