The Published Author Podcast: Recent Episodes
Josh Steimle
The Published Author Podcast will teach you how to write a book so that you can grow your business. Entrepreneur, author, and speaker Josh Steimle reveals how entrepreneurs can create exciting opportunities by writing a book and creating a thought leadership system. Enjoy interviews with authors and book publishing professionals, including literary agents, editors, ghostwriters, cover designers, publishers, PR experts, and marketers. Josh Steimle is founder and CEO of the 7 Systems of Influence framework, which incorporates his Published Author programs. He is producer and host of The Published Author Podcast.
Anjanette “AJ” Harper has ghostwritten over 100 books (!) and is the writing partner for Mike Michalowicz, and together they’ve written six books, including Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan, Fix This Next, and their latest, Get Different. After all that, she finally decided to write her own book, Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own.
AJ is an editor and publishing strategist who helps authors write foundational books that enable them to build readership, grow their brand and make a significant impact on the world. As ghostwriter and as developmental editor, she has worked with newbies to New York Times bestselling authors with millions of books sold. Through her workshops and editing retreats, AJ empowers authors with insider publishing knowledge and guides them through the book development, writing, and editing process.
In this episode, Josh and AJ talk about how she got connected to Mike Michalowicz and became his ghostwriter and now writing partner, her course, and why she decided to finally write her own book. Also, a bit of banter about ideal audience and memoir writing.
Peter Winick is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. For the past two decades, he’s helped individuals and organizations build and grow revenue streams through designing and growing their thought leadership platforms as well as acting as a guide and advisor for increasing business to business sales of thought leadership products.
His clients include New York Times bestselling business book authors, members of the Speakers’ Hall of Fame, recipients of the Thinkers50 award, CEOs of public and privately held companies, and academics at prestigious institutions such as Yale, Wharton, Dartmouth, and London School of Business.
In this episode, Peter talks about what thought leadership is, how his company helps his clients develop a thought leadership system, and of course, there’s a lot of talk about how authors can achieve their objectives by becoming thought leaders.
Peter’s Links:
- www.thoughtleadershipleverage.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterwinick/
Kim Whitler is a Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business and the author of "Positioning for Advantage: Techniques and Strategies to Grow Brand Value".
Kim spent nearly 20 years in the private industry in strategy and marketing roles at Procter & Gamble, as the general manager of the Breakfast Division for Aurora Foods, as the CMO of David’s Bridal, the country’s leading bridal apparel retailer, and as an officer of PetSmart.
Kim has written over 350 articles as a Forbes senior contributor and has published in Harvard Business Review, The Washington Post, Ad Age, and many academic journals.
She’s been interviewed, cited, or quoted over 3,600 times in places like the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Times, NBC, ABC, and The Associated Press.
In this episode, Kim talks about how her first job pushed her to become a better writer, why she moved from private industry to academia, and how writing a book helped her academic career and goals to reach more people with her message. She also speaks about what surprised her in the publishing process (like having to wait two years for her book to be published, after she finished it), and Kim and Josh geek out a bit about the CMO role in the middle of the episode.
If you’re a marketer or need to know more about marketing, you’ll enjoy this episode.
Kim's Links:
- https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Advantage-Techniques-Strategies-Brand/dp/0231189001
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimwhitler/
If you’ve read Gary Chapman’s book The 5 Love Languages, then The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace is the business/workplace version. Co-authored by Chapman and today’s guest Dr. Paul White, The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace is all about improving workplace relationships by learning your coworkers’ language of appreciation. The book has sold more than 500,000 copies and is currently selling 1,000/week.
In this episode, Dr. White says, “If I had written the book on my own, it probably would have sold 3,000 copies,” and then tells us how he was able to get through Chapman’s gatekeeper and convince him to co-author the book with him. Dr. White also shares how he built a business around the book that now support five other team members in addition to himself through speaking engagements, consulting, and other products and services.
Dr. Paul White's Links:
- http://www.drpaulwhite.com/
- https://twitter.com/drpaulwhite
Ed Brenegar is a keynote speaker and leadership consultant focused on teaching people to become people of leadership within their workplace and social circles. He’s worked with senior executives for 30 years and authored ‘Circle of Impact: Taking Personal Initiative To Ignite Change’. Using his proprietary Circle of Impact model, Ed provides the tools for people to innovate and problem solve by addressing and exploring people’s ideas, relationships, and structures.
In this episode, Ed talks about how he spent decades developing his Circle of Impact model, five years writing the book, and how he engaged in face-to-face communication to learn how to get people interested in reading it. He also shares how he is now writing much shorter companion books based on his original ideas and how this supplementary material is helping him gain more traction.
Ed's Links:
- https://www.facebook.com/EdBrenegarSpeaks/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/edbrenegar
- https://edbrenegar.com/
Mareo McCracken is the Chief Revenue Officer at Movemedical where he guides sales, marketing, and customer success efforts. Prior to this, he was the top-performing salesperson at multiple companies in various industries including financial services, marketing, logistics, manufacturing, and commodities. And he’s now the new author of the book Really Care for Them: How Everyone Can Use the Power of Caring to Earn Trust, Grow Sales, and Increase Income. No Matter What You Sell or Who You Sell It.
In this episode, Mareo talks about how, although he didn’t need to write this book to further his career, he needed it to give to people who, upon hearing that he had read over 800 sales books, asked, “What’s the one sales book I should read?”
Mareo didn’t have a good answer, so he decided to write the book that would be the answer. Mareo also talks about how he structured his book to appeal to salespeople who don’t like to read, and how, although it wasn’t his intention, the book is now helping him attract and land deals.
Mareo's Links:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/mareomccracken/
- www.mareomccracken.com
Adriana Monique Alvarez is the CEO and Founder of AMA Publishing, where she teaches women how to start highly profitable publishing companies. She’s the author of 15 books (and counting) including How To Start A Six Figure Publishing Company: A Guide for Ambitious Female Entrepreneurs Who Are Ready to Transform a Formerly Male-Dominated Industry. If you’re an ambitious female entrepreneur who wants to write a book, this episode is definitely for you.
In this episode, Adriana tells how she grew up in a small Colorado town, hated going to school, but then grew up to travel the world as an entrepreneur. Now, she helps entrepreneurs to start their own publishing companies and she discusses the details of how that works, as well as how she helps authors make bestseller lists in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
Adriana's Links:
- https://www.facebook.com/AdrianaMoniqueAlvarez/
- AMASpeaks.com
Ben is the author of Your Number’s Up! Getting a grip on Data and Measurement to accelerate your Direct to Consumer ecommerce sales. Ben is highly qualified to write this book, having held global roles with leading marketing technology companies like Unica, Chordiant, smartFOCUS, and Pitney Bowes Software, as well as leading the data charge at big agencies like RAPP and DDB. Now he works directly with brands that want to take control by using data to identify where to best focus efforts to help them grow rapidly. Ben works with these brands to bridge data, technology and marketing with commercial and common sense thinking.
In this episode, Ben talks about why he won’t create his next book using presentation software, why he chose to find a book printer instead of using a print-on-demand service like Amazon KDP, and how he used LinkedIn to connect to the people he interviewed for his book.
Ben's Links:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensalmon/
- https://twitter.com/bensalmon
Allison Williams is an editor, book coach, and speaker, and she’s the author of Seven Drafts, Self-edit like a pro from blank page to book. She has edited & coached writers to publication with Big Five, literary, and indie presses. Her own writing has appeared in the New York Times, and on National Public Radio and CBC-Canada. A former circus acrobat and fire-eater, she still loves to travel, and hosts writing retreats virtually and around the world.
In this episode, Allison talks about her journey from the circus to writing and coaching others to write. As she dives into Seven Drafts, she teaches how to edit your own book and the different drafts to create as you work from your “vomit draft,” the first draft that is a big mess, to your final copy. She also talks about hiring editors and ghostwriters and at the end of the episode shares some tips for those listeners interested in writing memoirs.
Allison's Links:
- www.sevendrafts.com
- www.rebirthyourbook.com
- Twitter/Instagram: @guerillamemoir
Curt helps entrepreneurs and wannapreneurs design, manifest, and grow their freedom businesses. For 25 years, he has counseled small businesses, entrepreneurs, as well as some of the largest corporations and associations in the country. He’s built three profitable businesses, including a 7-figure PR and ad agency.
In this episode, Curt talks about his book, Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle, and how he walked the walk by shutting down his business, selling his home, and traveling around the US and the world. If you’re an overworked entrepreneur trying to escape the comfort zone of misery, give it a listen.
Curt's Links:
- http://linkedin.com/in/curtmercadante
- http://twitter.com/curtmercadante
- www.CurtMercadante.com
Matt Beaudreau is the founder of multiple Acton Academy campuses and author of Collaborative Homeschooling. He’s also the founder of Apogee and host of The Essential 11 Podcast, as well as an international keynote speaker.
In this episode, Matt explains his philosophy of education and how he went from being a public school teacher to trying to find a better way to educate children and then discovering Acton Academy. Matt also talks about how, after becoming an Acton Academy founder, he wrote his book to explain his ideas around education to the parents whose children joined his program.
Matt's Links:
- http://actonplacer.com/
- http://apogeestrong.com/
- https://www.actonacademyparents.com/
Instagram:
- @mattbeaudreau
- @apogeeprogram
- @actonplacer
James is the founder of Sweet Fish Media, a podcast agency for B2B brands, and Showcase, a SaaS product for podcasters. He's also the Executive Producer of two podcasts: B2B Growth & Young Married Christian. James published Content-Based Networking to show how you can use the content production process to connect with clients, partners, mentors, and others. For example, if you want to talk to the CEO of a large corporation, you could try to call them up and ask for an hour of their time, and you might get lucky...but no, you won’t. However, if you reach out and ask to interview them for your podcast, book, or article, your chances improve dramatically.
In this episode, James talks about his author journey but also explains how authors can use content-based networking to create a better book and benefit from the book even while it’s still being written.
James' Links:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescarbary/
- https://twitter.com/sweetfishmedia
- https://www.facebook.com/sweetfishmedia
- https://www.instagram.com/sweetfishmedia/?hl=en
Kate is a “tech humanist” and the author of A Future so Bright as well as three other books. She speaks globally to audiences about how data and emerging technologies like AI are shaping the future of human experiences, and she’s addressed organizations like Google, IBM, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Cambridge, Yale, and audiences of world leaders at the United Nations. Among her prior roles, she was one of the first 100 employees at Netflix, created Toshiba's first Intranet, and led one of the first digital strategy and analytics agencies.
In this episode, Kate talks about her inspiration for her books and how they boosted her career as a paid speaker. Also discussed: Whether AI will take over the world and enslave us all.
Kate's Links:
- http://twitter.com/kateo
- http://linkedin.com/in/kateoneill
- http://koinsights.com/
Special Episode: Today's episode is about Ron Coury's recent memoir. We generally don't interview people about memoir-type books on the Published Author Podcast, but Ron's story is an interesting one and he has some great advice for anyone looking to publish a book.
After retiring from the U.S. Marine Corp, Ron Coury became an entrepreneur in Las Vegas, but not the Vegas you know today—he was there when it was a small town, the “old” Las Vegas from movies like Goodfellas and Casino. Ron started over twenty businesses during his career and along the way dealt with death threats from competitors, political and police corruption, and fought esophageal cancer.
In this episode, Ron talks about how he kept decades of notes for the day when he would write a book about his life and how he turned his life into a memoir that became a bestseller and received attention from multiple producers in Hollywood.
Ron's Links:
- https://roncouryauthor.com/
Peri is the author of Leadership Flow: The Unstoppable Power of Connection. She’s also a coach, consultant, herbalist, and leadership educator. Working for years in the field of wilderness-based leadership, she ran her own leadership school in Colorado, as well as in South Africa and Bulgaria, and has worked with clients in private, governmental, and nonprofit sectors, including Disney Theatrical, USDA Forest Service, World Bank, Stanford Woods Institute, University of Chicago, and Renaissance Reinsurance. In this episode, Peri explains how the people she worked with kept asking her for more information on what she taught them, but there were no other resources she could direct them to. Finally, she decided to write the book herself.
Peri's Links:
https://medium.com/@perichickering
https://www.perichickering.com
silenttogether.com
Twitter: @SilentTogether
Dave Chesson became an author as a way to spend more time with his family. As he developed expertise writing, publishing, and marketing books, he shared lessons learned on his Kindlepreneur.com website, which eventually became his main focus. In this episode, Dave shares his author journey, how he started Kindlepreneur, as well as some of his top tips about how to market your book on Amazon using Amazon Ads, editorial reviews, and more.
Kindlepreneur is one of the most visited websites for self-publishing authors, so seriously, if you haven’t been there, go now.
https://kindlepreneur.com/
How do you come up with the right idea for your book? How do you make sure that idea is irresistible? In this episode, Tamsen shares answers to those questions, taken from her book Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible. Her strategies and tactics are the same ones she’s used to work with organizations like Johnson & Johnson, Harvard Medical School, and Intel, and in her roles as the former Executive Producer and current Idea Strategist for TEDx Cambridge.
Tamsen's Links:
- https://www.facebook.com/TamsenWebster/
- http://linkedin.com/in/tamsenwebster
- https://www.twitter.com/tamadear
- https://medium.com/@TamsenWebster
- https://www.instagram.com/tamsenwebster/
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCle4DE7JXWJc4J0YeFOIIKg
What will convince your customers to work with you, talking about their problems or about your solution? Ari Galper, the world’s top authority on trust-based selling, says it’s all about the problem. Think about it—if someone trusts you enough, you could say, “I’ve got the solution to your problem, let’s sign you up,” and you wouldn’t even need to tell them what the solution is. To build trust, talk about your customers’ problems. Now, apply this to the book you’re writing to grow your business—are you talking more about solutions or spending your time showing your customers that you understand their problems?
Ari's Links:
- https://www.facebook.com/arigalperfans
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/arigalper/
- https://twitter.com/arigalper
- www.unlockthegame.com
While her new book, Selling Like We’re Human, isn’t about trademark issues, it was a trademark dispute the Swiss Sarah Santacroce got dragged into that led to the title. In this episode, you’ll hear how Sarah chose her first title and then had to rebrand her book, herself, and her business received a letter from a US-based trademark lawyer (those darn, litigious Americans!).
Lesson #1—do a Google and trademark search for your book title or any special terms you want to use. However, once that story’s out of the way, Sarah tells us about what it means to sell like a human, and how she wrote a book full of permission slips for those who don’t like selling so they can sell a different, better way. You’ll also see how Sarah’s community helped her write her book, and how her book is helping her build her community.
Links:
- sarahsantacroce.com
Bard Press only takes on one new book project per year, but when they do, they blow it out of the water with bestsellers like The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan or Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book of Selling. Bard Press is managed by Todd Sattersten and in this episode, he’ll talk about how his publishing company chooses who to work with and what any author can learn about writing a better book from their process.
Todd's Links:
- https://www.instagram.com/toddsattersten/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddsattersten/
- https://twitter.com/toddsattersten
- https://bardpress.com
Do you need to hire an editor for your book? (short answer = YES) When should you hire an editor? What kind of editor(s) should you hire? How much will it cost?
These are just some of the questions Carolyn Roark, developmental editor, ghostwriter, and book coach, answers in this episode. If you’ve got questions about hiring a book editor, this is where to start finding the answers.
Links:
- www.writingtexan.com
Jose is the founder of Value Prop Interactive, a consulting firm he started over 15 years ago, and the creator of the "Revenue Throughput System", a process that diagnoses the volume and velocity at which a business converts opportunities into revenue. He’s an adjunct Professor of Marketing with the Villanova University MBA program and author of Value Prop: Creating Powerful I3 Value Propositions to Enter and Win New Markets.
In this episode, Jose shares what the “I3” stands for in his book title, and discusses how using these three key ingredients will help you become a more successful entrepreneur and a more successful author. Jose also talks about how he has leveraged his book to grow his business and is able to track over $1M in revenue directly to it.
Links:
- www.valueprop.com
We’re all born creative and capable of achieving incredible things—that’s just part of the message Nir Bashan shares in this episode, as he talks about his book The Creator Mindset (McGraw/Hill, 2020). Nir has worked with Hollywood and music stars like Woody Harrelson and Rod Stewart as well as companies like AT&T, Microsoft, Ace Hardware, NFL Network, EA Sports, Suzuki, Activision, and JetBlue and shares his formula for creative success.
Links:
- nirbashan.com
- thecreatormindset.com
- Online Community
- Twitter: @Nir_Bashan
- Instagram: @nirbashan
- Facebook: nirbashan1
- YouTube
- nb@nirbashan.com
Andrew is a prolific bootstrapped startup marketing expert who has driven three VC-backed startup exits, and dozens of successfully funded startups. In this episode, Andrew talks about his new book, The Startup Growth Book: 50+ Proven Ways to Scale Your Business Without a Marketing Budget, and how he’s applying the lessons from the book to market the book. You might pick up a few ideas about how to market your own book, and your business too.
- andrewstartups.com
Kristine Carlson is a New York Times bestselling author and renowned speaker recognized worldwide for the global success of The Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff book series she co-authored with her late husband Dr. Richard Carlson. Her memoir has become a Lifetime movie starring Heather Locklear titled, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: The Kristine Carlson Story.
With over 30 million books in print, Kristine has emerged today as a leading mindfulness expert and transformational guide who has been featured on national radio and television broadcasts, including The Today Show, The View, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Debra Evans also joined this episode. Debra is a developmental editor who worked with Kristine on her book From Heartbreak to Wholeness, and together they launched Book Doulas.
In this episode, Kristine tells her personal story of loss when her husband passed away unexpectedly and how she found comfort by serving others. One way she found to serve others was to launch Book Doulas, a program to help individuals tell their own stories by becoming authors.
Links:
- kristinecarlson.com
- dontsweat.com
- Instagram - Kristine Carlson
- Instagram - Don't Sweat The Small Stuff
- Facebook - Kristine Carlson
- Facebook - Don't Sweat The Small Stuff
Adam Houlahan’s first book, Social Media Secret Sauce, launched his speaking career and helped him build a strong personal brand and platform. When Adam decided to launch his LinkedIn Agency, he already knew he was going to write a book to help him grow it. In this episode, you’ll hear how the book’s reception outstripped his expectations and has allowed him to grow a global firm with offices in Australia and North America. He also shares some of his best tips for how authors can use LinkedIn to promote themselves and their books.
Adam is proof that a tactful book launch can propel your marketing strategy into massive success for your personal brand. As an author of three Amazon bestsellers on LinkedIn marketing, Adam walks listeners through his process which includes the following...
- How to base your marketing campaign around a book launch.
- Writing a new book vs updating an old one.
- Utilizing the power of LinkedIn as an author.
Adam is the CEO of the LinkedIn agency, Prominence Global, and author of Social Media: Secret Sauce, the LinkedIn Playbook, and most recently, Influencer: the 9-Step Guide To Becoming Highly Influential In Any Industry.
Adam's Links:
- Adam's Webinar
- Website
“I know my book isn’t going to be a bestseller,” Drew says.
So why did he write it?
Because although his book targets B2B chief marketing officers, a small, niche audience, all Drew has to do is attract the attention of a small slice of that audience to produce massive success for him and his agency.
In this episode, Drew drops a mountain of helpful tips as he talks about why his first book wasn’t the right book but how he learned from it, how he’s getting the word about his second book, and why he’s dedicating the next four years to marketing it.
Links:
Renegade.com
Jason Falls leads digital marketing strategy at Cornett, a full-service advertising agency based in Lexington, Kentucky, which was named the Southeast’s Small Agency of the Year by Ad Age in 2021. He’s also the author of the new book, Winfluence: Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand.
It’s a slam-dunk to say almost every founder or CEO should publish a book to help their business, but what about other members of the team? Jason isn’t the founder at Cornett, but he had their full support when he set out to write Winfluence because they knew it would generate leads for the agency. Is there someone on your team you could encourage to publish a book about what your business does?
In this episode, Jason talks about his inspiration to write Winfluence, how he landed a deal with Entrepreneur Press and what it was like to work with them, and how he was able to promote his book on over 180 podcasts.
If you like this episode, check out Jason’s two marketing podcasts, Digging Deeper and Winfluence!
LinedIn
JasonFalls.com
TeamCornett.com
Ken has been in the publishing industry for more than five decades and has helped hundreds of executives, entrepreneurs, and others to become thought leaders.
In this episode Ken talks about how he came to the conclusion that every thought leader needs a book, as well as how he became an author himself. Listen in for some great tips on why and how to become a thought leader by writing your own book!
www.thoughtleading.com
Drawing from his military service to a PhD in Philosophy, Charlie Gilkey teaches entrepreneurs, small business owners, and professional creatives how to get stuff done. In this episode Charlie talks about how his first book, The Small Business Lifecycle: Taking the Right Steps at the Right Time to Grow Your Small Business, wasn’t the first book he set out to write, but it ended up being a growth engine for his business anyway. His second and latest book, Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done, was delayed for years because Charlie thought someone else had already written it, but an epiphany pushed him to write his book anyway, which went on to become a bestseller and drive his business to new heights.
Links:
https://twitter.com/CharlieGilkey
https://www.linkedin.com/in/charliegilkey/
https://www.instagram.com/productiveflourishing/
https://www.facebook.com/ProductiveFlourishing
https://www.productiveflourishing.com/
http://startfinishingbook.com/
As a young girl, Lisa was a slow reader but knew she wanted to be a writer. A career in writing led to coaching others to write nonfiction, and today Lisa’s clients have been featured on Oprah, NPR, Today, Good Morning America, and scores of other media outlets.
In this episode, hear about Lisa’s own journey as an author, and learn how she guides her students to publishing success.
Links:
The Ultimate Guide To Transforming Anger - https://amzn.to/2Rmo848
Good and Mad - https://amzn.to/3eegOR9
LisaTenner.com
www.how-to-write-a-book.com
12 Ways Journaling Can Spark Your Creativity, Support Your Writing & Transform Your Life
Dorie Clark was fired by her first literary agent after every publisher she pitched turned her down and told her she needed “a platform.” Not one to back down, when the front door was slammed in her face, Dorie says, “I went in the window instead.”
Dorie began pitching business publications to build a name for herself, and through the sale of a bike on Craigslist, got connected to an editor at the Harvard Business Review (HBR) and was able to contribute a few articles. Then HBR decided not to publish her work anymore, but a last-minute cancellation by another of their writers led to the print version of HBR publishing one of Dorie’s articles, and the rest is history.
Listen to Dorie tell the story behind her four books, including her latest The Long Game: How To Be a Long-Term Thinker In a Short-Term World. You’ll learn what Dorie has picked up over the years about how to build an author platform, market your book, and leverage it to grow your business.
Links:
YouTube
Clubhouse
DorieClark.com
Brant Cooper’s front-row seat to the dot-com boom and crash and subsequent experiences with startups led him to write a series of books to help entrepreneurs build more successful startups. More recently, he’s turned his attention to how startups prepare for the long term by making sure they survive the short term with his new book, Disruption Proof.
In this episode, Brant talks about how writing a book is a lot like starting a business, how he tested his content before putting it in book form, his writing routine, and how he creates his books by dictating them as keynote speeches first.
Links:
https://linkedin.com/in/brantcooper
https://twitter.com/brantcooper
https://brantcooper.com
https://movestheneedle.com
From the Air Force (with time in the First Gulf War and Bosnian War) to an MBA and then a PhD in Leadership, Dr. Tracey Jones has seen a lot, and written about what she’s learned in 10 books (and counting).
In this episode she talks about her author journey to her latest book, SPARK: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within, as well as what she’s learned about being an author from her time as President of the publishing company Tremendous Leadership. As the daughter of Charlie “Tremendous” Jones and having worked with authors like Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and Ken Blanchard, you’ll find Tracey to be a wealth of wisdom for aspiring and current authors.
www.tremendousleadership.com
www.traceycjones.com
Douglas Burdett isn’t an author, but he’s interviewed 274 of them. Douglas is the host of The Marketing Book Podcast, and in this episode we chat about the experiences he’s had and lessons he’s learned from talking to authors like Seth Godin, Mark Schaefer, Anne Janzer (see Ep. #5), and Jay Baer.
How valuable is going on podcasts to an author? (short answer = very) How can an author be a great podcast guest? What should an author not do when going on a podcast?
Douglas has the answers to these questions and more in this episode.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglasburdett/
https://twitter.com/MarketingBook
https://www.salesartillery.com/marketing-book-podcast
Mentioned during the episode:
Douglas' webpage with details on how to be a good podcast guest
Douglas' interview with Tanya Hall, Publisher at Greenleaf
Douglas' interview with Anne Janzer
Les McKeown is the CEO of Predictable Success LLC. A renowned speaker, author and advisor on accelerated business growth, Les started over 40 companies in his own right, and has guided hundreds more worldwide.
His company, Predictable Success, advises CEOs and senior leaders of organizations on how to achieve scalable, sustainable growth. Their clients range from large family-owned businesses to Fortune 100 companies, and include Harvard University, T-Mobile, United Technologies, The National Security Agency, Gartner and The Motley Fool.
In this interview, Les details his “secrets” to entrepreneurial success and how he created multiple bestselling books that have helped him grow his speaking and consulting career.
https://twitter.com/PredSuccess
https://www.instagram.com/predictablesuccess/
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3970027
https://www.facebook.com/predictablesuccess/
https://PredictableSuccess.com/
A former kidnapping negotiator with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the ideal person to write a book on negotiating. After all, what could be more challenging than negotiating the life of a hostage?
Chris Voss did just that, and used his many years of experience in international crises and high-stakes negotiations to launch Black Swan Consulting and publish Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, with almost 20,000 five-star reviews on Amazon!
In this interview with Published Author host Josh Steimle, Chris discusses how he worked with one of the foremost ghostwriters, Tahl Raz, to write his book. He also explores how he marketed it.
Chris was the case agent on such cases as TERRSTOP (the Blind Sheikh Case – Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman), the TWA Flight 800 catastrophe and negotiated the surrender of the first hostage taker to give up in the Chase Manhattan bank robbery hostage taking. During Chris’s 24-year tenure in the FBI, he was trained in the art of negotiation by not only the FBI but Scotland Yard and Harvard Law School.
Links:
Black Swan Consulting
Michael Zipursky is the co-founder and CEO of Consulting Success, a global leader in coaching and training entrepreneurs. In the past 20 years he’s worked with thousands of clients, and he’s the author of four bestselling books, including last year’s Act Now: How Successful Consultants Thrive During Chaos and Uncertainty.
In this interview, Michael tells the story of how he began coaching consultants, which turned into production courses, which turned into his first book that helped him grow his business. Michael’s journey is not only instructive in the details he provides to first-time authors moving through the world of self-publishing, but the very material he teaches his clients is applicable to authors as well.
ConsultingSuccess.com
Suhein Beck is the founder of ELAJ, a natural skincare company, and a bestselling author. She’s also a Syrian refugee, hosted an international talk show in the Mideast where she had to literally dodge bombs, has been involved in multiple FBI sting operations, and is now an American entrepreneur.
In this episode we talk about Suhein’s background, how she came to the US, the amazing story of founding her company based on her grandfather’s family recipe for a wound care ointment, and how publishing a book gave her a platform and legitimacy as a skincare expert.
John Meese is the author of the new book Survive and Thrive: How to Build a Profitable Business in Any Economy (Including This One). John is also the CEO of Cowork.Inc, Co-founder of Notable, and host of the Thrive School podcast.
John is an economist-turned-entrepreneur on a mission to eradicate generational poverty by helping entrepreneurs create thriving businesses. He’s also the first member in his family to go to college.
He readily admits that to succeed in business entrepreneurs don’t need a college degree, a lot of investment, or a big business plan. If you can find real people with real problems that they’re actually aware of and trying to solve, and if you can create a solution, then you can be successful!
Way back in episode 67 with Wendy Keller, Wendy referenced Paul Sokol, explaining that Paul is an expert at building funnels—essential for authors building their audience and contacts. Paul talks about this and lots more in this episode, including the new book he’s working on.
Paul Sokol is an expert on automated experience design and the author of Infusionsoft Cookbook: Over 88 Recipes For Effective Use of Infusionsoft To Mitigate Your CRM Needs, Marketing Automation, Conducting Online Business Optimally. This book is extremely niche, but it was an important step for Paul in terms of building his business, getting speaking gigs, and gaining new opportunities.
Christina Del Villar is a Silicon Valley marketing executive, consultant and author of the new book Sway: Implement the G.R.I.T. Marketing Method to Gain Influence & Drive Corporate Strategy. Christina has wanted to write the book for a long time, having worked on many teams and discovering that lots of people don’t understand what marketers bring to the table.
The G.R.I.T. Marketing Method focuses on helping marketing professionals to build smarter programs, be more efficient and exponentially grow revenue to improve overall company performance.G.R.I.T. stands for: Go-To-Market Strategy; RPN (repeatable, predictable, measurable); Intention; and Tools and Technology.
In this episode Christina discusses how and why she wrote her book, marketing strategies, and how to market your book.
Carol Roth is an American television personality, bestselling author, entrepreneur, radio host, and investor. Carol appears regularly on national cable television networks including Fox Business, CNBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
She is author of a new book The War on Small Business: How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush the Backbone of America, published by HarperCollins.
In this episode we talk about Carol’s book, her work as an author and why she wrote her first book, the bestselling The Entrepreneur Equation, and how she promotes her books in the media.
CarolRoth.com
In his youth, John Kotter didn’t intend to become a writer of bestsellers and a professor at Harvard Business School.
But early on in his career he fell in love with digging into a topic very deeply and finding value for readers.
His first book, Mayors In Action, kicked off a life-long love affair with research and writing. John, a Harvard Business School professor, has become a highly respected change management leader.
In fact, Leading Change, released in 1996, has been named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential business management books ever written. John is also author of the global bestseller Our Iceberg Is Melting.
John’s latest book, released in June, is Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times. In this interview, John talks to Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle about his books, ideas, and writing career. He also shares some advice for new authors.
John Kotter’s Advice For New Authors!
John will spend a lot of time working on a book outline until he is satisfied with it. He takes the same approach to his chapter ones, reworking them until he is ready to proceed. This, he says, makes writing the next few chapters much easier.
“Writing is much more than writing,” he explains. “It forces you to confront inconsistencies that don’t quite hang together.
“I’m not throwing away my writing,” he continues. “I’m throwing away a piece of analysis that has been informative. With that clear in my head I can set it aside and go back to writing.”
A second tip is never to stop writing if the work and flow feel forced. It may lead you in a direction that you don’t want to go in, and it’s better to stop and let your brain figure it out.
For new authors who are working with publishers (as opposed to self-publishing), John says they should go in with low expectations.
“Publishers are operating under difficult circumstances,” says John, referring to the massive amount of change they’ve faced since the rise of the Internet.
“The model doesn’t necessarily fit an author’s needs. Consider self-publishing instead.”
The Reward of Being a Catalyst And Influencing Others
John finds a lot of satisfaction in influencing other people’s work, or discovering that people are referring to him as a significant influencer.
“You also get terrific feedback from people. And if someone goes out of their way to send a note or email, that really says something,” says John.
“Hearing stories about how people used your information to create something new is very rewarding,” he continues. “People say John Kotter made it happen, but they made it happen. My role was more of a catalytic one.”
Both Research And Experiences Shape Books
John says his books come from research, but also a lot of his life experiences. He believes his brain is active 24 hours a day with information at the back of his mind, and a focal point emerges as some point, sparking a flurry of writing.
For example, John’s latest book Change began as an official research project with his consulting company, Kotter.
He explains: “We had a group of five of us talking about some new ideas from brain science and how they were informing us about human nature that fit in an interesting way with some of the research we had that had nothing to do with neurology.
“Our research was observational and had to do with why organizations were much more change-efficient and effective than others,” he continues. “That group met on and off for a few years, and one person said ‘OK, we’ve got enough. Let’s write!’.”
But John said the timing didn’t feel right. He agreed that the group had learned a lot, but believed that it had further to go. However, a year later, John got up one day, went to his iPad, and began writing.
“For me, it happens because my brain gets to the point where it says we've figured out the basics and we're ready to put them down on paper,” John explains. “So we can be more systematic about working out the inconsistencies or the missing data, or are there questions that aren't quite answered yet?
Show Your Book Draft To Others
John has consistently shown drafts of his books to colleagues and readers. He did this methodically with one of his most famous books, Our Iceberg Is Melting. John and the book’s co-author Holger Rathgeber self-published that book first, and then self-published seven more times. With each version, they sought feedback. Today, the book is published by Penguin.
“When you get negative feedback, most of us cringe and kind of hide and hate that. But nevertheless, as a way to improve your thinking, your writing, your capacity to produce something that will be used and be useful to people, it's invaluable,” says John.
And for first-time writers, John encourages them to put on a suit of armor and simply get their book out there!
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Overcome Imposter Syndrome To Finish Your Book
And:
A Hook Point For Your Book Will Win You More Clients - Brendan Kane
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Kotterinc.com
ABOUT THE HOSTThe Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
The devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in 1993 and 2001 were traumatic for thousands of people.
They also changed many people’s lives. Some left New York City, never to return. Some left the corporate world.
