Anna David's Blog, page 8

Why It's Better to Sell 100 Books Than 10,000

 

Traditional publishers lie.

They tell you that you have to sell 10,000 copies of your book for it to be successful.

Or 5000.

Or 1000.

They're wrong. I'd rather sell 100 copies of my book to the right reader than 10,000 copies to readers who won't really care.

In this episode, I explain why.

This is another of the episodes based on the book I'm writing. Speaking of, if you want exclusive stories, resources and info about this book as I write it, you can sign up for that on annadbook.com.

RELATED EPISODES:  

The Debut of Launch Pad with Dave Chesson

Mike Koenigs on Why You Need to Have a Product Embedded in Your Book

How Did Alex Strathdee Get 40,000 Students to Read His Book?

What a Book Can Do For an Entrepreneur with Rich Goldstein

TRANSCRIPT:

Anna: Hello, and welcome to the podcast that wants you to both be able to be an author and actually pay your rent or pay a mortgage or, and have the life you want. My name is Anna David and I am giving you one of my solo episodes. By the way, it's brought to you by my secret newsletter. You can get on it by going to authority secrets dot club (www.authoritysecrets.club). And if you want the show notes just go to Legacy Launchpad Pub dot com slash blog slash one hundred (www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/blog/100). The actual numbers 1-0-0. And that's because this episode, which is based on the book that I have coming out April 23rd, is all about how selling 100 copies of your book can change your life. AKA, it's better to sell 100 copies to the right readers whose lives are going to be changed, who may hire you, than 10,000 readers who simply won't care. This is also about how, have they been lying to you? They, those evil they! They have been telling you it's all about making the New York Times list, it's all about selling 10s of 1000s of copies, it's all about book tours. It's no, it's not. Robert Greene told me when I interviewed him for this podcast, your book could have sold 11 copies over the course of 10 years. But you can show it to people and they're impressed. That's of course, only if it's a very high quality book. Chris Voss said on the podcast, even if the only people that actually pay for copies are your parents, there's no better marketing tool or calling card than a book. It becomes the most viable business card you've ever had.

Now this is something I experienced firsthand every year when I go to my mentor Joe Polish’s Genius Network event. So I have talked about this on the podcast before, but in case you've never heard it or you feel like hearing it in a new way. I wrote my book Make your Mess Your Memoir with this couple in mind. It's this couple that I know from Genius Network. I've always loved them. They're like my surrogate parents, but they don't, they're not old enough to be my surrogate parents. But it doesn't matter. Surrogate. You're making it up, you know what I mean? And, um, I talked to them about, about them hiring my company to do a book. And so my book, Make Your Mess Your Memoir, every page, I thought about them. I thought like, I thought like, would they like that? Would that be too much for them? Would that shock them? Would that speak to them? And I finished the book and they never read it. I didn't tell them about it. I mean, I super liked them. But I don't see them all that often. Lots and lots of other people just like them did hire my company, we brought in 100s of 1000s of dollars in new business. So time passes and I run into them at the Genius Network annual event. And I go, oh my God, I have this funny thing to tell you. I wrote this book for you. Basically, I was like, I’m on Good Morning America with it. It was great for my business and they go what? And it happened to be at the gifting suite that was there at Genius Network. And so they went and they picked up a copy. And by the way, now we're working with them. They hired us.

My point is that, um, I knew what I wanted with that book. My why was a want to show successful entrepreneurs, thought leaders, business owners, CEOs, founders, that a book will be the best business card they could possibly have. How can I share this with them in a way that's entertaining? And because I had that why, because I had that intention throughout, it didn't matter to me if 10s of 1000s of people bought the book. When I was on Good Morning America, I went and looked at Amazon. My Amazon number didn't change that much. But the people who saw it, who ended up hiring me, that's who matters.

Now Rich Goldstein, who's a patent attorney I've had on the podcast has a method. He says he just offers the book for free to anyone who requests it. I was at an event with him in Vegas a couple months ago. And he had his office FedEx copies in for everyone there. It's worth the expense, the trouble, whatever it is, because people read it and then they go, oh, I want to hire, this guy really knows. He wrote the book on the topic. I want to hire him. So Rich was very into Clubhouse. Remember Clubhouse, late 2020, early 2021? And so he would go on Clubhouse, talk about startup rooms, about patent attorneys in, you know, getting patents and all of these things and he would always just say, hey, if you want a free copy of my book, just email me or message me or sign into my DMs or whatever. And he said he got over 100 book requests and landed at least five clients just from like a couple months on Clubhouse. Now depending on how much you've charged for a client that that can be a really big deal.

Alan Weiss, who's the author of Million Dollar Consulting suggests -- and I recommend this to everybody -- if you have a business book and you know your ideal client, send them a copy of the book but actually send them two copies. Sign both. Put both in the mail. Now the rationale is every potential client you know knows another potential client and people are not very likely to throw away signed books. So that potential client will probably give the second copy to someone else who could be a potential client. And I'll tell you I went to one of Alan Weiss's seminars in New York a couple years ago. And he put this big, you know, those, they're not whiteboards, they're like those big notebooks kind of that you put at the front of a room. And he went around the room and he said, how did you hear about me, originally? Now this was a, this was a conference that costs about $1000 to go to. So he goes around the room, there's, you know, 80 people in the room. And he goes, how did you first hear about me so that made you end up here? And everybody, and as soon as someone said what it was, he wrote it on the poster, or on the notebook page, and it was, you know, I read your book, I saw one of your videos, I heard about you from blah, blah, blah, I saw you on a web search, whatever it is. Everybody. What dwarfed every other response was book, including me. That's how I discovered, oh, I heard him on a podcast and then I read his book. And then I signed up for his conference. It is, um, and I will put in the show notes, I took a picture of that poster at the time. Because I was like, that is fascinating. I'm going to want to remember this. So go to the show notes, you'll see what I'm talking about in case I'm not explaining it super well.

Now another kind of person that you want to read your book is a teacher, as Rob Fitzpatrick told me when he came on the podcast. If a book gives teachers tools they can use, they don't recommend it to five people, they recommend it to 5000. They're hungry. If they read it and think here's a new framework or here's a new tool or concept, they know you can use it in their classes. Rob has been incredibly successful at that with his book, The Mom Test. And, and it's something that, that obviously, not every topic lends itself to course material. But especially if you're, you're like, say a Gen X-er like me. College has changed a lot since I went in the 90s when I went to a liberal arts school, which is basically another way of saying you can't major in anything useful. Now people can major in all sorts of things where… I love college professors, love them deeply. Sometimes they really have no idea what's happening in the real world. And your book could absolutely help people in ways that typical course material wouldn’t. So you don't also have to be a book that is used in a course for it to be relevant for the educational market.

Alex Strathdee, for his first book, which was basically he wrote it with his friend right when they were out of college. And it basically said, like, you're totally unprepared for the real world. And he knew that college students, people graduating from college needed to read this book, but he didn't know how to get it to them. So weekend after weekend, he'd sit in coffee shops, and he'd web scrape 1000s of email addresses of college administrators. And he emailed each, offering the book for free to their students. So out of that, 50 schools got back to him. And 11 agreed to distribute the e-book to their students. And through that they got their book in front of 40,000 students. But still, they weren't making money. They were giving it to the, the schools who are giving it to their students. So then they thought, well, this is wonderful. We like eyeballs but how can we actually monetize this? And so in the same way that they compiled the list of 3000 University contacts, they compiled another list. This one was of the email addresses of over 200 different companies they thought would want to hire those college seniors. And then they went and they offered them ad space in the book. He said, Alex said, we essentially turned our book into a product and they ended up landing six advertisers including Kohl's who paid $1000. So it made them not only enough money to pay for what they'd invested in the book, but also enough to support them in launching their first two companies. So you also can have a course that you link to in the book.

Pat Flynn's book Will It Fly?, he links to a free course he created throughout the book, and it's not, you know, I read the book. It didn't feel like you're being hammered with this thing. It just was mentioned when it was relevant. And I had Dave Chesson on the podcast and he helped Pat Flynn with his launch and he shared about this. What Pat did is he emailed those people who signed up for the free course, invited them to a paid course that built on what was in the free course. And from just that alone, he made $111,000. So that's not from his whole list, that is just from the list of people who signed up for the free course and then bought the paid course from the book. Then I had Mike Koenigs on the podcast, and he talked about how he made seven and a half million dollars from one book. You got, I'm gonna link to all these episodes. And you know, it's very, Mike Koenigs is the best salesperson I know. But basically the book led people to, into a funnel that included a live webinar that included a live of them that included a way to create a product for them. And you know, in the way he talked about it is you're attracting people to your book, and then you're inviting them. You're saying, do you want to know more about this topic? And when they say yes, if you continue to invite them to learn more in a way that is going to benefit them and they are your right reader and right client, it is an everybody wins situation. So that is my episode on why it is better to have 100 of the right readers than 10,000 of the wrong ones. And I'll see you next time.

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Why Podcasts are the Best Promo for Authors (and How to Get on Them)

 

Good news: going on podcasts is the best way to promote your book. Podcast listeners are eager to learn and read books.

Even more good news: Podcast hosts love to book authors.

So there has to be a catch, right?

Well, here it is: most of us are pitched daily, in the worst ways.

Listen to this episode to find out the absolute best way to pitch yourself to the podcasts you want to be on...and then how to slay once you're on there.

This is another of the episodes based on the book I'm writing. Speaking of, if you want exclusive stories, resources and info about this book as I write it, you can sign up for that on annadbook.com.

As promised, here's the "Can't lose" podcast pitch template:

Hi TK:

I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts, but I’m honestly blown away by yours. TK REASON WHY. I made sure to include what I like about your show in a review on iTunes (see attached!)

I know your show covers TK INFO ABOUT WHAT SHOW ADDRESSES, and I’d like to audaciously pitch myself as a guest. 

PARAGRAPH ABOUT YOU AND WHY YOU’D MAKE A GREAT GUEST.

I also very much relate to what you’ve shared about TK THING THEY’VE SHARED ABOUT AND WHY YOU RELATE.

I loved your conversations with TK PREVIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH PEOPLE THAT ARE SIMILAR TO YOU. 

Here are some potential interview ideas:

5 IDEAS IN BULLET POINTS

Other interesting things about me:

PARAGRAPH THAT ENCOMPASSES SOME QUIRKY THINGS ABOUT YOU

[ONLY INCLUDE THIS IF YOU’VE BEEN ON SHOWS THAT ARE SIMILAR TO THIS ONE]: I’ve appeared as a guest on dozens of shows. Here are a few examples that might be relevant for your audience: 

TK EXAMPLES WITH LINKS

Let me know if you and your team think I could be a good fit for the show or want to chat further. Either way, thank you for the great show.

Respectfully,

TK

RELATED EPISODES:  

How to Set Up an Author Podcast Tour with Alex Sanfilippo

Why a Book Is the World's Best Business Card with Chris Voss

Why to Ignore the Muse with Robert Greene

How to Get on Podcasts to Promote Your Book with John Corcoran

TRANSCRIPT:

Anna here, welcome to the podcast that doesn't want you to have to keep keep clicking refresh, to find out your how your book is selling because you don't care how your book is selling because you are too busy living the fabulous life that your book has given you.

This is a solo episode, based on information that's in my book On Good Authority coming to you April 23 of 2023. And this is all about how promoting yourself and your book on podcasts, which is the absolute best thing to do provided you do it right and this episode is all about how to do it right.

Chris Voss Best Selling Author of Never Split the Difference credits podcast for the tremendous success of his book he said he he hired Ryan Holiday legendary book marketer and author and Ryan got him on Lewis Howes' podcast and he said it just hit hard. From there. He went to Dax Shepard's podcast, he was on James Altucher's podcast, and the book has sold millions upon millions of copies and really came out of nowhere.

Now, great news, podcasters love to book authors. authors have a lot to say, we know they're probably not going to, you know, be at a loss for words, even though some are introverts. So that's great news. John Corcoran, who I had on the podcast said, "I find authors much easier to say yes to because, you know, they're going to be good at answering questions, and they have great authority."

The bad news is we are pitched authors all the time, I receive, at least I would say four terrible pitches a day. And the problem is, if you go and hire somebody who says, I'm gonna get you on podcasts, and they kind of subscribe to the spray and pray method, which is that they just pitch over 1000s of people, and maybe they're gonna get two yeses. We now there are a few agencies where I just have such a negative association with those people in my inbox that if they were pitching someone great, I would know they were great, because I'd be like, Oh, my God, these people. They pitch me people who are not authors. Now, this is a podcast about authors, and they don't know the name of the show. And that's not entirely their fault, because I changed the name all the time, but maybe try to know the name when you're pitching. Um, so you are far better off pitching yourself.

So how do you know who to pitch yourself to and how to do it? So go to I would say the biggest podcast in your genre in your field and be realistic. If you know it's a huge podcast, they're probably don't even accept guests. If you want to kind of drill down to a more realistic podcast, go to the iTunes page or whatever podcast app you're on. And go down to the bottom where it says listeners who liked this also liked and kind of just keep going down and down and down until you get to ones that you think are really realistic. It has guests, obviously, make sure the podcast is still active. It has at least 100 episodes they've released at least in the last few weeks. And write a kick ass pitch letter.

I'm pasting below a template for a kick ass pitch letter and a copy of the worst pitch I've ever received. And and so step number one, review the podcast review on iTunes. It's the secret to every podcaster's heart. When you pitch with a super awesome pitch letter mentioned just casually I love your show so much. It's what I said in this attached review, attach a screenshot of the review and think about it. What can you this is not about you in your book. This is about how can you serve this podcaster's audience. You're going to be better the better the more familiar you are with the show, the better you're going to be at pitching yourself because you're going to see what the podcasters needs are.

But I think you know it is so much better to pitch yourself to a show that has your target audience that In a show with a million downloads, Alex Sanfilippo, who is a podcaster, who has numerous podcasting companies, including pod match, which actually matches podcasters, with podcast guests said, "So many people say, Oh, they only want to be on shows that have 100,000 downloads. Because they think of it like social media, they think, oh, it's like 50 likes, that doesn't mean that much. Well, if 50 people are gonna sit in a room and listen to you for half hour, would you do that suddenly, having 50 listeners doesn't sound like so few."

So there are obviously millions of shows out there. So you don't want to, you don't want to waste your time on the wrong ones. And you don't want to waste your time on ones that are out of reach. So think about it, how do you narrow it down? Well, think about your avatar. Think about your reader, think about who you want to hear the information from your book, when you're looking at podcasts, when you're listening to them, does this speak to that avatar, so you can sign up for pod match Alex's website, and that is just literally like a dating site for podcasters and podcast hosts. But I also recommend pitching yourself.

And with John Corcoran, who's podcaster and the co founder of Rise 25 said is you want to make yourself relevant to the podcaster. So if they have a narrow focus, you want to cater that to that. And the example he gave is "I know you feature only woodworking experts on your show. But I've noticed you haven't had anyone on who talks about the financial aspects of how woodworking businesses need to operate. And I just wrote a book that's the definitive guide on how to manage your finances for a woodworking business." So that's a very specific, excellent example.

So if you don't hear back, which a lot of the time you don't, I just, you know, for my new book, I decided I wanted to try to do some outreach like this. And so what I did is I went and I looked at podcasts that people who had written books like mine had been on, and I listen to them. And then I used a little hat GPT. And I went in, I asked for summaries, and I asked for other examples of episodes like that. And then I reached out to the podcaster, I reviewed, I attached a screenshot of the review. And I explained what it is I could talk about that I thought would be relevant to their listeners. Now. We, my team helped me we sent out about 10, I got two responses, which I didn't think was terrible. I will say one of those two was, Wow, this is an amazing pitch. It's so fantastic.

What I did want to those two responses, and you don't have to spend money, this is just literally just what I did. There's candy company called SugarWish where you can send someone $20 worth of candy. And it's a perfect small thank you when you don't have someone's mailing address, but you have their email address, and to just say thank you so much as it's so sweet of you to agree to book me. I can't wait to do it. Again. You don't have to do that.

John Corcoran said, assume if you don't hear back, the person didn't get your message message across various platforms. Now, yesterday, when I tried recording this episode, the three other times I was hearing myself say these words, and I realized I got to sort of drink my own Kool Aid. And so the eight people that we had not heard back from I went onto LinkedIn, and I messaged them. And you know, I tried different strategies. I'll have to let you know if that worked. Because I haven't been on LinkedIn today to see if it worked.

Listen to the podcasts ahead of time. To not listen to a podcast before you get on is to literally it's like showing up at a stranger's house and going like, Hey, will you introduce me to all your friends that you've worked, you know, five years to cultivate? I had a guy on my podcast recently whose team had pitched him very aggressively. And it was very clear when he logged on not only that he had no idea what I did, but he didn't care. And he was very excited to explain publishing to me despite it not being his business. And it's just like it just reminded me Don't ever do that.

So know the host and if you don't know the host fake like you know the host or like you care. What Robert Greene said when I had him on the podcast is to be a great podcast guest you have to be authentic and relaxed and willing to tell stories with some self deprecating humor. He said nothing is worse than an egotistical writer who kind of shows how wonderful they are and how great their book is; they're so eager to promote it, that they come off as if they have no sense of humor. And that definitely describes the person I'm talking about.

And what's something that Alex Sanfilippo said when I interviewed him, which always stuck with me is, the best way to promote your book is to not promote your book. He said, "If an author says, Well, I'm not going to tell you about chapter five, because you have to grab the book to learn about that, nobody's interested."

They're listening to podcasts, because they trust you. And, you know, oftentimes, so podcast listeners, as you all know, are highly educated, passionate people who want to learn. And a lot of times the reason that they're listening, I don't know about you, when I find a new podcast, I look at previous episodes. And either it's the guest I'm interested in, or the topic they are talking about, which means I want to learn about that topic, which means that an author who's being interviewed about that topic is somebody I am ripe to find out about and become a fan of.

So the best way to show up, once you get booked is be a great guest: match the host's energy, when it's over, share the episode and tag the host. I've had guests do incredible things. I've received handwritten notes, I've received gifts, and you don't need to do any of that.

But do keep in mind that most podcasters are not being paid and are introducing you to their audience. So show respect for that. And finally, and I touched on this a little bit earlier, but don't worry about the number of listeners, Robert Greene said, he'll go on a podcast that has 5000 listeners. Because if you take those people who have 5000 listeners and you do 20 of them, and you do them, well, that's gonna spread books, unlike a lot of things.

Now, why do you read a book? Okay, I'm talking to myself. So I'm going to ask the question and answer the question. And the answer to the question is we read books because somebody we trust told us to, a friend recommended it, or a publication we read recommended...having the author on a podcast is the podcast host recommending it.

The reason a small show can make a move the needle more than a bigger show for the author is that massive shows grow because it's like cult of personality. The listeners can block out the guests, they might learn something, but they're not going to follow the guest. And Alex Sanfilippo said, "I've been on a few different million plus downloads shows and they've done less for me than some shows with under 100 listeners."

 

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Make Sure You're Writing the Right Book with Nicole Kalil

 

Nicole Kalil is someone who practices what she preaches.

A fugitive of the C-suite at a Fortune 100 company, she has coached hundreds of women in business and speaks around the world.

When she was gearing up to her launch her book, Validation is for Parking, she heavily invested in social media (to the tune of $9,000 a month!) She also set out to write a book debunking some of the advice doled out by male entrepreneurs. But she realized two things: one, social media didn't make her feel good. And two: she didn't want to write the book she had already started working on.

In this conversation, she talked about how she switched courses for her book topic, why she left social media when she was "at the top," how she handles the "head trash" that creeps up when you're writing and launching a book and how her book has impacted her speaking career, among many other topics.

RELATED EPISODES:  

How Authors Can Get Booked to Speak with Topher Morrison

How to Make Your Book Into a TEDx Talk with Bridget Sampson

TRANSCRIPT:

 Anna: Well, so now that we've established that we can curse, let's establish Nicole, you were so brilliant at social media. Why did you leave?

Nicole: Oh, my gosh, well, first, thank you for saying that it was brilliant, because behind the scenes, it felt like a hot mess. Um, the reasons for being on social media were really to promote the book and increase engagement. And I was, I always had this thing that I hated social media, but I thought most of why I hated it was because I wasn't good at it. Because I wasn't getting success, because I was doing all this work for like, you know, 55 likes or something like that. And so, the focused effort on increasing both the following and the book promotion, but also the engagement on social media was mostly because I wanted to test out this theory. Like is it just because I'm not good at it? Like will I love it when I start getting results? Also, I didn't want to have there be any regrets, like, I didn't want to get on the other side of my book launch and be like, oh, I wish I would have invested. I wish I would have given this everything that I got. So that's why I did it. Ultimately, why I got off of social media is because I do in fact, hate social media. I, I've tested it out, I've had success, and obviously all success is relative, you know, I don't have millions of followers. But I went from, like 3000 followers to like 40,000 followers, and that felt massive over a six-month period. And, as you already know, before we hit record, as you already said, you know, my engagement was really high. And people were commenting and liking and, and at the end of the day, I was headed in the right direction. I think my trajectory was where I wanted it to be. And I still hated it. And I still felt exhausted, and I still found myself falling into the comparison trap. And I still feel for me, the confidence doesn't live on social media. And having just written a book about confidence, especially for women, it felt inauthentic and out of integrity for me to keep being on it. So mostly a personal decision, I am by no means saying that this was a smart tactical business decision. It just, you know, I had to listen to that inner voice. And I knew, even with the success that I was having, that I wasn't enjoying it anymore. And, and that was the surest sign I could get. It's just not the right place for me.

Anna: So was it like, in my life, this would be compared to like, someone's going to rehab January 1. Were you like, okay, I'm gonna do it through the end of the year and then I'm going cold turkey? Is that how you did it?

Nicole: (Laughs) Yeah, kind of. Well, so I had hired a team. And I was paying them just under $9,000 a month. So this was no small investment on my part, and then the time part of it even. And so yeah, there was a lot of communication happening with them in the 60 days prior to the decision. And then, you know, there was about a month from when I made the decision to like, kind of tapering it off and, and tying up all the loose ends. And I had this thing, like if I start feeling like I regret it, or if I start like that, then I'll pay attention to that, but never want. So yeah, it was pretty cold turkey. I mean, I still post funny memes and stories, because they make me laugh. And, you know, I go on here or there. But yeah, it's kind of been…

Anna: Whoa, let me just have a delayed reaction to $9,000 a month.

Nicole: (Laughs) I know, isn't that nuts?

Anna: That’s insane!
Nicole: I know.

Anna: So okay. But it was it, was, how long were you doing that for?

Nicole: Seven months.

Anna: Seven months? And, and it was all because LinkedIn and Instagram were like, really your main one, yes?

Nicole: Yeah. I don't I don't actually think I'm on any other platform. If I am, it was a long time ago. And it's, you know, but um, yeah, it was just those two, the priority being LinkedIn. And Instagram was a little bit more of a plan B.

Anna: And did it quote unquote, work? Did it result in book sales? Did it get the word out in the way you wanted?

Nicole: You know, yes and no. We created a unique link that we used on social media so we could track specifically what sales were coming directly from LinkedIn or Instagram platforms. And certainly there were sales there, but they weren't by any means my biggest contributor to overall sales. Nothing replaced the word of mouth, the relationships that I build, the clients that I already have. And then equally as effective was kind of this podcast tour, being on different shows, but very specifically shows with hosts that I love and admire like you, or with, you know, that were really on brand for me. A lot of women hosts, a lot of, you know, people talking about confidence. So those were the two biggest things. I do not regret that I tested this out. I want, I want to be really clear about it. But I would love to get that 9000 a month back over seven months (laughs). And knowing what I know, today, I would have spent all my energy on, you know, those relationships, on a podcast tour, and I probably would have invested a little bit more into even paying for publications and things like that.

