Ep 573: What Makes a Great Offer | Zach Hesterberg Episode Recap
AJV (00:00):
What makes a great offer. If you’re thinking about scaling your high ticket offers, then this is something that you need to think about is what makes people buy, and more importantly, what makes people buy from you. So let’s talk about the elements of what makes a great offer. When you’re thinking about offer structure and the compelling reasons IE the benefits or the payoffs of why people would transact with you. There’s a few things that you need to be thinking about before you begin this endeavor. First and foremost, right? Through all of the, the systems, methodology, methodologies we teach at Brain Builders Group, you need to know what problem do you solve? Who do you solve that problem for? What is the, the root cause of that problem? What is your unique way of solving that problem? IE what we call your message. What is the uniqueness that you provide that only you can provide because it’s you?
AJV (01:05):
And then it, we get to the payoffs, right? That is what we call a brand positioning statement at Brand Boulder’s Group. This particular little section is really about what makes a great offer IEA compelling reason why someone would give you their money in exchange for products or services. And in our language in our brand positioning statement, we call those payoffs, right? What are the results? What’s the destination that people are going to experience as a result of working with you? First, you need to know what’s their pain. That’s what we call their problem, right? Once you know that, then categorically speaking, we can talk about how do we solve the problem and what do they get as a result of solving that problem. Those are benefits. IE that’s the offer. Now, if we wanna talk about this, categorically speaking, at a very, very, very high level, there are four primary quote unquote offers that all people want, and the benefits or the payoffs can come in a variety of thousand different shades, right?
AJV (02:14):
If we think about this in one of the analogies we use, like, there’s only three primary colors in the color wheel. However, from those three primary colors, there are thousands of shades of those colors, right? You can have red, or you can have rose or magenta or fuchsia, right? There’s all, or violet, all these different shades by combining the colors. What we’re talking right now is at a very high level, what are probably four of the biggest reasons that people would buy from you, right? And here they are. They want better health, they want better relationships, they want more money, or they want more time. So, categorically speaking, when you think about what makes a great offer, you have to know the human desires and most realms are gonna fit into, and this is in, you know, industrialized countries here, okay? But those are, those are the four main categories.
AJV (03:13):
I want better health, better relationships, more time, more money. So if we know that those are the high levels, then you can literally, categorically stick all the payoffs and benefits in those, right? If people are going well, I just, you know, I just, I want my I don’t wanna exchange time for money, right? Like, I hear that all the time. I wanna figure out how do I make money while I sleep, right? Ultimately, you’re saying I want more money, but more, you’re really saying, I want more time. All right? I don’t wanna exchange time for money, right? When people are going, I just, you know, I wish I had better communication. What are you really saying? I want better relationships. Also, probably I want more time ’cause I’m spending too much time trying to fix relationships or explain myself because my communication isn’t very good.
AJV (03:59):
If you’re a leadership coach, right? People don’t want leadership. What do they want, right? They, they want a trusted person that they can follow. They want better communication. They want better training, better results, more accountability, right? These are all the things, right? Those all fall underneath these high level four things. It’s, well, better relationships, better health, more time, more money, right? And the best offers, right? I the best benefits, right? The best things we can do for people are have a combination of offering several of those things, right? And so it’s not just one of them, but it’s how do they connect, right? By having more time, well, you have better health and better relationships probably by having better health. Will you have more time and better relationships and more money? Probably right now, more money doesn’t mean better relationships or better health or more time, right?
AJV (05:03):
That one doesn’t necessarily work that way. It can, right? More money can give you more time, but more money can also give you less time, right? But a lot of these we wanna share is how do these high level categorical human desires relate to what we can, what we can offer people, right? Are people looking for more notoriety, more credibility more influence? They all fit underneath one of these high level four categories of what makes a great offer. What you have to figure out is what are the shades of those human desires? And what does your audience want that you can deliver on? ’cause If we know, if it’s relationships, health, time, and money, then underneath that we just have to go, what’s the particular nuance, the shade of that color that my audience wants, that I can provide to them? Them. A quick example in the, in the world of brand builders group, right?
AJV (06:01):
The problem that we solve for people is obscurity. Now why are they obscure? It’s because they’re distracted. They’re trying to do too many things all at the same time, right? We believe that focus is power, and that diluted focus gets diluted results. So why are people obscure? It’s because they’re doing too many things and they haven’t become known for any one good thing. The message that we have is simple. Teach people what you know, right? Give it all away for free, right? Tell ’em everything you know, but then charge for the how, but it simply teach what you know, the uniqueness and how we do that is through the lens of service and our payoffs, our trust, influence, impact, notoriety, money, time, right? Legacy. Those are the payoffs. And much of those, again, fit up underneath that. So, although none of our payoffs are necessarily just more money or just more time, it’s like they’re all nuanced underneath that influence has to do with relationships, right?
AJV (07:09):
Impact has to do with time and relationships. Notoriety has to do with time, money and relationships. They’re all nuanced underneath there. And so if you’re having a struggle of going, like, what’s the offer I’m really trying to make? Then by taking it up 10,000 feet and looking at these in a, you know, four, four main categories that’ll help you go through a a underneath the health category. What are the payoffs I provide underneath the relationships category? What are the payoffs I provide underneath time? What do I provide underneath money? What do I provide? That doesn’t mean you have to do all four. It’s pick and choose based on who you serve, what audience you serve, what problem you solve, and the unique way in that you solve it, right? But I think what what happens to a lot of us is we get caught up in all the details of what the offer is actually about, and such as it includes this many course hours, this many calls a month, this many, this, that, many that, and we get this long laundry list of all the stuff it includes and we forget that’s, that, that is the vehicle of how we get there.
AJV (08:19):
But people don’t buy the vehicle, they buy the destination, right? If I’m going to take an exotic trip to Bali, right? I’m not signing up for the 23 hour plane ride and three layovers, and that’s not what I’m signing up for, right? That’s what I have to do to get there. But I am signing up for Bali, right? I’m signing up for palm trees and clear waters and relaxation and peace and sun and beauty and nature. That’s the destination, right? Those are the benefits, those are the payoffs. But I’m gonna have to go through some,
AJV (08:55):
You know, potentially middle seat, long flights, long layovers too many baggage fees. That’s, that’s the vehicle to get there. Don’t focus on the vehicle. Focus on the destination. That’s the benefit, that’s the payoff, and that is what makes a great offer.
Ep 567: 4 Steps to Sell a Lot of Books | Mike Thomas Episode Recap
RV (00:02):
Let’s talk about four simple steps that you can use to sell a lot of books. And obviously I am, have been working at this a lot for a long time, became a New York Times bestselling author when I was 29. Have written two traditionally published books as of this, this moment two self-published books and have a, my first hybrid published book coming out that I’m co-authoring with my wife and business partner AJ here next year. And so we’ve been around this world a long time. We’ve also helped 56 authors at the time of this recording to become national bestselling authors, including 10 clients of ours who have become New York Times bestselling authors in the last year alone. So we have spent a lot of time in and among this world, and one of our formal curriculums at Brand Builders Group is called Bestseller Launch Plan, where we talk about how to launch a book and more specifically like everything that should happen when you’re pre-selling a book.
RV (01:04):
And that’s where most of the, the success has come for our clients. But today I’m gonna walk you through a four step process that I think is a great, a fantastic long tail sales strategy. And this came from an interview that I just did with my new friend Mike Thomas. So Mike is the author of this children’s book series called The Secret of the Hidden Scrolls. And my son Jasper devoured this nine book series multiple times. And I had become friends with Mike and interviewed him of course recently on our podcast. And Mike was walking through the story of how he sold 650,000 copies of this, of, of this, these books when he started as a self-published author. And there’s four, there’s four steps that he followed, which mimic four steps that I’ve seen be successful, that we’ve seen be successful, that we’ve done ourselves, that I wanna just sort of share with you to kind of recap part of what he was saying, but also generalize what he was saying to go, this is how it applies to anybody.
RV (02:17):
So first of all, what’s step one? So step number one is simple. Step one is you have to market test. You have to market test. What that means is word of mouth is always the best long tail marketing strategy that’s true for anything. So how do you get, how do you ensure that you get word of mouth for a new product? Like, how do you know if the product’s gonna get word of mouth when you’re just releasing the product? And the, the, the simple answer is you test it. This is, you do market tests, you do experimentations with the content, or if it was a physical product, right? Like these are market
RV (02:59):
Research groups where you, you give people early access to the product so that you can get their feedback from real people and go, alright, how do I have to take their feedback and adapt it in a way so that I can incorporate it into my product? So that going forward, it’s going, it’s gonna be much more likely to propagate because I’ve already solved the big issues that people have upfront. Well, authors have a unique advantage in this particular area. Now, the way that Mike told his story was that he actually wrote the book and then he went out and he started reading it in schools, and it was kids’ books, right? So he went out to his son’s school and was like reading the book in the classroom and getting feedback. And so he did that. Well that’s one way to do it, is to actually write the book and then go out and, and and, and circulate it and get feedback on it.
