Book Profit Secrets with Ray Brehm: Recent Episodes
Ray Brehm
Discover how to increase the Income and Influence of your book using methods beyond royalties. Visit us at ray.fm
One of my favorite topics is email, and Philip Duncan is here to talk about all things email marketing. Philip is an award-winning Amazon best-selling author. He’s the host of the Powerhouse Offerings Summit and runs a workshop called Email Marketing for Authors Made Easy. Philip explains why email is his number one marketing strategy and how it’s transformed his life and business. Just a few years ago, he was working a nine-to-five but took a giant leap of faith and hasn’t looked back.
Email marketing can feel overwhelming, but Philip shares some of his best tips and tricks for authors so you can better promote yourself and grow your business. He walks through what you should do if you’re just getting started with email marketing and what he covers in his workshop. Philip and I discuss how often you should send emails out, the importance of authenticity, and why you need to have a “reader magnet” in your strategy. We also talk about cross promoting with others, ads, and how an email list can help you scale.
What’s Inside:
- Why email marketing is so powerful for authors.
- How to start an email marketing strategy from scratch.
- How to use cross promotion to boost your email list.
Mentioned In This Episode:Ray.fm
PhilipSDuncan.com
Matt McWilliams is living proof that you can pursue your passion in life and do so while making a profit. He’s worked with some of the top companies and entrepreneurs on the planet, including Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington, Tony Robbins, and Lewis Howes. Matt’s here to help you on your quest to turn your own passion and message into a profitable and growing business. We begin our conversation by talking about Matt’s journey, which he outlines in his new book, Turn Your Passions into Profits.
Matt’s a genius when it comes to book launches and marketing, and here he shares his secrets. He shares the techniques that he uses to help his clients see massive success when they put their books out into the world. We discuss how your book launch can lead to huge growth in your email list. We also talk about how to set up the perfect book launch funnel, the power of working with affiliate partners, why you don’t need to partner with big names to see big results, and what to do if you already have a book but want to revamp your strategy.
What’s Inside:
- How to set up the perfect book launch funnel,
- Why you don’t need to partner with big names to see big results,
- How to revamp your strategy if you already have a book,
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
PassionsIntoProfitsBook.com/Ray
Alinka Rutkowska is the CEO of Leaders Press. She’s a USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, and Leaders Press made me a best-selling author as well! Alinka helps entrepreneurs create books from scratch and launches them to best-seller with a 100% success rate. She runs a hybrid publishing house with traditional distribution through Simon and Schuster, through which more than 500 entrepreneurs have been able to share their stories. Alinka has been featured by Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and numerous other outlets.
Alinka’s mission is to help 10,000 entrepreneurs share their wisdom with the world by 2030. Here, she shares her own wisdom around book marketing, and we kick off our conversation with where a beginner can start. We discuss how to set realistic goals as an author, which aren’t always about how many books you sell. We also talk about how to invest money into becoming a best-seller, the truth about how many books best-selling authors actually sell, and how to use a book to bring in a ton of revenue for your business through other channels.
What’s Inside:
- Where to start if you’re new to book marketing.
- How to set realistic goals as an author.
- How to use a book to skyrocket your income.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
LeadersPress.com
Derek Doepker went from being a broke valet parker to best-selling author. He’s sold over 100,000 books using free and low-cost strategies. Today, he shares those strategies with authors to turn their passions for writing into thriving businesses. Derek has also been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Success magazines as well as several other world-renowned publications. Here, Derek and I talk about how to market your book, specifically through an audiobook.
A solid marketing strategy typically involves you putting yourself and your message out there in various forms of media. Derek and I discuss which formats make the most sense and why you need a good book cover, description, and a list of reviews. We also talk about how multiple formats help you build authority, the pros and cons of doing an audiobook and whether or not you should do it all yourself, the benefits of reading through your manuscript, and how to upload your audiobook to various platforms.
What’s Inside:
- How audiobooks can uplevel your book marketing strategy.
- Whether you should do your audiobook yourself or outsource.
- How to upload your audiobook to various platforms.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
DerekDoepker.com
Joris van Leeuwen is the CEO of Cutting-edge-studio.com where he helps self-published authors publish and market their books successfully by providing all the author services they would need. Joris and his sister company, Cutting-edge-business.com, create websites and promo videos that can help authors grow and promote their businesses. Joris loves to work with first time self-published authors who are overwhelmed with the publishing and marketing process.
Here, we’re diving into a bit of book marketing 101. Basic book marketing is a tough hurdle to get over, and Joris is an expert. The process involves a ton of clear thinking and focus. Many authors pour all of their time and energy into writing and publishing their books, not realizing that marketing is even more vital. Joris shares the basics authors need to get their book marketing plan started. We also discuss the importance of having a great book cover, why you shouldn’t rush the publishing and marketing process, and more.
What’s Inside:
- The basic elements of a book marketing plan.
- Why you need a great book cover.
- Why you shouldn’t rush the book marketing and publishing process.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Cutting-edge-studio.com
Cutting-edge-business.com
Glen Kowalski is an ex-Microsoft software engineer who said, “Screw the commute,” moved to Panama, and now helps business owners get their message out without worrying about being cancelled or censored. He’s a fierce freedom lover who believes that freedom of speech should be a core human right and is fundamental to living a life outside of tyranny. Here, Glen shares his story of how he wound up in Panama, the evolution of his marketing business ventures, and how he became more involved in freedom movements.
Freedom comes in many shapes and sizes, and many people simply want freedom from their jobs. Freedom of boss, income, and geography can be a total game-changer and Glen shares advice on the first steps people should take to move in that direction. The biggest thing to do is figure out your financial situation and how you’ll earn the income you need to get the freedom you crave. Glen and I also discuss how he helps clients find their own path to freedom and information on his upcoming virtual summit on how to own your own assets.
What’s Inside:
- Glen’s story of going from software engineer to business owner.
- The first steps to take to find your own path to freedom.
- Information on Glen’s upcoming summit.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
RenegadeSummits.com
Jackie Lapin helps leaders grow their online and live audiences by getting booked faster, easier, and in more places. Here, we talk about springboarding your business using live and virtual speaking events on multiple platforms. Jackie was one of the first female sports writers in America, and she then segued into having one of the largest sports special events and PR companies in the United States with a world-class client list. Jackie later rebranded her agency as Conscious Media Relations, where she does radio podcast tours for authors, leaders, and experts.
Today, Jackie also runs SpeakerTunity, a speaker and leader resource company that gives people contacts where they can book themselves across a number of different platforms. Her clients book everywhere, including radio shows, podcasts, virtual summits, live and virtual stages, and even TEDx stages. Jackie and I discuss some first steps to take if you’re thinking about booking speaking gigs yourself. We also talk about overcoming stage fright, the types of programs to sell during speaking events, and why how writing a book can help you book more stages.
What’s Inside:
- How Jackie helps her clients book speaking events to grow their businesses.
- The first steps to take to book speaking gigs.
- How to develop programs to sell during speaking engagements.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
SpeakerTunity.com
44 Ways to Seduce Your Next Client
Susan Friedmann is a certified speaking professional (CSP). She’s also an international best-selling author of 18 books. Susan is on a mission to wipe out sameness and add vitality and differentiation to author marketing. Through her company, Aviva Publishing, she has guided hundreds of non-fiction authors to use their books to become trusted and recognized authorities in their niche markets. Susan started her career training exhibitors at trade shows. There, she got her expertise in honing in on a niche market and going from unknown to one of the go-to experts.
Susan joins me here to talk about niches and how to stand out from the crowd. She shares insights from her book Riches in Niches and how to make yourself a big fish in a small pond. Some niches can run dry pretty quickly, so you want to make sure your niche is profitable and sustainable. Writing a book is a great tactic to stand out as a leader in a niche market, as many in those areas aren’t published. I also talk to Susan about the process of niching down, how to adapt your books and programs to niche audiences, how authors can leverage virtual summits, and why you shouldn’t be afraid to do something different.
What’s Inside:
- How to stand out as an expert in a niche market.
- The value of writing a book to establish authority.
- How authors in niche markets can leverage virtual summits.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
BrainstormWithSusan.com
Susan’s Book: Riches in Niches
Honorée Corder is a good friend of mine and the OG of self-publishing. She’s an author, publishing consultant, TEDx speaker, Founder of Indie Author University, and co-founder of the Empire Builders MasterClass. Honorée has published more than 50 books, and helped hundreds of professionals and entrepreneurs successfully craft, write, publish, launch, market, and monetize their books. There’s a new term out there called “quiet quitting”, which is doing the bare minimum in a job just to get by. Here, Honorée and I discuss how to transfer your life from a dead-end career and build your empire.
Before you quit a job you’re unhappy in, it’s important to have a plan. Honorée advises getting your ducks in a row before making a move, which includes getting a support system in place and building up reserves. You also don’t want to give your employer a reason to let you go before you’re ready. Honorée and I discuss the first steps to take to become a thought leader. We also talk about how to cultivate the energy it takes to be an entrepreneur and the importance of self-development.
What’s Inside:
- How to come up with a plan to quit your job and build your empire.
- The first steps to take to become a thought leader.
- Why self-development is the key to successful entrepreneurship.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
HonoreeCorder.com
Kris Safarova is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Amazon best-selling author. She’s a former management consultant and banker who managed billion-dollar portfolios, and she’s also a concert pianist! Kris is currently the CEO of FirmsConsulting.com and StrategyTraining.com and the host of the 90 Day Business Building Summit. She helps people get out of their corporate cubicles so they can move into the world of entrepreneurship. Here, Kris shares her own story and journey from the corporate world to where she is today.
Kris and I discuss how physical ailments and mental stress can nudge us out of jobs we know are wrong for us. Kris shares how she helps her clients make the right move and the endless opportunities that come with being an entrepreneur. She recommends experimenting to find your passion and purpose, which are often tied to emotions, and building from there. Kris and I also talk about why coaching and content marketing are a good fit for beginner entrepreneurs, how to build an email list, and the benefits of writing a book and creating an online course.
What’s Inside:
- How to experiment to find your passion and purpose.
- Why coaching and content marketing are perfect for beginner entrepreneurs.
- The benefits of writing a book and creating an online course.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
FirmsConsulting.com
Webinar and event expert Jon Schumacher has worked with more than 300 private clients and over 1,000 students. He’s helped them generate over $50 million in sales, and here, Jon shares all the details on how to use 30-minute webinars to sell your flagship programs. We kick things off by discussing the four things you’ll need for your webinar: your goal, offer, messaging, and how to get people to attend. Jon talks about the different types of webinars you can use depending on your end goal. Your offer is where the rubber meets the road, and it’s the most important piece. Jon shares tips on how to get clear and how to make what you sell more irresistible.
Jon dives deep into how to create your messaging, including an easy-to-follow framework that involves getting clear on “why, what, how, and now”. Addressing pain points is key, as is sharing a little about yourself. Driving traffic to your webinar and getting people to register can be challenging, however, you don’t need hundreds of people on your email list. Jon shares some client stories of how they made sales with just a handful of attendees. We also discuss how to collaborate with affiliates and how to create and use automated webinars.
What’s Inside:
- The four things you’ll need to put together a winning webinar.
- Jon’s framework on how to create the right messaging.
- When and how to create and use automated webinars.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
JonSchumacher.com
Susan Epstein is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) as well as a business coach and strategist. She works with coaches, therapists, and healers to fill their practices and helps them leverage their time through groups and masterminds. After finishing school to become an LCSW, Susan spent several years building a psychotherapy practice. Over time, she started running groups and clubs and eventually discovered coaching. Susan got certified and began building her business, including creating a landing page, an email list, and writing a book. She began attracting others who wanted to build their own businesses, and in 2017, Susan let go of everything but her business coaching practice, which is now thriving.
Susan shares her recommendations for those thinking about starting their own business. We discuss the differences between a group coaching program and a mastermind and how to decide which one to run. We also talk about the advantages of group coaching over one-on-one sessions. Enlisting the help of a business coach is also a great way to get support while you’re figuring things out. Susan also shares tips on how to form your first group, what a typical group coaching program looks like, and how to overcome typical coaching challenges.
What’s Inside:
- The difference between group coaching and a mastermind.
- The advantages of group coaching over one-on-one sessions.
- Tips on how to form your first group.
Mentioned In This Episode:Ray.fm
5 Simple Steps to Create and Fill Your First Mastermind
Bri Seeley is a bespoke business designer who works with both established and emerging entrepreneurs to create highly profitable businesses through consistent revenue creation. Whether you’re ready to make your first dollar or your first million, Bri will help you create a long-term, sustainable path to success on your own terms. She also recently recorded a TED talk called “Going from Wages to Wealth”. Here, Bri shares her story about how she accidentally started her business. After leaving an unaligned opportunity, she was thrust into the unknown and figured out how to create lasting wealth for herself.
Bri believes entrepreneurship is the path to financial freedom and fulfillment. Through her business, she helps people embrace their creative potential to build a life they love. We discuss how Bri got started and why it’s important to begin creating a vision on the inside. Shifting your beliefs and reprogramming your internal operating system are essential parts of being an entrepreneur. Bri and I also talk about overcoming fears, leaving people behind as you change on your journey, how to find your most aligned path, and how to set yourself up for entrepreneurial success.
What’s Inside:
- Why it’s important to reprogram your internal operating system.
- How to handle leaving people behind on the entrepreneurial journey.
- How to set yourself up for entrepreneurial success.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Bri’s Workbook - How to Guarantee Consistent Income in Your Business
Paul Brodie is a 21-time best-selling author and CEO of the Brodie Consulting Group. He helps people share their stories and positions them as experts in their field. Paul’s company accomplishes this by launching their clients’ books to guaranteed best-seller status. He’s done 92 best-selling book launches, including his own latest books, Entrepreneurship 101 and Book Publishing and Marketing Secrets. Here, Paul and I take a detour from the topics we usually discuss and get into story branding and how folks can start and scale a side hustle.
According to Paul, story branding is the best way to sell yourself, your business, and your brand. In order for people to become your raving fans and customers, they have to get to know, like, and trust you. Sharing your story is an authentic, powerful way to connect with your audience. Paul and I discuss how to set up an effective funnel to turn readers into customers. We also talk about lead magnets, using your book to sell products without being salesy, and which steps to take if you’re just getting started.
What’s Inside:
- How to use story branding to connect with your audience.
- How to set up an effective funnel to turn readers into customers.
- Steps to take if you’re just getting started.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Brodie Consulting Group
Ellen Finkelstein helps experts get their knowledge out to the world with online products and courses. She’s well-known for her email newsletter (I’m a subscriber), which earns her top rankings on the leaderboards. Ellen got started writing books for big names like McGraw-Hill and Wiley. Author platforms were starting to kick off in the 90’s and Ellen started her website and email list in 1999. Her list grew automatically within her niche, and she realized she could make more money selling eBooks to her audience.
Ellen eventually started Change the World Marketing to show others her email system, which is the opposite of what many of the gurus do. Ellen’s email contains daily tips, stories, and many resources instead of just one call to action. We talk about how to create a winning email strategy for your target market, how to handle promotions, and why you need to provide value to your audience. We also discuss why it’s OK to include some repetition, how to grow your email list through creating connections, and what to do when you’re just getting started.
What’s Inside:
- How to create a winning email marketing strategy.
- Why it’s important to provide value to your audience.
- How to grow your email list through creating connections.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Freebie - 10 Techniques for Better Results from Your Emails: More Engagement, Opens, and Clicks
Pam Obasa turned £500 into a seven-figure business while working from home and taking care of two young children. Pam has a background in acting and while she was working in that field, there were periods of time where she was out of work. This prompted her to think about what she could do with the money in her bank account along with her skills to get some income flowing in between acting jobs. Pam then created her first offer and sold it to schools, which then became a six-figure business. Eventually, it became her main thing.
Pam shares her story and how she recreated her offer after experiencing some personal challenges in 2020. Today, she shows others how to create their own three-day events and teach their passion. Once you have it set up, you can continue to run it and generate even more revenue. Pam walks through how to structure a three-day event around solving a problem for your audience. She shares how to sell a high-ticket offer within your event to skyrocket your income. We also discuss how to run your program while still at your nine-to-five and typical backend offers.
