Anna David's Blog, page 5

How a Book is the Gift That Keeps on Giving with Dr. Doug Brackmann

 

Dr. Douglas Brackmann isn't like anyone else you meet. He's far more intense and brilliant—the kind of person you find yourself telling your deepest and darkest secrets to when you had just planned to ask him about the weather.

The author of Driven: Understanding and Harnessing the Genetic Gifts Shared by Entrepreneurs, Navy SEALs, Pro Athletes, and Maybe YOU, Brackmann is revered among top entrepreneurs. And while he admits that he already had "disciples" before publishing Driven, the book still radically transformed his practice, career and life.

Although the tips he provides about building authority with a book are priceless, I was even more intrigued. by how much credibility he says the book has given him (even though he already has two PhDs!) Listen and get inspired. And if you relate to what he says about being a driven person...A) I feel your pain and B) there are many ways to work with Brackmann on that. Find out what they are by going here.

(BTW: I was on his podcast a few months ago. You can hear that here.)

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Why the Ex-CEO of a $550 Million Company Did a Book Now with Erika Badan Ayers

Erika Ayers Badan calls herself a “token CEO”, the rare female employee in the highest rank of a bro-roar sports and new media culture—specifically, at Barstool Sports, which she took from a rough-and-tumble sports and betting brand and turned it into a $550 million juggernaut with more than 5 billion monthly video views and 225 million followers. 

In her book, Nobody Cares About Your Career: Why Failure Is Good, The Great Ones Play Hurt, and Other Hard Truths, she talks about all that and more. And in this podcast episode, she discusses why she decided to do a book at this point in her career, how it serves as a “receipt” for what she’s done and how she truly doesn’t give an f what other people think.

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Why People Lose Steam on Their Books with Jill Ishkanian

 

It’s truly a crime that there’s no TV series about Jill Ishkanian.

The lone female tabloid reporter in a sea of men, Ishkanian has been raided by the FBI, exonerated Meghan Markle and been late to a lunch date with me because she thought she saw Kevin Costner driving. And those are just three of dozens of fascinating facts! Yet, despite the fact that she’s been technically employed as a writer for decades and knows she has a hell of a story to tell, she’s been stalled on writing her book.

Why is that? And how can we—yes, the collective we—help her? It’s all in this episode.

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How Book Publishing Is Evolving with Agent Mark Gottlieb

 

While Mark Gottlieb has agenting in his blood—he’s a second generation lit agent—he’s not your typical agent. He doesn’t specialize in any particular genre but bounces between fiction and nonfiction, with some children's books and graphic novels in between. And though he works with the Big Five publishers, he’s open-minded when it comes to self-publishing and the new wave of publishing.

In this episode we talked about how being a writer requires audacity, how tough it is to make a living as an author without a side profession and how most people don’t even know what a lit agent is, among many other topics.

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Boost Your Business by Sharing Your Story (Solo Episode)

Here's a special release for you: the keynote I recently gave at a mastermind that encompasses so much of what I know to be true about coming up with your book idea. It's short but sweet. Enjoy!

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How to Use Instagram Reels to Blow Up Your Book with Erin Lee

 

You know that kindergarten teacher we all wish we'd had?

That's Erin Lee. But part of what makes us all wish she'd been our teacher is the fact that in addition to being a teacher, she's an award-winning children's book author.

Still, as we discuss quite a bit around here, being an amazing author doesn't always guarantee book sales.

But Erin HAS sold thousands of books. So how has she done it? Well, she started dressing up as her five-year-old students to create engaging Instagram reels. These relatable and humorous videos have since fostered a thriving online community where Erin shares educational content, entertainment and promotes her books.

I was actually interviewing Erin for my other podcast when I realized the information she was sharing was such book publishing GOLD that I had to switch gears and release it on this long-neglected feed.

In this episode, she breaks her IG strategy down piece by piece. So good, so tactical. She actually makes Instagram sound fun AND useful. When have you last heard it described that way?

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The State of Publishing Today with Kevin Anderson

 

Kevin Anderson never meant to get into the publishing business after growing up in a small town in Canada before getting his PhD and graduating summa cum laude from Harvard and starting a tutoring company.

Nevertheless, that tutoring company transitioned into what is now a massive publishing company that employs 30 writers and editors that have collectively worked on over 200 New York Times bestselling books and sold over 100 million copies of books by people like Brene Brown, Simon Sinek and Jen Sincero.

How juicy was our conversation about the state of publishing today? Well, in case you hadn't noticed, I stopped releasing new episodes of this podcast! But when I stumbled into this chat with Kevin, I realized it was too good to keep to myself. So please enjoy!

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Treat Amazon Like It's the Third Largest Search Engine in the World!

Amazon is the third largest search engine in the world and yet so many authors don’t treat it that way.

How can YOU treat it that way?

Your first move should be to add relevant keywords to your Author page.

What’s the easiest way to do it?

Log into Author Central, click on one of your books, Edit Book Details and, under Editorial Reviews, add every single endorsement you’ve gotten (make sure you bold the name and titles of the endorsers; readers look at WHO recommended you before they look at WHAT they said).

You can add 20,000 characters that will now appear on your book page! Do you know how many keywords that can be? Do you know how many more people will find your book now when searching? Do you know how much more credible it makes your book? Did you know you can even copy/paste some of the reviews that your readers have left? Did you know someone could ask four rhetorical questions in a row???

 

How to Get Your Book Everywhere with Annabelle Gurwitch

 

 Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress, activist, and the author of the New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist I See You Made an Effort. Her other books include: Wherever You Go, There They Are, and You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up (coauthored with Jeff Kahn). 

She was the co-host of Dinner & a Movie on TBS and has appeared on NPR, The Today Show, CBS Early Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, PBS, and numerous CNN and MSNBC programs. Her essays and satire have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, AARP, Real Simple, Prevention, The Los Angeles Book Review, The Daily Beast, Time.com, Next Tribe, Lenny Letter, Hadassah and The Hollywood Reporter, among other media outlets.

She's also an extremely methodical (she might say obsessive compulsive?) person—one who starts planning her launch as she comes up with the book concept. And she works it—making lists, checking them way more than twice, reaching out to people she knows and doesn't know and ultimately making it so that her books have no option but to be successful.

If you want practical steps on how to prepare both emotionally and literally for a release, this episode is packed with tips, tactics and other t-words!

FOLLOW ANNABELLE ON TWITTER HERE!

HERE'S HOW I CAN HELP YOU WHEN YOU'RE READY:

→ You can get my 5 steps to creating a life-changing book

→ You can apply for an Authority Experience to have us create the concept and promotion plan for your authority-building book

→ You can apply for a call to work with Legacy Launch Pad (our publishing packages range from $7k-150k)

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE!!