RV (03:50):
But the other way to do it is the way that we teach at Brand Builders Group, which is one of our, one of our mantras that we tell authors is that a book should never be a hypothesis. A book should be a conclusion. Writing a book shouldn’t be a hypothesis. Writing a book should be a conclusion. What does that mean? It means that I don’t write a new book when I have an a new idea that I want to share with the world. I write a new book after I have had an idea. I have shared it with the world. I’ve sold it to the world. I’ve tested it, I’ve gotten feedback, I’ve adapted it, I’ve molded it, I’ve shaped it. I’ve re re-edited it, re-presented it, retested it, reshaped it, and, and done that several times to where it’s like, ah, now I have a finished thing and that’s what I’m gonna deliver to the world.
RV (04:41):
And I go, I know it’s phenomenal before I release it because I already tested it. That’s what great writing should be. It’s going, I’m not testing out my ideas in a book. I’m testing my ideas out through speaking and coaching and consulting and training and you know, whatever video courses and membership sites and, and what whatever, whatever your business model is, I’m, I’m testing the content out with customers first. My existing, my preexisting customers, my past customers, my past readers, and I’m testing those concepts first, and then I’m getting feedback from them. And then I’m incorporating that into the manuscript that then becomes a book. And if you look at, you know, my journey as an author, it’s, it’s pretty unusual that someone becomes a New York Times bestselling author with their first book, right? And that’s something that we did in 2012 when my first book Take The Stairs came out on the surface.
RV (05:41):
It’s like, whoa, a 29-year-old first time author hit the New York Times. What an anomaly. And, and yes, it is an anomaly, but the true story for how we did that was that book came out in 2012. I had been speaking professionally on the concepts around Take the Stairs and the psychology of overcoming procrastination and creative avoidance and prior to dilution and the Buffalo Story, that is the flagship story that now lots of people on the internet use, but that I am the original author of. I had been speaking like the Buffalo story. I have been telling that Buffalo story from stage since 2004, right? So eight full years before it ever appeared in the book. I was building my career on it. I was getting feedback on it. It it started as an internal training that I led for a little team that I was running in college.
RV (06:36):
And I got so much great feedback that, that that became a signature story of my speaking. And that came part of our coaching program and, and part of our curriculum and, and so many people it got, you know, shaped and refined. And then it landed in a book one day that we wrote actually in 2010, and then was published and, and hits the New York Times Bestseller list in 2012. That’s an example of a story that I created years before that was tested and shaped and molded and adapted. And then when people read it, it was not a hypothesis, it was a conclusion. It’s the same thing when I go out and speak, right? I don’t when people pay me to speak, I’m not trying out new content on that stage. I’m delivering content that I have tested many times before in front of other groups or on social media or webinars or, you know, and when I first started, it was in comedy clubs and Toastmaster groups.
RV (07:28):
I built my first keynotes speaking to those audiences for free so that by the time I got in front of an audience where someone had paid me to be there, I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t afraid that it wasn’t gonna be good. I knew it was gonna be a home run. I knew because it wasn’t the first time I was giving it, it had been tested. And that is what creates word of mouth is market testing is to go, don’t make it a hypothesis. Make it a conclusion. And too many people, you know, there’s this old saying that says a lot of authors have read have written more books than they’ve read
RV (08:14):
And that’s, it’s not impossible that that’s gonna succeed. It’s just way more, less likely. It’s sta statistically exponentially much less likely that that content is gonna succeed. So it starts with market testing. The second step to selling a lot of books is having a single channel focus, right? Having a single channel focus. If you’ve been around brand builders group for any amount of time, if you’ve been in any of our trainings, if you’ve ever heard me on any other podcast, you know that perhaps our most flagship mantra is that if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. And when you launch a book, or when you launch any type of product, you don’t want to do a thousand things that you could do. You want to pick a couple. And typically what we see is the most successful campaigns really focus and really drive on one kind of core strategy that they go, this is the one thing we’re gonna really go all in on.
RV (09:16):
And Mike, you know, he told the whole story in my interview with him about influencer marketing and that influencer marketing was the one thing that he did really, really well. And he went all in on it. It was super tactical. There’s other things that we’ve done. We’ve done big live events with ed Millet was one of our, one of our first clients that we did a big live event with. And we were a part of a team that helped Ed sell 35,634 books in a single day. We replicated something similar to that when we worked with John Maxwell’s team and we sold 11,000 units all wrapped around one event. That was one evening, it was a few in a few hours between the people who bought on the way in and then the people who bought that night. Those are huge numbers that, that are the result of a lot of focus on one specific thing.
RV (10:06):
So when we teach our bestseller launch plan, like our formal, our curriculum, our formal in inside of our formal program, we talk about how there’s really only five main mechanisms that, that anybody can use to significantly move a lot of books. But in the interview, Mike and I go deep on influencer marketing and, and I think part of why he was successful is he really mastered one. He really said, I’m gonna do this one thing really well, if you not just wanna sell books, but if you wanna sell anything, it’s going have one thing that you do really, really, really, really well that you perfect, rather than trying to have 50 different marketing strategies that you execute in mediocre fashion. And that’s a, that’s just a common, you know mistake that we see a lot of people do. Number three, give the product away.
RV (10:59):
Give the product away whether it’s a product or a service. This is a consistent trait, a consistent pattern. A a a consistent theme that we see among books that take off and products that take off, and companies that scale is you give a lot of product away. You give it away because you need people using it more than you need money, more than you need sales early on. You need a lot of people who have used the product in this specific case, a lot of people who have read the book. So you want to give it away. And that’s, Mike tells this story about how he did influencer marketing by giving the book to influencers and going, Hey, he, I wanna send it to you. Yes, that takes time. Yes, that takes money. Yes, it is a risk. Although if you’ve done your market testing, it’s not a huge risk because you know that they’re likely gonna love the product by the time they get it because you’ve already done the testing, you’ve already worked out the kinks, now you’re into marketing mode and you go, I need people to consume this.
RV (12:04):
And this is true for building your personal brand in general, is to go, the reason we put out so much content on social and blogs and podcasts is going, I want people to be able to experience me and and us at Brand Builders Group for free. I want them to be able to te test us to, to try it. You know, we use the analogy of chicken on a stick a lot of times because that’s like when you go to the food court, you know, or you go through Whole Foods, you go to the grocery store when they’re launching a new product, what are they good? They give you a free bite of the food that, because you need to taste it, you need experience it, and when you do, you’re more likely to talk about it and share it and buy it and promote it.
RV (12:44):
And, and people need that same thing for you. So if you’re just getting started, you need to spend some time thinking about how can I give my product away for free? How can I give my service away for free? How can I give my ideas away for free so that lots of people can get exposed to them, get a, a taste of them, get to sample them. The amount of sales that you make are gonna be directly proportionate to the number of people who have e experienced your product or service. And with a book, especially early on, it’s like you gotta have lots of people with, with, with getting lots of copies. And so, you know, now these days at this stage in my career, we don’t usually just give away a book to everybody, but we usually will do something in our launch strategy, which is like, if you buy one, we’ll give you one so that they can give it away.
RV (13:35):
And we call those trust soldiers around Brand Builders Group is is giving your customers or your fans giving them an asset that they can share with their friends for free. And you heard that in Mike’s story. Again, if you haven’t, if you didn’t hear that podcast, go listen to that to that podcast. You’re gonna want to check it out. And then the fourth thing is give people an incentive to share it with their friends and, and, and with their audience, which is kind of what I was just talking about. So, you know, step three is you’re giving the product away, but step four is give them an incentive to share your product or service with their audience. Specifically with books we’re going, okay, I’m gonna give you a book to share with a friend, or I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you free chapters that you can read or free chapters that you can send to somebody. In Mike’s case with influencer marketing, what he did that was so simple, so powerful, so effective was after he gave away a copy of the book, he said, Hey, would you like me to give you a few more books that you could do as a giveaway to your community? What a brilliant, simple strategy that is, is like worth its weight in gold
RV (14:51):
For the promotion to go. He’s gonna give away a handful of books here which will cost him, you know, tens of dollars, it will be dozens of dollars, and yet he’s gonna likely drive hundreds, if not thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars in sales that will result from the promotion and the exposure of everybody seeing someone talk about that product. So that is so smart that he’s creating that incentive. What incentives can you create for the people who are buying your product to you know, use the product, share the pro product, promote the product. So you’re not only just giving them one, you’re also creating incentives for them to share with other people and making it easy for them to say yes to sharing what you do. So those are four strategies that I think especially work well once a book is out and part of the long tail launch.
RV (15:47):
Now, if you wanna learn how to launch your book and, and really have a massive book launch knowing that over 90% of the books that hit the New York Times hit the first week, the book comes out, that’s a data point that our data science team figured out. And part of why, how we have reversed engineered so many best seller launches is because we have an entire pre-launch system. If any point you wanna learn that system, you can either, if you’re watching this, if you’re watching this on Instagram, just type the word call down below and you can, you can request a call with someone on our team and they’ll talk to you about it. If you are watching this on YouTube, just click the link near or around this video and we will set you up with a free call with one of our strategists to share with you what that process looks like.