Today’s guest, Miriam Schulman, was one such woman. She tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle that she was always a closet artist, but was afraid of not being able to make a living if she chose that path. Instead, she worked with a successful hedge fund.
However, when the terrorism came to US soil, Miriam—along with many others—had a wake up call. In 2001 she crossed a threshold of no return.
Learning How To Make Money From Creativity
Miriam took a job teaching Pilates at a gym and was also responsible for selling fitness packages. This was the perfect opportunity to study their sales model and emulate it with her own business.
She soon set up as an artist launching The Inspiration Place, and began selling classes. They included teaching people how to paint, including portraits. She also took commissions.
This transition wasn’t easy. Miriam is a mother and had to find creative ways of balancing her business with raising children. But today, she has a highly successful business with classes, clients, and her own podcast, The Inspiration Place.
If People Keep Asking You Questions, Write a Book!
Like many other successful entrepreneurs, Miriam had lots of people asking questions about how she ran her classes and other aspects of her business, and over time, the idea for her book arose.
She realized that by writing a book she would be able to connect directly with people just like her: moms (and dads) who are raising children but want to create a successful business that feels rewarding and helps others, too. Her forthcoming book will be published by Harper Collins in 2022.
Bad Book Reviews On Amazon Can Help You Create a Great Book
One of the major things an author must accomplish is producing a book with a unique message. This doesn’t mean that the whole book’s idea must be unique or that you can’t attribute content to other writers or quote people. But the core focus or ‘Why’ behind your book should be unique.
Creatives Jeff Goins and Lisa Congdon have both written books on running successful creative ventures.
But, points out Miriam, neither one of them is a mother of children. “And that's a huge part of my audience . . . women who have children, who are being given the message that you can't be an artist and a mother.
“So I felt that that was a big distinguisher between my message and the message of other authors. It's just a different positioning. There were also other books where the mindset and the why was there, but they didn't really then go into the how to.”
Amazon proved to be a big help here. Specifically, it was reading poor reviews of similar books that told Miriam what her book should and shouldn’t contain.
“I spent a lot of time looking at the negative Amazon reviews because that really gave me clues into what I was going to say to be different, which didn't mean I was going to bash the other authors because . . . that would be a huge turnoff,” explains Miriam. “But it really helped me create the language and describe . . . how to do it.”
When You Tell Yourself It’s Not Working, Stop Listening
Like most creative folks, Miriam knows only too well the temptations of negative self-talk. She’s currently in the process of writing her book and knows it can be too easy to believe that voice in your head that says your creative project won’t work or your efforts are doomed to fail.
She has a special message for Published Author listeners: “We're always going to have that fear of something going wrong and not making it. Our brains have evolved to be wary of fear. Our brains want to keep us safe. Our brains are going to come up with all kinds of reasons why something isn't going to work. I don't call these excuses. I call them doubts.”
She also cautions that the smarter you are, the more doubts you’ll throw in your own path.
“They feel real to you. So be careful of the stories you're telling yourself,” Miriam cautions. “Those stories that you're making up in your mind, why it's not a good time to start, why you're not ready yet, why something won't work for you.”
It definitely is your time, she says, “And you're going to do it anyway. And you're ready for this step.”
In this episode Miriam also talks about how to find the right agent for your book and her writing schedule.
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Finding The Right Agent And Getting The Best Deal With a Publisher
And:
Overcome Imposter Syndrome To Finish Your Book
LINKS
- SchulmanArt.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Years ago, psychiatrist, Dr. Drew Ramsey saw first-hand the impact of the second-generation of antipsychotic drugs on his patients.
While the drugs may have alleviated the symptoms of psychiatric illnesses, they were hard on the body and mind. Patients gained excessive weight and developed problems with the lipid balances in their blood.
It didn’t take long for a book idea to formulate. Drew tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle: “Nobody in mental health was talking about food. No one taught us how to talk about food. There was not a single lecture.
“It really hit me as a young physician. I remember thinking: ‘Wow, fats come from fish.’, recalls Drew. “We always talk about supplements and molecules in isolation. We studied B12, we didn’t study clams, but if you want to really up your intake of B12, just eat clams for months.”
Drew is an author, farmer, and founder of the Brain Food Clinic in New York City, offering treatment and consultation for depression, anxiety, and emotional wellness concerns. He is the author of three books, including the award-winning cookbook Eat Complete: The 21 Nutrients that Fuel Brain Power, Boost Weight Loss and Transform Your Health and his latest book, Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety: Nourish Your Way to Better Mental Health in Six Weeks.
A Co-author Improved First Book’s Readability
Drew quickly moved from writing down his ideas on scraps of paper to finding a co-author, Tyler Graham, to work on his first book, The Happiness Diet: A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood, and Lean, Energized Body.
Tyler is a journalist and had a lot of experience writing for the public. Says Drew: “That first book was really my education.
“Writing about science is boring! You gotta make it interesting and relevant and compelling,” he explains. “People want to hear your opinion of what they should eat and you can back that up with all kinds of evidence, but it comes down to your opinion.
“So working with a co-author has been huge, especially when I think about how my processes evolved to the team that I now work with.”
The Importance Of Deadlines In Writing
Drew says that many writers miss the importance of deadlines in writing. If you want to get the work done, a deadline is crucial. He learned this lesson working with Tyler. The two men held regular meetings three mornings a week for two-hour sessions. Each had their own work to complete for the morning sessions.
The Happiness Diet required a ton of research because Drew and Tyler had to learn so much about food, including agriculture and the food production and distribution process. However, the hard work laid the foundation for Drew’s next books. He gave himself an education and could build on that knowledge with his next books.
Drew and Tyler were in fact two of the early key figures in what is today called mental fitness. “Mental fitness really begins with nutritional psychiatry, this idea that there are things in your life . . . the everyday choices you make . . . they influence your brain health and your brain is the keeper of your mental health,” explains Drew.
Today, there is now a tremendous amount of support for Drew’s research and writing. He notes: “There are multiple randomized trials showing if you improve dietary quality and move people towards a more traditional diet, you can significantly decrease the burden of depression and anxiety.”
Writing Books Just One Small Part Of Sharing Message
Drew says that writing a book is just one part of his work to evangelize about healthy eating and mental fitness. A lot of the work is around content creating and delivering his message so that people get excited about the possibilities of food and mental health.
“Whatever you're doing, whether it’s improving your relationship or dealing with mood or anxiety, it’s all about brain phenomena,” he says. “It’s been a really exciting evolution in terms of what it’s done for me.”
His key messages for authors include:
Focus On The Long-Haul
Drew believes that each promotional opportunity is part of a big picture around a book. He focuses on the long-haul with each book, and as each opportunity arises he looks for its place in the creation of his platform.
The Secret To a Successful TEDx Talk
Drew has delivered TEDx talks and some of them have been based on his books’ content. He finds them “terrifying and challenging” at the same time. His big learning over the years is that a successful TEDx presentation comes from balance: a combination of a state of flow and following the arc of your key points.
“Just channeling your truth and keeping it simple is really important,” notes Drew.
It Takes a Team To Make a Successful Author
Drew is deliberate in his approach to progressing his work, saying he works on his career as an author with the same discipline he applies to his diet and mental health. He recognizes too that a strong team is important, and this includes his agent along with the people who help him translate his ideas and vision, design his books, all the way through to co-authors and other business partnerships.
“You’ve got to dedicate yourself to the process and have deadlines. Really enjoying that process is important, too,” says Drew, adding that it’s essential that authors create a team with people who care about them and support their work.
“It's one of the ways that I really think about mental health and what our brains are here for, that our brains do best when we are connected. We have our own internal process, but I would say almost spiritually that we're here doing what we're meant to be doing, and we're doing it with other people that we care about.”
Share On The Platforms That Work For You
Social media wasn’t an easy leap for Drew. As a doctor and psychiatrist, he had to take into consideration privacy considerations and how to handle patients contacting him online. Eventually, he found his place on Instagram, which he feels really comfortable with.
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Bestselling Author Tells How Books Built His Career
And:
Publisher Said Go Niche With Book, But Author Goes For Broad Appeal
LINKS
- DrewRamseyMD.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
People have never been so susceptible to propaganda and persuasion as they are today. Hype truly runs our world.
But imagine if you could generate and leverage hype for positive purposes—like legitimate business success, helping people, or facilitating community change.
Michael F. Schein is a writer, international speaker, founder and president of marketing agency MicroFame Media and a self-described hype artist. As such, he has mastered the art and science of using shameless propaganda and powerful tools of persuasion for personal and social good.
Michael passes this knowledge along in his new book The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable Success Secrets From the World’s Greatest Propagandists, Self-Promoters, Cult Leaders, Mischief Makers and Boundary Breakers.
The Power Of Group Psychology
Michael tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle: “I realized marketing is about getting people emotional on a large scale in order for them to take action. And that’s no different from what we used to call hype.
“It’s what the best rock band managers do, it’s what cult leaders do, it’s what propaganda artists do, it’s what leaders of causes do. There’s not so much difference between what the worst and best of them do; it’s that they all understand crowd psychology,” he continues.
“So I started to take that approach, with the proviso of never deceiving anybody and keeping things ethical, because I didn’t leave my corporate job to become a con artist.”
When It Comes To Publisher, Perseverance Is Key
Michael went through no less than two agents to get a publisher for The Hype Handbook. There were a few bites. One agent persuaded a couple of editors, but they had to convince the publisher’s sales team that the book would be a success, and for some reason they couldn’t.
At that point, Michael thought his book was done, and that it was time to walk away from all his hard work. He felt really sad about the whole thing.
But a chance meeting with a successful PR woman he’d known for sometime turned things around! During dinner Micheal told her about his book, and she revealed she’d just gotten into literary agent work. She told Michael: “I’ll sell your book for you,” and within two weeks he had a publisher!
Make War, Not Love
The Hype Handbook wasn’t Michael’s first book. At 18, he wrote Teenage Road Hogs, which didn’t sell many copies but did attract the attention of Oprah Winfield’s book club. But he never heard back from the TV show after vacillating on whether the driving age should be raised or lowered.
Michael believes: “That’s the first hype lesson: Make war, not love. Always pick fights. Always know where you stand. I never would have made that mistake today. It was a hard lesson.”
As the years passed by, Michael had learned enough lessons, first in a rock and roll band and later in corporate marketing, and as a freelance copywriter, to formulate the ideas for The Hype Handbook.
As the book’s subtitle describes, The Hype Handbook breaks the concepts of hype down into 12 strategies, told through the stories of highly effective and sometimes notorious hype artists.
Build Relationships With Influencers
One lesson for aspiring business book writers is to realize that building a grassroots audience through, say, Instagram or Twitter may not be as important as nurturing relationships with influencers.
Explains Michael: “The best hype artists make it look like everything they're doing is grassroots, but it’s only a fraction of what's really going on.
“Instead, they spend a lot of time building strong relationships behind the scenes, so that when they're ready to launch something, they call upon all their favors in a concentrated period of time. And blow it up so that it looks grassroots.”
Build on Your Weaknesses and Insecurities, Not Your Strengths
Another Hype Handbook strategy is discovering that the essence of propaganda is a well-designed package and, in some cases, an almost cartoon version of yourself. For example, the painter Andy Warhol used his pathological shyness to convey the artificiality of the modern world. “Instead of going to Toastmasters and becoming a firm speaker, he leaned into that shyness and became the most iconic, soft spoken and asthmatic speaker in the world,” observes Michael.
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Finding The Right Agent And Getting The Best Deal With a Publisher
And:
Writing Books Brings Entrepreneur Speaking Roles, Opens Doors
LINKS
- MichaelFSchein.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives near Boston on a horse farm. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
You're lying in bed in the wee hours, feeling anxious because you have no idea where your next client will come from.
Does this sound like you? If so, today’s Published Author episode is something you definitely want to hear!
Host Josh Steimle talks to Tobin Slaven, author of the book Experts Never Chase: The Hassle-Free Guide for Expert-Based Entrepreneurs. Experts Never Chase is designed to help business owners stop marketing and start growing their business by creating more conversations with the right people.
Experts Never Chase contains the four gears of marketing methodology designed by Tobin to help entrepreneurs find their ideal clients.
First Book From The Published Author Masterclass!
Tobin is the first member of the Published Author’s Masterclass to finish his book and get it published.
An entrepreneur for about 15 years, Tobin has been called an introverted savant with a super power for helping entrepreneurs find their tribe and sparking conversations out of thin air!
Tobin’s LinkedIn profile notes that his book’s title is about the fact that we all know deep down that “chasing undermines the hard won trust and authority of subject matter experts. I help entrepreneurs find the easy path to dialogue that drives sales, without chasing.”
Author Ran a Kickstarter Campaign To Fund Book’s Launch
Tobin ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to bring in some funding to launch his book. He says: “I like exploring new territory and doing unique things. I've never run a Kickstarter before, so I didn't bring a lot of experience, but I've wanted to do one for a while. I just find it really interesting . . .This idea of gathering a group of people together and getting them to buy into the vision of what you're creating.”
The campaign encountered a scary moment. With 10 days to go left in the campaign, Tobin and his co-author Cat Stancik, were only at 22 percent of their $5,000 goal. With Kickstarter, the rule is all or nothing, so orders for their book would have been refunded if they didn’t reach 100 percent.
Although Tobin was aware that most Kickstarters don’t see a lot of activity until the end of a campaign, he knew he had to really kick it into gear.
“I’d call it a good old-fashioned barn raising! I reach out to friends. I had family friends that came in in a big way,” he says. “Some folks supported with dollars. Some folks interviewed us on podcasts and helped us get the word out. And we ended up at 131 percent when we finished.”
The key to a successful Kickstarter campaign is, according to Tobin, being creative with what’s on offer. Tobin and Cat offered reward layers where, for example, people could buy a signed copy of the book, a digital package with a hard copy and audio copy due later this year, and a hard copy along with a consultation package.
Frustrated With List-Building, Pushing Send, And One-To-Many Marketing
Up until about four or five years ago, most of Tobin’s experience in the digital marketing space was with his own consultancy. His work was all about list building and pushing send—one-to-many digital marketing.
“It was all about efficiency and automation, and doing the least amount of work for the biggest results,” explains Tobin.
But clearly he wasn’t enjoying the work because he became frustrated and did a 360-degree flip, going all in on having one-to-one conversations with people and doing the things that wouldn't scale.
Experts Never Chase is about this experience and process and the journey that he’s been on after moving away from the one-to-many digital marketing approach. He notes the journey has been full of mistakes, but the goal has been to find a more elegant way of winning clients.
‘We’re Starting To Tune Out The Marketing Stuff’
Toban changed tacks not because he wasn’t successful. On the contrary, he and his team produced $1.5 million dollars in revenue with two emails.
However, he was watching the open rates go down, even though they were doing a lot of things right and had pretty high open rates compared to the industry average.
Explains Tobin: “It just was getting harder and harder. And I think we see this, all of us sort of recognize this, that we're starting to tune out that marketing stuff.
“Particularly with the pandemic, I think we crave real connections with people. And I just got to a place where I said to myself if I have to prove results, if someone put a gun to my head and said ‘You've got to produce results, how are we going to do that?’ it was this: Go out, talk to people, remove all the marketing that’s creating distance between you and the people you want to do business with.”
Networking With Meaning In The Online Space
As an introvert, Tobin finds networking at face-to-face events difficult. He also finds online networkers who he calls “leg humpers” a real turn off. They are the people who have something to sell, connect with you, and as soon as you say you’re not interested, they disappear.
Because of this, Tobin says people have bought into automation or they believe that there is a perfect script for online networking.
“The answer is there isn't one. Because if it's a copy and paste script, you automatically are removing your biggest asset, which is creating that human to human connection.”
Instead, explains Tobin, “Every message that is sent . . . the person receiving it is a hundred percent sure and certain that that message was meant for them and them alone. You do that by tying into the details that are only pertinent to them and would not have been sent to anyone else. And it completely changes the conversation.
“I would challenge folks that say ‘I don't have time for this’. Do you have time to burn your reputation with people because you only get that first impression? I want to create relationships with people I want to do business with. I don't want to drive people away who say ‘He treated me like a number, like I was a number on his spreadsheet to get more sales’.”
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Imposter Syndrome Halted Writer’s Work. Now His Book Has 100s Five-Star Reviews
And:
Don’t Bother With PR. Do This Instead
LINKS LinkedIn FaceBook Twitter TobinSlaven.com ExpertsNeverChase.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Authors who aspire to getting picked up by a traditional publisher should find an agent first, given that about 80 percent of books from publishing houses are sold by agents.
Agents are the ones with relationships with editors, developed carefully over the years. An agent knows what a publisher is looking for, and how to present an author and their work to a publisher
But how do you get an agent, and what exactly is their role, apart from—of course—sending your work to the right publisher?
An Agent Does Much More Than Connect Authors With Publishers
Wendy Keller, owner of the highly successful Keller Media, answers these questions and more in this episode.
Speaking to Published Author host Josh Steimle, Wendy explains that today’s literary agent acts like a business consultant for an author. The agent will spend time working with an author on the book idea and, in some instances, will help with their book proposal.
“Curating the content and pre-determining the content’s marketability are really important factors,” explains Wendy. “It's my responsibility to determine whether a book is going to be successful once it hits the marketplace. So I'm gauging the author's platform, which is an indicator of whether or not the book will be successful.”
Keller Media is a literary agency, speaker's bureau, and content marketing consultancy focused on nonfiction, business, science and self-help content. Keller Media has placed more than 1800 book deals all over the world, including 17 New York Times bestsellers and nine international bestsellers.
Wendy, who has been an agent for almost 30 years, has published more than 30 books, including the bestselling Ultimate Guide To Platform Building and the Secrets Of Successful Negotiating for Women.
Agents specialize in building relationships with editors who eventually acquire an author’s manuscript. For this reason, focus on one or two genres, and in Keller Media’s case they represent authors of business, science, and self-help books—nothing else.
How To Find An Agent
There are different ways of finding an agent who can sell your book to a publisher. Here are some methods:
- Reach out to your contacts and ask if they know any good agents. Be sure to thoroughly research any referrals
- Carry out your own research. Look at who the agent has published and the categories in which they specialize. Don’t send a query about a self-help book to an agent who specializes in education.
- Jane Freidman, a publishing expert with expertise in business strategy for authors and publishers, recommends taking out a one-month subscription to PublishersMarketPlace.com. It will give you a fast education into what the publishing world is like, and is one of the best places to find an agent.
- Hire someone to help you find an agent. CopyWriteConsultants.com is a good place to start.
Authors Get Published Based On Their Ability To Market Their Book
Wendy says the corporatization of the publishing industry means that today traditional publishing is about the author's ability to promote the book.
“I used to say it's 90 percent platform 10% content. Just like everything goes from extreme to extreme, at this point I would say it's 25% content and 75% platform, platform being jargon for your ability to sell the book.”
Platform is about the number of people who are engaging with you and how big your fanbase is growing.
Why Go With a Traditional Publisher?
According to Wendy, the main reason to work with a traditional publisher is the number of people involved in the process, along with their experience, qualifications, and knowledge. A publisher will spend time fleshing out an author’s idea, so that they are sure the book will be competitive.
“You have this opportunity to be supported, to have your editorial content vetted and approved by many people in the process,” Wendy says.
“You have access to marketing backgrounds like mine and the publisher’s that are far more extensive than anything you will ever get from any of the self-publisher hybrid houses. I'm familiar with that model. In some cases, it's the right thing. But in most cases, it's not because the work is going to be inferior and the marketing is going to be slapdash.”
Next, while an author-entrepreneur is working on their book, a publisher is busy preparing the market. For example, they can approach Amazon to let them know that a big business is set to be published, and Amazon will buy according to the expectations of the salesperson.
Working with a publisher means that there’s a system in place working for the author, ensuring that the supply and resources are working for the online and bricks and mortar outlets.
The Importance Of a Book Proposal
A book proposal is essential in the world of traditional publishing. A proposal for a book is to the publishing industry what a business proposal is to a venture capitalist, explains Wendy. She says: “You're trying to get a stranger to write a check for your idea, it’s got to be such a precise document.
Wendy can tell after reading the first two or three paragraphs of a proposal whether a book idea is strong. Even if an author has a great idea, if their proposal is weak and doesn’t answer all the questions editorial, sales, and marketing will ask, a publisher will likely reject the proposal.
Some agents, Wendy included, help authors write their book’s proposal. Wendy also assists with building parts of an author's platform that will either turn them into a paid speaker, bring more consulting revenue, or bring customers to their product or service—whatever it is that they're selling.
In fact, says Wendy, today’s literary agent acts like a business consultant with an author. They spend time working with an author on the book idea and then their proposal. Next, a publisher will spend time and money on fleshing out an author’s idea so that it is truly competitive.
Owner of Bookproposalworkshop.com, Wendy teaches authors how to write amazing proposals. Without a strong proposal you won’t sell a book, unless you're world famous, then maybe you can get away without having a proposal
One of Wendy’s client’s is nationally famous and worked in Donald Trump’s government, and even he has to write a proposal for his book, so there’s no way around a proposal.
For the book proposal workshops, Wendy brings in a team of proven New York editors and goes over the ‘Why’ of an author’s book. She explains: “A lot of times authors don't understand how the publishers are looking from their perspective at the content that's coming in.”
In this episode, Wendy also talks about:
- The key aspects of an author’s platform that must be developed well before their book is written
- How previously self-published authors tend to fail when they seek a traditional publisher
- Author success stories
- How the growth of Amazon has shrunk the advances publishers will offer
- Why Wendy selects one publisher over another when pitching a book
- Why she will occasionally decide to work with an author who doesn’t have a platform but whose book will contribute positively to society.
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Make Writing Your Nonfiction Book Your Top Priority
And:
No Agent, No Followers, But She Still Landed a Book Deal
LINKS
- LinkedIn - Keller Media
- KellerMedia.com/webinars
- StrategicVisabilityMarketing.com
- KellerMedia.com/query
- BookProposalWorkshop.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
For some author-entrepreneurs, success isn’t planned. Instead, it comes from a series of events and being able to see opportunities in those events.
This is definitely the story with John Warrillow. He built a successful market research business, with more than $6 million in revenue. Clients included The Bank of America and American Express, and because each job was custom, the profit margins were around 30 percent.
My Business Was Worth Nothing
One day, John decided to sell his business, assuming it was worth a lot of money. He soon discovered that because he did most of the research and sales, there was actually nothing to sell. John had built a business where he was the most valuable asset.
Recalls John: “For me, it was like getting kicked in the groin, it was brutal. It really inspired this journey that I went on to try to understand what makes a business valuable.
“Ultimately, we transformed that company. We hired sales people, created recurring revenue, a subscription model, etc. It was acquired years later by a publicly traded company in New York, a New York Stock Exchange listed company,” details John.
John details this experience in his first book Built To Sell. This book was recognized by Fortune and Inc magazines as one of the best business books of 2011. It's been translated into 12 languages and since publication has sold almost the same number of copies every week, within plus or minus 20 percent. It’s one of those rare evergreen books that just keeps selling.
The Amazing Journey To Value Builder
Today, John helps companies build and accelerate the value of their company leading up to an exit. He runs a company called Value Builder, which is software used by business advisors to market themselves and to add a value building practice to their firm.
He tells Published Author show host Josh Steimle that this part of his entrepreneurial journey began after writing Built To Sell,
A questionnaire on the Built To Sell helped businesses determine whether their business was sellable. “Suddenly, we started getting calls from advisors, accounting firms, merger and acquisition firms, asking ‘Could we license that questionnaire on your website?’,” says John.
“That triggered a light bulb for me to say ‘Why don't I build some tools for advisors to use?’ And that's what started Value Builder, which evolved into a practice management software for advisors to use in their firms.”
The Importance Of Recurring Revenue
John’s subsequent books are The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry, published in 2015, and the newly published The Art Of Selling Your Business.
He explains that he wrote The Automatic Customer with much more intention and more thoughtfully than Built To Sell.
John explains what he set out to do with The Automatic Customer. “Built to Sell talks thematically about how do you create a business that's not dependent on you. But I had underestimated and given short shrift to this concept of recurring revenue. I just hadn't made it a big enough deal.
“What I came to learn through doing some of the research for Value Builder is that recurring revenue is this incredible secret sauce for building a valuable company. If you don't have recurring revenue, it's gonna be very difficult to create a sort of transferable value. And so that's what inspired The Automatic Customer.”
Why Selling Your Business Is An Art, Not a Science
John’s podcast, Built To Sell Radio, alerted him to the fact that some entrepreneurs are able to sell their businesses for much more than the accepted industry average.
“I was fascinated by what they were doing differently than all the other folks. And so that's what I really wanted to begin with The Art Of Selling Your Business. This is a bit of a frustration for me . . . valuation experts—people who value businesses—parade around as if there's some formula that values a company and that they are the ultimate arbiters of what a business is worth.
In John’s experience, businesses can be viewed very differently in terms of value by different acquirers. In The Art Of Selling Your Business John explains that there is indeed an art to selling a business you’ve worked hard to build.
“It's not just zeros and ones. It's not just Excel spreadsheets. There's a way you position your company, market your business,” he details. “There's a way you go about romancing the buyer, so that it entices them into wanting to own your company. And that's not something you could put in a spreadsheet. And that's what I wanted to communicate with this book.”
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Bestselling Author Tells How Books Built His Career
And:
Entrepreneurs, The World Needs Your Book. Don't Let Anyone Talk You Out Of It
LINKS LinkedIn FaceBook Twitter BuiltToSell.com BuiltToSell Radio (podcast) SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
For some author-entrepreneurs, success isn’t planned. Instead, it comes from a series of events and being able to see opportunities in those events.
This is definitely the story with John Warrillow. He built a successful market research business, with more than $6 million in revenue. Clients included The Bank of America and American Express, and because each job was custom, the profit margins were around 30 percent.
My Business Was Worth Nothing
One day, John decided to sell his business, assuming it was worth a lot of money. He soon discovered that because he did most of the research and sales, there was actually nothing to sell. John had built a business where he was the most valuable asset.
Recalls John: “For me, it was like getting kicked in the groin, it was brutal. It really inspired this journey that I went on to try to understand what makes a business valuable.
“Ultimately, we transformed that company. We hired sales people, created recurring revenue, a subscription model, etc. It was acquired years later by a publicly traded company in New York, a New York Stock Exchange listed company,” details John.
John details this experience in his first book Built To Sell. This book was recognized by Fortune and Inc magazines as one of the best business books of 2011. It's been translated into 12 languages and since publication has sold almost the same number of copies every week, within plus or minus 20 percent. It’s one of those rare evergreen books that just keeps selling.
The Amazing Journey To Value Builder
Today, John helps companies build and accelerate the value of their company leading up to an exit. He runs a company called Value Builder, which is software used by business advisors to market themselves and to add a value building practice to their firm.
He tells Published Author show host Josh Steimle that this part of his entrepreneurial journey began after writing Built To Sell,
A questionnaire on the Built To Sell helped businesses determine whether their business was sellable. “Suddenly, we started getting calls from advisors, accounting firms, merger and acquisition firms, asking ‘Could we license that questionnaire on your website?’,” says John.
“That triggered a light bulb for me to say ‘Why don't I build some tools for advisors to use?’ And that's what started Value Builder, which evolved into a practice management software for advisors to use in their firms.”
The Importance Of Recurring Revenue
John’s subsequent books are The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry, published in 2015, and the newly published The Art Of Selling Your Business.
He explains that he wrote The Automatic Customer with much more intention and more thoughtfully than Built To Sell.
John explains what he set out to do with The Automatic Customer. “Built to Sell talks thematically about how do you create a business that's not dependent on you. But I had underestimated and given short shrift to this concept of recurring revenue. I just hadn't made it a big enough deal.
“What I came to learn through doing some of the research for Value Builder is that recurring revenue is this incredible secret sauce for building a valuable company. If you don't have recurring revenue, it's gonna be very difficult to create a sort of transferable value. And so that's what inspired The Automatic Customer.”
Why Selling Your Business Is An Art, Not a Science
John’s podcast, Built To Sell Radio, alerted him to the fact that some entrepreneurs are able to sell their businesses for much more than the accepted industry average.
“I was fascinated by what they were doing differently than all the other folks. And so that's what I really wanted to begin with The Art Of Selling Your Business. This is a bit of a frustration for me . . . valuation experts—people who value businesses—parade around as if there's some formula that values a company and that they are the ultimate arbiters of what a business is worth.
In John’s experience, businesses can be viewed very differently in terms of value by different acquirers. In The Art Of Selling Your Business John explains that there is indeed an art to selling a business you’ve worked hard to build.
“It's not just zeros and ones. It's not just Excel spreadsheets. There's a way you position your company, market your business,” he details. “There's a way you go about romancing the buyer, so that it entices them into wanting to own your company. And that's not something you could put in a spreadsheet. And that's what I wanted to communicate with this book.”
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Bestselling Author Tells How Books Built His Career
And:
Entrepreneurs, The World Needs Your Book. Don't Let Anyone Talk You Out Of It
LINKS LinkedIn FaceBook Twitter BuiltToSell.com BuiltToSell Radio (podcast) SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
It’s no surprise that Vancouver-based Page Two Books is making a name for itself as an outstanding book publisher.
Launched in 2013 by Jesse Finkelstein and Trena White, Page Two is one of the few hybrid publishers that offers print on demand or trade publishing. It also has a well-earned reputation for rigor throughout its processes.
Talking to Published Author Show host Josh Steimle, Trena said Page Two doesn’t usually refer to itself as a hybrid publisher, because so many things set it apart.
Beyond Hybrid Publishing
She explains: “We have not typically used that (hybrid) phrase ourselves, because we feel that we're bringing a level of professionalism that you don't always see in the space.”
While authors do pay Page Two to produce their book and provide the support expected from a publisher. They handle absolutely everything, including editing, design, production and sales and marketing, and distribution.
Page Two doesn’t license their rights to the book, so an author retains total ownership of the book content and their intellectual property, which is very critical, because they are typically entrepreneurs and experts who are using that IP in all kinds of ways. When a book sells, an author earns 90 to 100% of the proceeds of the sale, depending on how it is sold.
But what really sets Page Two apart is the rigor they apply throughout the entire process. With the editorial process alone, a book can go through multiple rounds of substantive editing to sharpen the content, structure, and stories.
“We're quite rigorous about our approach to setting the book up for sale in the market and digging into titles, subtitle, pricing, and all of those things that play into bringing the book to market. In the hybrid space, we are quite unusual in that rigor,” says Trena.
The Author’s Broader Goals
When Page Two begins working with an author, they do not think of a book as an object that comes to market. Trena says Page Two aims for peer-to-peer relationships with their author clients. They will work with an author around:
Understanding how a book fits into an author's goals Integrating the book into the author’s products and services Ensuring the book and it’s design into the author’s brand Making a cover stand out on Amazon Trade Publishing Or Print On Demand?
Trena explains that the approach to publishing depends on an author’s goals and where their audience is based.
“For instance, if an author wants to get a book into the market as fast as they can, print on demand is a better option for people who need to move quickly. The cycle to create the book and the production timeline is shorter, and the distribution timeline is shorter, too,” says Trena.
For an author like Phil Jones, who worked with Page Two to write and publish Exactly What To Say, it soon became apparent that there was a much broader market for the book. Exactly What To Say began as print on demand, but then became a trade publishing project. The book has now been translated into more than 15 languages!
Making Book Distribution Easy
Page Two works with a distribution company called Macmillan Distribution, which is a large, multinational publisher, Macmillan takes on select smaller publishers for sales and distribution. The company sells Page Two books and is able to open up new opportunities.
“For example,” says Trena, “they’ve just sold one of our business books into FedEx locations across the US. That's the kind of opportunity that you don't see through print on demand sales.”
The Importance of Audience
Trena says one of the big keys to success for nonfiction authors is thinking well ahead about building an audience, even years before the book exists. She says authors must build a following and begin marketing before the launch date.
“Try and find ways to connect with your audience so that when the book exists you can engage them. Amazing things happen when you do that,” she notes.
A stellar example is author Joey Remini, an entrepreneur who specializes in tinnitus and vertigo. Joey has built a following and an audience over the years, with 1000s of people in her Facebook group. She offers different tiers of training and courses. When she published her book Rock Steady late last year, she sold a phenomenal 7000 copies in the first week.
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Mortgage Banker In Awe Of Power Of Books Sets Up Publishing Company
And:
She Built a $19M Business Helping Life Coaches Write Books
LINKS LinkedIn FaceBook Twitter Instagram PageTwo.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
You wouldn’t think Steve Sims had room for even more success.
Originally a bricklayer from East London, Steve had achieved more than he dreamed working as a successful entrepreneur, business coach, and speaker.
He’s known as The Real-Life Wizard of Oz, courtesy of Forbes, and past clients include Elton John and Elon Musk.
But after writing Bluefishing: The Art Of Making Things Happen, Steve’s level of success vaulted into the stratosphere.
Book Brought Steve ‘More Gratifying’ Work
“I started working with people that wanted and demanded more of themselves. I would go home happy, not being able to sleep because I was so excited about what the projects we were working on,” Steve enthuses to Published Author podcast host Josh Steimle.