What’s Inside:
- How Pam turned £500 into a seven-figure business
- How to structure a three-day event and sell your high-ticket offer
- How to run your events while still working your day job
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
The Seed Method
Pam Obasa on YouTube
Matt McWilliams is a four-time affiliate manager of the year and has worked for big names like Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington, Adidas, Shutterfly, and more. Matt helps online business owners make money as an affiliate and leverage the power of affiliate partners to grow their businesses. He’s also the author of Turn Your Passions into Profits, which reached number one best-seller status before officially launching. We talk about the book launch and get into details on ads and affiliate partnerships.
Matt and I discuss how to create a long-term book sales strategy and how to hit best-seller status. When you reach number one, you’ll rank much higher on Amazon and you can use affiliates to get you there quick. From there, you can add in other strategies like paid ads to keep the momentum going. Matt also shares insights into how to recruit affiliates for your own book launch, how to structure a funnel, where people like to buy books, and why the world needs your message.
What’s Inside:
- How to use affiliate marketing to reach best-seller status.
- How to recruit affiliates for your launch.
- Why the world needs your message.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Turn Your Passions into Profits
Here, I’m sharing a boat racing story from my childhood from back in May of 1982 with a lesson about entrepreneurship. It was an early Saturday morning, and I went to the Vermillion Boat Club Bowl with my family. We had been racing this for years and never won. There was a light breeze when we started, but it quickly died, which was rare for Lake Erie. There were also a ton of mosquitoes and flies, and because we slowed down, they landed all over us. They covered the seats in our boat, and I’ll always remember my dad never taking his eyes off the sails.
Eventually, it got foggy as well, and it was so still that it took us about four to five hours to get to the first mark. The wind picked up a little bit on the second leg and then some more on the third leg. We wound up blowing away all the other boats in our class because my dad took advantage of the little wind we had. The key takeaway from it all was to continue on even when things are moving slowly. As an entrepreneur or an author, just take a small step each day to keep things moving forward. Keep your boat moving and stay in motion towards your dreams. When you’re consistent, you will do amazing things.
What’s Inside:
- A boat racing story from childhood with a lesson on entrepreneurship.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Although you may not be familiar with TeeJ Mercer, chances are you’re familiar with her work. For over two decades, she has worked on major Hollywood projects with A-list talent like Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, and Samuel L. Jackson. TeeJ has worked on movies like Shrek, The Incredibles, Cars, and The Chronicles of Narnia and for big name networks like Disney, ABC, and MTV. She’s arguably the queen of visibility, influence, and authority, and she now leverages her experience to help authors, speakers, coaches, and entrepreneurs book themselves in the media without a publicist.
TeeJ shares insights into the first steps to take if you want to increase your visibility. It all starts with you believing you’re the expert, and you don’t have to wait for the media to give you that title. We talk about why it’s important to approach the media from a service perspective instead of a promotional one. TeeJ and I also discuss the process for getting interviewed on TV, which involves dreaming national and thinking local. Other topics covered include how to target specific markets, what to talk about when featured, how to rock an interview, and how to use “newsjacking” to get media attention.
What’s Inside:
- Why believing you are the expert is the first step to gaining media visibility.
- How to prepare for a successful interview.
- How to use “newsjacking” to get featured in the media.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
TeeJ’s Newsjacking 101 Guide
Ryleigh Klimenko is a highly sought-after business sales coach. She specializes in helping high-ticket ambitious coaches and service providers seamlessly scale their businesses without awkward pitches. Ryleigh teaches high conversion, heart-centered conversational sales and has worked for Bank of America, TD Bank, and other top financial institutions. She’s been published and interviewed by several top media outlets, including CBS, Fox, and NBC. Ryleigh’s unique conversational sales flow will transform the way you sell while building confidence and breaking toxic sales practices.
Ryleigh’s revolutionary method is perfect for anyone who wants to create sustainable change in their business or career and make a lot of money along the way. Here, Ryleigh shares what inspired her to move away from corporate America and into entrepreneurship. We discuss why starting out with a high-ticket offer is best and Ryleigh’s secrets to doubling your high-ticket enrollment numbers. We also talk about the importance of mapping out your dream life, the top four things people want from a sale, how to uncover what your prospects and clients need, and why believing in yourself is the most authentic way to attract clients.
What’s Inside:
- Ryleigh’s secrets to doubling your high-ticket enrollment.
- Why it’s important to map out your dream life.
- How to uncover what your prospects and clients need.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Lucas Marino is a doctor of engineering, project management professional, and a serial entrepreneur in the training business. Lucas is a former military engineer who spent 21 years as a naval and training manager in the United States Coast Guard. He’s the founder of Marino Training and EAST Partnership and the co-founder of the Empire Builder’s Masterclass. Lucas helps entrepreneurs and authors launch and sustain online training products. He’s also a Thinkific expert, the host of the Conversations with Course Creators podcast, and author of the book Monetize Your Book with a Course.
Course creation is a great way to create authority, visibility, and influence for yourself. Lucas and I talk about his Empire Builder’s Masterclass that he hosts along with Honorée Corder. Many people have amazing courses but need help getting the marketing in place, and the Masterclass helps with this. We get into how Lucas’ crowdsourced platform helps both instructors and affiliates and how he helps creators develop their curriculum. We also discuss partnerships, course marketing strategies with Swipe Files, and why a book is the best way to establish accessible authority.
What’s Inside:
- How Lucas helps course creators through the Empire Builder’s Masterclass.
- How Lucas’ crowdsourced platform helps both instructors and affiliates
- Why a book is the best way to establish accessible authority.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Marino Training
Lucas Marino on LinkedIn
Lucas Marino on Facebook
lucas@marinotraining.com
After receiving degrees in poetry and creative writing, Carolyn Choate unexpectedly fell in love with sales and marketing funnels. Today, she helps coaches, speakers, and authors utilize funnels to connect with prospective clients, free up their time, and scale bigger. As a child, Carolyn loved looking at the descriptions of products in catalogues and she says she always loved marketing but didn’t know it. Marketing gets a bad reputation, but Carolyn realized that so much of it is all about storytelling and connection. She decided to take marketing on as a career so she could help others come to the same realizations.
Carolyn explains what funnels are and we discuss her main method of helping clients. Without a funnel in place, you could be missing out on a ton of leads and sales. The faster you get your funnel up and running, the faster you can generate passive income and scale your business. Carolyn offers VIP days with her clients where she gets them set up within a day. We also talk about different types of funnels, technical requirements, tips for developing your own funnel, and why you should start with a free opt in or lead magnet.
What’s Inside:
- The importance of having a sales funnel in place.
- How Carolyn helps her clients set up their own funnels.
- The technology needed to create a sales funnel.
- Funnel creation tips.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
FinanciallyFreeAuthor.com
Andre Loibl is the founder of Changenow.de where he helps people with their subconscious money blockages, allowing them to thrive in their businesses and do more things that they love. You can do amazing things if you get your mind right. Whether you’re trying to start your own business or create authority and influence in the marketplace, it all starts with how you think of yourself and what you’re worthy of. Here, Andre and I talk about “giving it all to God” and how powerful that kind of connection can be. We tend to only pray and ask God for things when we’re desperate, but why not ask for the plan along the way?
Andre shares insights about affirmations and trance states and how deep relaxation can help you tap into your subconscious mind and rewire your thoughts. We also talk about hypnosis and the differences between stage hypnosis and a more therapeutic approach. We discuss the most common problems Andre works through with clients along with a case study and how to enjoy the journey. Don’t miss the end of the episode where Andre demonstrates his work and the power of trance.
What’s Inside:
- Andre’s 30-second hack to solving issues around feeling unworthy.
- How to tap into the subconscious mind.
- A demo of Andre’s work with trance states.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Changenow.de
For this particular influence and authority piece, I’m interviewing myself! Virtual summits, or virtual events, are one of the best ways I know to make yourself visible and create instant authority. As an interviewer, you don’t have to be the expert, but you can gain credibility and authority through association. Here, I’m sharing some quick ideas about virtual summits that get you in the mindset that you can do this. The beauty of a virtual summit is you can do one even if you’re just starting out. As long as you know how to ask questions, it’s an amazing way to build up an audience and email list, build authority quickly, and meet other partners.
I dive into what exactly a virtual summit is and how they’re structured so you can put one together. Unlike in-person events, online events are easy to attend and people can make a last-minute decision to join. You also benefit from exposure to the audiences of your guest speakers. Everything is scheduled in advance to minimize scrambling. I share the five key ingredients of a successful virtual summit and how can use them to sell products and services. I also share tips on attracting speakers and influencers.
What’s Inside:
- How a virtual summit creates authority.
- The 5 key ingredients of a successful virtual summit.
- How to attract speakers and influencers.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Eric Van Der Hope is a three-time number-one internationally best-selling author, a book publishing shepherd, and a book launch strategist. His experience in digital and print publishing began in the late ‘90s. Eric’s helped thousands of struggling content creators navigate the often-confusing publishing process and shorten the time it takes to become a published author. We’ve been talking a lot about authority, visibility, and influence lately and Eric has seven steps to develop an effective author platform. Here, we go into each of the steps and focus on a couple of them and how they can help.
It's common for authors to start freaking out when they hear the word “platform”, but Eric’s steps help make the process less overwhelming. Having a platform makes it much easier to launch your book with some momentum behind it. Eric and I talk about creating valuable content you’re willing to give away for free, connecting with your tribe, and nurturing relationships. A huge part of building an effective platform is being as authentic as possible and Eric shares his wisdom about how he does this so well.
What’s Inside:
- Eric’s 7 steps to developing an effective author platform.
- Why having a platform makes a book launch easier.
- Why being authentic is the key to a successful platform.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
EricVanDerHope.com
Derek Doepker’s no stranger to the show. If you don’t know his story, he went from being a broke valet parker to a best-selling author. He’s sold over 100,000 books using free or low-cost strategies. Now, he shares those strategies with authors and helps them turn their passion for writing into thriving businesses. Derek’s been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Success magazines, among other world-renowned publications. He’s also the only person I know who sold a book to somebody who thought he was Deepak Chopra!
Derek has one of the most responsive audiences out of everyone I know and he’s here to share his secrets. Consistency in showing up through email and providing your list with valuable information is key. Derek and I talk about ways to boost visibility without breaking the bank, why it’s important to nurture your existing following, and how to repurpose emails into other forms of content to save time. Derek and I also discuss creative ways to engage your audience, how to deal with trolls, and how email compares to podcasting and speaking engagements.
What’s Inside:
- How to build visibility in your niche.
- Why it’s important to nurture your existing audience and customers.
- How email compares to other modes of gaining visibility.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
BestSellerSecrets.com
Liam Austin is the co-founder of Entrepreneurs HQ and a virtual event strategist. To date, Liam has launched over 15 successful virtual summits, averaging 10,000 attendees. He’s also launched countless online events and workshops with a more intimate setting, hosted over 400 speakers, and educated over 100,000 business owners through his programs. Liam walks through his career journey and how he started his business empire. His motivation to focus on online events was driven by his desire for freedom and the ability to travel around the world.
Liam and I discuss his strategy for driving attendance to online events and virtual summits and he shares a detailed presentation with a ton of great tips and details. Collecting leads is important, but it’s also key to give people the opportunity to buy products and services so you can generate revenue right away. Traditional sales webinars often feel salesy and people are expecting that pitch at the end. Liam shares a different approach through a 90-minute virtual workshop. Through his strategy, you can take your leads through a series of steps and get them to your high-ticket offer.
What’s Inside:
- How to use a 90-minute workshop to generate leads and drive sales.
- How to attract your ideal clients through event design.
- Steps to take your clients from free offerings to high ticket offers.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Entrepreneurs HQ
Anthony Garcia is the founder of Catapulting Commissions Inc. and an expert in sales training, goal achievement, and motivating business professionals to peak performance. Anthony’s here to talk about achieving sales in your first 90 days. He started his career at the age of 22 and spent 20 years building sales teams for large corporations. As he was building out these teams, Anthony realized he didn’t see the same things happening in the small business community. Four years ago, he founded Catapulting Commissions where he builds sales processes and systems for service-based professionals.
Sales are often one of the scariest subjects for authors, and Anthony and I discuss how he gets people out of that fear state. One of the ways to get over those fears is to hear feedback directly from their ideal customer through a discovery call. We also talk about the steps to take in your first 90 days to drive sales. Anthony shares tips on how to avoid common sales mistakes, pricing, market research, and how to position yourself as a problem solver. He also shares his wisdom about selling high ticket offers.
What’s Inside:
- How to overcome fears about selling.
- What to do in your first 90 days to make a sale.
- Tips for selling high ticket offers.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Catapulting Commissions Academy
If you don’t already know Paul Brodie, he’s a 20-time best-selling author. As the CEO of Brodie Consulting, he’s launched 79 consecutive best-selling books for his clients, even amidst all the nonsense going on with Amazon right now. Lately, Amazon has been having issues with the algorithm and they’ve been really annoying. Part of the issue is that they’re not tracking sales correctly. Paul has launched four books in the last two weeks and here, we chat about how things went and what’s different.
If you’re planning an Amazon launch, it’s important to have fail-safes and backup plans so you can stay on track. Paul’s company allows authors to outsource those headaches and stressors to him and his team instead. Paul and I discuss his process to help navigate the Amazon publishing process and fight glitches, promo strategies for launches, and how to use the KDP select free launch phase. We also cover the items on his pre-launch best-seller checklist.
What’s Inside:
- The changes and glitches in the Amazon algorithm.
- Why it’s important to have a backup plan when publishing on Amazon.
- Paul’s pre-launch best-seller checklist.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Brodie Consulting Group
Rob Kosberg is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling author. He’s the founder of Best Seller Publishing and has been featured in some of the biggest media outlets in the country. Rob has spoken to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants on how to stop hunting for clients and instead position themselves as the hunted. Rob and I have talked zillions of times and here, we’re discussing examples of some of Rob’s clients and whether or not it’s worth striving for best-seller status.
Your book is about authority and credibility and positions you as the expert or thought leader in your space. Becoming a best-seller brings you to the next level. It makes a difference when you want speaking engagements, running paid ads, and when you’re speaking to high-profile customers. Rob shares success stories, including a bit about how he was able to reposition himself as an expert. We also talk about Rob’s workshops, high ticket offers, and a bit about email marketing, ads, and sales funnels.
What’s Inside:
- How Rob helps his clients position themselves as thought leaders in their niche.
- How Rob was able to reposition himself as an expert in his field.
- Tips on email marketing, paid ads, and sales funnels.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Best Seller Publishing
PublishPromoteProfit.com
I’m back with Derek Doepker and in case you don’t know his story, he went from being a broke valet parking attendant to a best-selling author. He’s sold over 100,000 books using free or low-cost marketing strategies. Today, he shares those strategies with his fellow authors to empower them to turn their passion for writing into businesses and rewarding careers. I got to know Derek by originally being a member of his email list and eventually buying one of his courses. The reason why we wanted to talk about email marketing for authors is because it made me a super fan of Derek’s and it’s led to my introductions to many other folks in the business.
Many authors start out with email marketing by creating an opt-in but never follow through. Here, Derek dispels all the email marketing myths and provides valuable secrets and tips that can help you succeed. We talk about how to overcome the intimidation factor, how to create your own unique strategy and set expectations, and the value of an email list in Derek’s business. We also discuss referrals, collaborating with other authors, and where to find inspiration to write great emails for your audience.
What’s Inside:
- Email marketing secrets and tips for authors.
- How to develop your own custom email marketing strategy.
- The value of collaborating with other authors and cross-promotion.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
DerekDoepker.com
Amy Dix is a two-time international best-selling author. She’s also a sought-after keynote speaker, professional artist, founder of Authority Speakers Agency, and one of the happiest people I’ve ever met! Before she became the queen of speaking, Amy wrote a business-focused book that allowed her to see the business side of what a speaking career had to offer. Then, she wrote a more motivational book which helped her see the full picture. This session is all about the secrets of best sellers and here, Amy and I get into how authors can make the transition into speaking gigs.
Amy shares tips on which comes first: your book or speaking opportunities. It all depends on where your passions are, so if speaking lights you up, you don’t have to wait until you’re published. Once your book is finished, you can use that as leverage to gain credibility in your niche and book more events. You can also sell copies of your book at events in a number of different ways. Amy and I discuss how to speak at different stages, who to contact if you want to start speaking, and how virtual summits can help you find your audience.