RV (16:36):
And if you’re listening to this on the podcast, just go to free brand call.com/podcast, free brand call.com/podcast and you can request a call with our team and they can introduce you to the system and start walking you through a bestseller launch plan. But there you have it. There’s four ideas four steps that you can do to sell a lot of books. First market testing. Test your product, test your feedback. Test test the content before you go out in full, full promotion. Mode. Two, have a single channel focus. Have one strategy that you’re gonna be absolutely sure you’re gonna go all in on making sure it works. Number three, give it away so that people can sample it and test it for free. And number four, give people incentives to share it with their audience, to share it with their friends and family. Do those four things and you are gonna have a book that is going to take off sooner or later. That’s it on this edition of the Influential Personal Brand podcast. Keep coming back for more. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 566: How I Sold 650k Books with One Strategy with Mike Thomas
RV (00:02):
Well, something very unexpected happened in my journey a couple years ago. I was reading a book to my son Jasper, and as we do often, almost every night, we read books to him. And I had this epiphany that all these kids’ books are crap. And a few weeks later, God hit me with a download where I went and wrote a kid’s book that is called Be the Buffalo. And I wrote that entire book in about 45 minutes. And I never, ever expected to be an author in the first place. Definitely never expected to be a children’s book author. And lo and behold, here I am now a children’s author. And so I am suddenly curious about children’s books and how do you write them? How do you sell them? And then recently I was every year we host this I co-host this, this bestselling author meetup with Donald Miller and Mike Malowitz and our, our late friend John Ruland and John Gordon and several other people.
RV (01:04):
And the, it’s not a ticket you can buy there’s lots of people who want to come to this, but it is an invite only event, and the only way you get invited is based on your actual book sales. And so we researched these you know, potential people to come so that we have real colleagues and no one’s making money from it. We’re all sharing collaboratively. And that is where I met Mike Thomas, who you are about to meet. And I have become enamored and fascinated with Mike J. Thomas specifically. My, my son has become enamored and fascinated with Mike Thomas. So Mike is the author of a children books, a children’s book series that if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see me holding it up. It’s called The Secret of the Hidden Scrolls. And it is a time travel adventure series that helps kids explore the Bible and grow in their faith.
RV (02:02):
And Mike, this, this series has sold over 650,000 copies. It grows every single year. Mike recently signed a deal with Harper Collins and Zander Kids to expand the series. He’s got experience both traditional publishing and self-publishing. And Jasper bugs me on a nightly basis. I’m not kidding. Jasper has read this whole series three times, like through every book cover to cover three times. And he always asks me, he’s like, when is your friend gonna write another book? When is your friend gonna write another book? And so I I was like, Mike, is there any chance that we could have you come on the podcast, hear your story? Mike also is a, has got a lot of experience in marketing and helping other authors to sell more books without having lots of, you know, social media followers and not having a huge email list or a huge ad budget. And he was a president and chief marketing officer of an educational fundraising company. So, anyways, it was all of those things that made me say, we gotta get Mike on the show. Mike’s been so gracious to Jasper and me and now to you coming to share his wisdom. So Mike, welcome to the show, my friend.
MT (03:13):
Well, Rory, thank you for having me. It is a joy to talk to you to share this information. And that’s amazing that Jasper’s read it three times. I have to say, that’s probably more than I’ve read the whole series
RV (03:52):
Yeah. So tell me, like, where did the idea come from? I mostly want to hear about like how you marketed and sold it and made it, but Mm-Hmm.
MT (04:03):
The idea came when my son, my youngest son, Peter, was in third grade and he had a book report due, and he went to a Christian school, and I looked through the book report list and I knew he was a reluctant reader, and if he was gonna take the time to read to something, I wanted it to be something interesting to him, something that could help him grow in faith, something that would be fun. And I looked through the book report list and I just couldn’t find it. It was not there. And, and so then I went to Barnes and Noble, I said, well, surely they’ll have it. And I went back and there’s this tons of books for his age group, you know, everything you can imagine. And I couldn’t find it there. And so I went home and told him, and he said, well, why don’t you write it? And I like,
RV (04:50):
Nice
MT (04:51):
MT (05:31):
And I would run into him in the hallway, some of his classmates, and go, when’s the next book coming out? I’m like, I didn’t think of a next book. So I said, well, maybe there’s something to this. And so I wrote another book and another book. I wrote three books. And I self-published those. And what I wanted to make sure was that it worked locally. I wanted to make sure, like I could see that was having the effect that I wanted to have, I wanted to make sure that it was helping kids learn about the Bible grow in faith. And when I saw that, when I saw it actually happen, I was like, okay, this is something I can get behind. This is something, you know, because as an author, sometimes we’re, we’re kind of afraid to be honest, to put our words out there. We’re afraid that it’s not gonna work. We’re afraid that it’s gonna be laughed at or rejected. And so I just kind of had to wait and see if it had the effect that on the reader that I wanted. And once I saw that, I was like, okay, I can get behind this. I can promote it, I can get it out into the world. So that’s kind of the journey. I
RV (06:46):
Love that.
MT (06:47):
And then from that point, it got put picked up from a publisher and I went kind of that, that route and ended up writing nine books in a three year period.
RV (06:57):
Wow. So when you first wrote the books, were they actually, did you have them printed and like bound or was it just like a Word document that you printed out and took into his class to read it?
MT (07:12):
Well, the, the first was just that, I mean, and that was kind of before I edited it and all that. And then I knew a guy I was like, okay, these are chapter books, children’s books. You’re gonna have to have artwork. And so I worked with a guy named Cody, and I said, Hey, you know, here’s the concept. Can you do some art for me? And he did like the original covers and some line drawings for inside the book. And I published them on Amazon, KDP. And I was like, and I knew like kids needed, you know, a physical thing, you know, they needed a real book to hold onto. You know, you can do some digital books for kids, but they just, it, I don’t, I don’t think it has the impact. You know, they’re very tactical, you know, they need something in their hands. So I did on those original three published on Amazon, and that was it,
RV (08:07):
Did they, did they take off right away? Like what did, did you just kind of throw ’em up there and then it was like you had them indexed on Amazon for like Christian early reading or something and it takes off, or
MT (08:17):
Yeah, yeah, it was like Children’s Action and Adventure or Christian Children’s Action Adventure. You know, I wasn’t really good at that point of, you know, how do you talk about it or index it and, you know, categories and things like that. My main thing was I wanted a place that there was a printable book available, and I also bought some of them for myself off of there and put ’em in a local bookstore actually three three local bookstores and two churches had kind of bookstores in their churches. And so I approached them and had them kind of put it in there because I wanted to see, you know, if they didn’t know me, you know, if it was just kind of on a shelf or out there, would someone just buy it? And so
RV (09:02):
You just bought ’em and gave the inventory to the stores to try and sell?
MT (09:06):
Yes.
RV (09:07):
Interesting. So you, and you just gave ’em like, whatever, like five or 10 copies or something to just
MT (09:13):
Yeah, yeah. And I said, here, you can have ’em. I don’t want the money. I just wanna make sure that it sells. Because I just knew that if it gets in their hands and they like it, they’re gonna share it, you know, because, you know, what I’ve found is, you know, word of mouth has always been the best way to sell books.
RV (09:37):
Hmm.
MT (09:38):
And if you get your books out into the hands of enough readers that like it, you know, they’re gonna tell others. And so that’s kind of my kind of book marketing philosophy is, you know, word of mouth is the best, has always been the best way to sell books. So whatever tools or strategies you use at the present time is, you know, how do you keep that word of mouth happening? How do you initiate it? How do you kind of stoke it? How do you keep it moving forward?
RV (10:09):
Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So if you look at the, if you look at the techniques or the tactics or the, the, the actions, the actionable things that you took to initially get your book in front of readers, you’ve already talked about a couple. One is, you went and read, you went read the book at schools mm-Hmm.
MT (10:40):
Yeah, those were kind of my, I don’t know. At, at that point I wasn’t really thinking, you know, this is marketing my book or selling my book. At that point, it was more kinda research, you know, it was kind of in the beta thing, feedback, it, it, yeah. It was more about, I wanted to make sure it was a good book and it was gonna do what I wanted to do. And so once I kind of got it there, and then once the publisher kind of picked it up and it was going out into the world, you know, it was going to like Barnes and Noble and different places like that, I was like, okay, now I gotta figure out how to actually market and sell this book. And so at that point, you know, I had a full-time job, and I was basically write, you know, having to write books, edit books, and sell books, and do the full-time job all at the same time. Mm-Hmm.
RV (11:31):
The dream baby, living the, the dream. Oh yeah. It’s so glamorous. It was
MT (11:36):
Absolutely. So
RV (11:37):
You get to wake up at, at 5:00 AM and edit your own books and stay on the on weekends and go speak for free to like, promote your book for, for 10 bucks at the back of the room. It’s so
MT (11:45):
Glamorous. Oh, it’s a beautiful lie. Beautiful lie
RV (11:59):
Books, I did that this morning, by the way. I’m, we’re, we’re writing our first book in 10 years. And I have been doing that every morning for like, weeks. So it’s just, yeah, it, and it’s, there’s something about that 5:00 AM because it’s like, you can just get enough time in before the kids wake up and things get going. Oh yeah. For the day. Oh yeah.
