249: Systems for Selling Over One Million Books with Josh Kaufman

“The biggest breakthroughs came from the random side projects that I had no expectation would turn into anything.” Josh Kaufman is a longtime friendtor (13 years and counting!) who I admire for his streamlined approach to running his business in a way that supports family life and creative solitude.

In our last conversation we spoke about releasing the ten-year anniversary edition of his bestselling book, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, that has since surpassed the one million books sold milestone. Today we’re diving into the systems behind that success.

Check out 012: Generating Personal MBA Momentum with Josh Kaufman if you haven’t already!

More About Josh: Josh Kaufman’s research and books focus on business, entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, creativity, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. Josh's unique, multidisciplinary approach to business mastery and rapid skill acquisition has helped millions of readers around the world learn essential concepts and skills on their own terms. Josh's TEDx talk on The First 20 Hours is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 37 million views on YouTube.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

• Sign up for the Audible bounty program to generate affiliate income for audiobook sales. Get Josh’s Personal MBA book for free here, and Free Time on Audible (if you’re not already a member).

• If you set-up SEO-optimized topic pages for discoverability with excerpts from your book, do not create a central navigation page that might detract from book sales. The pages don’t need to be linked together, but you can link to a few related concepts. Include ways to purchase the book across all formats, as well as a small bio and newsletter sign-up embed.

• Figure out where your people are, figure out what they want, how to talk to them, and then just keep doing it day after day after day. The more you invest that effort in creating, the more your work will last.

📝 Permission

Try more random experiments, things where you don’t know whether or not it will work. Things you’re curious about, that pique your attention. “The biggest breakthroughs come from the random side projects that I had no expectation would turn into anything.”

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next

From Josh: To build skill from scratch, you need to know How to Climb A Ladder. But how do you know which ladder to climb? Try the Explore / Exploit process (here’s the overview from the Personal MBA: Exploration / Exploitation

🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Josh on the web, IG, Twitter

• Articles: Personal MBA (website)

• SEO-optimized book excerpt: What is the Iteration Cycle?

• Video: TEDx—The First 20 Hours

• Conference: Book Expo America

• Tools: Audible’s bounty program, ACX (Amazon) audiobook publishing, Findaway Voices (now acquired by Spotify), Amazon’s KDP publishing (for self-publishing)

📚 Books Mentioned

• Josh's Books: The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business

• The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast!

• How to Fight a Hydra (don’t miss the Audible edition

• Worldly Wisdom: Collected Quotations and Aphorisms

• Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature by Dan Sinykin

• Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business by Jenny Blake

• Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One

• Life After College

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