What’s Inside:
- Why you shouldn’t wait until your book is done to pursue speaking gigs.
- How to leverage your book to land more speaking opportunities.
- How to use virtual summits to gain experience and find your audience.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Authority Speakers Agency Website
Philip Duncan is an award-winning and Amazon best-selling author. He’s also the host of the Powerhouse Authoring Summit. Philip’s success story is a great example of an author who knows exactly how to build an audience. Almost two years ago, Philip and I discussed working together on one of my done-for-you summit services, but it wasn’t in his budget at the time. A year later, I sent him info on a pilot program for my lower-investment Summit Lab course and he went for it. Six months later, Philip hosted the Powerhouse Fiction Summit, and today, he’s in the middle of another summit that’s crushing it. It’s even beating my own numbers from a recent summit!
When Philip first heard about summits, he was skeptical. After taking Summit Lab, he realized it was something he wanted to get into, especially since he was looking for a way out of his day job. In March 2022, he launched his first summit, and it was a game changer. Philip took a lot of risks to get to where he is today and they’re paying off in a big way. Here, we talk about what he learned from his first summit and how he created a follow-up program for authors. Philip also shares his numbers from his first and most recent summits, the value of business relationships and a solid email list, and details on his core offer.
What’s Inside:
- Philip’s virtual summit journey and lessons learned.
- The importance of an email list and business relationships.
- Details on Philip’s core offer and his plans for the future.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Philip@PhilipSDuncan.com
PowerhouseAuthoringSummit.com
Jackie Lapin helps leaders and authors get booked faster, easier, and more frequently through her company, SpeakerTunity. She also does done-for-you radio and podcast tours for authors and has a lot of wisdom to share with those who want to create a speaking career from their book. Jackie is passionate about helping people gain the visibility they deserve, as they’ve poured their heart and soul into publishing their work. She started her career as one of the first female sports writers in America. Jackie then started her own public relations agency. As that was winding down, she wrote two books herself in personal growth. She then changed gears to serve conscious authors and creators.
SpeakerTunity started as a subscription service to provide speaking leads all over the nation. It has since evolved and grown to include more in-demand offerings, like podcasting. Jackie and I discuss what to do if you’re a new author interested in starting your speaking career. She recommends having a great pitch letter that summarizes your vision and story and having both a hard copy and a digital copy of your book. We also talk about virtual summits, the best ideas for freebies and giveaways, interview tips, and more.
What’s Inside:
—How and why Jackie created her company, SpeakerTunity.
—First steps to take if you’re an author pursuing a speaking career.
—How to find and book virtual summit speaking gigs.
—Ideas for freebies and giveaways.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
SpeakerTunity.com
Alfonso Inclan is an entrepreneur who helps investors, authors, public speakers, and other entrepreneurs write books and become best-sellers in order to promote their businesses. He’s based in Phoenix, AZ close to where I live, and is also a successful real estate investor. Alfonso’s work is focused on helping Hispanic entrepreneurs and he’s had an incredible journey so far. One of the things he works on with clients is helping them craft a persuasive narrative to turn their readers into customers. Alfonso started by writing his own best-selling book and many people started asking him how he did it. At first, he helped family and friends which then led to him opening his own academy for aspiring best-selling authors.
Building confidence and trust with your readers is a huge factor in long-term success, both as an author and a business owner. Alfonso and I discuss the importance of having the right title for your book, as well as cover design and what content to include inside. We also talk about how to plant seeds to lead your readers to more offerings, a story about Robert Kiyosaki, and the delay between a reader buying your book and investing in your products or services.
What’s Inside:
- How Alfonso helps his clients publish best-selling books to promote their business.
- The importance of having the right book title.
- How to plant seeds in your book that lead to your offerings and services.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Alfonso Inclan on LinkedIn
AlfonsoInclan.com
My friend, Alinka Rutkowska, is the founder and CEO of Leaders Press. She’s also a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author and a top 100 Amazon best-selling author in business and money. Alinka has sold over 100,000 copies of her books. Her book creation process has been showcased in Entrepreneur magazine and she’s been featured in several top media outlets, including ABC, NBC, and Fox Business. She’s also the founder of LibraryBub, which connects independent authors with over 10,000 librarians worldwide.
Alinka’s been on the show before, and here, we talk about how she started Leaders Press. Her done-for-you concept has helped several thought leaders establish authority in their niche. Alinka shares tips on how to take your own book to best-seller status on today’s top lists. Along with ads and promotions, Alinka uses email marketing and influencer networking to take her clients to the next level. She shares the details of her strategy from beginning to book launch, the criteria used to qualify an author on the most popular best-seller lists, and how being in an anthology can be a shortcut to best-selling status.
What’s Inside:
—How to get on the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author lists.
—Why networking and having the right connections is the key to a successful book launch.
—How Alinka’s anthologies can serve as a shortcut to success.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Leaders Press
Kent Sanders is the author and co-author of several amazing books, including 18 Words to Live By, The Artist’s Suitcase, and The Faith of Elvis, which he wrote with Elvis’ stepbrother, Billy Stanley. Kent is also the host of The Daily Writer Podcast as well as the founder of The Daily Writer Club, a membership community for writers who are building a business. Kent’s here to share his story as well as what you can do to get your own podcast going, which is incredibly useful to authors looking to establish authority and grow an audience.
Kent spent time as the music director at a church and had a teaching career. After 10 years, he realized he wanted to build a side business, and he began freelance writing. He built his side hustle up to a point where he was able to quit his full-time teaching job and he’s now a full-time ghostwriter. He also coaches and helps authors through his online community and podcast. Kent loves the power words have in the world and loves to share that with others. We discuss how Kent got his ghostwriting career off the ground, how to analyze your podcast listener data and statistics, how frequently to record and release podcast episodes, how to develop content, and more.
What’s Inside:
- How podcasting has allowed Kent to grow a full-time ghostwriting career.
- How to analyze your podcasting data and statistics.
- How often to record and release podcast episodes.
Mentioned In This Episode:Ray.fm
DailyWriterLife.com/Free
If you’ve ever been a participant in a virtual summit, you may have wondered how you could create a similar experience for others. Virtual summits are not only profitable, but they help you build your audience as well. I had the opportunity to be part of one of Derek Doepker’s summits and here, we dive into how authors can collaborate with experts in their niche to create a winning summit of their own. You can create a valuable asset without carrying all of the burden. We kick off by talking about my own story and journey into creating summits and all the benefits that come with hosting these events.
Summits are the perfect way to build a business from your book and generate income beyond royalties. One of the biggest benefits of virtual summits is how much they boost your email list. They also boost your authority in the field, which sets you up to do more summits and events in the future. Derek and I discuss the value of the relationships you make and maintain with summit speakers. We chat about who is the best fit for a virtual summit and the importance of having a purpose in mind before getting started. Other topics we discuss include tips for hosting your first summit, creating courses and offers, how to find people to speak at your summits and how to reach out.
What’s Inside:
- My story and why I decided to get into virtual summits.
- The value of building relationships with summit speakers.
- Tips for putting together the perfect virtual summit.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
TheSummitGuy.com
Kris Safarova is a USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon best-selling author. She’s an entrepreneur and consultant with extensive experience in online businesses and publishing and has been in business for over 12 years. Kris has written more than 20 books and publishing is very close to her heart. Kris and I are also working on some projects together as well. Here, she shares her wisdom about how to maximize your chances of your own book becoming a best-seller on an ongoing basis. It’s one thing to hit the top of the charts and head right back down to zero, but ideally, we want to stay there at the top over time.
When Kris put her first book on Amazon, she realized how powerful publishing is. Receiving emails from all over the world from her readers who got results is something she cherishes. Today, she primarily serves two types of clients: entrepreneurs and people looking to develop top management consulting skills. Amazon has become a sort of resume potential clients check and through publishing books, you can establish yourself as an authority figure. Kris provides her best tips on where to start if you’re looking to make your book a success. We also discuss what to include in your book, how updating your book helps sustain growth, and the type of content to include in your book to provide the most value.
What’s Inside:
- How Kris became a best-selling author and authority in her field.
- How updating your book helps you sustain growth.
- What types of book content provide the most value for readers.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
29 Steps to "Outsource" Your Book
Brynne Tillman is the CEO of Social Sales Link which helps sales professionals have better sales conversations through the power of LinkedIn. Brynne’s been in sales since she graduated college and she says she became a LinkedIn expert by accident. Although she loved the problem-solving aspects of sales, she didn’t like cold calling. Brynne dreamed of having access to her clients’ Rolodex and today, LinkedIn can provide the same information. For the last 12 years, she’s been teaching folks how to use LinkedIn for business development.
There’s no cheating in sales and it takes a lot of hard work. However, by using the right LinkedIn strategy, you can make the process easier. Brynne shares her recommendations on how to use LinkedIn if you’re an author just starting out. Your branding as an author is super important and your LinkedIn page should have the right graphics and links. If you’re brand new to LinkedIn, start with your existing connections and go from there. Brynne and I discuss who LinkedIn is and isn’t for, why you should create an email list on the side, why you shouldn’t automate or schedule LinkedIn posts, and more.
What’s Inside:
- How to structure your LinkedIn page as an author.
- How to start networking on LinkedIn.
- Why having an email list is important.
- Why automating LinkedIn posts is a bad idea.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Social Sales Link
Sarah Jolley Jarvis specializes in helping people build the businesses of their dreams on their own terms. She’s an international best-selling author and a multi-six-figure business owner and she’s an expert on turning your passion into profits. Sarah started her career in medical device sales about 17 years ago in the UK and learned a lot about selling and building relationships. After the birth of her first child, she realized she couldn’t go back to her original job while raising a family. Sarah then decided to dip her toes in the online business world and today, she continues to help clients excel in sales and marketing.
It's easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day tasks of our business and we lose sight of the bigger picture. No one wants to be the best-kept secret in their niche and Sarah shows her clients how to get in front of their ideal audience. Many of us authors write our books in the hopes we won’t have to be sleazy with sales, but there are ways to sell ethically and still be successful. In her book, Selling Without Sleaze, Sarah explains why finding your ideal client makes sales authentic and genuine. We talk about why mindset is important in sales, how to identify your target audience, how to set and advertise your pricing, and what to cover on a client discovery call.
What’s Inside:
- Why sales and marketing don’t have to be sleazy
- How to find your target audience and client base
- How to set the price for your products and services
- How to structure a discovery call
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Selling Without Sleaze - Book
Troy Broussard is my mentor, friend, and coach. I use several of his amazing software products. Troy is a prolific content and offers creator and here, we’re talking about how to create great things from the back end of your book. Troy’s services make me look like a champ to my clients, and his RedirectMe.io platform has been a game changer. We get into the benefit of QR codes and how they could help you capture more leads. We also talk about how to use Amazon and whether or not it’s more beneficial to sell books in more unconventional ways. Technology is advancing at a fast pace and as an author, it’s worth keeping up with the latest trends.
First and foremost, it’s important to know your objective and start with a goal in mind. Staying alive in business should be your goal and it’s no secret that Amazon isn’t going to help you retire early. Troy talks about why it’s important to know your end goal before you even start writing. We discuss what to do if your first book wasn’t written that way and what you might be able to do to turn things around. We also talk about how breaking content up can help you make more sales, the advantages of private book sales, why it’s important to understand your target demographic, and more.
What’s Inside:
- How technology is changing and which tools authors should use to boost sales.
- Why you should start writing a book with an end goal in mind.
- How to break up content to make more sales and elevate your authority and brand.
- The advantages of private book sales.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
RedirectMe.io
Troy Broussard
Sales, marketing, and automation are all things that scare authors, but they’re the fundamentals of building a business from your book. Tim Hyde is a fixer, a Keep Certified Partner, and an authority in these scary topics, which we’re diving into here. After founding one of Australia’s first social media sites, Tim has since moved on to help businesses convert more of the attention they create from their digital marketing efforts. Over the last eight years, he’s worked with more than 1,000 business owners in 36 countries to help them optimize their sales and marketing strategies. He focuses on CRM, sales life cycle, and marketing automation.
Tim found that his clients only had part of the puzzle when it came to attracting attention, and the missing piece was marketing. Writing a book is only part of the customer journey, and we need to move people from one part to the next. When you nurture your readers, you can then turn them into high-ticket clients over time. Tim walks through how he makes marketing less overwhelming for his clients and shares some practical tips you can use in your own business. We also talk about overcoming icky feelings about sales and how to get started if you’re an author who’s brand new to sales.
What’s Inside:
- How Tim helps authors build a sales lifecycle and master marketing.
- Why it’s important to move your readers along on the customer journey.
- How to overcome resistance to selling.
- Where to start if you’re a sales beginner.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
WinMoreClients.com.au
Melanie Benson is an authority brand amplifier for expert-preneurs. She’s also the host of the Amplify Your Success Podcast where she shows you how to stand out in a crowded market and attract high-paying clients and opportunities. Melanie’s been in business for 21 years and has a proven track record of accelerating results for her clients. In fact, it’s not uncommon for them to experience a revenue increase of up to five times in the first six months. As a business coach, Melanie searched for ways to set herself apart from the competition and consistently be seen by clients looking for solutions. After doing some speaking, Melanie launched her podcast which allowed her to share her expertise without being a road warrior.
Podcasting allows you to transform the lives of people you’d never encounter otherwise. Melanie shares tips for authors who want to get into podcasting, and explains the differences between hosting and being a guest. Guesting is a great way to build momentum before launching your own show. Most podcast hosts are looking for authority figures who can provide value for their audience, and if you have a book, you’re ahead of the game. We dive into how to pitch to podcasts and how to choose a topic, which isn’t always the name of your book. Melanie also shares how to structure a “podcast tour” to promote your book or services and why having a plan is important.
What’s Inside:
- How Melanie used podcasting to elevate her business.
- Why being a podcast guest can help you build momentum.
- How to pitch to podcast hosts and choose the right topic.
- How to structure a podcast tour to promote your book.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
MelanieBenson.com/bookprofit
Chris Kyle is a coach, teacher, and e-learning expert. He’s also the founder and CEO of Launch Academy, a deep-dive online training program community to help authors, speakers, and experts create and launch profitable online courses. Chris is the co-author of the number one best-selling book Internet Marketing Secrets. He started as a coach doing one-on-one work with business owners and entrepreneurs and then received a full-time Chief Marketing/Development Officer role through a client where he created courses with some of the world's most well-known teachers. Chris fell in love with the e-learning space and eventually started Launch Academy, which has been his focus over the last several years.
Today, there are so many opportunities for authors to create amazing online courses and teach their passion. Your book is your calling card and what brings you visibility, but it’s often not your primary money maker. Chris recommends that authors shift their mindset from selling books to finding a way to teach the material. Launching a course is a great way to make a ton of money and build a sustainable community and audience along the way. We discuss how and when to launch your online course and how to set up the right system. We also talk about why tech isn’t the most important thing in creating a course, how to step through imposter syndrome, the essential elements of a great online course, and why courses are key in creating a community.
What’s Inside:
- How Chris got into the e-learning space and founded Launch Academy.
- Why authors should shift their mindset and commit to developing a course.
- The myth that tech is the most important component of an online course.
- The essential elements of creating a great course.
- Why courses are key in creating a community around your message.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
ChrisKyle.com/ebook
Dr. Gena Lester is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author and professional speaker. She’s also an educator with over 20 years of experience in college admissions counseling. Dr. Gena helps business owners, coaches, and consultants take their skills into the entrepreneurial world by developing their "uniquely you” formula. Through this formula, her clients develop their passions and become more successful on their journey. After working as an admissions counselor for several years, Dr. Gena was inspired to write her first book, which was geared toward helping the average student. She then moved towards creating a program that was more affordable for families and offered more support than a high school counselor provides.
After experiencing success with her book, Dr. Gena looked for ways to expand her offerings outside of the one-on-one, in-person work she was doing. She then took her signature formula which she outlines in her book and created an online course. She started her business in 2019 and experienced triple growth over the last several years! Dr. Gena shares tips on how to get started if you’re an author looking to develop an online course of your own. We also discuss designing a business around your own personal preferences, how to shift your mindset around competition, and advice for aspiring online course creators.