“I was no longer spending a billionaire’s money to give them a cool cocktail story. I was working with a business to help them change their ethos, changed their culture, changed their branding and it wouldn't just affect the owner. It would affect the 300 people working in the business. And it was much more gratifying.”
Did he expect any of this after writing his book? “No!”
Steve’s wizardry includes sending people down to see the wreck of the Titanic on the sea bed and closing a museum in Florence for a private dinner party, with Andrea Bocelli arriving to serenade the diners while they ate their pasta!
What Kind Of Reaction Do You Want Your Book To Bring?
Right before Steve began working on his book, Jay Abraham asked him: “What is the reaction you’re trying to create?”
Steve thought about this and realized that he knew a lot of fantastic and successful people. “I've been able to milk that and ride the coattails through my 30 plus year industry. I'd love to be able to give some people the shortcut to that.
“So two things. One, I want the book to be an easy read. And I want it to be digestible quickly. I wanted someone to walk into JFK, buy the book, and to be able to read it on the five hour flight from there to LA, get off that flight, and do things differently. That's what I wanted.
So Steve focused on how readers can learn from his experiences while missing out some of his failings along the way.
He had what he calls a translator work with him on the book, translating his concepts and ideas into readable prose. He basically told his stories, experiences and lessons, and they were written down in his voice.
Keys To a Successful Mindset
Steve says there’s no such thing as a rich person without a successful mindset. He saw this at an early age and made it his goal to connect with as many people as possible to start building his business.
He went from getting people into nightclubs to entrance into the Monaco Grand Prix, New York Fashion Week, the Kentucky Derby, and the Grammys.
All these things were possible because he learned quickly about what successful people value and focus on.
Value Time
“The first one is they value time more than you do,” he says. “A lot of people will get to a point in the day when they think ‘I’m just going to sit on the sofa.’
“Successful people go ‘What can I learn with that free hour? Can I read a book or look at YouTube’,” They realize they can make more impact, they can make more money, but they can never make more time.”
Valuing Time And Relationships Value Relationships
Next, successful people value relationships. They don’t hire from a resume. Instead, they hire people who will match their culture.
“We all see these resumes, you know, graduated from Harvard, MBA Ph.D. But if the person's not a good mental fit for you, then the paperwork is not going to make it so. They focus on culture, and like-minded people get in.
“If you’re not qualified for the job but you’ve got the right mindset, they can train you for the rest of it.”
Quickly Move Away From Projects That Don’t Work Let Go Of Something That Doesn’t Work
Steve’s final key to a successful entrepreneurial mindset is to let go of a project that isn’t working. He acknowledges that it’s tempting to sink another $1,000 into a venture, but successful entrepreneurs have learned to let go. They tell themselves that the project is dead, and they won’t go back to it.
Steve learned this lesson the hard way. He says: “I learned it because I failed. You know, it's like everything. We become experienced because nine times out of 10 things go wrong, and you can't get experience without failure.”
He says entrepreneurs shouldn't think about what others may think of them and their failures. Those who possess a successful mindset will lean into failure and learn from it, not run away from it.
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Entrepreneur Writes Startup Guide After Hearing Crazy Business Ideas
And:
For Entrepreneurs Self-Publishing Is The Way To Go
LINKS LinkedIn FaceBook Twitter Instagram SteveSims.com The Sims Distillery
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
It’s every content marketer's ambition to create content that hooks their audience and has them coming back for more.
Marketers want followers to eagerly await content and consume everything they produce.
Not many marketers succeed, and this is particularly true in saturated niches where even the best content doesn’t make it to the top of search engine page results.
However, a new book by Dutch author Carlijn Postma, guest on today’s episode of the Published Author podcast.
Carlijn’s book, Binge Marketing, recommends that creators of content stop looking at what other content creators are doing, and instead pay attention to the entertainment industry and learn from it.
Learn from TV And Movie Showrunners And Writers
As the Amazon description for the book details, Binge Marketing takes readers to the place where content is the product and the people who create it know how to attract and retain an audience. Those people, of course, are writers and showrunners in Hollywood.
The writers for that TV show you can’t get enough of are using a set of tactics that keep you coming back for more. In her Binge Marketing, Carlijn tells content marketers to compare their brand with the scenario of a very good television series and consider every single statement and marketing activity you put out there as an episode of that series. As a true showrunner, you can build on your own loyal and involved audience.
A family scenario familiar to many parents was the seed of Carlijn’s idea for Binge Marketing. She tells show host Josh Steimle that she’s spent plenty of evenings trying to get her daughters to bed after an episode of Netflix show Once Upon a Time.
Create Content Audiences Want to Binge On
After each episode Carlijn’s two girls would never just get up and head off to sleep. “Every episode ends with a cliffhanger. And so they kept on watching and I do the same. And I think every listener who watches TV series does the same thing. You just keep on binging and consuming those episodes, because they never end.
She says: “That's when it occurred to me that this is exactly what we should do in marketing. We should look at the creators of films and series; they know exactly how to tell a compelling story and also how to engage an audience, define it, and to retain it.”
As a marketer, Carlijn knows that markets have for a long time struggled to get their stories across in the most efficient, but also brand-worthy way, while at the same time building an audience.
For Successful Binge Marketing, Don’t Let Your Stories End
Carlijn points out that with TV shows, the story never really ends. “What we do in marketing is we just write stories that have a start and an end. They all end. But why? Why do we do that? If we want to try to build an audience, why do we stop with our stories? Why don't we just follow the creators of series and just create a series and create episodes and keep on letting people watch?
“That's the way you can build an audience. With only one episode that has a start and middle and an end, you won't build an audience.
Carlijn actually used her binge technique in her own book, although it took two drafts to get the tactic integrated into her work. Like most published authors, she first focused on getting everything down on paper. The second time around, she was able to edit and include some cliffhangers. And it sounds as though there will be another book, because Carlijn notes that Binge Marketing “ends with no end.”
How Authors Can Use Binge Marketing In Their Books
Carlijn says that authors who want to incorporate binge marketing into their book should first of all determine exactly what their book is about and be able to summarize it in a paragraph. Understanding where the story is set, who’s telling it, and who the audience is. Answering these questions will make it much easier to use binge marketing in your book.
On your author platform, Carlijn recommends creating other forms of content that illustrate your expertise and showcase examples of how you use your expertise in your own work. For example, to illustrate her expertise with binge marketing, Carlijn’s podcast includes an interview with Dutch film director Martin Koolhoven, The Hollywood Way To Content Marketing (in English).
Learn more: If you appreciated this episode, listen to:
Author And SEO Pro Eli Schwartz on Product-Led SEO, Adaptability, Curiosity
And:
Storytelling Essential For Nonfiction Books To Succeed
LINKS LinkedIn Twitter CarlijnPostma.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Perry Marshall is an unusual thinker. He is a marketer, published scientist, and trained as an electrical engineer.
You’ve probably heard of Perry, and if you haven’t . . . well, marketer Dan Kennedy says that’s unforgivable. So now’s your chance to learn about the amazing man who also happens to be one of the most expensive business consultants in the world.
Perry’s 2013 book, 80/20 Marketing: The Definitive Guide To Working Less and Making More, has impacted thousands of entrepreneurs, and changed the way they do business. Even show host Josh Steimle said 80/20 has prompted him to change things about his business.
80/20: Figuring Out What Your Not Going To Do
Explains Perry: “The whole idea of 80/20 is that the starting point is what you're not going to do. And the starting point is who you're not going to sell to. And the starting point is what you're not going to sell in the first place. That is so important.”
He says that most people with good intentions admire people out there doing stuff and we think: I want to do that. I want to be like that.
“That’s great up to a point,” he says. But you really have to figure out who you admire. Is it just because they are admirable, and who you really want to try to imitate.
Perry got his first job in sales and marketing after studying electrical engineering. He says his book 80/20 is what he wished he knew at age 26.
What’s Your Unique Formula?
Back then, he read books by Zig Ziglar and listened to Tom Hopkins’ tapes, trying to figure out how to apply their formulas. But eventually Perry came to realize that not all formulas work for all people. Most people have their unique approach to persuading people and working with people.
From that realization, his foundation for 80/20 was born, and also Perry’s well-known Marketing DNA Test. He says it is extremely accurate and helps people figure out how they actually persuade in the first place. “I believe that people have a go-to default way that they get other human beings to cooperate with them.”
Perry kind of fell into writing by accident. When he landed in a sales and marketing job he liked, his boss asked him to write an article for a trade magazine because he didn’t like writing. Perry was paid $500 per article which, years ago, was a decent sum of money. Perry loved the work.
Writing a Book He Wasn’t Interested In Led to International Acclaim
Perry’s magazine writing drew attention to his work. Eventually, a publisher contacted him, asking him to write Industrial Ethernet.
Even though Perry knew nothing about the subject, he accepted the book project, knowing that if he wrote Industrial Ethernet he would automatically become a thought leader in that field.
He was right. Although working on Industrial Ethernet was in Perry’s words “a real pain in the butt to do”, it opened up immense new opportunities, massively lifting his profile and—15 years later—leading to the world's largest science prize for basic research. The Evolution 2.0 Prize, with judges from Harvard, Oxford and MIT is 10 times the size of the Nobel $10 million technology prize.
Perry explains that Industrial Ethernet was a small but absolutely necessary doorway for him to be able to write Evolution 2.0, about evolutionary biology and genetic code.
Adding context, Perry explains evolutionary theory is a field in which those in the know aren’t that open to an outsider showing up and telling them something new.
“But the fact that I had written an ethernet book for the International Society of Automation (ISA) meant that people recognized I knew what I was talking about.”
The Long Journey To 80/20
Perry had quite a journey to travel before being ready to write 80/20 after the success of Evolution 2.0. After being laid off and simply not resonating with the Zig Zigler types of the world, Perry registered for a direct marketing even by Dan Kenney.
The logic of direct marketing formulas really appealed to Perry. “That whole: ‘We mailed out 10,000 letters, and then we got, you know, 1.7% of the people to respond. And then we sold X number of stuff. And we had an ROI of X’.
“I was: ‘I get this! This actually makes sense’,” says Perry, who then moved into direct marketing. This was back in 1997, right at the start of the Internet.
Timing and Technology Bring Next Big Break
Perry recalls: “I remember reading an article where this guy said that the world just did a 180-degree shift. He said that it used to be that the marketers and salespeople were chasing the customers.”
The idea of being able to get right before consumers made sense to Perry who, at a web seminar, learned about keyword searches and what kinds of searches were taking place. “And so I wrote a book called The Ultimate Guide To Google Adwords.”
The book is the bestselling guide ever written on Google ads, and is now into its sixth edition.
Don’t Define Yourself Too Broadly
Perry says that the big lesson he’s learned through his career is not to define himself too broadly.
“Freelancers, consultants, and people like that. They're ‘ I can make your website and I can do your advertising. I can do this. And I can do that.’
“But there are 10,000 other people that can do those things. And even if you're better at those things, which you're probably not, nobody knows why they should pick you as somebody else.”
Know Your Space Better Than Anyone Else
Perry explains that the reason his clients picked him was because he understood industrial networking, and could prove it. He knew the language, the vendors, the customers . . . the whole space.
“I unquestionably knew it better than anybody else wearing a direct marketing hat.”
Meanwhile, Perry was building a niche as a subject matter expert in marketing, which positioned him perfectly for success when Google rose into prominence.
“All of a sudden, six months later, I wake up, and I am a Google expert! And there aren't hardly any other Google advertising experts anywhere. And so this became a much bigger deal than the previous thing. It just kind of swept the other one (industrial networking) aside eventually.
Wisdom In Office Memos
Perry’s latest book, released last month, is called Memos From The Head Office. He says: “There are a gazillion books on business strategy, but businesses find inspiration from elsewhere.”
This is a book about cultivating that uncommon wisdom that inspires. It’s made up of about 18 stories from different entrepreneurs that talk about how inspiration arose. Says Perry: “It’s a very unusual book and I think people will find it very, very interesting.”
Learn more: If you got a lot from this episode, listen to:
Author of 15 Books Proves Success Comes From Growth Mindset, Adaptability, Curiosity
And:
Overcome Imposter Syndrome To Finish Your Book
LINKS LinkedIn Twitter Facebook PerryMarshall.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
If you’ve worked hard to build your business and even endured some failures before you created something that’s profitable, chances are that selling up is the last thing on your mind.
But according to Michelle Seiler Tucker, it should be the first thing on your to-do list.
OK, so maybe you don’t want to sell next week or next month, But making sure that you can sell your business when you want—and not when you’re desperate—is Michelle’s key message.
Michelle works with businesses and entrepreneurs to buy or sell businesses. A veteran in the mergers and acquisitions industry, Michelle is the author of three books, including Exit Rich: The 6 P Method To Sell Your Business For Huge Profit, releasing June 22 this year.
Sell Your Business On Your Terms When You Want To
Michelle told Published Author podcast host Josh Steimle that a business is its owner’s most valuable asset.
“Like Stephen Covey says, start with the end in mind, and plan your exit strategy from day one. Because the biggest issue is that business owners will all of a sudden come to me and say: ‘Oh, I have to sell’. The sudden sale is usually prompted by an unexpected life event, some kind of catastrophe, either internal, such as a divorce or health issue, or external, such as a pandemic.
“At that point, it's the worst time to sell. Their business isn't worth anything,” comments Michelle.
Writing Books To Educate And To Generate Leads
Michelle wrote Sell Your Business For More Than It's Worth in 2013 to educate and develop leads.
She says: “I really wanted to educate the marketplace because so many business owners don't know what a business broker is, or what an M&A advisor is. Many business owners hired a real estate agent to sell their business, which makes no sense. And a lot of owners attempt it on their own, and they're not successful.”
She wrote her first book to educate business owners that a business is their most valuable possession, their valuable asset, and that they need to hire an expert to sell it for them.
Because a lot of sellers and buyers want to keep a sale and all the accompanying details confidential, Michelle’s own business was confidential, and so she needed some exposure.
Even though she made a few mistakes with her book in terms of hiring the wrong people to help her publish, the book was a huge success. Michelle says: “That book got me in Inc twice. It generated so many leads for me than anything else I was doing. And I self-published.”
Building a Business That Is Valuable
Michelle’s latest book, Exit Rich: The 6 P Method To Sell Your Business For Huge Profit, came about because a shocking 80 % of businesses will never sell, and this is because so many business owners don't build a business that somebody actually wants to buy.
Therefore, the first half of Exit Rich is all about building a sustainable, scalable business so the owner has a sellable asset. The second half is selling the business.
The Six Ps Create a Business Infrastructure
Michelle has developed the six Ps that create value in a business. By nurturing and growing each one, an entrepreneur creates a sound business infrastructure and a business with value.
People - You don't build a business, you build people and people build the business
The first P is People. Michelle says that the biggest reason that businesses don't sell is because business owners have created a glorified job where they go to work every day versus a business that works for them.
“Owners have a habit of working in the business, not on the business. So we work with owners to hire for their weaknesses, focus on their strengths, and we help them identify what their strengths are, because so many business owners don’t know what their strengths are,” explains Michelle.
She encourages businesses to hire their weaknesses, put the right people in the right seats and ask the ‘Who’ question. In other words, who opens the door, who handles customer service, marketing, legal accounting, manufacturing, logistics, environmental, the list goes on and on. You need the business to run without you. You don't build a business, you build people and people build the business.
Product - Innovation Is The Key To Success
Michelle says that about 70% of businesses eventually go out of business after being in business for 10 years. The number one reason for that is because of lack of aim - business owners stop innovating and stop marketing.
“Innovation is key to success,” she explains. “If you look at Toys R Us, it did nothing different for 75 years. Blockbuster saw Netflix and didn't do anything.”
Why don’t businesses innovate? Michelle says that a lot of business owners are married to their ideas and don’t focus on innovation. They want to keep doing things the way they've always done.
Says Michelle: “You're either growing or dying. You have to ask yourself ‘Is my product, my industry, my service on the way up on the way out?’.”
Processes - Design Processes Around Your Customer, Not Your Business
Another reason why businesses don't sell is because all the data is in the owner's head. Michelle recently had a woman call her after her husband died of a heart attack and left his widow with a mountain of debt. He had no people in his business, no employees, onlyhad subcontractors. All the business data was in his head. When he died, the business died.
Explains Michelle: “Most owners get this wrong. You need to design the processes around the customer experience, not around your own agenda. Ask yourself:
What do my clients want? Go and ask them. What do you need? How can I make it easier for you to do business with us? What processes make things easier for customers to do business with you? Proprietary - The Number One Value Driver
The fourth P is proprietary—the highest value driver for a business. Businesses that have less than a million dollars in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) typically trade out up to three and a half times EBITDA. There are more buyers for businesses with more than $1 million dollars in EBITDA.
“Proprietary is the number one value driver,” says Michelle. “Proprietary can take you from a six, to eight, or a ten in terms of value.”
Patrons - Your Customers
The fifth P is patrons, your customer base. Most businesses in the U.S. follow the 80/20 rule, where 80% of revenue comes from 20% of clients. Don’t take risks and have all your revenue tied up with one client.
Profit - Lack Of Profits Is Never a Problem
“The reason I put profits last is because lack of profits is never the problem” explains Michelle. “Everybody thinks lack of profits is a problem. I have clients that come to me all the time who have a process problem.
“But if you're operating on all five cylinders, you're going to be profitable.”
Learn more: If you got a lot from this episode, listen to:
Entrepreneur Writes Startup Guide After Hearing Crazy Startup Ideas, Financial Confusion
And:
Entrepreneur Sarah Frey's Growing Season: From Rural Poverty To Billion-Dollar Business
LINKS LinkedIn Twitter Facebook SeilerTucker.com Exitrichbook.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Hearing “phenomenal” feedback from her book's target audience is thrilling for new author Tatiana Tsoir.
“People say that it's the book they wish they had when they started their first business that failed,” says Tatiana. “Some people read the book and their feedback is that it gives them hope that they can actually start a business, especially the creatives and moms, which are the two audiences that I wrote this book for.
“They need that extra support, that extra confidence, that extra clarity in what to do next, how to even begin . . . knowing that it's not that scary. And the feedback from those folks, from ideal readers has been phenomenal since we launched.”
A Visionary Business Advisor
Tatiana, who has been described as a visionary business advisor, explains that her new book Dream Bold, Start Smart shows entrepreneurs how to bullet-proof an idea. It arms businesses with a framework that enables them to run a sustainable and profitable business.
Tatiana explains that some entrepreneurs are inspired by a vision, and that vision carries them through the early years of their business.
But too many pay little attention to the finances. They put money on the back burner and look at the numbers only sporadically throughout their journey.
Tatiana has taken on the role of ensuring that her clients understand that they are not accountants, but do know how to approach taxes, deal with government agencies, and manage cash—and that last one is a big one, she says.
She helps her clients set up a business so that it actually makes money a business so that it's actually making money and gives the lifestyle they want.
“You actually have to face your numbers. And that's what I wanted to show possible for someone who's just sitting there and thinking, ‘I really like photography, how can I make a business out of this?’.”
Tatiana, who has been described as a visionary business advisor, explains that Dream Bold, Start Smart explains how entrepreneurs can bullet-proof an idea. It arms businesses with a framework that enables them to run a sustainable and profitable business.
Writing a Book Like Having a Baby
Tatiana jokes that writing a book was the longest labor she’s ever had! But she made the smart decision of joining a workshop to write her book. She and other participants were provided with a matrix on how to develop structure, create chapters, fill in teaching points, and include stories.
“I already had a bunch of stories, so I just wrote them out and organized them,” Tatiana explains. “That was the first step. And then the writing was easier, because I already have the expertise. And I already have the story.
“Making sure that the story highlights the point that I wanted to make was really challenging,” she adds.
Group Writing Sprints To Write Consistently, Everyday
Even so, Tatian wrote her first draft in about four months by attending group writing sprints at 6 a.m. every weekday.
“It was actually really good, because it really motivated you to show up not just for yourself, but also for other people . . .and write whatever comes to mind. Sometimes I wrote 1,000 words in an hour, sometimes I wrote 200.”
She says the key to progress is not setting expectations high, but setting the expectation of writing consistently. These were the two things that really made a difference in writing this book.
Getting Over Getting Stuck
Like almost every entrepreneur-author, Tatiana went through a period of being stuck, especially when she hit chapter seven of her book, which contained a business entity selection matrix.
She explains: “I wanted to create something based on my not only tax preparation experience, but also tax planning experience . . . something that would allow people to form the right type of entity from the start and understand what they're forming.
“What I found was that entities, especially in the United States, are a big deal. It has a direct effect on the amount of tax that you're going to pay. Whenever I do tax planning engagements for clients, the first thing I look at whether their entities are structured correctly with the most efficient tax setup.”
However, startups often don’t have the luxury of forming several entities for tax efficiencies. But when they are up and running and earning good money, they keep the old structure and end up overpaying tax.
The Accountant’s Attention To Detail
Tatiana’s aim was to create a matrix that would address that, but she kept procrastinating. She didn’t want to continue writing other parts of the book until she figured that one out. She was stuck for about a week.
She observes: “A week in a writer's journey is a lot. So I really got held back because of that.”
Eventually, persistence and determination won through: As she says: “For an accountant to miss something is the worst nightmare ever. Because we never want to miss anything, we always want to consider all things involved. And that's kind of what the thought process was, something wasn't working. So I went back and worked on it and worked on it, and basically developed to where it is today.”
Learn more: If you got a lot from this episode, listen to:
Entrepreneur Writes Startup Guide After Hearing Crazy Startup Ideas, Financial Confusion
And:
How To Get The Best Publicity For Your Book
LINKS
TatianaTsoir.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Entrepreneur and author Peter Cohan uses the word “lucky” often in this interview with Published Author host Josh Steimle.
But looking at what he describes as his “very confused career”, a sense of curiosity and willingness to try new things are two qualities that stand out.
Peter could have easily embarked on his original quest to be a poet and given up, instead perhaps taking a job in a factory or maybe even a mid-level white collar role.
But the author of 15 books possesses an entrepreneurial spirit far beyond average. His ability to see emerging trends and adaptability, along with his skill at maximizing opportunities, have led Peter to phenomenal success.
Seeing Patterns, Connecting Ideas An Important Part of Nonfiction Books
Peter is a big picture thinker. His most recent book, Goliath Strikes Back: How Traditional Retailers Are Winning Back Customers from Ecommerce Startups, exemplifies this.
It explores the mindset of leaders of successful and growing companies. Says Peter: “One of the things that makes the biggest difference between companies and regions that have a lot of success in startups is the number of people who are what I call marathoners.
“They are people who can take an idea, turn it into a startup, develop a product that people want to buy, and then get a lot of people to buy that product.”
A Winning Entrepreneurial Mindset
Marathoners then take that company public, and keep running and growing rapidly as a public company.
He gives the example of Jim McNerney, who took over at Boeing when it had a lot of problems. Jim turned it around. Another example is Best Buy. Its CEO left after a $1.2 billion loss, and in came McKinsey consultant Hubert Joly to rebuild. Both had what Peter calls a fast follower mindset, similar to the marathoner mindset.
The third mindset Peter has identified is the head-in-the-sand mindset. “With this, you run the company looking in the rearview mirror. You run it with the mindset of somebody who may have been successful doing something 20 years ago, and they think the world is still that way, or they want the world to be that way, because that's what they're comfortable with.
“So they keep making decisions as if the world is still the way it was 20 years ago, but it's not. And then they run the company into the ground. Essentially, that's what Goliath Strikes Back is about.
You Really Don’t Know What You’re Good At Until You Try
His view is that entrepreneurs have to try things out and see how the market responds.
“You have to see whether you're producing anything valuable, he says. “You just try to do it and see what works. That was my experience.
“If I had been really lucky, I would have been born with some exceptionally great skills, like understanding microbiology. Imagine how much value I could create in the world,” he continues. “But I don't have those skills. So you just don't know what the world is going to see as being good. So you try different things, and hopefully, if you're lucky, something connects.”
Carving Out a Niche In Tech And Startups
Peter’s first book deal back in 1997 was unplanned. He’d been working for a telecom company in Japan and focused on the question of why some technology companies are able to surf through new ways of technology, while others fail.
The work resulted in a white paper, and then a book deal for The Technology Leaders: How America's Most Profitable High-Tech Companies Innovate Their Way to Success.
Timing is everything! And for Peter the moment couldn’t be better for this and his second book, Net Profit, Both were published at the start of the Internet age and the Dot Com boom. Peter naturally fell into a tech-startup specialist role and became a sought-after guest on major TV networks.
Peter went on to write about e-commerce and investment in e-commerce. These grew from his original book and opened the door to further exploration into startups and leadership.
Of all Peter’s early books, one is timeless and still used a lot today: Value Leadership, written in 2002. He and others still use it when teaching about corporate social responsibility.
A Book Proposal Is a Great Tool For Writing a Book
Peter readily admits that although he has written 15 books, writing a book is not easy. He uses a couple of tools to make it easier and make the whole experience flow as smoothly as possible.
“A book proposal is a great place to start when you're writing a book,” he says. “In fact, it’s incredibly helpful.”
Peter’s process looks like this:
- Begin a proposal by outlining everything that he wants to include in each chapter.
- Simultaneously, do research and gather case studies, articles, content from other books or anything else that he might want to quote from or include in his own book.
- When each chapter outline is complete, he begins interviewing experts he wants to include in his book.
- Chapter deadlines given to his publisher.
- He begins writing his book.
Importance Of Setting And Meeting Book Writing Deadlines
“When I set a deadline, I tell the publisher when I'm going to get you these chapters. I feel like I cannot let anything stop me from actually doing it. I have to do what I say I'm going to do. It's deeply, deeply ingrained in me. So I do it.
He adds that working on a first chapter is always a bit stressful, because you don't really know what the book is about. “I'm always wondering, when I read the first chapter, whether it's gonna be anything like what I thought it was gonna be like, but usually it is!”
Write When Your Mind Is At Its Best
Peter recommends that entrepreneur-authors find out what part of the day their mind works at its best. For him, it’s right after breakfast. He writes for several hours and then, after a run, he doesn’t feel like his writing focus is at its best. So he gears down a notch and focuses on research.
Learn more: If you got a lot from this episode, listen to:
Bestselling Author Tells How His Books Built His Career
And this interview with Paul Epstein, who highly recommends working with a book coach:
Entrepreneurs, The World Needs Your Book. Don’t Let Anyone Talk You Out of It
LINKS
PeterCohan.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
No one ever asks “How do I pick a great coach to make sure I finish my book?”.
But according to Dr. Angela Lauria, that question is ten times more valuable than all the other questions she’s asked by people about to start or in the process of writing a book.
Why? Because accountability can’t be understated. If you’re just starting on your nonfiction business book and wondering how to pick a topic, organize it, and write it, make sure you add selecting a great coach to your list of needs for your book writing project.
No Accountability? It’s Unlikely Your Book Will Happen
The difference between saying to yourself you want to write a book and saying it out loud is huge, explains Angela, an author and writing coach.
She acknowledges that it's hard for people to understand the real value a coach can bring, especially when you throw in a cost of thousands of dollars. Lots of authors start out thinking they can coach themselves. But if you don’t have the accountability built in, it just won’t happen.
Angela paid $10,000 a month for a coach, who told her to post in a group that she intended to have her book manuscript finished by August 14. The thought of missing the deadline and having to tell her group that she made a promise to herself was enough to keep her on track with her first book, The Difference: 10 Steps To Writing a Book That Matters.
For people who can’t or don’t want to pay a coach $10,000 a month, Angela’s advice as a coach is to withdraw $1,000 from your bank, put it in an envelope, and address the envelope to like the political party you don't like. Then hand it to a friend and ask them to mail it if your manuscript isn’t finished on the deadline you set for yourself.
Revenue Increased To Millions After Publishing Her Book
Before writing The Difference, Angela says her business was a mish-mash of projects and clients. She was doing well financially, but felt unfocused in her work and purpose.
The Difference contains a ten-step process for life coaches and therapists who wanted to take one of their processes and put it into a book and use the book to get a steady flow of business. And when Angela wrote the book, she did so with a strategy in place to help her give her business focus and increase her income. Here’s her strategy:
- Determining the one service she wanted to focus on and sell - teaching clients how to put their expertise into a book to get clients
- Using the book as a filter to attract the right clients for this one service
- Giving away copies of the book. In total more than 100,000 copies were given to potential or existing clients
- With the The Difference acting as a filter, Angela spent way less time on sales and fielding calls, and the ones she had were serious enquiries
- She was able to sell one product at one price.
“I said no to a lot more, but my revenue went from a few $100,000 to $3 million within 18 months of publishing,” she says.
Two Kind Of Business Books
Angela says there are two kinds of business books. The first is about your signature program, in other words, what you want to be known for. The second kind of book is about your philosophy or your leadership. These are platform books that aren't going to drive clients but instead give readers an understanding of who you are.
Angela has two books about her signature program. One is The Difference and the other is Make ‘Em Beg To Publish Your Book.
“Those two books teach my signature system; it's called the difference process. It is the system for how to get your book written and generate revenue for you. And that is how people walk through my door. That's how people get to work with me.”
Angela’s books about her leadership and philosophy as a human are The Incubated Author and Make ‘Em Beg To Be Your Client. The former is about her position on social justice, and how important she thinks it is for businesses, especially in personal development, to take a stand for their values.
Make Em Beg To Be Your Client is about how to build a quarter-million-dollar coaching business.
Use a Book To Make Your Message Clear To Clients
She explains that these types of books require a massive upgrade in thinking because most coaches make around $40,000 to $60,000 a year.
I always recommend until you've got your business cranking, to write what I call a front-end book, or a signature program book, or sometimes I call it in a Scottish accent: ‘Your wee portal,” explains Angela.
“Your wee portal is the little door that clients can walk through. So if you're a pool company, your wee portal is going to be ‘We build pools’, but then you might do lifeguard lessons, pool maintenance, sell floats for people's pools, you might do a whole bunch of other things. But you wouldn't do them if they weren't add ons to your main core signature program.”
Complete Transparency With Client Processes And Promises
While some marketers advise adopting an air of mystery and keeping the details secret, Angela believes the opposite is the best strategy. And she advises that authors do the same: If someone reads your book, tell them the exact system in great detail.
She says: “If you read my books, and you follow the steps—actually follow them—they will result in a book that can generate a quarter million dollars for you within 12 months.
“But most people won't do it on their own. So instead of being shifty or cagey about what you include, tell them every single exhausting detail and tell them if they're committed. If they do it with you, they're probably more likely to succeed because you've done it a few more times than they have.”
Angela covers a lot more in this episode, including:
- Her ten steps to writing a book that matters
- Which time of the day you should write
- How she works with her clients
- How many clients are her ideal
- Other lessons for entrepreneurs.
Learn more: If you got a lot from this episode and want to know what it’s like working with a book coach, listen to:
Why And When To Work With a Book Coach And What to Expect From Them
And this interview with Paul Epstein, who highly recommends working with a book coach:
You Hurt Others By Not Sharing Your Big Ideas In a Book
LINKS
AngelaLauria.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Curtis J. Morley is the real deal: He gets things done!
“I've got a huge, audacious goal, I want to help one million entrepreneurs take their business to the next level,” he tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle.
That’s why Curtis wrote his book, The Entrepreneur's Paradox: How to Overcome the 16 Pitfalls Along the Startup Journey, and works as a coach and a mentor.
Says Curtis: “There is a better way that doesn't include all the pain. I made all the mistakes, every single one of them that are listed in my book, especially in my first two companies.”
Entrepreneurs And Authors Are Prone To Imposter Syndrome
“I was thinking ‘I've never written a book, I don't know what I'm doing. All these other people are famous authors.’
“If you ask my English teachers from junior high all the way through college, they would not have picked me to write,” he says. Fortunately his editor was amazing and also functioned as a coach by helping with wordsmithing and storytelling.
On imposter syndrome, Curtis says the reason it's chronic with entrepreneurs, is that imposter syndrome is actually baked into entrepreneurship.
“You're doing something that has never been done before, in a way that's never been done before, in a market that's never been tried before,” he explains. “It doesn't matter if you're a high school dropout, or if you're a Harvard grad, you still have to figure it out like everybody else. It doesn't matter, you know, that you don't have all the answers. And that's okay. It's totally okay not to have all the answers . . . that’s when the real growth starts to happen.”
Entrepreneurs who are willing to go through that journey of growth must have “an indefatigable drive to take one more step up the mountain, and it's going to be hard, and it's going to be okay, because that's all that I really need is to take one more step up the mountain.”
Apply Solid Business Principles For ‘Amazing Success’
“You don't need you don't need a Warren Buffett to be your guide up the mountain anymore. There's solid business principles that anyone can take and apply to their business and succeed.”
Curtis quotes the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which note that 30% of small businesses go defunct within the first year, and 50% go out of business within the first five years. He believes business can avoid this route by applying the proper principles for amazing success.
What Gets You Into Business Will Stop You From Succeeding
The basis of Curtis’ book is that what gets an entrepreneur into business—his/her expertise, craft or skill—is what will actively prevent them from succeeding in business.
Curtis learned this lesson through experience. He became one of the top Adobe Flash experts in the world, and decided to set up a business selling this skill. But he quickly learned that if an entrepreneur spends 24-hours a day building the product, there is no time to build the company.
