Episode Summary
Kevin Tumlinson makes his triumphant return to Self Publishing Insiders! Kevin returns to talk to Jim about Author Anchor and his work helping authors get the most out of virtual author assistants.
Episode Notes
Kevin Tumlinson makes his triumphant return to Self Publishing Insiders! Kevin returns to talk to Jim about Author Anchor and his work helping authors get the most out of virtual author assistants.
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Transcript
Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:01]:
You just tuned into the hippest way to start and grow your indie author career. Learn the ins, the outs, and all the all arounds of self publishing with the team from d two d and their industry influencing guests. You’re listening to Self Publishing Insiders with Draft2Digital.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:27]:
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Self Publishing Insiders. I am Jim Azevedo. I lead corporate communications and marketing here at Draft2Digital. And today, I am pleased to welcome back to the show a very familiar face to many of you who have been with us for, I don’t know, let’s say over a year or more. I’m sure Kevin Tumlinson is back in the house, everybody.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:52]:
Getting the band back together.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:54]:
You’re getting the band back together. So most of you watching, I assume, kinda know who Kevin is already. But for those of you who may not know Kevin, let me just quickly read through his his bio. So J. Kevin Tumbleton is an author. He’s a podcaster. He’s a public speaker who’s helped thousands of writers to start, build, and grow their author careers. He is now the chief brand officer of Author Anchor, a company built to connect authors with highly trained and affordable virtual assistants.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:29]:
So this is kind of a hot topic, and it’s one that I don’t think we’ve addressed here on Self Publishing Insiders virtual assistants. Yeah. But before we even go there, Kevin, you know, that’s kind of a short bio, man. Like
Kevin Tumlinson [00:01:42]:
I I you don’t want you never wanna bore people. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:01:45]:
But we’re not gonna bore people today.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:01:46]:
The long bio takes a while. You know? What I do takes paragraphs.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:52]:
Okay. Well, let’s let’s cut let’s let’s cut down those paragraphs to a couple of of bullet points because, you know, prior to all this new c suite stuff that you’re doing Yeah. You were the marketing director at Draft2Digital for those people who who may not know, people who may be new to this show, are new to self publishing, are new to Draft2Digital. So what I’m interested in what led you to to author anchor, but first, give us a little bit of that backstory to kinda catch people up a little bit.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:02:23]:
What do with the, with my time at at d two d, or what’s happened since or both? What are you looking for?
Jim Azevedo [00:02:30]:
A little bit of both. Cliff Notes version.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:02:32]:
Yeah. You know? Yeah. I was with Draft Digital seven years. You know, pretty early, not the earliest days of DTD. It’s a company that, I loved, still love, and still, in a lot of ways, still represent out there because people a lot some people don’t even realize I’ve left Draft2Digital. So I get a lot of calls, emails from people. People come up to me at conferences asking questions, and I do my very best to, to to represent and make you guys look good.
Jim Azevedo [00:03:02]:
We appreciate that.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:03:03]:
Yeah. Well, Draft2Digital will always hold a very special place in my heart because, you know, it was, early the early days of me kinda connecting with the author community. Got all kind of swizzled in with that, and the the WordSlinger podcast and all that kinda helped me, you know, connect with this community, and I I get this I got to serve in that way. Since then, I’ve done several several things. I’m mostly been full time writing again. And and I’m doing a I’ve got a book deal, together with, author, JD Barker. It’s a New York Times bestseller. We’re we’re authoring something that just, I’m putting the finishing touches on the on the, the edits right now.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:03:48]:
If I weren’t doing this show, that’s what I’d be doing right now. And then, you know, I started doing a lot of consulting work with with folks in the industry. I did some stuff with plotter. I did some stuff with Book Brush. The Book Brush guys started this this company, Author Anchor. K. Okay. And I was kinda helping them with figuring out what the branding would look like and what things you know, a little bit of that.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:04:10]:
I wasn’t really doing much of that yet, but, you know, they I I kinda asked, like, you know, if I’d be interested in being the public face of author anchor, and they cut a good deal. And,
Jim Azevedo [00:04:23]:
So was author anchor was it already I’m sorry to interrupt you, but was author anchor already a service that they’re offering prior to you joining, Or is
Kevin Tumlinson [00:04:30]:
it telling you how to apply? Yeah. Let’s let’s let’s say it was kind of in a beta, beta mode, because they were supplying some, some VAs. And by the way, at least three times in this interview, I’m gonna say AIs instead of VAs. I’m just putting that out. That would be
Jim Azevedo [00:04:46]:
I’ll call Draft2Digital Smashwords, and we’ll just confuse everybody.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:04:50]:
Just confuse everybody. Yeah. So they they they were already supplying, VAs to some folks, in the industry. And the the origin story of this is they were using VAs from The Philippines to build this business, to build the book Book Brush business.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:07]:
Okay. That’s interesting.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:05:09]:
And what they have was a lot of authors would come around. You know, they you know, Book Brush offers a lot of marketing services. And so they have a lot of authors come around asking for some, like, done for you marketing. And the the reality of this is, there’s no there’s just no good business model for done for you marketing in in this business in particular. And, you know, because it’s nothing that’s affordable for both the author and profitable for the the, the company. You know? There’s just no real good model unless you are, helping the author connect with a a a dedicated resource. And, so, you know, if you’re gonna do that, you want that resource to be highly trained. You want them to be knowledgeable about all things, related to your your industry and your business.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:05:56]:
So, you know, we had all these VAs that were already trained in this stuff, especially one of our favorite tools, which is Book Brush, but trained in doing things like using Draft2Digital, using Vellum. So we started opening that up and allowing authors to to hire these VAs. We worked out some kinks, and we launched like, I came on board to start representing them in February, and there was, like, official launch in March. And, and then we’ve been rocking and rolling since then. So help That’s supply the needs of the author community.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:34]:
That’s really exciting. At there are some newer authors who are who watch this show. So I don’t wanna assume that they know what a virtual assistant is. Yeah. Can you can you talk about what it what a virtual assistant is, what they do, because I know that’s kind of a wide range. Then maybe if you can touch upon, like, what level of authors should start considering virtual assistants?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:06:58]:
Yeah. So a virtual assistant, assistant, I’m glad you asked that because I actually have had a couple of people assume that what I’m talking about is, like, a piece of software, like AI or something. But these are real living, breathing human beings. We source our, VAs from The Philippines, and they are, highly trained individuals. Like, you know, you can hire a VA from, you know, a service like Fiverr or something, but they’re not typically gonna be versed in what you do. You know? So you might there might be a lot more training involved. There’s always gonna be a certain level of training involved, but these are VA these are assistants who can who will know at least, some of the rudiments of your business, maybe not your business specifically, but the industry you’re in. And they can help you deal with some of the things that are pain points for a lot of authors.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:07:51]:
One of the biggest has been marketing. So they can help you with getting out there and marketing your work, getting it in front of people. They can help manage your newsletter if you want. They can help manage social media. You know, all these things that, you know, basically, we authors complain all the time that all we wanna do is just write. And so a VA is someone who’s there to help you get to the point where that’s what you do. Not everybody wants to hand off everything. You know? Some people love doing social media.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:08:23]:
Some people love doing TikTok and things like that. I can’t stand any of that. So I wanna hand that stuff off. But that’s that’s the key. Right? Is the the whole point of bringing on a resource to help you is, to hand off the stuff you hate. I actually I it’s kind of a joke, but it’s true. I tell people when they do, there’s a discovery call you do with us to help you, get involved and get get and you could set that up. We have a link that you’ll see later.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:08:49]:
But, you I tell people to go into that call with two lists. And list number one is, here’s everything that I have to do as part of my business that I hate and never wanna do again. That’s list number one. And list number two is, here’s a whole bunch of stuff that I’m told I need to be able to do, I wish I could do, I I wish I was more knowledgeable in, but I don’t have the time to do it because I’m too busy just writing the books. So you go in with both those lists, and we have people who will help you find a virtual assistant who, if they don’t already have those skill sets, we’re gonna get you as close as possible and make it easier for them to, to pick those skills up. Because we do we have mandatory training every every month. They they train on something new every month. You know? So one month might be Kickstarter.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:09:38]:
One month might be, Draft2Digital. One month might be Shopify. Every month, we we we do that, and we have some sort of continue on ongoing stuff to make sure
Jim Azevedo [00:09:48]:
That’s interesting. Yeah. So there’s so the VA the the VAs that you have, they’re not, like, they’re not focused on one particular area. Like, there’s not one VA who just does social media. There’s not one VA who just focuses on on Kickstarters. Are they they’re all required to have these skills across the board?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:10:05]:
Well, then not everyone’s going to. Right? And the the fact is strong points. Yeah. They’re gonna have their strengths. Some you know, we’ve got some VAs who are excellent with Kickstarter, for example. And some who do who couldn’t, you know, run a Kickstarter if you if it if that’s the only thing that’s gonna save their life. Right? But we we try to get them at least versant in those things. So here’s the key, though.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:10:26]:
Like, you’re not gonna need every one of these skills all the time, especially from one person. There’s gonna be principal things that you you want to be able to hand off. Right? That will make your your life and business easier. So, you know, social media is one we hear a lot. Like, you know, I don’t wanna manage social media. I don’t wanna create videos. You can get a VA who’s skilled at, video editing, for example, skilled at producing, social media posts, scheduling those. You can have them, do the posting, scheduling, and all that, the creation and all that.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:11:01]:
You could also have them interact on your behalf if you want, if you if you were trying to up your engagement, but you don’t like doing that. So, yeah, it so the the key, though, is we keep this thing so inexpensive that, you know and that’s a relative thing. But let’s just say it’s inexpensive enough that for a lot of authors, if you hired a a VA as your sort of general VA to take care of some things on a regular basis, and then you have a special need, like, I wanna run a Kickstarter next month, and so I need somebody who understands how to, you know, build and and promote and and operate a successful Kickstarter. You can request someone as an additional resource. There’s no contracts or anything. So you’re only on the hook for the, you know, the time that you’re using them. And we we have a there’s a monthly platform fee that we charge. It’s, like, $99, which you can get the first month $50 off with a special promo link that we’ll share.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:12:01]:
But, it’s, so that’s that’s the base fee. And then what we did was set it up so that you’re paying the VAs themselves directly their rate, and it’s, it’s $5 an hour. That’s the minimum. You can pay more if you want. And, and there’s reasons why you might want to. And then it’s a minimum ten hours a week. So your your total overhead is is effectively, you know, $300 a month, $2.99 a month. And, that can that can go up if you have if you need them for more hours.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:12:35]:
But, you know, there’s reasons. Sometimes you might want to pay more or pay bonuses or pay things like that. But for the most part, that’s not gonna be for everybody. I know. Like, not every author can afford $300 a month.
