Advertise on podcast: Before The Bestseller

Joining us for this episode is Jeremy Keil, author of Retire Today, Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and host of the Retire Today podcast. Known as “Mr. Retirement” on YouTube, Jeremy has spent more than two decades helping people make smarter retirement decisions, reduce taxes, and avoid costly financial mistakes. He joins Alex Strathdee to share why planning for retirement involves much more than saving money and choosing the right investments. Jeremy walks us through his five-step Retirement Master Plan, from understanding what you'll actually spend in retirement to making the most of Social Security, managing taxes, and protecting your investments. They also explore the risks of relying on historical stock market returns, whether international investing and cryptocurrency belong in a retirement portfolio, and why entrepreneurs shouldn't depend entirely on selling their businesses to fund retirement. Plus, Jeremy shares his perspective on using AI for financial planning and where it might fall short. Planning for your financial future involves more than just saving and investing. Tune in to hear Jeremy's practical advice on making smarter financial decisions, avoiding costly mistakes, and building a retirement plan that works for you. Learn more about Jeremy Keil and his book Retire Today here: www.jeremykeil.com Explore Jeremy's five-step approach to retirement planning here: www.5StepRetirementPlan.com Estimate your life expectancy to help plan for retirement here: www.LongevityIllustrator.org — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

We're back with a special episode featuring Thomas Umstattd Jr., founder of Author Media and host of the Novel Marketing Podcast. This time, Thomas is sharing something he's been working on: building his own team of AI agents to help run his business. We talk about how authors can use these tools to simplify their book marketing, automate everyday tasks, and spend less time managing the technical side of their business. We explore how AI agents can update author websites, analyze Amazon reviews, uncover insights about readers, and handle repetitive marketing tasks. Thomas shares how he built his AI team, which tasks he recommends automating first, and how authors can get started without needing advanced technical skills. We also discuss the costs, security concerns, and practical challenges of working with AI agents, including how to make them more effective over time. You don't need to be a tech expert to start using AI agents for your book marketing. Tune in to hear Thomas explain where to start, what to automate, and how to make these tools work for you. Connect with Thomas Umstattd Jr.: Grok Bot Website Tutorial: https://www.authormedia.com/get-more-time-to-write-by-using-a-grok-bot/  Novel Marketing Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/novel-marketing/id721122555  Author Media: https://authormedia.com — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

We're excited to welcome back Thomas Umstattd Jr., founder of Author Media, host of the Novel Marketing Podcast, and creator of the Novel Marketing Conference. With more than a decade of experience helping authors market their books, Thomas joins us to talk about how AI is changing publishing, what’s happening with book sales, and what authors need to understand about reaching readers in 2026. We explore how AI is reshaping nonfiction, why certain fiction genres are growing while others are struggling, and what these changes reveal about reader preferences. Thomas also shares how authors can turn their expertise into AI-powered experiences, why even a great book can struggle to find an audience, and what the latest trends mean for book marketing. Through it all, we come back to something that hasn't changed: the importance of knowing exactly who you're writing for. If you're wondering how to adapt your writing and book marketing strategy as the publishing industry changes, listen to the full conversation for Thomas's perspective on what matters now and what authors should be paying attention to next. Check out his podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/novel-marketing/id721122555  Visit Thomas Umstattd Jr.'s website for book marketing advice, podcast episodes, helpful articles, courses, and AI tools designed to help authors reach more readers and sell more books here: https://authormedia.com — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

We welcome back Ryan Levesque, author of Ask and Choose, to talk about the book marketing strategies behind his newly released book, Return to Real. After selling hundreds of thousands of copies of Ask, Ryan shares what he's learned from his previous launches and how he's applying those lessons to his latest book. In this episode, Ryan takes us behind the scenes of writing and marketing Return to Real, including how feedback from roughly 250 beta readers and more than 16,000 comments helped shape the manuscript. We talk about testing ideas before writing, using readers' own words to strengthen a book, and creating bulk sales offers that give people a reason to buy multiple copies. Ryan also shares his approach to generating reviews, building reader relationships, and experimenting with different book formats and distribution strategies. If you're writing a book or looking for ways to get more copies into readers' hands, listen in for a closer look at the strategies Ryan is putting into practice and what you can learn from his approach. Get your copy of Return to Real: returntorealbook.com Read and Subscribe to Ryan’s weekly newsletter, The Digital Contrarian: thedigitalcontrarian.com — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