ANNABELLE'S TOP 3 TAKEAWAYS FOR A SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH:

1) Organize your book around a topic you're so passionate about that you'll be willing to talk about it until you're blue in the face

2) Get as many people talking about your book as possible, by reaching out to specific groups, looking at media that has supported similar books and asking friends for help

3) Book live events by reaching out to organizers, telling them you'll be in the area (whether you will or not) and then, when they accept you, piggy backing other events around it.

BEST QUOTES:

“My great grandfather was what they called a peddler in the Ukraine who sold his wares off the back of a mule. Sometimes being a writer feels like that.”

"There's nobody who's going to love your book as much as you are and treat it like you do a child of yours to send out into the world with every advantage."

TIME CODES FOR KEY INTERVIEW MOMENTS:

8:18: Why to create a trail of material you didn’t include in the book that you can then pitch editors

13:06: How even an audience of 3 can change the success of your book

18:02: Why and how to tell people what you want them to say to help promote your book

21:58: Seek out editors who will want to promote your book by researching which creatives in similar genres they’ve supported already

27:59: Why Q-TIP is the most important acronym for a writer promoting a book 

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

Anna:                           00:00                I was just saying out of all the creative people I know, you seem like one who's got a system down. Like I see you with lists, stick in my head. Before a book comes out. Or like as you're putting like, you know, proverbial pen to paper, like you've got a plan. So how do you launch?

Annabelle:                    00:24                I do have a plan. But the plan starts way before six months before the book comes out. The plan starts when I'm writing the book itself. So, for me, and this is just, you know, I'm going to, I'm really excited to listen to your podcast because I am only doing, I've developed this method just based on really my years of experience as an actress. And then I sort of took the idea that I had had as an actress about trying to find a niche for myself into book publishing. And then I, I'm not quite sure how I got this idea of this little, Oh, the way that I launched things, but this is what I do. So first of all, to me the most, there are two essential ingredients to make a project successful. For me, the idea is that first, you can't make something successful as a book. I don't know about other businesses unless you are so passionate about this subject and your relationship to this subject, that you are willing to spend the next several years making yourself the Go To person on that subject. Right? So even if it doesn't seem like it's a subject, because I'm a humorist, each of my books is organized around a principle and a message and something that I perceive to be in this social [inaudible] said, I have a specific relationship too. And for me honing exactly what that is as I'm, you know what, I might be writing a bunch of stories and then realize, Oh this is the organizing principle. So it's not necessarily that I'm writing to an idea at first, but then once I'm writing and then I get an idea of where this project is going to live in the Zeitgeists, then I have to shape all the material towards that.

                                    02:35                And I say that because you know, there's a paradigm that people often work with in the book world, which is someone told me this when I started writing that when you want to publish a book, you need to think your publisher's going to ask you the three why's, why this book, why this author, and why now, right? So those three things are going to be essential to your success because you need to have a strong argument for all of those things. So, for instance, my book, I See You Made an Effort, right? Those were stories organized around the idea that I was turning 50 and I didn't know how I was supposed to approach that, how the world was supposed to see me, and what the fuck to expect from that experience, right? So, why that, so that I, and I knew that this is a perennial subject, aging and also are changing because of our longer, more, I'm giving you the background because this is how I'm thinking when I'm thinking about how I'm going to fit this into the world. So then I'm thinking, okay, so why is this subject important? Well, our mortality is longer, so we are all living longer, which makes sense why we don't know how to have a relationship to age. Also, we're inundated with images from the media. So there's all these issues that can give me not only writing points, but talking points, and ultimately provide me avenues for which to promote this book. Then a why this author.

                                    04:18                So while I'm someone who's turning 50, I'm a humorist. I've had every experience you could possibly have in that arena from having worked as an actress and having people stare at my face, wondering how to light the bags under my eyes, to then being a mom and a person in the world who doesn't give a crap how people see me on a good day. So I felt like I had a well rounded experience of this and then, why now? So I felt that was timely. I mean, some of these things, they, they're interconnected, right? I felt the subject was timely because of the times we live in. And in the book video that I created, which is easy to Google, I also mentioned all what I did was, you know, I researched all the things that were turning 50 when I was turning 50 like Playboy magazine. Like all these things that would then give me both writing and talking points that would be historical and I could reference in my, you know, ultimate promotion and also in my writing. So then I have the why's, and I feel very passionately about this project and this idea and hopefully I have a good product, you know, good writing to go along with it. The next part of how I'm going to be successful in the launch, in my mind, is to mobilize and make 1,001 lists that have to do with the other principal that I feel is the two pronged thing. One is the passion and dedication to the project. And the second is I believe a project will be successful if I can get as many people talking about this project that aren't me as possible.

                                    06:10                And that's where the thousands of lists come in. And these lists are all informed by the first principal, which is my passion for this project and dedication to this project. So my lists have to do with why should I reinvent the wheel, right? I don't need to invent an audience for something that's in the social zeitgeist. I just need to identify where people are already talking about the thing that I'm doing. So how do I do that? You know, in this age of, you know, internet, this is where one of the great things, this is one of the tools we have is first of all, you know, just starting out in my wide circle, narrowing the circle in closer and closer. So first of all, I go wide. I mean you could go either way small and then go wide. But first I might just do simple Googling of like groups that deal with people my age or aging, you know, I mean I might have things on the top of my head of, you know, let's say women's magazines or AARP or things like that. But then I want to go wider, things I don't know. So this is how I ran. Some things come to me obviously because of having a certain profile in the public. But then this is how sometimes things like women's conference in Boston, I'll see that that's happening. And then I'll see if there, if I know anyone who's connected with it and you know, the world is really small in the world of, ultimately in the world of people who write and people who speak on issues. And so maybe I will know someone who is associated with the conference and I can contact them. But I have also cold contacted people and had that work very well because I have a passion, a real passion and dedication to this idea.

                                    08:18                And one thing I hadn't mentioned is, and in advance of publishing, I will have created a trail for myself of material which I have published on the subject. So I will be able to contact people prior to publication with not only references to the work I'm doing, but to my track record as a person who is knowledgeable, even I mean as a humorous or is writing on that subject. Right? So I will have, you know, let's say I'm contacting this, and by the way I do this even though there are people, you know, publishers or I have personally hired as publicists, sometimes outsourcing to other people is a good idea. I often find that people appreciate personal contact. It really depends on my relationship or lack of relationship to the organization. So, then I will email links or profile of myself of, you know, or some kind of demonstration of my connection to that issue or subject or group and say, Hey, I've got a book coming out. I'm going to be in your area. Whether I will be in that area or not, I will be in that area. I want to make it as easy for them as possible. If I think that I can find a way to piggyback a bunch of groups together, right? So then, let's say I get a positive response, right? I don't even know how it's all going to work out yet, but then I'm able to contact or tell the team of people I'm working with, you know, I'm going to be in Boston speaking at this women's conference at the time of the book release. Is there a book festival that's happening then?