Anna: Well, it's interesting. I feel like you'll, you'll get this, even if the listeners will. Okay, I moved to New York, to go with me for a second 2007. And I hated it so much. I hated it, I hated it. And in 2010, when I finally decided to move back, I said to my sponsor, I realized I only did this because I thought I'd never meet a man in LA. And she said to me, if all it costs you was three years of your life and 10s of 1000s of dollars to learn to never make a decision again out of fear, I'd say you got a great deal. So if that $9,000 a month for seven months taught you you never need to spend another minute on this. Maybe you got the deal of the century.

Nicole: Oh, I feel great about it. A) the team I worked with was A+, like I learned so much from them and it did…

Anna: I would hope so!

Nicole: (Laughs) Right, right? It did work for all intents and purposes. But mostly because I now know without a shadow of a doubt, this isn't ah, you know how sometimes you want to achieve something, you want to accomplish something and then discomfort or fear or doubt gets in the way? None of that is what's going on here. I'm not not on social media, because it's uncomfortable for me here, because I'm not willing to risk or make the investment. I'm not on social media, because I tested it out to the fullest of my ability. And now I know (laughs) without a shadow of a doubt that I don't need to, need to waste, as you said, any more time or any more energy in that space. And I felt great about it.

Anna: So that's an interesting question. How can you tell if you're, you're resisting something because it makes you uncomfortable and challenges you or you really just don't like it and it's not for you? How can you tell the difference?

Nicole: Yeah, I mean, I think that's unique to each person. But if I am coming from a place of worrying how it's going to look to other people, or fear about whether or not it's going to work or not, or if I'm you know, going to fail. Or that those are usually the things where I'm up to something big, but my, what I call my head trash, that voice that's inside of our minds, that says things to us about us that are never kind, very rarely true. It's the difference between the voice that's being a bully, versus the voice that's coming from a place of love and kindness and, and knowing and listen, you know, distinguishing between the two and knowing which one to listen to. I, I just knew it was draining me. It was exhausting me. This wasn't fear, or doubt, or fear of failure or, you know, concern about what other people thought. This was everything in my being resisting it. I mean, I didn't even like go on and look at my own stuff other than what I needed to do, you know, to meet the commitments to my team. I don't know, I just knew. I think we know.

Anna: Yeah. I don't know, my, my head trash and my fear can get, they can get mixed up and confuse me and it really can be hard to tell the difference between something. It's kind of like that thing. Sorry but, frog in my throat. That thing, when you can't tell if the universe is saying don't do this, or the universe is saying you just need to try harder and you're gonna have that amazing story in 10 years about how you never gave up. You know what I mean?

Nicole: Yeah, yes. So I should rephrase what I said. I think you know when you know (laughs). Not that you just know. Because the reality is if I knew, I would have never invested $9000 a month into something like this. I would have never tested this theory out. I would have never doubled down. I think that was, it was because I did that, because I wasn't totally sure. Do I authentically hate this? Is this just not a place confidence lose for me? Is this not where I want to be spending my time or am I not good at it? Or is this where I just need to double down? Is this you know, you get in what you put out or, you know, success is on the other side of your comfort zone? All the things that we hear that are, in fact, true. But I just needed to figure out how to test it out so that I could distinguish the difference so that I would know when I know. Does that make sense?
Anna: Yeah.

Nicole: And at some point, I just know. Like it was just blatantly obvious to me.

Anna: So let's talk about that. When it comes to launching a book. I have almost never worked with someone who hasn't said I, either I don't know why, my story is not interesting. Who am I to think I should publish a book? All of the, the head trash that comes up around that. I would love any advice you have around that.

Nicole: Yeah, I um, so in my book, it's a book about confidence. And I talk about these confidence derailers. These are the things that chip away at our head trash. One of those things is overthinking. And I think that's like the cousin to head trash. It's the negative thoughts. But then it's the over thinking that happens. And we get stuck in the what ifs. And, you know, should I this or should I that or does this and like, all of those things, and perfectionism. All those things were playing a part in my journey. But ultimately, the biggest confidence builder is action. Action builds confidence. And I think a lot of times we think there needs to be, you know, big risk, huge step, you know, bold moves. And it's really one foot in front of the other towards what matters. I knew I wanted to write a book, I had all the head trash about whether or not I could or whether or not anybody would read it, or whether or not it'd be good, or whether or not I get five-star, one-star reviews or no reviews. I had all that stuff. But at the end of the day, I knew I wanted to. And so it was just one foot in front of the other. It was one conversation with an author. It was writing one outline. It was thinking about. and just always being in action towards what mattered to me is the only reason that there is a book. And a loving reminder that we get to decide what we say to ourselves. Our head trash is not something that we have zero control over. And so really practicing the exercises of reframing my own thoughts. Choosing something more productive, more empowered, and also acknowledging I'm making it all up anyway. You know? It's, it's all happening up in my mind. So as long as I'm in action, and as long as I'm doing the work to shift my thoughts. That's how we create just about anything that's scary and risky and worth doing.

Anna: Yeah, but old therapists used to say we're making it up. So why not make up good stories, right?

Nicole: Yes. Yeah.

Anna: So let's walk through. So, so how long ago did you, let's talk about your process of doing the book. How long ago did you decide you wanted to do it? And what was your, what were your steps that you took?

Nicole: Sure. So I decided I want a book, like when I, write a book when I was in my teens, so lots of overthinking lots of excuses, lots of reasons, lots of head trash. But I didn't really get serious about it until two years before the release of the book. I had spent about six months navigating the, talking to different authors, asking questions, researching, understanding the different options of publishing You helped me with that quite a bit too. You know, do I want to self-publish? Do I want to go traditional? Is there a hybrid? How does one even write a book and so it was a lot of, that is, prep action work? Not a lot of thinking but like a lot of talking and researching and learning, deciding. Then I hired a writing, writing partner. For me, I knew I needed that accountability. I needed somebody who, I needed to get pages to by certain dates. I needed somebody who knew how to create an outline of a book, and who, you know, could give me really good feedback. And so that accountability piece was really important to me. I will tell you, I, without that I would have never actually got to writing. I'll also share I started writing a completely different book than I ended up releasing.

Anna: Tell me more.

Nicole: I had, so I was going to write a book debunking some of the more masculine business theories or approaches. And, and by the way, I'm not, I advocate for women not at the expense of men. But the reality is, when I started writing the book, is 92% of business books were being written by men. So as women or really as people in the workforce, we're learning mostly about what it is to be professional, what it is to be successful, what it is to be confident from that masculine perspective. And so my initial thought was to debunk some of the more popular grit, grind, hard work, morning routine theories, and sort of balance those out a little bit. I realized it was gonna take a lot of frickin’ work to do that because I had to do a lot of research. These were ideas, but I didn't, you know, hadn't formulated all of the thoughts or the chapters. And um, my writing partner at one point was like, why aren’t you writing a book about confidence? This is what you speak about. This is what your podcast, like this is what you do. And I was like, I don't know why I'm not writing that book. Maybe the other idea is a second or a third book. But the book about confidence, frankly, half the book was already written because I do go across the country and speak on this topic. I've been learning and reading and researching and speaking about this for years. And so I had to, you know, check in with myself about is this first book, Is it easier, simpler to go with what I already know?

Anna: So how far into it were you?

Nicole: About three months.

Anna: About three months?

Nicole: We were, we had like outline and all that.

Anna: So when you say writing partner was this, how did you find this person? And was it a coach? Were you trading pages back and forth? What was the process?

Nicole: Yeah, so a friend connected me to a publisher who connected me to the writing partner. And I hired her and she was phenomenal. Her name is Peggy. And Peggy has written, I think she's ghost written several books? And she writes her own books and everything in between. I was very clear. I didn't want a ghost writer. My voice and the way I say things is so important to me. And I knew, you know, nobody's going to say things the way I say things other than me. That's, I mean, that's true for all of us. And so we did calls like every other week where she would ask me a bunch of questions. And then she would record everything I said, and then she would type out what she heard. And then I'd go in and add, delete, add some color to, you know, create the story, blah, blah, blah, then get it to her. She'd make her edits, and then we'd talk about it our next call, and then so forth and so on. I skipped the part too where we spent months figuring, well, months because we ended up changing the book in there. But on the outline and the purpose and what was the goal and all that…

Anna: I will clarify, a great ghost writer is going to sound just like you. I think that is people's fear is they say I don't want a ghost writer because it's not going to sound like me. Most, most authors came up as magazine writers at least ones in my generation where one day they were writing for Cosmo, the next for the New York Times, the next year Playboy, and it's all voice. And so a good writer can do your voice and I really look at a ghost writer as a sort of documentarian, who's, who's a tape recorder that's just making it all sound exquisite.

Nicole: I also would add, though, you, I'm assuming you pay a pretty hefty premium, at least when I looked into it, the ghost riders who I think were, you know, writing books of other or well-known people, it was in the six-figure mark.

Anna: Yeah.

Nicole: And I was like, I mean, I've already invested, I invested a ton into the creation of this book, and I only had one business goal. And trust me, it was not profitability from book sales.

Anna: Amen. Yeah, we know you're not afraid to invest, because we've already busted out with the social media. So okay, and so how smart, so many people, hi, actually get the, get the idea this is not the book I'm supposed to do but go ahead anyway. Because it's that like, what's that thing where you've already invested like, you don't want to throw good money after bad? You know, you keep, so, so you double down more. So how smart that you saw that and listened to that voice, and did it different and went a different way.

Nicole: So funny story. A quote actually came up when I was thinking about it, and I just, it will stick with me forever. Don't keep making a mistake just because you already spent a long time making it? Something along those lines. And then I was like, oh, yeah, that’s what I needed to hear right then. And yeah, it felt like a scary shift.

Anna: Yeah, I mean, it's not unlike what we were talking about before, which is how do you know when it's fear and how do you know when you need to listen? And um, and I think oh, the sunk money fallacy or whatever the, I don't know, I'm getting that thing wrong. So, so you guys, you shift directions and how long did it take you to do the book once you got going in the right direction?

Nicole: Um, from that point to locking the book was about eight or nine months.

Anna: Um, and then, and then did you, did you work with a hybrid publisher? Did you work, I don't actually know.

Nicole: Yes, I did work with a hybrid publisher. Yeah.

Anna: Because, because getting the idea, from getting the idea to two years is relatively fast, I would say.

Nicole: Well, and I think again, this shift to writing a book about confidence where, I mean, I already had half the book technically written it in my mind, in my, in my work. So that half the book was really, really easy. Chapters two through four (laughs), we went, you know, all around on, but chapters six through 10? That was easy peasy. And speed was a priority for me, not at the sacrifice of quality. But my speaker’s agency had said, in no uncertain terms, they're like, you need to write a book. It doesn't even need to be a good book, which was like a knife to the heart (laughs), for an avid reader like me. But they're like, you need to get a book out there and so speed was a little bit important. Two years felt long.

Anna: You are not, yeah but you are definitely not someone who would sacrifice quality. I really will say this, this is not like, I just, quality like oozes from you. And even just when I was on your podcast and you sent me a copy of your book, it was just so, you're just a class act. You do it, you cross every T and dot every I. It's very obvious.

Nicole: Thank you. Oh, that's so kind. That means a lot.

Anna: It’s true. I don't blow smoke. Now, now, so…

Nicole: One of the many reasons I love you (laughs). Not a big fan of… well, anyway, sorry.

Anna: So, so, I’m not, let's, we're fellow non smoke blowing fans. Now, now, okay, so your goal was not book sales thank the Lord. What was your business goal?

Nicole: So my business goal is to see an increase of speaking engagements and an increase of revenue from that particular, I guess, arm of my business. For me, the book is a calling card for, it's a business card for speaking engagements. I know if, you know, you're looking at two potential speakers, and they're all things being equal, you're always gonna choose the one with the book. I also felt like, you know, sometimes when people are looking to book speakers, that there is, is this person the right fit? Do they have the right voice? This is, it was really important to me that this is like, this is who I am and this is what you'll get. Um, so that was the one business goal. And thank God, I didn't think I was gonna make money from books (laughs) because it’s sort of depressing on that side.

Anna: Very, I, you're talking to someone who's never checked her book sales. Because I don't, I don't like to be depressed. I'd rather be happy. But what impact has it had on your speaking career?

Nicole: Yeah so, a lot of good things. I mean, completely new clients I've never worked with before. And it's hard sometimes to make the connection, right. I know, in every case, the book played a role. But I can think of one, which was a big one, I got to speak at Sales, Sales Force at the end of, the last year. And that was 100% via connection from the book. So that that was exciting.

Anna: How do you know that?

Nicole: The woman who booked me told me (laughs).

Anna: Okay, so you have the book, your speaking agent says, so how do you start using the book as a tool to get speaking engagements?

Nicole: Yeah, and I, I have not totally cracked this code yet. So if anybody has any ideas, reach out to me. But I think um, first, the social media team actually helped me with this a little bit. They were very purposeful, of connecting me to people who, you know, are event coordinators or HR, or you know, that run the logistics of like the Massachusetts conference for women or blah, blah, blah. So that rather than just randomly connecting me or, or trying to get any follower under the sun, they were strategic and purposeful about, you know, who, and then also in my messaging, we focus a lot more on me as a speaker. Or my content and a lot less on book sales or, you know, that type of thing. So they were smart there and they helped me build connections. I often send my books with little handwritten notes to people, there are lots of speaking engagements that I know about, that may already be booked, or, you know, I've just heard about them. I'll shoot my book off in the mail. You know. I am mindful of the people I know and where they work. And um, always try to be conscious of making that connection, sending them extra books, so they can pass them around, that, that type of thing. Follow through is really important. A lot of my speaking engagements come from relationships, or conversations from three years ago, and I just, when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. And I think sometimes it's a matter of timing, and it's just a matter of like, oh, this woman isn't going away (laughs). She's gonna keep reaching out. Those are just a few thoughts that jump into my head. But it's a work in progress.

Anna: If somebody listening wants to use their book in order to get speaking gigs, what would you recommend? Should they look up HR contacts at big companies? Follow these people on social media? What would you recommend?

Nicole: Yes, so I did a little bit in reverse, I built kind of the speaking side of my business and then wrote a book. And so, I will tell you probably the, the things that have had the greatest impact on building the speaking side of my business was, you know, I basically made it a point to have 10 different connection calls every single month. And so I started with the people I knew who I worked with in the past, or relationships, or previous clients, and I reached out and just said, you know, hey, I'm looking to build the speaking side of my business. And I didn't, you know, reach out to book something right there. I wasn't, I did some free things here or there. But mostly, it was just everything in my world has worked via word of mouth, and relationships and referrals. And I believe that people want to help. Not everybody will help or help in the way that you want them to. But the more people who knew what I was up to, the better it was going to be for the long-term growth of my business. And so I just did that. And, you know, when you do a good job, then you ask for an endorsement and ask if they know anybody at any other companies who, you know, do the work that they do. And it just sort of spiraled from there. Now, I also want to be clear, you know, there are people who speak on 100, 100 stages a year, that was never, that's not my goal. And that is also not my experience. I don't want to be traveling, I don't want to advocate for confidence, or for women at the expense of my daughter. That seems counterproductive. And so I do do quite a bit of virtual work, but I try to only be on the road at most, twice a month. And some months, it's six times and then some months it’s zero times, but it sort of averages out to like 25 stages a year. So you know, I don't, that's not big time but it works for me.

Anna: It’s perfect, I think. And did it, did the book raise your, allow you to raise your fees?

Nicole: I did raise my fees in conjunction with the book. But my fees up, my fees are always negotiable in my mind. So I have gotten one booking at my rate. But I got to negotiate down on other ones from a higher rate. So like I negotiated down to the rate I was asking for before, if that makes any sense.

Anna: Yeah, yeah. So and, so your, people ask me all the time, they say, can you connect me to a speaking agent? They actually want to, they think they can sort of hire an agent. And I'm like, agents are taking commission. So how does somebody get a speaking agent?

Nicole: Yeah, I have four. Yeah, four speaking agents. And I will tell you, each of them are good to book me on maybe one or two things a year. No disrespect to anybody in the speaker's agencies, but my experience is kind of like publishing. It's if you're Brené Brown, or Michelle Obama or Glennon Doyle, it's like, yeah, they're going to turn themselves inside out and it's going to, they're going to do all the work for you. But for the people like me with not a huge amount of name recognition, or you know, where people aren't calling the speaker's agencies going, hey, I want to book Nicole. Um, you know, I typically get pitched when somebody can't afford like a Mel Robbins. That's uh, you know, so oh, you don't have Mel Robbins budget? I've got somebody for you. Right? So they maybe get me one or two a year each. The vast majority of the speaking engagements I book, I book via word of mouth, via connection, or people reaching out directly to me after hearing something or other or reading the book or, or something like that. So all of that to say, I mean, unless you find somebody totally different than my experience, I don't think the answer is finding a speaker's agent. And yes, you do give at least 20% of any booking to them, which is, maybe they might be able to get you bigger fees sometimes. But that hasn’t always been my experience either. I don't know.

Anna: It's kind of like how the people who most don't need the free things, like the Kardashians, are given the free things. The people who most don't need the agents have agents work so hard for them. So…

Nicole: That’s exactly right.

Anna: Yeah. Yeah. This is fascinating though. So, so any, we'll get, we'll start wrapping up. I mean, we did so many fun little topics, but what would your advice be for somebody who is maybe in the midst of a book wants a speaking career? What would you tell them?

Nicole: Yeah, I'm gonna circle back to our earlier conversation about social media is, well, first and foremost, ask yourself and be honest with yourself, what is the experience you're looking for? What's most important to you? So you know, if the most important thing for you is book sales, then you know, I don't know if social media is the number one biggest place to invest? Certainly don't do $9,000 a month, you know. Learn from my mistake on that. Or if, you know from, what is your goal with speaking, is it to impact as many people or is it to make the most efficient and productive amount of dollars? Is it to sell something? What is it that you're looking for in all aspects? And then talk to the people who are doing it, who, not the, I mean, if you can get to the big name people, that's great. But in my experience, their advice is so far removed from what it takes from somebody like us to do and it's like, find the person who's a year ahead of you. So find the person who's a couple $100,000 ahead of you. Find the person who is a couple books ahead of you and ask their advice. That's where I've always gotten the best, most real, most effective, most relevant advice. And then take all that advice and go, what most directly connects to the experience that I'm looking for, the outcome, or what really matters, why I'm really doing this, and then start testing those things out. And I think test is a really important word. Have an idea of how much for how long? With what boundaries, you're willing to test that thing out. So you don't keep making a mistake, just because you've already spent a long time or a lot of money making it.

Anna: I love it. I love it. So if people want to find out more about you, get the book, where should they go?

Nicole: Yeah, so my website's the best place for all things at NicoleKalil.com. The book is Validation is for Parking. You can find it really anywhere. And yeah, that's the best place, best place to find me. You can go to social media, but you won't see me much there (laughs).

Anna: I know. But you'll see some amazing posts from last year.

Nicole: (Laughs) That's right.

Anna: And it, well Nicole, thank you so much. This was amazing. And thanks to…

Nicole: Oh my gosh. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

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Using Affiliates to Launch a Book with Matt McWilliams

 

Matt McWilliams is the go-to affiliate guy, which means he's very good at helping people—including Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi, Shark Tank's Kevin Harrington and Lewis Howes—get their networks on board to help them sell their products.

Now he's launched his first book, and he employed those same strategies to drive pre-sales. While his efforts didn't land him on any bestseller lists, they did help him add numerous people to his newsletter list and sell a bunch of other products.

He has numerous tips for those who want to find the right people to help them launch books, including studying how marketing-savvy authors do book launches, using Amazon for all its worth and remembering that no response just means reach out again.

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Why All Authors Need to Start Their Newsletter List NOW with Holly Darling

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TRANSCRIPT:

Anna: Morning. Well, Matt, congratulations on your book launch.

Matt: Thanks.

Anna: Let's talk about how, you know, you're the affiliate guy. How did you use affiliates and your knowledge about that in this book launch?

Matt: Yeah, I mean, that was everything. I mean, affiliates were probably 90, 95% of total sales from the book, at least in terms of pre-orders through kind of the first week sales. You know, that was, that was our strategy. So we knew early and often, so to speak, we did not have the firepower to, you know, to hit the list or, or, you know, really do anything special without our partners. And so that became a, we'll talk more about the specific strategies, that became a huge part of it. We knew going into it and even like working with a publisher in advance, you know, when, when we did the book proposal, it was like, yeah, you know, here's the strategy. It's the strategy we've used for Lewis Howes before him, his first book kind of launched him as, as a somebody, you know…

Anna: Yeah.

Matt: We had over 1000 affiliates. You know, I mean, 95% of sales were from affiliates. And he was a number two New York Times bestseller. Ah, even Brian Tracy, who'd already sold, you know, millions of books, we still tapped into affiliates. And while he sold, you know, 40 or 50,000 of his speaking book on his own, we also sold 52,000 through affiliates. You know, and so…

Anna: Do you know your book sales?

Matt: I do. Yeah, well, at least as of February 1. I don't know now. I don't, I don't, I don't even look at them anymore, because quite frankly, I know, they're not enough to hit the list, you know, week in and week out. So, I gotta be honest, I don't care. I really don’t. Another data point that I don't need,

Anna: Yeah. Listeners, to this point, anyone listening to this podcast knows that I constantly say don't check your book sales, just since you were citing book sales, I thought, oh, maybe this is one of the first guests who's going to actually talk numbers. You know, the my, you know, I don't know how much you know about me, but you know, I did six books with HarperCollins. One of them did, my Simon and Schuster book did hit the New York Times list.

Matt: Nice.

Anna: And now what I do is I help entrepreneurs publish books, and a lot of them hit Wall Street Journal and USA Today. But, as I constantly preach, it is not about book sales. It is about who reads your book. I'd rather have 100 people read my clients’ books, and have those 100 people's lives change than 10,000 who aren't going to care. Let alone 50,000!

 

Matt: Yeah, yeah, we wanted both. I mean, you know, there was a, I would say, there was a, you know, a strategic, a strategic element to us hitting the list that was important for us from a business perspective. So that certainly played a role in it. So what we did, just to give you some perspective, we actually looked at two years’ worth of the NPD data. Whatever NPD stands for, I forget. Our publisher sends us the data, I don’t even know, national publisher distributors, or something like that, I don’t know. And so we looked at two years’ worth of data. And basically what we said was, okay, our goal is to, to take the number that it takes to get to the list if we had launched in the worst possible week in the past 104 weeks. You know, in other words, what was the, what was number 10 in the, like, if we launched in the worst week, you know, the highest number that it took to hit that. And then we, of course, had a lower number. Okay, what was the average, you know, that hit the list. And then we had a few other, you know, metrics that we were looking at. And so we had that number, that was our goal all along.

Anna: Yeah.

Matt: Now, we ended up screwing something up. And now I'll just come out and say what we messed up, and it'll be a lesson for everybody. So my book launched on January 10th of 2023. On January 4th, I was in an email thread with our publisher, and, you know, she sent the early numbers. And I'm like, that doesn't look anywhere close to our numbers. You know, cause we're, we’re tracking things on our end. And I’ll walk, I'll talk you about how we're able to track them on our end and a little bit, but I'm like, that looks nowhere close to our number. And I'm like, ah what? I think I just responded with like, what question mark, question mark, question mark. That is not the number we're getting. What are, what are, you know, where's the disconnect here? And she's like, well, just a reminder, that's only hardcover sales. And I was like, okay, cool. Is there any reason why you're only reporting to me hardcover sales, and she's like, well, that's, the hardcover book sales are the only ones that count toward the list. I went, you know, I never knew that. And it was one of those things, you know Anna, where everybody assumed I knew that because we'd run seven big book launches before. We had, we had, we’ve actually run 12 book launches, had seven best sellers with our clients. Everybody assumed I knew that it was only the hardcover books that counted. It was not the audio books, and the other versions didn't count toward the list and I, I just had this sinking feeling cause we were ahead of our goal. And I mean, it was like the, your puppy just died feeling, like, oh, dear God, you know, I’m, this whole thing is just crumbling down around me. Because, and everybody said the same thing, we are so sorry, we just assumed you knew, you know, cause you had…

Anna: Well, you didn’t, but I'm sure you know this. There's separate New York Times lists for audio books, for ebooks, so, so why was your publisher not interested in those lists?