Jim Azevedo [00:12:47]:
So we’re talking about all others who are established. They’ve got some push to their to their name Yeah. For committing out in the world.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:12:53]:
And you here’s the rule of thumb, man. You should never bring someone on as an employee or contractor and and then try to justify the expense. That should never be the way you operate. It should always be, if I bring someone on, it will help me increase my bottom line.
Jim Azevedo [00:13:11]:
I just wanna bring up this quick question from from Leila. He says at what point in your off your career should you start considering a VA?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:13:18]:
I’d say You’re kind of
Jim Azevedo [00:13:19]:
getting that now.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:13:20]:
As soon as you as as soon as you reach a point where you say, I’m I am currently limited on how much money I can make as an author because I all my time is being spent on these other tasks, that would be a good time to start thinking about it. You know? And for the a lot of people will pay much more than $300 a month for marketing and other, marketing related things. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:13:42]:
But they’re pulling in
Kevin Tumlinson [00:13:44]:
Right. So you can you can actually have a resource who works directly with you, gets to know you specifically, your voice, your business. You can and you work with them, train them, get them to a point where you can trust them with all this, and they can go off and and do that stuff on your behalf. That might be worth the $300. And since there’s no contract, if it turns out it’s not worth the $300, the next month, you just don’t do it.
Jim Azevedo [00:14:10]:
Okay. Okay. So, I’m curious. Why The Philippines? And do you have is everybody sourced from The Philippines? Do you have any workers who are domestic?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:14:21]:
Why The Philippines? So the the the interesting thing about The Philippines, they actually that that whole culture is, is kind of there’s a there’s a sort of remote work culture there. Right? So, like, my my VA, one of my VAs, she, was getting her master’s degree, things like that. You know? The way it all works is that you, they are they’re working kind of in off hours. They cannot work your schedule. We chose The Philippines because, one, the the exchange rate between US dollar and the Filipino, peso is, like, 50 to one. And so they’re you know, they get a they get a pretty good you know, the $5 that you’re spending per hour is worth much more for them. And so, you know, they can stretch that further. My VA was get you know, pay putting her way through, grad school, paying for an apartment.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:15:16]:
I think she, was the first person in her family to own a car, you know, things like that. So these are these are what seems like small money to us, ends up being big money for them. But it’s also just there’s there’s a a kind of support network for that for that as a, as a industry there. You know? Because there’s they’re they’re almost indoctrinated into that kind of work. It’s certainly, it’s it’s work they can do that doesn’t put them at risk, doesn’t put them in some dangerous scenario. Yeah. You know? And it’s actually quite comfortable. So, we don’t source any, VAs from anywhere else.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:15:55]:
We we we just decided to focus exclusively on that region. There’s certainly VAs available all over the place, but this is the experience we have. I don’t know if they are open to that in the future or not, but I you know, I saw, Adriel Wiggins is in the chat. Hello, Adriel. I think I got your name right that time. So maybe.
Jim Azevedo [00:16:18]:
I get it.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:16:19]:
She’ll correct me because, we’ve had this discussion. But if I got it wrong, I apologize. But, she’s a VA. She’s a pro. She’s, you know, definitely someone you should hire if you can. Her rates are are gonna be higher than what we’re charging. But, see, that’s a specialized relationship there, and I don’t think she’s actually taking on clients right now. I think she’s got a full docket.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:16:42]:
But, we’ve been talking and and, still wrong. Adriel. See, I told you, I have a I have a family member. Okay. Anyway, long story. Sorry, Adriel. Anyway, she so we’re, she’s she’s got her her business down. She she could potentially use some of our VAs to kinda help take the workload off her shoulders as well.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:17:06]:
Okay. So there’s a lot of it’s a lot of flexibility. But, yeah, we it’s it’s just as far as making this affordable for the authors, you know, the the VAs in The Philippines tend to be the best bang for the buck, really. They usually have the highest amount of resources and training for the dollar.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:27]:
I wanted to ask you too, Kevin. It sounds like you kind of already touched on this because of, their schedules are so flexible. So the time zones not become an issue with the VAs that you choose to work with?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:17:40]:
Yeah. No. Not not at all. Like, they’ll work your hours if you want them to. I always felt bad about that, and, I so I actually, gave permission. Because for me, I I offset all the time anyway. Because I, you know, I set up a Slack channel. She would come into Slack, leave me a message, and I’d respond.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:18:01]:
We had a a recurring call, you know, once a week so that we could do a little bit of FaceTime together. And, you know, I’ve kinda I’ve kinda tapered that off, but it is nice to kinda touch base like that every now and then, especially when someone’s gonna be representing you out there in the wild. Yeah. Because she sends a lot of emails on my behalf. She you know, I I have her booking me for, podcasts and, you know, YouTube shows and things like that. So, you know, I I wanna I want her to know me as much as I know her. Right? I want her to be able to kinda not speak in my voice, but represent my brand in a way. So it’s good to have some FaceTime like that.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:18:44]:
But, yeah, no. You don’t you don’t have to worry about it, really. I mean, they’ll they’ll work any hours you need them to usually because this is kinda this is their full time gig. I just always feel bad. I I’m like, no, man. You deserve a life outside of work and school. Go Yeah. Go sleep.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:04]:
So I had the privilege to visit The Philippines back in 2012, and I stayed, I think it was, about three and a half weeks, almost four weeks. Amazing country. Like, just absolutely stunningly beautiful. But beyond that, you know, if anybody out there is thinking, well, I want my VA to be closer to me. The Filipino culture, I believe it’s if I read this correctly, the literacy rate there is, like, over 95%. Like, it’s I think it’s over 99%. Yeah. I don’t I don’t know how accurate it is, but it’s super, super high.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:19:36]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:37]:
And everybody speaks English. Well, at least Right. It seems like it seemed to me that everybody spoke English. And I remember looking it up. I thought, like, England I think English is one of the two official languages. There’s Tagalog. I probably pronounced that wrong In English
Kevin Tumlinson [00:19:52]:
That’s right. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:53]:
And there’s and there at the time, 2012, there are bookstores
Kevin Tumlinson [00:19:56]:
everywhere, like, everywhere. Right.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:59]:
Yeah. So it’s a very
Kevin Tumlinson [00:20:01]:
We have, there’s certain criteria. Yeah. They they they have to be proficient both written and spoken English. And, you know, so far, I haven’t met a I haven’t met a VA from the service that isn’t. And, you know, there’s other certain you know, they they gotta be, you know, be able to use the software and be have access to the Internet. And there’s there’s some basic rules there, you know, but we do some vetting. And, you know, there are times
Jim Azevedo [00:20:28]:
do that vetting? How do you do that? Can we talk about that a little bit?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:20:30]:
Yeah. It’s like a very It’s it’s kinda like an ongoing interview process. You know? Yeah. With check ins, they have, you know, pretty much weekly, you know, check ins. And, you know, we get, you know, as we get reports from the authors themselves, you know, they’ll let us know if there’s a bad experience, a good experience, whatever. And so we kinda look into that. We solve the problem if we can. If we can’t, you know, sometimes things don’t work out.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:20:57]:
It’s like any other, business. You know? Sometimes you hire and the the the person you hire didn’t quite work out, and so we do our best to, I guess, rehabilitate in a way. But sometimes it just doesn’t work out, and we part ways. It’s the way it goes. But that’s Well, that’s part of our commitment. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s part of our commitment to the authors on this, though, is that what we’re what we’re gonna do is make sure that you are working with someone who is, you know, highly qualified, as much as as possible with that.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:21:28]:
So
Jim Azevedo [00:21:28]:
You know, you talked a little bit about the training earlier in the conversation, Kevin. Yeah. Can we go back to that a little bit more? I just I’m just I’m so curious because there’s it seems like there’s just so much to know. And authors like, oh, I don’t wanna do social media.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:21:42]:
Uh-huh.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:42]:
Or, yeah, I don’t I I don’t know how to work with certain platforms, and there’s just so much more to it. And on on your website, you’ve got gosh. Let me see. +1, 23456789. Like, nine different, I don’t know, tasks, I guess Yeah. That they can help you with. Everything from book production and management to website and blog upkeep upkeep upkeep. Speak much, Jim.
Jim Azevedo [00:22:09]:
Administrative tasks Yeah. And and so on. So I’m I’m super curious. Like, that’s a lot to know. Yeah. So
Kevin Tumlinson [00:22:20]:
Believe it or not, a lot of them come in our with those skills already. So there’s not as much as as an intensive training as you might think, with with some of the folks who come in. And in fact, if they come in with existing skills, like working with Shopify or Amazon Marketplace or something, that’s even better for us. You know? Like, we that means there’s a new skill we can offer, and and there’s a little bit of cooperative training that’s gonna happen there. You know? We Sure. We’re gonna also be looking for, like, what authors are requesting. So if an author comes in saying, hey. I need someone who can do x, y, or z, then we’re gonna go try to find people who either have that skill or who can train, the VAs in that skill.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:23:03]:
We do a lot of these, like, partnerships, kinda kinda almost like a it’s like a sponsorship in a way, but, like, you know, we did a training, say, with, like, book funnel, training on how to use book funnel. We have people who are knowledgeable about that to show them, walk them through that. But, like, we do these, cooperate cooperative relationships with, different retailers and brand, vendors and things. Like, we could do one with Draft2Digital, for example. Like, we might have someone from the team, kinda work with, you know, our VAs, maybe do a presentation. You go walk them through and show them how to how to, you know, upload a book and use the Okay. Various tools. So there’s things like that that happen.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:23:46]:
And I’m I’m not directly involved in the training, so I’m kind of talking out of my head a little. But, I mean, I, you know, I I know some of the matrix of what we’re doing. Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:23:56]:
Yeah. Okay. Before we get to the next question, I just well, you have some fans in the comment section, so I wanna make sure I I wanna make sure that we acknowledge people kinda giving you little shout outs and saying hello. And DL White says it’s good seeing Kevin on a DVD page again.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:24:12]:
It’s good to be back. It feels natural. Feels feels fits like a glove here. It’s like I almost started this whole call.
Jim Azevedo [00:24:19]:
Is it like It
Kevin Tumlinson [00:24:20]:
doesn’t so nostalgic. I was I almost I almost started this call by, just pretending like I was the one doing the interview. That was kinda funny.