                                    10:25                Then I've got, once I get myself, for instance, one of the things we can do in this day and age that distinguishes us, if it's possible and you feel comfortable doing this, is live events. There's still nothing like a live event when you're actually selling books, which are, you know, there is a certain incentive to sell a actual physical copy. Although you know, I love my audio book listeners all that too. But also my goal, first of all, one of the things I want to mention about this is in piggybacking events and going to do live events, the goal is not actually the live event. The goal is the email list going to people who might come to the live event. They might not come to the live event. All again, it's this idea how many people are talking about my project that aren't me. So, it's not the event, it's the surrounding press, an email lists of the people who are then they're promoting their event and in turn promoting my project. So it's this cascading domino effect of getting more and more people spreading the word. And again, like it's such a funny thing. Every author knows this. You can be a bestselling author and have an event where two people show up. One year I did South by Southwest and it was standing room only sold out, one year I did South by Southwest and there were, I think three people in the audience. One was sleeping, one was someone who wanted to publish a book, and the other was in a dragon onesie, you know, I mean come on people, you know, it was kind of hilarious. I mean, and you have to have that attitude.

                                    12:24                But ultimately it wasn't about, no, of course it's great to have a great event. And when I can, I also try to do a guaranteed book buys and then sometimes I'll do, I'll even forgo a part of my speech honorarium for a book by if I'm at pub date time. But again, like, yes, of course I want to sell books and then of course I want the most people there. Cause, you know, giving a presentation to three people, well, one who is sleeping, I think they loved it. There's always people who come and sleep at my presentations.

Anna:                           13:03                But you don't know how you're impacting their dreams!

Annabelle:                    13:06                You don't know. And the funny thing is there were three people at that event. One of them actually was a booker for other events and booked me at another event. So you never know. You absolutely never know. But also again, you have to have, your in it for the long run. And also what's called the long tail of publishing, which is you don't want to just sell a pub date. You're trying to create a very, you know, and by the way, publishers do not think about this. Publishers are really geared towards release date only if it hits grade, if not, goodbye. Call us. Never. How's never sound to you? But you as an author have to be thinking of your whole career. So you're in it for the long tail auxiliary markets of speaking, of sales to film and television film, also for setting up your next book. So you want to keep selling and selling so you're, you're in it for this longer effect. So once, so I've gone to the wide circle to try to get events or also press. Maybe what I've looked up and seen is a group isn't, you know, is a podcast, is a online magazine that I hadn't heard of. Again, I look for any commonalities of people. If not, I will either outsource that to someone else, or I will contact them cold or also one of the things, one of the ways that you, I think are successful in this business and everybody does it, everybody. From the biggest bestselling authors I know to people who are self published. Usually when I do, what I'm about to describe now I put it in the subject line. So if it, if it upsets anyone, please skip it. It's yes, this is that email from your friend with a new book coming out.

Anna:                           15:08                I have gotten it from you.

Annabelle:                    15:08                Yes. You have. Yes, you have. And, you know, it's the indignity of being an artist, but I feel that I try to tell myself this at least first. There's two things about this. One is that, I always, always promote my friends and colleagues work, a why, a rising, what is it arising?

Anna:                           15:40                We don't write in clichés.

Annabelle:                    15:44                Tides and boats go together? Right? I mean, it's, I want everyone I know to be successful because most of the people that I know, with very few exceptions are all people who feel like I do. This is a ridiculous career. And you can either make a killing or go broke doing writing books. I mean, it's crazy, but you do it because you have to do it because you believe in something, because you're convinced of an important of a message or an experience that you had. And so I want everyone I know to do well. So it's not a problem for me to get that email, but it's always nice to just know that we all get lots of these emails. And so, first of all, when I'm sending this email that I know that most likely I have promoted your work, you, the person who is getting this email and gladly so. I want to make that clear. Secondly, I tried to, I mean I'm a dedicated atheist. I do, it's hard to do this. And so I will say a little secular prayer before I send out the email, just saying, I hope that people don't get annoyed by this because I genuinely believe in the message that I am communicating here. And I do. It's just still, it's hard because some people are busy. I'm busy, you know? So some people will immediately return your email. Now that email might say, Hey, do you know someone at so-and-so organization? Or it might be, you know, the email closer to pub date saying, Hey, you know, I hope you will help me spread this word and what a lot of people do and what someone actually instructed me to do like another author said this to me. It's really helpful if you're asking your friends, and this is really a label towards pub date. But if you're asking your friends and colleagues to promote you, it really helps to give them the exact language. Don't make people work hard. Even people who love your work and who've read this latest work, you know, don't, don't make them work too hard.

                                    18:02                Tell them exactly what you want them to say. And you can couch it in. Hey, whatever you want to do is fine. If you would like, here's a shortcut, here's the link to tweet, here's the wordage, here's something that people have done. There's one thing that drives me crazy and I really recommend people not do this. Say a friend like me takes the time to tweet or Facebook or promote and doesn't use the exact language you've used. Suck it up, do not email and say, “Hey, could you change that to be the blah blah, blah, blah,” live with it people! You know what I mean? That is just, that is where it gets annoying. I have one person on my list who does that regularly and I just, I bristle at that. Otherwise I'm happy to get your email. You're going to get one from me and if I, and I feel it's a trade secret to not stay, you know who sends me these emails, but every, almost everyone I know with the exception of I think one person who wanted a Guggenheim Genius award or MacArthur and a Man Booker prize, everybody else, best sellers alike send those emails saying, “Hey, this is pub date. It's coming out.” But back to doing this is in the advance. I also have, and I think this is super important again, a community of friends who are writers who we regularly share information of like, “Hey, do you have an editor stone so and so? And do you have an editor so-and-so?” Because as this circle gets closer, smaller and smaller to my research on outreach, I am looking towards places I can publish.

                                    19:55                So, what I've done is I've typically saved stories or thought about areas I will want to write on that didn't manage to fit in the book. And then I'll look for publications that might be printing something that I could write. And if I don't know someone there, I'll sort of gauge whether or not it's going to be best coming from my publishing publicists or it's going to be best coming from me directly. I don't usually write too cold. I don't, yeah, that I don't, I don't really recommend that. Although there are some places that are deliberately looking for people to do that, but that's usually non-professionals. They want sort of real people stories. So, if you’re a professional, I think it really helps if you can find a connection. It's just a sort of a safety valve that editors use of you putting in the subject line, “So-and-so said to reach out to you.” And then I, and one of the things that I do in order to do my research, this is, as the circle gets closer and closer because I've done my research on what titles are in the same arena as me. I will go to the websites of those writers. And this is not in any way I think. I don't want to sound stalkery or also like I'm trying to like, you know, piggyback off of someone's, you know, or like write something similar. It's just if I know where there are books that are in what I consider my vein, then, and I see who liked their books or who published articles from them, then I can direct my energies towards the most likely places that would want to hear from me.