MT (12:16):
No one else is expecting your time at that point. So yeah. So that’s, so when it came to that point, I was like, I kind of dove in to like, what is the best, easiest, quickest way to market a book. And if you, you go to Google, you’re gonna, you know, look at book marketing. I mean, there is an insane amount of advice out there. You know, some of it is decent, you know, some, a lot of it is really kind of gamy to be honest.
RV (13:24):
Cliffhanger, cliffhanger,
MT (13:34):
Cliffhangers are fun in books. The and so it kind of came as epiphany. I was, I saw Gary V had a thing with some rappers, and they were starting off and they’re like, how do I get my music out there? You know, how do I, he is like, look, just get people to hear your music and share it with people. And they’re like, well, how do we do that? And he goes, just get on Instagram. Go to the influencers, DM ’em, reach out to ’em. I was like, okay. And so I saw that and I was like, well, maybe that’s something. So I kind of dove into that a little more. And I saw, well, a lot of people were kind of doing that. It wasn’t, you know, brands were doing that. Those were doing that. So I said, well, I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m gonna go all in on influencer marketing. And another thing at the exact same mo moment popped up Brian Norman is my agent, and he Oh yeah,
RV (14:32):
I know Brian Norman.
MT (14:34):
And so he had I think it was another author or something that he knew, and they had kids, you know, she had kids in the, in the age range. And so he gave her the books, and I think her site was like, thrive Moms or something like that. And she did a post and it just was talking about the books. And it had like a giveaway, and it was like, it just got all these likes and all these comments. And oddly, I went and looked at Amazon ranking and I was like, the Amazon ranking just shot up. And I was like, okay, this is weird.
MT (16:00):
Wow. And so I just looked at some of the stats on it when we were kind of pitching the extension of the series. And I think I worked with over maybe 225 different influencers. Wow. And they had, and I kind of, kind of counted up and they had maybe a combined following of over 8 million.
RV (16:23):
Wow.
MT (16:24):
And so, and so that’s, that’s what I did. And, you know, during that time, that’s all I did. And I think within that time period had sold close to 500,000 books. You know, after that I’ve done a couple other things. You know, I’ve done some direct sales Facebook ads and things like that. But the thing that really got me going, ’cause I had no platform, I had no following. I had no email list. I didn’t even have a website for the books that whole time. Wow. The only thing I did was influencer marketing.
RV (17:00):
So
MT (18:00):
You know, I, I did come up with a system ’cause I was like, I, you know, I had such limited time. I was like, well, let me have a very specific system I do and just do it over and over again. Especially after I saw it work a few times. I was like, okay, this is what I’m gonna just keep doing. So there was the research side, you know, so, you know, once I knew who my, you know, first you kind of have to know your ideal reader, you know, who is your dream reader. And it’s gonna be different for the, you know, mine, since it was a children’s book, I had to say, okay, I’m not really selling directly to children. So it’s mo parents and in particular moms. And it’s like I say, I was like, okay, I have to figure out who are the ideal moms that would like this book.
MT (18:44):
Their children would like this book, and if they like it, they’re going to share about it. And so the first part was just kind of identifying, you know, who your reader is, and then looking at, okay, where do they congregate? And it’s like, okay, who, who are they listening to? And so that’s where I kind of said, okay, let me look through the influencers. Let me look through the, and when you say influencer, like you said, it’s not some, there’s not like a tag on there that, you know, okay, gimme the list of influencers. It’s basically you just looking Instagram and seeing who has a decent amount of followers and are getting engagement and are talking about the things that my readers like hearing about. And so I would just go through and find the ones I thought fit that criteria once I kind of knew who they were.
MT (19:40):
You know, once I could picture that person, then I just went through and found that person on Instagram. I mean, there’s techniques to do that. You know, you can look at hashtags, you can look at fall, you know, Instagram will tell you who is liked this person, you know, once you find another person. And I would simply, you know, there was some steps, you know, I would kind of follow them. But it really did come down to messaging them, you know, making that outreach. And I kind of did a, a kind of a framework that on what does that message look like? You know, how do you, and you actually shared the exact message that I shared with those people over and over again at the beginning when you
RV (20:56):
Led with giving them a copy.
MT (20:59):
Yes.
RV (20:59):
You did not lead with, would you post about it? Would you interview me? No, what you just said, can I give you a copy?
MT (21:07):
Yep.
RV (21:08):
That’s a big, that’s a really big deal. You just did that intuitively, I guess. But like, I don’t think that’s what people do. I think they go, Hey, I have this thing. Would you, would you promote it for me? And it’s like, I don’t even know. I don’t even know you. I have no idea who you are, what this thing is.
MT (21:24):
Yeah. So that was, you know, crafting that message, you know, is gonna be different for, you know, different, whatever your ideal reader is, who the influencer is, what your market is. But that’s what worked. You know, that’s what I found that worked. And so I would send it to ’em, wait for a response. You know, there are some follow ups that can be done. But if they did follow up, I would just send ’em the book. I would actually physically mail them the book.
RV (21:55):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (21:57):
If, you know, just ’cause it was a kid’s book, if you could send them a digital book and they’re good with that, you know, that would be a cheaper way to go. But I think getting a book in hand, a physical book in hand makes the possibility of them actually reading it. The possibility of them sharing it or promoting it. I think it exponentially shoots that possibility up.
RV (22:20):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (22:41):
Well at that point is when I, I was actually working with a publisher. I was with a traditional publisher at that point.
RV (22:47):
Okay, so you were buying ’em at your author discount, like at the wholesale price basically.
MT (22:52):
Yes. And
RV (22:54):
But still four or five bucks. I mean, still had to be like
MT (22:57):
Three. It is
RV (22:57):
Like three to five bucks. Three
MT (22:58):
Or $4, yeah. Yeah. In that range. And then you, you send media
RV (23:02):
And that sort a small book. I mean, that’s a, I mean, these books are, you know, just, they’re, they’re, they’re, I mean they’re kids books, so
MT (23:08):
They’re very light
RV (23:40):
Return on that investment and get
MT (23:41):
Right. And for me and for others, I’ve seen you get a good return because again, word of mouth is what sells books. So if you get someone presenting to their audience of 2000 people, 50,000 people, and they’re saying, check this book out, my kids loved it, or I loved it, go get yourself a copy. I mean, that is going out. That’s better than a Facebook ad. It’s better than you telling about it when you have someone that they know, like, and trust telling them that they should get this book. It’s just a much better marketing avenue.
RV (24:27):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (25:02):
Yeah. That’s interesting. I’ve played with that both ways. Oddly usually if you just said, I just wanted to make sure you got it, they would say, oh yeah, I was just mean to post about it. It was, it, it’s an interesting, it was a, I a couple times I would say, no, I’m trying to think. I was actually just too uncomfortable to ask them to post about it
MT (26:04):
And it was like, I didn’t want to push them if they didn’t really love the book or believe in the book, you know? So if they do, then they’re natural. You know, in my in experience, they naturally posted. There was a kind of another step that I would take with some, you know, and that would be a book giveaway. And so a lot of times they would post it and if we had a good kind of communication back and forth, I would say, Hey, would you like to host a book giveaway? And, and those cases is where you’d really kind of see engagement up. But I never would out the gate say, Hey, do you want to do a book giveaway? It always kind of started as just saying, would you like a copy of the book? I think it would be a great fit. And from that point, you know, if they post it and got a lot of engagement and even, you know, we kind of kept the dialogue going. Then I think the next step was kind of a book giveaway, hosting a book giveaway.
RV (27:06):
Wow.
MT (27:06):
So that was kind of, that was kind of my system. And then as I would kind of keep in touch with them, because each time a new book would come about, you know, I’d reach back out to that group and say, Hey, I’ve got a new book coming out. I can send you a a, you know, an early copy. Would you like to have it? And so it just kind of grew over time. Also, you know, with each thing, you know, there’s a new crop, a new, you know, a new crop of influence just, just to kind of add in there. And it just kind of kept growing. The other kind of byproduct was it helped my I, I still don’t have a ton of followers, maybe 6,000 something, but I started with like 15
RV (28:05):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (28:14):
I just did a single giveaway. Oh. And it was just like, yeah. And as it got to be the book set, I would, it, it, depending on how many they, you know, when I had five books, I’d do a, a, I would basically give away a set of the books and that was it. There was like one winner. And I, I kind of had a pretty simple system of like, here’s what they post, here’s kind of what it says. Once you choose the winner, you send me the address, I fulfill it for you. So they never had to kind of get in the middle, you know, they simply did a post. You know, they chose the winner from their comments and likes sent me the information. I fulfilled it and did several of those. And it did really well.