Matt: Ah, because, I mean, for Wall Street Journal, we were interested in really condensing all the sales into one format, because there, we could, we, we just didn't, again, we didn't have the firepower to hit, you know, the oddity like, we're not, I'm not Michelle Obama. Newsflash, right. You know, I'm not, a ah there's a unicorn, James Clear. You know, he's been number one for like, 108 weeks in a row. Those are the types of things that just, you know, sometimes you can't even explain somebody like James. You know, the book took off, it resonated with some people, it's in Costco and Sam's Club and, and you know, those things happen. We’d been, that was not going to happen with us. And we didn't have the, the early you know, we're not Prince Harry, right. I'm not related to anybody royal, although I am distantly related to the Archduke of Serbia, just as a fun fact there. So we didn't have that going for us. We had this was a very guerilla campaign. The only way we're going to do it was just hustle and, and, and hard work. And so we wanted to put it all of our efforts into one, well, I just didn't know.

 

Anna: Yeah.

Matt: And again, everybody assumed that I did, because I'd run those book launches. We've been on just the affiliate side. And so when we came in, it was one of those things I went back and looked. And sure enough, every one of those book launches that we had run, they were only hardcovers. But I never paid attention to that. I never asked the question, why are we only still in the hardcover? It was like, I was so focused on my lane. So it almost cost us. It ended up being one of those things where it made our jobs very, very difficult when it could have been really, really easy. Because most of those people who purchased the audio book and the other formats, they would have got the hardcover because of the bonuses that we offered for, for the pre-order, which we can talk about. So, yeah. I learned a lesson though. I learned the hard way.

Anna: And I noticed, you didn't emphasize reviews. A lot of people emphasize I want to get, you know, hundreds of reviews, that wasn't a focus for you.

Matt: We did. After the fact, you know, after, you know, once the book had launched, we did turn our attention to getting reviews. We did a pretty good job. Like we had a couple of strategies that worked really well with that. One was from a friend of mine, Kyle Jung, you know, he's like, get them to say something nice about the book when you're in a live event. So one of our bonuses was a live event, virtual event, you know. It was a half day event you could come to. We’d work through the exercises from the book, answered questions, shared some material, like some deleted material that wasn't in the book, you know, hey, a lot of you have asked about this. And actually, I had an entire 2000-word section that we had to cut, you know, out of 35,000 words from the book, you know, so here's some of that. And it allowed us, in there I was like, now, hey, guys, what do you think about the book? Tell me something good about the book. And, you know, 25 people were like, about what? And I said, hey, do me a quick favor. Here's the link, go there, you know, copy and paste what you just wrote here and leave it there. And so that…

Anna: If I could offer any advice, you know, so, so we as listeners know, always aim for over 100 reviews with the launch, because social proof makes such a difference in terms of more book sales on Amazon and 98% of sales are coming from Amazon. So, and I, and I've done a number of episodes on that. So, so the affiliate, so you focused only on pre-launch for your affiliates? And walk listeners through if they wanted to do affiliates. We've had Amber Vilhauer. I don't know if you're familiar with her, but she talks a lot about…

Matt: Amber’s the reason why this book actually did, did what it did. I’ll tell a story about her in a second. Yeah.

Anna: How does your process differ from hers?

Matt: I don't know. I don't know her process. She's actually the, the, I can tell you what we did. It's probably pretty similar. Amber and I just happen to have a casual conversation about two years ago. And I was telling her about the book. And you know, my goals for, my goals at that time were like, I just want to have a book and I don't really care. It's like, it's like a big business card. You know, that kind of thing. She was like, I was getting ready to sign with a really small publisher. And she was like, don't sign, don't sign. Why not? She's like, just don't do it. She's like, I need you to talk to my friend Kevin. She introduced me to an agent. She was like Matt, this book can be, this book can be so much bigger, please just don't sign the contract yet. She's like, just talk to Kevin first. And she's the one that sold me on the fact that this thing could be a, you know, a best seller. That it could be, we could get a major publisher and then it can be so much bigger than, than what I had in mind. So just yeah, a fun story about Amber there. She's, you know, I thank her in the book because she's the one who kind of believed in the book more than I did. In the early, early phases, and she's the reason why I ended up getting my dream publisher. You know, if you look at my bookshelf, about a quarter of the books are published by BenBella, you know, and that's who we ended up working with. So that was all Amber. You know, like, none of that would’ve happened. I would, I wouldn't even have cared about really doing a big book launch, it was it was more of a, for just the, again, the having the business card, you know, the big business card that you can give away at conferences and stuff like that. So, but I can walk you through just, you know, kind of what we've, this is what we've done for clients, this is what we did for this one, you know. It started, we already have an existing affiliate program. A lot of people don't, but so we did have some affiliates to pull from. I'm not going to focus too much on that, because I'm going to assume that somebody doesn't have that, you know. This listing, if you've already got affiliates, well duh, reach out to them first. Get them to sign up to promote the book. Then what we do is, we do, we call it the Amazon rabbit trail. So Amazon makes our job really easy. If you go and find one book, just pick one book, that is, you think compares to your book that came out in the past 18 months to two years. Amazon will then tell you all of the other books to look at, of course, and you keep going down the rabbit trails. So what we do is we thought one book that was similar to ours that had come out in the past couple of years. And we went and we found everybody that had promoted that book. So let's just say 32 people, you know, everybody that had promoted that book. And we reached out to them, whether it was a podcast interview, and I did over 165 podcast interviews now, for the book. Whether it was a podcast interview, a blog review, they promoted it on social media, they did a YouTube video for whatever, like, didn't matter. If they promoted that book, we wanted to reach out to them. Well, then Amazon says people who bought this book also bought this book. So we then went and clicked on seven of those that, and maybe four of them had come out in the past two years. The reason why that two-year frame is important is if a book came out six years ago, and somebody promoted it, they might not even be in business anymore. They might have sold it. They might be in a different niche. So that two-year window is a good balance between not being too strict and being just strict enough that there's a likelihood they're still doing the same thing with a roughly same size audience, and they're going to want to promote this book.

Anna: Right.

Matt: And so then we used a, a product, a service called Listen Notes. I'm sure most people have heard of it. That gave us like, we found a podcast and it said, you know, so and so interviewed this author a year and a half ago. We could use Listen Notes to see when was their last episode and where does their podcast rank. Those two things are important because number one, when, when was their last episode, well it was a month ago means they're not doing their podcasts anymore. We're gonna need to, don't even bother reaching out to them. You know, it's, it's old, it's gone stale. And where does their podcast rank kind of tells us where the priority is. If it's point 1% of all podcasts, like high priority, let's get on that one. Top 5% and it might not even be worth our time, you know. They're probably going to, probably have 200 listeners per episode. But we did use the strategy early on. I made sure to get on about five, seven, kind of smaller podcasts about four months out. And they released during the launch season. But we did about, I think we did, like seven actually that were, and I did them about every three days. So I could think in between. And that allowed me to kind of craft the narratives and think through, okay, what's the messaging? What are the stories I'm telling over and over again, from the book? What are the questions I'm getting asked? There were a couple questions where people were like, hey, in step nine, you share this acronym and I'm going oh, crap, I forget what's the A stand for? You know, so I was like, let me add that to my notes to make sure I put that in the, you know, in my notes for. So if somebody asks me what is, I went in, memorize the acronyms, so I didn't forget them and stuff like that. So we did that. And so we would go down that Amazon rabbit trail, and we ended up reaching out to over 6000 people who’d promoted a similar book in the past two years. We ended up getting about 450 of them to promote this book. Whether it be again, podcast, interview, video interview, email campaigns, blog post, those became the core of, of the marketing for the book.

Anna: Well, your team was extremely aggressive about getting you on this. So I know how determined they are.

Matt: Cool (laughs).

Anna: How does somebody listening, if they went and they looked at a competitor's book or a book that inspired them and wanted to do that same thing. What was your method for finding the contact information? Figuring out who promoted this book?

Matt: Yeah, so starting out with who promoted it. We used Google, that says, if you can believe it. We would narrow the search results. You can guess, you can tell Google, show me the search results. And we specifically wanted things that were published in the two months before the book launch. So we, you know, it shows you when the book launched on Amazon, like this book came out September 13, 2021. So we, we go back to August, probably August, in that case, we go back to about August 1st to maybe August 15th. We didn't want people who were talking about the book four months later, like, oh, I read this book, it was amazing. And it was just kind of a generic thing. We specifically wanted people who promoted the book launch.

Anna: Yeah, got it.

Matt: So if you were talking about the book before it came out, or really, really, ideally, it was like September 10th or, I’m sorry, is like September 5th through 23rd was like the real range that we really wanted to hone in on that example. Because these are people who are promoting the pre-launch through like the very early phases, not just, you know, a generic mention of the book. So that's specifically, we honed it into that frame. And we go to Google, okay who's promoting it, what podcast episodes came out during that period of time, who interviewed them? As far as contact information, Listen Notes was a source for podcasts. That'll give you contact information. There are a couple other services we used. I mean, the team used, I don't even remember some of them now. Clearbit Connect is one of them. It's a Gmail plug-in, where you can kind of get some stuff there. RocketReach.co, I think There’s a rocket, there's a RocketReach.io and a RocketReach.co. It's the one that finds emails, not the one that does something else. So I think it's dot co. That one was a big one. And because that one will give us their personal email address. So yeah, so that's how we found the emails.

Anna: And so, and then, then you asked friends to send newsletters. I'm assuming newsletters was a big part of it, not just podcasts?

Matt: Yeah, we had well into the, I mean, between the affiliates that we picked up and the, you know, I mean, this is a cool thing, like 70% of our sales came from people that I did not know prior to the book launch. That's the thing about a book. And I know your audience knows that Anna. It opens doors that, hey, here's my webinar, here's my course, or here's my other product, they just don't open, you know. And so, and I think that's just part of, I think it's, I was telling somebody the other day, I think it's part of our DNA, because we're brought up with books, you know, you're not taking your three-year-old to a webinar. You're not, you're not, you know, you're not having your, your three-year-old listen to a podcast episode before bedtime, right? What do you do? You read a book. So I think after, well, however, long books have been around, what 500 years now that, since the Gutenberg invented the printing press? It’s in our DNA. So there's something special about it. And so it opens those doors. And because of that, you know, I'd say about 70%, 65-70% of all sales came from people that prior to the book launch, I didn't know who the heck they were and they didn't know who the heck I was. That's the cool thing about what I'm sharing, is it worked. Like you don't have to be somebody who already had an existing affiliate program, or know a bunch of people with a bunch of friends in your niche, you know. Yeah, I had some great partners that I've had long term relationships that promoted the book and made, you know, dozens if not hundreds of sales. But so much of them came from people that, I can’t tell you how many times I showed up for the podcast, and it's like, it's the first time that we're ever speaking. And so it works.

Anna: And so, when people are listening, and they go, I don't really even know what you mean by affiliates. I'm a creative person. How do you break that down?

Matt: Very simply, it's somebody that, you know, the concept’s been around for 5000 years. It's somebody that promotes you in exchange for a financial reward. And so, from a tech standpoint, you don't have to get into all the super nerdy tech stuff. But, you know, basically, if I, you know, if you got a book Anna, and I promote it to my audience, I will have a link that tracks back to me. It sets a cookie and uses some other tracking IP address and other things that are totally just in case anybody's asking, but what about all the new anti-cookie stuff? Those are third party cookies, where you can't share data with other people. Like I can't, you can't share that I sent a click with Facebook. You know, that, that's illegal now, in most areas. This is first party data, where I'm tracking you for my own purposes, not selling it. So just to be clear on that. So we track that, and then if they buy anything, and we can talk about the funnel, because that's the, that's the ultimate ticket for the affiliates. Then it says, oh, Matt sent that and there was a $200 transaction. Let's say we agreed to a 50/50 commission. Give Matt $100. And so what we did from a, from a tax standpoint is we set up that, this is why pre-orders were so huge. We set up a pre-order campaign where there were specific pre-order bonuses. We created URLs, like, you know, the URL and they'd be like, so yours for example, as PassionsIntoProfitsBook.com forward slash Anna, you know. And so that URL, they go there, they purchased the book elsewhere. Now this was key for our objectives because we didn't want to sell the books directly, I did not want to have a warehouse full of books. I didn't even want to use Ingram or whatever, we were using Penguin Random House. So they, they dealt with all that. And we wanted a certain number of orders to go through Barnes and Noble. We know the stats about 97, 98% buy through Amazon. We wanted to get at least 5% of sales through Barnes and Noble because we wanted to get it in stores. And we did, we ended up getting it nationwide, and actually just got another order from them. So, and it's a lot, yay (laughs)! So, so we got Barnes and Noble. And part of what we did there is we had a special bonus if you purchase through Barnes and Noble. It was just a little extra, a little something, something. So you go to the URL, you go then for, to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or Target or wherever, you know, you're buying your book. You come back, you have entered information that redeems your pre-order bonuses, and then on the back end of that are offers that are relevant to the book. And about 18% of people upgraded to some additional offer. And we paid out a 50% commission on all those sales to our affiliates. And so, you know, we had affiliates that are promoting a $25 book that earn $10,000 plus in commissions.

Anna: And when you say offers, just to be clear, so you mean courses, you mean events, you mean coaching programs?

Matt: Yep. It could be anything.

Anna: It could be anything.

Matt: Ours, ours was, we had a course. So we offered substantial discounts, so that there was some urgency there. So we had a course, we had a course. Gosh, I always forget the other one. Some sort of other training, but I can't remember what it was. And then another course and then our flagship course. And that was the funnel, you know, there were three, three steps in the funnel, essentially. And we had about 18% upgraded to something. Of  those about 25% upgraded to the next thing and of those about 25% upgraded to the next thing. And that's a, there's a lot, we actually converted a little bit higher than we expected. Our average order size on the back end was over $128. We were budgeting for 90. So it was really…

Anna: That’s great. And so do you know your totals that, you know, people think oh, it's just about the money I make from book sales. Your launch, you know, so Pat Flynn famously made $111,000, you know, from his, the free course that he had, in Will It Fly which led to the paid course, do you know that number?

Matt: We’re already over 100,000 that much I know. Pre-orders, we were at about 84, 84,500, I think somewhere in that vicinity. In terms of money that we made from, that was, sorry that's net profit, though. So total sales would have been 169,000. And just under 169,000.

Anna: It’s interesting, it’s inspiration. The biggest one I've heard of is Mike Koenig’s, which was 8.5 million (laughs).

Matt: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, book launches compared to like our product launch? I mean, we've run for, like clients, we've run dozens of seven figure launches. Product launches are completely different. Book launches, the reality…

Anna: No, I mean the biggest book launch I've heard about.

Matt: He made 8.5 million from that?

Anna: From what, yeah, it's a previous podcast episode. It’s from what the…

Matt: That’s impressive.

Anna: It’s amazing. It's amazing.

Matt: And that's like immediate, in immediate sales or like long term sales?

Anna: No. So basically, the, the book led to a course, the course led to an event, and the event led to the sale. So it was…

Matt: Okay. Yeah. Because we're not even close to the end of that. I know, just in sales from the book. We, so we, we're tracking this, it's a little bit funky in our system. But so, we know, like we just had our biggest webinar ever. All right. Part of that was because 60% of the people on that webinar are people who bought the book. And we did it. We, we weren't stupid. We did it six weeks after the book launched, knowing full well that most people would be right around that step in the book, you know, so we did this training. It was, I mean, it wasn't even close. We did almost twice as much as we've ever done on a webinar. So that was awesome. And we know a lot of those came indirectly or directly from the book. What's been fascinating is, we really only have one offer in the book, and it's a $47 course. The other way is through the resources page. So we, we have tons, I mean, like 25 to 30 things that are free on the resources page. So it's in the book, you go to the URL, and then from there, there are things that you can then upgrade into from there. But yeah, I mean, just in, in webinar and after book sales, like things that you can buy that are directly from the book or the URL, there's a special URL, that's how we're tracking it, that's from the book. It's 225, 230 right now, I mean, it's gotten maybe a little bit higher, and it's like, I've been blown away because we were not budgeting. It's not that I'm an idiot. We just forgot about that. When we were doing like our planning, we weren't really thinking, oh, we're gonna sell a lot more, you know, of this course. And that means a lot more people are going to buy our, you know, we call them funnel Fridays, where we send out an email and offer a free download, and it goes into a funnel. And it just wasn't one of those things that registered and all of a sudden, it's like our normal funnel Friday brought in, it was like 3 or 400 dollars, you know, which was fine. It's like, extra money. Cool, yay. All of a sudden, they're doing over 1000 bucks. And I’m like, I remember asking, I asked our Ops Manager, I was like, is this because you redid the funnels? He's like, because I thought he had redone, he's working on them right now. Like, man, the new funnels are working, I'm like, way to go bud! He's like, I didn't release those yet (laughs). Like, well then what is, why are they suddenly over at, we've never had $1,000 Friday, you know, other than, like, when we do a big promotion. He's like, it's just the book buyers. You know, you gotta remember, this part, I did know, paying $25 for something means they are infinitely more valued than if they'd opted in for free. I mean, the level at which like, it's a $25 purchase, it's just, it's the pack of gum, it’s the equivalent of a pack of gum in a grocery store, right? But they now are so much more valuable than somebody who came in through any other offer. And we already knew that instinctively. Because if they come into our funnels, and purchase a $17 product, long term, they're worth, you know, 20, 25x of somebody who doesn't buy the $17 product. So you think 17 to 25 is a pretty good equivalent. So it's created great buyer's for us.

Anna: And I just want to walk it back for people who aren't as familiar with all of these marketing terms. So, so really, what it means is you had, you had one link or QR code in the book and you were saying it led to your resources page or it led to a $47 product or both?

Matt: We had both, we had both. So every, there are multiple mentions of the resources page in every chapter, because, you know, we’re saying go download the template here. Things that I want to include in the book, but it would have been 175,000-word manuscript. It's like, well, instead of me putting the template over the next two pages, just go here and download it. And so they go there. That's number one. And then yeah, there is a mention in it is, it's in two places in the entire book, where I reference it. I mean, we've sold, and it's a very specific URL. So we sold well over 200, I think.

Anna: And how do you do that in the paperback with a very specific URL? You have a redirect?

Matt: Yeah. Yep. It's just, I mean, the title of the book is Turn your Passions into Profits, so it was the regular URL forward slash, passion, or passions. Yeah.

Anna: And did, did your publisher have any issue, sometimes publishers have an issue with people attracting to their own newsletter list as opposed to the publishers?

Anna: No, and this is why, I'm not, I'm not endorsing my publisher, or I'm just telling you my experience. They didn't give a flying crap about that (laughs). Like, they, I could have put like dancing pink elephants in the manuscript and I think they probably would have signed off on it. I mean, they were amazing. Like they made it sound so much better. I mean, like I heard the guy who did the audiobook was my, they picked him. And as soon as I heard his voice, I'm like, they sent me a sample on it. Like, I know that voice. Oh, my gosh, that's the book. I'm listen, I'm listening to him right now. He just, he narrated a biography of Tiger Woods. And I'm like, that's the guy. This guy's Kyle Tate, this is the, like, oh my gosh, did they really pick my dream? Like, I just assumed that I’d kind of get somebody like a couple notches down. Like, this is a guy, he does like 50 books a year! And I was listening to him do it, and I'm going, man, this sounds so polished, almost too polished. It's not me, you know, it's like, bordering on the edge of too good. And so that's them. You know, that's the publisher being amazing. But as far as like whether or not I wanted to put some URLs or, you know, snide references and you know, sarcastic comments in there, they let me do whatever I wanted to, thankfully. So there's, there's a little sarcasm in there.

Anna: If, as we get, as we wrap up, what would be your advice to somebody who doesn't know this whole marketing world, but would love to add people to their list and would love to make money beyond book sales? And, and has potentially people they could use as affiliates? What would be your advice?

Matt: I would do three things. And this is exactly what we did. Because again, what we did was independent, that 30% came from the fact that I have experience. The 70% came, was not. So you know, maybe you will just miss the best seller list then, I don't know, or maybe you could still hit it if you start early enough. Number one, I would follow as many book launches over the next, you know, let's say you're gonna, let’s say you're planning on a launch in 15 months from now. For the next two months, I would sign up for at least 15 book launches. I would sign up in a few different niches. I might even buy books that you don't even plan on reading, just to go through and see what it's like, take, take a picture, a screenshot of their landing page. If you look at my landing page for my book, and what the landing page looked like for our client who launched about a year before Mark Miller, they're almost exactly the same, just different colors. Why? Because it worked. It converted really well. Why would I reinvent that? Where did the landing page design for Mark Miller came from? It came from when we did Lewis Howes. So where did Lewis House came from? It came from when did Jeff Goins. Where did that come from? It came because we copied it from some other people that we saw, you know. So study book launches, buy a couple things in their funnel. And that's your budget, like just set aside $1,000 for buying books and going through funnels, like there's no other way around it, you have to do that, number one. Screenshots, record all the emails they send, go to, go, go to their page and try to exit and see if they have an exit pop up. Like we had an exit pop up for a sample chapter. Not only did we end up selling over 300 books from people who downloaded the sample chapter, we added 2000 people to my email list for nothing, you know, it was just extra stuff. So that's number one, just become a student of book launches, and funnels and things like that. Number two, identify that one book. And if you want to identify three, that's fine. And go to Amazon, start creating the spreadsheet, what's the old saying, dig your well before you're thirsty? Start creating the spreadsheet of potential promotional partners and podcasts a year and a half in advance, a year in advance and make that list before you even start reaching out to them. And then thirdly, you got to, like, follow up, follow up, follow up. You mentioned my team was persistent. It's because we have a rule, like, no is not an acceptable, no’s just are, no response is not an acceptable answer. No we’ll accept to some extent. You know, like, if you're like, this book is not a good fit for me, I will never promote it. Cool, we're good. You know, don't, no need to follow up. But no response is not an acceptable answer. We will follow up and follow up and follow up and follow up. And so we usually follow up 12 to 15 times with our prospective affiliates. One little tip there, follow up on about an eight to ten day schedule, not a seven day schedule. So you hit people in different days, you know, and try different times of day and, you know, send an email over the weekend, sometimes. Try sending one at four o'clock in the morning, because you don't know maybe they're in Europe, four o'clock in the morning  where I'm at is probably tea time in Europe. I don't know how Europeans operate. I'm just kidding.

Anna: That is genius, this is genius.

Matt: Follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up. So again, but it goes back to that first thing, like you have to become a student of that. Because if you don't have a good landing page, and you don't have a good funnel, you're not gonna get good affiliates. So it's, I mean, I hate to say it's like, it's just busting your butt. I mean, I, I personally, my team did 70% of the work and I still probably spent 400 hours on this. It's, I don't know, if somebody out there saying this is easy, then I don't know what they're smoking because it's not easy. Is it worth it down the road? Yeah. Has it been? I'll be honest, so far. Probably not worth it.

Anna: But it's your legacy. It’s your lifetime.

Matt: But I’m getting close. It is. And also, from a purely financial standpoint, I think we're only about 30 days away from me going, you know what, I'm glad we did that. So yeah, it's like [inaudible] asked me like this exact question: why in the heck did you write this book? Like what a, you have things to do that bring in substantially more money? And I was like, yes, it's the legacy thing. But also, I know, I have faith that this is going to pay off in the end, and I think we're close. But yeah, it's hard, hard work. And it's a lot of hustle.

Anna: Okay. And one final question about that. So you say sign up for people's book launches? What if they go who, what? Do you, should they look at marketers who are going to be especially skilled at that?