For our 200th episode of Before the Bestseller, today’s special guest is Ryan Levesque, founder, seven-time Inc. 5000 CEO, and #1 national bestselling author of Return to Real. Ryan has generated more than $100 million in revenue, and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Entrepreneur. His experience building businesses has given him a front-row view of how technology is changing the way we work and connect, something he also explores in The Digital Contrarian, his weekly newsletter on business, technology, and where things are headed. We’re living in a time when it’s becoming easier to create almost anything. AI can write, generate ideas, produce content, and give us information in seconds. But as more of what we see starts to look and sound the same, Ryan began asking a different question: What becomes more valuable when artificial becomes everywhere? That question led to Return to Real and the idea that being real might actually become an advantage. Ryan and I talk about what that means for authors and creators, from holding on to your own voice and becoming a better storyteller to creating the kind of human connection technology can’t easily replicate. Along the way, we get into his analog, oxytocin, and contrarian advantages, the “great bifurcation,” and why some of the things that are hardest to scale may become the things worth doing. If you’ve ever wondered whether your voice, your ideas, or even your writing will still matter as AI gets better, listen to this special 200th episode with Ryan Levesque. Get your copy of Return to Real: returntorealbook.com Read and Subscribe to Ryan’s weekly newsletter, The Digital Contrarian: thedigitalcontrarian.com — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

Mike Michalowicz is back on Before the Bestseller to talk about his latest book, The Money Habit, and what he’s learned from writing more than ten books and selling roughly 1.6 to 1.7 million copies across his titles. This time, we look beyond the launch itself and into what Mike has learned about writing books that continue to find readers over time. Mike breaks down the framework he uses to think about why some books keep growing while others fade, including how quickly a book delivers value, how deeply it helps the reader, and how easy its ideas are to put into practice. We also talk about writing for a clearly defined audience, building genuine relationships with readers, collaborating with other authors through social selling, and why Mike is leaning further into storytelling as AI changes the way people find and consume information. For authors thinking about the long game, this episode goes beyond getting more attention at launch. Listen to the full conversation to hear how Mike approaches the book itself, the readers behind it, and what can help a book keep spreading long after release. Check out The Money Habit here: https://a.co/d/00icp0op Explore Mike’s other books here: https://mikemichalowicz.com/books/ Learn more about Mike and his work here: www.mikemotorbike.com — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

We welcome back bestselling author and entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz, whose books have tackled nearly every corner of entrepreneurship, from profitability in the bestselling Profit First, to building a business that can run without you in Clockwork, to standing out in a crowded market with Get Different. After building and selling two multimillion-dollar businesses, Mike turned those experiences into practical systems that entrepreneurs around the world have put to work. Now, for his third appearance on Before the Bestseller, he joins us to talk about his newest book, The Money Habit, and why the way we behave with money may matter just as much as how much we earn.  Mike gets personal about becoming a self-made millionaire, losing it all, falling roughly $300,000 into debt, and the systems that eventually helped him climb back out. We talk about why earning more money doesn't necessarily solve money problems, how small wins can change financial behavior, the hidden cost of subscriptions and credit cards, and why your bank account may be a better tool than another budgeting app. Mike also walks us through the six accounts behind The Money Habit, the four financial seasons, and how a simple system can make money easier to manage, especially when you're managing it with a partner. For anyone who has avoided looking at their numbers, struggled to stick with a budget, or simply wants to make managing money feel less complicated, this conversation offers a different way to think about it. Listen to the episode and hear how Mike built The Money Habit around the way people actually behave with money. Check out The Money Habit here: https://a.co/d/00icp0op Explore Mike’s other books here: https://mikemichalowicz.com/books/ Learn more about Mike and his work here: www.mikemotorbike.com — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