What’s Inside:
- How Dr. Gena developed a highly successful online course from her first book.
- Where to start when developing a business from your book.
- How to design a business on your own terms.
- Advice for aspiring online course creators.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Education Prep Centers
Since 2015, Paul Brodie has launched 71 consecutive best sellers for his clients through his book launch service. He’s also a best-selling author himself and has written and published several books. Paul lets me pick his brain on making money after the book and has some great advice for authors. He shares his go-to method for doing business with authors, which includes a high-ticket offer. Paul attracts his clients in a number of different ways, including podcasts, websites, summits, books, and referrals. He runs one summit a few times a year and interviews some of his top affiliates. This year, he’s letting his speakers pick the topics to change things up.
Word-of-mouth referrals bring in a ton of business for Paul and he’s always refining his list to keep only the most interested and engaged audience members. Many people stall themselves because they think they need to have a perfect launch right out the gate but done is better than perfect. Your book positions you as a subject matter expert and allow you to leverage your business and your brand. Even though you may not make millions from your first book, selling copies after your speaking gigs can help you make connections with potential clients and a book is way more powerful than a business card. We wrap up by talking about the next steps authors can take to start building out their business.
What’s Inside:
- Different ways to attract clients for high ticket offers with your book.
- How to use your book to build authority.
- Next steps for authors to take to build a business.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
BrodieConsultingGroup.com
Heather Dempsey is a business coach who specializes in emotional health, mindset, and the psychology of business. She focuses on helping introverts, highly sensitive people (HSP), and those struggling with anxiety show up powerfully and comfortably in their businesses by creating radical mindset transformations. Heather and I discuss the roadblocks authors often face after publishing our first books, dealing with imposter syndrome, and not knowing what to do next. She helps her clients carve out a path to public speaking, live coaching, and workshops based on their book, which also uncovers valuable market research.
You can create a whole new business from your book, and completing your book is just the beginning. Many readers will look for more when they’re finished with a book, so offering programs or the next steps can be a game changer. It’s easy for authors to put themselves in the writer box, but the truth is that the audience wants more than words, they want guidance. Authors can use this knowledge to develop offerings to further their credibility, better support their audience, and make a lot of money along the way.
What’s Inside:
- Roadblocks authors face when launching a business from their books.
- How to change your mindset and overcome imposter syndrome.
- Why taking imperfect action is the key to success.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
HeatherADempsey.com
If you need a crash course in publicity, you came to the right place! Jill Lublin is a four-time best-selling author, international speaker, and master publicity expert. She helps authors get book deals and teaches a virtual publicity course. Jill’s books include Guerrilla Publicity and The Profit of Kindness, which went number one in four different categories. “How do I get publicity?” is one of the most common questions authors have, and here, Jill demystifies the process. Jill became a publicity expert out of her own frustrations with getting her message out, as both a businessperson and an author. Today, her system helps authors and entrepreneurs create messages that matter and get out there.
When it comes to getting publicity, it all starts with your message, which should come before your book. You can get started with promoting your work way before your book is finished or published, even if it’s just a simple 500-word blog post. You can start integrating the name of your book in your messaging as well to start getting noticed. Just like growing a garden, publicity for your book should be planned in advance so you can bloom when you’re ready to launch. Whether you’re planning your first book or your 50th, Jill’s tips can help you take your publicity to the next level.
What’s Inside:
- Where to start when setting out to get publicity.
- Why publicity for a book should be planned in advance.
- How to get featured in media outlets.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
JillLublin.com
PublicityCrashCourse.com/FreeGift
Derek Doepker has achieved best-selling author status multiple times. When I first got to know Derek, he helped me with audiobooks, and he’s got an amazing instructional course on them. Derek’s also a rock musician as well as a successful digital entrepreneur and I’m always learning something new from him. He’s got a ton of great tips around email and here, he’s sharing his tips and tricks. Building a business off the back end of our books is a major goal for us authors, and you can take things to the next level with a smart email strategy.
Although you can grow your audience in many different ways, having an email list is one of the best ways to do so. Through an email list, you can keep the relationship going with your readers through personal messages and share upcoming books and product launches. You can even funnel people from your social media into your email list, which can help you stay focused. Derek breaks down list building and list engagement and gives his recommendations on where to start. The frequency and type of communication will be up to you, but Derek shares fundamental principles to help you stay consistent. We also discuss how a solid list can help you make quick cash and test out new concepts.
What’s Inside:
- Why you don’t need a huge audience to have a successful email list
- How to get an email list up and running if you’re just getting started
- How an email list can boost your revenue on demand
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
DerekDoepker.com
International keynote speaker Adam Houlahan specializes in LinkedIn strategies for entrepreneurs. He’s the CEO of a global LinkedIn agency called Prominence Global. Adam hosts one of the world’s largest free online LinkedIn training events with thousands of people registering five times a year. He’s considered to be one of the world’s leading experts in harnessing the power of LinkedIn for business. Adam shares his journey and how he was led to be a powerful authority in the LinkedIn space.
If you have a book but are struggling to connect it with your business, making strategic updates could make a huge difference. You can even do re-releases and have a strategic launch plan and marketing strategy to boost your audience and get more people to purchase. Adam shares the outlets where he prefers to sell his books, as it’s always to your advantage to have your book available on multiple platforms, not just Amazon. Books can be a great way to lead your audience to higher ticket offers, which is something Adam has mastered. Trust and credibility are two of the biggest factors in getting speaking events and taking your business to the next level, and books are one of the best ways to position yourself as a leader.
What’s Inside:
- How Adam came to dominate the LinkedIn space
- How to update your book to better connect it to your business
- How to use your book to lead customers to other offers
- Which types of authors and businesses benefit the most from LinkedIn
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Prominence Global
Darnyelle Harmon is an award-winning CEO that’s moving entrepreneurs to millions. She started on the entrepreneurial path by deciding she was going to be successful and let nothing stand in her way. Darnyelle showed up consistently and fully, doing the work that needed to be done, but she also made sure to take time to rest and reflect, as you can’t pour from an empty cup. Darnyelle is also a motivational speaker, and she developed her coaching program to expand her portfolio to her ideal customers.
Although she’s a multi-passionate entrepreneur, Darnyelle and her team decided to scale back their offerings to focus on a signature offer and complementary products. As business owners, we can do ourselves a disservice by having a wide business model, which means having something for sale in every price range. Instead, it’s much better to hone in on who you really want to serve. Just because you’re new to business doesn’t mean your offers have to be low ticket. Entrepreneurs who make it to the million-dollar mark start with an “I’m already at the top” mindset, which is the key to growth and success. We dive into how to cultivate an abundant mindset, how to price your products as a problem solver, and advice for new authors to get going as entrepreneurs.
What’s Inside:
- Why being a new entrepreneur doesn’t have to mean selling low-ticket products.
- How to cultivate an abundant mindset.
- Why you should base prices on the solution over time spent.
- Tips for authors who want to break into entrepreneurship.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Get To Know Darnyelle
Amy Dix is a two-time international best-selling author, artist, and international motivational speaker. Her company, Authority Speakers Agency books stages for speakers guaranteed. Amy has a fantastic story about how she built her business on the back end of a book and has a lot of wisdom to share. Amy started an event planning company while she was still working a full-time corporate job. She grew it very quickly and wound up selling that company and walked away from the event world for a while. When Amy finally quit her corporate job, she wrote a book and then eventually wrote a second one. The stage is where Amy feels at home and her current business was a natural result of her evolution.
Many authors wonder what it takes to become a speaker, and Amy says it “takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round.” You don’t have to have a bubbly, loud personality to be successful, as many folks have solid speaking careers with a more serious message. When people think about speaking, they usually think about a big stage, but our audiences reside everywhere, and it’s important to be open to all kinds of “stages”. Amy shares tips on what to do to book your first stages, how to profit from speaking engagements, and what makes a good talk.
What’s Inside:
- How to become a speaker if you’re an author.
- How to translate your book’s message to the stage.
- Where to start if you want to book stages.
- How to profit from speaking engagements.
- What makes a good talk.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Authority Speakers Agency
Today I’m with Troy Broussard, my friend and mentor. He’s the creator of multiple SaaS platforms that I use every day. I’m in a coaching program with Troy and he’s also the author of Memoirs of Mastery, which is a monthly book series where the books get sent directly to your house. If you’re just starting a business or trying to build it up, Troy goes through everything you need to know in his series and in this episode, I get to pick his brain and share all of the secrets with you.
Troy shares what he’d do now as a new business owner, looking back after all of his experience and accomplishments. He says that knowing yourself is far more important than following a system. You have to know what you’re good at as well as what you suck at. We tend to lie to ourselves about what we’re capable of, which can get us into trouble. Another tip is to do the one thing you know you’re the best at and finding someone else to help you. Going deep in mastery in your own zone of genius is far more impactful than going wide with tactics.
What’s Inside:
- Why knowing yourself is the key to building businesses.
- The importance of going deep in mastery over going wide with tactics.
- The impact of having discipline and self-awareness.
- What we can learn from having an intern’s mentality.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Memoirs of Mastery
Honorée Corder is back for another session, and this time, we’re talking about what you’d need to do in your first 90 days to launch a successful business venture. Honorée is a strategic book coach who helps professionals and entrepreneurs become authors. She helps them turn their books into multiple income streams by leveraging their education, experience, and knowledge. Honorée is also a best-selling author and runs a very successful mastermind.
Honorée and I discuss what you need to do within your first 90 days of building your business to make sure you’re on top of your game. The first thing to do is to get your mindset in the right place, which could include things like meditation, exercise, and journaling. There are going to be challenges along the way, so the better you take care of yourself, the more energy you’ll have to keep going. Engaging your network is also key during these first days. You’ll want to explore how you can give something valuable to your contacts and ask how you can help them. Honorée shares some great tips for brand-new entrepreneurs as well as seasoned pros looking to create something new.
What’s Inside:
- What you should do in your first 90 days of starting a business venture.
- The importance of a healthy mindset and a strong network.
- How to figure out what to provide to your network to build a mutually beneficial relationship.
- Why you should never come from a place of desperation when tapping into your network.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
HonoreeCorder.com
Rob Kosberg is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author and the founder of Best Seller Publishing. He’s been featured in some of today’s most prestigious publications, podcasts, and media outlets. Through his trademarked program, Publish Promote Profit, Rob helps clients perfect their own professional best-selling book guaranteed. He also teaches them how to use that book to grow their income and impact through speaking engagements, free PR and media, and cutting-edge lead generation strategies. Today, Rob also has several done-for-you services, and he shares some valuable information on how he put together his high-ticket offers.
Some people prefer to learn skills on their own, but many people want to know how to get things done quick and get to the next level. Done-for-you services and programs with guaranteed results help you save time, which is the most important resource we have. Rob gives us insight into how he helps his clients go from non-fiction author to high-ticket entrepreneur. We also chat about the fear of giving too much advice away in a book and why it won’t prevent people from buying your additional offerings. If you’re an author who’s looking for help with using your book to take you to the next level, Rob’s got you covered.
What’s Inside:
- How to create high-ticket offers with guaranteed results for your clients.
- Tips for non-fiction authors on how to break into high-ticket offers.
- How to figure out what programs and products to sell.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Best Seller Publishing
Today, I’m with Greg Mohr who is a former corporate ladder climber, author, and business owner. Throughout his career, he’s owned several businesses, including dry cleaners, storage units, rental properties, and franchises. Greg’s helped hundreds of people invest in a number of different franchise units. We discuss a ton of great stuff here, like how to get into brick-and-mortar ventures from digital and owning versus being an owner-operator.
Greg started his experience with franchises back in high school when he ran a couple of Taco Bells. Eventually, he got his master’s degree and realized that if he wanted to get ahead in the world, the corporate environment wasn’t going to do it. He met some franchise consultants and fell in love with what they did. Today, he helps people go into business themselves and helps make their dreams come true. Greg walks us through the benefits of franchising and the different types you can get involved with. He also shares what you need to know about start-up timeframes, getting a return on your investment, and the best franchise types for digital entrepreneurs. If you want to get in touch with Greg, give him a call at 361-772-6401 or visit his sites below.
What’s Inside:
- The pros and cons of franchising.
- Different types of franchises and how to invest.
- The perfect types of franchises for digital entrepreneurs.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
FranchiseMaven.com
FranchiseMaven.biz
Karen Ferreira is the founder of Get Your Book Illustrations. She helps children’s book authors master the process of writing, creating, publishing, and selling their books by providing all the know-how and expert support they need through online courses, and coaching. Karen joins me today to talk about her high-ticket offers. Her current offering is a group coaching program called Children’s Book Mastery. Included in the program are weekly calls, a Facebook group, and guest speakers. It’s also a full-year program, which she believes enables her to spend enough time to truly help her authors.
Karen shares a behind-the-scenes look at how she created her coaching program, along with how she prices her offers. Having a shared Facebook group is a great way for people to see which questions everyone’s asking, as many people often have the same concerns. It’s also a great way for people to learn from each other. Karen’s program has a rolling admission process, and it doesn’t have a beginning or end, people can jump in at any time. Karen also shares how she funnels people into her coaching program through three-day bootcamps. If you’re interested in building a group program of your own, make sure you check out this episode.
What’s Inside:
- How Karen started her company, Get Your Book Illustrations.
- How Karen created her high-ticket group coaching program.
- Karen’s method for building a pipeline of customers.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Children’s Book Mastery
Karen@Childrensbookmastery.com
Charylle Wolfe helps entrepreneurial couples unleash their combined superpowers so they can position themselves to be business partners while living they're happily ever after. She’s created a high-ticket program called Spouse in the House and here she shares how she came up with her offering and all the important details. Charylle is also running a virtual summit called How to Master Residual Income.
I think Charylle’s program is fantastic because if your personal life isn’t great, chances are your business won’t be so great either. Finding balance and being able to work together as an entrepreneurial couple is the key to success. Charylle was inspired by her own relationship, and she began writing a book because so many people were asking her how she and her husband did it. Part of Charylle’s program includes an assessment of a couple’s strengths so they can learn how they complement each other to help their business grow and thrive. She shares her biggest reasons for creating her high-ticket offer and I think her program has some great advice for not only couples but regular business partnerships as well.
What’s Inside:
- How Charylle began her own entrepreneurial journey and started Spouse in the House.
- Tips on how entrepreneurial couples can leverage each other’s strengths.
- What to do first if you’re considering working with your spouse.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Spouse In The House Program
CharylleWolfe.com
Laura Di Franco is the CEO of Brave Healer Productions, a company that specializes in publishing and business strategies for healers. Laura’s up to some cool stuff, way too much to fit inside this podcast. She has a 30-year background in holistic physical therapy and has been a healer her whole life. Laura has also been writing and publishing her own books for quite some time and published her first book back in 2012. Brave Healer Productions was born in 2016 while she was still running her physical therapy practice. She started helping other healers write their copy and books, assisted them with publishing, and was involved in several complications with other authors.
In January of 2020, Laura launched a number-one Amazon best-seller compilation book and has now published 29 best-selling collaborative books within the healing space. From a high-ticket perspective, Laura quickly created the model that is now a staple in her business. When she ran her first project, she was the lead author of the collaboration. She then proceeded to release several volumes, as she wanted to provide a healing toolkit that would work for a wide audience. Laura’s strategy is a high-ticket program that’s a triple win. It makes her money while giving her other authors recognition, and provides them with a book to sell on their own to turn a profit. She shares how she built her strategy, how she’s scaling her business, and how she’s able to provide huge value for those she works with.
What’s Inside:
- How Laura launched her business and complications with other authors in the healing space.
- Why Laura’s high-ticket strategy is a triple-win.
- How Laura was able to scale her purpose-driven business.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Brave Healer Productions
support@lauradifranco.com
Honorée Corder is a strategic book coach who helps professionals and entrepreneurs become authors. She helps them turn their books into multiple income streams by leveraging their education, experience, and knowledge. Honorée is also a best-selling author, writing 53 books in 39 different languages. After spending decades in masterminds herself, Honorée founded her Empire Builders Mastermind. I personally am a member and I’ve been learning so much from Honorée when it comes to developing my own programs.
