Tucker Max

In How To Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital, Tucker Max is the worked example of “decoding a pickax” — building a business that sells tools to a gold rush rather than mining gold yourself. The book describes Max recognizing a large market of “gold miners”: people who want to establish themselves as thought leaders so they can charge higher consulting and speaking fees, for whom publishing a book is the “silver bullet.” The obstacle is that most of them lack the time or expertise to actually write one.

Max’s response was to launch Book in a Box (later renamed Scribe Writing) in 2015 — a service that writes a client’s book in the client’s own voice, with the client only answering a set of interview questions. The book reports the company had worked with more than 500 authors and passed $11.3M in revenue as of September 2017, charging a minimum of $25K per book. The takeaway the book draws: Max realized the pickax business could be more lucrative than his own best-selling books, which is why he came to spend more time on the business than on his own writing.

Context: Tucker Max is an American author best known for the bestselling “Hilarity Ensues”/“I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” memoirs, who later co-founded the book-writing/publishing company Scribe Media (formerly Book in a Box) with Zach Obront.

Where this appears

• How To Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital — the central “decode a pickax” case study (Book in a Box / Scribe) on selling tools into a market rather than competing in it.