RV (28:55):
When did this all start? Like, when did you, when did you really start doing this? Like when did you start reaching out to these influencers and like, how much time passed between that? You said this was like your primary strategy for the first 500,000 copies. So how much time passes between when you kind of like hear the Gary V thing and start sending out to where you sold 500,000 units?
MT (29:19):
So the first book came out in 97.
RV (29:24):
Okay.
MT (29:25):
And so, but I didn’t really, this didn’t hit until like maybe six months after the first book came out. The sales weren’t right. I mean, they sold, it did okay. ’cause They did get him into like Barnes and Noble and some of the, and books of Million and some of those. So there was some movement just kind of naturally that way. But it wasn’t really picking up the way I would like, like it to have. And the other problem was, even though it was a nine book deal, it was like, if the first two or three don’t do well, we’re not gonna print the rest of ’em.
RV (30:34):
On. But INS, Instagram wasn’t around in 1997, so this had to be way later than that when you actually,
MT (30:39):
Right. Oh yeah. I got the years wrong. Yeah. It would’ve been a, I got that completely wrong.
RV (30:53):
2007. Okay.
MT (30:55):
Yeah. Sorry about that. Okay. 2007.
RV (30:58):
So it all happened like right as Instagram was coming on the scene?
MT (31:01):
Yes, yes. Yeah. It is been a seven year window here, so yeah. So it would’ve been right when Instagram was kind of coming out and I was kind of new. It was kind of, I, I did tinker a little bit. I tried a little bit on Twitter. It just didn’t work. You know, I, I’ve tried some other things for me. Instagram, it just was a great avenue. So the best platform for this did
RV (31:27):
The book, actually the first book was published in 1997, but then basically 10 years past,
MT (31:32):
No, I’m sorry, two 2007,
RV (31:35):
The first book published in 2007.
MT (31:38):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (31:39):
And then it was like, so then did you start doing this kind of like right then, like right in 2007? Or was it like more like 2010 or something like that? Like a few years after the book was kind of like,
MT (31:50):
It would’ve been about a year after the book came out. So it’d been probably 2008, you know, so Right in that timeframe.
RV (31:58):
And then how long did you,
MT (31:59):
I’d have to map it out a little clearer.
RV (32:06):
And then how many, like, how, how long did you do that for? Was it like a five year period or a two year period? Or like,
MT (32:14):
Because like how long have I done the in influencer outreach?
RV (32:17):
Yeah, like how, how long did you stick with the influencer outreach before you just kinda let it take organic flight from there?
MT (32:24):
Probably until the last book came out, which would’ve been 2021.
RV (32:32):
Gotcha. Wow. Okay. So this is like, this is like a
MT (32:37):
So you know, I gave you the wrong dates. Lemme give you the real dates here. Okay. Okay. So it was really 2017. I don’t know why I said 19 97, 20 17. I was thinking probably the birth of my child was when the first book came out. And so
RV (33:03):
I can look in the book because I got it right here
MT (33:05):
Next. Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s get the real dates. Let me,
RV (33:07):
Let me open the book here and see. ’cause It probably has the publication date. Yeah. 2017.
MT (33:14):
Yeah.
RV (33:15):
So this is 2017 is when, at least when the publishing deal happened. So you might have, you might have had the self-publishing before that and
MT (33:25):
Then Yeah. That was for a few years before that.
RV (33:28):
All that. So then it comes out. So, so, so then really you start hitting this in 2 20 17 through 2021. So it’s like four years. Yes. It’s all four years as you’re like releasing a couple books a year.
MT (33:41):
Yes. And
RV (33:41):
You’re, this is like what you’re, ’cause that was the other thing you said Russell Brunson, you know, like Russell Brunson, that, that’s all like 2015 plus. Yes, probably. Yeah. So yeah, so that makes sense. Okay. So then it’s really like, there’s really like a four year period that you’re hammering this. So that’s what I thought. ’cause I thought this was much, this is pretty recent stuff. Yes. and then and so you did, and, and so over that time you just, it, it started to consistently sell and it’s added up to hundreds of thousands of copies. It, so the book. So it’s really been, it’s only, it’s only, it’s only been like eight years. It hasn’t even been out. The series hasn’t even been out 10 years.
MT (34:24):
Right.
RV (34:26):
Got
MT (34:26):
It. Yeah. So the, like I said, like you said, for those four years while those across that timeframe, those books coming out just did the influencer marketing. Yeah. After that point, you know, I’ve done a few other things. Once the kinda the box set came out, I kind of went into doing also some direct sales and Facebook ads and book funnels. But up until that moment the only thing I did was influencer marketing.
RV (34:52):
Yeah. So ha have, have the, the Facebook ads and the funnels and that stuff. Has that panned out or kind of, or not really or? Yes, it’s amazing.
MT (35:03):
It’s doing well, you know, and I think depending on, you know, I think there’s some kind of milestones that have to be met for Facebook ads, to work for books. Like if, if you just had one single book, you know, that was selling for $10, it’d be really, really hard to make Facebook ads work.
RV (35:26):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (35:27):
‘Cause There’s not enough profit margin in the book to recover the ad spend to run the ads.
MT (35:31):
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I’ve talked to several people that run Facebook ads for books, and once you really dial it in, you could maybe get between, you know, between 10 and $15 cost of sale on an ad. So
RV (35:48):
10 to 10 to $15 in ad spend Per
MT (35:53):
Or per sale.
RV (35:54):
Per sale. So that’s a, that would be a CAC, a customer acquisition cost of like $15. And that now that’s to sell one of your box sets.
MT (36:03):
Yes.
RV (36:04):
Which is the, the whole nine series box set is like $150.
MT (36:09):
No, it’s $59.
RV (36:11):
Oh my goodness. Steal. Yeah, but then you go, okay, if you, if you collect $60, you take out 15 for ad spend, you take out, you know, whatever the wholesale cost is for the book, and then you gotta like pay the people to run the ads. And like, you’re not, you’re, you’re not, it’s not, you’re not making a lot of money there, but it’s, right. Yeah. But you’re breaking even. You might be breaking even or something.
MT (36:35):
I do a little better than break even. So what I, but the thing that I found was that although I was picking up, you know, the ads themselves point directly to my site where I sell them directly secret, the hidden scrolls.com and so they go there, you know, you can buy the box set. Right now I have like a 25% discount, you know, get a, you know, get some worksheets with it so you can have some things to help promote it there. So I sell enough books there to more than cover the ad spend. But what I found is I, Amazon sells and other sales shoot up, because what happens is, and you know this, and anyone who shops knows, if you look at a product you say, oh, this looks great. You go right over to Amazon and say, what’s Amazon got it for?
MT (37:26):
So if you got Prime, you’re gonna get free shipping. You know, so a lot of people are going from my ad to my website or seeing it over and over and then going to Amazon and buying the book there. Now I’ve tested this several times to say, I’m gonna shut off the ads and see what happens within a day. Exactly. Amazon sales rank drops. I mean, it just, to the moment you can see that it just, the sales start drying up there too. Turn ’em back on. You see the sales, your rankings start getting better and better take it off. I mean, there is a direct tie, even though the Facebook ads are running two direct sales, it’s also driving other sales.
RV (38:17):
Have you run ads on Amazon to the listing on Amazon?
MT (38:21):
I have not. Because it’s in,
RV (38:24):
It’s just tricky ’cause you’re just losing money. Like you just, you’re, you’re literally just losing money. You never
MT (38:29):
Yeah, I know people that do pretty well there. The problem is, like in traditional publishing, the, the way mine is kind of set up, it would be really difficult. Like if they’re the one selling it directly to Amazon, you know, if the publisher is selling it through Amazon for you to try to come in and run ads, running it to that thing, you’re not gonna be able to collect on the money. I mean, you’re not gonna collect on the ad spend because at that point you’re only getting your royalty Mm-Hmm.
RV (39:24):
Mm-Hmm.
MT (39:26):
But I don’t have any expertise on Amazon ads, so I can’t really be helpful in that area.
RV (39:31):
But when you run the ads, you just run, like you’re saying like a Facebook ad just directly to your book page to buy direct, like direct to consumer, check out, you know, here’s a shopping cart, put a credit card in. Mm-Hmm.
MT (39:57):
Yeah, I buy them from the publisher. And so every couple of weeks I’ll just place an order just to kind of keep, you know, over time I know how many I’m pushing out or how many I’m selling. And so I’ll just have ’em send me the box sets. In our back bedroom, we’ve got a table set up, we’ve
RV (40:18):
Got Oh, so you send ’em from the house,
MT (40:20):
The boxes? Mm-Hmm.