“That's the paradox, it’s that I'm so good at something that I love to do. And I want to do it all day long. But I have to actually give up being the best in the world at something, in order to be the best in the world at building a company,” Curtis explains.
One of the pitfalls of being an entrepreneur, he explains, is that they love to wear all the hats in a company. The hard lesson here that has to be learned is that an entrepreneur must learn to delegate and trust that others will get the job done.
The second part of trust is trusting yourself. “Most people don't realize that there's that aspect of trust when you're delegating,” explains Curtis.
Writing a Book Is Like Climbing a Mountain
Curtis wrote the first two-thirds of his book before a summit to Mount Kilimanjaro. But when he returned home he scrapped all his work and began again.
“It was so much of a better book with the analogy of Kilimanjaro in there, and it actually was more fun.”
He hired an editor to help him with wordsmithing, along with the story flow and examples.
Understanding The Bestseller Lists
Before writing his book and working as a coach and mentor, Curtis worked for Franklin Covey and learned a great deal about what makes a bestselling book.
He discusses this at length in the episode, but a key point is that: “With a new release, all of the prior orders to the release date are counted in that week. So all the sales you've done before the day of launch will be piled up on that one day. If you sold 10,000 books in the four months prior to launch, then all 10,000 will count on the day of your launch.”
Promote Your Book Through Keynotes And Book Exchanges
To market his book, Curtis did a lot of what he calls book exchanges or the keynote exchanges. This involved going out to organizations he knows are interested in entrepreneurship and offering to do a keynote at zero cost if they purchase a copy of the book for every attendee.
If you like this episode, you won’t want to miss these episodes:
Bestseller Opens Door To Speaking Gigs For Retired Military Leader
Turn Your Book Into Income By Being Smart With Publicity
LINKS
EntrepreneursParadox.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Julie Broad is yet another example that determination plays a huge role in writing and publishing a bestseller!
This guest’s first book has its origins in rejection! Wiley book publishing contacted Julie and she then pitched an idea for a book about real estate investing. Their response was no, they already had a book like that. Instead, they ask Julie to work on another title.
But after three months of work on a book proposal, Wiley then turned around and rejected their own idea.
Says Julie: “I was certain I was getting a book deal, because it was their idea. They sent me an email that said the marketing department doesn't think you have a strong enough platform to sell books.”
REJECTION STRENGTHENS AUTHOR’S DESIRE TO SUCCEED
However, that big no from Wiley “Turned out to be the greatest gift that I ever could have been given,” Julie tells Published Author host Josh Steimle.
She went back to her original book idea and finally published More Than Cashflow: The Real Risks & Rewards of Profitable Real Estate Investing.
Julie was well aware that everyone talks about getting rich in real estate, but it can be a minefield for some, and she wanted to give new investors a warning, and much-needed guidance.
BOOK BECOMES AMAZON BESTSELLER IN ALL CATEGORIES
Her book included stories such as investors accidentally buying a crack house, a property manager who punched a tenant who then died in hospital, resulting in the property manager being charged with manslaughter, and a property manager who stole rent money
Julie told herself that if she was going to write this book, she’d do a much better job than Wiley.
“So I made sure I had all the editors, the designers, and I dove into self-publishing for all the information that was out there.
Her book landed at number one on Amazon, ahead of Dan Brown ahead of George R.R. Martin. It was in the top 100 print books on Amazon for 45 days!
SO GRATEFUL FOR PUBLISHER REJECTION!
Julie says she is so grateful to Wiley for their rejection. “Reason one, I made a ton of money,” says Julie. “I would have made less than $10,000 for their royalties. I made almost $80,000.
Author of the newly released Self-Publish & Succeed: The No Boring Books Way to Writing a Non-Fiction Book that Sells, Julie says she’s also grateful for the fact that as a self-published author, she owns the rights to her book and has complete control over what happens with the material.
WITH A PUBLISHER YOU LIKELY DON’T OWN THE RIGHTS TO YOUR BOOK
Julie says one published author changed fields and so Wiley republished his book word-for-word under another name. She explains that legally a publisher has the right to do this because they own the book.
Because she owns her book, she’s been able to build courses around it and use the material in other ventures that she wouldn’t have been able to if she’d gone with a publisher.
HOW TO USE A BOOK TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS
“My husband and I together raised a lot of money. And then we started teaching other people how to raise money. And through that a lot of people realized that a book is a powerful way to grow your business.”
She says the book has made selling big ticket items much easier. Once people read the book, they have no hesitation in signing up for her $10,000 mastermind or anything similar.
In addition, investors came to Julie saying ‘Hey 've got $250,000. Can I invest it with you?’.
Julie self-published her second book, The New Brand You: Your New Image Makes the Sale for You, in 2016 and has since diversified and now helps people write books, self-publish, and develop results-driven marketing plans. Explains Julie: “My friends who got deals with Wiley, they were wondering why their books didn't go to number one. They wanted help, so I started to do all this book stuff on the side.”
BEGIN MARKETING BEFORE YOU BEGIN WRITING YOUR BOOK
The biggest challenge, explains, is that authors who traditionally publish begin a marketing plan before they write their book. Self-published authors, meanwhile, often write a book and then try to figure out how to market it.
Next, inexperienced authors often think they can do everything themselves. But it’s impossible to edit your own work and all the other tasks are incredibly time-consuming.
In response, Julie has launched a business that takes care of marketing, podcast interviews, speaking engagements, bookstore distribution, partnerships, and a whole lot more.
Julie begins this way with nonfiction authors:
- Understanding the author’s hook point
- Drilling down to really understand an author’s reader
- Helping authors avoid writing a boring book
- Understanding how authors want to grow their business
- Focusing the author’s thinking so that the approach is strategic.
In this episode Julie covers a tremendous amount of ground, including how books can be life-changing for authors, the impact of book cover colour on sales, and examples of what Julie terms the juicy hook that makes people stop and want to read a book.
If you like this episode, you won’t want to miss these episodes:
Mastermind Student’s Book Becomes Instant Bestseller. Here’s How He Did It
A Hook Point For Your Book Will Win You More Clients
LINKS
JulieBroad.com
BookLaunchers.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Entrepreneurs who aren’t professional writers but want to write a book can face challenges.
These include:
- Struggling to find their voice
- Sounding too stiff or formal
- Not enjoying the writing process
- Working with a ghostwriter but not convinced that writer has found your voice
- Omitting stories from the narrative.
Jeff Arnold is now a successful author with two books to his name, including the number one bestseller The Art of the Insurance Deal, and How To Beat Your Insurance Company, along with numerous magazine articles that focus on buying insurance agencies and companies, as well as helping consumers learn how to pay less for all types of insurance.
Cemented Position As a Thought Leader
Jeff says his books have played a big role in his evolution into a thought leader in the insurance industry. The timing couldn’t have been better, because his books have come out when many older agency owners were ready to sell.
His books have done so well, they automatically lead people to his website, and they make the next step and call him. People outside of the industry who think they’re paying too much for insurance also contact Jeff regularly, due to his book How To Beat Your Insurance Company.
Understand Demographics of Readers To Sell More Books
Working with research and marketing demographics, Jeff learned that he needed to tweak his book’s cover design to meet the needs of different types of buyers.
“I had really masculine blue and brown and gray colors. And that meant nothing to females or to other type executives,” he explains. “It was a very staid, boring color. So we just changed all the colors and saw an instant change.”
Use Others’ Expertise To Get Your Book Finished
Before producing a bestseller, Jeff had to deal with the fact that writing was not in his skill set. He had to surrender to this fact. And he wasn’t ready to admit it until a soccer coach friend observed that one of the toughest parts of coaching was getting talented kids to recognize their own weaknesses.
Says Jeff: “It resonated with me. I had to accept and drink in the fact that it's not a skill set. I surrendered to that. Then it’s ‘Let's move forward’.
“Part of it was humility, right? The other part was ego,” Jeff explains. “I really wanted to publish a book. I really wanted to get ‘author’ as a title in the things that I've done in my life.”
Jeff also admits that he was naive when he began working on his book. He soon realized that the process was more complicated than he realized. He also thought that a publisher would want his book, but that wasn’t the case. So he worked with Arbor Books to finish his book and get it published.
Today, Jeff will publish his third book next month, and is set to begin his fourth. Looking back, he says: “The journey was to find a firm that did that for me, the cover, the formatting,, the styling, it's best left to the professional,” he advises. “If you don't have the experience and expertise, it's a longer journey. And why wouldn't you take advantage of other people's expertise instead of failing all along the way?”
Get Your Book In Front Of The Right Audience, No Matter How Niche
With his book published, Jeff turned to marketing and wrote blog posts and did podcast interviews to generate sales.
But what really made a difference was getting his book before the correct niche within the insurance industry. After developing relationships, relevant sites wrote about his book and featured it on their website, and sales took off.
Next up, research revealed that women tended to buy his book on a desktop, while men bought it on mobile. This information helped Jeff tweak the book's cover colour and font to better reach those audiences.
“What I learned is that it’s not just putting the book out there, you have to constantly market it,” says Jeff.
Learn more: If you enjoyed this episode, here are two similar episodes in which the guests had to deal with the same kinds of challenges as Jeff.
Working With An Editor Was The Best Decision I made While Writing My Book - Peter Kozodoy
Without A Writing Coach, My Book Wouldn’t Be What It Is Today - Paul Epstein
LINKS
YouTube
JeffArnold
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
It’s an exciting moment! One you’ve been waiting for. You’re finally writing your book!
But there is one important last step: Make this book project your priority. Otherwise, you won’t get it done.
That’s the message delivered by Published Author podcast guest Jyotsna Ramachandra. Jyotsna is bestselling author of Job Escape Plan: The 7 Steps to Build a Home Business, Quit your Job & Enjoy the Freedom.
Jyotsna is also a book publisher, having founded Happy Self Publishing to help overwhelmed, yet purpose-driven authors publish their book and amplify their message. So far, Jyotsna has helped more than 400 authors from 35 countries through her global publishing agency, Happy Self Publishing.
Focus On Your Book Ahead Of Launching a Course or Campaign
Jyotsna observes that for many authors who are struggling, the main issue is that the book is not their number one priority.
“They have a lot of other things happening in their life, such as a new course, a campaign or personal commitments.
“In that case, we tell them ‘Please don't feel guilty. Let's do it one step at a time. If you want to take a break from this, we are completely OK with that. But when you come back, let's only focus on this,” she says.
Be Clear About Your Book’s Purpose
Jyotsna says that entrepreneurs who are clear about the purpose of their book and have a strong reason to complete it are the most successful.
These clients have been thoughtful about choosing the right topic, completed their book’s outline, and meet deadlines are on a sure journey to success. These clients also access all the support structures that are in place, show up for weekly calls, take and share feedback, and complete every step in the process.
The Hard Work Of Writing a Book Pays Off With Unexpected Surprises
Entrepreneurs write nonfiction books for different reasons. Some want to grow their business, others want to leave a legacy and help mentor the next generation. So from that perspective, success means different things to different entrepreneurs.
“A lot of times authors do not expect that they are going to get a lot of different opportunities after the book gets published. But only after the book is published do they realize that many things about their life have changed,” explains Jyotsna.
She shares the example of a client from Spain. Fitness was his passion, but not his main business - he was a full-time employee in an IT company.
After he saw that a lot of people were benefiting from his book, he started listening to what his readers wanted. Slowly, his side hustle produced more and more services and products for his readers. He developed an app, protein shakes, energy drinks, and fitness classes online.
Fast-forward two years, and this entrepreneur-author is about to quit his job and manage his growing business full-time!
Comments Jyotsna : “I'm sure he did not have the slightest clue. He did not plan this. But then he started to build his author funnel and create their entire ecosystem around his book, which has given him a lot more freedom.”
Building An Author Funnel
Some entrepreneur-authors such as the example above become excited about growing their business after the initial experience of success.
To do this, Jyotsna says it’s a good idea to do an asset audit. What assets do you have? Do you have a course, a coaching program, or something else?
If the answer is none of the above, that’s absolutely fine, because for most authors their book is their starting point.
“My recommendation to authors who are business owners is that your target reader for your book should be the exact target client for your business,” emphasizes Jyotsna. “Because, ultimately, some of the people who are going to read your book will become your clients, and you need to be really strategic about that. Otherwise, your book and your business may not have a proper connection.”
Jyotsna scopes out a typical entrepreneur-author funnel:
- Your book on Amazon and other online and offline sales points.
- A free value offering, such as a blog, podcast, or content related to the book
- A paid value offering for entry point clients who are motivated and want to see results. This could be a course or membership.
- A premium offer you deliver personally, such as one-on-one coaching, consulting, or speaking.
Jyotsna and host Josh Steimle cover a lot of ground in this episode. If you find it inspiring and want to begin working on your book, reach out to Publishedauthor.com
LINKS
Free Facebook Group for purpose-driven authors
Youtube
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Your book is a business. And if you’re not designing your entire business around your book, it will fail.
These are the frank words from Bendan Kane, author of the bestsellers Hook Point and One Million Followers.
The globally recognized author learned this lesson after writing his first book, One Million Followers.
Brendan tells show host Josh Steimle: “You need a strategy for your book so that readers know what action you want them to take in terms of working with you.
“I didn't really have that mapped out (with One Million Followers). I kind of had a vision of building a brand where I get paid to consult and speak. But I quickly realized most people just wanted me to build followers for them, which is not a business I'm interested in.”
A Three-Part Strategy For Penetrating a Market Saturated With Books and Content
Every single author needs a hook point for their book to stand out. “Without it, you can't stop somebody in the first three seconds and hear them say ‘I'm interested, I want to learn more.’
There are three core areas Brendan focuses on with clients. The first is determining the hook point, so that a book stands out above the 1.7 million books published every year.
Of course, an author isn’t just competing against other books. There are 100 billion messages sent out on digital platforms each day, he notes.
Next, he determines how to create a sustainable and predictable marketing engine to drive people to buy a book.
Number three, once someone has the book, what are the steps you want them to take to engage with you as an individual, as a company, as a brand, or as a product?
Even If You Write a Book To Give To Others, You Must Still Market It
Brendan says this applies even if your motivation to write a book is to give to others, and not to grow your venture.
He says: “When people talk about impact and wanting to help people and give back, I love it, I want to support that. But in order to do that, we need to have a sustainable engine to make that happen. And that's where most people are failing.
“When it comes to books, some people have this aspiration that there’s value that they want to offer the world. And that value can come in many ways, shapes or forms.
But without a foundation . . . a real marketing strategy that is sustainable, you are most likely going to fail!”
Brendan says that he doesn’t invest his energy in book launches, but instead in a marketing engine that is predictable and can be scaled so that he can constantly sell books every single month
A Predictable Marketing Engine
In fact, Brendan’s been so successful at developing this kind of marketing engine that he knows exactly how many copies of a book will sell each month.
“My One Million Followers book, we are selling more books today than when we first launched. And we have a predictable engine where we can scale and know exactly how many copies we sell every single month.
From talking to a lot of people in this industry, 99 percent of authors do not have something like that. That's why most of them are failing to get their message heard.”
The Hook Point Development Process: Identify Patterns And Break Them
Brendan’s first step with a client is to look at existing patterns around a subject matter.
“For example, we were working with a client in meditation. They have a meditation book, they have a meditation retreat, business, and courses. Meditation is difficult, because it's been around for 1000s of years. So if you type “meditation” into the Google search, you're going to get over a billion results,” he explains.
A high number of results like that doesn’t worry Brendan. In fact, he loves oversaturated markets because they tell him a market actually exists.
“What we have to do is identify the patterns of what other people are saying, and how they're showing up in the world to make sure that we are not falling into the trap with a pattern that everybody follows.”
Once the pattern has been identified, Brendan finds a way of breaking it and replacing it with a different pattern. It sounds straightforward, but it takes research to see patterns and the issues, or pain points, the consumer is experiencing.
A hook point will often focus on what people want, now a ‘how to’ or what’s required on a journey - no-one would buy that book. But a book with the hook point built around what people want means that the consumer will connect with it and follow the journey the author lays out for them.
If you liked this episode and show notes you’ll find these episodes useful:
Chris Ducker On Writing And Marketing His Books
Kiri Masters On Using Networking and Content To Generate Book Sales
LINKS
- BrendanJKane.comInstagram
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com
Author and marketer Nikki Nash freely admits she didn’t follow any advice she was given on how to get an agent and write a book.
A marketing consultant, Nikki tells the Published Author Podcast: “I literally tell people that I manifested my book, because everything people told me about getting a book deal, I did not do any of that!
“I didn't have an agent. I didn't have 50,000 people on my Instagram following me, or on my email list.
“I had a firm belief that this book would be amazing, and that Hay House was going to publish this book. I just went for it.”
Regardless of what you think about how Nikki’s book came to be, there’s no doubt that determination and hard work played a huge role!
Nikki competed with 100 people to win a Hay House publishing deal. A few months later, she competed with a smaller group of authors and won months of mentoring with Hay House CEO Tracy Reid!
Her book, Market Your Genius, finally comes out in August, 2021. Market Your Genius helps entrepreneurs generate leads and build a community.
Can’t find time to write your book? Put it in your calendar
Nikki knew as a child that she’d write a book. However, as an adult and founder of the busy marketing consultancy Nikki Nash, she wasn’t sure how she would find time to write.
“It wasn't until I saw this video by Brendon Burchard, a motivational speaker. He said if he looked at your calendar and couldn't tell what your big goals were, then they weren't gonna happen,” Nikki tells show host Josh Steimle.
“I started right then. I just started putting time on my calendar to figure out how I was going to write a book and bring it into the world.”
Getting a Publishing Deal
First, Nikki focused on getting a book deal. After searching online she discovered an article about how to get a publishing deal with Hay House.
“If you attend their Writer’s Workshop, they will allow you to submit a book proposal on a specific date and then they choose somebody, one person out of the submissions.”
Nikki and 99 other writers attended the Hay House event. Out of that 100, only Nikki’s proposal was selected by Hay House.
How To Create a Book Proposal
Nikki explains that the first step to getting a book deal is having a decent book proposal, which is essentially a business plan for a book.
A book proposal must include:
- That there’s no other book like it in your industry
- Why your book needs to exist
- Why you’re the person to write your book
- Sample chapters
- How you will help market your book.
Nikki bought a book proposal course from Bookmama.com and then began writing, completing her proposal non-stop in 48 hours! It can actually It can take months to write a book proposal, and costs up to $20,000 if someone writes your proposal.
After submitting her proposal to Hay House and waiting for months for their decision, Nikki attended another, smaller Hay House event. Here, she competed to win one-on-one mentoring with Tracy Reid.
How To Deal With Writing Challenges Writing the book outline
Nikki’s first challenge was completing her book’s outline. Her mind was so full of ideas and information she began to feel overwhelmed.
“To push past that, I reached out to people on my email list and posted in Facebook groups. I announced I would write and publish a chapter every week for 90 days. I asked if people were interested in reading an early copy of the book.”
The response was positive, because people really wanted to learn about how to get more clients and more leads.
Writing accountability
Nikki explains: “What I needed was accountability. So what I did was I set up my email system to automatically send out a new email to everybody every week. The email had a link to a Google Doc.
“I made a new Google Doc for every single chapter. Because that Google Doc was going to be emailed to them whether I wrote something in it or not, I knew I didn't want the embarrassment of having a blank document!”
The genius in this idea is that Nikki learned that her book resonated with people, and that the followers formed a group who will help promote the book.
The book writing process
Nikki’s Hay House editor wanted to see one chapter at a time, but Nikki couldn’t write like this and instead just wanted to get the whole book down into a document. Her editor agreed to this change. Then followed an extended period of editing, with drafts moving back and forth, lasting around May 2021.
How To Use Your Book To Grow Your Business
Nikki says her book will reach many more people than she’ll be able to work with in her career. Those readers could sign up for her newsletter or courses, and some will even become clients.
The book launch itself is another business opportunity, bringing about a new discussion point for newsletters, podcasts, and even client updates.
Next, Hay House will pitch Nikki and her book to various forms of media. She’ll focus on adding value to her audience, but of course will have an opportunity to mention her book, which gives her credibility in her industry.
If you liked this episode and show notes you’ll find these episodes useful:
Scott Schrober Publicized His Books With Local Speaking Gigs and Won New Business
Michelle Tillis Lederman On The Personalized Approach To PR For Book Marketing
LINKS
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Entrepreneurs don’t write books so they can sell them in massive quantities.
They write books because of what a nonfiction book can accomplish for their business.
But first you need to market your book and yourself as a thought leader. In this episode of the Published Author Podcast, Sandy Smith reveals actionable tips on how to maximize book publicity so that you can grow your business.
An entrepreneur who studied art and architecture, Sandy has combined her creative bent and business expertise to launch Smith Publicity, a consultancy that works with authors to significantly raise their profile.
When that goal is met, entrepreneurs are on their way to winning new business and significant new revenue.
Sandy gives the amazing example of author Nicholas A.C. Read, who wrote Selling To The C-Suite. Within five months of working with Sandy’s firm, Nick generated $500,000 in new business.
Define Your Publicity Goals
There is no checklist or winning formula to getting publicity for your book. It very much depends on an entrepreneur-author’s goals for themselves and their business.
Smith Publicity’s process is a creative one, focused on listening to what’s happening in the media, and matching that up with an author’s goals and passions to find just the right opportunities.
With the example of Nick, above, you might assume Sandy landed a profile about Nick in The Wall Street Journal to land such a large contract. But it was nothing that bit. It was, in fact, a trade publication that ran an article placed by Sandy about Nick and his book. This piece was read by a VP, who awarded Nick that massive contract.
The trick is to target the right media outlets, and ensure you showcase your worth. The results can be amazing.
Twelve Steps To Creating Winning Book Publicity
If you can’t afford to hire a publicist as successful as Sandy, here are the key steps to get noticed where it matters.
- If you haven’t already, start thinking of yourself and your book from a branding perspective. How can you differentiate yourself from the competition?
- Then ask yourself what you want to accomplish with your book.
- What will be the messaging you want to deliver in your media coverage?
- When you have the desired publicity, how will you leverage it to win new business?
- How can you differentiate yourself from the competition?
- Identify all the publications—trade, specialist, and general—you want to be. Don’t forget podcasts, too!
- Do some focused thinking on how you match your brand, expertise, and book with the content, feel, or focus of the publications you want to reach. A PR freelancer can be a great help with this.
- Develop a spreadsheet or whatever organizational tool you're comfortable with and list your target publications and podcasts, key messages, and the material you’ll need to issue.
- Include your next steps—what you must do to build on your growing profile to take your business to the next level.
- Create great blog content. You should begin this immediately, before you begin writing your book, if possible.
- Use your network including LinkedIn to connect authentically with people who are writing about or discussing stories in your field.
- Get help. There are many inexpensive publicists, writers, and designers who can brainstorm your approach and messaging, as well as design a media kit and support with other activities.
Sandy also encourages entrepreneur-authors to start thinking about themselves as experts in their field and comment on issues or questions about which you have knowledge. Sites like Muckrack.com list experts who can be readily contactable by journalists. Here’s show host Josh Steimle’s profile on Muckrack.
Other Forms Of Income
Sandy also works with clients to help them identify other forms of income they can leverage with their book. This can include speaking gigs, passive income through courses, short-term consulting, or affiliate opportunities.
She encourages her clients to explore opportunities carefully and not to necessarily think an opportunity is too small, because you never know what can arise from an interview with a smaller podcast, library presentation, or interview with a weekly newspaper.
Should You Use a Book Publicist?
Some experienced authors have had a negative experience with PR, and Sandy acknowledges that it can be a leap of faith and a learning experience.
However, the key is expectations, and understanding that a PR campaign doesn’t bring success overnight. It can take weeks to yield results.
The next consideration is, of course, cost. The best book publicists are not cheap by some standards. But again, there are freelancers or smaller consultancies that can provide similar services at affordable prices. Just check their reviews first.
If you liked this episode and show notes you’ll find these episodes useful:
Scott Schrober Publicized His Books With Local Speaking Gigs and Won New Business
Michelle Tillis Lederman On The Personalized Approach To PR For Book Marketing
LINKS
- Smith Publicity
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
When is the last time that your ideal client or prospective client invited you into their home in their quiet time?
Most entrepreneur’s would answer that question with “Never”. This is why Published Author’s latest guest Matthew Halloran is a huge believer in the power of podcasts, particularly for authors.
“A book is finite. You’ve got 300 pages or 200 pages,” says Matthew. “When the reader is done, they close the book and put it back on the shelf.”
However, with a podcast a potential client knows that another episode is coming out next week or next month, and this allows an author to continue the relationship.
Matthew is a partner with Proudmouth, an influence accelerator agency focusing on podcasting for authors. Proundmouth’s mission is to free businesses from the torment of sales.
“We love working with authors because the call to action is to download a book, buy the book, go to Amazon,” explains Matthew.
“I know that if I'm going to get you to listen to my podcast, if you'll buy my book, the probability of you becoming a client is very high, because you've opted in steps to engage with me.
“If I can get you to engage with me socially, the probability of me ever having to sell . . . I don't sell anymore. People listen to our podcast. People who have purchased my book, The Social Media Handbook For Financial Advisors. They follow us on social media, they engage with us. Then they just call and they say: ‘Hey, I'm ready to go’.”
BOOK CHAPTERS ARE STARTING POINT FOR PODCAST EPISODES
Matthew says most people have chapters in their books, and these can be turned into podcast episodes. In turn, the episodes can be turned into social media posts, making it fairly straightforward for authors to utilize podcasting as a way to accelerate their influence.
Matthew explains that most authors and their books get a lot of attention when the book is first published. But a book “doesn't have a lot of the longevity that we would really want. We believe that podcasting is the most effective way to achieve longevity.”
Matthew recommends a minimum of two podcasts a month for a business owner. Those podcasts turn into one social media post per day.
Proudmouth works with a lot of financial advisors who've used our services, had already written a book, we've got one that wrote a book based off of his podcast, and they use the book as their main foundation for all of the content.
UNCERTAIN ABOUT PODCASTING? JUST JUMP IN!
Matthew believes that the biggest thing that stops people from podcasting is overthinking. He says when he was writing his first book he was told he’d need to write anywhere from 5000 to 10,000 words a day. He knows this is intimidating, but with podcasting, it’s simply hit record and start talking.
“Podcasting is not only not that complicated, but that's what people like,” says Matthew, noting that host Josh Steimle has found success with the Published Author podcast because it’s a conversation-based, interview-based podcast, a format he recommends.
“I'm not a huge fan of solo casts,” adds Matthew. “You have to have a lot of production behind it to keep people's attention for 30-plus minutes. People like to feel like they're hearing and eavesdropping into a personal conversation. The more personal you can make the conversation about whatever your topic is, the more passionate people are going to be about your podcast.”
He also says that finding a niche is very important. “Joe Rogan is only successful because of the 25 years of work that he did before he went behind the microphone. You're not going to be the next Joe Rogan. You need to do podcasting because you love it.”
Matthew adds that with passion behind the podcast, along with a microfocused topic, an audience will grow naturally.
Finally, he adds that the best podcasts are entertaining, utilize storytelling, and offer listeners a chance to learn something, because most people go to podcasts to learn something new. Not least, a podcast episode must have a call to action.
LINKS Twitter LinkedIn Proudmouth SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Note: Xinran has heavily accented English, so listeners will probably find it easier to listen while reading the transcript, which you can find at Publishedauthor.com, linking from Episode 48's page
Xinran is an internationally acclaimed author, journalist, and activist.
Born in Beijing in 1958 to educated parents, Xinran was separated from her mother and father during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution because her parents were imprisoned.
In this episode, Xinran tells host Josh Steimle the moving recollection of her early memories, when she came home from school to find her parent’s house on fire after being set alight by the Red Guards. She recalls losing all her books during that traumatic event.
Raised by her grandparents, Xinran hosted a radio show, Words on the Night Breeze, in the 1980s. It aired between 10 p.m. until midnight because, she was told, no one listened to her show.
However, she received hundreds of letters from listeners every day, revealing the true and enormous size of her radio audience. These letters as well as phone calls became the basis of some of her books later on, and hugely influenced her writing.
Xinran’s most recent book is The Promise. Other books include Message From An Unknown Chinese Mother, Buy Me The Sky, and her first novel, Miss Chopsticks, released in 2007.
Xinran says: “If you read all of my books, 99 percent are not my life story. It’s all the people’s story.”
She explains that when she started writing she realized she didn’t know the real China.
“I found this history . . . that I didn’t know. It wasn’t in my textbooks, wasn’t in books. People never talk about this,” she says. “People in the countryside are very poor, but people never talked about it. It was three generations in silence.”
I Didn’t Have A Right To Talk To Anyone
Xinran dreamed of writing because she knew people were scared to speak out, and she wanted to help them. But she never dreamed this would become a reality until she moved to the UK in 1997.
Xinran moved to London in 1997, she worked as a cleaner, eventually getting a job as a part-time teacher. Her students encouraged her to write a book because they loved the stories she told about China and her friends there.
That seminal first book, The Good Women Of China, is a memoir relating the stories Xinran heard while hosting her radio show. The book reveals many Chinese women's thoughts and experiences that took place both during and after the Cultural Revolution.
Published in 2002, The Good Women Of China has been and has been translated into more than 49 languages.
After its success, Xinran went on to write Sky Burial, published in 2004. This book focuses on Tibet and follows Shu Wen, whose husband joined the Chinese army and was sent to Tibet to help unify the two cultures.
Between 2003 and 2005 Xinran wrote a regular column in The Guardian, and these were published in 2006 as What the Chinese Don't Eat. The book delves into a vast range of subjects, from food to sex education, as well as the experiences of British mothers who’ve adopted Chinese daughters.
A Bridge Of Love
In August 2004 Xinran set up ‘The Mothers’ Bridge of Love’ (MBL). MBL reaches out to Chinese children in all corners of the world. By creating a bridge of understanding between China and the West and between adoptive culture and birth culture, MBL aims to help bridge the huge poverty gap which still exists in many parts of China. The MBL book for adoptive families is Motherbridge Of Love, translated into more than 20 languages.
LINKS MothersBridge.org About Xinran SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Being hacked multiple times, having money stolen from his bank account and—the ultimate embarrassment—having his cybersecurity company breached, all led to cybersecurity expert Scott Schober writing his first book.
In Scott’s work to educate people on cybersecurity, he effectively put a target on his back, and suddenly found himself a target. Hackers figured they’d try and keep Scott quiet and in a short period of time his credit and debit cards were hacked, and then more than $65,000 was stolen from his checking account.
Next, his company was hacked, and soon the Associated Press was on the phone looking for a story from Scott. He agreed, on the condition that he could tell the whole story. This led many of Scott’s contacts and friends to encourage him to write a book.
‘I’M NOT A WRITER’
However, there was one major hurdle. Scott didn’t like writing and had in fact struggled with writing his whole life.
“I'm terrible at writing, my spelling, my sentence structure, putting my thoughts on paper, it was a struggle for me my whole life,” Scott tells Published Author show host Josh Steimle.
So the process of writing his first book, Hacked Again, became a monumental challenge. But Scott did have one card up his sleeve. In college, a professor offered to help Scott learn to write if he helped with computers.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A GOOD STORY
Through this experience Scott discovered that someone can learn how to write, if they are disciplined enough and want to learn.
Another important lesson: Make sure you have a good story. Says Scott: “If you don't have a good story, it's really hard to write about abstract things and stuff unless you're just writing a school textbook.”
With Hacked Again, Scott stayed focused on the story and stayed true to the narrative. It took him two years to write Hacked Again, and he describes it as “long and painful”. He even had to throw out a few chapters in the end, partly because he overshared and had too much detail.
Scott was also fortunate in that his brother, who is also a part of the business, is a gifted writer.
“I would write a chapter, and I would send it to him, and he'd rip it apart,” says Scott. “The good news is having somebody that grew up with me, and is also in the same family business, he knows the stories and knows my mind. He knows what actually happened. But he can explain it and edit it without offending me too much, because it gets the big picture.
Scott has written two more books - Cybersecurity Is Everybody’s Business, and his latest, Senior Cyber: Best Security Practices for Your Golden Years.
A WRITER WITHOUT AN AMAZON ACCOUNT
Strangely for a writer, Scott doesn’t have an Amazon account. This is because he has to live off the radar now. He has a lot of fictitious personas online, and he never inputs his true birthdate when he registers on a website.
As a cybersecurity expert, he has no choice. He sets up other entities and has people do tasks for him that most of us would do ourselves. He blurs out his house and licence plate on Google and Bing. He also always pays for gas with cash, never credit card. “It’s just a really strange way to live,” he comments.
LINKS LinkedIn Twitter YouTube ScottSchober.com
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We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
We hear lots from and about CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs. In fact, we probably don’t need to write out these acronyms.
But what about the CSO? That’s chief sustainability officer, just in case you didn’t. Looking at the headlines these days, we probably need to hear more.
So it’s great that Chrissa Pagitsas has decided to write a book based on interviews with chief sustainability offers. The target release date is early 2022.
Chrissa is a globally recognized thought leader at the intersection of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability issues in Fortune 500 companies. She is also the VP of Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) with Fannie Mae.