Honorée and I chat about what it takes to put together a successful mastermind and how to invite people in, whether they’re peers or clients. Some of the most important things to consider are an outcome and a timeframe. If you’re leading a mastermind, you want to make sure you love the way it’s structured so you’re motivated to keep it going. If you’re hesitant to start a mastermind because you don’t think you’re at a high enough level yet, chances are you have way more knowledge than you think. A great way to dip your toes in mastermind creation is to pick a shorter timeframe and make your program curriculum-based. Selecting the right members is key, so think about putting some kind of application process in place.
What’s Inside:
- How to invite people into your mastermind
- How to structure your mastermind and what to offer to your members
- Why it’s important to have a selection process for your mastermind members
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
HonoreeCorder.com
Best-selling author Derek Doepker went from being a broke valet parker to a successful entrepreneur, selling over 100,000 copies of his book. He did it using free or low-cost marketing strategies and he now shares his method with other authors so they can turn their passion for writing into a thriving business. Derek’s an expert in a lot of things and today, he shares some great information on how you can create a successful business from your own book. We talk about what you should do if you’re just getting started and how to structure your own course and a high-ticket offer.
Any kind of personalized feedback and coaching gives people access to you, which people often want to pay for, especially when you’re an authority in your field. People are more interested in buying a transformation over information and will often pay top dollar for coaching and personalized guidance. When it comes to value, it’s important to know what your audience wants, because it might be different than what you value. If it’s your first time offering a course or coaching and are looking to dip your toes in and get some experience, consider doing a beta run at a discount or in exchange for testimonials. To get in touch with Derek and get a copy of his book, “Why Authors Fail”, head to his website linked below.
What’s Inside:
- Where to start when building a course or offer from your book.
- Ideas on components to include in your high-ticket offer.
- When to consider doing a beta run of your program.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
BestSellerSecrets.com
Paul Brodie is a multi-best-selling author and the CEO of Brodie Consulting Group. He helps people share their stories with a proven system that works through book launch marketing, book publishing, and virtual summits. Paul’s launched over 70 consecutive best-selling books for his clients since 2015. I’m thrilled to have him on so he can share his high-ticket strategy with us. Paul started his book publishing journey after a health scare in 2015 and his story is super inspiring. He then started public speaking and others approached him for advice on how they could get their message out into the world. Paul started coaching and then started offering done-for-you services, including a virtual summit service.
Done-for-you services are great high-ticket offerings because you can guarantee results. Paul offers his clients the chance to position themselves as thought leaders in their industry. It can be easier to sell done-for-you services at a higher price because your potential clients can see the value. When pricing your programs, you have to be confident, but also realize that it will take time to scale. Many people start out coaching first and build content. Then, you can consider repackaging your services. Done-for-you services help you build credibility while getting your clients the results they desire.
What’s Inside:
- How Paul went from publishing his first book to selling high-ticket offerings.
- How to scale towards offering high-ticket services.
- Why done-for-you offerings make great high-ticket programs.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
BCGPublishing.com
Alinka Rutkowska is the CEO of Leaders Press, a USA Today and WSJ best-selling press where she creates books for entrepreneurs from scratch. Alinka then launches the books to bestseller status with a 100% guaranteed rate of success. 172 of the Leaders Press authors have ranked on the nation’s top bestsellers lists. Alinka’s been featured in prestigious publications like Forbes and Entrepreneur magazine. She’s also on a mission to help 10,000 entrepreneurs share their wisdom with the world by 2030.
Alinka got started by self-publishing her own book and the royalties allowed her to quit her corporate job to pursue publishing on a full-time basis. She continued to learn a ton about marketing and eventually launched Leaders Press to share her knowledge with authors, so their work has the highest rate of success. After realizing the value of her services, Alinka transitioned into high-ticket and done-for-you services. She walks through her process from proof of concept to successful venture and shares the lessons learned along the way.
What’s Inside:
- How Alinka started Leaders Press.
- How Alinka developed her own high-ticket offers and done for your services.
- Why you need to believe in your product to be able to sell it.
- Tips for entrepreneurs who want to sell high-ticket programs.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
LeadersPress.com
Melanie Benson is an authority brand amplifier for expert-preneurs. She also hosts the Amplify Your Success Podcast. Melanie specializes in showing her clients how to stand out in crowded markets and how to find high-paying clients and opportunities. In fact, many of her clients achieve three to five times revenue growth after just six months of working with her. Leveraging podcasts as a guest expert is a fantastic way to not only position yourself as an authority in your niche but also to attract clients for your high-ticket offers. Melanie shares her expertise around this topic and has some amazing tips you can put into practice.
In addition to reading your book, your potential clients can hear you or watch you on video through a podcast to get to know you more. Speaking on a podcast can have a similar effect to live speaking engagements. When you are a guest on a reputable podcast, you’re borrowing their audience and benefit from the podcast’s host’s “know, like, and trust” factor. You can even leverage your competitors and support each other by guesting on each other podcasts and highlighting your own specific niches.
What’s Inside:
- How to leverage podcasts as a guest expert and attract clients for high ticket offers.
- How to work with your competition to create wins.
- Tips on how to target podcasts for guesting.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
MelanieBenson.com/BookProfit
Troy Broussard is a prolific author, entrepreneur, software developer, and high-end private coach. He’s also the founder of four SaaS platforms with more on the way. I’m also in his coaching program, full disclosure. What impresses me the most about Troy is that he’s so down to earth, and shares his wisdom, and I thought he’d be the perfect person to discuss high ticket offers with. Troy got his start in writing for back-end sales, and he wrote his first book about it. He delayed writing it and then delayed the publishing process, which he says really cost him. Troy advises anyone who has an idea for a book to just get started.
If you want to create a lucrative revenue stream on the back end, you’ll want to write a thought leader book, a methodology book, or what Troy calls a “positional authority” book. It helps to create your book with the end in mind and “sculpt” the content accordingly. If you’ve already written a book and feel like it was the wrong one, don’t panic – you can use that book as a lead generation tactic or a bonus. Some people feel that holding back content to get people to buy your products but providing people with as much valuable information as possible always leaves them wanting more.
What’s Inside:
- The types of books to write to create a back-end revenue stream.
- Why you need to identify your ideal client.
- The importance of building your reputation before selling a high-ticket offer.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
One of the most interesting things to me is learning how other entrepreneurs think. In my anthology series, The Co-Author Project, we do two to three books per year. We take authors on to contribute chapters and make sure the book hits bestseller on Amazon. They also get attached to the “code” series, which currently has 100 authors across five different books. The beauty of being a contributor to this series is that when one author sends someone to one book, they send them to all five, which is great for exposure. These books get awesome reviews and people love them. They’re like a junior version of “Chicken Soup for the Soul”.
Join me on a 7.5-mile walk as I talk through my updated sales funnel for the latest anthology. I’m sharing my thought process, including my framework for writing copy and the importance of starting out with an origin story. I’ll also go through the three roadblocks to why someone wouldn’t buy into an anthology and how to resolve them. I take you through the four points of creating value in an offer and the value of increasing your status by adding books to your library.
What’s Inside:
- My framework for writing copy for sales funnels
- The three things that block people from participating in anthologies
- The formula I use to evaluate an offer
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Kris Safarova is a best-selling author, recognized by Amazon, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. She’s also the founder and CEO of FIRMSconsulting.com and StrategyTraining.com. Kris began her career as a concert pianist and then moved to South Africa to start her business career. She then started working for Deloitte Consulting and quickly moved up the ranks. Over time, Kris started to feel burned out and unfulfilled, which led her to start up her business. Today, she helps others fulfill their own missions, empowering people with the skills they need to do so.
Kris has two podcast channels that are top-rated in multiple countries. She also created a membership program and the largest online library for strategy and consulting practice building. Kris’ programs contain real, actionable advice that helps people see real results. She also offers coaching and a mastermind program. So many people are stuck in the rat race of an unfulfilling career and Kris provides her clients with the tools they need to be their own boss. She’s got some great tips on how to create summits and high-ticket offers that will wow your audience.
What’s Inside:
- Kris’ journey from concert pianist to successful business owner.
- How Kris created her high-ticket offer.
- What Kris learned from hosting summits.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
FIRMSConsulting.com
StrategyTraining.com
Business coach Heather Dempsey specializes in emotional health, mindset, and the psychology of business. She helps introverts, highly sensitive individuals, and those who struggle with anxiety show up powerfully and comfortably in their work. Many first-time authors get stuck with where to go next after publishing. Heather assists authors with market research in their niches so they can create businesses and become successful public speakers. Writing your book is often just the first step in the journey.
Humans are community creatures that benefit from learning from others and approaching your work with a service mindset makes all the difference. Readers often look for more guidance from authors, but authors can suffer from imposter syndrome which prevents them from developing more content. There’s a ton of fear of rejection and not looking good enough that needs to be addressed. Taking steps from a place of service helps authors develop more confidence, assist their audience, and generate income along the way.
What’s Inside:
* The mindset roadblocks authors experience and how to move beyond them.
* Why vulnerability and a lack of perfection are gifts to your audience.
* Why it’s important to take action, even when you don’t feel ready.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fmHeatherADempsey.com
Lucas Marino is a serial entrepreneur of training businesses. He’s the CEO of Marino Consulting Services and the EAST Partnership. He’s also the co-founder of Honey Do Today Academy. Lucas spent 21 years as a naval engineer in the US Coast Guard and has a doctoral degree in engineering. While he was in the Coast Guard, he was sent on a training assignment, and it was one of the best jobs he’s had throughout his career. In 2018, Lucas retired from the service and began his entrepreneurial journey.
One of the challenges authors face when creating online courses is figuring out how to share their knowledge in a more technical way. Many people without a traditional training background don’t have the time to get into learning management systems and curriculum development. Lucas helps his clients with their launches and how to best position their courses with their existing products through marketing strategies. He shares some great tips for authors looking to jump into course creation and training, especially if it’s your first attempt. Check out Lucas and his businesses in the links below.
What’s Inside:
- What authors need to consider when creating a high-ticket course.
- How to approach course creation to accommodate different learning needs.
- Ideal lengths of time for courses and modules.
- Why taking action is the most important step in course creation.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Marino Training
When I was first starting out and thinking about products to launch, I went to a Jeff Walker live event where he discussed something called a “seed launch”. The idea behind it is you sell the course but create it on the fly. When delivering a course, it’s common to find out that some of the things you’re teaching are things people already understand. You might also find out that you cover some material that people don’t know enough about. The beauty of creating a course on the fly is being able to customize things based on where your students are coming from.
When you sell a course but make it up as you go, you’re getting paid to develop the curriculum. When I ran my first summit course this way, I got amazing feedback, made valuable connections, and sold over $40K in upgrades to my done-for-you services. Creating a course on the fly allows you to restructure your plans in real-time while making money.
What’s Inside:
- How creating a course on the fly allows for a customized learning experience.
- Success stories from my first summit course.
- Advantages of creating on the fly vs. creating a whole course before delivery.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
If you read my book, Book Profit Secrets, chances are you got it from a book funnel. I love to buy from book funnels and enjoy seeing how the author structures everything. It completely changes your concept of price as well. On Amazon, people are looking for the cheapest price among other competing books. When you set up a funnel, there is no competition. This goes back to thinking like a publisher and becoming your own platform by selling on your own site.
Book funnels not only bring people to your book, but they also introduce customers to your other products. There are so many different things you can do with a funnel where you can upsell. Online courses and monthly memberships are both great options. It’s helpful to offer a down-sell option as well for those who aren’t ready to commit to a high-ticket offer. Offering a wide variety of products helps your readers put what they learned in your book into practice. If your funnel is designed right, you can set it on autopilot. Funnels also show potential business partners that you’re an authority in your niche.
What’s Inside:
* Why do book funnels set you apart from the competition?
* Components of a typical book funnel.
* How a book funnel can engage partnerships.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
As Tony Robbins says, success leaves clues. A few years ago, I was determined to figure out how people were seeing massive financial success from their book launches. At my very first virtual summit, I asked people how they made money and the common theme was that they all looked beyond royalties. From the feedback I received, I put together a list of the five pillars of an online business.
Whenever you create a new book or product, it has to be worth your while to fulfill. You also have to grow an audience to be able to sell to, and you can’t go wrong with a traditional email list. Building authority in your niche builds credibility and helps you form strong partnerships with top influencers. Once these foundational pillars are set, it’s time to make sales. There are many ways to sell and it’s important to get over any mental hurdles preventing you from making money.
What’s Inside:
- The five pillars of an online business.
- How to think beyond royalties to build a successful business from your book.
- Why it’s important to clear mental blocks around selling.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
The truth about publishing on Amazon is they can turn off your publishing account at any time. They don’t always give you a clear reason for it. I’m not saying don’t publish on Amazon but being at the mercy of a big corporation is thinking like an author, not a publisher. A publisher would make sure that there are several avenues to get your book out into the world. A publisher mindset is a business owner’s mindset. Taking control of all aspects of your book can make you exponentially more money.
From a strategic point of view, you should be selling your book wherever you can. Although Amazon is a great platform for selling, the royalties are just pennies compared to what you could make elsewhere. Thinking like an author means you’re at the whim of a bigger power. When you think like a publisher, you broaden your horizons and put yourself in the driver’s seat.
What’s Inside:
- Why you should think like a publisher, not an author.
- Why it’s important to think beyond Amazon to sell your book.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Today, I want to talk to you about what I call the “bittersweet symphony. I went to visit my parents in December 2016, fired up my laptop, and found that my first book hit bestseller. It took ten or eleven months of work, self-editing, writing, and more and I made it! I had multiple books in my mind ready to go, and I envisioned bringing in more and more passive income.
But the bittersweet part of the story is, about three weeks later, I checked my royalties, and my heart sank. What I thought was going to be a major amount turned out to be much, much less. If you’ve had a similar experience, you’re not alone. Your book could play any number of roles in your life and business and there are so many ways to earn money. Writing your book is just the beginning of your journey.
What’s Inside:
- Why your book launch is just the beginning of your journey.
- Why you shouldn’t be disappointed in making fewer royalties than you expected.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Jan Koch is the owner of Virtual Summit Mastery. VSM is a leading course that teaches people how to run successful virtual events and it’s my favorite course on the internet. It’s helped students bring their content to countless attendees to their summits. Jan experienced burnout in his former career which led him to become self-employed. The previous owner of VSM taught Jan how to run his own virtual summits which took him to the next level. Today, he helps others stand out from the crowd to see their own massive successes through their own events.
The opportunities that come after the event are often better than the summit itself. The partnerships formed can become life-long relationships that can skyrocket your business. Virtual summits do take a lot of work, so if you’re planning on hosting a large one, it may help to have a team helping you. It’s important to think about the future years ahead when you’re planning your summit, as it can completely change your trajectory.
What’s Inside:
- Tips for planning your first virtual summit.
- Technology to use to set your summit up for success.
- Upselling products through virtual summits.
- Why you should build relationships before you need them.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Virtual Summit Mastery
VSM on YouTube
Virtual Summit Mastery Podcast
COO of Real Fast Publications, Anthony Hall, creates email campaigns that are responsible for over seven figures in sales. He started over five years ago in a support desk role and was given more responsibilities until he eventually landed in his current position. One of the biggest tasks in his role is email marketing, which he loves because he gets to see the ROI and it forces him to continue to develop his writing skills. He’s an expert on being concise and compelling and he shares why email marketing is so important.
Email is such a huge part of your post-book business strategies and it’s not emphasized enough. Offering free resources to potential customers is a great way to keep them engaged and provide value. It’s important to make your campaigns fun, informative, and educational. Make sure you write as personalized as possible and keep your readers in mind as you’re creating. Anthony’s strategy on how to write an email campaign offers some great tips no matter where you are on your book and business journey.
What’s Inside:
- Why email marketing is a key component of any business.
- Anthony’s email marketing strategy tips.
- Why you should offer free resources as a part of your email marketing plan.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
DanielHallWebinars.com/freebonus
Alex Strathdee is an Amazon ads expert. He married his passion for books with technology to create his company, Advanced Amazon Ads. Alex started out as an eager author, under the impression that his book was going to sell tons of copies. He quickly realized that without a game plan, that just doesn’t happen. Alex’s first attempt at running ads on Amazon didn’t turn out so well. He wound up working with someone who was more of an expert and learned as much as he could about the process. He also noticed that there was a lack of affordable ad services for authors and so he decided to start his business. Through word-of-mouth marketing, Alex now manages over 130 accounts. His background in tech allowed him to automate many of his processes to keep his rates in a reasonable price range.