                                    21:58                Personally, that really works out and sometimes it's more tangential than other times. So, for instance, I'm going to give you an example that where I mentioned someone's name. So, when Jill Solloway who’s an acquaintance of mine who generously blurbed me before and I love her work so much. So when she launched Transparent, my book, I See You Made an Effort was coming out, I think it was close to then or one of my books. I looked at who was giving Transparent press, not because my work was related to her work. And this is another level of like this is like the opposite or maybe it is Dante's inferno front circle of hell of publishing pre publishing release. But it's the reason why I researched who was covering Jill was because Jill is also a Jewish artist. Now that is a category that I fit in. I am a secular humanist person with a Jewish background. And yes, I absolutely use any kind of personal identification because there are readers who seek out writers with my background. At the same time, and I guess people could judge for themselves whether this is exploitative, but I write about Jewish themes, but I have to write about secular themes and living life as a person of identifiable background. But it was also a secular humanist. So at the same time as I was promoting my last book, Wherever You Go, There They Are. I simultaneously went on the Jewish Book Council Tour and toured the country with secular humanist atheist groups. Because these are on, I actually was not connected to those groups, but I contacted people in those groups and I traveled with Richard Dawkins and interviewed him.

                                    24:14                I did an event at the National Mall with a big convention that was happening because that is, because one of the stories in my book was about the family of secular humanists and what draws us to that world. And so, those are two seemingly contrary groups that I write about and genuinely identify with and feel passionate about. It might seem contrary, but this is the life that I genuinely lead conversation that I genuinely engage in with myself and others. So I was on the atheist and Jewish tours at the same time.

Anna:                           24:58                Amazing. Well, life is full of contradictions. Now, okay, we have to get close to wrapping up. So let me ask you one thing that, you have been so successful at this. I mean, we should talk about how you get on Bill Maher, how you got on WTF…

Annabelle:                    25:18                I've been on Mark's show several times and Bill's show numerous times. So these are longstanding friendships that I've had with people in the industry and that just really speaks to, first of all, how old I am. That Bill Maher and I did a movie together in 1989 when I was headlining a show on HBO and he was a comedian trying to get a standup specials. I might appear to be a little misanthropic, but I value community and community building, genuine community building. There are communities I cannot, I mean I draw the line. There are people and groups, anything to do with Marianne Williamson, I always lose friends and followers this way. Have at it people, anything to do with magical thinking and new agey, secret stuff.

Anna:                           26:30                Vision boards are not hanging behind you the way white boards are.

Annabelle:                    26:34                No. They're not. But you know, longstanding friendships and communities, we all work together. And so it's because of those now then I will make…because my subjects matters often deal with things in the social, political, economic arena that allows me to branch out on various MSNBC and CNN and PR, you know, kinds of media beyond my known circle of friends. So having a community really look—identifying where your message will speak to and having the genuine passion to propel yourself past a thousand no's that you will get along the way, I think are all combined ingredients to making a project successful.

Anna:                           27:34                We will meet people. We will have, I'm particularly great at having connections with people who become huge and completely alienating myself from them by the time they're huge, and then feeling uncomfortable about ever reaching out as if they've forgotten me, even though they might have been people I was really close to.

Annabelle:                    27:59                Well, yeah. And I'm going to give you some examples. So, at one point I had a writing partner who has gone on to a fair amount of success. Let's just say Peter Spiegel, the host of and creator of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on NPR. And you know, I've never gotten booked on that show and I reached out a number of times and you know, ultimately it's someone's prerogative whether or not they feel that you or your project will add value. And there's this horrible acronym that always gives me the creeps, but it's really good. It's Q-TIP. Quit Taking It Personally. Because some people will see a value in your work and having you as part of their universe that you knew from the way back and some people will not. And you know, that's just not my business. Sadly, although I can totally spiral into “I can't believe,” you know, but, you know, it's just, it's pointless there. It's just not going to; it's just not going to get you anywhere. I mean, I enjoy obsessive compulsive thinking. This is where your obsessive compulsive nature is your friend and your enemy. My obsessive compulsive nature, my OCD, makes me just so driven to, you know, just do, to push every limit and to explore every option. It also, I can, sure I can spend an entire night thinking about someone, how I work. “I can't believe they don't” you know, whatever, pointless and yeah, they have their own reasons. Who knows? And you know, also sometimes it can switch. And again, this goes back to do I really feel I have an important message. That's ultimately what keeps you going when you get rejections.

Anna:                           30:21                And it's so, it's such an interesting point too, because I know when I was really in the traditional publishing world, there was this thinking that you had to produce a book a year. That's what my publisher told me. And that's what I did for six years. That not only makes it so that you're not as passionate about it because it was this pressure to come up with new ideas, but you just don't have the time to nurture it the way, to send out those requests as sporadically as possible, to wait two years between them. Do you know what I'm saying?

Annabelle:                    30:51                I do know, I know exactly what you're saying and it's really hard. I think the thing is most people understand, and I think, you know, it's just the nature of the business. And, you know, there are some times when I will feel like, “Okay, that person is just not interested in me. I get it already.” And I'll just cross them off my list. But, you know, even when you're producing things, I mean, you know, you have to be strategic about what you're asking. And it's not always fun. And again, one of the things you can do as to counter the asks that you make is also sometimes I'll be on it before my friends will ask. You know, I just, I really take that seriously that I must, you know, walk the walk and do the same for my friends. Also, if you have a friend and you are going to their book event.

Anna:                           32:09                Buy their book.

Annabelle:                    32:12                Buy the book! It kills me. It kills me when someone who you, I mean the hilarious thing is authors, you know, there can be like a thousand people in an audience and you will remember who didn't buy the book.

Anna:                           32:26                It's the worst because it's so, it's such a big deal to show up, especially in Los Angeles. And then you hate them for not buying the book. And yet they showed up for you. It's the worst.

Annabelle:                    32:38                It is. It's just awful. But you're trying to be entertaining or maybe your book is very serious and you're trying to service this really important message and in your brain you're also counting how many people are going to buy. “Is anyone going to buy?” Because what a civilian doesn't know is that if you don't sell a certain number of books at your event, you will not be having an event there again, it's not, Oh, next time, you know, it's so hard. Writing books is not for the faint of heart.