BOOK DESIGNED TO SHARE SUSTAINABILITY MESSAGE
Chrissa was motivated to write her book by something that will resonate with many entrepreneurs. She wanted to share knowledge—and that of CSOs—with others who were set to embark on building a large business dedicated to sustainability.
Chrissa says: “I was coming up to my 10-year anniversary at Fannie Mae. I've been working in sustainability and finance at the intersection of green building for quite some time, about 20 years.
“There was something that I wanted to share with others, I wanted to talk about what it was like to build a large business dedicated to sustainability, with of course, environmental outcomes, positive outcomes,” she explains.
First up, Chrssa encountered the big question many authors face: How would she write this book? Like other writers, she began to talk to people, including professors, authors, and people in the field.
PLANNING A BOOK? FIRST LOOK AT THE COMPETITION
One of the pieces of advice that Chrissa received: “Look at the competition, look at what else is out there.”
She did just that and discovered Published Author host Josh Steimle’s book, Chief Marketing Officers At Work, published by Apress in 2015.
Chrissa tells Josh: “I came across one of your blogs about interviewing for your book. And you gave rich descriptions on how to do it.”
Chriss also discovered that the perspective of CSOs was missing. “I put together a book proposal and reached out to Apress, and they said: ‘Well, you should talk to Josh because he wrote a book about this’.”
When Chrissa was ready to begin, she submitted a proposal and Apress responded immediately, saying they wanted to work with her.
IMPORTANT ADVICE FOR A WRITER
Chrissa came away with two important pieces of advice from Josh’s blog.
Be Organized
“One of your blogs referenced having a spreadsheet where you kept track of who you had talked to, when they had submitted the release form, and so on,” says Chrissa. “For any writer when you are working with so many ideas and moving parts, you do need to keep track. Having a system gives you more freedom to actually work out your ideas.
Just Go For It!
Next up, Chrissa appreciated the fact that Josh encourages people to simply begin.
“I think the advice to reach out to people via LinkedIn or just just ask, because you don't know if someone's going to say yes or no. So you might as well ask.”
Chrissa was also inspired by the fact that Josh emphasized not becoming frozen if things aren’t perfect.
“If you don't write the perfect paragraph or you don’t know the right person. You have to do a draft, and then you’ll refine it. Or you’ll make a new contact, and perhaps that will lead somewhere,” says Chrissa.
FINDING INTERVIEW SUBJECTS
Says Chrissa: “I've started interviewing. Some interviews are through my network, some of the CSOs are people that I already know. And some have been friends of friends in my network. I've scheduled about seven or eight, and I've already conducted five of the interviews.”
Chrissa’s list of CSO’s is impressive. They include Bea Perez, the chief Sustainability Officer at Coca Cola; Jim Gowan, CSO at Verizon, Katherine Neebe at Duke Energy. Fascinating conversations there. Virginie Hélias at US Procter and Gamble.
If you intend to write a book based on interviews, Chrissa recommends exploring your own network first, and then asking your network for recommendations. These are the best ways of securing interviews.
She’s encountered two obstacles since starting her interviews. The first is that in conducting an interview, during which an executive might tell a really great story, but it needs a few more sentences for context for the reader.
Chrissa explains: “I've found that doing the follow up to fill in those two or three sentences is a little bit challenging, because the only person who can really fill that in is the CSO. And I really should only expect them to review the final chapter versus ‘Oh, can I ask you one more thing?’. So that's where in the course of the interviews, if I realize immediately that I need two more sentences, then I need to interrupt and say, could you give me two more words about what this or that was and then I'll retro fit the paragraph afterwards.
“Going back to an executive after the interview is not the best use of their time, not efficient.”
The second challenge has to do with transcripts. Some of the interviews are 35 to 45 minutes long. Chrissa is getting the interviews transcribed, yet they come back pretty raw. The flow needs to be corrected and some paragraphs need to be re-ordered.
“I've found that finding the two to three hours that I need to just think through a transcript in one big chunk has been challenging.”
LINKS LinkedIn ChrissaPagitsas.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
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We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Eli Schwartz’s incredible experience setting up a brand new SEO team in Singapore meant that he often wrote down instructions or explanations for his employees.
Eli had longed to be in Asia for a while, and SurveyMonkey’s CEO at the time, Dave Goldberg, granted Eli’s wish and opened an office in Singapore to keep Eli at SurveyMonkey.
Explains Eli: “I'd write down notes of these things that my team wanted to learn, and that's actually when I felt like I should publish a book. That was the first thing that really made me feel like I had something I wanted to share, because like it wasn't shared anywhere else.”
Eli’s book, Product-Led SEO, is published this month. It digs into his career and how to learn how to get things done.
SEO At a Strategic Level
Eli explains: “The book is about how to think at a higher level, how to be strategic and not really chase the algorithm or chase SEO tactics.”
He believes that SEO pros and in fact anyone working on a website should be spending their time on being strategic, because SEO is different for every website. “It’s really about what Google believes your website to be about. So that is what you should focus on. What should my website be about? And not the little minutiae and little tactics on how to be successful.”
The second prompt for Eli to write Product-Led SEO came from his blog, also called Product-Led SEO. It’s about building products around users. One of his posts completely took off on LinkedIn, making Eli realize “There's really something here, I should build all of these ideas around this book.”
The Biggest Challenge: Telling A Compelling Story
If you’ve regularly written a blog, Eli says that blog posts can easily become the foundation for your chapters.
However, the challenge is how to tell a compelling story. As Eli says: “How do you bring all this together? How do you narrate this? How do you bring color to it?”
Initially, when Eli started his book, he wanted to get his message out there and build a brand But if he pursued this path, Eli believed his book wouldn’t have been great. So instead he separated the book from his branding and career, and focused on telling all he’d learned about SEO.
“I had some ideas. I was writing some guides, but it still wasn't a book,” he observes.
He worked with some amazing editors who were able to pull everything together, bringing in color and a narrative.
Product-Led SEO
Eli describes product-led SEO as giving people what they want from content and services.
“You're building something for users. And if all you're thinking is I'm building something, so I get some clicks then that is not valuable. That is just a blog post,” he explains. Eli adds that people need to determine product-market fit first, and then build an SEO strategy.
“Whatever it is that you want to happen for any sort of use on your website, that has to happen from SEO, and SEO shouldn't be divorced from this idea that users come to websites, websites convert into whatever the user funnel is, the way it is in many SEO strategies,” says Eli. “SEO is to be part of that, it has to be an acquisition, one acquisition channel of all your other channels. So that in a nutshell is product-led SEO. Your SEO is a product. It's not just a keyword.”
LINKS Twitter LinkedIn EliSwartz.co Productledseo.com
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
After a demanding decade as the CEO of a global company, Maulik Parekh was looking forward to a sabbatical year of travel to nine countries with his family.
But when the pandemic struck, wiping out all those plans, he quickly switched to a long-anticipated plan B he’d never had time for: Writing a book.
The result is Future Proof Your Company and Career. It’s a book about flourishing in an emerging era of artificial intelligence, a new digital-savvy workforce and the gig economy.
“The pandemic was the biggest trigger for me to write a book. I also did it as a therapeutic thing, because I realized if I didn't do anything for the next year, I may go crazy,” the Asia-based executive, investor, and speaker tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle.
“I needed to keep myself busy with something that would be constructive, creative and channel my energy in the right direction.”
Three Trends to Future Proof Your Company and Career
The book is based on three trends Maulik observed during his final years as a CEO with SPI Global. One was the stealthy rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in corporate jobs and processes.
“We are so used to AI in our lives that we don’t think about it,” he says. “And that is very concerning for business leaders because it could one day potentially put us all out of jobs. A study by McKinsey says by 2030, up to 375 million jobs could be at risk because of automation, AI and robotics… We have to figure out what are the strengths of AI and of humans and learn how to complement each other.”
The second trend was the growing influence of what Maulik calls digital natives. “In the last three years, almost 100 per cent of the people we hired were either Gen Z or Millennials—not a single Gen Xer or Baby Boomer. In 10 years, these people will be occupying positions of influence and power, and we must understand what motivates them.
The third trend was the increasing importance of freelancing, especially among professionals in fields such as law, accounting, marketing and computer science. “That changes the landscape of how work will be done in the future,” he says. “So these three trends have the potential to completely disrupt the way we work.”
From Two-Word Ideas to a 50,000-Word Book
Based on his observations and research, Maulik started writing down one- or two-word ideas about these trends. Those jottings became the outline for what, once fleshed out, became a 50,000-word book. That approach—along with identifying in advance what the table of contents and various chapters would cover—helped him organize his thoughts and overcome any writer’s block. He was also totally focused on the book, researching and writing up to five hours a day.
Maulik found it helpful to have 15 people from nine countries and ages ranging from Gen Zers to Baby Boomers review drafts of the book. “I wanted to see which demographic is impacted by what chapter, and what appeals to them most. They all had a unique perspective that I found very helpful.”
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
After an impressive military career, Craig Whelden decided he wanted to give back by sharing all he’d learned about leadership with the next generation of leaders.
Craig had a long career in the United States military, serving in various positions. He was Commander Marine Forces Pacific for bass operations, Deputy Commanding General, US Army Pacific. And he served as the first Chief of Staff for a four-star Navy-led Joint Task Force, and much more.
Craig believed the best way to pass on his knowledge and experience would be through speaking engagements. But he soon discovered that to become a sought-after speaker, he’d need to write a book.
Creating a True Leadership Handbook
After pursuing the idea of a ghostwriter, Craig finally decided to write his book himself. After working hard on it for weeks, he sent his draft manuscript to a book coach.
The coach gave Craig no-holds-barred feedback, telling him that he’d written a memoir, not a leadership book, and that he had some rewriting to do!
Craig took his medicine and went back to do some heavy editing. He then worked with the coach to edit and structure his book. Craig’s coach asked him which were the most important chapters in the book - and from there character became chapter one, trust chapter two, and onwards.
Craig’s book, Leadership: The Art of Inspiring People to Be Their Best, was released two years ago, and has allowed Craig to accomplish what he set out to do.
“I wrote this book to help me get on stage to tell my story to people to help the next generation in leadership and life lessons, that's the reason I wrote it,” he tells show host Josh Steimle.
Leadership is now an award-winning international bestseller, with dozens of five-star reviews on Amazon. Not least, it’s opened up the speaking circuit to Craig, which in turn has boosted book sales.
Want To Be a Speaker? Have a Demo Video
Craig began seeking out speaking engagements by finding a couple of companies that send out leads for speaking gigs. He signed up with one, and so every month he receives a list of conferences that are occurring in the next eight, nine months or so.
He also sends out a solicitation email, which basically introduces him, tells recipients a little bit about him, and his web address.
Craig advises: “Step one is you have to have a pretty darn good foundation with a website. And on that website, if you want to be a speaker, you better have a demo video. Because if you don't have a demo that's pretty good, people are just going to move on.”
Craig’s website has testimonials about his book, his speaking engagements, and about me section, a blog, and lots of information about leadership.
Leadership Book Opens Door To Speaking Gigs
Craig delivered his very first presentation on stage in Omaha, Nebraska, in late 2019 to an audience of 250, for a financial management firm.
“The firm bought 250 copies of my book, I signed every one of them the night before I gave my presentation. And they gave the book out to every attendee. So that has sort of been the model that I've been approaching as I talked to people about speaking engagements,” explains Craig.
“I say ‘I can give you a discount on my book if you want to buy it in bulk for every attendee’. In probably 80 to 90% of my speaking engagements, they have purchased the book for every attendee.”
“I gave probably four, maybe five presentations before the lockdown let a year ago in March,” he recalls.
“The last presentation I gave live was the Los Angeles Fire Department Leadership Academy. With 50 students, they bought 50 copies of my book, and they've incorporated it into the curriculum,” enthuses Craig.
“They asked me to come back and be a regular speaker, which I had planned to do, until COVID shut everything down. So I haven't been back out to Los Angeles yet, until things settle down.”
From that point forward in March, 2020, Craig began seeking online opportunities. For example, last month, he presented to a graduate course in leadership at Emory University in Atlanta. They bought 42 copies of his book, one for each student. Part of the students’ assignment was to take notes on Craig’s Zoom and read the book as well.
He delivered an online presentation to a medical group, and at the end of the presentation gave his contact information, CraigWhelden.com so attendees could purchase his book online.
Next month, Craig plans to begin doing in-person events. “I’ve had both my COVID shots and I feel pretty comfortable that I won't get infected and I won't infect anybody else. And because an event in Gatlinburg, Tennessee is a medical group, I'm pretty comfortable they will take the appropriate precautions as well.”
LINKS
TwitterLinkedInCraigWhelden.com
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
BESTSELLING AUTHOR TELLS HOW HIS BOOKS BUILT HIS CAREER
Dr. Daniel Crosby wanted to be the catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, but couldn’t throw a curveball, so had to settle with being a New York Times bestselling author.
“It’s been a rough road,” he jokes with Published Author host Josh Steimle. The disappointment was fleeting, and today Daniel is happy with his success and somewhat unusual path as a behaviour finance expert, psychologist, and leadership coach.
Danial’s career choice was influenced by his father’. “I grew up the son of a financial advisor. As far as someone can want to grow up to work in finance, I really did have a lot of respect for my dad. I saw what he did for his clients, saw the kind of life he was able to provide for us. So I really grew up talking about stocks literally around the dinner table.”
But Daniel was also curious about what made people tick. He went to major in psychology, eventually completing a PhD in clinical psychology at Brigham Young University. But he fell out of love with the thought of being a therapist while doing clinical work at Emory. Daniel was taking his work home with him and feeling heavy all the time.
His father pointed out the many opportunities in business for a psychologist, noting the psychology behind the markets. Soon, he had a new career path.
Danial explains that behavioral finance is a specific case of behavioral economics. “Behavioral economics could deal with anything from how we make decisions about what we put in our body, like food and things like that, to exercise, public policy, politics. Behavioural finance, meanwhile is the very specific application of psychology to the stock market.
AN ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
After a stint in a large bank doing pre-employment assessments, Daniel was drawn to entrepreneurship and stepped out on his own in his late 20s. With that, he realized he needed to market himself.
He says: “Organizations were always looking for public speakers. If you have something interesting to say then people are intrigued by human behavior and human nature. And so it was easy for me to go speak at the local Rotary club or business organization.”
From there, Daniel landed a speaking gig at TEDx. His speech was hugely popular and that’s when he realized he had a book in the making. His first book, You’re Not That Great, was based on his TEDx talk and self-published in 2012.
“My talk was these seven counterintuitive truths for living a good life, and talking about the ways in which recognizing and owning our own mediocrity can be empowering in a counterintuitive way,” explains Daniel. “So I said ‘Well, this is the framework, here's the, here's the seven concepts I'm going to write about; that will, that will be the process.”
A BOOK PERFORMS WELL WITH A STRONG COAUTHOR AND PLATFORM
Although You’re Not That Great has plenty of five-star reviews, Daniel says: “It did poorly enough that it made me want to go seek out an established publisher the second time.”
Looking back, he observes: “I have friends who've had great success with self-publishing, but they all have really robust platforms . . . they all have a direct-to-consumer pipeline that I did not have at, 29 years of age and six months of self-employment.”
When Daniel was ready to write his second book and pursue a deal with a traditional publisher, his career was more focused and his platform was much-improved, with an email list, speaking engagements, and a stronger social media presence.
In fact, he’d done so well he was actually sought after by a couple of publishers! Daniel notes: “My specialization helped a ton. And the fact that it was an emerging field helped a ton.”
The industry-focused Personal Benchmark: Integrating Behavioral Finance and Investment Management came out in 2014 and was a New York Times bestseller.
This book was also a bestseller, and Daniel says it had every advantage! He co-authored the work with Morgan Housel, a well-known asset manager—he was able to get the book in front of the right readers. They also had a massive PR and marketing campaign, with a lot of social media activity.
‘INCALCULABLE’ IMPACT OF WRITING BESTSELLER
“It's incalculable the good that the book did for my career. I couldn't I couldn't overstate how much good it did for me.” says Daniel. “I’m in my early 30s at this point, and it opened every door for me.
“Nobody's hiring 32 year olds from to, come speak at their event without some sort of a calling card. And so a book becomes your calling card, it becomes the reason that the industry, newspapers, and publications begin to reach out to you for comment. ”
Daniel does point out though that he’s not making money on the back of book sales, but from the opportunities and sales that came because people read his books or heard of him via his books.
“I coasted on the success of books, just doing speaking gigs. That was a full-time job, to speak and promote those books,” he notes. “To this day, I think for a lot of people in niche fields like me . . . that’s the usefulness of writing a book . . .even those books of mine that I've done well, they're not big moneymakers, relative to other things that you can do on the back of the book.”
Next came The Laws of Wealth in 2018. Daniel wrote this book to make financial knowledge and behaviour available to people who aren’t financial professionals.
His follow-up was the more industry focused The Behavioral Investor, another New York Times bestseller. Both it and The Laws of Wealth have been published in seven languages. Daniel touches on the complexity of international publishing arrangements, which can include different pricing structures, marketing approaches, and cover designs.
Daniel is an incredibly enlightening guest, with eclectic interests. He’s even written a children’s book called Everyone You Love Will Die, and touches on that in this episode, explaining how the idea evolved, and why he wrote it.
LINKS
- Standard Deviations Podcast
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Dave Parker is an entrepreneur’s Superman, ready to save them from disaster that could strike after being swept away by the passion of an idea.
So there’s some dramatic exaggeration there, but it’s true that many entrepreneurs are blinded by an idea and dreams of success, without exploring financial realities or even whether their idea is viable.
Dave is more than qualified to advise startups. He has founded multiple companies over the past 20 years, sold some, and served as a CEO and board member for others. These days, Dave spends 80 percent of his time helping founders actually land the deal that they started and 20 percent of his time involved with community development and community building work around startups.
He’s been involved in a leadership role at Startup Weekend, and it was in part that experience that sowed the seed for Dave’s book Trajectory: Startup—Ideation to Product/Market Fit, released on April 13, 2021.
Dave noted people would leave the Startup Weekend overwhelmed with passion for their business idea. They’d be saying things like “I’ve met my startup soulmate!” and were ready to quit their day-jobs with only an untested idea and no sense of the financials.
Killing Bad Ideas Fast Is A Great Option
Says Dave: “There's this phrase and startup land that the idea doesn't matter, only execution matters, which assumes by default, that it is a good idea.
“If it’s a bad idea, you're just going to fail faster. And I think failing fast is a really bad idea. I grew up a son of a single mom on food stamps. So failure wasn't an option. I think killing bad ideas fast is a great option. It allows you to take the framework of learning and understanding what makes a great idea. And then applying that to your next idea if this isn't the only one.”
However, not everyone gets carried away by their idea. Some people don’t have ideas but want to become founders. Dave met a woman at a seminar who was such a case, and she didn’t know how to think about ideas. So his book includes a chapter on the 11 frameworks for ideas.
When it comes to financials, many startups don’t focus enough time on them, or have the wrong financial model for their industry. This prompted Dave to investigate and he discovered that there are basically 14 revenue models in tech, including things like services, subscription services, market places, and new media.
Says Dave: “Hopefully, your startup idea is unique. But how you make money is never unique. And there have been very little changes with those financial models over the last six plus years.”
See the link below for the free excerpt from Dave’s book available on DKParker.com where you can access the 14 revenue models detailed in the book.
A Book From Blog Posts
The second thing that prompted Dave to write Trajectory was that he fielded lots of calls or emails from entrepreneurs about their startups. The good thing about this was that their questions often led to blog post ideas; the bad, he often had to repeat himself, or direct an enquiry to his blog.
“After a while, I looked at my 150 blog posts and went: ‘Ha! That actually might be a book. So I started compiling them into the pieces.”
Some of the blog posts had added components from other authors, because Dave wanted to make sure he gave credit to them. Dave realized that he needed to include the 50 books that he believes are the most important 50 books in startups.
“You’ll find that throughout the book, I've gone to great deliberate effort to really give credit where it's due to the standing on the shoulders of giants, if you will, the people who've written some amazing things.”
A Diverse Range Of Book Blurbs
Angel investor and venture capitalist Dave Berkus has written a blurb for Trajectory’s cover, and describes Dave’s book as “Awesome . . . this will be the handbook for startup founders.”
Dave was strategic in his request for blurbs for the book’s cover, which are a powerful component of a book’s marketing. He wanted them to be diverse from the start, and secured blurbs from an amazing group of people.
Dave covers a lot more in this interview, including product market fit, customer profiles, business categories, scaling a business, the importance of the customer interview, and his writing process.
LINKS Twitter Instagram LinkedIn DKParker.com Startup Revenue Models
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Experiencing an intense fear of failure at the tender age of eight defined Dr. Rebecca Heiss’s career path.
That fearful experience prompted her to give up theatre as a career choice, and focus on science instead.
Rebecca had planned to enter a public speaking competition, but at the last minute failed to show up because she was so afraid.
“I started to understand how much fear, fear of failure, fear of rejection, starts to drive all of our decisions. And from that point on, I decided I didn't want to fail for the rest of my life. It was such a terrible, scary endeavor, that I was ‘All right, I am giving up theater. I don't want to do that anymore, because that's way too risky’.”
Theatre’s loss is the world’s gain. Rebecca has just published Instinct: Rewire Your Brain with Science-Backed Solutions to Increase Productivity and Achieve Success. And it’s a book that could transform your future!
Rebecca is a biologist and stress expert, and dedicated to helping others become self-aware and overcome instinctual limitations—those ancient, often subconscious, fears that hold people back from optimal performance and their happiest lives.
A TEDx speaker, Rebecca’s “fear(less)” message inspires hope and actionable insights to train our brains to work for us, rather than against us in times of uncertainty. Her research has been designated “transformative” by the National Science Foundation, and it’s waking up audiences around the world. She also is founder and CEO of the 360-review mobile application, Icueity.
INSTINCT IS FOR ANYONE WHO HAS A BRAIN
Rebecca says Instinct is for anyone who has a brain, even though it applies strongly to entrepreneurs and those wanting to take risks and overcome some of the brain’s feedback loops that stop people taking safe risks.
“In today's environment, my audience includes people looking for self-help, they're looking for stress reduction techniques.”
Some readers may “want to understand why they seek variety, why they're never happy where they are, why they want a new partner, a new job, a new, whatever. I think the book is for anyone who's looking to optimize their brain.”
TOO BROAD AN AUDIENCE, SAYS PUBLISHER
Rebecca’s publisher said her description of her book’s potential audience is “Way too broad.
“This is classic marketing, right? If you can find your niche audience, that's ideal. And I would love to say, ‘I've got a niche audience’. And that may be the case. But I'm so hesitant to nail that down and say, ‘Those people are the ones I'm targeting’, because the reality is I want everyone to read it.”
GOING WITH A TRADITIONAL PUBLISHER
Rebecca says she considered self-publishing but decided to put out a call to literary agents. She contacted more than 50 agents and in a matter of hours one responded.
“I was able to work with her to develop an actual book proposal. I think I sent her five chapters of what I thought was going to be my book, which is not at all my book,” explains Rebecca.
“But, you know, once I started working with her, she really helped me, guided me through the process of what it means to publish a book in a traditional publication format. I'm a newbie, but it was a great experience for me to understand.”
Rebecca describes her writing process as a stop-start experience. She’d struggle, and then something would prompt her creativity, and she was suddenly inspired!
“There was a lot of rewriting, but the original concepts,the core is still pretty solid.”
BOUNCING IDEAS OFF SOMEONE WHEN YOU WRITE IS A GAME-CHANGER
Like almost every writer, there were times when Rebecca got stuck and couldn’t write. However, an “an incredible editor” to whom she could send her work was a game changer for Rebecca.
Next—and her biggest tip for entrepreneur-authors—just walk away from the best ideas, the best things, and the best conclusions will come to you.
“Right in the middle of the night, or when I was first waking up, or I was sitting in the shower, or on vacation, and completely removed . . . it allows my brain to step away. I would take a deep breath, start processing those subconscious thoughts that are coming up. Hilariously, this is some of the stuff that I talked about in the . . . it’s taking that step back and getting out of the weeds; this sometimes produces the result.”
LINKS Twitter Facebook Instagram.com LinkedIn YouTube.com RebeccaHeiss.com
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There are two fundamentals to a successful book launch.
One, write a good book. Number two, make sure your social media following is significant.
That’s the message from Scott Miller, who’s published three books in the past two years and has three more coming out this year!
“Most publishers won't even speak to you if you don't have 50,000 Instagram followers and 100,000 YouTube subscribers, and you've maxed your Linkedin and maxed your Instagram and your Facebook,” Scott tells host Josh Steimle.
SOCIAL MEDIA ESSENTIAL FOR SUCCESSFUL BOOK LAUNCH
“Too many authors say ‘I don't want to play that game’. Then you're not going to sell a book. There is no book promotion without social media. Get over your social media phobia, and it'll take you two years minimally to build your social media.”
Scott is author of Management Mess to Leadership Success. In May 2021 Marketing Mess to Brand Success: 30 Challenges to Transform Your Organization's Brand (and Your Own). September this year will see the publication of Master Mentors: 30 Transformative Insights from Our Greatest Minds
Scott was recruited 25 years ago by Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s team to work at FranklinCovey. He recently served as chief marketing officer there and is now a senior advisor at FranklinCovey on thought leadership.
“Writing a book is about 20% of the process of publishing a book. I'll do 125 podcasts just for Marketing Mess alone.
“Ninety-five percent or more of all the marketing comes from you: it’s podcast, webinars, speeches, keynotes, your website, social media, sending out galley copies to anybody and everybody,” he explains, noting that in contrast, the publisher’s role is to edit, print, and distribute your book.
Scott stresses that his social media success is often due to the fact that he focuses on others.
“I post two and three times a day in my social media, putting a spotlight on others, making sure I'm an abundant contributor. I nurture my social media extremely methodically, hopefully abundantly and generously.”
DON’T LET ANYONE TALK YOU OUT OF YOUR BOOK
While all the marketing and promotion may sound daunting to some authors, Scott encourages entrepreneurs not to be dissuaded.
“Don't let anybody talk you out of your book,” says Scott. “Yes, the world needs your book if your book is good. So if you've got a book in you get it out of you.”
Next up, think about why you want to write your book, and be clear on that. Is it because you want to go become a speaker, you want to build your brand? Do you want to become a consultant?
Understanding the why behind writing your book is important, because no makes money on a book.
After that, determine what kind of writing process you will use to organize your thoughts and your book. Some authors use cards, while others, including Scott, use Post It notes. Next, think about your writing schedule, and do what works for you. For Scott, that means being at his desk every morning from 4 a.m. to 5:30 every day non-stop.
Scott encourages entrepreneur authors to be forward when it comes to reaching out to publishers - if that’s the route you choose to go. He says: “Every publisher is always looking for new books. So don't feel like you should be embarrassed or walk on eggshells. Every publishing house is always looking for new authors and new books.”
LINKS Twitter.com Instagram.com Facebook LinkedIn.com ScottJeffreyMiller.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Just because you’re good at selling doesn’t mean you’ll be good at leading. That’s something Ben Ward learned over 20 years of helping tens of thousands of sales leaders achieve industry-leading results in team sales.
“I’ve experienced this myself in sales and in transitioning into leadership. It’s different focusing on yourself and then helping other people become good,” he says. “Some of my top salespeople were the worst managers, the worst leaders.”
In his new book, Sellership, Ben reveals secrets of how top salespeople can become remarkable sales leaders.
“There’s a strategic plan, a system, a methodology to help somebody who’s really good at sales transition successfully into leadership,” Ben tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle.
FIRST STUDENT FROM PUBLISHED AUTHOR MASTERMIND
Ben is the first student from Josh’s Published Author Mastermind program to finish a book. The program helped Ben refocus what that book should be about.
“This book I actually planned as my fifth book. I was going to write a whole different book, one that’s now going to be coming out later this year,” he says. “It’s for salespeople having to overcome the fear, the uncertainty and the doubt that you have to rid from your mind, like plucking a weed from a garden.”
But the book he ended up writing first, Sellership, was a better fit for the growth of his business: helping sales leaders master the skills of leading their teams to success. It’s something he also drives home in individual and group coaching sessions, keynote speaking and digital master classes.
RELYING ON MENTORS AND OTHER WRITERS
Ben leaned heavily on other mentors and writers in developing his book. Brian Tracy, who’s written countless best-selling books on sales and leadership, was an early inspiration, from his books on tape to a mastermind retreat he led that Ben attended. Brian ended up writing the forward for Sellership.
Greg Reid, who’s written dozens of similar bestselling books, jumped on board as Ben’s co-author of Sellership. “He loved the idea and he wanted to help me,” Ben says. “He helped me blend it into an easy-to-read story that’s packed with principles.”
A ghostwriter was also enlisted, particularly to help develop Ben’s writing voice and the book chapters. They developed a system of sending the ghostwriter transcripts from Ben’s YouTube channel and then discussing ideas over the phone.
“That ghostwriting experience was a bit of a challenge, but it ended up being amazing, taking my knowledge and concepts and having her put them in a way I could never have written myself,” he says.
The YouTube videos provided an additional benefit, allowing clients to share insights in team training meetings, coaching sessions and digital courses. “Doing those videos has been extremely valuable,” Ben says. “Recently, I’ve gotten new clients that way as well.”
LINKS Instagram.com Facebook LinkedIn YouTube.com BenWard.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
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We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Having a profound positive impact on a young woman’s life is the one thing that kept entrepreneur Sarah Frey writing her book whenever she found it too difficult or painful.
Sarah, author of The Growing Season: How I Built a New Life--and Saved an American Farm, grew up in rural poverty on a farm in Illinois and faced a lot of personal challenges as a child and teenager.
She took over the farm—now Frey Farms—which operates farms and related facilities in seven states and distributes fruits and vegetables across the country through Its Sarah’s Homegrown label.
Sarah has been described by the New York Times as “the Pumpkin Queen of America” because she sells more pumpkins than any other producer in the United States.
When Sarah took over the farm it was on the brink of collapse. As a teenager, she was able to secure contacts with the likes of Walmart distribution centers and, even though she says she didn’t know what she was doing, Sarah slowly grew the farm into a billion-dollar business.
As an entrepreneur, Sarah felt that clients and business contacts knew only her successful side.
“No one knew what my background was . . . that I grew up in rural poverty. By the time the world got to know me I was polished up and individuals thought: ‘Oh, wow, isn't that great? She's taken over this family business. Look at this young woman who's running her dad's farm’.
HOW PERSONAL SHOULD YOUR BOOK BE?
Sarah explains to show host Josh Steimle: “It was easier to let people believe that others had given me the business and not let them know I'd had a very scrappy upbringing.
“It was easier to be taken seriously in meetings and dealings with major corporations if they thought she’d come from a background of education and maybe had a business degree or I attended an Ivy League school.
“None of that was ever really true. When I thought about writing such a personal book like a memoir, I was terrified that the world would find out that it wasn't always easy, and I never told anyone what my background ever was. . . I let them create their own perception. In my life it was better to just do that,” explains Sarah.
CHANGING SOMEONE’S LIFE
A chance encounter with a young bartender called Olivia kept Sarah going when she wanted to stop writing her book. Olivia had a business question to ask Sarah, and while doing so she compared her life to Sarah’s. In that moment, Sarah made an exception and shared her background with Olivia, explaining that “What you see is the finished product. This isn’t how it started.”
Sarah’s story transformed Olivia’s life. About three years later, Sarah and Olivia encountered each other again. Olivia ran towards Sarah and said: “Oh, my God, you changed my life!” Continues Sarah: “Her life really was changed! She was there at the same restaurant where I'd met her but she was no longer behind the bar. She was there celebrating her birthday with friends and colleagues and her life was in such a different place.
“I remember walking out of it was at the restaurant that evening and feeling a sense of fulfillment,” says Sarah. “My words and my story had impacted her life and caused her to actually make a change in her life that bettered her life.”
This encounter and Olivia’s words became Sarah’s inspiration whenever things got tough writing her book, because she had to recall difficult memories. “Writing the book . . . was for really all the Olivias. That was the person, the mental image that I would dial up, when things got really hard for me during the writing process.”
YOUR BOOK CAN CHANGE SOMEONE’S LIFE
To entrepreneurs writing an inspirational memoir-type book, Sarah says even though it may be painful work at times, it can change someone’s life for the better.
Sarah says that changing someone’s life for the better was enough motivation for her. Then, of course: “Knowing that multiplying effect, now that I've written the book . . . how impactful that is, I would tell anyone considering writing a book that you don't know until you really put it out there, you can't think that it's not going to help.”
LINKS Twitter.com Instagram.com Facebook LinkedIn.com FreyFarms.com
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The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Marcus Whitney has experienced a lot of failure in his life. He dropped out of college, waited on tables and, as a born entrepreneur, spent considerable periods working for other people.
Yet it was the lessons learned from all these setbacks that allowed Marcus to pass on invaluable, practical advice in his best-selling new book Create and Orchestrate: The Path to Claiming Your Creative Power From an Unlikely Entrepreneur.