We’re back with Jayson Gaignard, author of Community Made: The Truth About Success and the Relationships That Created It. Jayson is a veteran entrepreneur known for building communities and bringing entrepreneurs together through his invite-only events, with past guests including Tim Ferriss, Marc Ecko, and Dave Asprey. His work has also been featured in Forbes, Lifehacker, and Business Insider. In this episode, Jayson breaks down the strategy behind his Kickstarter campaign and why he chose to build his book launch around relationships rather than reach alone. We talk about using Kickstarter to test audiences, getting books into the hands of the right readers, using bulk orders as a distribution strategy, and building around the idea of 1,000 true fans. He also shares how documenting the writing process helped build support for the book long before he ever asked anyone to buy it. Tune in to hear how he put the ideas behind Community Made into practice and built his book marketing strategy around relationships, community, and getting the right people invested early. Check out Community Made here: https://a.co/d/04ZhFQYJ Learn more about Jayson and his work here: https://www.jaysongaignard.com/ — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

Our special guest for today is Jayson Gaignard, a Canadian entrepreneur, author of Community Made: The Truth About Success and the Relationships That Created It, and founder of Mastermind Talks, an invite-only gathering that has brought together people like Tim Ferriss, James Altucher, and Esther Perel. After building a million-dollar ticket business and later finding himself $250,000 in debt, Jason began hosting small, carefully curated dinners that eventually changed the direction of his life and work. In this episode, Jayson and I talk about what it actually takes to build meaningful relationships without turning networking into a transaction. We get into finding the right people, investing in relationships long before you need anything from them, building trust, reaching out cold without immediately making an ask, and why doing genuinely interesting work can open doors over time. Jason also shares what this means for authors, including why trying to build a network right before a book launch is often too late and how years of showing up for people are now playing a major role in the launch of his own book. If you’re an author or creator thinking about how relationships fit into your work, your audience, and eventually your book marketing, this conversation offers a different way to look at networking. Listen to the full episode to hear how Jason built his community one relationship at a time, and why the work you do years before you need help may matter more than the ask itself. Check out Community Made here: https://a.co/d/04ZhFQYJ — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

Last episode, we talked with Mark Wolynn about the ideas behind It Didn’t Start With You. This time, we’re talking about what happened after he wrote it and how the book eventually sold more than 3 million copies. Mark takes us back to the beginning, from spending nine years developing the material and nearly self-publishing the book to landing an agent and a traditional publishing deal. But when the book launched in 2016, it didn’t immediately take off. We talk about what helped it build momentum over the years, including podcast interviews, influencers sharing the book with their audiences, TikTok and word of mouth, and the personal things Mark did along the way, like answering readers one-on-one and walking into bookstores to sign copies. We also get into why he believes deeply knowing your subject and writing from lived experience played such an important role in the book’s longevity. If you’re building something you believe in but the results aren’t happening as quickly as you hoped, Mark’s journey offers an interesting look at what can happen when you stay close to your work, your readers, and the reason you wrote the book in the first place. Listen to the full conversation to hear how It Didn’t Start With You grew from a slow launch into a book that continues to find new readers years later. Learn more about Mark and his work at markwolynn.com. You can also check out his book and workbook here: https://a.co/d/0aoZXZU6 — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

Our very special guest today is a leading expert in the field of inherited family trauma, the director of The Family Constellation Institute, and the creator of The Core Language Approach. He has taught at institutions including the University of Pittsburgh, the Western Psychiatric Institute, The Omega Institute, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. I’m joined by Mark Wolynn, author of the international bestseller It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle, which has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 41 languages. The book has received recognition well beyond its sales. It Didn’t Start With You won the 2016 Nautilus Book Award in Psychology and was a finalist for the 2016 Books for a Better Life Award. More recently, it was named one of The New York Times’ 5 Books on Healing from Trauma in 2025 and one of Oprah Daily’s 10 Best Trauma Books of 2023. In our conversation, Mark takes us back to his early thirties, when he began losing his vision and eventually traveled the world looking for answers. That journey brought him back to his own family and became the foundation for much of his work. We talk about the science behind inherited and generational trauma, how experiences within a family can continue to affect later generations, and the role our earliest attachment experiences can play in the way we experience safety, fear, and relationships. Mark also walks us through his Core Language Approach and how certain fears, reactions, and patterns can give us clues about where to look within our family history. Before we talk with Mark about how It Didn’t Start With You reached millions of readers, we wanted to understand the story, research, and experiences behind the book itself. Listen to my conversation with Mark Wolynn to hear how his own search for answers eventually became a book that continues to reach readers around the world. Learn more about Mark and his work at markwolynn.com. You can also check out his book and workbook here: https://a.co/d/0aoZXZU6 — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