Anna:                           33:16                But I think that promoting them is for the even less faint of heart.

Annabelle:                    33:20                Well, writing the book, I mean is, is you know, my God, first of all, writing is hard. Selling is hard. What's so funny? It's, I think it's so fucking hard to sell a book and you know, you just, it's really, it never ceases to amaze me when someone will say, Oh, I'm going to, they are somewhat a friend of mine, whatever friend would come to, has come to a lot of my events and said, “Oh I'm going to share a copy with so and so.” You just want to, you know, you want to stab them and, but it's hilarious because the truth is they just don't know how small a margin you have as an author for being successful, and you don't want to hate people, but you are mentally Xing them off your Hanukkah list, of cards even. I'm not going to, you know, it's the most undignified piece. I feel like, you know, my great grandfather was what they called like a peddler in the Ukraine. It all comes back to Ukraine just by the way.

Anna:                           34:32                Always.

Annabelle:                    34:32                Always. But so they were a peddler and Ukraine but sold like their wears off this like the back of a mule. And I think I’m like that sometimes.

Anna:                           34:40                That's how it feels.

Annabelle:                    34:44                How sad he would be to see me like I've got, I've got books right now, you know.

Anna:                           34:49                In your trunk.

Annabelle:                    34:50                In the trunk. And the other day. Okay. The other day I'm with a very good friend and their mother and she says, “Do you have a copy of your book, my mom should read your book. Do you have one in your car?” I'm like, “Well of course I do.” I'm ready to sell her mom a copy of my book in the trunk of my car. She takes a look at it and it has like a tiny spot of coffee on it and just, “Oh no, I want a fresh copy.”

Anna:                           35:18                I know. I will say that's why self publishing rules because you've only paid like $3 for a copy and you know what I'm saying? And you're fine giving them away.

Annabelle:                    35:31                Well, self-publishing to me I feel like is a great option if you know you have an audience. I'm still hooked into traditional publishing because I don't know that I could publish and not have at least some of that machine behind me. But I mean, if you can make that work, it's fantastic. I totally see how the advantages. I haven't gone there, but yeah.

Anna:                           36:02                I'll convert you. The machine never did anything for me, but that's like even what you're describing, you did it.

Annabelle:                    36:08                Yeah. Well, but see what I did was, I mean, and look, there's a lot of different ways to cut this thing. What I did was I am capitalizing on the fact that a large publishing machine is, I can use their name. Right. But I mean, you know, there are some, there are so many downsides to the big publishing machine because if they're not in your corner, your book doesn't have a shot unless you are, I shouldn't say that's true because it's not totally true. But you have to really know that. I've had the experience. I've had great experiences with a big publishing machine, but then I've also had the experience where I thought they were really going to push something and they didn't, which is why there's, you know, there's just nobody, there's nobody who's going to love your book as much as you are and treat it like you do a child of yours to send out into the world with every advantage. You know you are really, you know that that book is your, is your offspring and to launch your kid or a book into the world, it's going to take more love and chutzpah then you would ever think is possible.

Anna:                           37:31                Okay. We are so over time, so let me just wrap up. This has been fantastic. I would say the three main points when it comes to a launch according to Annabelle Gurwitch, be passionate, make sure you are so passionate about this topic that you can talk about it forever or at least until your next book. Get as many people talking about it as possible who are not you. Reach the F out and then piggyback events around this potential, like, Oh, I'll be in town. Even if you weren't planning on being in town. Those I feel and Q-tip, quit taking it personally if it doesn't work.

Annabelle:                    38:11                Yeah. That's it.

Anna:                           38:14                I'm so glad I took notes. Annabelle, thank you, you’re a goddess. Thank you for doing this. Thank you everybody for listening. If you would like to find out more about Annabelle, what is the best way to find you?

Annabelle:                    38:24                Go to my, go to my website. AnnabelleGurwitch.com and if you don't spell it right, you'll probably get there anyway.

Anna:                           38:30                Yeah, it's like so dissimilar from any other person's name out there. Okay. Delightful. Thank you so much.

Annabelle:                    38:38                Thanks.

 

Make Sure Your Readers Can Afford You with Scott Duffy

 

Scott Duffy is an entrepreneur and business strategist who's listed as a “Top 10 Speaker” by Entrepreneur and has been named one of the “Top Influential People To Follow” by Yahoo! Finance.

But that's not why I brought him on the pod. I brought him on because he's also the author of three different business books on three different topics, from three different publishers and launched in three entirely different ways. When I was at his mastermind a few weeks ago, he articulated why entrepreneurs should launch books in a way that was clearer than I'd ever heard. That's why I wanted him on the show but what I actually got out of our talk was so much more.

In this episode, we got into the importance of subtitles, why authors should be featured on their book covers and how his most recent book launch was a disaster.

RELEVANT LINKS:  

Scott's site

Scott's books

Scott speaking information

HERE'S HOW I CAN HELP YOU WHEN YOU'RE READY:

→ You can get my 5 steps to creating a life-changing book

→ You can apply for an Authority Experience to have us create the concept and promotion plan for your authority-building book

→ You can apply for a call to work with Legacy Launch Pad (our publishing packages range from $7k-150k)

RELATED EPISODES:  

What I Learned From the Party Girl Re-Launch

What Book Would Help Build This Entrepreneur's Business?

Approaching Your Book Like It's a Business with Bonnie Habyan

TRANSCRIPT:

Anna David: Thanks for being here, Scott.

Scott Duffy: Hi. Great to be here.

Anna David: So you are a genius and author. And also, as I was just telling you, someone who articulated what I have been trying to articulate for many years, and you just did it off the cuff. Well, let’s talk about what you said that I loved so much.

Scott Duffy: So what happened was you and I were having this conversation in Park City. So, I was throwing an event we had, say, 50 entrepreneurs, small business owners there, and a whole bunch of them wanted to write books. But the challenge that I saw, which is a challenge I’ve seen since the last 30 plus years they’ve been around this industry, is that most people don’t know why they’re writing a book. So, when we start a business, we write a plan, I always like to say start with the end in mind, right? Think about where it is that you want to be, what you’re doing this for, and then back out a strategy. So what we were talking about was this, you know, I always ask people, are you writing a book, because you want to be a New York Times number one best seller, and you’re willing to invest the time and the money in this project, because you believe it’ll bring you a tremendous amount of business, whether that’s in speaking fees, or in other ways that help you and your company to grow? Are you writing a book number two, because you want to have a business card, that you’re able to hand out to everybody?