His current resume indicates an unqualified success. He’s a founding partner of venture capital firm Jumpstart Health Investors. He hosts a livestream interview show and a podcast. He’s a part owner of the Major League Soccer team Nashville Soccer Club and a board member of several Nashville institutions including the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
A Unique Perspective on Entrepreneurship
Marcus’s winding, diverse path to entrepreneurial success and his real-world MBA gives him a unique perspective not found in most business books.
“These books cover things like taking something from a hypothesis to a real business, but none of them cover how you run a business. Like what are the day-to-day blocking, tackling, fist-fighting aspects of really running a business,” he says. “I especially didn’t see that book in the growing canon of startup venture capital books. So I thought I wanted to start writing that book.”
What he didn’t know is it would take five years to write the book. Things started well with a Kickstarter campaign that raised $30,000 from 400 backers.
“But I had no idea how to write a book or how difficult it is to write a book,” he says. It also took him two-and-a-half years to overcome his unwillingness to write about his failures.
The Failures are What Make His Book Great
“The failures are the thing that are gonna make the book great,” he realized. “Many of the chapters start with a failure story. And the big lesson that comes from them is me talking about my philosophy or imparting information. Here’s some real information that can help you avoid making the mistakes I did.”
During this period, Marcus also suffered from a serious bout of imposter syndrome, causing him to stop working on the book for about 11 months.” He finally rented a remote cabin and locked himself in for a week to get the writing juices flowing again.
Now, his book is generating five-star reviews on Amazon from readers thankful for having entrepreneurship explained and demystified. “The business world puts up a lot of smoke signals and screens. But it’s actually not that complicated,” he says. “It’s great to have this (book) that can sort of take the place of mentoring sessions. It’s better than most mentoring sessions I could offer to somebody in a 30-minute window.”
LINKS Twitter.com Instagram.com LinkedIn.com MarcusWhtiney.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Michelle Tillis Lederman has written four books and with each one she’s discovered that a personalized approach to PR and marketing brings the most success.
This makes perfect sense. Michelle is the author of The Connector’s Advantage and The 11 Laws of Likability. She’s a connector at heart.
Michelle is one of Forbes Top 25 Networking Experts, and CEO of Executive Essentials, which provides customized communications and leadership programs for Fortune 500, non-profit, university and government clients. A former finance executive and NYU professor, Michelle is a regular in the media appearing on NBC, CBS, Fox, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, CNBC, and others. Michelle is known for helping people work better together and advance their individual impact.
The Connector Mindset Brings Results!
Michelle is often asked how she’s built her business. She says The Connector’s Advantage answers the question. “This is how I build my business, with these philosophies.
“I realized that it's just a way of being if we can embody mindsets, and I talk about the seven mindsets, and the connector’s advantage of having them.” (Listen to the episode to uncover the seven mindsets).
She adds: “If we can embody those (mindsets), that's when you achieve the connector’s advantage of faster, easier, better results!
When she’s asked about the difference between networking and connecting, Michelle says: “Networking is something you do, but a connector is who you are. And that's how my work grew. And that actually became the last line of my book. Because it was like: ‘Oh, this is what I want people to get. Don't do something, be someone’.”
Self-Publishing Gives More Control
Of her four books, Michelle has only used a traditional publisher with the first one, and she says the experience wasn’t great, mostly because she didn’t have any kind of voice in the process. The publisher sold the audio rights and a man recorded the audio book, while the first cover presented wasn’t something Michelle liked.
For the Connector’s Advantage, Michelle worked with a hybrid publisher and describes them as “fabulous”. She was fully involved in the process and had a voice every step of the way. She also says that the financial model is better for authors.
“Where traditionally you get the advance up front, you get very little on the back end,” she explains. “Well, The 11 Laws Of Likability has sold every week for over a decade. Tens of 1000s of copies, and I get $1 a book, you know, maybe $1.50. And it costs me $10 to buy a copy. So even when I sell them direct, I'm not making that much.”
In contrast, Michelle can buy The Connector’s Advantage at cost which makes it much more affordable to gift copies.
The Connector’s Book Launch
With The Connector's Advantage Michelle took more of a podcast approach to the launch, as opposed to a full book launch.
“I've been on hundreds of podcasts. So I just went back to all the podcasts and said: ‘Hey, launch coming. You want me back on?’ And I was recording for months with them, releasing it around the launch date.”
Michelle also ensures her launches have a personal touch. She explains: “If I’ve had a conversation with you, I try to personalize the inscription in the book that I sign. Now, when you're doing a line of 200 people, you can't do that. But when I had 20 or 30 people, I would try to do that. It became this whole group conversation. And people felt connected and people would stay at my table. I really live the work.”
LINKS
Youtube
MichelleTillisLederman.com
Michelle’s Quiz: What’s Your Networking Style?
Book Bonuses
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
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We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Drew McLellan has written seven books. That’s quite an achievement for a man who runs a busy and successful ad agency, as well as the Agency Management Institute (AMI).
But Drew stumbled upon a clever approach which meant that writing books was a collaboration, and therefore less work for him.
Drew has worked in advertising for 30 years. He started his own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, in 1995. He's been featured in or published in Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Ad Age, New York Times, Washington Post, Ad Age, CNN Business Week, and many others. He hosts the Build A Better Agency Podcast.
COLLABORATE TO WRITE YOUR BOOK!
Drew’s first book, 99.3 Random Acts Of Marketing, was published as a result of writing a newspaper column for a while. He then ran into someone who offered to publish the columns in book format.
Next up came Drew’s Age of Conversation, One, Two, and Three, although at the time Drew didn’t realize that Age of Conversation would be three books. In the early 2000s he read an article about Harvard experimenting with crowdsourced content for a book. This triggered his idea for a core group of around 150 marketing bloggers to produce a book, with each blogger writing one chapter.
Hundreds of marketing bloggers contributed chapters, and that’s how books two and three were born. Profit from the books - more than $50,000 - was donated to Charity Water.
“None of my books have I sat down and wrote a book the way everyone thinks you write a book,” says Drew.
CREATING AUTHORITY, CONNECTIONS, BUSINESS GROWTH
Drew says his books have contributed significantly to his success. They’ve brought clients, given him credibility, and created new connections.
“There is a gravitas to being an author that other people afford you, that's different than if you're a podcast host or fill in the blank; you do some other content. There's something about it, probably because everyone thinks it's super hard. But it elevates you above your competitors and it does say something about you and your depth of expertise,” says Drew.
He thinks of books as content that opens doors. “So whether you're dropping them in the mail to prospects, or you are using it as a tool to get podcasts, a book is absolutely worth it. It is probably one of the best marketing tools for your business that I can think of.
“My book is a moneymaker, not that people pay $19.95 for the book, but that they buy coaching and consulting, and come to workshops, and join our peer groups. That rings the cash register in a much more significant way for me than a $20 book.
USE A PRESENTATION TO WRITE A BOOK
Drew’s next book, Secrets of Ad Agency Owners, was developed in a similar way to Age of Conversation.
Explains Drew: “By now, I owned AMI. There were a bunch of agency owners who wanted to be authors, but they don't want to actually write a book. So I did the exact same thing we did with Age of Conversation. I said: ‘I'm going to give you a theme. If you want to write a chapter of this book, send it to us.
“My agency laid it out, designed it, self-published it through Amazon's self-publishing. So that was the next two again . . . I wrote a chapter, right and everybody else contributed. And again, what we did with that money is any money we made, we donated to a charity.”
For his latest book, Sell With Authority, Drew partnered with digital marketer Stephen Woessner, and the two offered a two-day workshop selling with authority. The workshop was filmed and transcribed the bones of the book.
“We had to do a lot of rewriting because how you present is very different from how you would write. We had to augment what we taught with more content,” says Drew. “So of all the books I've written, that's the one that probably took me the most writing. Stephen wrote his chapters, I wrote my chapters. Then I took all of the chapters, and then edited all of them so they sounded like they were coming from one voice.”
When it comes to marketing a book, Drew says it’s essential to have an audience and think about marketing before your book is written.
LINKS Twitter Facebook LinkedIn DrewMcLellan.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Ask innovators how they came up with a great idea and they’ll typically say it just came to them. But probe carefully and you’ll find they invariably followed a step-by-step formula that anyone can follow.
In her tenth and latest book, RE:Think Innovation: How the World’s Most Prolific Innovators Come Up with Great Ideas that Deliver Extraordinary Outcomes, author and renowned speaker Carla Johnson explains how the world’s most prolific innovators come up with great ideas that turn into extraordinary outcomes.
Carla has travelled the world, partnering with Fortune 500 companies and thousands of people to rethink their work and come up with game-changing ideas. What she discovered is the process is not that hard to master.
Anyone Can Learn How to Come Up With Great Ideas
There’s a myth that innovation requires a bewildering, innate talent or years of specialized training to learn. But through comprehensive research for RE:Think Innovation, Carla found there was an easily learned method for coming up with these great ideas.
“What I started to see were patterns,” she says. “And it was that everybody followed the same process to come up with a great idea that led to outcomes much bigger than they could have imagined. They all follow the same process, whether they realize it or not. What this book does is break things down into a very simple, teachable, scalable process that anybody can follow.”
Indeed, the book unveils a five-step formula that helps readers draw inspiration and naturally generate ideas. It also teaches organizations to nurture employees who learn to quickly and consistently generate high-quality ideas that deliver outsized results.
Interactive Book Research
It took Carla five intense years to formulate the principles underlying RE:Think. Because much of it was uncharted territory, she relied heavily on her networks for ideas.
“This book was an opportunity to look at my own idea generation and organization process,” she says. “Because I wasn’t sure about all the parts and pieces, I blogged about them and shared them on LinkedIn, where I would ask questions about things I wasn’t sure about. My LinkedIn network was extremely valuable, to be able to ask questions about examples of companies that have done X, Y and Z, and get so much great information.”
As a prolific speaker, Carla was also able to test many of her concepts during entertaining talks to leading companies and their innovative leaders. In the process, she created much of the book’s content.
Creating a Thick Book Outline
“My outline was almost a mini book in itself, 17 pages and 5,000 words long,” she explains. “I think writer’s block, a lot of times, comes from overwhelm, rather than not having something to say. So as I made my outline more detailed, and I could see the storyline flow through it, it made it much simpler for me to sit down and work on chunks.”
It also helped to use storytelling to illustrate her ideas. “One of the things we struggle with is how to come up with a great idea that resonates with people. But it doesn’t matter how great your idea is. If you can’t tell its story, it will never get anywhere.”
While Carla tapped outside expertise to write the book, she learned to trust her own voice in delivering the message. “If you are an authority enough to write the book on it, then you don't need to constantly lean on somebody else to prove your points,” she says.
At the same time, she discovered, her ideas were what really mattered. “I had somebody very wise say to me: It's not about you, they're coming to hear your message. And your role is to share that message. Because there's a reason they need to hear it, there's a reason they need to hear it now and from you. And I think that is really important as an author to understand. I learned a while ago that my role in this whole writing process is that of an educator.”
LINKS
Twitter.com Instagram.com LinkedIn.com CarlaJohnson.co
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Nonfiction books with stories using the narrative arc are almost guaranteed to be successful.
Former publisher and writing coach Allen Arnold says that well-written stories engage readers, draw readers in, and make the content memorable.
“In today's world of distraction with so little time to read, you have to compete for a reader’s attention,” says Allen. “It can't be enough just to say, this is something that I thought you might want to read, I've written a book, now buy it.
“You have to invite people into the story, whether it's food, whether it's technology, whether it's architecture. What is the story that you're telling in your nonfiction?”
In a wide-ranging interview, Allen talks to Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle about how to use God as a co-creator in any creative venture, the importance of the narrative arc, formulaic writing, the state of the publishing industry, and why knowing oneself is essential before beginning either a nonfiction or fiction book.
USE GOD AS YOUR CO-CREATOR
Author of two successful bestsellers—The Story of With: A Better Way to Live, Love, And Create, and Chaos Can’t—Allen has helped literally hundreds of writers publish successful books.
Allen believes too many creative people pursue a formula or what is in vogue, when instead they should be creating their own story—as a writer, painter, poet, whatever.
“Most people don't know how to pursue their creativity actively with God. Instead, they try to pursue a formula. They want to know what works and just do more of that. So I decided to write a book through an allegory, mostly that invited people into how do you pursue what you love to do actively with God?
He hears a lot of creatives say “I feel like it's all up to me”. Allen’s response is that by co-creating with God “You never have to be alone again. You're doing something with an eternal spark. The fruit of that it's been a lot of transformed creatives out there that all of a sudden enjoy it more and are doing more breakthrough work.”
Allen describes his approach as inviting God into a playground of ideas. In his own writing he would “Sense God saying in the allegory . . .right, your character goes into an impossible situation that you can't resolve at the end of the chapter. And then wait for me to tell you what to do. The writing became this almost like, a game of back and forth and tag, and the pressure was off me.
“I felt like God was guiding me in the story and in the teaching into some things that would be beyond me. I got to be a part of it. I think that's the best kind of writing possible, when you're not just relying on your own wisdom.”
HOW MANY WORDS A DAY SHOULD YOU WRITE?
Allen is a big proponent of forgetting word count when you sit down to write. Instead, he encourages writers to simply focus on having something to say something worth breathing life into. In his view, if you write no words one day in search of that strong piece of writing, and 10 words the next day, a writer is better off compared to someone who produces 5000 words a day.
GET TO KNOW YOURSELF - REALLY WELL
With most successful authors, it doesn’t start with their book, but instead who they are. “In the publishing world, if you don't know your own story, if you haven't lived an examined life, if you don't know why somebody would enjoy working with you, then ultimately, I think you do yourself a disservice,” he says.
Allen passed up on many authors he knew could produce a New York Times best seller because they were, in his words, hard to work with, had a high ego, or were driven by such a need for validation that they would just drain his team.
He says authors must “Know your effect on others, as a writer as a creator, because it's a relational business, whether you self-publish, or whether you're with a traditional publisher. You work with other people and so it starts with who you are. And the more you know your story, the more the story you write, it will have a power to it.”
ABANDON FORMULAIC WRITING
Allen recalls that as a publisher he learned that the most successful and appealing authors were those who did not write to a formula.
Writers who wanted to write what would be hot were in fact limiting themselves, he explains. Instead, he was drawn to those who would say “I don't care if this is a genre that's hot or not right now, this is what I was born to write. This is what I'm passionate about. And this is what I want to offer you.”
Those were the writers who most caught his eye. “We all know in this industry that trends come and go.The best thing you can do is write what you're passionate about; not write to spec not write to formula if you want to have heart within what you write.”
In large part he blames the publishing industry for this state of affairs, saying it’s gotten off track for two reasons. First, too many publishing hours are chasing authors with large social media followings to be able to say they can make a book around a following instead of what's a good book and how do we grow the audience?
Next, the publishing industry has lost its ability to define their customers. At one time, it was the bookstore, not the reader. But along came Amazon and defined the customer as the reader, not the bookstore. They also happen to know a lot about that reader. So when bookstores started closing physical locations, publishing houses realized they had no information about their customers.
The fruit of all this, concludes Allen, is: “A lot of forgettable books by smaller publishing teams who are overworked, understaffed, and have no marketing budget.”
LINKS Twitter WithAllen.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Writing a book isn’t a solution. It’s just part of the journey to business growth and opportunities to make a lot of money.
Tyler Wagner, Founder of Authors Unite, is a book marketing expert, and knows all the tactics entrepreneur-authors can use to grow their income on the back of a book.
BECOMING AN AUTHOR LET’S YOU LAND SPEAKING GIGS,SELL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
“If you want to become a paid public speaker, one of the ways to do that, is to first write a book and become an author. And better yet, a bestselling author,” Tyler tells host Josh Steimle in the latest episode of the Published Author Podcast.
Tyler launched Authors Unite almost seven years ago to help authors write and publish their books. The business also markets books, and the only service it doesn’t provide is coaching.
A number of the authors the company has worked with have achieved bestseller status with the Wall Street Journal. They’ve also maximized revenue, with their book opening doors to the sale of products and services and speaking gigs.
Tyler’s company worked with Dr John Jacquish, author of Weight Lifting Is A Waste of Time. Author Unite got the book onto the Wall Street Journal bestseller list for two weeks.
“We built Dr Jacquish a nice foundation to then really scale it,” says Tyler, who adds that Dr Jacquish sells the well-known X3 Bar and supplements. “Dr Jacquish’s book has just been crushing it with almost 1000 reviews in three months.
“I don't take credit for Dr Jacquish’s success. He was very successful before he even got to us.”
Another client—Dan Henry—wrote Digital Millionaire Secrets, and has done extremely well on the back of his book, with a program called Sold Out Courses. Tyler says that for Dan the thinking was that if he could sell five courses, from the investment made in his book, then he has already made his money back. Dan also secured new clients through his book.
Tyler says that entrepreneurs are free to decide how they handle the “accolade” of writing a book. It could be from speaking or sales of products and services. “We have seen people multiply their money,” he says.
ALLOW YOUR FIRST DRAFT TO BE TERRIBLE
Tyler wrote his first book not long after dropping out of university. He left, in part, because he wanted real-world experience of being an entrepreneur. With student loans to pay off, he volunteered at conferences and got amazing experience with some famous entrepreneurs, including Tim Ferris, author of The Four Hour Work Week.
Tyler’s book Conference Crushing taught him that writing is about completing the process, not perfecting the process. “What I mean by that is you have to allow your rough draft to just be as terrible as it wants to be.
“I'll speak for myself, mine was terrible. And then I hired a very good editor. And it's cool if you know this going in - that an editor can really take your book from a two out of 10 to a 10 out of 10.”
A lot of Tyler’s clients have had similar experiences and in his view writers have to accept that you just have to get your book out of your mind, and write it down.
“It can be sloppy. Read it out loud, fix it up a little, then give it to an editor and just let it be what it's meant to be.”
On writing, Tyler says: “I could only do it for an hour in the morning. Some people can do it for like 12 hours in a day and they sprint. For me it was exercise in the morning, my mind's clear then, and then I can write. But I could never do the writing at night.”
He adds that writing gets easier after the first book. “The first book is when you have all the doubts, the limiting beliefs like: ‘People are going to hate this’. But once you do it and you realize nobody's making fun of you online or anything like that, it gets easier.”
BEFORE YOU WRITE, START MARKETING
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneur-authors make is that they don’t begin marketing soon enough.
“The marketing begins before the writing. And that's where I see a lot of first-time authors mess that up. And rightly so, because the writing of the book is just so intense already. So it's like: ‘Let me just focus on that’.”
But Tyler learned from Gary Vee that the number one lesson is: Document, Don’t Create. In other words, document your writing process, and use this to kick-start your marketing.
“Documenting that process publicly is a great marketing tool.” explains Tyler. “If you just document the journey of writing and publishing your book, a lot of people will follow just for that alone. It doesn't take much time to just take a selfie in the morning and say where you are, working, struggling, something like that. Show those raw emotions of it.”
Tyler says some clients have started Facebook groups that within six months have 1000s of followers. He encourages writers to do book cover votes, or share vlogs of progress to make things really personal and intense.
LINKS Twitter LinkedIn Facebook AuthorsUnite.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Sarah Weise is living proof you can write and publish a successful business book in just a few weeks.
Of course, years of research and thinking led to the point where the CEO of the marketing research agency BIXA was ready to write. But the resulting bestselling book, InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z, just flowed onto the page.
“It actually was not a lot of work for me,” says Sarah, who lectures at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business on marketing strategy for the next generation and speaks at conferences and corporate events worldwide.
“Granted it was a ton of research that went into this. But because I’d done the research already, when I actually sat down, I only wrote for two weeks,” she tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle.
You Can Write Your Books In Two Weeks
Sara has been doing market research for leading companies for more than 15 years. An important way to solicit business, she figured, was to write a book. “It was absolutely a business decision.”
The idea for the book arose from research Sarah’s firm did for Google on the digital trends of Generation Z and how to market to those young people. This research led to similar work for other companies, helping build an expertise that could be shared in a book.
“I had this wealth of data and trends I was able to translate into this book,” she says. “A lot of the organization in my head was done because I was already presenting on this material at conferences. I already had a lot of the format in place in a PowerPoint. All I had to do was build on that structure and tell lots of stories. So, it was a lot of writing in two weeks, but it didn’t feel like a huge lift for me. And then on the third week, it was published.”
InstaBrain leans heavily on stories, many of them based on video recordings with Generation Z participants. “Following teenagers as they shopped and searched online for things helped prove my points and made them stick a little better,” Sarah says. “It’s interesting how people really cling to the stories.”
Book Boosts Business
Sarah’s book, InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z, has opened doors to a wide range of business opportunities. Many were unexpected.
“There are constantly new opportunities coming my way because somebody is reading the book or talking about it. It’s a lot of exposure for my business,” she says. “I get a ton of interviews for podcasts now that I wouldn’t have gotten before.”
For example, executives at the American Chemical Society read the book and heard Sarah speak. That resulted in a big contract with the society, which is trying to attract Generation Z undergraduate and graduate students.
To promote the book, Sarah sent signed copies to 50 potential clients, landing work with Ogilvy. It helped that she sent physical books, “which are so much rarer than an email these days.”
The book also allowed her to develop courses for LinkedIn Learning. “I was able to say I’m a published author, a thought leader. I’d like to do a course on X. I don’t think my pitch would have gone anywhere without the book. I am now building a lot of business from the course.”
“I’m definitely getting more paid, better quality speaking invitations now that I have the book. For example, Facebook reached out to me last week to keynote an event. I don’t think that would have happened if I didn’t have the book.”
Using Amazon Ads On Similar Books
Sarah has been promoting the book by placing Amazon ads on other, related titles. “Quite a few people who are looking at (related) titles click through to my book and end up buying it,” she says. “I’m only spending a couple of $100 a month on Amazon ads, but it’s enough to attract a constant stream of people.”
She’s also steadily increasing her profile on Instagram and YouTube. “I can take clips of a talk and post them on those sites, reusing the content that I’m already creating.”
Free Chapter Of InstaBrain
To get a free chapter of InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z, go to bixaresearch.com/freechapter or text the word hi to 66866.
Links:
TikTok
Youtube
InstaBrain at Amazon.com
Link to a free chapter of her book InstaBrain: The New Rules to Marketing for Generation Z:
www.bixaresearch.com/freechapter
Links to Sarah's three courses on LinkedIn Learning:
- Market research fundamentals: https://linkedin-learning.pxf.io/KM0xA
- Generational design: https://linkedin-learning.pxf.io/ZMZd1
- Storytelling: https://linkedin-learning.pxf.io/97knQ
After writing his first book last year, speaker and leadership consultant Peter Kozodoy firmly believes in the power of networking to generate awareness and ramp up book sales.
Author of Honest to Greatness: How Today's Greatest Leaders Use Brutal Honesty to Achieve Massive Success, Peter tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle that all of the speaking opportunities he’s received have been either through his book agent or his network.
“It's all been about: ‘Who do I know? How can I reach out and ask for help? How can I get introductions?’
“Over the course of the last four years I’ve probably talked to around 1,000 people on the phone. Just like sending my Calendly link to anybody who talked to me, just to play hopscotch . . . to get all these relationships and put them all in place and get these pick-ups.”
TOP TAKEAWAY: WRITE A BOOK TO GROW YOUR PLATFORM AND INFLUENCE
Peter began writing his book about four years ago, but not to grow his business. His goal was to develop keynote opportunities. “It's about having a platform. So people are: ‘Oh, yeah, we need someone to speak about . . . . we need an expert on, you know, honesty, right? Honesty in society, strategic honesty for results, etc’. And so I want it to be that guy.”
Peter’s strategy is working. Already, he has plenty of gigs for some great national conferences throughout 2021. “These are the things where people hear you, they develop a relationship in an hour, and then they go buy the book.”
In fact, Peter’s take on speaking is that it’s such a successful tactic for him, he’ll use it with his next book instead of PR. “Next time, what would I do differently? I would approach marketing and PR completely differently. I would do zero PR. The number one, two, and three things I would do is just go out and speak, secure speaking gigs, and I’ll probably do podcasts.”
STORYTELLING IS ESSENTIAL
Peter’s advice to entrepreneurs who are starting to write their book is that it’s essential to use storytelling in their writing, otherwise their book will be dry and dull.
“It's gotta be all about story and fun stories. Because otherwise, it's just like: ‘Hey, did you know that honesty is the best policy? I'm going to tell you why that's true’. My goodness, no!
“I’m really inspiring in others the anger that I had by telling them the stories that fired me up. And now they're fired up with me, I'm taking them on that journey,” he explains. “Don't worry about making it pretty. Don't worry about the structure. Worry about what is the story you want to tell. And within that, how do you chunk it up?”
WORKING WITH A TRADITIONAL PUBLISHER
Peter chose to work with a traditional publisher and was picked up by Benbella Books. He says the experience was exceptional and really pushed him to dig deep and produce an excellent book.
When Peter submitted his first draft to his editor, he was convinced that it was awesome. But she sent it back, asking Peter to rewrite 90 percent of the book!
“Now, seeing where the book has gotten to, through multiple rounds of editors, the agent, the publishing house owner . . . all these people lending their perspective and eyes on it, I can't put $1 amount on them. That was invaluable.
Peter freely admits that compared to self-publishing, working with a traditional publisher was much more expensive and a lot more soul-crushing. Even so, he’s glad he did it, because without enduring, he would have “essentially put out a piece of junk that I would have been convinced was great.
The book is my entire platform. If the book sucks, and misses the mark, it really reflects badly on me.”
WRITING A BOOK IS HARD WORK!
Peter cautions that writing a book oneself is incredibly hard work, and that he thinks it should be hard, otherwise as a writer you’re not going deep, getting vulnerable, or pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.
“Writing a book has been one of the most difficult challenges I've ever faced. I've built a multi million dollar company, by the way, and I've also done a triple Lutz on finger skates. So I am telling you, writing a book is really hard!”
Peter explores lots more in this episode, including how to make a pitch to a publisher, and how to bag speaking gigs. It’s an essential listen if you’re ready to write your book!
LINKS
- PeterKozodoy.com
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
Unusually for an entrepreneur, Dr. Reyzan Shali wrote her book not to grow her medical practice business or to get speaking gigs. Instead, her motivation was to honor her parents and help her patients.
The physician, who is an internal medicine specialist in California, self-published Teaming Up Against Cancer: Simple, Powerful Ways to Beat the Odds and Take Your Life Back because her mother and father had been such great parents and encouraged her to get an education, which was somewhat unusual for girls from the Kurdishstan region of Iraq. She went on to study medicine at the University of Baghdad, College of Medicine.
“The intent was not for me to sell 1000s and 1000s of the book,” she tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle. “It was for me to share the knowledge that I came up from my research with as many people as I can possibly share.”
Reyzan gifts the book to some of her patients, especially if they have a family member directly affected by cancer.
Reyzan is a member of the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians. As a primary care physician, board certified in Internal Medicine, she leads a medical practice in Southern California. Reyzan is a public speaker on the topics of intuition and nutrition.
DON’T BE CONSUMED BY FEAR OR DOUBT WHEN YOU WRITE
Reyzan tells Josh: “What surprised me about my book is why didn't I start this earlier? Why did I let the doubts and fears consume me so much? And, just like anything else in life, if I had stayed in my comfort zone and let the fears consume me, then I was not going to be able to do anything about it.”
Published three years ago, Teaming Up Against Cancer has had a significant impact on readers. Reyzan has received some excellent feedback, and has also affected change amongst her patients.
“I’ve been able to divert some of my readers into a mostly plant-based diet and a Mediterranean kind of diet and lifestyle. So I have seen some, or at least I have encountered some readers and some patients, who have told me that they've totally changed their diet, and now they're mostly plant-based, and they go out for walks every day, and they connect with friends and family on a more regular basis. All that adds up to a healthier life,” she says.
CREATIVE TIME MANAGEMENT
Rezyan said her young sons were into soccer when she was writing her book, and so she employed creative time management to complete the research and writing. For example, when they were at a soccer game or practice, she would work on research and writing while waiting for them in her vehicle.
The actual research for the book meant that she added to the reading and research time she does as a doctor. “That same effort, I multiplied it times 100 for the book, meaning I did a ton of research.”
Reyzan encourages anyone one who is thinking about writing a book to simply sit down and begin. “You don't have to be a perfect writer in order to write a book. You just have to start, meaning you just have to start the process.”
LINKS
- Shalmd.com
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
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We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
When they launched a Sonoma wine business in their laundry room in 1986, Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan were business consultants with no industry knowledge and no money, just $300,000 worth of bulk wine.
Today, the Barefoot Wines label they started is a top international brand. They’ve written thousands of articles and two best-selling books—The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle and Heart Built America’s Number One Wine Brand and The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways to Engage and Empower your People. Now they’re helping other entrepreneurs tell their stories in imaginative audio books.
The common theme running through all these successful endeavors is being outsiders, continually forced to come up with novel solutions. “We’d never written a book before. We’d never done an audio book before. We’d never done a wine business before,” Michael tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle. “We weren’t wine people. We were entrepreneurs.”
TOP TAKEAWAY: YOU CAN DO IT!
That’s the message Bonnie and Michael want to pass on to entrepreneurial consumers of their print and audio books. “The Barefoot Spirit is a you-can-do-it story, says Michael. “No, it’s not what you expect. It’s more work and different work than you thought, but this is doable. That’s the message, an encouraging message for entrepreneurs.”
After 19 years of a “get-rich slow scheme,” Bonnie and Michael sold Barefoot Wines and wrote a book, at their staff’s insistence. “Once we sold our company, our staff came around and said working for us was the most unique, wonderful experience they’d ever had. And that we’d have to write a book about the company culture, which is why they’d all stayed with us.” says Bonnie. “Because our approach was so unique, we wanted to share it with other people, and the only way to do that was in a book.”
But they didn’t want the Barefoot Spirit to be a typical, top-down business book. “So we thought why don’t we just give them a story and let them draw their own conclusions, because they’ll see the action and outcomes and learn the lessons even better than in a prescriptive text,” says Michael.
Make sure you're ghostwriter understands the principles you're communicating
After a disastrous first attempt at hiring a writer for their book, Michael and Bonnie found Rick Cushman, a longtime food-and-wine columnist for the Sacramento Bee, who impressed them with his humor, style and ability to tell stories.
“He talks to the average person, which was our end user in the wine industry,” says Bonnie. “So we’d tell him stories, and he’d take notes.”
“I would recommend to your listeners if you’re going to get a ghostwriter, make sure they understand the principles you’re trying to get across,” adds Michael. “What is the basic message here? Is it a message of tenacity, of innovation, of humanity?”
TURNING BUSINESS BOOKS INTO AUDIO PLAYS
The couple’s latest book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People, is an audio book, intended to reach a wider, younger audience. But it has a twist.
“We bought the top 10 audiobooks on Audible, and every one was great. But they were all read to you. They were all narrated,” says Michael. Driving across the Nevada Desert one day, they heard a PBS radio play complete with actors, sound effects and music. “We thought this is a fantastic way to communicate, through an audio play, like we had in the 1940s, before television.”
“Audio is entirely mobile, and you’re not tethered to a screen or a page—you’re jogging, driving, cooking pasta, vacuuming the floor—and you’re listening to a story and you’re learning from it. And you can put it down or pick it up anytime you like.”
The Entrepreneurial Culture was named a top-five audio book of 2020 by the Audiobook Producers Association. The award’s judges said they’d never heard a nonfiction audiobook like it, let alone one that was self published.
Bonnie and Michael are now offering their audio theatre services to other entrepreneurs so these companies can preserve, in story form, their legacy, successes and knowledge. “We’re motivated to help others and educate ourselves, to stay on top of the entrepreneurial education industry.”
LINKS
- LinkedIn - Michael Houlihan
- Linkedin - Bonnie Harvey
- YouTube
- TheBareFootSpirit.com
Subscribe To The Published Author Podcast
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. You can also watch episodes of the podcast on YouTube.
And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star review (we read every single one!) and share this page with your friends.
We also share valuable snippets from podcast episodes on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
About The Host
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
British entrepreneur Chris Ducker has experienced the power of a book to grow his business not once, but twice.
His first book, Virtual Freedom: How to Work with Virtual Staff to Buy More Time, Become More Productive, and Build Your Dream Business, was published in 2014 and continues to sell well today.
Four years later, Chris wrote and self-published Rise Of The Youpreneur: The Definitive Guide to Becoming the Go-To Leader in Your Industry and Building a Future-Proof Business.
Chris is a serial entrepreneur and owns and operates several businesses, including the personal brand education company Youpreneur.com. He employees more than 350 full-time employees. Nowadays he spends most of his time coaching and mentoring successful entrepreneurs, as well as investing in and advising startup companies.
Top Takeaway: Be Strategic About Using Your Book To Grow Your Business
Chris tells Published Author show host Josh Steimle that when Virtual Freedom was published, he didn’t want to be tacky or overly obvious in promoting his business Virtual Staff Finder. “I did want to be strategic, but, but I didn't want to be seen to be strategic, if that makes sense,” says Chris.
In the approximately 280 or so pages in the book, Virtual Staff Finder is mentioned only four or five times.
“But this I know for sure is the big deal closer: At the back of the book, we had a resources section. And at the beginning of the book, I said, ‘You're going to see lots and lots of resources mentioned throughout the pages of this book. To save you time skimming back through all of the pages to find them, when you're done reading it, I put them all at the back in a nice convenient list for you, along with website addresses what it's for, etc’.”