Jim Azevedo [00:24:29]:
Yeah. But then we’re gonna confuse people, and we’re already so good at confusing people that I wanna Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:24:34]:
You guys don’t need that help from me. No.
Jim Azevedo [00:24:38]:
So alright. I wanna ask you a question about, I mentioned to you earlier be while we were still offline. So some of our viewers out there may have come across Jane Friedman’s blog
Kevin Tumlinson [00:24:50]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:24:50]:
From earlier this week. Let’s see. She on her blog, there was a guest post from the author coach, Ann Carly, about how self publishing assistance is be is becoming threatening or is becoming threatened because it’s just getting more and more difficult,
Kevin Tumlinson [00:25:06]:
in
Jim Azevedo [00:25:06]:
terms of, like, you know, identity, and verifying identity on platforms like KDP and and IngramSpark. So I just wanted to ask you if if that’s become an issue for author anchor. Is that, like, a roadblock for you guys? Do you have any workarounds for that? Is that something that authors should be concerned about?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:25:26]:
Yeah. It’s gonna get it it it is tricky when the, when the various and I’ve had some conversations. Like, I had a conversation with, the folks from Ingram, for example. Like, they they and they’ve got something that they’ve worked on that isn’t yet live that that would be a sort of, you know, assistant login kind of thing.
Jim Azevedo [00:25:44]:
Ingram does?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:25:45]:
Yeah. They they it’s not it’s not active. It’s not live, but I was talking to them. Like, they actually have it. They just haven’t implemented it.
Jim Azevedo [00:25:51]:
Okay. Like, to verify representatives. I mean Yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:25:53]:
Yeah. Like, you know, and Draft2Digital has something kind of similar where you can actually, engage that that mode and allow an assistant to do everything but access your financials, for example. Yeah. So some companies want
Jim Azevedo [00:26:06]:
we call it.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:26:07]:
Account sharing. So, you know, some businesses already have something like that built in. Some are more paranoid. You know, KDP is gonna be a challenge. There are ways to kinda work around this, and one of those I found was, so, like, I created a unique email address, through, like, Google. And, you know, and I have a Google voice number. And so, through tools like, LastPass and other, like, password sharing tools and account sharing tools, you can actually set up sort of a limited remote access kind of thing. Like, they’d get full access, but, you know, you are gonna have to build some trust with these people eventually.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:26:49]:
You know? So, and I have some guidelines on that too we can talk about. But, you know, for example, KDP, like, I I could, set it up so that the access email address is this, you know, this one that I share with with my VA. And, if there’s ever a moment where I need to shut that off, it’s as simple as going into LastPass and removing them. And I think in Gmail, actually, you can you can actually share accounts with people directly. But, you know, if I ever need to shut it off, I just shut it off. They don’t have access to the password for that account. So, effectively, once I do that, they’re no longer they no longer have that access. But it’s so if you’re both using the same, email address and phone number to, to access something like KDP, there’s really no problem.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:27:39]:
It’s just when it’s you know, the way they’re kinda doing this is is, and they may limit access to something like Google Voice. I don’t know. There’s rumors of that kind of thing happening. So far, I haven’t experienced any problems with that, but I also haven’t needed that as much. You know, because one of the uploading to the various platforms hasn’t been one of my tasks. I’d say though, like, you know, Draft2Digital kinda makes it super easy for you to do that in including uploading to, Kindle or Amazon. Mhmm. So, you know, that might be a route to to choose, if you’re gonna work with the VA for uploading.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:28:19]:
If you’re try if you’re trying to take advantage of KDP, that’s a different story, but, you know, there are there are some workarounds. It’s it’s hard for me to say, you should try this, this, and this because guaranteed, you know, six weeks from now, all those things won’t work anymore. But there’s always there’s always some way. You know?
Jim Azevedo [00:28:37]:
There’s always a way. Yeah. It just it might involve an extra hoop or two.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:28:41]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:42]:
But I wanted to bring it up because our goal, it seemed very timely for our conversation because I think it I posted, like, two days ago. Yeah. And I thought, well, we should probably talk about this, especially since the VAs that you’re sourcing are, you know, from outside The US, and is that gonna create an extra hurdle? Yeah. How do we go about figuring this out? Because I think VAs are important Right. For author efficiencies.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:29:04]:
Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I I I so I use a tool for social media, for example, that is, very similar to Hootsuite, but it’s a it’s, you know, it’s a direct login kinda app. I was able to create a a separate account for my VA and share the account without sharing any of the login credentials. So, if I ever need to move on, there’s no problem. Most tools are like that in some way. If you use something like LastPass and there’s others, none of them are coming into my head, but there’s all kinds of, password management tools. I was actually able to share through LastPass, credit card information. So, and I gave access to, like, my accounts and things on, like, the my preferred airline and my hotel my preferred hotel and things like that.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:29:55]:
And so my VA is act was actually able to book me flight and hotel and use my credit card to pay for it, without ever having direct access to any of that information. So there are tools out there that will that will make that, happen for you. Just be prepared because you are probably gonna have to whatever it is you use, you’re probably gonna have to change. Because that and it’s not it’s just the way the world works. It’s not
Jim Azevedo [00:30:23]:
In the decade in the decade, that’s been 2025. Yeah. Yeah. Things are just moving very quickly. It like yes. Exactly, Beth. Things are always changing.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:30:35]:
And it
Jim Azevedo [00:30:35]:
seems like that rate of change is just getting faster and faster and faster. And
Kevin Tumlinson [00:30:41]:
if I don’t know.