And this is like your introduction to them. And the strategy for doing that is much different, it costs a lot less to do, you’re going to have to your cost per book is going to have to be super low. So, you’re going to be able to give away a lot of these books, right? Are you writing a book number three, because you want to, for example, build a list. So what you want to do is you want to have a book online, people enter an email address, or they enter a phone number, and then they’re able to download your book in exchange for you being able to send them marketing messages. So, what is your strategy? What is the reason that you that you’re doing this? And what you and I were talking about is like your client, that you primarily is writing because they want to hit? You know, they want to be that New York Times bestseller.

Anna David: Well, this is actually the way I remembered what you said, it’s slightly different. When entrepreneurs write books it’s for three reasons. One is the free plus shipping, or give away for free, basically, they want your email address is that it’s my business card, but I kind of hope you don’t read it. Like it’s there. And you know that I did it but there’s probably tons of typos and stuff like that. And then the third is the legacy book. And I don’t look at that as like the number one New York Times bestseller. You know, I don’t believe in shooting for things that .00001% of the population can get the don’t make a difference. Take it from someone who is a New York Times bestselling author and was borrowing money to pay my rent after I hit that list. So, to me, a legacy book is it does those things, those other two ideas too, but it’s something you’re proud of. I think it’s the way you feel about your book for entrepreneurs, maybe you feel that way about all three of your books. I don’t I don’t know, you tell me. Are they legacy books?

Scott Duffy: No, one of them is one of them. Maybe two. So, the first book that I wrote was called How to Invest in Self Storage. And the reason I wrote that book is I’ve been in the tech industry, I’d had a series of kind of wins financial wins in the tech industry. I decided I wanted to invest in real estate, and create passive income. This is a long time ago. And it’s back before there was a self storage, you know, like a Public Self Storage where you put your stuff and you keep it. Like before those were on every corner. And before I’m a real data driven person. And so before I invested anything, I wanted information, I wanted to learn about what I was going to potentially invest in. And the challenges the self storage industry didn’t have a lot of that. So in the just for perspective, in the self storage industry, there’s like 50,000 self storage facilities in the United States. And the biggest owner of self storage facilities only owns 3% of the market.

So, the majority of the industry is people that just own a one or two, so it’s a lot of mom-and-pop businesses, meaning you don’t have big companies that are aggregating public data in order to share it, they don’t have to do. So what I did is I went out there to talk to everybody, I could assemble all of my notes. And I’m like, if I want this, I’ll bet there’s somebody else that wants it too. So, I went to the biggest publisher in the industry called Mini Co. and I said, “What do you think?” And so they said, “We think that’s a great job that doesn’t exist out there.” So, they helped me to hire an editor and we put the notes together and we launched it. I think to this day, it’s the bestselling book about self storage in the industry, which is kind of ironic. So I wrote that. I wrote that entirely because I was trying to aggregate research so I could decide if this is a good decision to invest it in. Crazy. My second book was called Launch and that was a whole different process.

So, I wanted Launch to be a legacy book. And my goal was to make that a number one New York Times bestseller. And so I ended up getting an agent, she was amazing. We ended up selling that, that book to portfolio, which is a division of Penguin Publishing, and we were scheduled to be the number one big release for Thanksgiving weekend for the holidays that year, in business books. So here’s the thing, I had never written a book like this and I wanted the book to be written about how to scale a company. That was the goal. Okay, and this will come back, it’ll be important. So because it was the first book I’d ever done for a publisher like that, they required that I have an editor and they were very hands on in helping me determine who that editor was. The editor was the head of entrepreneurship, and did those kinds of articles for one of the two biggest business publications in the world. So, we’re thinking to ourselves, this is going to be a home run.

Well, here’s what happened, we had one year to write this book. So we started to work on it. And number one, he started to get all of these covers for that magazine. He had three while we were working together, so he would disappear. So, it just never really worked. It never really gelled. I kept going back to the publisher saying, I need more time, or I need different help. And they kept saying no, no, no, just every entrepreneur goes through this, every writer goes through this, just put your head down. It didn’t work. Until one day, the book, it just was so bad. It was so bad. And nobody would listen. I wrote a text-actually I wrote an email to the head of Penguin Portfolio. And the subject was in all caps: THIS BOOK FUCKING SUCKS. Okay, I wrote this book fucking sucks. Because I had to get somebody’s attention. Yeah, he was on vacation in Mexico. He called me right away. He said, “This book does suck. You’re right, we need to make a change.”

And he said, “The change starts with you.” And it’s really important for authors for writers, that change starts with you. He said, “We’ll do our part, we’re going to help find you another editor. But what do you really know about what you’re writing about?” You see, my core competency had always been launching companies taking ideas from idea to market. And he said, “What would naturally just kind of pour out of you? And it would be those stories versus the stories about growth and scale?” So, what it is I sat down, I was so by the way, depressed after that call, I’m like, shit, now I got to change the book. I got to change the title. I got to figure this out. We don’t have much time. And what happened in a is I went home that night, and I was talking to my ex wife was looking at my kids. And she said, “Well, what if the book wasn’t about like, you weren’t doing it for yourself? Who would you do it for?” And I said, “You know what, I would use this book to tell my kids who their dad was. That’s what I would do.” That became the purpose.

And then over the next six weeks, I started from scratch. And I wrote every word of the book from front to back.

Wow, in the book was called Launch and it was all about doing what I really knew. And so for me, that was a big lesson. And I think that, you know, when you’re writing a book, it’s really important not to focus on what you think is going to make money or what you think is going to do something you’ve got to focus on what it is that you know, it naturally comes to you. Because those are the stories. And those are the lessons that will truly connect with an audience. And so, I think, you know, that’s kind of what kind of what happened.

Anna David: But don’t you think it’s where what you know, meets what you know your audience wants? Don’t you think?

Scott Duffy: I think that if you’re writing about seeing this is the mistake I made, I was trying to write. Okay, I have to answer your question. I have share the story. The day the book was published, and I got my first copy, got my first hardcopy, I drove up to one of my mentors’ houses. And he was going to be the person first person I gave it to. He was like ADA, an iconic venture capitalist. I walked up to him and said, “I got the book I’ve been telling you about, you get the first copy.” He asked if I’d sign it and I signed it. And he looked at the cover. He said, “Your book is called Launch?” I said yes. He said, “You’re going to be broke.” That’s what he said to me. And I said, “Why would you say that? He said, “Scott, you have to make a decision before you do anything in business: do you want to have a rich customer or a poor customer?” And he said, “If you’re talking to people that are launching companies, they’re probably broke, or at least they don’t have a lot of free cash, because they’re investing everything they can into this business.”

