Business Blueprint

How Business Blueprint Helped Create The Rotten Food Cookbook

What is Business Blueprint?

Before I talk about how Business Blueprint helped me write the book, let me briefly let you know what Business Blueprint is. Business Blueprint is a training ground for entrepreneurs. It has quarterly conferences, fortnightly podcasts, a facebook community, and many other resources. I wrote a detailed description of it on my Practical Business site.

Business Blueprint was a critical part of the creation of The Rotten Food Cookbook. Here’s how…

The idea for the book

Business Blueprint was created by Dale Beaumont. Dale owes a large degree of his success to a series of books he wrote. He is a huge fan of writing a book.

Writing books won’t make you rich. You don’t write them to make money from the sales of the book. Instead, they set you up as an expert in the field, and they then open doors. Speaking engagements is a common example, and I know that even before the book had been printed, I had been invited to speak at a university on the topic of food safety.

The idea for the book

Despite the continual encouragement to write a book, I could not think of a book that would reach my target audience. I had other books in mind, but not one that would actually be achieving my business goals.

That is, until they had 3 guest speakers from Step Change Marketing, and specifically Adam. His advice was:

Ask a restaurant owner “do you remotely monitor your fridges, and when they say no, say “you may need this one day when your fridge fails, it is The Rotten Food Cookbook” and in it, you have a page that says “If you never want to use this book then you need a wireless temperature logger”.

It was that throw away line that gave me the title, and from there the ideas just flowed. I took it from a throwaway joke line to a full food safety book, but it all relied on that one magical insight.

That’s the quality of speakers and ideas that Business Blueprint makes available.

The cover

It is a fiverr job. Business Blueprint introduced me to fiverr and odesk. They have allowed me to quickly outsource many of these small jobs to people who do an awesome job.

The printer

Business Blueprint supplied the contact details for New Style Printing. They were half the price of the nearest competitor.

Web site

The web site is a WordPress site and designed based on the information provided by experts in the field. I am using the latest SEO information to ensure my odesk sourced web developers are doing the best job possible.

The Rotten Food Cookbook actually has many web site links in it. A number of them are to my sites. A key secret to online business is that you need to give before you can ask, and we have reference information sites (foodtemperature.com.au, handhygiene.com.au, foodandsafety.com.au to name but a few). Once again, the training Business Blueprint provided was critical in their design.

Writing the book was also a great culmination of all of these sites into one focused goal. It was great to realise that all of this work was coming together.

Facebook

Business Blueprint provided intensive Facebook advertising training and I am about to embark on a big campaign that will reach thousands for a couple hundred dollars.

Media coverage

Over the next month I will be approaching media outlets. Before Business Blueprint the idea of doing this seemed beyond my capabilities. The reality is that we have already had newspaper and radio coverage for other work that we have done, and this one has even more potential.

Find the pain

A recurring message is about identifying your customer’s pain point and the providing a solution. The entire book is about highlighting the pain (food poisoning) and then talking about how to address it. The big issue with food safety training is that people focus on the solution without identifying the pain. The entire book turned food safety around and is effective because it focuses on the pain.

Support

When a dozen people walked up to me and said “that was a great idea, you should do it” I knew it is a winner. The support since then was awesome with continual encouragement. When I released the book the group was 100% behind me. The encouragement from the members is unbeatable.

Time management

Each recipe was achieved in a Pomodoro or two.

And more…

There is probably more, but that’s enough for now.

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