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After finishing school, Dale attended workshops and read numerous books on personal growth including communication, beliefs and money management. He became passionate about packaging and passing on what he had learned to other young people in seminars and workshops.
He co-founded 'Tomorrows Youth International', which today runs educational and self-development programs for teenagers in four countries.
Despite being dyslexic, Dale published his first book for young people titled 'The World at Your Feet' when he was barely out of his teens and since then he has walked the talk and created a publishing phenomenon with his ‘Secrets Exposed’ series.
Although inspiring and motivating teenagers to achieve what is possible for them was Dale’s vision, he soon discovered it was not a market where there were big dollars to be made. If he was to achieve his goals and dreams, he had to come up with something that had more money making potential.
Dale took motivational and goal setting guru Brian Tracy’s advice on how to become rich - “Find an existing idea and improve on it 10 to 15%”.
The idea of content compilation for books had been around for some time, however Dale decided this was the way to go and the “Secrets Exposed” series was born.
Dale realised that many people with something important to say want to write a book but simply find the task too daunting. However, if they do write a book, the project often falls down when it comes to mastering publicity and distribution. From his experience with his first book, Dale knew that the writing is only the beginning. It’s the marketing and distribution that are the real challenge. In fact distribution is 90% of what you need to focus on.
Dale advises people to have a research and marketing strategy in place from the outset, even before their book or other product or service is a reality.
Convinced the series would take off, Dale didn’t wait for the first book 'Secrets of Male Entrepreneurs Exposed' to be a success before he started on the second book. He planned his marketing strategy and compiled the first five books in the series concurrently and released them within a few weeks of each other. This was his insurance against other publishers picking up his bright idea and, with more financial resources than he had, taking his market space before he could get the second book off the ground.
It worked, but an exhausted Dale now realised he couldn’t do it all by himself and started to outsource the editing and other production aspects of the books so he could concentrate on the marketing and distribution.
Dale leveraged financing for some of the later books in the comilation series by actually enrolling the content authors themselves in buying the books before they were even written. He structured the buying plan so that the authors would get a bulk deal on the finished books, and could thus make money from re-selling them. In this sales model there was still enough profit for Dale.
For someone so young, enrolling big names to become part of his 'Secrets Exposed' series was quite a challenge and in his early day lessons he had to sell from a point of respect and humility rather than arrogance. He also made sure he had firm written agreements from those who said they wanted to be part of the book, including a payment plan.
When it comes to diversification, Dale advises us to be wary of trying to tap into too many markets. He explains how finding your market and then creating more products for that market is far more cost effective and successful than finding new markets where you have to create products with a different focus.
Dale believes it was worth doing it all himself in the beginning. He learnt hands-on about publishing, distribution, retail and internet marketing. All this has enabled him to know whether he is getting true value from those he now delegates these tasks to.
Source: Dale Beaumont interviewed by Paul Buckingham
for the Small Business Mentor Club
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