There are many myths about the Amazon algorithm and it’s difficult to optimize your ads without knowing what you’re doing. Alex doesn’t take anyone’s word on what works and what doesn’t, and he puts everything through testing. To be the best in this space, he believes you have to try out things for yourself and do your due diligence. Alex shares some of the ad strategies he uses to make his clients successful so you can put them into practice yourself. If you’re interested in learning more, check out his website below.
What’s Inside:
- Alex’s story of how he got into Amazon ads and why he started his company.
- Facts and myths about Amazon’s algorithm.
- Strategies Alex uses to get his clients results.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fmAdvanced Amazon Ads
Karen is a master of everything related to illustrations. Her passion for illustrating children’s books prompted her to start her own business, Get Your Book Illustrations, in 2016. Her company has grown and now includes a team of ten amazing illustrators. Karen helps indie children’s book authors win during every step of the journey, including writing, publishing, and marketing. She hosted her own virtual summit and is a guest on others as well.
Karen was inspired to do a virtual summit for many reasons. She went in without any major expectations and the results were way better than what she had planned for. Her email list went from a few past clients and connections to a group of potential customers that she was able to market her products and courses. When reaching out to influencers, Karen believes in honest admiration and working with people she resonates with. People can tell when you’re not being sincere so it’s important to be genuine. A virtual summit is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field, and you don’t need top influencers to boost your audience and credibility. Karen saw so much success with her first summit and is excited to offer it again later this year.
If you want to learn more about Karen and illustration, head to her websites linked below.
What’s Inside:
- Why Karen decided to do a virtual summit and how it went.
- Karen’s advice on reaching out to influencers.
- Lessons learned from the first summit and how to improve the next.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
ChildrensBookMastery.com
QUIZ – Which Illustrator Type Is Right For You?
Ted Demopolous has been running his own business for over 30 years. I collaborated with him on a virtual summit that catapulted his business afterward. Ted had been thinking about running a summit for a while, since he’s a pro at product launches. His computer security business is very niche and the speakers he had didn’t have email lists. His opt-in rate wasn’t as high as some others, but his conversion rate and engagement were off the charts. Ted used his first summit as more of a proof of concept and was thrilled with the outcome.
The offerings Ted launched after his summit were very successful and made more money than the summit itself. His customers got to know him better through the summit which helped him sell. The speakers he hosted and the feedback he received also helped him make changes to his course to make it better. Ted has made both good friends and partners through his summit and is looking forward to his next one.
What’s Inside:
- How virtual summits can work for niche businesses.
- How Ted structured his post-summit offerings.
- What worked well and what Ted would do differently at his next summit.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
teddemop.com
International bestselling author Jonathan Green built an island life he enjoys with his family from a consistent stream of passive income. Jonathan’s done multiple virtual summits, including his latest around high ticket offers. He used an innovative three-tier pricing strategy to maximize profits and offer his audience a wide variety of resources. Through using the strategy, he boosted the income of his summit by 40%.
Going after summit speakers who aren’t super-famous but are enthusiastic and great at interviews has worked out well for Jonathan. He’s also shifting towards driving summit attendees to his membership space versus trying to upsell them into something more expensive. Even if you’re just starting out, a small email list can turn into a lucrative audience. Running an evergreen event where you’re reusing content also works, as the chances of getting audience members who notice is unlikely.
Head to the link below to get your free copy of Jonathan’s book, “Give to Get”.
What’s Inside:
- How Jonathan maximized virtual summit profits by using a three-tiered pricing strategy.
- Why the fame of your speakers matters less than the quality of the content.
- How elevating those “below” you can help boost your business.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
GiveToGetFree.com
Doug Pew helps info-marketers launch online courses to their existing email lists through his M.U.S.I.C. framework. Doug is an expert copywriter, and I had the chance to spend time with him during one of his live events. He is a musical composer by trade. After losing his teaching job five years ago, he decided to make a pivot into marketing and copywriting, growing his skills with the help of a mentor. Your copy isn’t as big as the offer itself and it’s more important to get it to the right people at the right time. Sharp writing is a lot like great music in a movie soundtrack. Doug helps marketers “sing the tune” of their ideal audience through the use of smart copy.
Doug’s five-part framework for creating courses and persuasive copy is a great system for authors to monetize their book beyond royalties. From the start, think about what kind of new person you can help your potential customer to become. You’re delivering to them the action steps that they can then apply on their own. Getting to the core of what’s keeping your audience up at night can help you create a brilliant offer. Your course should also have a unique promise that you can deliver that sets you apart from the competition. Connecting the solution you’re offering to your customer’s ideal world is key to making a successful product. The end of your course should be an exciting “call to adventure” that offers students a clear path to where they want to be.
To contact Doug and get a free copy of his eBook, head to the websites below.
What’s Inside:
—Doug’s five-part framework for creating successful digital products.
—Why your copywriting goal should be to “sing your customer’s tune”.
—Questions to ask yourself to test the viability of your product.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Musicofcopywriting.com/work
Musicofcopywriting.com/emailstory
Steve Olsher has been a multi-passionate entrepreneur for over 30 years. He’s the founder and editor in chief of Podcast Magazine and the original founder of Liquor.com. Steve also created the largest Podcast club on Clubhouse (ClubPod) and the New Media Summit. He’s an international keynote speaker and strategic coach who helps businesses of all sizes leverage the power of new media strategies to succeed and grow. Steve’s also the author of the book “What Is Your What,” which is a book that’s near and dear to my heart.
As an author, your book is a way to use your voice in the written word. Using your voice through audio is another way to share your message and generate income beyond book royalties alone. Podcasts and social audio platforms like Clubhouse offer a huge opportunity to monetize your voice and gain credibility. Being a guest on a podcast is an easy way to share your expertise, as the host does the heavy lifting in terms of marketing and promotion. If you’re an engaging guest, you can convert their audience into your own prospects and customers. Relationships are key when getting on someone else’s podcast and can be the difference between chasing opportunities and them coming to you. Social audio is a lot like talk radio in that it’s made up of many different people talking about a variety of topics on different channels. It also gives you the opportunity to speak with others all across the globe. Today, Clubhouse has over ten million users, which makes it a great platform to leverage.
What’s Inside:
-How to monetize your voice through audio media.
-Why being a guest on a podcast is a frictionless path to gaining credibility and generating revenue.
-Social audio explained and why it’s a smart tool to build a following.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
ClubPod
Podcast Magazine
Jake Schmelzer is the founder of Boring Old Business.com and his passion is helping experts create, market, and sell transformational high-ticket offers. We’re in some masterminds together and I personally love his content. He’s also a pastor. A couple of years ago, Jake and his wife started a church. He decided he wanted to bring in an extra $500 a month through a side hustle and started selling content on Amazon. He quickly realized he didn’t want to give away his proprietary information on that platform, so he did some research and created a course. Jake was wildly successful and brought in a half-million dollars from that product in its first year. He, unfortunately, made his business too complex, and it wound up crashing. The biggest lesson he learned was that the boring fundamentals of a business, like marketing and copy, are what ultimately make them sustainable. Today, Jake helps entrepreneurs with these foundational elements of business that are needed for success.
Starting with creating an ideal customer avatar, Jake helps his clients build a winning offer. As creators, many of us wind up giving away too much of ourselves that we can sometimes resent selling. It’s important to package the offer so that it’s transformational for your clients, but also great for you to want to keep delivering. The last thing you want to do is create something and then make everyone want to buy it. You should start with figuring out what your ideal client really needs as a foundation for creating your course. Observe your audience and watch what they do and say in their unguarded moments. Many people get caught up in the details of deliverables when creating a high-ticket offer, but what you’re really selling is the results. Making it as lean and mean as possible actually provides the best experience for your clients.
Jake wraps things up with some great tips on how you can create offers through coaching, courses, and community. Make sure to check out his free resource by clicking the link below.
What’s Inside:
- Why you need to be good at the “boring fundamentals” to have a successful business.
- What components are needed to make a great high-ticket offer?
- How to uncover what your ideal client really wants.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
BoringOldBusiness.com/10k
Daniel Hall is a WSJ and USA Today best-selling author who has extensive knowledge on generating income from public domain works. Daniel started his career by going to nursing school, then law school, but always had a passion for writing and publishing. After becoming unhappy with his law career, he wrote his first book. It became very successful and he was able to learn the whole business of publishing from that experience. Today, Daniel loves working with authors and content creators and his own story prove you can start from anywhere.
Authors are always looking for ways to make money beyond royalties from their original books. Today, using public domain works is a hot topic, but there’s not a lot of clarity around it. Daniel gives us all the details on what public domain content is and isn’t. He also shows how you can repurpose the content and monetize it. One of the most lucrative areas of the public domain with the most opportunity is content created by the US government. Almost everything they put out is up for grabs and covers just about every niche you can think of. The public domain also goes beyond writing. It exists within audio, video, art, music, and so much more. It’s a treasure trove of content on almost every topic. Being a successful author is all about creating quality content for your audience. When you dive into the world of the public domain, the possibilities are endless.
Make sure to check out Daniel’s Federal Green course on how to make public domain content work for you by clicking the link below.
What’s Inside:
- What public domain is and how you can use it to generate passive income.
- How you can use content created by the US Federal government.
- How to know if something is in the public domain.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Daniel Hall on YouTube
Federal Green Course
Derek Doepker went from being a valet driver to a best-selling author. He successfully sold 75,000 books using free or low-cost marketing strategies and he now helps others do the same through workshops, coaching, and retreats. Derek started out with no business or marketing background and a degree in music. After moving to LA, he became a valet driver and started blogging and making content for YouTube about his true passion - fitness. His first attempt at writing and selling a book didn’t go as well as he’d hoped (he sold two books) but Derek continued to study different strategies and got a mentor. Refusing to stop where many hopeful authors throw in the towel, he published the third book and became a number one bestseller in the weight loss category. Since 2013, Derek has been working with authors to help them create their own winning strategies while writing more books along the way.
Derek first got into audiobooks after he realized that many of his potential readers preferred that way of consumption. It’s difficult to convince someone to consume a book or any other type of information in a way they don’t prefer, and he realized that offering audio along with eBooks and traditional print was to his advantage. With today’s technology, you can create your own audiobooks without breaking the bank. If you don’t have the time or prefer to have someone else record your book for you, there are many places that allow you to outsource. There are also many ways to sell audiobooks. Selling them on a site where you only get paid the royalties may not make you as much money as selling them directly on your website. When you have full control over sales, you can bundle an audiobook together with other products, offer discounts, and wind up making more.
Creating an audiobook is leveraging material you already have that adds in a whole new revenue stream. It also allows you to capture a different market segment. Your goal is always to create raving fans of your material and keep them for life. Before writing a new book, take full advantage of monetization by making an audiobook.
What’s Inside:
- Why you should offer an audio version of your book.
- How you can record and create an audiobook on your own.
- How to sell your audiobook through different channels.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Bestsellersecrets.com
Paul Brodie is the author of 18 best-selling books and is an expert on getting published. Through his company, he’s helped launch 49 books for other authors, getting them to bestseller status as well. He’s all about figuring out how to leverage a book and move onto the next level. Creating a foundation around your story helps you build a successful business and elevates you as an authority figure in your niche. Paul started out by writing his own book about his health journey and it changed his life in so many ways. He created a marketing system that got his book to bestseller and inspired him to keep going.
After attending a virtual summit about publishing, Paul bought the premium pass so he could have access to all the content afterward. He learned enough to start building a system on his own and after his own process of testing, implementing, and adjusting, he came up with something that worked. He’s studied over 300 categories of books over the last 5 years and the data is constantly changing. Things adjust and evolve over time and being flexible with your process is the key to hacking algorithms and hitting bestseller status.
Working with people who have a proven system and know what their core values are can really elevate you to the next level in the publishing space. You only have one chance to make a first impression, so you might as well do it right. You are your brand, and your brand is you – communicating your brand clearly is essential and it’s the key to building a successful empire. Being genuine and keeping it real while still being an authority in your niche is magnetizing.
Make sure to head over to Paul’s website linked below to learn more and get a free copy of his book.
What’s Inside:
- How Paul sharing his personal story turned into building an entire company.
- How to structure your book and write it with ease.
- Why it’s important to constantly adjust and evolve when working with systems.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
getpublishedsystem.com
Brian Berni is the co-founder and Head Strategist of BookAds. Through his company, he helps over 150 people every month find success through managing their ads across several platforms to sell more books. He’s an Amazon expert and he’s built an amazing reputation as an author himself of both fiction and non-fiction books. Brian also runs virtual summits to help fiction authors succeed in publishing to turn their passion into a lucrative business.
Brian started self-publishing in 2014 with no experience. He took a basic course and then became hooked. Being around books his entire life, he decided that the next logical step was to try and write and found success publishing under pen names. Everything changed in 2016/2017 when Brian started hearing about Amazon ads. When the platform was first launched, it was rudimentary and extremely easy to use, and he’s watched it grow into what it is today. After realizing how much of an advantage it gave authors, he started his company and began managing ads as a service.
Brian packs so much information in this episode on how you can make ads work for you and how you can set yourself up for success on Amazon. He also shares his experience with running successful virtual summits. If you feel like you could be a good candidate for ads and you’re interested in working with Brian, check out his website below or send him an email directly.
What's Inside:
- How and why Brian started his company, Bookads.com.
- What determines how well a book will do with ads.
- How fiction authors can turn their passion into a business.
- Brian’s experience with running virtual summits.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Bookads.co
Fictionmarketingacademy.com
brian@bookads.co
Danny Iny is the founder and CEO of Mirasee, a company that helps people launch successful online courses. He’s also the author of multiple best-selling books, including “Effortless” and his most recent release, “Online Courses” which is linked below. Danny started his entrepreneurial journey at a young age and stumbled along his path to success. Failing at a business venture and dealing with the financial fallout is also a very emotional experience, much like going through a breakup. It takes time to want to get back out there and start something new, but sometimes the rebound winds up being “the one”. Hitting bottom is a rite of passage, and failure is only failure if it’s the last thing that happens. Otherwise, it’s just a plot twist.
Online courses are a huge opportunity for transformation, and a great companion to a book. Even the biggest authors out there today don’t make most of their money off royalties. The big names generate revenue from things like licensing and speaking. Your book is often a doorway, and not the heavy lever of income or transformation. Books are great at expanding people’s horizons and integration, but a course is much better at imparting competence. A course is the perfect companion to a non-fiction book to go deeper. Two of the biggest mistakes people make when creating a course are thinking of it as an afterthought and thinking that the course should simply be a video version of your book. For a course to carry impactful transformation, it should be highly engaging.
The best way to develop a course is to co-create it with your audience by running a pilot. You can test your ideas before your book comes out, and the feedback you receive can help you both develop a successful course and write the perfect book to go along with it. A good length for a course is four to six weeks and you should focus on the minimum viable outcome. Remember, people are paying you for the years you spent learning the skill you are teaching, not from creating the actual course – it’s the expertise that’s valuable.
What’s Inside:
- Why you should think of your course before writing your book.
- How to create a pilot course to test your idea.
- The three steps in the process of learning and how it can help you create your course.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
www.mirasee.com
Online Courses: A Business Parable About How to Create Freedom by Teaching Your Gift
Greg Rollett is an Emmy award-winning producer, best-selling author, and founder of Ambitious.com where he offers an entire suite of products for entrepreneurs who want to be their best. I am a client of his, so I know first-hand how great he is at driving others to succeed. So many first-time authors get excited about their book launch, selling millions of copies and going to signings at big stores, and then feel let down when they realize that’s not what happens. The best thing to do when writing a book is ask yourself why you’re writing it. Using your book as a tool to grow your business often winds up making you way more money than if you were to only depend on royalties for profit.
Greg wrote his book after doing a bit of a reverse engineering process, realizing his main goal was to get clients to sign up for his done-for-you services. He created several products to educate potential clients while still offering massive value, which then would ultimately funnel his dream clients into his highest ticket offering. When writing a book, it always helps to start with the end in mind. Then, create an offer that is the next logical step for someone after they’ve finished reading your book. Some “low hanging fruit” products that are easy to create are digital or audio versions of your book, companion worksheets or a workbook, or an online course. The sky is the limit here and a little bit of creativity and imagination goes a long way.