Matt: I would do both, I would do all over the place. Um, you know, I think marketers, yeah, you know, and then you're also hopefully, if you're interested in marketing, you learn something from their book. Here's what I would do, I would go to Amazon. Again, Amazon makes it so easy for us, it’s stupid. Just look at books coming up. It says the, the, what is it, new releases or coming soon or whatever. It's also a great way to find people for your podcast by the way, just a little side note. Because I've had many guests on my podcast I had no business having. And it's because they had a book coming out. Authors do irrational things as evidenced by the fact I've done 160 or 170, podcasts, you know. Admittedly about 50 of them I probably could have skipped. But here's the thing, you go there and you look for the, then you go Google that. You go Google that book to find the book website. So this is the website that they're promoting on their podcast, or that they're telling people to go to. You might have to even go down a little bit because it might be on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, you know, in 17 other places before you get down to their book website. You find their book website, and you go through it. If that fails, go to their, just their homepage. They're probably featuring the book somewhere relatively close to their top of their homepage or somewhere like that, and go through that way. So you can find people who've got a book coming out and then start following them. And I'll even do little things like, I wouldn't do it now. But I did it, you know, back in the day when we were getting ready for this. I was like, we go subscribe to their podcast. And I found a couple of people I just want to hear how are they talking about the book? What are they doing on their podcast to promote the book? I signed up for their email list before I bought the books, I would, this is another little tip. I signed up for their email list using a different email address than I purchased the book with. Because I wanted to see how they promoted the book to non-buyers, not just the emails I got after I bought the book, because those are going to be different. And we created a big, but just a gigantic swipe file. There's one email in particular, I remember that we, for all intents and purposes, to be honest, we stole 70% of that email. I mean, the theme of that email, if you look at them side by side with the email that we sent, that our copywriter wrote, are almost identical. Very different story because it's my story, not their story. But the theme and everything is almost exactly the same. And it came because I did exactly what I said. So make sure you sign up with a different email address. So you don't just get the thanks for buying my book, here's your bonuses emails. And then all their regular emails you get the, I noticed you haven't bought my book yet. That was when we got on the, it was the last day of the pre-order bonuses that we stole. I would never have gotten that had I not signed up under a different email address.

Anna: Fascinating. Well, if people want to find out more about you, your, are your bonuses still live even though you're not in the launch?

 

Matt: They are, but only and this is only, I gotta find the URL here for you. I think I sent it earlier. So PassionsIntoProfitsBook.com forward slash Anna. So A N N A. If you go to that, that, that URL still has some awesome bonuses for your listeners Anna.

Anna: Right.

Matt: And so make sure to go to that one because if you just go to the store and, you know, or buy it at Barnes and Noble, that's great. Then go back there and, and redeem that there because you'll get those bonuses. So that's the best place, check out the book and then you know, MattMcWilliams.com for all your affiliate marketing needs and wants.

Anna: Well, thank you so much, Matt, and thanks you guys for listening. I will see you next week.

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The Business Transforming Book with Tamar Hermes & Carla Moreno

 

Tamar Hermes is a real estate investor with more than 20 years' experience and the CEO of Wealth Building Concierge. Carla Moreno is a serial entrepreneur, realtor and real estate investor who has more than a decade of experience buying and selling family and luxury real estate.

The two have something in common in addition to real estate: they were both published by Legacy Launch Pad. Also, Tamar is Carla's coach! In this episode, we talked about what Tamar's book, The Millionairess Mentality, has done for her business a year later (including how she signed the baker who created the launch day cake we sent her as a client) and how Carla is going to use her just-launched book, Finding the Gold, as her platform for the rest of her career.

Listen in for their best tips on making the most of a book and what they say are the must-do's for the launch.

RELATED EPISODES:  

Mike Koenigs on Why You Need to Have a Product Embedded in Your Book

What a Book Can Do For an Entrepreneur with Rich Goldstein

TRANSCRIPT:

Anna: Yes, we're recording. Hi, guys.

Tamar: Hello, hello.

Carla: Hello Anna. Hi Tamar.

Anna: So this is a very special episode because I've never really done it like this before. But we've got, I've got two of my favorite clients whose books we've done, who work together. One of whom her book came out over a year ago, and I would say her life has transformed as a result to the point that she always talks about wanting to do a second book. And one whose book just came out, and we're going to talk about what's happened so far and what can happen as a result of the book. I'm going to let you guys talk now. So okay, so Carla, how are you feeling in the month, it's the, after your launch? How are you feeling about putting your story out there?

Carla: I feel like super excited. Saturday was a launch party. It was a small, intimate, maybe like 50 people. And I, I just felt so amazing, because a lot of people came, came to me saying that they wanted to write a book. And just seeing that it's possible to, to just make that determination and go ahead and follow the steps, follow through, was an inspiration for them to actually start taking action to write their book. So that was very powerful.

Anna: And I love that too, cause Tamar was your inspiration.

Carla: Tamar was the one that put all my ideas into actionable items to make this a goal. Because when I talked to Tamar, at first, I told her, well, I'm thinking about writing a book, but I'm not sure where to start. And Tamar had all the steps from A to Z. And she's like, well, what's stopping you from, from doing it right now? This is all you need to know. And, I would, I don't think I would have written a book that quickly if it wasn't because of Tamar and her inspiration, and her guidance through the process.

Tamar: Okay, I'm complete. I'm just gonna go now. I just, I love what you said, Carla, that you inspired so many people, because there's so many layers to the inspiration of writing the book. For me, it was the same thing where I felt like I had certain knowledge, I had a story I wanted to share, and getting it out there and being a year in, and listening to women call me and write me and tell me that they read my book. And that they were inspired, that they bought properties because they learned how to do it. And they felt safer because of what I shared is, is really a game changer in life. I mean, this is what we want, we want to be, we want to be in the world and, and helping each other in creating and inspiring, and a book does that so beautifully.

Carla: Yeah, I agree.

Anna: So okay, so Tamar, if you had to say, what is the biggest change in your life or in people's perception of you since you published the book?

 

Tamar: So I wrote down some notes, but from my heart…

Anna: Yes.

Tamar: The, the biggest thing has to do with the, the level of, of expertise that people now see me. So once you have a book it, it legitimizes what you feel, what you think, what you share. When you write it down, and people can read it or listen to it on an audio, they, they are taking in you at a whole other level. The other thing that I love, that ties into this too, Anna, you always talk about, what is it 83% of people want to write books and only 3% do.

Anna: Yeah, I think it’s 81% want to, but close enough.

Tamar: The, the beautiful thing about it is that once you are crossed the finish line, wow, look at what you've done. So not only have you done something that you really wanted to do, but then you also shared yourself so magnificently with the world. And then you're being acknowledged, and, and opportunities come, and clients come and, and there's, there's an opportunity now I'm looking at doing a TED Talk. There's all kinds of things that happen once you have a book. You're at a different level of, of notoriety.

Anna: Yeah, yeah. So Carla, have you seen any of that yet? Or is it too soon?

Carla: Well, it's not yet too soon. Well, for example, for the party, I just reached out to the city, to the Mayor of the City of Buren. And he was there, he bought a bunch of books and he posted it all over social media, how inspired it was to see Latina entrepreneur inspiring other Latinas. And I'm already starting to see that recognition, people reaching out through social media. And it just feels amazing because I think the most difficult part of writing a book is making the decision to actually do it. Because once you do, once you decide, it's like the entire universe conspires, puts you in front of the right people like Tamar, like you, Anna, to make it, to make it happen. So I know that wonderful things are coming soon.

Anna: Well, they are. And here's what it was occurring to me too about, about both of you is doing a book brings up so much fear that people don't acknowledge and it's like, one of my biggest problems is that people don't see it. I see it. And then it makes them do all sorts of things. Usually not move forward with their book at all. Sometimes it's, they obsess over every comma. And, and I would say with that…

Tamar: I did that, remember?

Anna: Oh, I remember. But see, Carla, I will say from the very beginning, we took our time with it. I know you said it happened really quickly. But what I really liked about you, as you were like, let's take this over a year. That was actually for us a very long time to work on a project. And I would say things as I was reading it going, this is really good. And you write back and go, really? Like you didn't know it, you were acknowledging that like, to me it was so obvious. And, and then and Tamar, because we're friends you admitted when you know, we were sort of like, we need to hear back from you on this and this. And you said to me, you were like, maybe I'm not yet responding so quickly, because I'm scared. Do you remember you said that to me?

Tamar: Yeah, I did.

Anna: And so what would you tell people who, who, I mean, I think the main thing is be aware of the fact that it's going to trigger your fear. And most of us have defense mechanisms that don't allow us to acknowledge that.

Tamar: Yeah, I think that the most important thing is, even though we're talking about all the wins of writing the book, I think at the end of the day, the biggest reason to write the book is for yourself.

Anna: Yeah.

Tamar: So when you let, when you, you have the fear. And then you also have the part of you that really has this in your heart, that wants to leave something for your kids. That wants to leave something for other people. That wants to be an expression in the world through a book. And if you focus on that, and you know that that is the goal, then it's a lot easier when the fear comes up to say, hey, I know why I'm doing this. I have a bigger why than my fear. Because…

Anna: Yes.

Tamar: Let's face it, I mean, fear is just, it just sucks the life out of you. And there's just, at a certain point, we know that all of our successes are going to come as we conquer each chapter that we're afraid of, no pun intended.

Anna: Yes. What about you, Carla, in terms of fear around it?

Carla: Oh, I was terrified. I wasn't ready to sign the final form. I couldn't sleep for a few days. In particular, because I, I expose very vulnerable aspects of my life, of my family, my dad, and, and it was difficult. In fact, I had to have the conversation with my dad. And I told him, Dad I know you're excited about me writing the book, but I just have to tell you that there are chapters that you're not going to enjoy. But then I also explained that the reason why I did it was to also inspire people that are going through challenges. And to keep, but to keep going because there is some light at the end of the tunnel. We just have to keep on going and, and be afraid and do it anyway.

Anna: Yeah, absolutely. And was his, what was his response, when he read the parts? Was it not as bad as you thought?

Carla: Oh, he hasn't read it because he doesn't speak English. So he's waiting for the Spanish version. So there's still some fear inside me. I have to be honest.

Anna: You can still change some stuff… [inaudible] differently. No, I'm kidding. But you know what's interesting about that, and I don't know if you've, okay, so my very first client is this guy named Darren Prince who basically, I have a business because he insisted that we write and publish his book. He's a sports agent. His book is about his addiction and recovery. This has nothing to do with sports agenting. And he told me, it transformed his business because every negotiation turned into a conversation between friends. Because they knew these incredibly personal things about him. So I don't know if you've experienced that, or if, you know, fear around, exposing that stuff. We just think we're going to be judged and it's always the opposite. People love us more for it. Have you…

Carla: Yeah, because…

Tamar: Absolutely. 100 percent.

Anna: So Okay, Tamar you go first. How?

Tamar: Well, I was gonna say that I feel that the vulnerability is what makes us relatable. It makes us human. Because we're all afraid to fail. We're afraid to look stupid, we're afraid to have mud on our face. And the truth is, we all have a version of that. And so when we're willing to expose ourselves and say, hey, I had the same thing, then you don't feel so alone. It also inspires a lot of people when they read my book, and when they read Carla's book, to invest in real estate, because they see, hey, you know, this Latina lady did it. She didn't have any money. And she figured it out. I can do this. This child of a Holocaust survivor did it…

Anna: Yeah.

Tamar: And can figure it out. So I just, I just think that it's, it's also I think, our calling, our yearning to be vulnerable. I think we want people to see us, we want to connect, we don't want to live a life alone and fearful. So I think that that's another opportunity that the book gives us.

Anna: Mm hmm. Absolutely. What about you Carla, do you have anything to add to that?

Carla: I agree 100% with Tamar. A lot, what, what I've heard is that some people have told me, wow, I didn't know that you went through so many difficult things. Because from the outside, it looks like everything is easy. And it's success after success. And that things just, they would appear to just come easily. And the reality is that we struggle like everybody else. It's just a matter of getting that armor, right? And that mindset to say, okay, I'm going through difficult things. I am going to conquer it. I will find a way. And I could see that that inspired and empowered a lot of people because, especially on Saturday, they were like, oh my God, you are, you are so relatable. You're not that different from me. And before reading the book, it seemed like you were just luckier or had everything work for you. And no, you've gone through challenges. So, so I think like Tamar said, it's important to be vulnerable, and to show everyone that we're human, and we all made, make mistakes. And it's not a matter of how many times we fall down. It's a matter of how many times we get back up.

Anna: I’m so sorry. My cat is very drawn to you ladies.

Tamar: We are always welcome to bring Bernie along for the ride. We like Bernie.

Anna: Do you know that Tamar stayed with me and Bernie would wait outside the bathroom door for her total obsession with Tamar. So I'm sure that's, that's why.

Tamar: and I was sort of mean to Bernie because I locked him out of my room.

Anna: Typical man. That's why he fell for you. It’s, so one of my favorite sort of client stories is when we were getting our cake ready to send Tamar. Carla, we sent you cookies and…

Carla: Thank you so much. I love them. I was so busy during those days trying to plan everything. I'm like, I keep forgetting I actually have a video that I'm ready to post.

Anna: Oh, you have to because we obsessed over what's the best thing you can send somebody that would make you know, it just feel like their, you know, coming out party. And so we were doing cakes. And then we thought, well the cake gets eaten. If we send it in a cookie package, then they can use that forever. Tamar, I'm so sorry but…

Tamar: The cake worked out. The cake has a great ending to the story, though.

Anna: What happened? What happened with the cake, Tamar?

Tamar: I had a beautiful cake delivered to my home in Austin. And it said The Millionaire's Mentality, it looked exactly like my book. It was amazing. And a, a couple days later, the owner of the cake company called me and hired me. So right there, it was a great, it was a great success story. And, and I also wanted to share another aspect that I think is important with, with books and with, with getting it done. So a lot of people think, I don't want to spend the money because I don't know if I'm gonna get an ROI on this, return on investment. And so they don't want to pay money for books. And part of the way that you get it done is by hiring a company like Legacy Launch Pad to help you execute on, on whatever level it is. And so I just wanted to say that, you know, as you're going through it, and you know, Carla also, she, you know, invested in herself in, in getting the book done. And that, one it got me to that, it got both of us to the finish line. And the other thing was that the, the return on investment has been exponential and it really is a gift that keeps giving. So I think it's worth, definitely worth the investment to, to work with professionals that know what they're doing. Because a lot of times those things can stop us, especially when we're afraid and we think, oh it's too complicated. There's too many moving parts. I can't get through it. If you have a team in place that can help you, coach you along and help you get it done, it boy, does it, it basically is the difference between doing it and not doing it.

Anna: Yeah, there's like a quick thing. I don't know, I can't remember if I've talked about this on this podcast before. But I was at an event. And I met this guy who was like, exited his company for multi-millions. And he was very proud of the fact that he had hired a very inexpensive book publisher to do his book. And he showed me. And it, online, it looks terrible. More importantly, he has the same name as like a serial killer, literally. And his Google presence was so not good. That literally, it would say his name and show a picture of the killer. It wasn't a serial killer. It was like a terrible person. I blocked out what the person did. And had he used a real company, his Google presence overnight would have been known as an author. But instead it's literally known as like a murderer or something terrible, simply because he wanted to, like, save the money and do it that way. It just killed me. And I said, you shouldn't have done it. And he goes, oh, no, I paid all this money to try to get this, my name not associated with this guy's and I’m like, all you actually had to do was do a book and then have a press release go out, and have it go to 6000 outlets, and it would have changed overnight. Okay, but Carla, did you want to add anything to like, you know, I like this idea of it being an investment in yourself, the same way people do personal development or masterminds?

Carla: It is, it is and it pays off to work with someone that knows what they're doing. I have a few friends that are authors as well, they've written a few books, and they all want their, your contact now, because they were impressed on the quality of the print, of the book, of the cover, of the design, of everything.

Anna: This is not meant to be a commercial, listeners. There are other companies like ours that, you know, frankly, cost less, and, and some of them are good. And then there are places that cost a lot more, but it's really about what your, what your intention is, what your why is. And I think it's wonderful to help people. But I always say, if you just want to help people go volunteer, because it's a lot easier and less expensive than doing a book. So you can absolutely help people and have a great ROI for yourself. They are not mutually exclusive. Right?

Tamar: Yes. 100%. 100%. And you can, you can Venmo us both. We gave you our link, right?

Anna: Yeah, for the referral fees (laughs). So okay, so and I also wanted to talk about what, so Tamar became a Cover Girl. Let's talk about that. And how that had to do with the book.

Tamar: Yeah, so I spent some, I spent again, investing in myself in some PR when the book came out. And one of the opportunities that was pursued was Austin Women's Magazine. And they called me and asked me to do a cover story. And it was a five-page spread on me. I got, I mean, even if I didn't get any clients from it, just those photos were spectacular. And the way that they styled me and the story that they shared about me. And they never would have seen me in the same way if I wasn't a published author. I think it definitely elevated the, the resume and had them really feel that I was someone that they wanted to represent on the cover of the magazine. So that was a huge win for me.

Anna: I love it. I love it. And so Carla what, so the idea, so you are going to, you have a coaching program, tell us about the business plan, the ROI, getting the money back times 100.

Carla: I have a coaching program. I, initially I was going to charge a lot less but now that I'm a published author and that (laughs) and I have the confidence of sharing that knowledge, and knowing that, that all the knowledge that we have has so much value, more than what I wanted to charge initially. So now I'm increasing the price. I already have people that believe that it’s a super fair price to pay even if it's three times more than when I initially had intended to. And I can see just from, from that coaching program and from people knowing that I'm already a published author that it's, that my opinion has value. I'm already seeing that ROI and that aspect.

Anna: I love it. Now what is your, and this is not like don't, it's not working with us. What is the smartest thing you did? Like, what was the, was it the launch squad? Was it the party? Like, what was the best, what would be your advice for, for somebody who might be doing it on their own? Like, what can you, what do you need to do? What was the most successful aspect of your launch? 

Carla: I think, to not reinvent the wheel, to follow experts’ advice and to do everything. Because I don't think it's only one of the things that I'm more, that has worked best because everything really worked. It's the social media. It's the definitely the book launch squad.

Anna: Yeah.

Carla: Already having those reviews, the party as well, gives so much more exposure. So I think doing everything, not, not just picking and choosing, but you guys gave us recommendations. You're experts, you already know what works. And I did everything.

Anna: Yeah. And you're the first book that we're publishing in another language, which is kind of exciting for us.

Carla: Oh, fun!

Anna: And so you wanted to do that. Because from the very beginning, you were like, this is, this is for everyone. We talk a little bit about your decision to want to do both.

Carla: Yes. Yes, well, because I was born and raised. I'm a Latina, and most of my family only speak Spanish. I think the, the message is powerful. And it's important to write it in Spanish, because I don't know that many inspirational books in, that are written in Spanish that I could relate to. I mean, of course, there's the, the big ones, right, The 5 AM Club, etc. But, I really wanted to also do a service to my Latino community. So I'm excited about that.

Anna: I love it. So Tamar, what was the most useful thing, like what, what's a can't miss on your launch? For people?

Tamar: I would say, definitely doing the, the what you call the launch squad, but anybody can do it. It's basically before your book is released, get some friends to review it on Amazon, and start building up the review so that you don't look like that person that has like two reviews. Because it kind of says like, why do I want to read this book. So you want to have at least 100 reviews on there, so that you feel like you're, like people might take notice that don't know about you. The second thing is to just really be proactive about sharing the book. I tried it wherever I go, I try to bring a couple books with me. And I give them out. And I just spread the love because I want other people, women, is because that's who I wrote the book for, to read the book. And so for me a, having the books with me, making sure that I'm actively sharing it, putting it wherever anyone will let, allow me. Doing some businesses, they sponsor books for the month, and when you sign up with them, they'll share the book that would, that's another way. And I just, I just think that you can't, you can't share it enough and, and give it out enough.

Anna: Have you left it in random places? Like a Starbucks [inaudible]?

Tamar: I haven’t left it in random places. But boy, that's kind of a cool idea. Maybe I will do that. That might be fun. Maybe I'll just go put some in Whole Foods and sign them…

Anna: Exactly, where your clients are. I left a water bottle for Launch Pad in a fancy Vegas gym. And I was like, oh, I need to go get that. And I'm like, maybe I don't, maybe it’s better if someone finds it. But wait, I have a question. What did you just say about businesses sponsoring your book, what’s that?

Tamar: Oh, so I had for example, I had a friend that owns a company that does self-directed IRAs. And, and so she sets those, she sets those plans up. So when every month she has a different book that she shares with clients. And when they sign up, she gave them a copy of my book and included it with the welcome package. So things like that. I have a friend that has a title company, and she also got some books and then shared them with her clients and sent them out.

Anna: That's really smart. So anyone who has, you know, because Tamar’s book is about real estate, it makes sense for that. But everybody's got some sort of an industry where if you're doing a how-to book, it can teach people how to do something. And it'll make them look good to know an author that they can send it out. Well, okay, so as we, as we wrap up, what, is there anything I didn't ask you guys that you want to add about doing a book, launching a book? Tamar’s looking at her notes.

Tamar: I'm looking at my notes just to make sure I didn't leave anything out.

Anna: Anything?

Tamar: Well, on my notes, I mean, my, my main thing is, is really, if you have, if you have it in your heart to write a book, if you feel that you have a message, if you feel you have a story you want to share, if you feel like you want to leave it for your children, or for friends, or for the world. It's going to live beyond you and that is a really cool concept. It's just like having like, it's, it's so, it's not like having a kid. I mean, having kids is much better. But I mean, you know, but you know, your kids live beyond you like a book lives beyond you. It's a, it's a legacy. And, and that is pretty prolific for me. So I think that if you have that in your heart, then just, I would say that that's the most important thing to just get off, get off the, the, the fear seat and just get going on it and do it.

Anna: I love it. Carla, what about you?

Carla: It's a great way to transcend, like Tamar said, and that's where the courage comes from, from being afraid and, and, and still doing it because the fear is going to be there, right, to expose your ideas, to expose yourself, to be vulnerable. But when you tap into a bigger why, when it's no longer about just you, but inspiring and helping other people. That can take you forward with that courage and moving along.

Anna: I love it. So if people want to find you guys, where should they go online?

Carla: My website CarlaMoreno.com.

Anna: I love it.

Tamar: And you can get my book at TamarBook.com.

Anna: Love it. Well, thanks you guys. Thank you lovely ladies, and thanks you all listeners for listening. I'll see you next week. 

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The Introvert's Guide to a Successful Book Launch with Ryan Paugh

 

Does the word "networking for your book launch" make you want to curl up in a small ball and rock back and forth?

This week's guest will assuage your anxieties...or at least get you to uncurl.

Ryan Paugh isn't just a thought leader, but also a community-building, relationship-forging, entrepreneur-enabling force to be reckoned with. And he's a self-proclaimed introvert!

The co-author of the book Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships That Matter, Ryan shares in this episode how any author, introvert or extrovert, can use basic skills for connection in order to have a successful book launch.

RELATED EPISODES:  

How to Launch a Book by Giving First with Kay Allison

The Debut of Launch Pad with Dave Chesson

TRANSCRIPT: 

Anna: Welcome to the show, Ryan. Thanks for being here.

Ryan: Yeah, thank you.

Anna: So, let's talk about super connecting your way to a successful book launch. First of all, what is a super connector?

Ryan: Superconnector in my mind, as well as my co-author Scott's, is a phrase that's meant to describe someone who knows how to navigate very fluidly the new world of relationship building, not networking. People that have probably most likely grown up in this digital age of communication, know how to leverage that in a world full of uncertainty and a lot of hucksters and folks just selling air. They're individuals that put others first and have learned that by connecting the dots between individuals and resources, you can really build a long term, successful and profitable network around yourself by of course, first and foremost, giving back and supporting others.

Anna: So how does that play into a book launch? How did it play into a book launch for you?

Ryan: Yeah, for me, and for Scott. I mean, really, we had been building up a lot of social currency for a while to bring some really great folks into the fold. Keith Ferrazzi wrote our foreword, which we were super grateful with him for doing. Adam Grant was one of the main individuals we interviewed for the book. Other folks like Steve Sims, Barbara Corcoran, gave us an amazing soundbite and an amazing promotion for the book.

Anna: Endorsement.