RV (40:21):
Got it. I’ve
MT (40:23):
Got the boxes. We, you know, I’ve run it on a Shopify site. Love it. I mean, it has just can’t say enough good about it. Just how it tracks things and how the shipping works and things like that. And so, yeah, so we get the orders, we print the orders, my wife boxes them up. Wow. Takes, you know, takes
RV (40:51):
Wow. Man, this has been so awesome, Mike. Thank you so much. I mean, just, it’s inspiring to hear the story, but actionable that it just to hear the, the strategies and it’s just, and I hope you feel how much of a difference it’s making. Like not just making money and like doing this cool art artistic expression, but just like, I mean, as a parent I go, I struggle so much. It’s, it’s really important to me to curate what my kids are reading, to just make sure they’re not being fed, you know, stuff that is gonna be crazy. And it’s a, it’s a really wonderful blend of what you put together here. And
MT (41:30):
No, I, I appreciate you telling me that because it’s tough as an author, a lot of times you’re, you’re kind of disconnected, you know, from the reader. And I remember early on, you know, just like getting up at five and doing these things and figuring out how to do the marketing, it’s just a task. I mean, it can turn into work and unless you have kind of that mission or that calling or, and believe that this book is actually going to make a difference, you know, that’s the thing that keeps you moving forward. And so at one point, you know, at some point along the way, you know, I started to receive the messages, you know, from parents and from kids. And when you see the transformation, it can help making people’s lives. You know, that’s what gives you the fuel to kind of, to keep for, you know, moving forward in those other tasks.
RV (42:20):
Mm-Hmm,
MT (42:32):
Yes. Yes. And on the other side, on the book marketing side, I am in the midst of creating a course called Influencer Marketing for Authors. And so that course will probably be available in about two to three weeks. And so if you know someone watching this or some of your people, if they would like to do that course, if they go to roar book marketing.com there will be until it’s up, I’m gonna have, there’s like a little thing that could fill out for a presale and I’ll have a 50% discount offer.
RV (43:09):
Very cool. Very cool, Mike. Well keep it going brother. So nice to thank you. Spend time with you, appreciate all the wisdom and we wish you the best.
MT (43:19):
Thank you very much.
Ep 563: Three Keys to Speaking Success | Lesley Logan Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. There are three key components to a world class presentation, and most people don’t even know what they are. So let me walk you through it. The first one is your content. The content of your presentation is the base. The second one is the charisma, and the third one is the circumstance. I’m gonna explain each of ’em to you in detail. So first, there is the content. The content is the basis of your presentation, no matter how funny you are, and no matter how inspiring you are, if your content is lame, it’s not gonna be an amazing presentation.
RV (01:14):
People will say, oh, that person was really funny, or They were really entertaining, but it didn’t change my life. And no one’s gonna invite you to come speak or hire you or recommend you. Beyond that, typically. So how do you make great content? Well, the way you make great content is to forward the thinking that’s already been done. So content is about having a clear message and making sure that the, the people in your audience know exactly what to do when they’re done hearing you, and that you share a balance of stories and education, what we would call frameworks, visuals, charts, tables, illustrations that help emphasize the point that you’re making. And in a perfect world, it’s original thought leadership, accompanied by what we call pillar points that are written by you, these catchphrases that you made up that no one has ever heard because they came from your mind.
RV (02:09):
The second part of a great presentation is charisma. It has to do with your delivery. How funny are you? How inspiring are you? How engaging are you? Being a masterful storyteller is one of the most important skills of charisma. Also, learning how to use the stage, learning the psychology of laughter, and how to tell jokes. Learning how to use your voice to command the audience. Learning how to use gestures, learning the, the mastery of the mechanics, of the professional trade of speaking. By the way, if you ever want to learn more about coaching with our team on how to be a better presenter, just click on the link around this video and I’ll set you up with a free call with one of our strategists. Third part of a great presentation is the circumstance, and this is the one that almost nobody knows about or thinks about.
RV (03:01):
The setup of the room in which you are speaking has a tremendous amount to do with the experience of that event. It is one third of the power of that experience, and that presentation is dependent upon the circumstances of the room. Now, when we talk about circumstance, we’re talking about lots of things like how close is the stage to the first row of the audience. The further the distance, the stages from the audience, the less connection you have, the less intimate the experience will be. It also includes things like the height of the ceiling. The more space there is between the tops of the heads of the people and where the ceiling is, the more energy that is lost and absorbed into empty space, rather than having that energy transmitted through the audience, creating a powerful experience. Also, the space between people in the room, right?
RV (03:57):
If you have a room of a thousand people and only a hundred are there and they’re all spread out, that’s gonna create a less than desirable experience. Other things include the time of day. The, the earlier you speak in the morning, if you speak very early, sometimes people aren’t awake yet, or sometimes they’re hungover, or if it’s late at night, they’re just thinking about going to bed, or maybe they’re thinking about going to the bar. So the time of day that you speak matters a lot. And then also who’s in the audience? Believe it or not, female audiences laugh a lot more than male audiences. So if you’re ever in front of an all male audience and you don’t get a lot of laughter or engagement, don’t be alarmed by that. That’s perfectly normal and typical for most all male audiences. All female audiences are my favorite.
RV (04:44):
Put me in front of an arena of 10,000 women at a direct sales conference, and we will literally make the walls shake with laughter and fun and have an awesome time. How well do the people in the room know each other and how well do they feel connected to each other? Has a lot to do with the power of the experience. The closer they are to one another, the more impactful the presentation tends to be. The more that they are strangers or feel only distantly connected, the harder it is for you to connect with them. All of these elements are related to circumstance which affect the connection you have with the room. So these three elements, the content, your charisma, and the circumstances of the setup determine the connection that you have with the audience. The more you maximize each of these three areas, the stronger the connection.
RV (05:36):
The more powerful the experience, the less effective you are at maximizing each of these three areas. The lower the connection will be and the lesser the overall experience for the audience. So if you want to have an amazing presentation, you first have to have amazing content, but content alone is not enough. You wanna layer on top of that the secrets of charisma. This is some of the things that we help people do for a living. It’s being charming and engaging and inspiring and motivating and entertaining and funny and, and touching people emotionally. But then also it’s controlling the circumstances, setting up the environment, do those three things, and I promise your presentations will go to a whole new level.
Ep 562: How to Sell Out Live Event Tours with Lesley Logan
RV (00:02):
It’s one of my favorite things when one of the people that we get a chance to teach becomes one of the people that we get to learn from. And that’s what’s gonna happen today with my dear friend Leslie Logan. She has been a long time brand builder. She was a, a brand builder for years, and we absolutely adore her and her husband. And she is one of the world’s leading experts, if not the world’s leading expert on Pilates and how Pilates changes your life. So she’s the, the Chief Pilates [email protected]. She has taught thousands of students, trained hundreds of Pilates teachers, led dozens of workshops at global conferences. We’ve had her do stuff at BBG. She’s done stuff for the Associated Press. She’s been featured in Sports Illustrated LA Magazine. She’s been on Fox and CBS and KTLA. She also has certifications in trauma informed breath work mindset, habits, coaching, and a number of things sort of just related to health and, and physical health and mental health overall.
RV (01:06):
I think but the reason that I invited Leslie to come on the show is there’s a piece of her business model that is doing live event tours. And that is something that we haven’t talked a lot about on this show and is actually a big part of how when we launched Take the Stairs, we don’t tear this, we don’t tell the story very often, but one of the ways that we launched the Take the Stairs book was we did a 23 City nationwide tour. And I really haven’t had anyone else talk about it. And so I was like, oh my gosh, Leslie, you gotta share what you are doing. And anyways, Leslie, welcome, welcome to the show.
LL (01:50):
Oh, Roy, thanks so much for having me. And I love that you did a 23 city tour. We’re about to do one, and I think that this is hopefully gives people some ideas on how they can get themselves out there without waiting for someone to ask them to come to their, to their stage.
RV (02:04):
Yeah, I love that. And it’s, ’cause you know, when, when you think about, all right, how do I monetize a personal brand? You, you know, there’s like or, or, or just how do I get traffic and awareness for what I’m doing? There’s sort of like the online world, which is ads and webinars and funnels and social media and podcasting and YouTube and all, all things that can work and do work if you know how to do them right. And then there’s sort of like you know, this offline world of like hand to hand sales and referrals and there’s that, and then there’s speaking and speaking at events. But when you’re first starting out, you go, nobody’s really calling you, inviting you to speak, and you’re not famous. They’re not paying you to come speak on their stages. And so the idea of building your own stage, building your own event is so powerful.
RV (02:57):
And, and that is what we did with Take the Stairs. We had a tour bus actually, and, and, and did it. But even before that, when we started our first company, we were early twenties, nobody was paying us to come like teach our, our, our pearls of wisdom. And so we were doing our own events, we were doing public seminars and we would sell tickets to them. So, but a completely different vertical from you. So tell me, what are you doing? Like how many years have you done this exactly? What do you call them? And just like, tell me what the, what the big strategy is here?