Taking care of your customers with personal touches will help you create genuine relationships and raving fans. Greg adds a personal note to an order before it gets shipped out and he also has a text line where customers can ask him questions. Always think of new ways to add value to your audience as you never know when someone will decide to buy from you. People who buy books are great people because they’re seeking out information on how they can improve their lives and want their futures to be better. How you treat people makes all the difference. Treating your audience well from the start sets you up for long-term success with whatever you decide to offer them next.
What’s Inside:
* Why you should start with the end goal in mind when writing your book.
* How to structure your offerings to offset advertising costs.
* How taking care of your customers can create lifelong fans.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fmAmbitious.com
Ben Settle is a marketer, entrepreneur, and author who writes about business, marketing, and selling -- as well as the occasional twisted monster story. He knows a thing or two about what it takes to be highly successful, and it mostly has to do with a simple mindset shift. Thinking about yourself as a publisher instead of an author removes so many limitations and allows you to create and sell whatever you want – the sky (and beyond) is truly the limit. Within traditional publishing deals, you are often bound by what to write and how to write it. When you think and act like a one-man publishing machine, you have ultimate freedom and control over your process.
Part of what makes this mindset so successful is also being able to be a good showman. You don’t have to be the best writer, but you do have to be the best promoter you can be and really sell yourself. Another thing that successful writers and authors do is think like a strategist and not a tactician. If you struggle with strategy and would rather spend your time on writing alone, hire out or align with someone who can help you out.
Lastly, you have to be entertaining. One of the best, most authentic forms of entertainment is storytelling. Stories are a source of high-quality, persuasive communication that can set you apart and show that you’re unique. Some of the most entertaining people are good at what they do because they’re able to take their personality and exaggerate it to become more intriguing. That’s not to say you have to lie or be inauthentic. On the contrary, it’s sort of like making yourself hyper-real. Oftentimes people don’t see who we really are because we hold back. Not everyone will like you, but people do appreciate it when you’re able to say what everyone’s thinking. As a writer, you have the obligation to put your inner dialogue on display. Real-life is always a relevant topic and being able to write about it genuinely will automatically make you more marketable.
What’s Inside:
- Why you should think of yourself as a publisher vs. an author.
- How thinking like a strategist and a showman sets you apart.
- Why storytelling is a powerful form of entertainment.
Mentioned In This Episode:Ray.fm
www.bensettle.com
We’ve all grown up with the phrase “patience is a virtue” being said to us, but that’s not always the case with entrepreneurship. As an author, pricing your book low and then working to make ten thousand dollars per month is a lot of work. People ask me all the time how they can get more eyes on their book when the question should be “how do I get more eyes on me?” Trying to make your book your breadwinner often translates to a long and frustrating road ahead. The same thing with courses – even if your course is priced higher than your book, you still have to sell a lot of courses to make any significant income goals. All of that becomes so much easier when you focus on selling a high-ticket offer instead.
I realized that virtual summits are the best place to launch a high-ticket offer immediately afterwards. That works perfectly for me because I don’t have the patience to stay in my lane and work my way to my income goal slowly. When you have a valuable, in-demand high-ticket offering, you can spend your time getting a few great clients who adore you instead of trying to automate processes in the hopes of generating thousands of book and course sales. Your high-ticket offering helps prove your value, authority, and worth and gets you to your income goals much, much faster.
What’s Inside:
- Why patience isn’t always a virtue as an entrepreneur.
- How a high-ticket offer can get you to your income goals faster than selling books and courses.
- A story about salsa dancing and the “high-ticket” move that changed my dance game.
Mentioned In This Episode:Ray.fm
In a continuation of the last episode’s discussion on high-ticket offers, I’m posing this question: would you rather pay for knowledge or results? Most people would say results, yet most of us wind up buying knowledge in the form of courses and coaching first. We go through what I like to call the “course collection” phase. The problem with courses is that sometimes they can give us an excuse to not start whatever it is we’re looking to get off the ground. It allows our fear to get in the way and delays us from taking action.
A done-for-you program or one with guaranteed results gets us where we want to be quicker than courses or standard coaching, but it also forces accountability. Also, if we’re a coach that provides guaranteed results, we wind up selling more because we’re helping our clients do better. Guaranteed results can come in many forms, like guaranteeing a certain number of people on an email list or reaching a certain level of income. You can structure a high-ticket offer from this principle and make your money at the same time your clients are while you’re helping them. Offering guaranteed results makes you unique in your niche, and when you’re unique, your price stops becoming a factor.
What’s Inside:
- Why buying too many courses can delay progress.
- How to design a program with guaranteed results.
- Why guaranteed results program encourages accountability.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
High-ticket offerings have become such a passion topic for me because of how much success I’ve seen from them. After a recent audit of my first virtual summit, I figured out that I made over 5 figures from premium passes to lifetime access, bonus courses, etc. I felt that my authority level was at an all-time high, so what better time to launch a high-ticket offer? The problem was that I had just launched a lower level offering at the time. I was able to relaunch using the same email sequence and sent it to my current list which now had some new people. Long story short, I wound up making 150% more than the virtual summit itself.
After that first summit, I continued to work with speakers from the summit, promoted their products, and did webinars with them. I made a ton of money in affiliate business, but I had never done a thorough audit of everything to know an exact number. After spending some time with the data, I had, I realized that I had made multiple 6 figures from all efforts related just to that first virtual summit.
A high-ticket offer can really transform your business, especially if you pair it with a virtual summit. I’m also now a huge fan of the descension, or down selling model for offerings. If you lead with your high ticket offer right out of the gate, people who aren’t a fit will fall into your lower-level offerings, allowing you to still make money.
What’s Inside:
- Why your business needs a high ticket offering.
- How to audit your virtual summits.
- Why the descension sales model works for high ticket offers
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Christine Kloser is a transformational author coach, a USA Today and WSJ bestselling author, and an award-winning publisher. She helps professionals and experts fulfill their calling to write and publish their own books that will leave an impact on the world. Christine got into writing and publishing in 2002 by helping her husband with his first book. In 2005, she published her own book, a collection of inspirational stories from women entrepreneurs. Her signature program, “Get Your Book Done”, is based on more than a decade of time-tested and proven processes to make writing your book easier and better than you ever thought possible.
A lack of clarity is the biggest reason why people don’t get started. Instead of getting help, they get caught up in what Christine calls the “author’s merry-go-round”. People get stuck because they’re not asking themselves the right questions. They also get hung up on marketing and publishing before they even know who their ideal reader is. Christine challenges her clients to dig into what kind of transformation they want for themselves, their readers, their businesses, and the world through their writing. Once they have that down, writing the book becomes easy.
Many new authors also try to tackle everything themselves instead of getting help from a coach or expert that can guide them through the process. It’s important to seek out a coach that resonates with you and do not settle for the first person who persuades you. Christine has a one-day virtual event coming up on 10/30 called the Transformational Author Experience. I have more information on my website, and you can get there directly by clicking the first link below.
What’s Inside:
- The 4 questions to ask yourself when you’re finding clarity to write your book
- Why it’s important to choose an author coach that’s a perfect match
- Details about Christine’s upcoming event, the Transformational Author Experience
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Ray.fm/TAE
Christinekloser.com
Eric Van Der Hope is the creator of the Publishing Success Summit and is known for his expertise in digital publishing. Through his work, he has helped thousands of authors get published. Eric became interested in digital publishing in the late 90s and published a few books of his own. He studied some of the leaders in the industry, learned affiliate marketing, and then realized he could make money through his own products and services. Since 2010, he’s been dedicating most of his time to coaching other authors.
Leveraging additional income streams along with selling copies of your book always helps maximize profits. When coming up with your own unique ideas, asking yourself how you can use your book to make money is way more effective than asking how you’d sell a ton of books. Selling coaching or courses that are based off the material in your book often generates more profit than selling books alone. Becoming an author helps you prove your credibility to potential customers and helps you build genuine rapport.
If you’re stuck on which income streams to try, figure out what your passions are and start researching your options. Not all income streams appeal to everyone, for example, an introvert may not feel comfortable being on camera and hosting a digital summit. You also don’t need to be an expert in your niche to write a book. Writing your book then turns you into the expert, due to all your hard work and research that went into getting it published. Being an author makes you an authority that can open many doors to business success.
What’s Inside:
- The top income streams you can create from your book.
- Questions to ask yourself when choosing the right income stream for you.
- How to use your book as a credibility benchmark to generate profit.
Mentioned In This Episode:Ray.fm
Ericvanderhope.com
Eric Van Der Hope on Facebook
Eric Van Der Hope on Twitter
Gundi Gabrielle is a digital nomad and branding expert. As a former conductor and pianist, she once ran her own successful music company. She also went to medical school and became a social entrepreneur, raising money for Doctors Without Borders. After a major crisis, Gundi decided to shift gears in her career and started researching ways to make money online. She fell into self-publishing and wrote her first book on how to build a blog, which did very well and allowed her to begin traveling more. Gundi has since published several books and started Sassy Zen Girl, a community for those who want to develop their business and marketing skills with a fun twist.
Your brand must give you goosebumps before anyone else. If you are in love with your brand and messaging, others will resonate with your style and become loyal fans. It’s also important to choose a niche, and even a sub-niche, to be able to stand out and become an influencer. Storytelling is a powerful tool in branding, as it helps people connect with you and makes you relatable. Being realistic as you’re developing your brand will help ease overwhelm. Many people think they can build out their brands in a week when it really takes time and many adjustments as you go. Branding is always a work in progress.
Becoming a thought leader doesn’t mean that you have to be super-famous with millions of followers. Being a micro-influencer and being known within your niche can translate into a huge success. Once you become an author, you can use your book to connect with others and create a community. Starting a Facebook group is a great way to get to know your readers and it helps them connect with other like-minded people. With social media, you don’t have to be present across all channels. Choosing one or two of your favorites and learning how to grow those platforms is much more manageable. When building an audience on social media, take the time to make genuine connections and grow your following authentically.
What’s Inside:
- 5 ways to build an irresistible personal brand.
- Why it’s important to choose a niche when you’re first starting out.
- Tips for becoming a thought leader in your field.
Mentioned In This Episode:Ray.fm
Influencer Fast Track
Sassyzengirl.com
Dreamclientsonautopilot.com
Cloris Kylie is the author of Beyond Influencer Marketing and is an expert at making long-lasting connections. Collaborating with influencers saved Cloris’ business. After becoming frustrated with creating content and feeling like no one noticed, she started reaching out to influencers in her ideal audience. From there, everything changed. Cloris likes to send a signed copy of her book to influencers to start building relationships with them. If you’re reaching out to someone for the first time and want to collaborate, you’ll want to provide them something of value. Gifting influencers with your book goes beyond them giving you a shout-out on social media. It establishes you as an authority and sets the stage for long-term collaboration.
Aside from your book, you can also leverage your platform to give them value. For example, you can go live with them on Facebook or Instagram or feature them on your podcast or blog. If you’re launching something within your business, you might want to ask them to be a part of it. It’s important to know your long- and short-term objectives before reaching out. Although it’s standard practice for people to build their list up to a certain number before contacting top influencers, that doesn’t always matter. If you can provide value to someone and genuinely nurture a relationship, that’s way more important than how many people are in your audience.
A great next step for a virtual summit or an event where you’re hosting several different influencers is to have a debrief call afterward. This allows you to share feedback and lessons learned and helps connect the group with each other. Cloris offers 1:1 coaching for those interested in taking their networking skills to the next level. For more information about her book and coaching services, her website is linked below. Cloris also offers a free guide on connecting with influencers after you join her email list - be sure to check it out.
What’s Inside:
- How influencer marketing helped Cloris grow her business.
- Ways to provide value to influencers to nurture relationships.
- Why you should let your personality show right away when building connections.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Cloriskylie.com
Author and entrepreneur Cary Richards always knew he wanted to run his own business. He first worked in a corporate setting, spending decades in outside sales. He eventually wanted to try doing something online and got into self-publishing books on Amazon. He was successful but realized that selling books alone wasn’t going to achieve the financial goals he was striving for. After taking several courses and reading many books, Cary stumbled across a concept known as curating bundles. A bundle is essentially material sourced from several experts within a niche, packaged into one product. Cary co-created Infostack, which is a company that does the bundling process extremely well. Along with his partner, Cary was able to scale the business and is now wildly successful.
Each partner that’s featured in an Infostack bundle (or “stack”) provides something of value, and then the product is sold to an email list. Cary begins by compiling lists of people that have relevant content to a particular niche. They’re at the point now where they have so many contributors that cold outreach has significantly decreased. Usually, a stack will have between $1500 and $4000 worth of material included but is sold for much less (around $40). Infostack uses a very short launch period of about a week, which creates urgency and makes a stack an impulse purchase. For contributors, being in a stack can earn them money through an affiliate program and can also build out their own list. Overall reach on any given stack can be anywhere from 350,000 to 1.3 million.
Cary realized that being a curator instead of an expert was very lucrative. For those who resonate with this type of model and want to get started, choose a niche, and start researching the experts in that area. You could also host a virtual summit and offer a bundle to go along with it. When reaching out to folks, being genuine and enthusiastic about who they are and what they do will go a long way. Cary invites anyone who is interested in getting started with their own bundle enterprise to reach out to him directly at cary@infostack.io.
What's Inside:
- Cary’s story and how Infostack was created.
- How being a curator vs. an expert in a niche can make you successful.
- Tips on how to engage and network with influencers.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Ray.fm
Infostack.io
Alinka Rutkowska is the CEO of Leaders Press, a USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling publishing company. Alinka creates books for entrepreneurs from scratch and launches them to bestseller status with an impressive 100% success rate. Leaders Press is a hybrid publishing company and the only one with a sales agreement with Simon & Schuster. A goal of many authors is to maximize their authority in their field and becoming a USA Today the best-selling author is the best you can be.
Alinka turns many of her authors into bestsellers through anthologies. Becoming a USA Today bestseller is a huge undertaking. Every book that makes the list is never there by chance. It always takes an orchestrated effort planned well in advance to get the author to that place. By becoming an author in an anthology, you can spread the cost of using a service like Leaders Press to get the bestseller title. Anthologies, like virtual summits, are a great way to connect with other authors and form strategic partnerships.
A large audience or subscriber list (250K) is the recommended audience for making USA Today's bestseller. It’s all really a numbers game, as the more people you can reach, the more people will buy your book and push you to the top. Another benefit of being in an anthology is that you can share audiences and get closer to that ideal subscriber number together. The USA Today bestseller title opens many doors for authors, and it can be used your entire career. It is way more important to find out who can help you get there versus trying to figure out the “how” by yourself. Learn more about Alinka and Leaders Press here.
What’s Inside:
- How Leaders Press turns authors into bestsellers guaranteed.
- The benefits of being in an anthology and how it can get you on a bestseller list.
- Why the right connections are better than technical knowledge when it comes to making a bestseller.
Honorée Corder is a strategic book coach who helps professionals and entrepreneurs become authors. She’s also the author of 53 best-selling books in several different languages. Honorée wrote her first book in her twenties and built her business from there. One of the main things she helps her clients focus on is making sure the book they write sustains them over the years. The biggest indicator of a book’s success is how well it’s published. There is a huge difference between an indie-published book and a professional book, so it’s well worth your time and money to make sure it’s done right.
After you write your book and you have an audience, they’re going to want to know what else you have. Creating a follow-up workbook or even a course is a great way to start setting up your book business. Along with generating royalty income, books can serve as a foundation to build from. You can also write another book within the same “universe” as your first one to help build out your portfolio.
Building long-term relationships with other authors and entrepreneurs help your business thrive. Connections can help lead to new opportunities and shared audiences. Having a strong email list helps you stay in touch with your audience and getting on the lists of those you admire can help you make new connections. Most authors are just regular people who love to hear from those who were impacted by their work. Providing value for your readers and clients always comes back to you, so don’t be afraid to give.
What's Inside:
- Why spend extra time and money on professional publishing sets you up for long-term success.
- How to create more products and courses from your book to generate additional income.