Ryan: An endorsement, thank you. Yeah, to really help us get that out there and show the social proof and show the connectivity we had with others in the space that would help us build some credibility. And really, that didn't come out of thin air, it was in cold calling and cold emailing. It was a lot of calculated connections and relationships that we had been fostering for many years, giving back and just leading with generosity that led to, you know, a lot of really exciting yeses when we asked for help for our own book launch.

Anna: So, what does that look like? Did you say, we really, I really want to know, Barbara Corcoran? I really want to know, Adam Grant. And then what did you do next?

Ryan: You know, really, it's a combination of things. And it's not always about that person. One of the things that we talk about in the book Superconnector, is that oftentimes getting in touch with individuals, at corporations or individuals within major brands. It's not about just reaching out to them, it's about identifying and finding the people around them, who help them make the decisions that help them, basically run their lives and run their empire. So for some of these folks, it wasn't so much just, you know, reaching out to them directly, but getting to know the people around them, supporting them, and helping them out that eventually led to enough generosity being built up where we could make that connection and have enough credibility and trust that those folks were more interested in us and helping us kind of get connected to those people that they support. So that more times than not, is how it was done, not just reaching out directly, but reaching out through someone else that we had built trust with.

Anna: So how do you find those people?

Ryan: You know, it's not always easy. Some of it just comes through serendipity and natural collision, putting yourself out there and making time in your life to build those connections. Some of its more scientific than that. Knowing how to research and find the people around the people, whether that's through LinkedIn or reading about them. You know, there's no one size fits all approach. But if you know how to navigate the digital world and find information over time, you'll be able to follow some threads back to how people are connected.

Anna: Well, and it reminds me, I'm making a note of this. In the episode on Tim Ferriss, I talked about how he went to South by Southwest. It's like a legendary anecdote about how he made his first book so successful is he looked at the biggest people in the room and he said, who's standing next to them? That's the person I want to know. So this is like the digital version of that.

Ryan: For sure. And sometimes it happens in person too. I don't want to kind of mislead people into thinking super connections all about navigating, the social media era. In person connections, in real life connections matter now, more than ever, we just went through a couple of years of being in solitude. People want to get back out there, but they want to get back out there in different ways, and we're seeing a lot of individuals kind of shy away from the conference and look for more intimate ways to connect with people. I mean, for years at South by I've been going to South by and not going to the convention center, go to you find those little like oases around the conference center where people are going to disconnect and recharge in between panels and conferences. That's where you meet those people. Not kind of shuffling your way through a crowded happy hour or a crowded conference space.

Anna: Yeah, I went last year and never stepped foot into anything official. But, and which reminds me Fast Company is doing something there, which you and I know each other through Fast Company. So when I stop recording, I'm going to ask you about that.

Ryan: Yeah, for sure.

Anna: But, so you are a self-proclaimed introvert. Correct?

Ryan: Yep, I am.

Anna: So I know that a lot of people who listen say, well, I'm a writer, I'm an introvert, I can't really do this. What do you say to them?

Ryan: I think that introverts are more set up for success at building real genuine relationships in some ways, compared to extroverts. And the reason why is introverts don't have the built in needs to sort of like, run the conversation and run the show, are more natural listeners. And part of connecting the dots and being a superconnector really requires you to like kind of take a step back and listen to other people and listen to what they're saying. And to not just listen, but to read in between the lines, to understand what their needs are. So, for me, being an introvert has always been a superpower. It helps me understand people better, it helps me listen and really understand what they're saying and helps me start to play that game of connect the dots to determine how I can help them with either a connection to a person or a connection to a resource that I think will help them level up and achieve their goals.

Anna: That's fascinating. And I'm sure music to people's ears, although don't ever use a cliche like that in your writing people, please, please, please. It's okay sometimes when you're talking. Never okay, in your writing. So thinking of writing, tell me about the process of working with your co-author. How did that work?

Ryan: Yeah. Well, what's really challenging, having a co-author, I imagine just at a baseline, is tough. Having, you know, a co-author who is sort of like, polar opposite, is even more challenging. I'm your textbook, introvert, Scott Gerber, my business partner as well, is like textbook extrovert. In business that really suits us well, because we've spent years, knowing our strengths, knowing our weaknesses, and being able to divide and conquer in our business. When you're working on something, so creative, and so close to yourself, like a book, a lot of times you kind of end up in a room, in this think tank. And you realize you have totally different ways of thinking around how you build relationships, how you how you connect with others. And it made it very difficult to kind of figure out how to balance all of those ideas. And I think one of the things we say early on in the book, which I think is important is, like there is no one size fits all approach to doing this, like there is no blueprint, unfortunately, our book is meant to not be prescriptive, but to just inspire you to find your own way of building relationships and building community around yourself both personally and professionally. So, once I came to terms with that, it became easier to work with one another and to find that balance between, this is Scott talking, and this is Ryan talking. And I hope in the book that comes through. I've talked to a few friends and asked them that question. And they say, oh, yeah, I can tell, this chapter is totally Scott, this chapter is totally Ryan. And we had some great editors working with us to help us do that. I would say on our own, it would have been really challenging. So, I'm grateful to have the editors that we did, who are able to basically take this puzzle of ideas and insights and package it in a way that makes sense. Without them, it would have been really difficult.

Anna: Did you write together, or you wrote individually?

Ryan: We did a lot of writing individually. We did a lot of meetings where we came together with our editors to figure out how to piece that all together and give it like a common voice while also being respectful of our individual ideas and our individual tone as people. So, it was like some sort of locking myself in a room being creative doing my introvert thing. Because I'm not great at kind of just spouting out ideas on the fly, Scott could just kind of talk and I would write for him. And for me, it's like, I really like to have my space to get ideas generated, and then meet and talk about how we blend all of those things together. So there were a lot of moving parts, a lot of meeting a lot of together time, a lot of private time, about six months’ worth of all of that kind of coming together to form the first draft, which we edited, and then edited it again, and slowly got to a place where we were ready to say, alright, publisher, do your part, let's get this ready and put it out there.

Anna: And so, what was your goal with the book?

Ryan: Our goal was really to take the last 10 years of what we had been doing with our business, Community.co, and sharing those lessons with our followers, people around our sphere. Community building has always been something that's like, near and dear to me. It's been the center of everything I've done in my career, since the beginning. Beyond just wanting to share all of that information with our world, I think being able to create Superconnector was a great way for us to take our brand and kind of centralize it around this idea of community and relationship building. We started 10 years ago as one community, YEC, stands for Young Entrepreneur Council. It was kind of like, our baby, and we realized, through that process of building that community that everything we had built both products, technology, and philosophy around bringing people together could be applied to other executive and senior leadership groups. And that's how we started working with brands like Forbes and brands, like Fast Company and Rolling Stone to build their own communities. So as we kind of expanded, we needed that umbrella to have like some cash and have some recognition. Superconnector was kind of, in some ways, a marketing strategy to help us build that Community.co brand and build some kind of recognition in the marketplace.

Anna: What were the tangible results from doing that? Did it accomplish that?

Ryan: Yeah, yeah. It was a great way for us to put ourselves out there to thought leaders. We did a lot of podcasts, we did a lot of more traditional press, and earned media and got a lot of good attention, not just for the book but for Community.co, and our process and our story and what we believe in our values as a company. So yeah, we sold a lot of books, which was great. We put something together that we had been dreaming about putting together for a long time and we also were able to kind of centralize like what we were doing around this new brand that has helped us ever since kind of create some notoriety in the market, so when we go out and look for new partners and opportunities, they know who we are.

Anna: And I think it's really interesting, when you talked about doing podcasts. Podcasts don't really tend to want to have people on to talk about their businesses, but if you've got a book, that is a wonderful way to also talk about your business.

Ryan: Yeah, for sure. And podcasts, I mean, at least when we launched the book, far more effective way of building some book sales than traditional press. I mean getting featured by a mainstream media outlet for your book is a good way to build some social proof. Not a great way to sell books. People who have influence and have followings, such as yourself, are more inclined to have influence over what other people want to buy and where they want to invest time and money. So, we spent a lot of time doing that. Email newsletters, things like that have a lot more just tangible results than the traditional earned media publicity angle.

Anna: Were there specific podcasts that really moved the needle in terms of book sales?

Ryan: I found that there wasn't just one big one, but a lot of little ones right. Micro-influencers that you can find and easily connect with within whatever your niche might be, that will help drive success. I hate to put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, I think that you can do a lot with a larger group of micro-influencers than perhaps trying to invest all your time into getting the attention of one, like massive influencer, who may or may not end up following through.

Anna: How would you recommend people find those in their field, in their genre?

Ryan: Oh, gosh. Spend time on social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, looking for them. Join podcasting groups and communities. I mean, there's probably like, just dozens of free groups on Facebook or LinkedIn, where podcasters are chatting every day. And people are always generous and happy to give recommendations. Use your existing networks. I think one of the things that worked to our advantage is that Scott, and I build associations and put a lot of our personal time into supporting those associations. And we're also a part of associations outside of the ones that we run. So just calling on your people to support you in these moments is always important. I mean, we asked all of our groups hey, like, who do you know, who would be interested in having us on for an interview? And we got so many great connections, and so many doors opened. Because, again, we had spent so much time building up the generosity within those communities that when it was time for us to make an ask, I mean, people were ready and willing to help, and we really appreciated that.

Anna: And so when it comes to how your book is your calling card today, you said a lot of people that you want to work with and started working with know who you are, is that something where you literally are sending copies of your book? What are the practical steps people can take with their book?

Ryan: Yeah, I mean, look, sending copies is always a great way to start. Making sure that you build that into your budget. I mean, I always, whenever someone sends me a copy of a book, I always try to at least post about it on my social platforms. Show everyone me holding that physical book, I think it creates a sense of like, tangibility that hey, this is something real that Ryan's holding versus, kind of digital copies that I can read and come up with some anecdotes about to share. I like that sort of physical presence. I've seen some authors do some really cool stuff recently with their books. A friend of mine, Brittany Hodak just wrote a book and sent me like an entire care package along with the book. There was like a video inside the front cover.

Anna: Oh yeah, I love those.

Ryan: And it blew my mind. Like, it's just how do you not want to help someone celebrate something like that? By the way, Brittany just sent me a Valentine's Day card, like the other day thanking me for all the help I gave her on promotions. That personal touch matters so much these days. It's hard to scale some of this stuff, but try to find a good balance between automation and systems with like, maintaining that that personal touch that really helps you build relationships. Yeah, there's a lot of really cool stuff, and really cool packaging opportunities out there now to help you stand out.

Anna: Yeah, it's ironic, it was sort of direct mail really fell by the wayside, as we became the email generation. And now it feels like it's really back. And anybody who I just connected, somebody just connected me with somebody on Alibaba, who does those exact videos that you can put in an—

Ryan: Yeah, they’re really cool.

Anna: They're so cool. You don't know what I'm talking about? I'll try to put a picture of it in the show notes.

Ryan: I mean, they're not expensive, either. I mean in the grand scheme of things, like it seemed pretty cheap to put that together. I think a lot of people get scared away from some of these marketing tactics, because they think, oh my god, it's going to cost me an arm and a leg like, no, there are cheap things you can do, that aren't going to cost you that much more than sending a physical copy of your book, that really, like create that wow factor for people.

Anna: I think it's true. And I really would say the theme of what we're talking about is that the most effective marketing things you can do are actually free. It's giving of yourself for a long time. And then so you're not sort of busting out with oh, my book is here, will you do this for me? But you actually have people who want to help you. Because it sort of is that Robert Cialdini, that's the whole concept of you give and people want to give back.

Ryan: Yeah, no. It's important that you don't keep that part to the last minute. I mean, you should be building up trust and support and generosity with your community for years leading up to a big launch, whether it's a company launch, a book launch, whatever. It's not something that you can just rush out the door overnight. Like, the people that do this right, are doing it for a long period of time. And it's just something that's part of their daily ritual, habitual generosity. How do you kind of like sprinkle that into your day to day, so that over time, you're building up these dividends to support yourself by making time to support others?

Anna: Yeah, and I mean it literally, you could even put in your calendar, 20 minutes a day, what can I do? Maybe that's doing an iTunes review, maybe that's sharing posts, maybe that's sending an email to someone you don't know, telling them how much such and such has helped.

Ryan: Simple gestures like that mean the world to the people on the other side.

Anna: Yeah.

Ryan: It's such little time away from our daily schedule, that they're worth it, just to find that that small win that you can give to someone else.

Anna: And it makes you feel good.

Ryan: That too.

Anna: It really does.

Ryan: Yeah.

Anna: So, what else? Any parting wisdom for somebody kind of gearing up for their launch? Maybe their first launch, maybe a second launch, if the first didn’t go well?

Ryan: Yeah, I would say, just in any launch, book, products, whatever, like, share your ideas on the upfront with as many people as possible. I give this advice a lot. But it still holds true. Like, most people won't share enough about what they're working on because they're scared that someone else is going to steal that idea or whatever. No one can execute on like, that precise idea and the way that you can. The worst thing that's going to happen is nothing. Best thing that's going to happen is you're going to find people that want to collaborate, work with you, partner with you, or just kind of like, be your your cheer squad along the way. I think that is the most important part. Everyone has good ideas, whether they know it or not, it's whether or not they decide to put them out there. And right now, like in the world that we live in, with the amount of free tools and abilities to connect with others that are available to us at the tip of our fingers, there's so much opportunity to get that stuff out there and to connect with people in just a genuine way. Show some vulnerability and share, and you'll be amazed at just what kind of domino effect that can create.

Anna: Yeah, there's this great quote, I can't remember who it's from, but you don't have to worry about people stealing your ideas. If they're any good, you're going to have to ram them down people's throats.

Ryan: It's true. It's true.

Anna: Most of us have more ideas than we know what to do with and we're not out to steal yours, I promise. Well, Ryan, thank you so much. If people want to find you, find the book, where's the best place for them to go?

Ryan: Oh, I'm super easy to find. You just google Ryan Paugh or find me on Twitter or find me on LinkedIn. I am always happy to connect and geek out with people around community and building relationships. It's what I love to do, especially geeking out on other people's community building strategies and things like that. It's fun to kind of step away from your own stuff for a minute and look at what someone else is doing. So yeah, I’m easy to find. Pick up a copy of the book if you're interested, www.superconnectorbook.com. Check out Community.co, if you're interested in learning about some of our professional associations and the work we do. I'd say that's about it, and I appreciate you having me on and thanks to everyone for listening.

Anna: Thank you, Ryan, and thank you all for listening. I'll see you next week, talk to you next week. You know what I mean.

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Get Over Yourself and Pay for Media with Jay Jay

 

Jay Jay is tired of people thinking they just deserve media attention.

A former magician who now helps personal brands become seen as the number one in their industry, he's also tired of publicists overpromising and underdelivering.

And he has good reason to be tired of it: Jay is excellent at guaranteeing people media attention—in publications like Forbes, LA Weekly and Ocean Drive, and even Maxim, WWD and Us Weekly.

In this episode, he broke down why media attention matters, how it should be used and how authors seeking PR need to stop focusing on the wrong things.

RELATED EPISODES:  

Talking About Your Book on TV and Podcasts with Media Coach Susan Harrow

Cameron Herold on Generating Free PR and Creating a Vivid Vision for Your Book

TRANSCRIPT:

 

Anna: Jay, thank you so much for being here.

Jay: Yeah, we'll have firstly happy Presidents Day. I woke up this morning. And I was like, there's an energy today. It's different than the guy says in the, in the condo is like, it's Presidents Day. I'm like, yeah, I need a break from this guy anyway, so it's all good.

Anna: I will say that when you don't have kids, things like Presidents Day is just like, you decide to go to the bank, and it's closed. And you're like, what? I didn't know, what!

Jay: Actually it's great because the office is super quiet. And it's like, I'm such an energy guy. I know everybody says that. But my life has been energy for the last 34 years on this planet. So it's calm today, like my phone’s not blowing up. It’s like, I'm calm, nice. Nice feeling for a Monday.

Anna: So you were just saying something that I found so fascinating. And I don't know, if you, like my background is, I come from traditional media. I come from the world where if you came up to me, and you said, we can pay $10,000 to get this story placed there, I should have like, tried to push you off a bridge. And I have woken up. Well, I woke up to a couple of things. I basically stopped being a broke journalist, and became a successful entrepreneur. Because I, I, I just realized it was all such lies anyway. But you know what, let me stop talking and you tell me what you were saying before.

Jay: Well, you know, just to come back to the, to like the backstory, I was a broke entertainer for most of my life. So I was a famous magician, who was very well known all over the world, but I was broke. I was super talented. I was really charismatic. I had the best equipment. I had the best show reel, the best website, but something wasn't working. And I think part of that pain and problem that I had was my ego. I felt that I'm really good and people should just know me. And people should just give me opportunities. And obviously, I would see other people who weren't as talented or good-looking or as well spoken, get all these opportunities. And I'm like, why them and not me? And that took me a long time to get out of, I call it fairy land or Disneyland, of like, the reality is, the reality of like making it in whatever your expertise you're in, you have to use money. And you have to use things that we're not told, because we want to believe that we're just great. And we're a princess, and everybody should just give it to us. And now that I'm heavily involved, just like you in the media, I mean I run a personal branding agency, we have a PR firm. I've seen the darkness of, and the darkness and the brutality of this world. And it's very, the illusion gets broken very quickly for you. If you wanted me to tell you of like, how did people, things get done? It isn't because they were good. Or they deserved it. And that's what I'm going to say. The Hollywood is not what you think it is. And a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs in this digital space, don't want to know the truth. And they're in trouble because they don't, they allow the ego to take over.

 

Anna: Well, interesting. What do you mean, they don't want to know the truth?

Jay: Because it hurts too much.

Anna: What's, so what’s true?

Jay: The truth, the reality, the reality of actually, how to actually take themselves and their expertise and their brand to the next level.

Anna: Right.

Jay: And they're, they're like, in my opinion, they're like two kind of truths, is the reality of like, maybe they aren't as good as they say they are, right? That like not it, not that great, or their marketing isn't that good. Or they haven't allowed to just go by I have to do things that I didn't think I have to do. And I have to just go and do it. But they sit sometimes in this highchair of life, of like, well, I made it in the 90s. Like that's not how it works anymore. I made it in the 2015, 2019. Yeah, it's 2023 now.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: So I think a lot of people, it's really, it's hard to and as I said, I'm such an energetic person, and I sometimes wish I was more of a Leo, right? Because I could be like that, but I'm so empathetic. I'm like I feel it, and I was like I gotta tell you something, you're not gonna like this. Like that, that ain't how it works anymore.

Anna: Well, it’s interesting, because when I first, you know, I came from media. I worked at People and Us Weekly and Premiere and Playboy and all those places and it was all quote, you know, earned media. However, there was this pure company, it still exists, PMK. It’s like where all the biggest celebrities are. If you got PMK, it didn't matter how random you were. If you were willing to pay PMK 50 grand a month, they could get you anywhere. Now somehow that is considered completely honorable. However, if you were going to just directly pay that publication $50,000 to put you on the cover that is, quote, immoral. And that is where I started to hit my head against the wall. Because it's just the honest version of what's been happening this entire time. Correct?

Jay: It's the smokescreen. It's the magic. It's the, it's the illusion. That is what I came from. It's what you want the world to see. But in the reality, there's another side of it. But no one wants to, no one wants to tell the truth because the truth is not sexy. You want to be like, hey, I deserved it. They were giving it to me. No, you got three people on firms on retainers, that you pay five figures a month to, they’re doing something and you just get given it, now you feel why deserve that. No, they probably did things because they wanted to get paid the next month. But conversations like I have no ego because I came from entertainment. So like, you can't tell me something now for me like, oh my gosh, I'm hurt. It’s more, okay, my biggest thing is like, do you know deep down do you deserve it? Like if we can get you to the table, as they call it, can you close? Can you deliver, right? Like if you're a musician, if you're a speaker and I get you on a TEDx stage, however, we get you there, you better like close it off because your character and your content and your talent. You can't buy that.

Anna: Right, right.

Jay: So that's, that's how I like to, to frame it up now. Like, who cares on, why do we care on how we get there?

Anna: Right.

Jay: Like, if you ask me like, okay, like, let me ask you this, like, what's your favorite food?

Anna: Chicken.

Jay: Chicken? Okay, what's your favorite restaurant?

Anna: Oh, so hard to say? Quick, why am I drawing a blank?

Jay: Okay, like, well give me give or give me a place that you'd like, oh, my gosh, that was one of the best meals around the world or in America that you've been to.

Anna: There, I, okay, you know what, I'm terrible at this game. Like don't do, give me another thing, not restaurants because this always happens when people…

Jay: So, just think like, think of a really amazing meal. Right?

Anna: Right.

Jay: Okay, when you have that meal, and they bring it to you and it's amazing, do you say hey, was the chef black or is he Mexican? You don't say stupid stuff like that. You don't care because you're paying for the outcome of the dish.

Anna: Right.

Jay: You don't care whether they put the potatoes in the water for three minutes, or a minute and a half? And you, you don't need to know because that's the magic of the outcome. You don't go to the chef, hey what's the exact ingredient? Hey, that's his trick. Yeah, I think the reason I'm playing this game with you is because a lot of times it's like, why do we care? Like, it's because it's, it's about this feeling of like, oh, like you worked hard for it. I'm like, I got the outcome. Now, how we got there, it's whatever you think is right, like who decides what's right and what's wrong.

Anna: So let's describe what we're talking about. I'll have said in the intro, but basically, we're talking about guaranteed media placement. And we're talking about rather than going and pitching a publication, actually exchanging money in order to get somebody coverage in a publication or on a TV show, right? Is that, is that how you would phrase it too or differently?

Jay: Yeah, well just to give a context. So like, I pay PR firms, five figures a month before I paid, I paid other people to do certain jobs. And I'm like, well, if I can pay this firm to do it, or I can pay someone else, and they can guarantee it, or they can have really strong deliverables. I don't care who gets me there. I need this for a specific reason. And I'm going to use this currency of money because that's the best way to get something. Better than a high five, or a favor, or I owe you. IOUs never work in PR by the way. People will say, I’ll owe you one. No, we're not doing IOUs not from his client point of view, Anna, but like I have other journalists like, hey, can you help me get them into here and I owe you one. I'm like, nah, I don't want to do that because it's never fair. Like, you have a great contact at something that I can't, it's like, okay, so the context of what we were speaking about is people have problems of paying for media where they want to feel like they deserve from an organic point of view. But at the end of the day, you're, the reason you're doing this is to get more clients, more cash flow, more exposure, no one cares, hey, did they pay for that article? Or are they in the article like, they just think that they see you with the credibility. Now, obviously if it says sponsored, and all this stuff, that's different problems. So that's kind of the context we're talking about. And now I run this agency, helping people get to the next level of their personal brand, right? Doctor, lawyer, plastic surgeon, author, whatever. They want to be more known. And we have tools to help them get there. And they've been so hurt by other firms that over promise, under deliver, don't hit deliverables. I’m like, now you can pay money to have the deliverables. And let's work backwards. And let's come up from like a holistic approach. Like if we get you there, okay, what else can we do to like enhance the media, enhance the leverage of the, of the publication?

Anna: So what are some publications that you can get people in? I know there's a million. Tell me the biggest ones.

Jay: Yeah. So that we had a, we have a great relationship with Forbes.com. Right, we have a great relationship with Forbes. Forbes has, here's a little fun, little insider info: They, Forbes, I will just say it. So Forbes Monaco lost their license recently. And that was a big call, Forbes Monaco. Like, Monaco is Monaco. And the reason why is because people were getting in these, this is the, this is the dark side of the sometimes paying to get to the front of the queue, is because not everyone deserves to be in the front of the queue. And sometimes when it comes to money [inaudible], here's money for a certain transaction, just because you can, doesn't mean they deserve it. Working, we're getting in these publications, and it was tarnishing the brand of Forbes and they realize this and like, that's it, you lose your license. Because obviously people are getting into these, these articles when they shouldn't be. So we've got some right relationships with some, with some high-end contributors and publishers, and at the end of the day, whether I know them and whether I've spent five grand on lunches over the last year with them. Or, and then they do me a favor, or I give them a gift, or I pay them money. Like it's just they're doing me a favor, and I'm using something to help them do that. So yeah, I don't want to go around too much about this. But it's like, it's just I think, to the, to the outcome that everybody's listening is what will, let's get you to the goal faster like, Anna you said this to me on our call, like you said, Jay I like your speed. Like, I want to get there as fast as possible. Because I know there's going to be another whole bridge to get across, faster get to that bridge, we get into the next bridge. And I think now Anna, when it comes to like online, its attention is a huge problem, right? Like everyone's like got a million things going on. So how fast can I get to the goal? And what are you willing to do to get there? And how much money are you willing to pay? And that's what it comes down to. And I don't allow to buy into the ego of like, well, this, that doesn't matter. No one cares. No one cares.