At the beginning of the Virtual Freedom’s resource section a note appeared referencing a companion guide to the book, downloadable for free at Virtual Staff Finder’s website.
Placing the guide on his website meant that thousands of people signed up for it, and in doing so happily submitted their email address to Virtual Freedom.
Chris says his strategy “worked brilliantly. There are 1000s and 1000s of people who have opted in for the companion guide over the last six years. And many, many of them have converted to paying clients.”
He says Virtual Freedom has been so successful because it’s: “A no brainer for people to pick that book up, learn what they needed to do and then say: ‘I can either carry on doing what I'm already doing and being overwhelmed and not really getting anywhere. Or I can follow the advice in this book, and go out and find a VA and build my virtual team, or option C is, I can use the author's company to help me do it’.”
With this approach, Chris gathered tons of new clients and about three or four months after that book came out, he literally doubled the size of the team working at Virtual Freedom.
Self-Publishing Is The Way To Go
Chris is a strong advocate of self-publishing, for a number of reasons. First of all, by self-publishing, an entrepreneur retains the rights to their book. Next, speed. With traditional publishing, it can take up to two years for a book to be released - a very long time-frame in the world of an entrepreneur.
Use a Developmental Editor
Regardless of which route an entrepreneur selects, Chris says that: “My big piece of advice, whether you go traditional or you self-publish, is that you must hire a developmental editor to work with you on the book.
“This isn't an editor who will check for spelling and punctuation and grammar, and all that stuff. Yeah, you should definitely get somebody to look over that side of things as well,” he explains. “This is a developmental editor, someone who can read the book, chapter by chapter, and help you develop a better book.
Links
ChrisDucker.com
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And if you're an entrepreneur interested in writing and publishing a nonfiction book to grow your business or make an impact, visit PublishedAuthor.com for show notes for this podcast and other free resources.
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Dr. Nanette Miner has gone the traditional publishing and self-publishing routes, and after navigating both, she’s a strong advocate of self-publishing.
Nanette is the author of eight business books, including her most recent one, Future-Proofing Your Organization by Teaching Thinking Skills. Nanette also authored 101 Media & Marketing Tips For The Sole Proprietor, and there’s a fascinating story behind this book’s origins, which you can discover in this episode.
The ease of self-publishing in the digital age is the deciding factor for Nanette, founder of The Training Doctor; a consulting firm focused on organizational leadership.
Nanette began writing in the 90s, before the Internet existed, and when she self-published back then she even had to start her own publishing company to publish and distribute her books.
This extensive experience means Nanette has an impressive depth of knowledge about writing, publishing, and distribution.
Top Takeaway: Self-Publishing Is Easy In The Digital Age
She tells show host Josh Steimle: “Just being available on Amazon makes self-publishing the choice.
“If you use your keywords correctly, and people have a need for what you're writing on, then they just find you by default, which they would never do in a bookstore, they would never do by just getting on the internet and hoping that they found a book. When people have a need for a book they know to go to Amazon.”
Nanette’s primary concern about traditional publishers is the lack of marketing of books. “They don't really market your book for you and everything that any author has ever said is true: It’s that writing up the book is the easy part. It's the marketing that's the hard part.”
For Nanette the writing is the part that she loves, and the marketing not so much. “Once I understood how self-publishing worked, it was much easier to just replicate that process with different topics.”
She got around the marketing issue by writing on specific topics and working with either partners or professional associations to get a book out to an audience. And, of course, she has a significant following, which makes marketing a book easier.
More Control With Self-Publishing
Nanette also appreciates having more control over her work, including book titles, although sometimes this can occasionally provoke controversy.
The response to her most recent book, Future-Proofing Your Organization by Teaching Thinking Skills, was that people thought she was insulting them with the title.
Explains Nanette: “People were like ‘You're insulting us with this title, Increase Thinking Skills . . .you’re saying we can’t think’.
“And then I had a meeting with a mentor, and she said ‘But really, what you're saying is you want people to be better leaders. So why don't you change it to how to increase leadership skills’.”
Ultimately, Nanette left the subtitle but now just refers to the book as simply Future Proofing Your Organization, and she’s able to capture people’s attention this way.
However, she does feel strongly about improving thinking skills in the education system. “Truly, in my opinion, it comes down to fill-in-the-blank tests, because what we taught kids to do was look for only one right answer, because you can only choose from A, B, C, or D so that we can put it through a scan machine and give your test score and to determine if you're a smart or not.”
But, she says, that's not how the real world operates. There's multiple right answers, and you have to have the thinking ability to critically choose the best, and it may not be the best, but you at least put some thought into it. So that's the part (of the book) that actually grabs people because they realize ‘You're right’.”
This explains why Nanette is such a big fan of reading. She tells Josh: “If you are able to read in different interest areas, you become a more critical thinker, because you're like, “Oh, man, this economy thing is not matching up with this finance thing, which is not matching up with this historical thing . . . You start to see connections.
“So that's really what I'm trying to get people to realize. It's the education process that created this learner, this learning process. And we have to clip it in corporate America, or we're just going to have a bunch of people who don't have enough critical thinking skills to run business.”
Be Regimented
Nanette’s advice to entrepreneurs wanting to write a book is to: “Just do it. With Amazon the risk for you is so low, so just do it, get it out there as a credential, and and you can update it as you feel fit . . . it’s a blessing to have the technology to do that.”
She also recommends that writers be regimented about their writing. In her case, she made sure she wrote 1,000 words a day. “It doesn't matter if it's drivel, I just go back and edit it later. The important part is to get the thoughts.
Nanette narrates her books and articles, partly because she is more verbose when she’s talking than when I'm writing. So she tends to speak her articles or chapters first, and then, thanks to rev.com, she doesn’t even have to retype them.
Links
TheTrainingDoctor.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Paul Epstein had a life-changing experience at a San Francisco 49s’ executive retreat some years ago.
As head of sales and business development with the 49ers, Paul went with colleagues on a two-day retreat. He came away from the experience transformed, finally knowing what his personal “Why” was. “I knew my mission, and I now had clarity on my core values,” Paul tells Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle.
The big change was that Paul realized he had to lead himself before he could lead others. Next, he identified his passion: The leadership, culture, and people side of business, versus hitting the quotas hitting the goals, targeting those KPIs
Not long after the retreat, Paul left at the 49ers after 15 years at the top of his game to join the group that led the off-site executive retreat. This experience, ultimately, inspired Paul to write his book The Power of Playing Offense: A Leader's Playbook for Personal and Team Transformation.
Top Takeaway: You’re Hurting Others By Not Sharing What You Know In A Book
Through his life-changing experience, Paul believes that entrepreneurs and leaders who have an important message to share must write a book.
“I understand the mental barriers about: Who's going to read this book, Who's going to care? Where do I even start? Do I have the time? They're a natural part of the process,” says Paul.
“But on the flip side, why are you inspired to write the book? What is the ‘Why’ behind the book? How is this feeding into your personal mission? How is this going to add to your legacy? And is there something inside of you that if you had a billboard (this is that Tim Ferriss question of if you had a billboard, and you put one thought or one idea on it), what would it be?
“If you have that idea in your head, then my advice would be you're hurting others by not sharing it with them, because others need that boost.”
Working With A Coach
Paul realized in spring of 2020 that the pandemic presented him with a silver lining: He'd now had an opportunity to write a book. So he began. Although it was more difficult than he imagined, he hired a book coach, which turned out to be one of the best decisions he made.
“I'd never written something so extensive, and this process taught me that it's exactly the same level of preparation as you would prepare as a trainer, as a coach, as a consultant, as a speaker, thought leader, frankly, or any business professional,” he emphasizes. “You have to do the work behind the scenes in order to shine when it matters.”
The coach helped Paul with every aspect of the book, including some of the most important parts. Explains Paul: “To be completely candid, I was probably too author-focused when I came into the process, meaning: What does Paul want to say? What's Paul's message? What's the message Paul wants to share with the world?”
Keep The Focus On The Reader
Paul’s coach got him to do a 180-degree shift, so that instead his focus would be on the reader, and he would look at everything through a reader’s lens.
“It helped tremendously, because now that led to the outline of my book. The focus sounded very familiar to me, and I should have realized this on my own but I didn't.
“And when they got me to think it's like in keynote speaking, it's not about the speaker, even though many speakers think it is. It’s audience-focus,” explains Paul. And the best speakers are 100% audience focused, they are servants for the audience. There has to be a ‘What's in it for me?’ to the reader each and every step of the journey.”
Paul says that although the book is written for leaders, almost anyone can get something from it. “My take on leadership is that the principles of what makes a great leader apply to any walk of life.
“This is not written from any other place than the trenches of leadership” and from those trenches come the truths that people are not able to find anywhere else.
Links
PaulEpsteinSpeaks.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
David Hancock walked away from mortgage banking and a massive salary after directly experiencing the power of a book on business growth.
David’s passion shifted when he realized he wanted to help other people with the same secret weapon that Jay Conrad Levinson gave him in the late ‘90s. Jay, author of Guerilla Marketing, explained to David during coaching sessions that to win big clients and be in demand, he needed to write a book.
With said book written to help other mortgage bankers, David achieved massive success in mortgage banking. He was finally in demand with affluent clients.
TOP TAKEAWAY: A BOOK WILL GIVE YOU AUTHORITY AND MAKE YOU IN-DEMAND
David recalls that after writing his first book, amazing things began to happen. Less than a year later he doubled his fees and his income “all because of the power of the book.
“I was a recognized authority in the space. I didn't necessarily feel like the authority in this space. But the book gave me that authority. And sure enough, people who would never give me the time of day were begging to get on my calendar just as he predicted.”
The media began to call David on a regular basis, and at the height of the book’s success he was interviewed weekly. He then co-authored a book with Jay Conrad Levinson himself, Guerrilla Marketing for Mortgage Brokers: How to Steal Customers from Your Competition.
Meanwhile, David had experienced a taste of the power of a book, and the allure of mortgage banking began to fade. He was falling in love with the way books could transform a business, and with helping others on the same book writing journey. “It was very fulfilling and I ended up going all in.”
Going all in meant that David actually set up his own publishing company, Morgan James Publishing, in the early 2000s. He and his wife began working with entrepreneurs and business execs, getting them published without the pain points that accompanied traditional publishers.
CHOOSE YOUR PUBLISHING MODEL CAREFULLY
The phenomenal success of David’s first book was wonderful and awful at the same time. David didn’t enjoy the lack of control with a traditional publisher, and so with Morgan James he decided to create a hybrid publishing company that involves authors closely.
Even though Morgan James is a hybrid publisher, it’s unlike other hybrids and has some unique aspects to its approach. For example, entrepreneur-authors are paid a small advance, but have to buy some of their books at wholesale prices. Authors need to be open to being cowshed and best practices around promotion and selling, as well.
In this episode, David goes over the pros and cons of various publishing models. He notes that while self-publishing may at first glance appear to be the most lucrative option for most entrepreneur-authors, this isn’t necessarily the case. It’s important to explore all the services a traditional or hybrid publisher can offer that bring in additional revenue. These include book store distribution, multiple e-book platforms, and foreign publishing options.
After 17 years in business, Morgan James is a respected publisher, having published more than 3000 books. It regularly releases around 200 books a year. Most are by entrepreneurs. The business has a small faith book division, and publishes a small number of fiction books each year.
Their very first bestseller was by Brendon Burchard, author of The Millionaire Messenger. Since then, Morgan James has been on the New York Times bestseller list about 29 times, and on USA Today’s bestseller list more than 65 times. Last year alone they hit the Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list 14 times!
“It's really exciting to see even in tough times how well the authors are doing with their books, and what a privilege it is to play in that space with him,” enthuses David.
Links
MorganJamesPublishing.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
John Lee Dumas delivers some incredibly powerful advice in his interview with show host Josh Steimle.
“If you're a first-time entrepreneur trying to become an author, I have one incredibly strong piece of advice for you,” says John. “Come up with and create the number one solution to a real problem out there in this world. If you do that, and create content around that, people will beat a path to your doorstep every single time.”
Some may disagree with John when he tells Published Author Podcast listeners: “Nobody needs to be motivated by you, by your story. Because guess what, there's millions of people out there that are doing and trying to do just that.”
TOP TAKEAWAY: GIVE PEOPLE A SOLUTION
He emphasizes: “What people need in this world is the best solution to one single problem in their life. And if you can hand that to them, you will win, your book will win, your business will win, your life will win because you will carve out a meaningful niche. You will become what I shared earlier within that, quote, as a person of value for me for the first time in your life.”
John doesn’t hold back from being controversial; although some people will disagree with this, he says people shouldn't share their life story or set out to motivate people: “That's what everybody does. They lead with that. They start their first half of the book with their life story.
“I'm sorry, like, you're not a famous person that has this biography that we all want to consume, yet. You maybe someday, but you're not there right now. So why would you act like that? Come up with one incredibly amazing solution, the best solution to a serious problem. And then you win.”
John and Josh also talked about John’s latest book, set for publication on March 23, The Common Path to Uncommon Success: A Roadmap to Financial Freedom and Fulfillment. It contains all his learnings from more than 3000 entrepreneurs on his Entrepreneurs on Fire podcast.
“I have been mentored by 3000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, I've learned from every single one of them so much,” he says.
“I want it in your hands, because this is how you're going to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment. I want that for you because I know how it feels. And I want that for everybody because it's going to make this world a better place,” says John. “I'm going from just success which I've had for a long time now to significance. I really want to create significance in this world. And I can do that by helping people reach their uncommon success by helping people reach their version of financial freedom and fulfillment.”
John’s success took hard work. He was an army officer for six years, and after leaving struggled for six years. He tried corporate finance, law school, real estate, and a few other things, but nothing seemed to fit.
One thing he did do was read a lot. At 32, a line from a book virtually reached out from the pages and slapped him in the face. It was Albert Einstein’s: “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value”.
John explains he had been chasing success my whole life but wasn’t doing anything of value. The quote planted a seed, “which eventually led for me a couple months later to launch Entrepreneurs On Fire, which was the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs.
The podcast has published more than 3,000 episodes which have had more than 1.4 million listens. Monthly net profit is at least $100,000 - without doubt a thriving business!
LINKS
YouTube
EntrepreneursOnFire.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Sara Bliss, a New York Times best-selling offer of 11 books, had always wanted to be a writer, even from a young age. She went for interviews right out of college and was turned down mainly due to shyness, but she pushed through and willed herself into being a writer.
Having written for magazines, and working for a freelance writer, Sara explains that she was just waiting for the opportunity and topic to write her own book. She got the chance with Exotic Style, and got $7,000 for her work. This may not sound like much, but Sara knew “you kind of do whatever you can to get your foot in the door.”
Sara is a New York Times bestselling author who has written eleven books including Take the Leap: Change Your Career, Change Your Life, which profiles more than 60 people who radically changed their careers. She also wrote Hotel Chic at Home and co-authored three bestselling books with beauty and wellness guru Bobbi Brown, including Beauty From The Inside Out.
Top Takeaway: In-depth Proposal Vastly Increases Chances of Getting A Book Deal
Sara realized very early on that she needed to write an in-depth proposal for her books because “the stronger the proposal, the more likely [she] would get a deal”. With an in-depth proposal, about 40 to 50 pages for Sara, her agent was able to approach multiple editors and ended up having a bidding war for one of her books, which is something every writer dreams of.
Sara explains that the more you can give in the proposal to really entice the editors, the better chance you have of receiving a great book deal! With an incredible proposal, and an agent that you have a great working relationship with, there is nothing stopping you from succeeding.
Finding the Right Agent Key to Writing Successful Book
“Finding an agent is really like dating”, Sara explains, “you have to put yourself out there, be willing to be rejected, and see if it’s a kind of emotional fit”. This was the case with Sara’s search for the perfect agent, which took some time, but worked out in the end.
When you do find that agent you no longer have to be a career writer in order to write a book, “you just need a strong platform and a strong idea that stands out from the pack”.
In addition to her books, Sara has also published articles in the Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Town & Country, Oprah, Travel & Leisure, Refinery29, and Forbes.
Sara is also the Co-Founder of One Eleven Partners, a brand content, strategy and marketing firm based in NYC, and a public speaker.
Links
SaraBliss.com
OneElevenPartners.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Jennie Nash transitioned from being a fiction author to a book coach—she’s been there and done it.
With a tremendous amount of knowledge of both aspects of publishing, Jennie has impeccable credentials, making her one of the best book coaches available today.
Jennie joins Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle to talk about what serious entrepreneur-authors need to know about working with a coach.
Jennie has worked in the publishing industry, written for publications like The New York Times and GQ, and is the author of seven books, but she gave up her writing career a few years ago to become a book coach and today we’re going to hear Jennie’s story and learn about what a book coach is and what one can do for you.
Top Takeaway: Identifying When To Work With A Book Coach
Jennie says that a book coach is recommended for an entrepreneur-author who is serious about getting a book written within a deadline, and wants to produce the best possible book possible. A writer may also be feeling stuck or frustrated, and this can be another sign that a coach is needed.
If a writer is thinking: “I don't know where to start, I don't know what to do, or is asking questions about the types of publishers and the book world, then that might be time to seek help,” she explains.
She adds that some writers feel completely overwhelmed, and a book coach can bring the clarity and logic required.
Your Book Is a Product, Invest In It
Coaches range in fees from a few hundred dollars, to thousands of dollars for a session - which can last up to three or four months. For that investment, you have a qualified book coach who is going to be wholly dedicated to you, day-in, day-out.
While some might raise an eyebrow at the cost, Jennie stresses that if an entrepreneur wants to write a book that has an impact, or at least a chance of having an impact, they have to be willing to invest.
“It's no different from bringing any other product into the world. You would never start a business selling anything without looking at that business model, your goals, who's the audience, who's your competition. The same is true for writing a book,” she explains. When you're willing to really invest in your own success, ready to say I really want to do this, I don't want to mess around and I want expert guidance, that might be a time to seek coaching help.”
Interestingly, Jennie says that the main thing that seems to be required for nonfiction coaching is a sense of passion and color in the writing, while fiction writers often require a sense of logic to their framework.
“If I'm coaching a nonfiction writer who's got a bloodless thing, I'm actually drawing on all the tools of fiction to help them and vice versa, if I've got a fiction writer who doesn't have the underlying logic, I'm using a lot of the tools from the nonfiction side.”
Hiring a Book Coach? Don’t Make This Mistake
Some people hire creative professionals and disagree with them on almost every issue. The same thing occurs with a small number of people who hire book coaches. Says Jennie: “The stupidest waste of money is to come to a coach and then fight them on everything they say. And it's surprising how often that happens. And that's because people haven't done the work of determining what they're really looking for.”
Links
JennieNash.com
AuthorAccelerator.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
After enduring a couple of bouts of writer’s block, author and journalist Blake Snow has learned not to sit down with the intention of writing a whole book.
Instead, he breaks a book into chunks, accomplishing one chapter at a time. Talking to Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle, Blake says: “For any of your listeners out there wanting to write a first book, it is a big challenge.
“But one thing that did help me, despite my writer's block, was this whole concept of don't try to write a book, write one chapter, and then the next chapter,” he explains. “Try to break it up into bite-sized things you can accomplish. That was way easier for me to do with the second book than the first. But that advice, I think stands regardless, and for anyone that's interested in publishing a book, you have to break it up.”
Top Takeaway: Your Book Must Engage And Interest The Reader
Blake says that if your book isn’t engaging and interesting to a reader, it simply won’t sell. He says the hallmark of an amature writer is to think that a business book needs to be stuffy and formal.
No, he says, explaining that entrepreneur-authors should write the way they talk, in a way that’s interesting for people to engage, listen to, and interact with.
Blake has written as a journalist for half of the top 20 U.S. media outlets, including CNN, Wired, and USA Today. He also advises Fortune 500 companies on their content strategy. He’s a blogger and author of two books: Log Off: How to Stay Connected After Disconnecting, and Measuring History: How One Unsung Company Quietly Changed The World, which is the story of National Instruments, a company you probably haven’t heard of, but which has had a global impact on lives big and small, and is explained in the episode.
Despite being a professional writer, Blake has experienced a couple of debilitating episodes of writer’s block, the first one when he was working on Log Off. The struggle lasted for about eight months until it finally dawned on Blake that the successful approach to writing was breaking a book into bite-sized pieces.
“Instead of writing a book, it was: ‘Let's write 1000 words today’. So anyone can do that, and you can break things up,” says Blake. “What I found with writing two books—as with most all things in life—it really is about momentum.
“If you can keep that momentum, you won't stall out as long as I did, or as hard as I did in my first book. So it's all about that momentum, creating bite sized chunks, just sticking to it and not being afraid to fail.”
As an experienced writer, Blake says: “First and foremost, I write for myself. If I know that I don't like it, I'm pretty sure no one else is going to like it. And so that I use that as a litmus test of like, How good is my current writing, the page right in front of me?”
This isn’t guidance for a new writer, who should instead work with an editor to determine the quality of their writing. However, aftertime, everyone who writes a lot can learn to quickly determine what’s good and what their audience wants to read.
Finally, Blake encourages all entrepreneur-writers (or ghostwriters) to read a good range of classics, from Mark Twain and Herman Melville through to Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo, as well as Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy. Novels such as theirs, says Blake, will simply make you a much better writer.
Links
BlakeSnow.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Marketing pro Andrea Fryrear has authored two successful books and her advice to would-be entrepreneur-authors is to just sit down and write your book.
If you can’t write your book then just sit and write, even if you think it’s terrible, and do this consistently every day.
Our guest on this latest episode of the Published Author podcast tells host Josh Stimele she would get up at 5 a.m. every day and right for about 60 minutes, no matter what. “Sometimes it was 2000 words, sometimes it was like 200, barely, and some of it was terrible,” says Andrea. “But I'm definitely in that school of just ‘Sit down and do it’. And you can't wait for that bolt of inspiration because it almost never comes at the right time.”
Andrea, co-founder of the agile marketing agency Agile Sherpas, wrote her first book—Death of a Marketer: Modern Marketing's Troubled Past and a New Approach to Change the Future—after a desire to look backwards and see how marketing has evolved and where it is today. She also wanted to further establish herself having just launched her own agency, Agile Sherpas.
Writing a book, she says, creates a hefty business card. “It proves a lot about my knowledge and background, and the book continues to work really hard” for her and her work.
Top Takeaway: Use PR and Networking to Push Your Book
Andrea’s second book—Mastering Marketing Agility: Transform Your Marketing Teams and Evolve Your Organization—was published just after the onset of the pandemic. But that hasn’t stopped it having impressive sales and getting lots of five-star reviews.
She achieved this with a well-coordinated marketing campaign, combining online speaking engagements, a PR campaign, and tactical networking.
The PR campaign was with an agency specializing in book publicity. As a result, Andrea netted a couple of recurring columns, as well as quotes in articles, podcasts, and interviews.
Next, a personal email campaign to people she’d met at conferences, colleagues, or clients asking if they’d be on her book launch team generated a response of around 40%. These folks wrote reviews of the book for Amazon, LinkedIn, or both.
“They did help spread the word very organically, which was super awesome, because when Mastering Marketing Agility launched, there were already some really positive five-star reviews ready to go, as opposed to having to wait for the reviews to build up.
Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing
Andrea self-published her first book and used a traditional publisher for her second one. The publisher Berret-Kohler reached out to her, saying they were looking for authors who could write about agile. She recalls: “They said 'Hey would you be interested in writing a book?' and I said: 'I already am. Would you like to see what it looks like?'.”
Although Andrea’s book writing and publishing journey sounds as though it’s been relatively simple, she’s experienced struggles, particularly with her first book, Death Of A Marketer.
“I suffered from a lot of imposter syndrome, especially because I spent some time covering the history of agencies and advertising agencies,” she explains. “I thought: ‘I’m not the most informed person about these. I read a lot and I've tried to provide what I think is an accurate depiction but I'm not a scholar or any of these sorts of things.
“I felt people would send me angry emails saying this isn't right or this isn't accurate. And of course, that never happened. I was concerned for no reason!”
This episode is a must listen for any entrepreneur keen to lift their career with the power of a book. Be sure to listen today!
Links
Fryrea.com
AgileSherpas.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
An artificial intelligence expert who’s worked with the United Nations and IBM wrote a book on AI when he realized people are asking the same two questions about the subject: What should I be doing? How do I actually get started?
Entrepreneur-author Neil Sahota says: “Most of the books were very technical, and people couldn't understand or they were really fear mongering. I thought: ‘I will solve this problem. I'll write a book for non-technical business leaders so they can answer those two questions’.”
Neil had never written a book before, but Own the A.I. Revolution: Unlock Your Artificial Intelligence Strategy to Disrupt Your Competition was picked up by McGraw Hill and became a bestseller!
Neil is a professor at UC Irvine, IBM Master Inventor, and advisor to the United Nations on artificial intelligence. He joins Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle to discuss writing and promoting his first book.
Top Takeaway: Have a Detailed Outline
As a first-time entrepreneur-author, Neil has many takeaways, but the essential learning is that having a detailed outline is a must.
“An outline makes the writing process so much easier,” says Neil, adding that his co-author Michael Ashley really helped him structure the book and frame the story.
“I had lots of knowledge, lots of examples of things I had done, but they were just scattershot; they didn’t make sense to anybody else,” he continues. “So we spent a good five or six hours in a couple of sessions, just throwing everything out there.”
“We built a very detailed outline. It took about six weeks to build a detailed outline, it was about 54 pages long.”
Leverage Your Network
Neil reached out to thought leaders in his network for interviews to build the content for the book. This idea soon evolved into something bigger when Neil and Michael received incredibly rich contributions from big names in AI, including Peter Diamandis, Steven Kotler, Stephen Ibaraki, and Ben Goertzel. These interviews make up a full section of the book.
The two authors also interviewed people across a range of industries, as well as smaller entrepreneurs, ensuring that the book was both comprehensive and deep.
Consider Working With a Co-Author
As a first-time author, Neil knew nothing about writing or publishing. He sought out co-author Michael, who has written more than ten books.
“It was an experience that if I tried to do on my own, it probably would have fallen flat. I didn't realize how incredibly difficult it was right to write a book and how even more difficult is to get published,” says Neil. “I have a new appreciation for authors because it is a grind. It's a worthwhile grind. But it's still a grind!”
Despite the grind, Neil adds: “The experience of writing the book was way better than I ever would have imagined. I was happy to get the book and just hoped to help people. But given the kind of feedback . . . As a first time author, I was totally stoked!
Neil’s collaboration with Michael has been extremely successful and they are planning two more books. Their next one is on disruptive thinking, while book number three will be on art and technology.
Neil’s other key takeaways as a first-time author are:
Keep a firm focus on your audience and don’t forget you are writing for them, not you A book needs to make sense to an audience and resonate with readers Even if you work with a traditional publisher, as an author you’re still responsible for promoting and marketing your book Don’t get too attached to your title; if your book is published by a traditional publisher the title may change Going with a traditional publisher means that they buy the book, own it, and can do whatever they want with it.
Neil also discusses what it means when a publisher has an option on an author’s next book, how he promoted Own the A.I. Revolution: Unlock Your Artificial Intelligence Strategy to Disrupt Your Competition, and how he was able to expand sales beyond the original target niche.
Links
NeilSahota.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Being fired from his job is one of the best things that ever happened to Paul Edwards.
It may not have felt like it at the time. However, being unemployed gave Paul the time he needed to think deeply about what he really wanted to do professionally.
The answer, in part, was writing. So Paul sat down and pretty quickly completed his first book—Ten Secrets To Networking Success—most recently published as the bestselling Influencer Networking Secrets.
Paul is a strategic connector, ghostwriter, and host of the Influence Networking Secrets podcast. He’s lived in five countries, speaks two languages, has combat experience in the Middle East, and he’s a voice mimic. But mostly, he’s interested in words and people. When he isn’t writing content, he’s building relationships.
In this episode with host Josh Steimle, Paul explains how to be a good ghostwriter, and how to build a following - an important focus for any aspiring entrepreneur-author.
TOP TAKEAWAY: GIVE PUBLICITY TO OTHERS TO LIFT YOUR PROFILE
Paul is a huge believer in giving, simply for the sake of it. Part of this business philosophy is influenced by his strong faith, and part of it by the fact that it simply works! His advice to authors: Be someone who gives with no expectation of something in return.
“So much of this business is relational, right? You can write a great book, but doing the publicity tour and all of that, you're going to need stories. You're going to need something that's authentic, that you really believe in,” he says. “I've rarely met someone who's successful who doesn't have some way that they call giving back, that they benefit other people around them without charging anything for it.”
In fact, the path to successful ghostwriting began when Paul was on the receiving end of some giving. Aaron Walker of Iron Sharpens Iron told Paul of his writing: “You've tapped into what is a high-income skill that you can make a fair amount of money doing. The marketplace is hungry for somebody who is not only skilled and talented with words, but also can capture that person's voice, and can actually become you on paper, like a chameleon.”
Says Paul: “I had that!”
With renewed purpose, Paul pursued ghostwriting and growing his network. As he began to market, he realized that he was drawn to people who were, like him, oriented towards servanthood.
Once the parameters were in place, Paul was able to distill his target client so that it's preferably faith-based, although that doesn’t have to be the case. He carries this approach into his guidance he offers others: “One of the things that I tell people to do is if you want publicity as a business owner, especially starting from scratch, the best way to do it is to give it away to other people.”
CULTIVATE EMPATHY WITH THE READER
Paul’s advice to entrepreneur-authors and ghostwriters: “You have to be able to cultivate this very strong empathy with the reader.”
A big part of this is understanding what will persuade the reader: “Not in a purely emotional form, but in a form that engages both the emotions and the intellect,” Paul explains. “It moves them in a positive direction. You have to know what to write and what not to write and when to write it. You have to understand that there are things that you understand very well, you have a huge comprehension of and your reader probably doesn't.”
Paul and Josh discuss a lot more about writing and networking. In addition, there’s a bonus section at the end of this episode. Josh and Paul explore their interest in religion and how they are self-described “extremists” when it comes to pursuing their deeper interests.
LINKS
YouTube
ThePaulSEdwards.com
Influencer Networking Secrets, by Paul Edwards.
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
An entrepreneur-author who lost her partner in 2020 used writing to help her deal with her grief, and wrote her latest book, Heaven On Eleven, in a matter of months.
Elizabeth Barry is Josh Steimle’s latest guest on the Published Author Podcast. She tells Josh how the loss of her partner in a boating accident in January 2020 led to a growth in creativity. Elizabeth explains that Heaven on Eleven is an inspirational spiritual book given couples guidance on romantic love.
“I focused on getting that book out, because that was where my mind needed to be. It took me away from what happened,” explains Elizabeth. “I wrote about love, so that everyone who's looking for love or breaking down through their relationships can understand how to nurture it with building a foundation through healthy communication and being vulnerable with someone.”
The amazing thing is that Elizabeth completed another book last year, too. Little Book of Love was published at the same time as Heaven on Eleven.
Top Takeaway: Be Accountable For What You Want
As a coach of authors, Elizabeth says the biggest issue she encounters is would-be authors who want to write but for some reason aren’t accountable for their choices.
“People say: ‘Oh, I have a book half-written’, or ‘I want to write a book, but’,” she explains, noting that the word but often reveals a lack of accountability. “I think that a lot of the people that have a book inside of them that say ‘But’. But it's not really the content, it's the accountability, and they let time pass and they're sitting, they could be sitting on something that they could be so proud of.”
She says some potential writers feel comfortable in our surroundings and keep telling themselves they’ll write their book tomorrow. “Or we sit down to write and we scrap it because it's not good enough. Or we let time go by, and we put everybody else and everything else first. So the accountability, I think, is one of the biggest things.”
For other writers, there is a hesitation about starting their book due to a fear of being judged. “Imposter syndrome comes up and says: ‘Why would you write a book on that? There are other books on that’,” adds Elizabeth.
She believes that the key is just starting and using a coach to help hold an author is accountable for their goal of writing a book.
Elizabeth self-publishes all her books and sells all of them on her website. She’s used Amazon in the past but prefers to handle the marketing, printing, packaging, and distribution herself. When readers order her books, they are specially wrapped and sometimes include personal touches, such as little meditations or other items.
Her target audience is adults who are looking for personal transformation. And for entrepreneurs, her books help uplift and support. “We have to feed the soul, feed the mind, and nourish the knowledge that will give us the necessary tools to keep our businesses running.”
Elizabeth hosts her own podcast, Beyond Ego, and is a speaker and marketing pro. She is also author of The Kind Communicator. In this episode, she shares a great deal about her approach to writing, printing, why she doesn’t use Amazon, and her upcoming book, Lead By Example.
LINKS
TheKindCommunicator.com
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Josh Steimle
Josh Steimle - LinkedIn
Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Author and marketer Kiri Masters shares dozens of important learnings about her writing and publishing journeys in the latest episode of the Published Author Podcast.
But above all, Kiri’s message is that investing the time to produce great content is essential to cut through the crowded world of entrepreneurial books and content marketing.
In this interview with host Josh Steimle, Kiri details her self-publishing experiences with Amazon and IngramSpark, her co-authoring experience, and working with a ghostwriter.