Jim Azevedo [00:30:42]:
I was gonna say we’re all spun out of our heads trying to keep up. Maybe it’s just me who spun out of my head.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:30:48]:
You’re not alone. You’re not alone, which is why author anchor actually exists, because, you know, that’s the other thing you can do is sort of, outsource your anxiety over keeping up with things in the industry. Like, you know, you can you can have your VA become the person who learns about the latest new thing and helps you, you know, ease into it rather than you constantly chasing this stuff. That’s kind of a that’s a big draw. It’s a big draw for me. Like, my you know, I talked about, you know, we just wanna write. I the just write idea. You kinda get told that you can’t do that, you know, because you gotta treat it like a business.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:31:27]:
Well, you know, if I’m treating it like a business and I’m supposed to be the CEO of of Kevin Inc or whatever, you know, any other business, I would have people take I would I would delegate. Right? I would take tasks that I don’t that are not efficient for me to do, not cost effective for me to do, and I’d find some way to to hand that off. The other side is, by the way, because they’re because AI is always a question. And it’s really funny because I’ve had a I’ve had occasionally, I’ll talk to people about this whole thing. You know? They’re like, well, what’s to stop them from just going and using AI to do it? I’m like, you want them to go use AI to do it.
Jim Azevedo [00:32:08]:
Yeah. Use the tools.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:32:09]:
Right. Use those tools. Because here’s what’s happening. You’re paying them by the hour. Right? If they can find a way to make that hour more efficient, like, they can do 10 times as much in that hour, then why would you not want them to use AI to do that? So
Jim Azevedo [00:32:25]:
That’s a really good point. Yeah. That’s that’s an excellent point. Just gotta bring up some quick comments from our own Alyssa who says, yep. You got it, Be agile, and think on your feet. It’s the indie author way.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:32:36]:
That’s definitely the indie author way. I mean, it is it’s it’s, we kind of invented this, you know, that as an approach to publishing is the the the the ability to flex, the ability to, you know, learn new skills, apply new skills and technologies as instantly as possible. But there just comes a point where bootstrapping bootstrapping is a startup plan. It’s not it’s not a business strategy. You know? And so there there’s definitely gonna come a point. This may not be for you. You know? If you if you’re an author who’s not making enough money to justify, you know, shelling $300 a month out to, have somebody, completely understandable. And and it’s it’s probably a good idea to not, to not try to do that for a while.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:33:24]:
Like I said, you should this should never be a thing where you have to figure out how to justify this expense. This that’s not the way this should work. It should always be, I can, you know, increase my revenue, increase the time I spend with my kids, increase, you know, or decrease my stress levels, you know, if I have some help. If you are at that stage, then this is exactly the sort of thing you need. But otherwise, yeah, you shouldn’t this isn’t something you should do and then try to figure out how you afford it.
Jim Azevedo [00:33:54]:
Right. Oh, and with that, I wanna bring up this, this question from Leila. I think you’ve touched upon this already. Yeah. But, yeah, Leila asked for those of who are just listening, is there a mandatory minimum number of hours your VA works a month with author anchor?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:34:10]:
Yes. So this is for the so we don’t get any cut, by the way, of the VA’s revenue. Their that $5 an hour goes to them. It’s exclusively for them. We only make the $99 platform fee. And we use that money a lot of that money gets used for things like the trainings and buying software licenses and things like that. So the for the VA, it’s it’s $5 an hour minimum with a minimum of ten hours per week. So that’s forty hours a month.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:34:39]:
So that you know, all told you’re spending $2.99, and, and that’s the bottom. So now what I what we have found is that a lot of the authors who start using this service end up, bringing people on for many more hours than that because they’re able to, increase the, you know, the reach and range of their business. You should, by the way this is here’s here’s a warning caveat kinda thing. Okay. When you, start doing this, you should count on the first couple of weeks at least being, kinda long weeks for you because you’re gonna wanna train these they’re they’re coming in trained with certain skill sets, but they’re not trained yet on your business and your preferences and yours you know, the tools that you use. So, you know, there’s gonna be some setup times, some get to know you time. So you need to count on that happening. Because when I first started working with a VA, I’m like, man, this I’m putting in more hours than I was before I had help.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:39]:
Just like oh, yes. Like what you have to do with any company when you’re onboarding a new employee. You wanna see that you hit the ground running.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:35:45]:
Right. But the you need to always think of it in terms of, like, you’re you’re building toward removing yourself from the process. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:52]:
You
Kevin Tumlinson [00:35:52]:
know? And you will get there. And, once you’re there, then it’s just it’s just all gravy from then on. So Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:59]:
Because the more time you spend you spend upfront onboarding, the less time like, you’re not gonna string it out forever and ever and ever.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:36:06]:
I would actually advise, you should take a close look at your existing systems before you you do this and and figure out, like, how do I streamline what I do and automate things as much as possible and then document everything. That’s a little bit of extra work.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:28]:
Yeah. Or as Brett says, outsource your anxiety.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:36:30]:
Outsource your anxiety. Yeah. That’s a yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I am perfectly fine with I don’t want anybody to feel anxious, but I don’t I definitely don’t want me to feel anxious. So Sure.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:42]:
Sometimes I wish I could outsource my sleep. Like, somebody else sleep for me, and then I could do all the, like, the fun things. And
Kevin Tumlinson [00:36:48]:
Not me, man. I want all the sleep I can get. So, you know, and that there is something to be said for having work that’s being done while you sleep. You know? Like, I I can go to bed at night knowing, you know, she’s gonna take care of, you know, pitching me to all these different podcasts, radio shows, TV programs. And so that’s primarily my use for a VA, by the way, was was PR stuff. But as I go, what I realized is, like, that was my first task. You should probably pick a a primary task. That’s the reason you’re bringing someone on.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:37:22]:
But as you go, you start to think, well, why am I doing x? I could just hand that off, see how it goes. And then, you know, that’s how it grows over time. And, eventually, they’re gonna reach a saturation point where, you know, no one human can do all these things in just a mere ten hours a week, so you’re gonna wanna consider going up or even bringing on, an additional person as a resource. So Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:37:49]:
Yeah. As you and I both know, the PR stuff is so time consuming.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:37:53]:
Yeah. That’s true. To
Jim Azevedo [00:37:54]:
really focus on it because not only do you have to find, like, the right podcast for your particular brand or genre, you have to find the right journalist if it’s if you’re looking at, say, traditional media. And then you have to kinda go through their stories or their old podcast and see what kind of lights them up. And then you have to write the pitch. You have to make that pitch pretty perfect Yeah. In order to get noticed. It’s it’s it’s extremely time consuming. So if you could have somebody do that while you’re sleeping, Kevin.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:38:22]:
Yes. Very Good business. Very helpful. Yeah. I I I I give you a full thumbs up. Two even.