Anna: So if Forbes Monaco lost their license for paid media placement, how is that different, that, I think I'm confused? They lost their license because the wrong people were paying to be in there?

Jay: Yeah, well, I think it was a bit of both. I don't think it was just because people were paying because I think the, a lot of people were getting in the publication that didn't deserve to get in there. So the brand was tarnished. The, the image was tarnished a little bit.

Anna: How do, who determines whether or not that they can, if anybody can come and pay who determines who's worthy?

Jay: The, well depending on the accessibility of the contributor of you know, when you buy a license for let's say, Forbes, obviously you run it and you have the ability, probably run to the guy when it's, I don't know the guidelines, but maybe, I don't know you can have 100 writers, and those writers have to do a minimum of two contributions every month. So cool, they just do contract, but obviously all these people are getting in the article and you need volume because you need to build Forbes, you need to build the, the brand. Obviously, the head team said we don't like what we see you don't get to renew it so that and the same thing with television as well. Like television is more nastier than press in the publication world.  TVs can be can be more worse because it's, there's a lot of variables to a TV. You've got the producer, you've got the EP, then you've got the cameraman, then you've got the journalists. There's a lot of people on that field. And a lot of people can get in trouble if it's not done the right way, like you ever watch TV Anna, and you ever see something like that story doesn't make sense? Or like, something doesn't add up here. Like, why would they talk? There's, there’s plays behind the play. So, yeah.

Anna: So, if for somebody listening says, okay, I want to be in Forbes, I want to be on TV, how do I know if I'm worthy? What is that process? And also, I'd love to hear about publications, in addition to Forbes, other publications that you help people get in.

Jay: Yes. So, so look, you know, the, it's a great question. So someone comes to me well Jay, if everyone can pay, right, that ruins the whole point of like, you know, great people getting in. You're 100%, right. However, I'm the, I'm the, the gatekeeper.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: I'm the soldier. I mean, I'm the security guy. Like, here's the club, not everybody can come through. What are you wearing? And how do you look? What do you sound like? I’m the same thing, I have the accessibility to these large media outlets, TV press, podcasting influences, different books. I've got the people to help us do that. But that doesn't mean you deserve just to get in because you're using money. Money is just to get my attention and to put you to the front of the queue. That's, and then obviously, if we feel like you're a good fit, because I have to respect the relationships on everybody else. Hey, okay. That's how it works. It's just like going to Disneyland. I went to Disneyland once and like, hey, it's 97, 127 bucks, or it's 797 or something like that but you get like VIP breakfast, lunch and snacks. Plus, we take you to the front of the queue. I'm like sign me up for that. He took me right to the front of the ride. Yeah, I’m like, no way. I was like, this is what I'm talking about.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: And I had a great time. And everyone was cool. So yeah, so I think to your, to your question, that's, that's how we make sure we, we approve the people first. And then with, in regards to other publications. Yeah, we have access to all different ones from SEO publications to ones that when you google someone's name, it's going to come up on Google. So it's really great for your domain ranking. That's great for anyone listening because most people have no digital presence. They have a very, like Anna, you have a great digital presence. You put your name in, bam, TV, prep, like you, you are, that is how people should be. But most people have no articles, no good website, no good social. So that's, that's one strategy for press. Then we do some kind of like, national tier stuff. So could be something like a Chicago Journal, or it could be something where it's more like, oh, I've heard that before. And then you've got the big boys, the globals like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post. Like you've got different ones that we either have access to, or we know the right people to go at least, and pitch and they will take our email first.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: That's an upgrade vantage because you get 500 emails a day. Be like, delete, delete, delete, delete, oh, Janice, hi Janice. That's not gonna work, Janice, but come next week, like, right, you didn't know, you know what you journalists have to go through every day. I've seen it. I'm like, show me, they're like 600 unread emails. I'm like, my gosh. I'm like, how does someone get through to you? And they're like, not like this. Right?

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: You build a relationship.

Anna: And so, but, but truly, I mean, you have gotten clients on the Today Show, I think you've gotten them on Lewis Howes’ show like, right?

Jay: I hadn't I haven't personally done the Today Show. I haven’t, but my partners have. So in a way, yes. The, the magic though, or the reality, reality though? And Lewis Howes. Yes, Lewis Howes has these big people like we all, we all sort of work together and our, in our teams. The biggest thing is a lot of people think though Anna, once you get on this show, you just sit back and do nothing. And that is the biggest problem. And I think that's when most PR firms struggle, and most marketing firms struggle because they don't teach people how to leverage their results.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: Like I've seen it firsthand. I had a partner, partner, that got someone on the Today Show. They had a four-minute bit, really good spot. Nothing happened. Nothing happened from the, they got a little bit of website increase. It was good, but it could have been better. But that's not up to your control. The host wasn’t in a good mood that day, they didn’t vibe together, the cameraman didn't show the product as long as I was like, they, they didn't really give it as much, like airtime. It was a rushed piece. That lady I know spent a lot of money with a firm, right, with a firm so she didn't pay for it, with a firm, over six figures in a year. That was their big win. And she didn't get the result. Yeah, like how do you think that teels, you’re six figures in the hole, you spent 10 months on a retainer to get a win. The PR firm is happy because they got your win. You're thinking you're gonna kill it because the outcome is to sell your product. Nothing happened. This is a huge problem. This is a massive problem in, in the, so I try and like help people like, hey, we can get you these things. But what is the plan, like before, during, after to leverage it? Because one television show, one Forbes article, one influence on one podcast with Anna isn't going to cut it. It's everything. And I think a lot of people haven't been told the truth behind you.

Anna: And so what should somebody do? What should that person who had that great TV show appearance have done? She should have taken the clip and pitched it to 10 more big shows? Right?

Jay: 100%, yes. So you know, if you're working with a firm right now, or if you know that something's coming out in the next two weeks? Like, you should be thinking, okay, what can we do pre, during, and after, to maximize this exposure? The biggest one that I tell people is like, send an email blast, even if you have four emails. Doesn't matter. Like send, hey, I'm going to be on the Today Show. Hey, I'm coming out in Forbes next week, get them excited about new things coming for you. The moment it comes out, the same day, you should be throwing it on your social media. Social media, website, sending another email blast out. Then the other big thing you should be doing is taking that media and sending it to all your old prospects who said no.

Anna: Yes.

Jay: Because they'll be like, I've done this multiple times, or TV shows or go on TV show. Hey, John, check out my last TV show, when can we speak again? Yeah, let's have another conversation, boom. So the TV show that I paid 5,000 for, made me 30,000, but because I had to get it in front of the guy ready to give me the money. When most people would be like Anna, I'm on a TV show. Nothing happened. Of course it didn’t happen. How do you, it's how do you use this kind of new, new claim to fame that you have?

Anna: I mean, that's exactly what it is with a book. You can have a book that looks nice on your bookshelf, or you can have a book that transforms your life. And it's literally the difference is how you can have the book that's just sitting in your bookshelf could be a better book. But it doesn't matter if you don't go talk about it. You don't go send it to ideal prospects. If you don't go do something with it. It doesn't matter.

Jay: Anna, let me ask you this. When did the idea of people writing a book just thinking that's it? Like who gave us this idea? Like was that, is that just general marketing? Like you did a book, I'm good. Like who, who said that you can just write a book and just let it be? Who approved this?

Anna: I will say, as somebody who was around back when traditional publishing worked, and when you could make a great living from books. I was at a unique juncture. Because my first book came out in 2007. It was still possible. I was wined and dined at Michaels, I sold the movie rights for a lot of money, it was like this whole thing. And then when the recession hit, it just changed. And it became impossible for authors to make a living. And then entrepreneurs were very savvy and saw oh, you don't need to make the living from the sales. You make it from everything else. So, so I do think that there is in our society, this idea about art and commerce should not meet. There's something tacky about like, wanting to make money off of an art. You know, it's such BS.

Jay: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. I got, I got drilled when I was a magician, people like how could you teach magic tricks on my, on YouTube? That's a disgrace to the community. I said, I ain't doing this for the community. I'm doing this because people want to have a good time. Like, I'm not doing it for you. But I get it. It's people, it's we call it, we call it sell out. That's what it is, you sell out. Like, you know. Singers? Oh you sold out? You just copied people's covers? I'm like, who are you listening to? Like, and I'll tell you firsthand, too, like, I have a soft spot for artists because I was one, right. And I still am but I see, there are so many amazing artists that don't get taught how to have confidence and belief in themselves to ask for money. And that's why they're broke.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: Because they want to sit on if people think I'm good, they'll pay me what. No people won't. They don't know anything. Yeah, you have to ask for it. And, and it hurts me a lot because I see so many talented people who are broke and struggling because that no one's given them the confidence to be like, yo, speak up. Like, you can now make six figures from Instagram. I've seen it from artists, you can put a painting on Instagram and say, everybody, it’s only 1000 but I’m selling for 200. But I've got five of them. Boom. You know what to say. No sales manager, no CRM just you asking and showing good work, but they don’t even want to do that.

Anna: Well, I think it's, to me, it's less about confidence. I mean, this is the same thing. And more about just fear, discomfort. I don't want to put myself out there. It feels uncomfortable. Guess what? It feels uncomfortable for me. It may even feel uncomfortable for you, doesn't seem like it. But like, you know the point is it there isn't this like world of some people are just so comfortable putting themselves out there and others aren't. You gotta go claim your seat. And we live at this glorious time where you don't need a gatekeeper to tell you you're good enough. So go claim your seat.

Jay: Yeah, yeah, who said I always tell people who said that. I play this game with people. Like I'm shy. I'm an introvert. No one wants to hear my story. Who said that? Oh, I did. Yeah, exactly. What else you telling yourself?

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: Yeah, and you're 100% right Anna. It always comes down to one word: fear.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: It's always fear, fear of judgment, fear, fear of doubt fear of is it going to work for you? Are they gonna make fun of me? I'm like, Yeah, I'm scared all the time, too. So. So what do you want to do about it? Like I'm like, great. So you said, I think when sometimes when you break the, you just tell it how it is that you're scared? Great. Okay, what's next? Ah, well, okay, what are you gonna do about it? Because this, this girl did it. And she's not as pretty as you. And she's not as funny as you. And she's not as well off as you has. So she could do it. I try to relate that a lot. Like if she can do it, if he can do it, please.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: We live in North America. Please.

Anna: Yeah, yeah. So, so let's say somebody listening says, well, wait a minute, I want to be in Forbes, I want to be in Chicago Journal and all of these things. Can anyone reach out to you? How does that work?

Jay: Yeah. So obviously, like I'm really big on, they can obviously reach out to me that, I'm really big on finding out their why though. Like, what is their expectation of being in Forbes? Now there's the I just want to be in Forbes because I've always wanted to be in Forbes. I've always wanted to be on GMA, because I've always wanted to be on GMA. Or I want to be in People. Yeah. However, here's the reality. If we all just want that, then most of the time, it's not going to happen, because everyone wants those things. Firstly, we need to see what you've done to deserve it. Right? Secondly, okay, if you're not there yet, what is the reason why you want to be here? Oh, you want to be able to position yourself with more authority? Oh, well, that's a different conversation. Let's do that with some smaller publications. Let's do that with maybe a local TV show. Let's do that with getting you a book, like fixing your authority, like let's do that. I'm really finding the why before I, before I just give people the keys, and like, here are all the things you can buy. Like, what, why do you want to do this?

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: That's, I think that's what's been really great. You know, we've got over 100 clients in 10 countries. It's helped because I've been a global, I've had a lot of people around the world. But I think the reason we've grown really quickly is yes, we have these media outlets that most people don't have. We can guarantee some deliverables which people have never heard of, in the PR space. Like they, they hate me for saying stuff like this. I've had emails, like how could, I've had an email subjects like how could you write, like you are disgrace to the industry? I'm like, bring it I'm like, I tell people like I'm the Uber that came the, that's like what it did for taxis. You know, when taxis, when Uber came in, it completely destroyed taxis because it was faster, smarter, better. It cleaned up the problems that taxis faced, it was safer. I'm like, well done Uber. That's what I wanted to do for PR. I wanted to have deliverables. I wanted to have a holistic approach. I wanted to actually go hey, you don't need that. Like just because you want to give me 50 grand, five grand, 13,000. That's, you don't need that. You have an offer problem. So we get you in Forbes, right? You pay me five figures. But you don't even have enough customers to know what's working right now. And I think most people know that giving people the truth. That's what I do. And like you don't need it. Or like you have a lead flow problem. Or like, do you know what you do? They're like, well, I have, what I'm like, if you can't tell me what you do in a sentence like we don't need anything else until we solve that.

Anna: Yeah, yeah. That's like our, our, you know, discover your book in a sentence template. It's like, who is this for? What do they want?

Jay: Yeah.

Anna: That's the easiest way. So okay, but I'm like, looking at what you offer. It's like there are,  somebody can come along and get in LA Weekly, Flaunt, Gracia, Okay, E Online, Life & Style. I mean, it's just…

Jay: Yeah, we have a list of 100 publications. However, most people, if I said to you Anna name, it’s different cause you’re a journalist, name more than 15 publications. You can't. No one really knows more than like the classics. So it's more about, like I think there's different PR bundles, we create like a bundle together. I think you saw that as well. Like we've got like if you’re an entrepreneur. Here's like low tier, medium tier, high tier cost. Hey, that's good stuff. You just start with that.

Anna: Yeah, yeah.

Jay: TV, the same thing. We have TV shows, right? We have, we have podcasts that people can come on. So it really comes down to what is the direction that you want to go down, that you want to actually do? Because a lot of people go, hey, I want to be this, but I don't also want to do social content. Well, then we're not going to give you the social plan. Right? Or, hey, I don't want to really show up on TV. Okay, well, then we won’t wind up doing TV, we’ll do podcasts. Can you do a shot for podcasts? Yeah. So yeah.

Anna: Um, and so, God, I got distracted in you're like, this is just an amazing array of offers here. So does it say sponsored on all of these posts?

Jay: Some, some do. I prefer not to give detail but I'm very clear on like, hey, we can get you in this publication, or we can get you on this television show or get on this podcast. Or whatever strategy we use. This will say this. This is what it would look like as the outcome. And pros and cons. Here's some truth behind what I've done. A lot of the times when television shows or press, they've got it hidden, so it’s discrete. So like, for some shows that I've been on that I’ve paid for, it will say sponsored by Ace of Spades. Well, I don’t put that up on social, do I? I just cut that out.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: Right? And it doesn't matter. It's like it doesn't concern, no one, no one has gone, hey, can you send me the whole clip? Like they see you, oh, Jay’s on TV. He's the expert. He's got a [inaudible], I probably need to go to him with that panel problem. Right. Right. Right. Asked me stupid questions. And so yeah, I feel like it's just giving people the, you got to, there are some publications that do, some that don't, but most of them that we have, they, it's all real. It's supposed to help you these tools. Anna these are just tools just like a book. It's supposed to help you. It's not supposed to, like that's it. It's just supposed to enhance what you have.

Anna: Yeah, yeah. And does it provide, some of them provide links back to their website, which really can help SEO, but not all of them? I mean, it all depends, right?

Jay: Well, yeah, here's the great thing with digital PR. Obviously, you know, I still love getting a magazine. I was in Forbes and I was in like, I get to hold it. But other than that, it takes too long. Everything's Googleable now. So your name or the keywords, like you're going to find yourself Googleable, and all these, most of the publications have backlinks, you'll at least have your name in it. TV shows will always have your website link. So not only are you getting the media, like you can leverage it but also you're getting free, free, as I call it, like real estate of your name on the internet. And like why Google you Anna. Like, I'm sure that immediately I don't know how long you've been building this for. But it was everywhere. So like, it positions you in my mind? Oh, this is an expert. Like, this is someone that I need to, like, she's, she knows what she's talking about.

Anna: Yeah. And I mean, I came about accidentally because I was shocked when my first book came out. And the Today Show is like, come on and talk about addiction. And I'm like, what? So I, I'm the slowest to wake up to this. I was building this whole thing. And, like you were saying, I was completely broke. I was, I had all the media hits in the world, and nothing to do with that.

Jay: Interesting what, what, what,  well, let me ask you this, because this has been good for your audience. So you had all the attention, likability, show. What was the thing that took you from struggle to success or what is it?

Anna: I had no business!

Jay: So you had no offer?

Anna: Yeah, I thought just being on the Today Show, or Good Morning America, or in these, these publications was enough. I mean, it's almost like what you were talking about before, like the people who just, like led with their ego. I mean, it really, it's like, I thought I should be paid for just being special. Like, when I look back. That's really what I thought.

Jay: We work with so many speakers and the amount of speakers they think their message should be, they should be paid $10,000 plus.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: You know, and I know you feel that way. Get in line. Because you and a million other people have the same story.

Anna: Yeah.

Jay: Right? And they're not buying it like that. They're not buying a story, they’re buying on the outcome of what happens to the audience.

Anna: Yeah. Yeah. So that's why I'm always pushing people and they'll say, well, I just want to write a book and I'm like, that's awesome. They say I just want to help people and I'm like, do you realize that in addition to helping a whole bunch of people you may never know you helped, because they you never may meet them. you can also help yourself. And, and people can hire you to do what it is you're describing in this book. And I pushed people because I had to be pushed into it. I didn't get it either.

Jay: Oh, I had, I learned that the worst way. I learned like the worst of the worst, you know, struggling, questioning yourself, doubting yourself. Like, you know, nothing crazy. No crazy thoughts, but enough to like, really go this isn't meant for me. I had a good run, like, yeah. And all it takes is one shift, like one shift for you to go, oh, I was led to believe something completely wrong. And you know, I know so many people still haven't been told this enough or want to accept it.

Anna: Yeah. Yeah.

Jay: Many of the people that I meet that just never transition to digital properly. Like, you know, you know, when you see this stuff online, it's like, you're still trying to hold on to like the old you like, get, you need, you need to fight with this, like, you have to. Like you're losing out to someone who's not as good, not as talented, who understands how to work this baby. Yeah, they're getting seen. And you're still struggling, you know.

Anna: Well, this has been fabulous. If people want to find out more about you, where should they go?

Jay: Yeah. Ace of Spades agency, just because I was a magician, right? So aceofspacesagency.com. And look, even if you're listening to this right now, and you're like, hey, Jay, I just want to get started on something small. I know, I need to get out there. I know, I need to maybe position myself, get more authority, get more credibility, like we can help you at a very small investment, right? Or if you're like, hey, Jay, money's not a huge concern for me, but I want to plan and I'm tired of all this. I've been sold lies, I've been sold over promise, hey, we can give you very strong deliverables. And I'll tell you the truth. And at least you know that, and I know that we'll hit those deliverables, and what happens from there is how you want to, what is they call it dance with the, I call it dance with the devil. How you want to boogie, boogie, boogie with, boogie with the angel.

Anna: Love it. Well, thank you, Jay. So much. And thanks, you guys for listening.

Jay: Absolutely.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

 

 

22 Words That Will Get You Speaking Gigs (with Joel Weldon)

 

Joel Weldon is the first guest I've ever had who wrote the introduction to the podcast episode for me.

He's also the first to have a timer on so he could make sure we didn't go over 30 minutes.

You get it, the guy's a pro.

And it makes sense. He's a Hall of Fame speaker who's been speaking for over four decades and is a true legend in the speaking industry—having been paid to speak at over 3,000 events and personally coached over 10,000 speakers. 

In this episode, we talked about how to why you need to research your audience ahead of time, how to make your speech about them and the 22 words you need to know if you want speaking gigs. 

(Know you want to work with him? You can go ahead and book here.)

RELATED EPISODES:  

How Authors Can Get Booked to Speak with Topher Morrison

How to Make Your Book Into a TEDx Talk with Bridget Sampson 

TRANSCRIPT:

Anna: Well, as you know, you're here because this podcast meets your needs as writers, entrepreneurs and business owners. And you also know how important it is for you to communicate effectively. Warren Buffett, considered the greatest investor that ever lived, made this bold statement, you can improve your value by 50% by learning public speaking, and communication skills. And I'm here to tell you, that's true. And that's why I invited Joel Weldon to be our guest today. So for over 40 years, he's been a Hall of Fame professional speaker and speaking skills coach, having been paid to speak at over 3,000 events. And he has personally coached over 10,000 speakers, including yours truly. He has a very different approach on how to be an even better speaker, which you'll pick up on in this interview. And I can tell you that it works. He trained me when I was lucky enough to speak at the Genius Network annual event, alongside such luminaries as Tony Robbins. And Joel was so patient and worked with me and not only on my delivery and content, but he also gave me this fabulous idea, which was to hold up a sign, which I never would have thought of. So, without further ado, welcome, Joel.

Joel: Well, thank you, Anna.

Anna: That was a brilliant introduction and listeners, because you know, I believe in full disclosure, I will tell you, the Joel wrote that, ah, was that good. It's another thing he does. So hello, and welcome, and thank you for being here. It's an honor to have you on the show.

Joel: Well, it truly is to and as you're listening as an author, you’re here, because you get something out of Anna's show, you get something that you can turn around and put into action. And that's all that counts, you know. Ideas are worthless unless you use them. So this discussion as you read is going to really be about how you can take your book, and use that to get more speaking engagements, how you can get paid to speak, and then more importantly, how to speak even more effectively. You can get speaking engagements, and not do a very good job, it's not going to get you anywhere. You and I have both seen people at Genius get their start by giving a 10-minute talk.

Anna: Joel, personally, coaches, every single person, I go to tell you at Genius Network, I've never seen a bad talk there. Ever.

Joel: Well, I don't coach ever, I coach all the 10-minute talks, and many of the guest speakers, but we have some guest speakers that don't really want to be coached. And it's not so much coaching, it's just helping them understand their audience, which is the first thing that you need to think of. If you're using speaking to grow your business, or to promote your book or to spread the wisdom that you have, you need to make sure that that message is relevant to the people you're talking to. So if there's one piece of advice that will help you be even better, as a speaker, it's know who your audience is.

Anna: Know that I mean, let's say, you know, oh, I'm speaking at a corporation, or I'm speaking at a college because it makes sense to try to get more information from the person who booked you about what sort of executives or what sort of college students?

Joel: Absolutely, yes, because just think about it. Right now, we're going to talk about how to tune up a car engine. But you have a car, don't you?

Anna: I do.

Joel: Is that why you're on this podcast to learn about how to maintain your car? No. So unless you know who your audience is, you just get to give what you think it's important. And that's the biggest mistake I think people make, especially even professional speakers. They begin with something like this. I'm so excited to be here. This is my favorite subject, so here's a little suggestion, no one cares. No one cares about you. Unless what you know and what you have, can benefit them. Would you agree with that? You don't care anything about Joel Weldon. You might care about Anna, but you don't care about me. Unless does this guy know something that I can use, so I can get more effective in front of a group. I can figure out a way to get paid to speak, I can get more speaking engagements. If that's important to you, then you you're in the right place. But if you want to learn how to tune your car go somewhere else. That's not this.

Anna: And it's very relevant. It's the same problem people have with books. And I had for six books, I didn't know that there was an audience for it. Turns out, there wasn't, or I couldn't find them. So if you're lucky enough to be, you know, in front of an audience, yes, know who they are. Again, it's a mistake that I've made in the past. So, you find out by asking the person who booked them. I remember when you helped me, Joel, we actually worked in references to specific people that were in the room. Is that something you recommend always?

