Jul 1, 2016 · 29m · top-founders
EP 342: How to Write a Best-Selling Book with Steve Olsher
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The Top, host Nathan Latka interviews entrepreneur and author Steve Olsher to break down the business growth of Liquor.com, the financial realities of New York Times bestselling books, and the necessity of reinvesting digital cash flow into tangible real estate assets.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 49.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 2.9 Guest teaching 2.9 Guest disagreement 1.1 Nathan pushing back 1.8
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 15:10 Steve dismisses traditional publishers as glorified printers
Steve forcefully cuts through industry prestige to argue publishers provide zero marketing value unless an author already commands a massive personal platform.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 19:01 Nathan drills into the negative ROI of publishingNathan totals Steve's $15k advance and $50k royalties against his six-figure marketing spend, directly questioning if the endeavor made any financial sense.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 20:45 Steve reveals his true primary wealth engine is real estateSteve upends Nathan's assumptions about internet businesses by demonstrating that his $50M real estate portfolio is where his actual wealth originates.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 9:45 Nathan analyzes ZergNet live via Alexa rankings and site layoutNathan immediately pulls up ZergNet's global web ranking and deconstructs its native ad interface to verify Steve's traffic acquisition claims.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly Listener Contest and Winner Announcement | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Nathan introduces Steve and pushes him to focus on his single most profitable business model, while Steve rejects the conventional wisdom of putting all eggs in one basket. | |
| The History and Dot-Com Collapse of Liquor.com | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Steve explains the dot-com collapse of Liquor.com and its recovery to a projected $7.5M business, detailing high-CPM brand sponsorships. | |
| Traffic Acquisition with ZergNet and Conversion Optimization | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Steve reveals ZergNet as a primary traffic source driving 400k+ monthly uniques, while Nathan evaluates its Alexa rank and native monetization dynamics in real time. | |
| Book Publishing Realities and the Role of Platform | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Steve demystifies book publishing, asserting that advances are strictly driven by existing digital platform reach rather than manuscript quality. | |
| Financial Breakdown of What Is Your What? | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Nathan calculates the negative ROI on Steve's book launch after discovering he earned $65k against a six-figure marketing spend. | |
| Generating Core Wealth Through Real Estate Development | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Steve surprises Nathan by revealing that the bulk of his income comes from $50M in real estate development, prompting Nathan to admit his interview strategy missed the main story. | |
| Sponsor Segment: FreshBooks Expense Management | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Nathan presents sponsor spots before checking in on Steve's podcast metrics, which Steve candidly admits generate modest download numbers. | |
| The Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | Steve answers the Famous Five rapid-fire questions covering favorite business books, prospecting tools, and running a nightclub at age 20. |
Statements from this episode (16)
Entrepreneurs make a huge mistake focusing on just one business
“The reality is as an entrepreneur that that is just going to be a huge mistake, right? I mean, it is too many people out there that frankly just dive into one thing, build it, sell it, move on to something else. I get that, but I'd rather dive into multiple th…”
Liquor.com boasts 36 million unique visitors and 1.8 million email subscribers
“That's a domain that I've owned since 1998, and we get at this juncture, we get about thirty-six million uniques to the site, and almost a 1,000,008 on the email list.”
Olsher: Liquor.com filed S-1 in 2000, lost domain until 2005
“Well, actually it started as a catalog company in 91. We launched on CompuServe's electronic mall in 93, put together one of the first fully functional e-commerce sites in 95, and then picked up the domain liquor.com in 98, had the S one filed to go public in …”
Outside executives hired for planned 2000 IPO lacked basic competency
“Wall Street wanted to see the gray hairs, the CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, all the lettered saviors, and when everything went to hell in a handbasket, basically, we figured out pretty quickly that the folks we had brought in to take us to the promised land didn't know ja…”
Liquor.com is projected to generate $7.5 million in 2016 revenue
“And so that's kind of modified over the years, but right now we're doing this year we're slated to do about seven and a half.”
Brands must commit to six-figure minimum spends to advertise on Liquor.com
“That's just not going to do you any good, but realistically to work with us you're going to be looking at a six figure spend to make any sort of sense.”
Steve Olsher: Liquor.com advertises for Diageo, Bacardi, and Brown-Forman
“Yeah, no, I mean, we work with all the biggest brands in the world you know, from the Diageo portfolio, if you know Diageo, I mean, you know, and then of course you know, Bacardi and, you know, the, I mean, heck, you name it, the single malt Scotches, the Jack…”
Olsher: Liquor.com gets about 400,000 monthly unique visitors from ZergNet
“Literally, because we have been taking advantage of that for as long as we have now, I mean, we'll get about 400,000 monthly uniques to the site just from ZergNet alone.”
Liquor.com grew email conversion rates from under 0.5% to nearly 6%
“Our conversion rates used to be just absolute shit. I mean, we were looking at like less than half of one percent and since we've been working with some of you know, some pretty interesting characters out there, They're to just really just know their stuff. I …”
Publishing advances rely entirely on an author's existing platform over agents
“Agent is, I mean, it's part of the battle, my brother, but it's really all about platform. I mean, I hate to use Michael Hyatt's term and everybody else, and you know that term, but it's, it truly is about, if you can push a button to make shit happen, you're …”
Traditional book publishers act as mere printers without providing distribution value
“And frankly, you know, there's self published, there's hybrid publishers and there's traditional. I've done all three. And at the end of the day, publishers are nothing more than printers. You know, so, I mean, all they do is print, you know, the books for you…”
Selling 8,000 books in two weeks guarantees New York Times bestseller status
“Reality is that if you want to hit the list, if you move eight to 10,000 books in your first in your first week out, first two weeks out, you'll hit the list.”
Olsher completed $50 million in real estate development over 12 years
“I've done commercial. I've done residential. I've done for sale. I've done for rent. I've done about fifty million in development over the last 12 years.”