Jim Azevedo [00:38:31]:
Alright. So I understand your guys are offering a promo now.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:38:36]:
Yes. So what what we do is we we book you into a what we call what we call a discovery call, and you’ll speak to somebody from author anchor who’s gonna ask you questions. This is where you need those two lists I talked about. Everything I hate, everything I wish I could do. And, you’ll you’re gonna sit down with someone for, you know, less than half an hour and tell them, you know, all your hopes and dreams for this. And And then
Jim Azevedo [00:39:02]:
the the link now.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:39:03]:
Yep. If you go to authoranchor.com/promo, that’s where you can sign set up that call. If you use that URL and you end up doing this, a paid, version of this for for at least the a month, you can actually get, $50 off of that first month. And since there’s no contracts, if you know? So that means instead of $2.99, it’s, like, $2.49 for the first month. Then if and since there’s no contract, if you get to the end of the month and it’s just not working for you, then, you know, it was a $250 investment, and you can kinda go on with your life. I would recommend trying trying it out for at least, you know, at least two months. But go in. Be you know, can kinda be organized about it.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:39:49]:
Have your list.
Jim Azevedo [00:39:50]:
And for authors who can earn that money back through their book sales, not for, like, the first time debut author.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:39:56]:
So Yeah. I wouldn’t do this. Yeah. I wouldn’t recommend this for for somebody if you, you know, if you’re brand new, you don’t you haven’t even published yet. Now if you’ve got the resources, if you got the money to to do that, I mean, you could actually you know if you don’t if you got a little bit of disposable income that you feel comfortable putting towards having someone help you, you know, they don’t have to do just, author related stuff, by the way. Like, they can help you out with all kinds of things. As long anything that can be done remotely, that is
Jim Azevedo [00:40:23]:
So not your laundry and walking the dogs.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:40:25]:
No. They could do your laundry. It’s just the the shipping costs are what kill you. Oh, okay. But, yeah, you could you could have this, you know, just about any remote task done, on your behalf. So yeah. It’s it’s just a matter of, you know, is it something affordable for you? Is it something that’s going to help you, improve your business? You know, either improve, your revenue chances or improve the time, that you wanna spend on other things. And most for most authors, that’s time they wanna spend on their writing.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:40:57]:
So
Jim Azevedo [00:40:58]:
Yeah. I’m listening to all this, and I’m thinking, oh, gosh. What?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:41:02]:
You know, little side story. I remember a few years ago, there was a guy who got busted, because he worked for a software company. He was outsourcing all of his code work to He
Jim Azevedo [00:41:13]:
was outsourcing a ton.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:41:14]:
Not just I know. And I I started thinking about them like, well, they shouldn’t fire that guy. They should promote him. They should make that guy like a director or something in that company because this this is what’s this is what’s coming next for all industries is, you know, we already know out outsourcing is a thing, but specialized outsourcing, special you know, having a pool of people who are specialized for your specific industry, you know, there isn’t anyone else doing this sort of thing specifically for authors unless it’s Adriel and and some other you know, she’s a genius and she’s but she’s not taking on new clients. So you can’t have her. She’ll do your editing. She’ll edit your book.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:55]:
She’s like, wait a second. Wait a second.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:41:57]:
I should no. I I I definitely wanna fuck her because she’s she’s excellent. She’s a wonderful person, but she’s doing editing and that sort of thing. She’s not gonna do your VA role.
Jim Azevedo [00:42:06]:
Is she on the advisory board to author anchor?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:42:08]:
She’s not. She has no affiliation. No direct affiliation.