Joel: Oh, yes, absolutely. That's one of the powerful ways you can make it more relevant is using people in the group. And I just happened to have, I was talking to somebody, this is a meeting I did, called the RelaDyne National Sales Meeting. These are the names of the people I had worked in to my presentation. And normally, it would be between 20 and 35 people sitting in the seats that I would work in. So as an example, if I was somebody you'll know, imagine just we're talking about how to take the message that's within you and share it with others. Now, one way is to write a book. As an example, Anna David, you have written six books, you help other people write books, you know how important that is. So if I mentioned that in a group, how do you think the group responds? Well, he knows what Anna does. Maybe he knows what we all do, and maybe these ideas then are relevant. But when you hear a canned talk, the first thought that goes through a person's mind is, well, maybe this worked for the last group that person talked to, but it doesn't apply to me. So let me give you a suggestion how to open any message. Three words, if you use this, anytime you gave a presentation, whether there's three people around a coffee table, or 30 people in a small meeting room, or 300 people, and you're on a stage. If you use these three words, you're here because. You're here because you're a writer, you have a book, or you're a business owner, or an entrepreneur. That's how the introduction that I wrote for Anna to read, started. But if you just began that, you're here because you're part of the University of XYZ, and you're in the graduate program, in the business school. And one of the things that you enrolled in this program for, is so you can have a successful career in the business world. Now, if you just began with something like that. So you mentioned about signs, I think signs are important. I have a little sign here. I don't know if you can see it. It's a little small. But it's a giant sign if you're listening to this on audio, and it says, you, if you would just begin your opening of any presentation about your audience, and their name is you. But what do most people say, I'm so excited to be here. Anna, I've been looking forward to doing this interview. Oh, I'm just so pleased I can get to talk about speaking. It's my favorite subject. No one cares.

Anna: Yeah.

Joel: Make it about them. And you're here because it's three words that you can't go wrong opening a message with.

Anna: Do you think everybody should have one of those “you” signs?

Joel: Well, I think they should have it in their head, yes. And so here's a good assignment. As you're listening. Look at the last email you wrote to somebody you do business with. Maybe it's a supplier, maybe it's your editor, maybe it's somebody who got one of your books, or maybe somebody that's hired you to speak. Look at the first two paragraphs, take a pen and circle how many times you said “I” and how many times you said “you.” Now I could be, I, my, you is you, your, or you’re. The chances are, you've got more Is than anything else. That's why “I” is the most frequently used word in the English language. How about writing a book? What do most authors begin with? They talk about themselves. I don't think anyone cares. Unless, what you know and what you're going to share is a benefit to them. So that's rule number one, about speaking, is making it about them. And I remember that talk that you gave about addiction. That's what you began with. You talked about them, that you might have experienced some addiction, or, you know somebody in your life that has.

Anna: And I remember you teaching me to literally, it's possible to turn around an “I” sentence. You may think, well, I got to get this information out because it's about me. And you taught me the, have you ever? You know, and so then have you ever, whatever it was, and then there, you've got the audience engaged, and then you can talk about yourself. I think that's what you taught me?

Joel: Yes, that's one way. The other way is you can just put them in your stories. So people love to tell their personal story. Well, let me give you some advice and your story. No one cares. No one cares why you're doing what you're doing. No one cares why you wrote the book. Unless that can be helpful to them. So, let's just make up something. So I'm going to be an author speaking. I'm just so proud of this book. It took me so many years to first get committed to writing it, and then the years of struggle to write it. But I just wanted to get this message out about pursuing your passion. That's what the book is about is pursuing your passion, and being able to monetize that, when you really get good at doing that. Okay, so what if instead, you started like this, just imagine that you had something burning inside of you. An idea, but you wanted to share that idea with others, and you didn't know how to do it, then you meet somebody, and they tell you one of the best ways to do it is to write a book. But that's exactly what happened to me three years ago, when I met Anna David. So just imagine you've got this burning desire, and you meet somebody like Anna and she tells you that there's a certain process to writing a book. And you soak in every word that she tells you because she's done a lot of this. But then you reach a roadblock, and maybe you just can't figure out what to do next. That's exactly what happened to me six weeks after I got started. And maybe what I did would be helpful for you.

Anna: I love it.

Joel: Alright, so that's what I call putting your audience in the story or just saying something like this if it's an “I” story. So there I was struggling I didn't know what to do. I was experiencing writer's block. I tried meditation, I tried ice plunges, I tried everything. What would you do? What would you do if you just couldn't get going on something? That's another way to draw your listeners into your message or to your story. What would you do? What would you be thinking if that happened to you? How would you respond to something like that?

Anna: I hope you guys are taking notes on these intros. It's so good. So Joel, let me ask you selfishly. So I have a new keynote, and listener, I'm taking Joel's advice, put yourself in my situation. I've got a new keynote. And I want to do more corporate speaking. And so the path I'm taking, I have a friend who is a big corporate speaking agent. And so what we actually did, is we went first to Google, and my talk could be molded. It could be about goals, it could be about wellness, it covers a lot of topics, and we looked, and best wellness speakers and best happiness speakers, everybody had bought up those Google words. What we discovered was, there wasn't so much about goal setting. And that's a topic that corporations are interested in. So, I made my keynote around goal setting. And then I said, well, I need practice and I need a reel. So I asked some friends, I asked our mutual friend, Tim Westbrook. I said, hey, could I come to Arizona to give this talk to your people in your rehab? And he said yes, and he said he would buy the book copies for everybody who was there. And I went out and did it. And of course, things went wrong. They always do. And that's great, because then you get to learn what to not do the next time. So then, I'm sorry, this is a long question. But I'm also walking you through what you can do. Then I said, well, I want really good video footage. So I actually booked a studio near me, I actually got my makeup done, and I went to that studio, and I delivered it as if I were on a stage. And now I have another rehab. It's the employees of a rehab that I'm speaking to next week, and I'm also going to get footage. Well, the footage at the studio didn't go great either because he cut off part of me. Even a professional is going to do that. But I'm going to be able to create a reel where I'm taking different bits of the speech from those different experiences, the video that works, and I'm going to have a great reel. Is that what you would recommend Joel?

Joel: Well, I've never done that. My career was never built on, I had no demo video. I never did marketing. I didn't know anything about marketing until I joined Genius Network, and that was well at the end of my career, even though I'm still speaking now. But all I can tell you is, that if you want to get paid to speak, you need to have something that people are willing to pay to hear. Now, in this age of the internet, and we know AI is coming next, which is going to overshadow the internet, that you can find almost anything. You can find information, but you can't always find the way to connect that information to the audience. And that's why my recommendation from the very beginning when we talked about this, including people in the audience, is talking about things that are relevant to them. So let's say your subject is goals, which was one of the subjects that I always talked about as well. How does that apply to this audience? So, let's just say you're going to Tim Westbrook's audience, again, these are people that have had an addiction problem. They're involved in living in one of his homes, but they have a job and a career, but they need to be focused and surrounded by people, so they have sobriety or kick those addiction, correct?

Anna: Yes. But I would love to talk about how to take that and get the reel or get whatever it is you do need to get paid and then get to those people. So if not a reel, what should people put together? They should have a one sheet, you didn't have to do that, but most people listening are going to have to put something together in order to get paid to speak. What should that be?

Joel: Raving fans.

Anna: Great.

Joel: If you think about that, how do you spread, how do you start a restaurant that people want to come back to? You put out great food? You wow the people you have, so that when they see what you do, they want to see you do it again. So I built my career on a statement that Walt Disney used to make Disneyland a success. Now I don't know, you're in California. Have you ever heard of Disneyland or Disney World?

Anna: Yes.

Joel: Oh, you have? Would you say it's a successful organization?

Anna: Yes.

Joel: Very successful. Have you been there many times?

Anna: I have.

Joel: In your lifetime?

Anna: Yes. But I really want to get to how people can get booked. Yes, Disneyland's amazing.

Joel: Well, I'm going to give you the answer, because Walt Disney gave it in 1955 on how he built Disneyland. And this is how you build a speaking career. Here’s what he said, “do what you do so well, that when people see what it is you do, they want to see you do it again, and will bring others to show them what it is you do.” That's how we're going to sell Disneyland. And in 1955, they put on a great program. So that's my recommendation, speak for free. Get out in front of some place.

Anna: On a practical level, how do you speak for free? Who do you reach out to, your Chamber of Commerce?

Joel: No, you start out with everybody you know, and you say something like this. Anna, you and I have been friends for years, and I don't know if you know that in my XYZ business, I also am speaking now. I created an amazing talk on goal setting. Are you part of any kind of organization that brings in speakers that you'd be willing to recommend me to?

Anna: That’s great.

Joel: Okay. So, there's the first place to start. Everybody, you know, that likes and trusts you. Many of them are part of an organization where they bring in speakers for meetings. And many of them are involved in who they choose. They don't know that you do that. So that's the first place to go. It costs you nothing. But it's amazing how it works. Second suggestion, when you get one talk, get feedback. Use a blank card, whether it's an index card, and on that card, just ask the audience to write three things. On a 1-10 scale, how valuable was this talk on goal setting for you? Number two, what's your one best takeaway of all the things we talked about, you know, 30 minutes together, what's the one thing that was most helpful? Third question, what could I have done to make this presentation even better for you? Okay, no names on the card. Now. If you like this message, and you rate it at over a seven or an eight, and you got some good ideas, is there any group that you think could benefit from this idea that I should be talking to? If so, would you just put your name and phone number on the back? And I'll call you. And I'd be happy to follow through and find out who this group is.

Anna: So good.

Joel: Okay. So, there you have somebody who just saw you speak. Now, this is all predicated, and of course, you meet the requirement to kind of be good. Yeah. Because if you give a terrible presentation, if Disneyland was filthy and dirty, and they employees was sullen and angry at you, nobody would go back. But that was why that Walt Disney statement was the key, do what you do so well, that when other people see what it is you do, they want to see you do it again. Why did Joe have me at Genius Network work with these speakers for eight years? Because he saw what happened to a 10-minute talk, when I coached them. And now everybody is coached by that. I didn’t advertise, I didn't have a sizzle reel, I just did a great job. And that's what you can do. Whatever you doing, marketing helps advertising helps, but are you the real deal? How do you get a book to be sold? It’s got to be a good book. Sure, you can market it in the beginning. But eventually, if it's a terrible book, that stops helping you. But if people buy 10 copies, because they want everyone in their family to have one, and talk about it at a meeting, then you got something going. Like I'm thinking of writing a book called Party Girl, but I'm not sure.

Anna: On a practical level, you said get raving fans. Perhaps when you finish, you could get some testimonials while people are still on the high. Hey, what’d you think? They're like, I loved it. Could I capture a video of you saying that?

Joel: Well, that's what I was going to recommend. This is a reel should be, a reel should be testimonials.

Anna: Love it.

Joel: But no one cares about you. Now, if you have say, and you know, it can be a sign that says R.B. New York. No, it's got to be a first name and a last name, and a company name. Anna David, you know, such and such company, and then a testimonial. That's what I had, raving fans. So, and again, what I did is not relevant in today's world, because things have changed. But the concept is still true. The best way to get repeat business is to be amazing the first time, how do you become amazing? You make the message about them, and you make it about their situation. So, I started to say about goals. If you're talking to somebody, like Tim Westbrook's group, so let's talk about the goal, like what's your first goal when you leave this rehab center? Do you remember your first goal when you decided to become sober? Do you remember your, then you're talking about them. So when talking to Tim, I would say Tim, what are some of the kinds of goals that you recommend people have once they start to get ready to leave your facility? What do you call these things? What are some examples of what you've used? And that's what you talk about, things that are in their world. So like that list of people that I showed you here, these are all people that exemplified some of the qualities I talked about in my message. So I'm looking at this one name here. Troy Gold, who is the best in customer service. So I asked my client, who's really terrific, oh, Troy, they love him. I said, what does Troy do? He just follows up so well. So all of that became part of it. So rather than saying in a generic term, you know, one of the things that customer service is so important, you got to follow up with people. If somebody calls you don't have an answer, you get back to them. That's ordinary. But if you said something like here’s one of the keys to being effective in customer service, is to follow up with something like Troy Gold. If somebody calls Troy and he doesn't have an answer, you know what happens? He calls them back in 24 hours and if he still doesn't have an answer, he tells them to call him back in another 24 hours. What if you did the same thing that Troy did? By the way, let's give Troy a great hand for being number one customer service the last five years at Anna David's company. Right? So not only does that edify people in the audience, it shows the audience that you've done your homework, and you know about Troy, plus the fact, that you using that information to make a point that they can use. Rather than say, you know, when I was in service, I was always the best customer service person in the company, and one of the things I always did was I called people back in 24 hours. Why don't you do that, which would have more impact?

Anna: Troy

Joel: The reason Troy is so good, is because Troy's doing what they're doing. I wasn't in your business; I don't have any credibility. So when I hear people always using themself as an example, they're missing the boat. Find out what everybody else is doing, don't do it. Don’t compete, create, be unique. And you are unique because you're an individual. That's what makes a great speaker is being yourself. Not acting, not performing. That's why I love Anna when she talks. Anna is Anna. And if I talked to people who know her, what’s Anna David really like? What you see is what you get. Isn’t that what they say about you, Anna, you're always the same.

Anna: I’m always the same.

Joel: We went to a party at Joe's house, we sat together we've talked, you're just like you are now, there's no difference. It's not a performance. Speaking effectively, is not acting. It's not how to use your voice and your body. That's ridiculous. Then you’re making it about yourself and you’re thinking about yourself, your voice, your movements, be natural, but know your audience. If there's one thing that will help you become a speaker and a paid speaker. And one other thing, too, you have a business. You don't necessarily have to get paid to make money. If you have a product or service, you can talk about or your book, many speakers began their career, Zig Ziglar began speaking free by selling his book.

Anna: In terms of getting paid, let's say you have raving fans, all of that, what do you do next?

Joel: Well then you use them to get as many speaking engagements as you can. And there is a way of course with social media, you can put things out like that. There are all kinds of organizations where they have lists of meetings, but I don't find that works very well. It's really using referrals, your own centers of influence, and then putting stuff out on YouTube, putting your material out on goals, a 10-minute video and goals. And by the way, if you liked this message on goals, that's just the beginning of a keynote speech that I can give. Look up Anna David, and I'll tell you more. So putting things out like that.

Anna: And then you just try to get as much traffic as you can, or you show it to your people that you know. We know that Joel is a professional because he's showing me the clock that's at 28 minutes and we got to get, we got to get close to wrapping up. And I know that Joel, first of all, I want people to know how they can reach you. And I want you to give your parting wisdom. So first of all, how can they reach you?

Joel: Well, the easiest way is if well, you can look at www.ultimatespeaker.com, that shows what we have in our coaching programs or our product. Or if you're serious about speaking and want to take it to the next level, get on my calendar, make a 15-minute appointment. Let's talk about it. www.talktojoel.com Just www.talktojoel.com leads you right to my calendar appointment.

Anna: So, what are your parting words, Joel?

Joel: Well, as you're listening to this podcast, and you have a book, or you have a business that you're passionate about, and you want to speak about it, and you're going to use speaking to grow what you're doing. Here are 22 words, to think of. If I was to sum up everything I've learned about speaking here it's for you in 22 words. You ready? Speak to your audience about what they need, in an organized way they can follow, and get yourself out of the way.

Anna: Genius. Well, thanks so much, Joel. And thank you all for listening and go do it. Just remember those 22 words. I hope you took notes throughout this one, but in case you didn't, there will be a full transcript of the episode at www.legacylaunchpadpub.com/blog/joel. And I'll have links to all things related to Joel on how you can reach out to them. So thank you so much for listening and thank you Joel.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

How to Manifest a Today Show Appearance with Rachel Luna

 

Rachel Luna kinda defies explanations and bios.

But if you're going to make me put her into one of these boxes, FINE! Here goes: she's an international speaker, podcast host, former U.S. Marine and cancer thriver. In addition to all that, she's a coach who hosts retreats.

As if that wasn't enough, she's now also a bestselling author: her new book, Permission to Offend, has not only been creating waves with its unapologetic, brazen and yet hilarious voice but has also landed Luna on the Today show.

In this episode, she walks us through the exact steps she took to make that Today show appearance happen—as well as who's been sliding into her DMs since that appearance, how to make self-help material fresh, methods for speaking up around your book launch and so much more.

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What NY Times Bestselling Author Jennifer K. Armstrong Learned About Launches

Gina DeVee on Finding Gratitude When Your Book Comes Out a Terrible Time

TRANSCRIPT:

Anna: Well, listeners didn't get to hear me fawn over you. But they can imagine. Rachel, I adore you. I am so happy you're here to talk to me.

Rachel: I am so grateful to be here, Anna, and I love you too. You know this,

Anna: We had an Instagram love affair. And I'll tell you something, there's a lot of people I start talking to over Instagram. And then they're like, let's set a call. And I'm like, no, I didn't mean for it to go this far. And, and then we set this call, and you just cracked me up. And I'm like, she's my friend. Because when I think about you, I don't think of you as someone I've never met. You feel like someone I've met. You know?

Rachel: 100% 100%. The feeling is so mutual. And I'm laughing because I understand what you mean. And I say this all the time. No new friends. No new friends, no. Sorry my kids are making noise in the background. It's President stay here at the time of this recording. And in that, but, but it's not their fault. I have ample space. I usually do these calls in my office for having some internet stuff. So I'm in the area, but all that to say I overstand. And it's not that, it’s not that we don't want to make new friends. It's just that, I don't know. Well, yes, I think this is a safe assumption for me to make about you as well as for myself. I know this is true. I am a very good friend. I'm loyal. I show what, I'm the kind of friend that you can call at two in the morning. And because I am that way, I can’t have that many friends because I can't have all of you disrupting my eight hours.

Anna: Fair. Fair. I'll be, I’m not that kind of friend. My phone's off. So do not call me at 2am. I absolutely love you. And if I'm awake, I will 1000% be there for you. But please don't try to wake me up because it won't work. But let's talk about your amazingness. So, so okay, I want to get into, I didn't know till I got your book, which was just the other day, that you were on the Today Show. I somehow missed this. And I was just watching it. I'm someone who's been on The Today Show and seen a bunch of people on it. And I know what it's like when you kill and you killed! You just seemed so comfortable. Were you?

Rachel: Yes, I belong there. And I'll tell you why. I, that has been my dream for more than a decade. Literally, Anna, my dream. So one of the things I like to say to people is don't get ready, be ready, because you don't know the day or the hour when your dream is, when you're going to be given an opportunity to walk out your dream. So let me tell you how, can I tell you how that happened?

Anna: Please, please.

Rachel: Okay, good. So, literally a decade ago, more than a decade ago to be, to be honest, I was, had this great idea. I'm gonna start a business. I had a two-year-old and a three month old, had no business starting a business with everything that was going on. We had just moved to Japan. I had no friends, no job. And I mean, it was identity crisis overload. And I decide I'm gonna start this business. Every morning at 10am, which is when the Today Show would air, I would have my cup of coffee in hand, café con leche because I'm Puerto Rican. My journal and I would sit and at the time it was Hoda and Kathie Lee. Okay, so I would watch these women on the Today Show. And I remember saying and thinking, I'm going to be on the Today Show one day. I'm going to be chatting with these ladies. And it's going to be wine day, wine day Wednesday, or whatever, you know, the day that they drink the wine, and I had this vision. So with my journal, I would literally take notes, I would pay attention to who they were bringing on, what kind of segments they were doing. And I remember thinking many, many times, like what could I talk about on the Today Show? Like, I'm not famous. I'm not an expert. I gotta figure out a way to make myself remarkable enough to get on the show. That right there is the work that most people don't even think about doing. They overlook the visioneering. They overlook the relevancy that they need to have in order to even get on the show. So but years pass and the dream is dimming away. And I'm thinking to myself, it's never gonna happen. I'm never gonna be on the Today Show because I don't have anything to offer. And so I began just going outward, like okay, let me just focus on helping other people. I never give up the dream. I just shift and focus on other things complementary to the dream. I write this book, and I did what I teach. I started journaling around it and then I, I have aphantasia. Do you know what that is Anna?

Anna: No.

Rachel: Aphantasia is where you don't have a Mind's Eye, meaning you can't, you don't have imagination for things that you've never seen or experienced. So if you say to me, picture a shiny, picture an apple, what, an apple on a table. For me, it's a dark room. And, the apple is like gray, and it's on like a gray, I know it's gingham. But it's gray in my mind, right? There's no colors or anything. But if you tell me picture, the, the bag of green apples that you got from Publix yesterday, I, it's in color now. And even then it's not bright or shiny, because I can't bring that into my mind. So when you have aphantasia, vision boards work really well, because now you can actually see something to bring it up into recall. When you have aphantasia, you can only bring things up from recall. It's very, very hard to imagine. So whenever I would do those meditations, and they're like, picture yourself in an elevator going down, then I'm like in an elevator, I'm in a dark hole. And it's dark in here, you know? Anyway, so I decide I'm going to create a media vision board, so that I can see myself on the shows and I go into Canva. And I like superimpose my face on to all these TV shows. And, and I may sound silly, but doing that was able to really help me see myself. Then I started watching old clips of authors on the Today Show, just to see what kind of questions they were asking? What were they wearing? Where were they sitting? Right, just bringing all of this. And there was one point where my, the Harper one, which is who I was published with, they did provide a publisher for me.

Anna: A publicist.

Rachel: Shout out, shout out, a publicist. Yes. Sorry, publicist. So she was fantastic. And she, she says, can you do some videos for me? And I said, sure, no problem. Now I take the time Anna to create highly polished videos, these are not shot on my iPhone. And it's very clear what this book is about, what is Permission to Offend? Who is it for? Why does this book matter? Who am I? Why do I matter? And I put together a beautiful package. And I say to her, here's my media vision board. These are all the places that I want to be. And I will go, wherever you get me, I will send myself there. So there has to be this willingness to go above and beyond. There has to be a willingness to make an investment on a dream that you don't know is going to pay out because it cost me 1000s of dollars to get all these assets together. And it was a crapshoot. Those assets were actually requested by GMA, and GMA passed. So sad for them.

Anna: It’s literally too bad. Well, they'll come around later, maybe if you'll have them. Go on.

Rachel: And so, as she says, you got the Today Show. They want to know if you can come on this day. And I am hyperventilating, screaming, and I'm thinking to myself, this has to be a dream. Do you know Anna, that I said nothing to no one until like, the very end. And then my husband got COVID about a week and a half before I'm supposed to go on the Today Show. And I am like, no, no, no, get away from me. I quarantine him. I'm like, you are not allowed to come out. I'm going to be on the Today Show. And you will not ruin this for me. And then I prepared. I hired a media coach. So shout out to Linnea Floyd, who was amazing. I highly, highly, highly recommend her. Anna, that was another investment. Okay, big investment for like a 90-minute thing, a 90-minute session and her helping me. Again, it’s like the investments that you're willing to make on a chance. And it paid off because every single person that has watched that segment has told me that I crushed it. Do you know Anna, ready for this? My publicist was walking by the control booth at the Today Show. They came out of the control booth to tell her what a great guest I was and how they’re all talking about it in the control room. She says to me, I have been here with hundreds of clients. They have never come out of the booth.

Anna: I mean, it was the response I had too because I've had a lot of friends I know who've gotten their big break, gotten on shows like that, but not gone about it the way you did with that sort of preparation with that sort of intention. I certainly never did myself. And because I'm so, I'm used to watching them and like, oh, it's the first time on a big show. Like they're kind of uncomfortable, but like, they didn't screw up. You were like, owning it. You, they were trying to keep up with you. You're way better than them. I don't think they, think that that's like an outrageous thing to say. They are reading from cards and like, I don't know, and I loved that you could say and look, here, I am living my dream, like that you actually, who gets to go on that show and say like, this was what I wanted. And here I am in this moment. It's like so meta, I love it. So what has been the result of that?