He said, “So you can be the very best in the world writing this book or doing what you do. But if you’re going to have a poor customer, you’ll be broke because they can’t afford to pay you.” He said, “Where would you rather have a rich customer?” And I said, “Well, these are the stories I know how to tell.” He said, “If you told them just a little bit differently, what you know, they would appeal to that person too.” So that was a really big shift. I wouldn’t try and invent. First of all, I would get really clear on who my target is and can they afford to pay me what I want them to pay me? Number one. And number two, I would focus on the content that they really know and understand. And if I have to tweak that a little bit, to make it relevant for a different market, I would do that. But I wouldn’t start from scratch. I wouldn’t try and lie, or not stretch the truth about what I was really good at.

Anna David: Did you rewrite it after he said that? Or you just said, fine. You leave it?

Scott Duffy: I said, “Fuck, are you serious?” And by the way, it was really awful. For me, my stomach, like I love this man. And so to my feet, and I was so embarrassed, you know, but it was the right lesson for me at the right time. I actually, it was the right lesson for me. It would have been great if the timing was a little different.

Anna David: It was the right lesson at the wrong time. But also, the Jeff Walker book Launch was already out or?

Scott Duffy: No, so Jeff and I were talking. So, Jeff was working on Launch while I was working on Launch and a mutual friend Travis Euston put us together because Travis was in the product launcher world. And so Jeff and I talked by the way, our books came out like the same month. In there’s two things I learned from that experience. Number one, you can’t trademark the title of a book. So a lot of people will seek see that they can stay claim to a title, you can’t trademark that right. What I learned is the most valuable part of selling a book is the subtitle. And that was just what Jeff and I talked about. He said, “We can both have the same title. It can look the same way it can be identical. But your subtitle has to talk to your market. And my subtitle has to talk to my market.” And that was a really big lesson for me.

Anna David: That’s so interesting. I don’t want to interrupt you but I do think it depends on the book. I think there are subtitles where you don’t the reader doesn’t even notice what the subtitle is. A short title, absolutely. And especially like your subtitle is no pun intended, critical. But I don’t think that’s always the case. I think it is true in this case. Okay, so keep going.

Scott Duffy: I think that the subtitle really has, because if you’re in a bookstore, I mean, I don’t know how many people are still going to bookstores but when Launch came out, if you’re in a bookstore and then your target customer is looking at a shelf and they’re skimming, you only have a few seconds for them to know if that’s the book, right? So what attracts the verse? It’s going to be the color and the font, the positioning on the shelf, who you’re around or who you next to. By the way, when I wanted to sell more. I went into every bookstore I could wherever I was. I moved my book next to Gary Anarchic. I moved in next to whoever was hot at that time. You have to do that. You got to have a little bit of Sara Blakely from Spanx in you.

Anna David: And nobody stopped you. Right? You’re like an affable big dude. Nobody’s going to be like, ah, that guy stopped the guy moving the books. You just did it, right?

Scott Duffy: No, I did. And here’s the thing, the people in the bookstore couldn’t care less, because they just want to sell books. Right? So, I did, I would take pictures. So I learned about the importance of a subtitle learn about the importance of the impact that your cover, and that needs to have in a very short period of time. So that if two people are looking at books, the subtitle for Launch was: the critical 90 days from idea to market. And the reason was, our publisher had research showing that in the next year, having a number in the subtitle was going to be like the thing. So they actually did that.

Anna David: I mean, the publisher research…you don’t even want to hear my rants about traditional publishing. So it sounds like that was a great learning experience, but not necessarily a wonderful publishing experience.

Scott Duffy: It was a terrible publishing experience. It was awful. It was incredibly stressful. The book fizzled, because by the time it came out, I was so burned out from the project. I just I had no energy or desire to go out into to promote it the way the way that you should do, you know.

Anna David: Me too. And so, the next one, you said, “This is going to be different.” Right? Is that what you said for your most recent book?

Scott Duffy: Well, I actually said, “I’m never going to do this again,” first. That’s what I said, I’ll never do this again. And then what happened was, I had a video series called Business and Burgers. I would travel across the country, Alan Taylor, and I, and we would go the awesome burger places. And we would interview entrepreneurs like Daymond John, and people like that, over burgers and sides, and it was a blast. We ran about 45 episodes of that show. While that show was airing, I was contacted by Entrepreneur Magazine, and they said, you know, the publishing group, Entrepreneur Books, really enjoyed the first book and didn’t understand why it didn’t get bigger pickup. They said, “What if we went in and we updated the book, and we updated the stories, and we added some more connective tissue, would you be open to that?” So, that’s what we did. Now, the problem that I ran into in this circumstance was a disagreement about the title and the subtitle.

So, here’s the thing. If you read the breakthrough book, the title and subtitle don’t tell you what’s in it. So you don’t know what you’re buying. That was a big disconnect and that hurt. I’m just sharing. I mean, I’m committed to sharing the good and bad of everything, you know. And so what I learned is I was much happier with the book itself, but I think that the title and subtitle got in the way of it, and so we’re actually in the process of redoing that with new stories. And I can’t show the title yet, but it’s very descriptive to come out next year.

Anna David: Okay, wait, stop. Breakthrough is your brand. So I would think that that’s the perfect title for you?

Scott Duffy: Well, here’s what I learned. Breakthrough is a brand. But if you are a personal brand, your name has got to be your brand and that was a lesson for me. It was a lesson for me because my brand was Launch. Oh, no, no, no, it’s not. My brand is Breakthrough. Oh, no, no, it’s not. I’m in education, technology. I’m working on a book right now. Education right, is that my brand? No, my brand is Scott Duffy. And so, for me, that was a real big lesson. And I think it’s interesting, because if I used to be back in the day, you’re too young for this, but it used to be when I was starting in the industry. The way you got to know somebody and see who they were, was there was a one inch by one inch picture on the back cover of the book. Yeah. So like when I worked for Tony Robbins back in 1990, right. The way anyone got to see him before the infomercial was he had a book and on the back there was the picture. That was it. I think that as it relates to books, and today when personal branding is so important, I am an advocate of putting your picture on it somewhere on the cover. Yeah, because you are the brand. And I’d be curious to see to hear what you have to say about that.

Anna David: You know, it’s very interesting that you say that. I’m a narcissist, and I’m very vain. So, I think I should not just be on the cover of all my books, but on every book, and yet I’ve never done it.

Scott Duffy: Why not?

Anna David: Out of fear of being judged as vain. And also I really vacillate between, is it my experience? You know, it’s sort of like that idea about marketing, change all your eyes to use, make your stories. I don’t know the answers. I do this. Because every book, I learned more. I mean, I think I approach it a lot like you do, but I also have to so that I can stay on the cutting edge for my clients. So I mean, I’m kind of excited. I’m like feeling something inside, like, ooh, could I go on the cover my next book, but I don’t know. So you didn’t do that. So, this is how you feel now, you didn’t do it before?