LL (03:33):
Yeah, so originally I don’t even know what I, what I thought the strategy would be, but I was actually in like one of the first coaches I ever hired as dear friends of yours, I’m sure. ’cause That’s how I heard about you was Brad and I were in Rory and Lori Harder, and Chris Harder’s like fast Foundations group for like newish entrepreneurs. And someone asked a question like, we wanna go on a book tour. And I just wrote down, how do I go on a book tour
LL (04:17):
We’d done 145,000 miles that year. And I was like, I just, there’s, I’m not
LL (04:57):
Ideally not charging us our rent. And then we put tickets online and then we sold them and we did it through those events were like just people who were big fans of us who wanted us to come. And we also hit cities that people just don’t go to. Like a lot of big huge events happen in the big cities, but no one is going to these smaller cities to do an event. We actually did a stop in Nashville on our first tour, and we had 25 people there. And and so that’s kind of how it started. And then because of that first year, people want us to do it again. So the next year, obviously 2020, we didn’t do it, but in 2021 we were able to do it again. 2022 got bigger, we got sponsors in 2023, and we can talk more about that. And then 2023 is also our first year we did two tours. We did a summer tour and a winter tour. And this year in 2024, we did a, a summer tour. We were about to adore our winter tour, and they just keep getting bigger each time we do it. And we’ve gotten more sponsors to join in on the fun.
RV (05:54):
Nice. This is so cool. And it’s so simple and everybody is like, there’s so many people that are waiting for like, someone to wave a magic wand and say, you deserve to speak at my event or my company or my association, not realizing you can wave your own wand, build your own freaking event and do it the way you want it. So I wanna talk about the venue. Okay. So you, you, you, you know, you talked about the Cali City selection. It’s funny that when we did our tour, we were getting like 50 to 75 people every night. But then, like we were selling, 50% of the audience was buying, were buying books, and many people were buying more than one book. The biggest event we had was like 450 people, and it was in Salina, Kansas. Like
LL (06:37):
I’ve been, I’ve taught near Salina. I know that well,
RV (06:40):
It, it, it was crazy because it was like we went to LA and Atlanta and like these places and it was the smaller cities where people totally showed up. So that’s interesting about the location selection, but I, I found that the, the key to the whole thing was getting the venue and like you said, is going a place that will host it and not charge you or not charge you much. How did you go about doing that? Like how did you find the location?
LL (07:13):
Yeah, so in the beginning we had to really rely, and we still do this to an extent, we rely on the, the local person who is like excited for us to come. And so we used our members, so on, on OPC with members all over, we use our members like, Hey, we wanna come to your place. We wanna see you in person. Do you have the location? Do you know someone who does? So we are able to find hosts in each city to kind of be the ambassador of that city. And they either found us a, we use their space or they found us a space that was rent free or because we actually do a rev share with all of our hosts because it helps us, like, yes, we could, we could spend money on ads, but that cuts into all the margins.
LL (07:55):
And to be completely honest, like we try not to do ads unless we really, really need to. And what we found is we usually have to do ads when it’s a big city. Like you’d be surprised at how hard it’s for me to sell Los Angeles when I lived there for 14 years. Mm-Hmm.
RV (08:38):
Person in direction. What’s the difference between a class and a workshop and yeah’s the prices?
LL (08:42):
Yeah. So the classes range from 25 to $45 a person and a class could, because a class could have 30 people in a mat class or an equipment class might be limited to the amount of pieces of equipment that a studio has. Usually 12 or 14. So we don’t pay a ton on those. Also, people of all levels and, and Pilates can come ’em to a class will or will come to a class, they’re like, oh, I wanna learn from this teacher, or someone tells me that they should come and they’ll come where a workshop that’s limited to someone who’s super dedicated. So that’s just like people who pay for coaching, that’s a, there’s a small percentage of people who are like, yep, I’m gonna invest in that. Gotcha. So the price point on those, we try to keep around one 50 because again, I want as to be as accessible as possible, but it’s obviously going to limit some Pilates levers are not going to pay that kind of investment.
LL (09:33):
So we do our payer hosts more for a workshop, and that is to encourage more sales. ’cause There’s a bigger tire ticket on those. And it works well for everybody. We’ve had hosts, we paid out $1,600 because they sold out all of their events that was in Boston last, last winter. Don’t tell me people don’t do things on December 14th, you guys, we sold out all three events in Boston. So, so that’s how we find locations. Now we have done some that are like public, like in Scottsdale there’s this really cool container park and they had heated it was, it’s an outdoor indoor kind of a thing. So all the walls are containers, all the stores are containers, but you’re kind of outside. But they had those like heated lamps and we did a, a New Year’s Eve class in Scottsdale, outside
RV (10:44):
Mm-Hmm.
LL (10:58):
Yeah, so for the workshops, we we’ll do two to three people per piece of equipment. So I can have up to 30 people, which is why we don’t always have, like, I don’t think I’ll ever have a hundred percent sellout of tickets because the workshops can have often have even more people than a class just because of limitations on space where on a workshop people can be standing so I can have more people on a workshop than in a class. And that’s that we deep dive on a topic that would be like, if you were a, a breath work presenter and you did a breath work class, but then you did a workshop on like the importance of, of doing belly breaths or a lateral, like you could find something to be nuanced and then teach people who wanna go even deeper on a topic.
LL (11:40):
And that’s what we do. And here’s what’s so cool is at every event, because they’re not a hundred person, of course, of, although I’m sure I could, I could figure out a way to do like a wanderlust version of this and make them the venues even bigger. And that would be super, super cool. And we are trying to figure out things with our sponsors on that. But what is cool about these intimate settings is they have, they’re with us for an hour to three hours in a day, and we actually get to talk to them about our other stuff that we don’t promote so much because we, you know, you’ve talked about it, you like, you don’t wanna confuse people. You gotta make sure that you’re really specific what you do. So we try really, really hard to promote Pilates and OPC as much as possible, but at these events, we can actually talk to ’em about the retreats that we offer and we can talk to ’em about my mentorship program. And so we actually sell out our higher ticket stuff from these smaller events that are in person without ever having to market them.
RV (12:32):
Yeah, I love that. I mean, it’s just basically paid. That’s what speaking is. I mean, live events is, you know, I call it speaking in my world, right? I’m not doing Pilates, I’m not, I’m not doing that. But the, it’s like paid prospecting. I mean, you’re getting, you’re, you’re finding a way to pay to be there, but really you’re just forming a deep bond with these people and then the opportunity to go, Hey, let’s, you know, I have all these other things. So I, yeah, I I I love that. So you’re leaning somewhat heavily on the local person, it sounds like, for finding the venue and then also helping get the word out about it, and then you’re sharing in that with them.
LL (13:11):
Yeah. So especially in the beginning, that’s how it worked. And it, and I will say in the beginning, there’s a lot of, like, I would, anytime anyone was a new follower, I was like, where are they from?
LL (13:59):
I’m sure similarly to you, every book tour gets bigger because the people from the past books are coming and they’re telling their friends about it. So, so that’s been really helpful. And then now since 2023, having sponsors different sponsorship levels, one of the things we look at before we sign on with them and agree to a price is like, can you help us promote this? Mm-Hmm.
RV (14:56):
Yeah. And I’m just doing the math in my head here. You know, if you go, if you sell a hundred dollars ticket for 30 people, yeah, that’s $3,000. And if you do that, you do that in 20 cities, that’s 60 grand and you can do 20 city tour in a couple months, I guess like a, a month or two
LL (15:19):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (15:24):
But yeah,
LL (15:24):
You totally can. This is what’s like, so our, we are our goal for these tours, and, and if anyone is listening who’s coming to my tours, like our impact is always like the, the reason why we do this, right? But our goal for like, as a business for doing them is how can these make us 50 plus grand as a company? Because they do take a lot of time to put together. Like, that’s time, that’s the, you don’t like, what people don’t see is like, and I can go into more detail of like what the back end looks like, but there’s lots of hours of reaching out now that we are on our seventh tour, we have people who, we have a sheet that they can request us to come to, so that makes this a little easier. But, you know, there’s, there are contracts that have to go out.
LL (16:06):
There’s all the, the planning beforehand, there’s logistics. We use a really cool app that allows us to plan it out literally where we’re sleeping, where we’re eating, where we’re stopping, who we’re seeing for lunch when we’re getting there. So it’s, it’s a whole, it’s like if I was going on a call, what is it? The, the app? Yeah, we use, we use Wander log and you guys, the free version, like you don’t
LL (16:54):
Maybe you want to do it where you don’t have a high ticket fee like I do. But what we what we also can do is I make money on affiliates. So one of our headlining sponsors I’m an affiliate for, so I get sales off of Pilates equipment from them. So at the end of a tour, I am getting paid still on the affiliates from different events. And then all also the other sales that we can make on that. So there’s all these, you, the more you do it, the more you can think like, oh, okay, I can bring this company in and they can be the, I can be affiliate for the blankets people are gonna sit on, or, you know, so that people are trying things out. And we just really keep trying to figure out how do we make this better for the person coming? And then how do we make sure that, that that also benefits the company that we’re working with. And then of course our company. So everyone is winning.
RV (17:42):
How do you, how do you manage the ticket sales? Like what, how do you collect the money and like, schedule, like here’s our tour dates and like all of that. Is there a tool that you use?