Rachel: Well, we had a really great halo of sales, which I was also surprised because they said TV shows don't sell books anymore. And I was like, well, let's find out. And it did. We had a great halo of sales. I was really grateful for that. You know, it's really, okay. I want to tell you this, because this, you're my friend. And I'm like, wait a minute, there's like, a lot of people are going to be listening. But

Anna: Do you want to tell me after we're recording, and then…

Rachel: No, it's good. It's better for the audience. Let's tell them.

Anna: Yeah, tell them.

Rachel: You know what the result was? Is that all these people that counted me out, started sliding into my DMs. All these people that would give me no airtime. All of a sudden, Hey, girl. Oh, my gosh, you're on the Today Show? And I'm the type, listen, I'm real. I'm almost too real. So don't come at me. You know, with all of that. But I, I was cordial and polite. Like, oh, hey, girl. Yes, I was, thank you. How do you, how did that happen? What were you doing? No, get out of here. I have zero time for you because you did not have time for me. And now you just want to, like clout chase with me? No, no. So that was interesting. Now, I will say this. I'm also nobody's fool. So I don't burn bridges intentionally. If a bridge has to be burned, it has to be burned. But I'm not a bridge burner. So I, I thank them for their time and attention. And I just kept it moving, but that, I knew it was gonna happen. But I was disappointed. Does that make sense?

Anna: Yeah, but I'm different than you. I would find that incredibly gratifying. No, you didn't? You found it sad? I'd be like, Yeah, I mean, you'd come for me. Sorry, you don't have time, you don't have that feeling, huh?

Rachel: Oh, no, I don't have that feeling. Because it makes me sad for them. I feel bad for them. I feel sad for them that, in all this time, they could have had a genuine friendship with me. And I am such a good friend, and they’ve missed out on all these opportunities. And now I don't trust you. So you will never have me like that, with a friend.

Anna: Yeah.

Rachel: You will only ever have me at an arm's length. Because I don't believe you. I don't believe who you are. I don't believe the character or integrity behind the person.

Anna: And so these were like influencer chicks or something like that? They're like, is that the type? I mean, it was all types, but what kind of person?

Rachel: I mean, it's people that I've known for years, it's people that I've been in groups and circles and programs and events with that, you know, they're all, they're all kiki in the moment. And then like, it's to the winds. And to me, I, I get that we have seasons, right? So you and I will have a season where we're chatting all the time. And then it'll be months where we don't chat. But I know that I could call you, out of left, and we'd be good. Because we've created a genuine connection. And with, with, in particular, there were a couple of small handful where I, we were, I thought, friends. But as their, their rise was, they were accelerating faster than me. And so as they accelerated, they didn't, they couldn't be bothered to have that level of connection with me anymore. Because you know, I  wasn't in that circle.

Anna: Got it.

Rachel: Now, my, my star is rising too. And now it's like, oh, I knew her, what, no, you. No, get out of here.

Anna: Yes. And I sure do. And so then you're using that Today Show to get on other shows, yeah?

Rachel: Yes. So we are pitching, and then of course holidays have rolled in, so we'll see, I'm definitely, this is what I told my publicist. As I said, go back, go back to everyone. She's like, yes, I am. What angle should we do here? And you know, so that is the other thing is that I'm very hands on and collaborative. I'm really not leaving anything in anyone else's hands. Because especially when you sign with a publisher like Harper, I'm not the only author. They have dozens of other authors. And they're very understaffed.

Anna: Yes.

Rachel: So you have to be willing to advocate for yourself, give yourself permission to offend, like I talk about in my book. And you'll be, step up and say, look, this is what I want to, here's the pitch, here's the this, here are the assets. What else do you need? And if you want to give me your contact list, I'll email them myself.

Anna: And let me ask you this, are you willing to share those assets that you created that got you booked? Like, can I put those in the show notes? Or is that not something that's public?

Rachel: Like the like, like, request stuff like that

Anna: Yeah, you, the thing that like you were like, I'm investing, I'm putting together videos. I'm not going to do them on iPhones? I'm gonna do some legit videos. Is that something…

Rachel: Yeah, I can send you one of them.

Anna: Yes. People want to see them.

Rachel: And, um, they're not highly produced. And like, it's not cinematic.

Anna: Right.

Rachel: But it's well done.

Anna: Yeah.

Rachel: And I think that's important as well, you know. Because sometimes we get caught up in like, I have to have this huge budget for cinematic whatever, whatever. No, just a really well done like, can you get the message out clearly? Can you convey, you know, who you are and why this matters? And why now?

Anna: Did you, for that Today Show booking, did, was there a press release as well? Or did you just put in a video?

Rachel: No, there was a press release, I can send that too.

Anna: And what was the time peg? Like I think people need to know that, you know, we invent these we make it newsworthy, you know, my book on writing was newsworthy during the pandemic, because hey, writing helps you heal. What was your news peg for this?

Rachel: Like, what was our angle?

Anna: Yeah. Like why now?

Rachel: Oh, the antidote to cancel culture.

Anna: Yes. I love it.

Rachel: The antidote to cancel culture.

Anna: Yes. And then the nice thing with a book like this, too, is, I mean, I'm just riffing here, but it's like, then it could be like, a Mother's Day angle. Women. Yeah. You know, a holiday angle, like

Rachel: Women's history is coming up. And we're gonna add that too. The, the great thing about my book is that it really hits every facet of life, right? So relationships, business, your internal perception, identity, boundaries, decision making. It really is an all-encompassing book. So we can hit it from any angle 365. I mean, I'm pitching the Rachael Ray Show for crying out loud. My publicist said, how are we going to tie it in with food? I said, great. I'm a breast cancer survivor. And I healed with the Gerson Therapy, which was, you know, all these cancer-fighting meals. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how I gave myself permission to offend. We'll drill down on chapter two on identity, she's gonna love it.

Anna: And so these are all, I, did, did the publicist, did you hire an outside publicist or you're only working with the Harper Collins publicist?

Rachel: I am only working with the Harper publicist? Because, girl, these publicists are no joke. We're looking at for, for at least the ones that I wanted to work with, it was like $6,000 a month, retainer. Anna: Yeah.

Rachel: And I just was, I have two kids that go to private school.

Anna: Yeah, I mean, I think what you did, that's key. What I used to do, when I had Harper as my publishers, I would sort of successfully alienate the publisher, the publicist, because I'd be so angry that like, I didn't feel like I was getting the time, like, what you're doing is you’re understanding that they're very busy, very overworked, by the way, very underpaid. And you're actually assisting that. Which is only going to make them want to help you.

Rachel: Yeah, I really, I mean, I created my own graphics for crying out loud. Because they weren't, they were just, they had so much going on. And I tried to put myself in my editor’s position, who by the way, she wasn't my acquisition editor. My acquisition editor left.

Anna: Right.

Rachel: And now my editor Sydney, God bless her inherited my project, a bunch of other projects, and she got promoted all in the same fell swoop. And then three of her books got on the New York Times bestsellers list. So, you know, I could have spent a lot of time being angry and frustrated. And I definitely had my moments of like, I felt where I wasn't getting any kind of response. But you know, Anna, I followed exactly what I teach in my book, Permission to Offend. And I stuck up for myself. When they were not responding to me in any kind of a timely manner, I sent an email and I said, listen, I understand that you're really busy. But it would be out of integrity for me not to say anything. The, you told me that you would respond to me in a timely manner. And that hasn't happened. And I'm beginning to tell myself stories that you don't value me as an author. And she received this so well. Why did she receive it? Because she read the book. And she knew I was the embodiment of my work. And that changed everything for us.

Anna: Yeah. And when you're coming from a place of authenticity, nobody cares that you're sticking up for yourself in a way that might point out their inadequacies. Because you're being authentic.

Rachel: Right.

Anna: Okay, well, we were going, we don't have time, we were going to also talk about what I was telling you, which is that I am just going to be totally real, picked up the book thinking, I probably don't have time to read this. I love this girl, so I'll definitely give it a good skim. I mean, sure. And literally could not put it down, brought it into my bed last night, most books don't make it into my bed. So, and I said, you know, I just I'm really kind of over self-help and that's why I didn't really think I would respond to this. And, and we started talking about this idea that it feels like everything's been written, but it hasn't. You want to just speak to that?

Rachel: Yes. So everything has been written. There's no grand new idea. But there are so many ways to tell a new story, using an old principle. And this is why, you know, if you read the Bible, Jesus told parables, he taught in stories. And I think that that's what we've forgotten, especially in the self-help realm. It's so prescriptive, it's almost like step one, step two, step three. There's nothing engaging, there's nothing that actually shows me that, wait a minute, maybe this author actually does have an interesting perspective. Because authors are, in my opinion, getting lazy. We're writing, we're so conditioned to writing captions that are limited. So we're not taking the time to draw out the story to go deeper to actually think, what is the question that the reader has after I write this sentence? And can I speak to that? My process is, can I speak to the thought underneath the thought? That my readers experiencing?

Anna: Yep. And you do that really well with like, even your opening anecdote with this, you know, and you guys are all gonna buy the book, but basically, so it's not a spoiler alert, but like, you know, kids, husband, let's go have a fun day, culminates in like snapping at husband. But then it goes back and it's like, it walks you through. Okay, so when my kids were on their computers, it made me feel like I was a bad mom. And it kind of just leads you through each thought. And whether you've had that exact experience or not, you can relate to it because you're like, oh, right. It's just really walking back every emotional outburst. I don't know. I love it.

Rachel: That’s, well, quick question. Did you read the intro?

Anna: I did. I read the intro, so I can tell you actually where I am.

Rachel: Okay, I was gonna say because the intro, I want to mention this: I skip introductions, always. And I did not want to write an introduction. In fact, we went around a couple of circles. My editor and I, she was like, you're writing an intro. I'm like, no, I am not writing an introduction. They suck. And she's like, you have to write an intro Rachel, please just take a stab at it.

Anna: Oh, yes. I can't believe, that’s so interesting that the intro did not stand out to me when it is quite standoutable.

Rachel: So that's, that's why I asked if you read it, because that's the feedback that I've been getting from people is like the intro alone, like sucks you into the story. We won't tell them that.

Anna: Can I tell you what's interesting? Because of the people I attract and the sort of books that I publish and people I know. That was less memorable to me than the mundane stuff because, because a lot of the books that, it's a shocking thing and it'll just anyone who reads the book and hears me say that will be like you're the most jaded fucking person ever. But it's true. Um, so yeah, that's interesting. That did not stick out. I mean, it's horrible, but it didn't. It didn't stick out to me.

Rachel: Yeah, But I'll tell you this, though. Well, because we're talking about writing things from a different perspective, right? I hate introductions. So I wrote one worth reading.

Anna: Yep.

Rachel: And this is what my, my cry to all of the nonfiction authors in the world reminder to myself is, let's write books that we want to read over and over and over again. Because if you can read your own book over and over and over again and still look at it and think, damn, that's good. That's how you know. I have read my book eight times. now Anna, eight. Because I read it every time I had a draft that I was turning in, I read it out loud. And then I read it out loud for the audiobook. And then I read it again once they sent me the physical copy, once I had the real one. I read it again. I love my book. And by the way, can I just talk about that for a second?

Anna: Yes.

Rachel: I, as I was writing it, remember thinking this is crap. I hate, like this is not going to be good enough. And I just kept fine tuning, fine tuning, fine tuning. There is one chapter that's like, you know, the least favorite chapter. And I won’t tell, I always tell people read the book and tell me which was your least favorite. And let's see if we have our same least favorite chapters. But they're all my favorites. And I, go ahead…

Anna: Do they pick, do the people pick the same one as you?

Rachel: No, everyone has said, I don't know what you're talking about?

Anna: Yeah.

Rachel: Yeah, no one has found it. Yeah, everyone has said I loved, I, cover to cover I've loved it. I don't know where you're talking about.

Anna: Oh, yeah, I have a book I wrote where I hate the whole book. And whenever someone emails me and says they like it, I have zero respect for them, and I delete it. But it really, yeah, this book deserves no respect. You deserve all the respect in the world, and I just adore you. So is there any, are there any final words you want to leave listeners with?

Rachel: Ooh my gosh, I hate when people do this to me, because I’m such a wordy person,

Anna: I know, I’m so sorry.

Rachel: Okay, final thought is: check out the book. We, go on to Amazon, read the sample, give it a go. Because at worst you'll, you know, invest a couple of minutes. At best, it'll change your life. And I can say that with full authority because writing the book has changed my life and all of the readers that have at least responded back to me. It has already completely shifted things for them. So give it a go. And at a minimum, connect to your truth and activate it immediately, if not sooner.

Anna: And if people want to find out more about you, they should definitely go to Amazon to get the book, but where can they find you?

Rachel: At rachelluna.com And since you're already listening to a podcast, definitely check out my podcast, Permission to Offend. And I'm on Instagram @girlconfident. I do respond to DMs, so DM me.

Anna: I love it. Rachel, thank you so, so much. And you all thank you for listening.

Rachel: Thank you.

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Without Readers, You've Written a Journal

 

Journals are awesome. Been using 'em since I was six. I've even published a few myself.

But the difference between the journals I've published and the books I've written is that the journals are not meant to be read by anyone once I've filled them with words.

The books are.

But Field of Dreams was wrong! Just because you write it does not mean that they will come.

You have to determine your audience, find them and write a book specifically for them. This episode breaks down how.

It's based on the book I'm writing. Speaking of, if you want exclusive stories, resources and info about this book as I write it, you can sign up for that on annadbook.com.

RELATED EPISODES:  

Make Sure Your Book is Muzzy Approved with Dave Chesson

Why to Read Those A**hole Amazon Reviews with Jay Abraham

Yes, Publishers Treat You Differently Once You Hit the NY Times List with Jennifer Keishan Armstrong

TRANSCRIPT:

Anna: Well, hello there. Welcome to the podcast, Anna David here. If you're new to the show, welcome. It's where I talk to authors and entrepreneurs and myself about how to launch a book that will actually build your authority and not just sit on your shelf. So, this is another solo episode based on the book that I am currently writing. And if you want to sign up to get more information, a front row seat as I move towards launch, where I'm sharing all the latest stuff that I'm doing, just go to www.annadbook.com, and you shall be added to that list.

So, today's episode, I am focusing on the number one most important thing when it comes to a book, as well as the number one thing that most people ignore. And that is that you need an audience, if you're going to launch a book.

Take it from somebody who did six books without ever thinking about an audience. One, a novel based on my recovery, one a fictionalized version of a details magazine story I wrote about prostitution, one on reality shows, why not, one on less. There was no consistency, there was no thinking about, I did a book on reality TV without bothering to think, oh, hey, reality TV fans want to watch reality TV and not read books about it. And you know what, people who don't watch reality to TV probably don't want to read a book about something they don't care about.

So, I cannot explain the importance of this, and if you're familiar with Bernie, my cat, he certainly agrees because he's crawling all around. He wants you to have readers. I often say without readers, you've written a journal. So, the delusion that we all suffer from in previous episode about rose colored glasses, I talked about how we all secretly think we're going to be the exception, even though we hear, oh the average book sells 300 copies, we kind of just go well, but you know what, you know what? I've always kind of thought I was like going to do well, you know what I mean? And you know, she's very fabulous. And Guido meets with Kamala Harris and sells millions of copies without someone to do it. I could do that, too. No, no.

You know, the very first agent I ever talked to you who was a complete douchebag, and really, frankly, quite creepy, said something to me that has always stuck with me, which is I said, I want to do a book of essays, because Sex in the City was both a very big book and big show at the time. And I said it could be like Sex in the City. And he said, never compare yourself to the exception. Compare yourself to the rule. You can always be pleasantly surprised if you are that lotto ticket that happens to win. But it's probably not going to happen. So certainly go into it expecting that.

So how on earth do you find readers? The bad news is that it's all that stuff that you're probably not comfortable doing, which is audience building. The good news is that you're not alone. We all hate it at first. And then just like you hate running on the treadmill, the very first time you did it and then you do more, and then you don't hate it. And then one day you find yourself kind of craving that treadmill. I wouldn't say I ever crave audience building, but I look at it as another way to share what I'm passionate about with people who are also passionate about it.

So, it requires a lot of work at first to get anyone to care. And it's very easy to compare and despair and say, oh, this person has 10,000 followers and I don't have any. Well, everybody started with the same amount, which is one. So just start and the fewer people there are, the more you can experiment and take risks and not worry. So this whole concept of the riches are in the niches, is that you want a group of people who will feel like the book that you've created is just for them.

When I was writing, Make Your Mess Your Memoir, which is the last book I wrote before the one I'm currently writing, I thought about two people as I wrote. They're married to each other. And I apologize if you've heard me talk about this on the show before, but they are my surrogate parents. Not really, they're not old enough. And they haven't totally agreed to this, but I know them from Genius Network, this Mastermind I'm a part of, and they're just lovely. I've just always loved them. And years and years ago, they said, you know we need to, they’ve done a book, but we need to do another book. You know, maybe we'll hire your company to do it. And I said that would be great. And then nothing happened. And then, you know, we were working with other clients, I forgot about it. But then when I sat down to write Make Your Mess Your Memoir, I thought about them. And I thought about them not once, not twice, but pretty much every page. I said, would that speak to them? Would that speak to Michael and Ros? Would they be offended by that? Would they understand that? And I thought about them on every page.

And when the book came out, you know, I was lucky enough to get on Good Morning America. And lots of people read the book and lots of people hired my company. Now when I say lots of people, I don't mean hundreds, I mean that we have this very high-ticket expensive offer. So just 10 people hiring us as a result of reading that book, is a year's worth of business.

Michael and Ros, they didn't read it. They didn't even know about it. Maybe two years later, no, I know exactly when it was, it was from the time I’m recording, a year ago, I run into them, at a Genius Network thing. And I say, oh my God, I have the funniest thing to tell you. I wrote a book for you guys. And they just go, what? And I said, I know, it's crazy, but whenever I write a book, I try to think of one person or two people, and I just thought of you guys on every page. And they said, what is this book? And I said, oh, it's over in the gifting suite. And they went and got a copy. And guess what, they hired us, we're now working on their book. That's really like a cute story and they're adorable people.

But the point is, it’s so much easier to write for one person or a very small group of people. Because if there's one of them, there's many. I've also said before, I would rather have 100 people read my book and be completely moved by it, and hire my company than 10,000, who don't really care. So, if you have 100 people, and they feel like it's written for them, you know what happens when you feel like something, think of something that was the, you know, creative work that you liked so much, that you kind of felt like it was made just for you. I know, I felt that way about the show Girls, and the show White Lotus, and many books that I've read.

Now what happens, you start recommending it to everybody, because it kind of feels like it's yours. And what means more, when someone recommends a book or when the author recommends their own book. It means a lot more if it's someone else. So, if you can write something that's so specifically for a certain group of people, they will then become your salespeople. They will go out and start doing your work for you by telling everyone else they have to read it.

So, if you're worried that the niche you're writing to is too small, the example I like to use is there is a Facebook group that is called, A Group Where We All Pretend to Be Ants in an Ant Colony. And that has, as of this recording over 1.8 million members. So, your group is not too small. And think about your own experiences.

I think a lot of us are scarred a little bit by these English teachers who taught us these very rote ways to write papers. And we learned along the way that like we needed to sound smart. Sounding smart is great, but sounding “smart” can lead you to speaking writing cliches, and right in this very professorial language that doesn't endear you to anybody, and is usually quite boring.

So, my favorite writers are the ones who have a voice. Lean into your voice and think about your own experiences. My favorite compliment I ever get from anyone who reads one of my books is, if it’s someone I know, I felt like I was hanging out with you for a week, it was like going on vacation with you. And I love that. And keep in mind that controversy. You can't be too you, you know. You know, you do you boo. You can't do it too much. Think of Mark Manson, the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, who sold 12 million copies by telling people they shouldn’t give a fuck. So the advantage of being you in front of this audience that you're building is that you're finding out what they like. You're finding out what they respond to.

And by building I'm talking about being on social media, I'm talking about creating a newsletter list and gathering people to it. I'm talking about joining groups, you know, whether that's on Facebook or Reddit or Discord or frickin Mastodon, which I've never been on, don't even know how to spell, but apparently, it's a thing. Get out there. And you'll find that some things people respond to, some things people don't respond to at all, and some things people go crazy for. When you hit on that, you know, you're finding your audience. Double down on that.

And I look at it as a creative thing rather than going, oh my God, what do you mean, I have to toast about building authority through a book if I want to establish my authority around it. How about it's a creative exercise, I'm a creative person, I wouldn't be writing books if I wasn't. So why don't I use some of my creativity in order to build my audience.

Now an example that I give in my book that's On Good Authority, which you can sign up for a front row seat by going to www.annadbook.com. I talk about my friend Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. Now she's a New York Times bestselling author of many books that are about entertainment. She worked at Entertainment Weekly. And her first book was about the Mickey Mouse Club. So, she writes this book, and she goes, and she tries to find like Boomer websites on Facebook, and she can't summon up interest. Then she goes home to Chicago, and her dad takes her to one of his veteran organization meetings. And she finds her audience and they're like, oh my God, Darlene tell me, I don't know who any of these people are. I love it when I can say this, but Mickey Mouse Club was before my time. But so, she finally found her readers, and only realized the importance of finding her readers when the book was out.

So, Dave Chesson, previous podcast guest, all around the amazing person. When I had him on this podcast, he talked about how, go to the Amazon search box, type in your topic. The example he told me about is a woman he was helping with her book, and she was selling art. And she was writing a book about that. That was what she knew about. That's where she was building her authority. So she goes to Amazon, she types in, how to sell art online. No, no, she's sorry, she types in, how to sell art. What pops up is how to sell art online. She's like that people care about, I didn't know that. So, she not only adds a whole bunch to her book about how to sell art online, but she creates a lead magnet, about how to set up your accounts on online art sales platforms.

Now, Jay Abraham, who was both on the podcast and is quoted in the book, and is a genius, like the father of marketing, wrote an amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got. What he recommends, is go to your you could call them your competitors’ books, go to the books that are on topics like yours. Look at the five-star reviews. What did they say? Then go to the one-star reviews, the two star reviews. I actually find like a three, a two- or three-star review more useful because a one-star review, like I'm sorry, those are dicks, those are people who need to get out of basements or deal with whatever resentment it is that it's making them take out their power on an author who's put their work out there.

But look what people respond to very passionately, whether they're very happy or unhappy with something. They use language, that as Jay Abraham says, penetrates right past the conscious mind. And you know how I was talking about people feeling like a book was written specifically for them? You're using their language; they are going to feel that it's really easy when you know a lot about something and you're writing a book about it. We let expert blindness literally blind us. We know how something works. So, we assume that the people, the readers know our language, speak about it the same way. We assume they understand something they don't, because it's really hard, if not impossible to remember to break it down and remember when you learned something, and when you didn't know it.

An example from publishing is in traditional publishing, people when they say blurbs, they're talking about endorsements. A blurb is a recommendation from a luminary about your book. I noticed when I got more invested in the self and indie publishing world, that when people said the word blurb, they actually were using what they were calling book descriptions blurbs. I don't know how it happened, but it started to happen. So rather than me sticking to what I know is “right,” I'm going to be better off using the language that my audience uses. And it's really hard to break things down.

I'm always reminded of one of my favorite movies, Reality Bites. If you haven't seen it, well, if you're a Gen Xer, you know what I'm talking about, if you're not a Gen Xer, it’s a frickin amazing movie. And if you ever want to understand the Gen Xer in your life, just go see that movie. But there's a scene where Winona Ryder gets in the elevator with Anne Meara and she's just interviewing for an internship, or a job and Anne Meara says define ironic. She's like, oh, you know, it's like when something's ironic, you know. And then of course Ethan Hawke who plays Troy Dyer, this sanctimonious dick, who she's in love with, he can of course, define it perfectly.

But the point is, it can be really, really hard, if not impossible to describe things that you're so familiar with, that you don't need to describe them. So that is what you can learn about from your audience. And from those one- and five-star reviews and from all the audience building that you're doing.

So that is that. That is all about the importance of readers. I hope you got a lot out of this episode. Find out, you know, like I said, more about this book that this is from, get a front row seat, find out all the tips, tricks and techniques that I am using to launch this book and you can use for your own at www.annadbook.com and I will talk to you next week.

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