TOP TAKEAWAY: CONSISTENTLY GREAT CONTENT CUTS THROUGH NOISE
Kiri is author of The Amazon Expansion: Learn How To Skyrocket Your Sales, Sell Globally And Make Your Brand An International Success and Amazon For CMOs: How Brands Can Achieve Success in The New Amazon Economy, co-authored with Mark Powers.
She’s also a Forbes contributor. While she acknowledges that it's helpful to have that Forbes name behind her: “The quality of your content is what really matters.
“People reach out to me, after two years of writing for Forbes, and say ‘Your articles are really thoughtful’. But it's about the content at that stage. So it's a long burn, and very rewarding when you get to a point where it's obviously paying off for you. But that's 1000s of hours of investment to get to this position.”
GROW YOUR BUSINESS, MAKE YOUR MARK
Both Kiri’s books have significantly grown her business, Bobsled Marketing, and have paid for themselves several times over by now.
She notes that the mark of a successful book is the amount of influence it has in its niche. “What kind of cut through do you have of your tiny little corner of the internet? If you've got a pretty narrow focus like I do, (my book) seems to have achieved a decent level of cut through.”
This “cut through” is seen in the fact Kiri’s often encountering people who have either read or are reading one of books. She met a prospect in San Francisco who pulled the book from her handbag and had chapters marked up with notes. And recently Kiri spoke with a guy on her podcast who had her book on his bookshelf.
“I've also had people send me photos of them walking around an ad agency in New York, and someone's got Amazon for CMOs on their desk,” she adds.
CO-AUTHORING AND USING A GHOSTWRITER
Kiri decided to work with a co-author on Amazon For CMOs. In part, this option appealed because co-author Mark had a much larger network at the time, and Kiri recognized that between them both they’d be able to create a great book and leverage their networks to promote it.
They worked with ghostwriter Laura Gale on Amazon For CMOs, and the result was superb. “Working with a ghostwriter while also having a co-author really helped to smooth over any sort of differences in opinion about what the right approach was,” explains Kiri.
“If we had different ideas about a topic in the book, the ghostwriter found a really neat way to bring those together. Or even say, ‘Well, you know, Kiri thinks this and Mark thinks that, and so that works really well in that dynamic’. So, a really good ghostwriter will have a process that they use.”
Kiri shares so much more in this episode, including how she chose the title for her most recent book, book cover design, the amount of effort needed to market a book, why she chose self-publishing, and the role of writing in thought leadership.
LINKS
Youtube
https://www.bobsledmarketing.com/kiri-masters
https://www.bobsledmarketing.com
https://www.ecommercebraintrust.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Leo Bottary is a seasoned author and an all-rounder when it comes to writing, publishing, and book marketing.
Based in California, Leo helps leaders build high performing teams and groups. His latest book, Peernovation, is less than six months old and has received dozens of five-star reviews.
Peernovation follows on from Leo’s earlier books—What Anyone Can Do, and The Power of Peers—about leveraging the power of peers in business and in life.
Peernovation is designed for leaders who want to coach engaged, adaptable, and higher-performing teams. It includes Leo’s lessons from more than a decade of academic research, fieldwork, and personal experiences throughout North America and the United Kingdom.
Leo joins Published Author Podcast host Josh Steimle to discuss the writing of this book, and everything he has learned about writing and publishing.
TOP TAKEAWAY: DON’T OVERTHINK YOUR BOOK, JUST GET STARTED
Recognizing that many people who want to write a book don’t do a lot of writing, he says: “Oftentimes people feel like the idea of writing a book is just so monumental, and they can't commit to it. If you feel passionate about what you want to write about, no matter how bad, just start writing it. Don't try to overthink it. Just get into it and you'll find your way.”
Leo approaches book writing in stages, starting first with an idea or theme. He says it’s akin to building a house.
“It’s like I'm framing a house . . .kind of doing the architecture first before I start moving the furniture in.” With the outline in place, he crafts out the chapters and while doing so he ensures a narrative is in place that tells the overall story in the book.
Much of Leo’s work is based on research and he had a lot of data to incorporate into his book. For this reason, his writing process can be intense. He notes that: “It's easy to get three quarters of the way through a book and then start losing a little steam, and not feeling that level of rigor about at all.”
He handled this by taking breaks and then going back to his book to ensure that he incorporated lessons from his first two books and really paid attention to each chapter, ensuring that it delivered its content in a powerful way.
Leo also believes that for books like Peernovation that serve as workshop handbooks or how-to books like Peernovation, it’s important to keep the focus firmly on the reader: “Not everyone sits and sits down and reads a book cover to cover. Nor do they read the chapters in order,” notes Leo. “They could read three chapters, and then pick it up two months later. So the way you write it has to accommodate for that.”
THE HYBRID PUBLISHING MODEL
Leo has pursued mostly self-publishing with his books. And for the most recent book, Peernovation, the publishing model was closer to a hybrid model, through Archway, the self-publishing arm of Simon and Schuster.
Leo was satisfied with their service menu, selected what he wanted, and notes that he had a lot of flexibility with the book’s editing, title, cover design, release date, and marketing.
He’s a strong advocate of working with a professional editor who would ensure the book was in APA style and met true publishing standards.
BOOK PROMOTION DURING A PANDEMIC
Leo has an extensive network, and an email list in the thousands, so he’s well-positioned to promote Peernovation during COVID-19.
He’ll do a virtual media tour which includes radio and podcasts. He has his own podcast on C-Suite Radio. “There are a number of three things across several platforms that I'm doing to just keep the book out there, extend the reach.”
Sharing knowledge and empowering people are huge motivators for Leo. To this end, he is pricing his paperback at $12.99 and the ebook at only $3.99. “I'd like for team leaders to see it as incredibly affordable, and say: ‘Great, I'm going to get a book for every one of my team members,” he adds.
At the end of the Peernovation, Leo has also included a PDF at the end of Peernovation that people can get access for free, and his website offers free resources, too.
Leo says the ideal scenario for his book is that years from now peer innovation will be something that a lot of companies will bring into their organization.
“It isn't really about trying to make money from the book, or trying to make a killing in the consulting business or anything like that,” says Leo. “It's really about believing in something, and making sure that I want to get it into people's hands so that they can benefit from themselves.”
LINKS
Youtube
LeoBottary.com
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Rob Tighe took some of the luck of his native land to New Zealand when he moved there some years ago.
From Ireland, Rob had written a magazine profile on New Zealand entrepreneur Tony Quinn. Rob emailed a copy of the profile to Tony, adding a PS acknowledging one of Tony’s comments about eventually writing a book. The PS said: “I’d love to have a crack at that book one day if you’re keen to chat about it.”
Tony was keen on more than just a chat, and hired Rob as his ghostwriter. Titled Zero to 60, Rob’s first ghostwritten book became a bestseller!
The luck came with the PS. The rest of the little story above speaks volumes about Rob’s talent as a ghostwriter, and the fact that he and Tony really got along and had a great working relationship.
Rob tells his story to host Josh Steimle in this latest episode of the Published Author Podcast. He also shares loads of secrets on how to be the best possible ghostwriter you can be, and how to seek out a ghostwriter
TOP TAKEAWAY: PUT YOURSELF IN THE SHOES OF A READER, AND KEEP ASKING QUESTIONS
Rob says telling Tony’s story in Zero to 60 taught him almost everything he needed to know about being a successful ghostwriter. He acknowledges too that his background in journalism played a role in his success.
“The key was kind of taking Tony's thoughts and ideas and making them coherent. As with a piece of journalism, you've got to make sure that every sentence, every paragraph flows into the next one,” says Rob.
“An editor once told me: ‘Make sure you answer every possible question that the reader might have’. So that's what I tried to do.” , I tried not to get too bogged down in the enormity of the task. I tried to take each chapter on its own merits and do as good a job as I could of each chapter.”
The important thing is to never stop asking questions, to keep probing for details. “Sometimes that means asking the same question three or four times, and sometimes it means rephrasing the question a different way,” explains Rob. “I would often revisit the key pivotal, turning points in Tony’s life three or four times throughout the process.
“Every time you'd ask a question, you'd get a slightly different answer that would add more nuance to the answer, more detail and colour.”
Despite Rob’s training in journalism and skill as a writer, he sometimes wondered how the various strands of Tony’s life would pull together as a narrative. “I tried not to get too bogged down in the enormity of the task. I tried to take each chapter on its own merits and do as good a job as I could of each chapter. I took each chapter on its own merits, writing it almost as a mini kind of feature article or profile.”
In particular , the final sprint to the finish line demanded intense focus. Says Rob: “I took myself off for two weeks and dedicated myself solely to the book. I didn't look at any other email, I didn't look at any other parts of my business. And I left my family for two weeks, they went off on holiday somewhere.
“I got a house and just spent two weeks working from 6 a.m. til 8 p.m., totally focused on that final edit process and making sure that each chapter was as good as it could be, he says, adding that if anyone wants to be a ghostwriter, there needs to be a couple of weeks of total concentration at the very end of a book, because this will “make or break your book.”
Other key learnings for ghostwriters and entrepreneurs hiring a ghostwriter include:
A book is very much a long game, and the client’s business can change. This means that the objective and purpose of a book can change. Capturing your client’s voice is essential. Rob transcribed every word and paid close attention to the way Tony talked and the phrases he used. Ghostwriting a book is challenging for the writer and entrepreneur. Both must dig deeply into the subject's past, and some people find this difficult. Storytelling is the most important tactic when it comes to ghostwriting. Sometimes a ghostwriter should work according to an outline, while at other times it’s best to let a story evolve organically. A good relationship between a ghostwriter and the entrepreneur is essential. You’re both going to spend a lot of time together, and trust is essential because the entrepreneur is going to open up to the ghostwriter. A ghostwriter needs to select projects carefully. For Rob, Tony’s story stood out because of the story. “This guy building something in the middle of nowhere with his own money . . . It was a story that was too good to turn down. I didn't chase the book opportunity - I was open to it. And that's key - just spotting those opportunities is a big part of it.”
If you’re keen to improve as a ghostwriter, or you’re an entrepreneur who wants to hire a ghostwriter, this episode is a must listen!
LINKS
RobertTighe.com
Storybud
Zero To 60, by Tony Quinn, ghostwritten by Robert Tighe
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
If you’re pursuing only data-driven marketing strategies for growth, you’re missing out on a powerful yet ancient approach.
This tactic - done well - will lead to significant changes in client behaviour and potentially massive business growth.
The approach? Storytelling. Host Josh Steimle’s guest in this episode is a masterful storyteller, Park Howell.
Top Takeaway: How to craft spellbinding stories
Park is the author of Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System™ to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand. This inspiring work helps readers clarify their brand story.
Founder of Business of Story, Park has more than 35 years’ experience with brand creation. He’s the creator of the Business of Story, a platform based on his ten-step Story Cycle System™. Park also hosts the Business of Story podcast.
Josh and Park explore Park’s 10-step Story Cycle System™ with depth, exploring what - exactly - story is, why it works, and how authors can use storytelling to write a book.
The key is, explains Park, to put the audience front and centre, understanding that the customer is the hero in the narrative arc. An author-entrepreneur must focus on where the customer is in life, what’s holding them back, and what can be done to resolve the customer’s challenges and move them forward.
Our brains can’t help but love stories
“Story is a primal learning tool,” explains Park. “A story enables you to hack through the noise and hook the hearts of your customers, getting them involved because their brain can't help it. It just loves the story.”
In fact, Park’s story system works for all industries and all kinds of information.
Park has worked in advertising for decades, but didn’t thoroughly embrace storytelling until about 15 years ago.. His motivation? He thought everyone told stories, but he discovered that’s just not so. Brands around the world are either not understanding how to use story, or unaware of its transformative power.
The hero’s journey
Around the same time, Park’s son, Parker, went to film school, allowing Park to join his son vicariously. He asked his son: “Send me your books when you're done with them, because I want to know what they teach you about storytelling that I could apply in my own world.”
That’s when Park discovered the hero’s journey. It was his big “Aha” moment!
“These frameworks to story would work exceptionally well in branding and business, and why in the world doesn't anybody teach them?” he remembers asking back then.
The power of the hero’s journey is found within its ability to move and motivate. This potential sparked a passion in Park. He decided to teach people everything he’d learned about storytelling in business and branding.
Links
SlideShare
Youtube
theBusinessofStory
Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand
Subscribe to Published Author Podcast
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: CMO’s At Work
An entrepreneur opens up multiple opportunities by becoming a published author.
Laura Sprinkle, an affiliate partnerships strategist, discusses partnerships and affiliate opportunities for entrepreneur-authors on this episode of the Published Author Podcast with host Josh Steimle.
Laura explains that it’s simple for newly published authors to take the first steps in setting up an affiliate program to increase book sales.
Top Takeaway: How To Use An Affiliate Program To Grow Book Sales
For a new author, developing an affiliate program or a course are great tactics to boost book sales, as long as the tactics are well-executed. If an author is doing this on their own without the help of a consultant, the first step is to create the affiliate links and invite those members of your network you think will be interested.
“Get started with a really simple training,” says Laura. “You could just host it on Zoom, and, and ask people what their goals are for how many sales they want to make, ask people what assets they would like you to create, so you don't create things that they're not going to use.
During the Zoom session, it’s important to find out what would make participation in your affiliate program streamlined. Ask questions like:
What would make participation easy for you? What visual or social media assets would you like? How can I help you make those initial referral sales?
Laura uses her work with entrepreneur Todd Herman, author of The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life as a case study. Working with Todd, she created a promo guide on how to sell. They also had templates of how people could share the book, as well as bulk purchases. There were different levels of prizes, as well as a private Facebook group for the supporters of the book.
“We were cheering them on and telling them behind the scenes of how the launch was going,” explains Laura. They shared Todd’s “Run to getting on the Wall Street Journal, bestselling list.”
She notes that authors don’t necessarily have to go to this expense, and that “You can do a lot with a book launch, for sure.”
Laura, who notes that she only works with clients who align with her values, says that she takes each client through four phases: attract, activate, amplify, and appreciate.
“It goes in a circle because the more that you can appreciate the easier it is going to be to attract people back into the cycle of partnership,” she explains, adding that the four phases can be used for any kind of launch, be it a book, podcast, course - anything that requires leads.
Laura details the four phases, giving examples of each, in this episode. She also explores the benefits of launching a course after a book launch, and the importance of communication with partners, so that they are frequently updated on progress and upcoming stages of an affiliate program.
LINKS
Facebook.com
LauraSprinkle.com
LauraSprinkle.com/podcast
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Entrepreneur Jeff Butler launched a successful speaking career and then wrote two books - The Authentic Workplace and The Key to The New You – to enhance his credibility as a speaker and grow his income.
Most entrepreneur-authors write a book and then begin speaking. Jeff did things in reverse. And while this approach might not work for everyone, it was the key to Jeff’s success.
He fell in love with speaking after finding his career as a computer scientist in Silicon Valley limiting.
“The problem was I wanted more control,” explains Jeff. “And on top of that control aspect, I also wanted to do something that was going to push me to the brink . . . let's see what I can really squeeze out of this thing called life.”
Jeff soon found his passion. He gave a few talks and, despite his initial fear, got a massive buzz from the experience.
“I realized I wanted this for the next 10 to 20 years of my life. It hit me . . . The ability to convey an idea in a high-risk situation really appealed to me,” he says.
But there was one big problem. Jeff wasn’t a great speaker. But with help from Toastmasters, he worked hard and honed his skill, to the point where he gave impressive and persuasive talks, easily holding the attention of an audience. Today, Jeff’s entire business is built around speaking.
TOP TAKEAWAY: SPEAKING AND BOOKS ARE A LUCRATIVE COMBINATION
Jeff decided to write a book when he realized that by becoming an author he would increase both his credibility and income. As an entrepreneur with a book, he knew he could land more speaking gigs and grow his business.
“I went into the corporate world, and I realized that I didn’t have a book that really encompassed what I was talking about on stage. And I thought it could be an easy way of, let’s say, mutual sell, where they book me, and they can also buy books as well. And that’s when I wrote The Authentic Workplace”
While most authors need to spend time building an audience, Jeff already had a following from the dozens of talks he’d delivered over the years. With his books readily available at events, he realized strong book sales. And at corporate events, a dozen or more or his books would be bought in advance for execs and managers.
Jeff chose the self-publishing route after weighing out the pros and cons of the traditional route. He used a consultant to help him publish on Createspace, now Amazon KDP.
His combination of books and speaking has led to phenomenal success, to the point where he was actually contacted by Wiley Publishing to write a book with them. Wiley had researched Jeff’s performance as a speaker and were impressed with the number of people he spoke to in 2019. As excited as Jeff was about this opportunity, he calculated he’d be on the losing end of this deal and could earn more by self-publishing, and so in the end turned it down.
In this episode with host Josh Steimle, Jeff also goes into detail about how he develops his bullet-point book outlines and why the outlines mean he never has writer’s block. He also explores the tools that help his creativity, and how he’s been busy with other ventures since the pandemic hit.
LINKS
Twitter.com
Linkedin.com
Facebook.com
JeffButler.com
Jeff Butler’s books: The Authentic Workplace and The Key to The New You
Also mentioned in this episode:Desde el Exilio: A Collection of Poems from the Exile (Spanish Edition), by Arcaniam/Marianna Guédez Forgiarini
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: CMO’s At Work
Entrepreneur and owner of The PR Freelancer, Lori Ames joins the Published Author Podcast to discuss her work in the marketing and PR world as a book publicist.
Lori tells host Josh Steimle she started her career working as a PR consultant and with big names, including Tina Turner and Dr. Steven Covey. However, Lori realized early on that she enjoyed working with mid-level authors, as they often give her more of a challenge and in turn a more rewarding outcome.
Today, Lori’s perfect client is a consultant, a CEO, an entrepreneur, or anybody in a leadership position who has something actionable that people can do.
TOP TAKEAWAY: CREATE YOUR NETWORK AND CAMPAIGN PLAN BEFORE WRITING
Today, publishers want to publish books for an entrepreneur-author who has a strong network, one that’s already familiar with the author and their ideas. This way, a publisher knows a book will be met with enthusiasm by an author’s network.
To that end, an author needs to begin work on their platform well before the writing begins. Lori suggests building a platform (such as a website or podcast) and growing a network before a book is even published. By attracting a following ahead of time, an author-entrepreneur is in a strong position when their book arrives. And a publicist will be able to utilize this interested following.
Lori says that some of her most successful clients are those who think about what they want to accomplish—both with their book and the publicity campaign. And by success, she means authors who get the most value out of working with a publicist.
“The first thing we do is we have to find out what an author's goals are. It's always part of the introductory conversations,” she says. “You know, what is it that you want to get out of a publicity campaign? What are your goals?”
DEVELOP ADDITIONAL REVENUE STREAMS
In addition to generating revenue from book sales, today’s author has to create additional revenue streams. Explains Lori: “It's different (during the pandemic) because a lot of speaking engagements aren't happening. So that's one revenue stream that that sort of disappeared, at least for the foreseeable future,” she notes.
So authors have to come up with other ideas, such as training programs, consulting, or courses, because: “The book is just one piece of whatever your bigger plan is.”
Finally, Lori encourages authors to: “Have a connection with [their] publicist,” and not look solely at the cost associated with the process. She notes that: “The money may be part of it, but that connection is something that you won’t get with every firm or consultant.”
LINKS
Twitter.com
Linkedin.com
ThePRFreelancer.com
SUBSCRIBE TO PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
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Josh Steimle
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Josh Steimle’s book: Chief Marketing Officers At Work
Entrepreneur-author Ryan Foland’s interview will leave your jaw hanging on your chest for the whole episode!
A successful mortgage broker earning thousands, Ryan suddenly spun downwards and became a loser - literally.
Mired in debt, Ryan lost everything. His house was foreclosed and creditors pursued him for months. When they caught up with Ryan, they took away his last remaining asset - his car.
Top Takeaway: Know When To Stay, And When To Say Goodbye
On the verge of bankruptcy, Ryan realized he alone could figure a way out of his dire circumstances. And he did. Ryan worked and worked, and the hard work paid off. He eventually formed a business partnership with well-known branding expert Leonard Kim.
The two men were really in sync. In fact, they were so successful they even wrote a bestselling, award-winning book, Ditch the Act: Reveal the Surprising Power of the Real You for Greater Success.
But through the process of writing the book, some fundamental personality differences began to emerge. Within months the men were in heavy disagreement about almost everything. Not long after, the writing and business partnership fell apart.
Ryan took a deep, hard look inside and decided he had to walk away from the partnership and their business.
These incredibly tough decisions Ryan has faced in his life have one essential element in common: They come from a place of honesty. Says Ryan: “Those elements of my brand that have been the most successful, it’s when I'm honest with myself and with the world.
“I just couldn't be honest with myself unless I was in a partnership that was truly positive and encouraging and supportive of each other.”
When to Share, How Much to Share
Next, despite Ryan’s focus on being real and relatable, he says: “One thing that I'll share about Ditching The Act is the importance of not sharing in the moment.
“If you're in the moment of something that's really challenging, it's not necessarily fair to share. Because it's not fair to the audience,” he observes. “They don't know where the outcome is, they don't know what the resolution is.”
Sharing in real time is fine, Ryan clarifies, “But it's when there's drama and things are unsettled . . . and you're airing grievances and you're making unhealthy decisions,” he explains. “And you're putting yourself out there in a way that makes people concerned for your safety.”
Ryan’s honesty means he’s able to move forward with his personal brand without interruption.
He also has some hard-hitting advice for anyone thinking about bringing on a co-author: “Are you willing to have a baby with this person? And I say that in all seriousness, because I feel like Leonard and I had a child, okay? And the child is the book. And we have since gotten divorced.
“Next, whether you have a business partner now or in the future, you have to understand that things are going to change, people change.”
This episode is a real, raw look at what it takes to work in a partnership, and so much more. Ryan shares extensively and honestly with host Josh Steimle, who in turn asks probing questions, bringing to life an amazing entrepreneurial journey.
Links
Twitter.com
Linkedin.com
Facebook.com
YouTube
RyanFoland.com
Subscribe to Published Author Podcast
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star rating review and tell your friends to subscribe, too. We're available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts.
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Josh Steimle
Josh Steimle - LinkedIn
Josh Steimle’s book: CMO’s At Work
It’s essential that entrepreneurs understand the pros and cons of publishing vs self-publishing, and how agents and publishing companies work when an entrepreneur is ready to publish a book.
In this episode of the Published Author Podcast, Kerry McDonald, author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom, explains that the choice a writer makes will depend on their timelines and end goals.
Unschooled and Kerry’s first book, Your Unique Wedding, were published by traditional publishers. But she self-published Choosing Home, an edited anthology of essays by moms who decided to be stay-at-home parents. And her next series of books—part of her new teachcapitalism.com project—will be self-published, too.
Top Takeaway: Understanding Publishing vs Self-Publishing
Getting her teachcapitalism.com project books out quickly is Kerry’s priority, and she says self-publishing is the best way to accomplish this goal. (If this part interests you, check out Ep 0004 with Connor Boyack, talking about his Tuttle Twins series).
“I want to have a lot of books, and to be able to have that quantity and have them out for people. In this case, self-publishing is the right way to go to build up that particular website.”
With traditional publishing, it can take up to two years for a writer’s book to appear on Amazon and in bookstores.
“Typically, it takes about a year, unless you’re sort of a celebrity, or something is timely in the news,” notes Kerry. “But for most of us, it takes about a year from submitting your finished manuscript to the publisher, to having your book on the shelves.”
When writers opt for a traditional publisher, they usually need an agent to connect them with a respected publishing house. A publishing house can add credibility and will really help with distribution. Traditional publishers also give some help with publicity, tours, and PR.
However, this route may result in a writer losing control over their book’s final title and cover design, which can be hard for some authors to swallow.
A Writer’s Journey
Kerry also discusses what motivates her to write. With Unschooled, the book began as a series of blog posts about homeschooling after the birth of her first child. As she became more of an expert on the subject, she decided to put her ideas into a book for parents and educators.
With the teachcapitalism.com project, Kerry thinks that capitalism’s successes are sometimes maligned, and that parents want to offer alternatives to their children.
“Parents are looking for more of these tools, particularly parents of young children, that can help them to offer different viewpoints around economic progress and prosperity than their kids may be getting elsewhere,” she explains.
Kerry and host Josh Steimle also explore other important topics for writers, including how to build a portfolio, and the power of a well written proposal, and why it’s important to begin writing when you are young.
Links
Twitter.comLinkedin.comTeachCapitalism.comUnschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside of the Conventional Classroom by Kerry McDonald
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Anne Janzer is a big fan of creating an outline for your book.
But as an author, you also need to know when to abandon your book outline if it’s not serving you or your readers.
Anne is my guest on the latest episode of the Published Author Podcast. She’s author of Get The Word Out: Write A Book That Makes A Difference, and Subscription Marketing.
Anne understands what motivates her to write, and her own writing process. But she wanted to know if it is the same across the board for other authors. So she sent out a survey and had more than 400 authors answer in kind.
Anne says her survey opened the eyes of a lot of participants about the importance of accepting change during their writing process.
“We outgrow our outlines as we write, and we need to understand it’s more important to serve the reader with a better book, than to cling to an outline that isn’t quite working anymore,” she explains.
The survey’s findings deal with outlines, research, and motivations for writing. Some authors feel guilty when they deviate from their original outlines. Others are uncomfortable if they don’t complete their research before beginning to write. And some writers discover their motivations don’t line up with their chosen topics.
Anne stresses authors should realize they are free to step outside of their original constructs, allowing their book to evolve through the process.
This breathing room and evolution doesn’t only include the outline process, but every process and aspect of writing a book, right up until the published product. Your research, motivations, and even purpose for writing the book might change, and she wants authors to know these changes are perfectly acceptable.
In this episode you’ll hear Anne talk about her findings, what an author’s main intent should be when writing a book, and her own books.
If you enjoy this episode be sure to forward this email to an entrepreneur you know who is thinking about writing a book!
Links
Annejanzer.com
Anne Janzer’s survey results: https://annejanzer.com/nonfiction-authors
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And if you're an entrepreneur interested in writing and publishing a nonfiction book to grow your business or make an impact, visit PublishedAuthor.com for show notes for this podcast and other free resources.
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Josh Steimle’s book: CMO’s At Work
If you want to publish a book, why not be really ambitious and publish three?
If you write a series, you’ll significantly increase revenue opportunities compared to just publishing a single book. .
Author Connor Boyack has sold a staggering 1.4 million copies of the children’s series the Tuttle Twins! He joins me on this week’s episode of the Published Author podcast to explain how writing a series completely upped his game as an author and earner.
Connor’s huge breakthrough came when he completed three books, making the Tuttle Twins a fully-fledged series.
“When it's a series, that does something psychologically to people,” explains Connor. “It's not just a random book. It's like: ‘Ooh, the Tuttle Twins series!’.
“With three books, something shifted, where our marketing started doing a lot better. The profit and the amount of revenue I had to play with was larger.”
With a significant jump in revenue, Connor then started running Facebook ads. “And as long as your cost of acquisition is below that profit margin, that's a sustainable thing that can run all day long,” he explains.
Today, Connor has an 11-book set. “And that's precisely still the same formula we use as long as our cost of acquisition is below the total revenue that we obtained.”
Connor has written books for adults, too. His first was Latter-day Liberty, which explains why Christians should be libertarian, or at least support the ideas of liberty. This sparked him to launch his own not-for-profit company, The Libertas Institute. During the launch, he wrote another book, Feardom: How Politicians Exploit Your Emotions and How You Can Stop Them, to better explain the ideals and views of his company.
In this episode you’ll hear Connor dive into various complications with publishers and marketing, and how writers can go a different route, giving them the freedom to self-publish and market their books in streams that are most beneficial to them.
Links
ConnorBoyak.com
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And if you're an entrepreneur interested in writing and publishing a nonfiction book to grow your business or make an impact, visit PublishedAuthor.com for show notes for this podcast and other free resources.
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Josh Steimle’s book: CMO’s At Work
If you’re like the thousands of entrepreneurs out there who want to get their name on a book, but you don’t have the time or desire to write, this episode of the Published Author podcast is for you!
Josh Steimle's guest is Marcia Layton Turner, and she is here to tell you that you don’t need to be an OK, good, or even exceptional writer. A ghostwriter can write your book for you.
Marcia has ghostwritten a New York Times bestseller and more than 60 business books! Clearly, she isn’t your run-of-the-mill freelancer or ghostwriter!
Author of The Unofficial Guide to Starting a Small Business, Marcia says that when entrepreneurs work with a ghostwriter, it’s a truly collaborative venture.
“A ghostwriter works with a client to figure out how best to express the idea, whether it’s in a blog post, article, a white paper, or a book,” she explains. “It’s the ghostwriter who is pulling that information out of the client and figuring out how to write it up.”
Marcia also challenges some older notions about ghostwriting. Many people have great and unique ideas, but writing isn’t their number one skill. “So if someone writes your book for you, it is your ideas and experiences - your book. Your name should be on it,” she says.
In this episode, Marcia goes into detail about how to find a ghostwriter who is a good fit for you and your project. She discusses fee structures, and what to expect when working with a ghostwriter, and much more in this engaging interview!
Marcia’s other books (published under her own name) include Vision Boards, The Domino’s Story: How The Innovative Pizza Giant Used Technology To Deliver A Customer Experience, and Selling Your Crafts on Etsy.
If you like this episode, be sure to share it with someone you know who wants to write a business book. You can check out more at the Published Author podcast.
Links
MarciaLaytonTurner.com
Amazon
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If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star rating review and tell your friends to subscribe, too. We're available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts.
And if you're an entrepreneur interested in writing and publishing a nonfiction book to grow your business or make an impact, visit PublishedAuthor.com for show notes for this podcast and other free resources.
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Published author Kara Goldin had to fight some serious feelings of doubt on her entrepreneur’s journey.
Kara documented those doubts in her journal, along with all her experiences on her way to successfully setting up a beverage company - Hint® Water.
The result of all those journal entries is her new book Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters.
Kara joins me for episode 0002 of the Published Author podcast to talk about Undaunted, the process behind writing her book, how she found a publisher, and how she marketed Undaunted.
Kara had to wrestle down her doubts before she believed she had earned the right to call herself an entrepreneur.
In the early days, Kara’s venture was so small, she actually doubted that it was a real company, or that she could accomplish what she’d set out to do. In fact, Undaunted’s chronicling of her doubts resonated with many readers, including some famous ones.
“People like Jamie Dimon, John Legend, and Adam Grant have read Undaunted,” says Kara. “They say ‘Wow, what you've put down on paper is not just about women, not just about being a founder. It’s about the journey and recognizing that everybody has doubts along the way!”
Kara faced monumental challenges as she forged ahead. The drinks industry in the U.S. is massively competitive, with big players trying to block small companies from entering the market. This, in turn, stops consumers from accessing healthy foods and drinks and, ultimately, becoming more healthy.
Published by HarperCollins and endorsed by Sheryl Sandberg and Jamie Dimon, Undaunted’s core message is don’t let anyone crush your dreams! It inspires readers to move past fears and defy the doubters.
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Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters, by Kara Goldin
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And if you're an entrepreneur interested in writing and publishing a nonfiction book to grow your business or make an impact, visit PublishedAuthor.com for show notes for this podcast and other free resources.
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Josh Steimle’s book: CMO’s At Work
This very first episode of The Published Author Podcast started out as a trailer, but show host Josh Steimle realized he had so much value to share, he just went ahead and recorded one incredibly informative episode!
Josh is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker. He’s now launched a new venture - Published Author, and this is The Published Author Podcast.
Author of CMOs At Work and with two other books in progress, Josh gives impressive examples of entrepreneurs who’ve created and encountered exciting new opportunities, all through writing and publishing a book.
If at this point you’re telling yourself you can’t do what the Gary Vaynerchucks, Gary Kellers, and Anne Lamotts of the world have done, stop. Remember, everyone starts from nothing. And, as Anne Lamott said, perfectionism is the main obstacle between you and a first blank draft.
Yes, your first draft will probably be ugly, but that’s OK. Josh and his team will coach you and help you along your journey using a comprehensive range of proven tools and systems, including Josh’s own 7 Systems of Influence.
In fact, in this episode Josh asks you to take the first step. Think of yourself as an author. Say this sentence: “My name is - fill in the blank - and I am an author.”
Josh isn’t just going to help you write a book. He’ll show you to create an all-important thought leadership system. By creating a thought leadership system with activities like courses, speaking, and consulting, you’ll create a tribe that’s keen to follow you and listen to what you have to say. The core content for your thought leadership system will be your expertise and your unique offering - and this will be the material for your book.
In this episode, Josh goes into significant detail about his approach to writing, coaching, thought leadership, and content calls to action. In fact, even if you’re not ready to write your book or sign-up for one of his Published Author programs, you’ll learn a significant amount about writing and thought leadership from this episode and the Published Author Podcast.
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Subscribe to Published Author Podcast
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to spread the word, please give us a five-star rating review and tell your friends to subscribe, too. We're available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts.
And if you're an entrepreneur interested in writing and publishing a nonfiction book to grow your business or make an impact, visit PublishedAuthor.com for show notes for this podcast and other free resources.