- How long-term relationships with other entrepreneurs create more business opportunities.
Rob Kosberg is a great friend of mine. He’s an author and the founder of Best Seller Publishing, a company that helps authors promote their books and grow successful businesses. Rob started out in real estate, but after the housing market crashed, he decided to write a book and went all in. He used radio media to promote his book and wound up landing several clients through giving away free copies. Rob still uses this strategy in his business today and has folks simply pay for shipping. This then funnels potential clients into his business where all he has to do is close them.
Books can supercharge your credibility in whatever your field may be. You’ll want to spend some time making sure that you’re writing a book that aligns with your business to attract ideal clients. Knowing what questions your clients have can help you write the book that will answer them, making your book the perfect introduction to you and your business. Once you have a solid funnel in place, the clients will come, and you can lead them into more ways of working with you.
One of the biggest mistakes new authors make is that they think their work is done once their book is finished. They often move on to the next thing before giving their book a chance to make their money through other avenues. Rob helps his clients turn their books into lucrative businesses. His team works with many different authors, each with unique business goals. Learn more about Rob, his business, books, and more by checking out his website below.
What’s Inside:
- How Rob used radio media to promote his book and grow his business.
- How you can use your book to generate leads for a high-ticket offer.
- Why giving away free copies of your book is a great way to land clients.
Navid Moazzez is the founder of Virtual Summit Mastery, a program that I used to create Book Profit School. We all know how popular virtual summits are today, especially for building out your email list, promoting your book, and making solid connections with other influencers. Navid knows exactly what it takes to make your summit a success, even if you’ve never done one before.
A virtual summit allows you to repurpose any content you’ve created inside of it to further promote your brand. Videos can turn into a YouTube channel, or you can use the transcripts to create lead magnets, apps, or even a new book. Running a virtual summit is for everyone, no matter what niche you’re in. There are folks in very specific niches that are the first in their areas to do them and are getting incredible results.
Navid’s Virtual Summit Mastery program offers people a strategy and framework so that you don’t need to be a designer or great with tech to get started. He also has a ton of free resources available on his website (link below).
What’s Inside:
- How you can monetize your virtual summits and use them to create your business.
- Why you should start with the end in mind when creating a summit.
- How you can repurpose your virtual summit content.
Mentioned In This Episode:
ray.fm
Navid Moazzez on LinkedIn
Navid’s Website
Early on, there were many times where I’d hold off on reaching out to someone to make a connection if I didn’t think I was big enough. A lot of people think they need to wait until they have a large audience before they reach out to bigger influencers to try to work with them. If you believe in yourself, decide that you’re worthy of that person’s connection, and treat them with respect, things happen.
The opposite of this is what I like to call the anti-connector. This kind of person will troll comments and reply to emails with snarky messages, and it completely ruins any potential of a future connection. I’ve had people send me a nasty gram and then try to sign up for one of my programs. They’ll reach out to me and say they’re having trouble, and then I will look them up and have a note beside them that reminds me of their past behavior.
The moral of the story is that you don’t want to be an anti connector. People keep track of interactions. If you’re someone who has goals to do virtual summits and grow their business through influencers, being audience-centric is the best way to go.
What’s Inside:
- How to choose which influencers to reach out to based on list size.
- What does an anti-connector look like and how can I avoid being one?
- Why it’s important to pick and choose your customers.
Running ads has always been pushed on authors to drive book sales. There are so many programs out there and coaches who try to sell you on their methods and secrets. Even though there are a lot of great people who can show you how to hack algorithms and other things, they don’t touch on what I think is the best way to win in the long run: building an audience.
Your book should serve the purpose of introducing you and then you should work to build your audience and your email list. When you have a list and send out regular emails, it allows you to move from just a transactional relationship to a more authentic relationship. Emails are great because people can hit reply and interact with you.
When you take the time to connect with your audience, it makes selling that much easier. When people are able to interact with you, whether through a virtual summit, through social media and email, or even in person, you form relationships. Genuine connections can often work out better than buying ads and pitching to a cold audience.
What's Inside:
- Why you should focus on building an audience vs. simply running ads.
- How to use an email list to move from transactional to more genuine relationships with your audience.
- Why you don’t necessarily need a big email list to be successful.
A great way for an author to earn passive income beyond book royalties is through offering a membership. Stu McLaren, the founder of the Tribe program, helps many people each year create and launch successful membership sites. The work involved to get up and running isn’t always as daunting of a task as you may think. In fact, Stu has seen some people launch their programs without websites at all.
Memberships offer readers a chance to continue their journey with an author after they’re finished reading a book. One of the key takeaways Stu offers is that less is more. Sometimes people can get overwhelmed, thinking there’s too much information to pack into a membership. Data shows that people ultimately want results and you accomplish this with less content than you think.
Launching a membership site, unlike publishing a book, is fluid and can be updated over time as you learn. The best thing to do is just get started. Stu’s free guide, Launch A Successful And Profitable Membership Site, is linked here. In it, you’ll find the answers to Stu’s top 10 most common questions about memberships.
What's Inside:
- How you can create a membership with less tech than you may think.
- Why less is more in terms of content in a membership site.
- How membership sites create more opportunities to connect with your audience.
Using affiliates when launching a book can lead to exponential sales. Working with authors and public figures that are within your niche and already familiar with affiliate marketing can translate into a huge success, even if it’s your first time launching. Matt McWilliams has helped several authors through massively successful launches and has a proven roadmap.
Three top strategies for getting started are looking for people who have promoted similar books, reaching out to friends, and reaching out to fans. Since affiliate success is really a numbers game, the more folks you have on your list, the more customers you’re going to get. Some technical tricks when launching with affiliates are making sure you have a back-end offer, getting an opt-in set up, and testing everything pre-launch so that you can eliminate as many hiccups as possible. Offering a lifetime cookie is a great strategy Matt recommends as well.
Make sure to click the link to download Matt’s free report: Your First 100 Affiliates.
What's Inside:
- Matt’s top strategies with using affiliates for a book launch.
- Ins and outs of technical pieces to have in place.
- Why attracting affiliates is a numbers game.
Publishing a book takes a lot more work than simply finishing the manuscript. The world of ranking, getting on a bestseller list, and making sure you’re visible to your people are all important things to consider. The tasks to get there can be overwhelming, but luckily there are resources out there to help you get the job done.
Sierra Melcher, CEO of Red Thread Publishing, helps women write and publish their books, empowering them to get their stories out into the hands of the people who need to hear from them. She sets them up for success by getting them in a prime position to become a bestseller and guiding them through the process. Navigating SEO, choosing the right book categories, and having a solid author page all make a huge difference in terms of ranking. Both Sierra and I know how valuable it can be when you’re able to tap a professional like us to help.
Becoming an author won’t always make you rich from book sales alone, but the credibility you gain when getting your books out there can be a path to other lucrative revenue streams. When people buy your books, they begin to trust you, making books a great way to find coaching clients and more. It all starts with making sure your audience can find you and being positioned as the expert.
What's Inside:
- Tips on how to make Amazon’s bestseller lists.
- Why having an expert’s help can decrease overwhelm.
- How becoming a bestseller can increase your credibility.
Effort makes all the difference when we’re working towards our goals. Henry Ford has a famous quote where he says, “whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right,” and it’s just so true. It seems like there are two kinds of people out there: people who complain about what’s not working and people who know that getting what you want will always take effort.
A good friend of mine recently had great success with a virtual summit, and it’s because he’s a guy who spends more time putting effort into his work than making excuses. We all know people who like to think that they’re failing at what they’re doing, and come up with all kinds of reasons why it’s not worth it. Failures are often subjective as well, and what might seem like a waste of time could actually be a hidden opportunity. The trick is to keep at it and always push ahead.
What’s Inside:
- Why consistent effort is everything.
- A story about a friend’s virtual summit success.
- How a success or failure from your efforts can be subjective.
Qat Wanders is a successful author and editor and knows how to maximize profits. She uses Kindle Unlimited to increase revenue from page reads and to generate reviews for her books. There are pros and cons to listing on Kindle Unlimited, and Qat has a lot of knowledge on what works and what doesn’t.
Qat has written both fiction and nonfiction books, and her strategies with launching vary. Sometimes she will do a pre-order, other times she’ll get the book out there and then wait a while to promote it. She will also tweak her strategy based on pre-order demand, and may hold off on publishing a book altogether if the data shows low interest.
Using different platforms to sell your book can help boost profits. Some genres sell better in different places. The trick to all of this is to not be afraid to experiment until you get it right.
What’s Inside:
- Pros and cons of using Kindle Unlimited.
- Free books and how they can boost reviews.
- How to choose a particular platform for your genre.
Using virtual summits to launch your business or program is a great way to tap into your audience and to find the right partners. Summits can help you build authority in your space, but they also put you in a good place to go ahead and launch something else based on the feedback you receive from the summit itself.
When you host your summit along with other experts in your sphere of influence, you’re basically endorsed by them which furthers your credibility. You also get feedback in real-time from the audience around what they need and what kinds of products they want to see. It eliminates the guessing game when you’re working to come up with something viable.
The beauty of virtual summits is that you don’t even have to know what you’re going to offer next because your audience will guide you. In fact, they’re paying for you to come up with it. Summits can help you go from publishing books as a hobby to launching a business. Once you see the results, you’ll want to do more.
What’s Inside:
- Using virtual summits to grow your audience.
- How partnering with others in your niche builds authority.
- How your audience can provide you with your next product.
Today’s episode covers all the great reasons why you should start doing virtual summits. I share my own story about how I got into them in the first place. I’ll talk about what worked, what didn’t, and what I learned so that you can get an idea of how to set up your own.
When you’re an author trying to build a business around your book, you need three things: proof of concept, your own audience, and connecting with other influencers in your niche. You can invite influencers to speak at your summits and you can also make some decent money through affiliate marketing.
Virtual summits seem like a lot of work upfront, but once you have all of the pieces, you can automate the process. I’ll share some tips on how I automated my own process so you can get up and running and on your way to more income.
What’s Inside:
- My experience with my own virtual summits.
- Three things you need to build a business around your book.
- Working with influencers to build your audience and make more money.
- How to create and automate a virtual summit.
In this bonus episode, I’m going to talk about email lists and why they’re important. The great thing about email lists is that they put your customers and fans all in one place. They’re also algorithm-proof, because we all know that Amazon and Facebook can change how they do things at any time.
There’s a mindset that goes along with building and maintaining an email list, and that’s to be your own best customer. Figure out what your customers would like to see the most in an email and offer them something great in exchange for their email address. Start with the end in mind when you’re building your plan.
Plenty of great tools are out there to help build a great list, and a lot of them are very affordable. I share some of my favorites and talk about the pros and cons. I also talk about ways that can get you set up with a solid list and audience in the fastest way possible.
What’s Inside:
- Why having an email list is so important
- Tools I use to build and maintain my list
- The fastest way to build a high-quality email list
Today’s episode is probably the most important of all, but it will likely be the one that people skip because it sounds too fluffy. I’m going to tell you the number one factor that determines who is going to make money from their book and who isn’t. It comes down to one word - abundance.
I’ve met people with both at all levels. If you have a scarcity mindset, it scares you out of industries that you should be participating in. You feel like you can’t compete so you don’t try. If you’re just starting out and you’ve got a scarcity mindset, that’s going to limit you.
When you have an abundance mindset, you can literally do anything. You won’t let obstacles get in your way and limit you. You should never compare your beginning to somebody else’s middle. Don’t let a fear of failure prevent you from trying. If you’re just starting out, all you have to do is flip that switch in your mind to an abundance mindset and you can do anything.
What's Inside:
- The importance of having an abundance mindset.
- How having a scarcity mindset will limit you.
I could give you a lot of examples of times I’ve turned down things or not bought something because it was just too hard. I click on a link and I can’t see the price without giving them my email address or signing up for a newsletter, so I don’t complete the purchase. If I can't see the price of the thing before you take my email, it's more of a hassle for me to then have to go and unsubscribe, so I’m out.
Consumers have so much choice these days, so it makes sense to give them the easy button. Make it easy for them to buy from you. This means making the decision, the purchase, and the consumption easy for your clients.
On the flip side, you also need to make it easy for yourself. Is it easy to develop? Is it easy to maintain? And is it easy to enjoy? It needs to be worth my while - do I enjoy it and do I profit from it?
Every first attempt is a kind of case study, so you need to get to the second try as soon as possible. Getting to that second try is really one of the keys to making that easy button work for you so, for your first try, done is better than perfect.
You’re not going to be an expert in everything, so knowing when to ask for help is important. If something is outside of your skillset, getting a little help with that is key.
What's Inside:
- The easy button.
- Making the decision, the purchase, and the consumption easy for your clients.
- Making it easy for yourself - easy to develop, easy to maintain, and easy to enjoy.
- Asking for help with things that are outside your skillset.
- Done is better than perfect.
Having a book is your best business card. Being a bestselling author gives you credibility. Having a published book, or better still, two published books, demonstrates your expertise. But writing a book is hard work and can take a lot of time. In this episode, I’m going to talk about how you can use anthologies to get your books out there and onto the bestseller lists.
When somebody reaches out to me and I don't know who they are, I check on Amazon to see if they’ve got a book about what they're talking about. A book is a great way to show your authority. And having two books on Amazon is twice as good, if not ten times as good. A book shows that you have the expertise, but having another book shows you're serious about being an author and expanding your reach.
It’s a chore to write and publish a book. Writing, editing, formatting, making a cover, it all takes time. Then you’ve got to launch it and market your book. But here’s a trick. Join an anthology with other authors, do a fraction of the work, spend a fraction of the money, and get more books in your Amazon library.
Anthologies are also great at making connections. If you co-author an anthology with 30 authors, multiple authors are marketing you every time they talk about the book. You can find people to partner with, people to do webinars with, people to promote your summits. There are so many advantages to connecting with other authors on an anthology.
If you want to host an anthology, it’s critical that you get all your ducks in a row right from the start. Set out expectations, schedule, and who the contact person is, straight off. And be careful who you agree to work with. If an author is both inexperienced and money-driven, it’s a red flag.
You don’t make money on royalties - royalties are practically nil for most books - so don’t get dragged into sharing royalties. It’s a lot of work for very little gain. And be wary of co-authoring with people who want a cut of the royalties. It’s a sign that they just don’t get the purpose of having a book.
Even better than being part of an anthology is being part of an anthology that is one of a series. This massively multiplies the benefits. Now it’s not just your co-authors who are marketing you, but the authors on the other anthologies. Books in a series get more traction on Amazon too, so it’s another win.
Book Profit Secrets brings people together. Join as many anthologies as you can afford to, consider hosting your own anthology, and try to get on an anthology that is part of a series. You’ll gain credibility and visibility and it will really help you to promote your business.
What's Inside:
- Why you should join an anthology.
- How having a book elevates your credibility.
- How co-authoring an anthology builds connections.
- Why you shouldn’t focus on royalties.
Will authoring a book make you independently wealthy? Well, maybe, but mostly likely it won’t. People who tell you that if you “just write a book” you will gain crazy amounts of wealth haven’t been truthful with you. You could potentially earn a lot from writing a book but that is going to take a large investment, especially in ads. There are other, very specific, reasons to write a book. I explore some of them today.
A book is simply not a profit center for your business, nor will it likely become a passive income for you. That being said, your book does play many important roles. The main purpose of authoring a book is to draw people into your world. If you write a book, you become the authority on a topic, and multiple books build an even bigger authority. Writing a book establishes credibility, shows your readers that you are an expert, and educates your readers. It’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t going to be a big cash cow for you, but it does open other doors.
Another big reason to write a book is the opportunity for your readers to opt-in to your email list. Once your name is out there as an authority, people will be able to find you and choose to opt-in. Once they are on your list, you can contact them whenever you want to share your message.
One good way to begin getting your name out there as an author and expert is to take part in an anthology. Not only does it get your name out there, but it also adds to the library of books that you’ve authored or coauthored, and people can start finding you.
If you are looking to grow your business, establish yourself as an expert, grow your business, and really get your name out there, then writing a book might be for you. Authoring a book can do all of this and more for you.
What's Inside:
- Why you should consider joining an anthology.
- Will writing a book make you independently wealthy?
- How will writing a book grow your email list and why is that beneficial?