Jim Azevedo [00:42:11]:
Alright. So Adriel is gonna become an official advisory board member.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:42:15]:
Yeah. So off
Jim Azevedo [00:42:15]:
the anchor, you heard it here first.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:42:17]:
We are done. We I have been talking to her about, you know, some things some things that we can do. But, you know, she you you can’t you can’t always have the the, the top option, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get top level work. You just gotta, you know, you gotta be a little open minded and a little flexible, and then you can you can find people I mean, you know, my the first VA I ever had, did not work out, and I paid a lot more than $5 an hour. I was paying, like, $50 an hour. One of the things I asked her to do is, like, give me a list. This was early days. Early days.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:42:52]:
Give me a list. This is not with author anchor, by the way. Give me a list of every writing related podcast. And she went and searched Google and gave me, like, the first page of search results on Google, and fully three of the podcasts were mine. So
Jim Azevedo [00:43:06]:
Really?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:43:06]:
Yeah. She never vetted, never checked. So that’s the thing. You want people who are trained to to be a you know, to be to have their strengths need to be in your industry, in your in and meet the needs that you have. And, you gotta vet them, and then we’re we take care of the, like, I’m gonna say 80 of the vetting for you so that you get somebody who’s gonna work for your business.
Jim Azevedo [00:43:30]:
Perfect. Yeah. And this is I mean, it’s not necessarily a new idea here either. I mean No. For those of you who are familiar with, like, Tim Ferris and Yeah. The the the four hour work week
Kevin Tumlinson [00:43:41]:
Four hour work week is Yep.
Jim Azevedo [00:43:42]:
Not put Tim Ferris on the map.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:43:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:43:46]:
And he he was kinda introducing the world
Kevin Tumlinson [00:43:49]:
promise you that if he knew about this service, if this service existed at the time he was doing that, he would be an author or a customer. I promise you.
Jim Azevedo [00:43:58]:
Because I’m I’m I’m forgetting the name of the author who wrote The Art of Nonconformity, another book along that same vein that I loved.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:44:06]:
Is that Chris Guillebeau? Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes, another another one we we of the business followed
Jim Azevedo [00:44:16]:
me. At that time, when I read both of those books, I was still in the tech industry just, you know, having my soul sucked out of my body. Right. There’s got there’s gotta be a better way here. As a matter of fact, he’ll kill me if I’d mentioned this, but I had a long conversation with a buddy of mine, really close friend of mine last night who was just completely completely stressed out over the amount of hours that he’s working. He’s a high level guy at a company that everybody here has heard of, two young children who’s is just stressed to the gills. So I’m just trying to underscore here that if you have the means to maybe take away some of your workload so you could focus on the good stuff
Kevin Tumlinson [00:44:58]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:44:59]:
I would encourage you to do that if you’re at an a level now in your career that you can afford it.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:45:04]:
To yeah. $300 is if and I’m not gonna make statements like it’s cheap, it’s paltry, or whatever because, you know, for some people, $300 is the difference between paying rent and not not having a home. Right? So I totally get that. But for a large number of of of people out there, this $300 would actually free you up to to increase what you’re doing. But you need to make sure that that’s the case. I just I cannot stress this enough. Like, do not get into this and say, how am I gonna afford $300 a month? If that’s the the question, then it’s the this is the wrong time. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:45:42]:
Doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea for down the road, but it means you’ve got some work to do. And I think that advice to go and streamline what you’re doing, figure out ways to, you know, streamline, automate, and document everything you do. Those three things, paired together, that’s your preparatory work for, bringing on a VA. If you if you can do that, then it means you can make your business more efficient and and get more out of it. And once you reach that level, that’s when you bring on a virtual assistant.
Jim Azevedo [00:46:18]:
Perfect.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:46:18]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:46:19]:
Perfect place to end this conversation because we’re already at time. It’s good to see you, my friend.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:46:26]:
Yeah, man. I’ve missed all you guys. I need to
Jim Azevedo [00:46:29]:
Well, we we missed you too.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:46:31]:
We we need to do, like, a little virtual meetup with the whole team sometime. So
Jim Azevedo [00:46:35]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think I’ll have the pleasure to see you. Will we see you at author nation and link again this year among other places?
Kevin Tumlinson [00:46:42]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard to scrum. You know, I’m like a I’m like a toe fungus, man. It’s hard to scrape me off those things. I’d show up.
Jim Azevedo [00:46:49]:
I knew I should’ve just ended this dream on the opportunity.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:46:53]:
But you got a free toe fungus out of the, LLL conversation.
Jim Azevedo [00:46:57]:
Okay. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we would like to thank our friend Kevin Tumlinson for carving a little bit of time to to spend with us today. Always a pleasure of my buddy
Kevin Tumlinson [00:47:09]:
Yes, sir.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:10]:
My friend. Let’s see here. I’m kinda trying to get rid of some of this stuff. Okay. If you enjoyed having Kevin, could you guys do us a favor and please share this episode talking about virtual assistants? It’ll help us spread the word far and wide. It’s very helpful. Also, why not bookmark?d2dlive.com. When you do that, you can see what our future episodes are going to be all about.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:39]:
And finally, if you’re new to the show, welcome. If you’re new to self publishing, why not sign up for a free Draft2Digital account today simply by going to draft,thenumbertwo,digital.com? Kevin, you got a second to hang out in that green room and
Kevin Tumlinson [00:47:54]:
I will stick around if you will.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:57]:
Alright. Until next week. Bye bye, everybody. Thanks again for joining us.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:48:07]:
That’s it for this week’s self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital. Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with your will be author friends, and start, build, and grow your own self publishing career right now at draft2digital.com.