This final episode of our four-part series from Ed Rush’s Top Gun Author event in Dallas brings everything together. Instead of focusing on another guest interview, I walk through the framework we use at Shelf Life to turn book marketing ideas into an actual plan. The goal is simple: know what you’re going to do before launch, during launch week, and long after the initial excitement wears off. We break down how to take inventory of the marketing assets you already have, set a specific goal for how many readers you want to reach, choose the right marketing tools, and assign realistic targets to each one. From there, I show how to build a 24-week marketing roadmap by working backward from launch week and forward into the months that follow. We also get practical about building your first 100 email subscribers, creating content people actually want to read, using Amazon ads and influencers strategically, and why book marketing should start much earlier than launch day. If book marketing has ever felt like a pile of disconnected tactics, this episode is about turning those pieces into a plan you can actually follow. Listen to the final part of the series and start building a book marketing blueprint around your goals, your resources, and the readers you want to reach. — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

Welcome to Part 3 of this special four-part series of Before the Bestseller, recorded live at Ed Rush’s Top Gun Author Live Event 2026. In this session, I’m sharing the real stories behind books that found their audience, from Atomic Habits and Profit First to Rich Dad Poor Dad, Go for No! and How to Win Friends and Influence People. The strategies are different, but they all show how creative book marketing can create opportunities you might never see coming. Instead of giving you another list of marketing tactics, I break down the stories behind them. We get into finding gatekeepers who already have access to your readers, tapping into existing communities, using social listening to build genuine relationships, creating corporate bulk-buy opportunities, finding a small but passionate niche, and getting your first copies into the right hands. I also share how my first book went from an Amazon bestseller that quickly lost momentum to reaching roughly 40,000 students through university partnerships, and what that experience taught me about getting scrappy when you don't have a big marketing budget. If you're trying to figure out how to get your book beyond the launch and into the hands of people who might actually read it, share it, and open doors for it, this episode will give you plenty of ideas to work with. Tune in and start thinking differently about the relationships, audiences, and opportunities already around you. — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

Welcome to Part 2 of this special four-part series recorded live at Ed Rush's Top Gun Author Live Event in Dallas. In this episode, I want to talk about something that doesn't get enough attention: how to stop wasting your time and money on book marketing. After working with hundreds of authors, I've seen the same mistakes happen over and over again. The good news is they're avoidable once you know what to look for. We dive into why so many books lose momentum after launch, how simple marketing systems can keep your book moving long after release day, and why batching your content can save you hours every week. I also share why building even a small team can make a huge difference, how to avoid costly marketing and PR mistakes, and why studying authors who are just a few steps ahead of you is often more valuable than chasing the biggest names. Finally, I explain the simple "Three Rule" I use to decide whether a marketing activity is actually worth my time. If you want to build a book marketing strategy that's sustainable instead of stressful, tune in and let's talk about how to make every hour and every dollar count. — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

In this first episode of a special four-part series recorded live at Ed Rush's first-ever Top Gun Author Live event, I take a step back from the usual interviews to share the foundations of book marketing. Before we talk about ads, social media, or launch strategies, we need to understand what actually makes a book succeed and why so many authors end up busy without making real progress. Through real stories from bestselling authors, including Joseph Nguyen's journey from complete unknown to New York Times bestselling author, we uncover what really drives long-term book success. Instead of chasing the latest marketing tactic, this conversation focuses on the ideas that shape every successful campaign and why getting these foundations right can change everything that comes next. Tune in to discover why the strongest book marketing strategies begin long before launch day, and why getting the fundamentals right can make every marketing decision that follows more effective. If you're serious about getting your book into the hands of more readers, this is where your marketing journey begins. Learn more and grab a copy of Alex’s book here. It's packed with practical lessons, real case studies, and proven book marketing strategies you can start applying to your own book today. — Subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps more people discover the show, the author and their books.  — Subscribe to our popular weekly 3-2-1 newsletter and get 3 book marketing secrets, 2 useful links, and 1 book recommendation delivered straight to your inbox every week. Sign up here:https://getshelflife.com/category/newsletter/ Head to our new website for more content and updates.: www.getshelflife.com If you're interested in connecting further or have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]