Scott Duffy: That’s how I feel now. And like in terms of change, you know, a change in approach, one thing that I did really learn what was the Breakthrough that I really loved versus the way I wrote Launch. The way I wrote Launch is I literally sat behind a computer all day, and just wrote, and then what I would do is I would write a chapter, I would send it to an editor. The next day, the editor would send it back, I make corrections. And then we move to the next. Now, I’d like to say that I wrote a chapter every day that in practice, it doesn’t work that way, you know, some take longer than others. But that was kind of like what the flow was, with Breakthrough the flow changed. So, with Breakthrough, what I started to do is I love to move and I love to be active. So I downloaded an app called Rev. And I actually wrote a lot in the book while I was walking. So I would be walking, or I would be in the gym or whatever and I’d record on Rev and then what we would do is I hit play, and then when I was done, I would have that transcribed. By the time I was back from the gym, or my walk, or my run, or whatever it was, it would be in my inbox, I would send that to an editor. The editor would then organize it and compile the thoughts in there was my chapter. What was really cool about that also is, once that was done, I can take that I could turn that into a blog, quote boards, a million other things. So I highly recommend if you’re not the kind of person that wants to sit behind a computer all day, leverage a tool like Rev. If you’re a blogger, and you’re in the car, just talk about what you’re thinking, and boom, you’re done.

Anna David: Here’s what I want to say about that. Yeah, and I’m this is not like, this is not sucking up, you speak the way a lot of people try to write you just are naturally like that, I do not think that works for everybody. And I say that because we’ve had clients who have said, oh, I’m just going to send over my like brain dumps. Tt is very hard for us to make that into written material, it is far more effective for us to interview them, I think somebody interviewing you is going to be more effective. However, if you’re like Scott, and you’ve got the gift of the gab, then I do think that can work more effectively. But sometimes you are making an editor’s job hard if you do it like that.

Scott Duffy: Okay, so a couple thoughts on that, because you’re right. I think an interview is like the gold standard. If you can get interviewed, I mean, like that’s freakin awesome. I think, if you’re a speaker, a professional speaker, it can really be a challenge. And you got to learn to get better when you’re dictating. The reason is, a speaker can just talk forever, and say nothing. They’re really awesome at it. Right? So, it’s almost like you got to get that inner TikTok voice working in you where you got like, eight seconds to a minute, or whatever it is. Yeah, you got to learn how to talk in shorter in shorter sound bites. I think I’ve seen that with speakers. When I wrote Launch, the way I would tell a lot of the stories because the way I teach is story based; the way I would tell a lot of the stories was almost like dictating a speech. And this is really important for right for people who want to be authors. The way you speak at people, right when you’re onstage, is different than the way people read. It’s really important.

If you just gave them a speech, they’re not going to get through if you give them something like should be written about. Totally different. The other thing is if you’re hiring an editor, this is a lesson I learned in Launch. The person that we used was a magazine editor. Okay. So think about this. They were exceptional at writing things that were really short and it stood on their own. So if you’re writing a book, and you need an editor for a book, you need somebody that understands basically how to craft a story that builds as it goes, right? And where there’s connective tissue from one thing to the next. So, when I wrote Launch, and I was dealing with that first editor, the reason the book didn’t work is everything was totally disjointed, like a bunch of articles. So, it’s really important to know the perfect target avatar of who your writer or your editor is, in order to have a book be as successful as you want it to be.

Anna David: The good news is that most magazines have gone under. So most magazine editors have transitioned into being book editors. I came up as a magazine editor and then I learned to edit books, because you know, necessity is the mother of invention, you just learn, right? But that’s great. That’s a great tip. So let me ask you what have and we got to get close to wrapping up? Tell me what these books have done for your career?

Scott Duffy: Well, I mean, they done a number of things, I think that the one thing they did is they helped me to, actually, I’ll tell you what the most important thing is, the most important thing that they’ve done is they’ve helped me to develop a business philosophy that became like, I was successful doing things. And I didn’t necessarily know how I was doing them. I thought I did. But what I did is I was able to codify my superhero power. I think that that’s incredibly powerful. And if you want to be a great speaker, you want to be great at growing an audience on social media, you want to be great at building a personal brand, I think you really unmeet to understand who you are, what you stand for, and how you get to the results that you get to. And so, this really helped me to learn that, and it helped me to find where there were holes in what I did, where I really needed to, like grow myself.

And I really worked on those areas when writing the book. In fact, on the book breakthrough, I added a section on growth and scale. But instead of doing it myself, I went to a friend of mine named Rolan Frasier, who is exceptional at scaling a company, and almost made those chapters more like interviews, where we talk back and forth. And the way we positioned it is here’s how we work with this company. Here’s how we work with that company. So the content was organic, it was authentic, but I couldn’t have done it on my own. But when I was done with it, I’m like, I understand that now I can really help a company in that area now. So, in addition to a branding tool, it was like a growth hack for me as well.

Anna David: I love that because it’s kind of like I think a lot of successful people. They can’t teach what they do because they don’t know how they did it. It was so organic. It was when I started teaching that I’m like, oh, I got to figure out how did I write a book? I don’t know, I just did it. So, I think that I’ve never heard someone say that, the book is the opportunity for you to drill down and articulate. How did you do this? How can your reader do this? And so, and in terms of business, in terms of speaking, I mean, you were already killing it on the speaking circuit, but what difference has it made in your business?

Scott Duffy: You know, I think the book, it enabled me to market myself in the bigger companies was one of those things. So it’s one thing to have a personal brand, it’s one thing to have success with companies that you’re a part of. And for me, many of those were big media companies, big media brands, but having your codified philosophy, how you did it. I think, you know, that really helped me to open to open more doors. You know, I feel today that the book is like it’s a learning tool for us as authors. But I think that as a door opener, it’s incredible. It’s just you need to get clear as to which doors you want to open. Do you want to open the door of somebody hiring a speaker in a fortune 500 company? Or do you want to open the door of an entrepreneur that wants to learn how to create sales funnels?

So, if I were to share with anybody, like if somebody said to me, “where do I start?” And so, we’ll start by getting clear on what you want the end result to be and my second step would be create the perfect avatar of who it is that you want to speak to. And the more narrow you go, the more successful you’re going to be because if you try to talk to everybody, you’re not going to connect with anybody. The riches are really in the niches and when it comes to writing and when it comes to author when it comes to putting out a book, if you nail who your target audience is, I mean from the beginning. You’re going to be on fire.

Anna David: Yeah. You are fantastic Mr. Duffy; how can people find you?

Scott Duffy: Go to scottduffy.com. There, or you can you can find me on social media @scottduffymedia across all the platforms.

Anna David: I love it. Thank you, Scott. Thanks, you guys for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

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