LL (17:53):
So we, two things we use, so we use monday.com as a like project management tool. And the way it is used, like I can literally look at the board and has every city, we will have every single person who buys a ticket. So we, our, our websites are built on WordPress, so we are gonna use probably WooCommerce on that, but sell the tickets through our own site so we’re only losing money on the strike fees. That’s, you know, which is like the best thing you can do. We also, this is something that’s really important. We make sure everything is a non-refundable, but it can’t be transferred to a friend. So if somebody can’t come like
LL (18:42):
But it’s something to think about with your event. Like, do you need to have waivers? And so we, we have all the tours all the stops on the site. We’re trying to get better with just the layout of it because the, the, the current tool we use shows like every single event. So if you are the last stop, you’re going through like 60 events. Mm-Hmm,
RV (19:47):
Got it. Yeah. So, so an Eventbrite, can you collect money through Eventbrite or Mm-Hmm.
LL (19:54):
I’m sure they take a cut of it. Uhhuh,
RV (20:23):
LL (20:36):
Yeah, so this is something that we are obviously like learning as we go. And what I will say is like every time we’ve had a sponsor sign a contract, we’ve then updated the contract for the next time
LL (21:24):
I will say that it hasn’t, we’ve only gotten one through her. So as far as like, can you pay to plate? You can, but it doesn’t mean you’re getting anything. So we have been able to get one because she put out like, Hey, we’ve got this tour and they’re willing and the, their, the ask is $5,000. So so that there are different things like that where publicists for different companies are looking to see what they can pay for. But how I got our biggest sponsor is relationships. And I think that’s probably how you do a lot of your things and a lot of the coaching, and I I’m sure everyone listens like, oh, this is so annoying. I have to network, but like truly like go and and network. So I’m already hired to speak at conferences. So I went to the person who hosts those conferences and I said, Hey, you’re never gonna go to Spokane, Washington.
LL (22:11):
Like, we already know you’re not gonna do Bend Oregon. You’re not like, you’re not gonna do these places because the, the, the, the draw isn’t as huge. You’re not gonna get hundreds of people to go to this. So what if you sponsored our tour where we’re going into smaller cities, we’re doing these events and we’re putting your product already in front of them. We can do it on a bigger scale if we have your help. And so that’s really how we got our first sponsor. And then what we did to figure out like what can we offer them is first of all just sit down and write down everything you could do. Like what would, like, first of all, what,
RV (22:43):
Like for the sponsor? Like what, that’s what I was gonna ask. Mm-Hmm.
LL (22:49):
Yeah. So, and again, we didn’t have a sponsor until our fourth, fourth tour. Mm-Hmm.
LL (23:29):
So we could go to them with three tours and say, on average, this is what our current ticket sales are, and this is who’s coming and this is what we are charging, this is what our payouts are. And then this is by the way, like what we’re already doing. We’re already putting their product in front of them. We’re already putting this in front of them. So really having that information. But then what do they get in exchange for their money? So what I would write down is like all the different ways you could promote a product, not just on your event, but, or at your event, but like before and after. So we wrote down like, what do we have access to already? What do we have? So at the time, we had just launched an app, guess what, every time we open an app, there’s two seconds where you look at a logo.
LL (24:11):
We could sponsor that. We could put that as the sponsor’s
LL (24:58):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (25:56):
You tell ’em most recent sponsor the price before the call.
LL (25:59):
Yeah. It’s all, it’s, it’s all on there. Like, so you have
RV (26:01):
Key packages, like this is what the package includes. Mm-Hmm.
LL (26:04):
RV (27:25):
I love that. I love that. Yeah. So and so then you just did it, and then you do the event. You do an awesome thing. Mm-Hmm.
LL (27:39):
Fun table.
RV (27:40):
You just have a table, bring
LL (27:41):
A table. Yeah, we bring a table. We got one of those little covers. You know, like, again, every time we go we like upgrade. We feel like, you know, we’re like becoming one of those booths that we had a conference. But we have a table has the things people can take away. We take pictures with people, we do a group picture, which was really fun. Then we can airdrop it to everyone. And then as soon as they leave within two hours, they’re sent a thank you text and email that has a request for a testimonial. Mm-Hmm.
LL (28:25):
So they’re really important. Then we actually send emails for four days after the event. So they’re getting a, a testimonial one, then they’re getting one that’s a thank you from us and our sponsors. They’re getting one that also is upcoming events and things like that, that they can get involved in. And then the last one is like, by the way, here’s all Leslie’s favorite things in case she missed it. Which is again, sponsors affiliate links. And this is where we insert other affiliate links of mine and where we, that again, can be additional income on the, on the tour.
RV (28:56):
Yeah. And you know, there’s a part of this that you’re saying here, kind of saying without saying, which is there’s nothing more powerful than an in-person event in terms of building trust with people. It’s like you’d have to watch, you know, a hundred, 200 social media videos, listen to 10 hours of podcasts or, you know, spend 45 minutes in a room with someone. Like, it’s so powerful. You build, you build, you build lifelong fans and customers. Yeah. This is really, really cool. What, what, so first of all, so I got one last question to ask you before I do that. Where should people go, Leslie, if they, if, you know, if they happen to be listening and they’re a Pilates fan and like they’re going, oh my gosh, like you are the, you’re the, you’re the Pilates queen of all the
LL (29:51):
Oh, go to opc.me/four zero and that’s going to take you to online plus classes.com. It’s gonna allow you to try us out. You’re gonna be able to enjoy the different things that we have. You do not have to know what pils is or how to spell it to start out. We have really amazing products and support for you
RV (30:09):
LL (30:37):
Be easy for them. ’cause Like you just, like, they’re
RV (30:54):
Is that, is there anything else that we need to know about, like, if, if we were gonna try to pull this off and make it reality?
LL (31:00):
Yeah, I think, I think I would probably, what I think I would ask anyone listening is like, why are you doing your personal brand in the first place and how would an in-person event accelerate that? And because you just said it, like there, you cannot, like the in-person trust that you build, you, you can’t even put a price on it. You like the, the, I can’t wait to see like the lifetime value of clients that we have at, if they go from a tour stop to what happens next. And what I truly love, and one of our, one of our values as a company is community. And these in-person events, even though our online platform is the only one that allows for community to exist and to support each other and do Pilates, you know, even though they’re on demand, there’s, they, they have that community.
LL (31:51):
There, there is something so special about these in-person events that allows our online community to come together. Hmm. And then they actually hang out afterwards. And of course I wish I had the time to go with them. Like sometimes I can, but truly like the fact that I can go to a city, do an event, hug all of them, and then they go off and have happy hour together. Like that is like, that is ma that makes the impact that I wanna have with my Pilates. It makes it, it accelerates it on such an amazing level and then they’re doing it right. And so then they have this empowerment, this agency. And so I would just ask yourself like, why am I doing my personal brand? Like what is this, what is the goal of this was the impact I wanna make? And how does in in-person accelerate it? And then start with what you got. So I did not start with the 13 event. We started with eight cities. I did not start off with a huge team. So with three people I did not start off with sponsors. It was just us. And then, you know, in the beginning our goal was just that it paid for itself. And now our goal is that it does, that it actually is our, one of our top products of our business because we know down the road the impact it’s going to have.
RV (32:59):
Mm-Hmm.
LL (33:17):
Aw, thank you for having me. Thanks for letting me share this. This is a lot of fun.
Ep 561: Choose Your Hard | Chris Janssen Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Choose your hard. That’s the conversation that I would like to have today. I just got off of an amazing conversation with author and coach Chris Janssen. She’s the author of a new book called Grace Yourself, how to Show Up for the Sober Life You Want. And our conversation was about choose your hard and whatever, whatever we choose in life can be hard. Like I heard somebody say the other day, it’s like, life is hard. It’s, it’s just hard. And so it’s up to us to choose our hard. And in this conversation that I had with Chris Jansen, we were talking about very specifically choosing a sober life versus a, a life where something has a stronghold over you. Not necessarily just alcohol, but in this quote I saw the other day, it was like, you know, choose to be fit. That’s hard.
AJV (00:55):
Choose to be fat. That’s hard. Choose to save your money. That’s hard. Choose to go in debt. That’s hard, right? Choose to focus and work on your marriage. That’s hard. Choose not to and get a divorce that’s hard. Choose to prioritize your time and spending time with your kids while you’re young. That, that can be hard. Choose not to do that and miss out on knowing your kids while they’re young. That’s hard. It’s like, regardless of what we choose, there is going to be hard parts to it. It’s just what hard are you going to choose? Right? And it doesn’t matter if it’s a health journey or a money journey or a relationship journey, or it’s a sobriety journey, right? Either way you go, it can be hard and there’s going to be hard parts of whatever it is that you choose.
AJV (01:49):
The differences is, do you want to, you know, choose the salad and be healthy or, you know, choose the dessert and have a temporary indulgence. And I’m not saying having a dessert is bad and having salad every meal is good. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying the repetitive nature of those choices lead to rewards and consequences. Not all that different than, you know, spending money or investing in relationships or anything else. Our choices are what lead to the rewards or the consequences. And there’s going to be hard parts about either there’s gonna be hard long days lots of extra work. There’s going to be discipline and obedience. There’s going to be missing out on some things to get something else later. Like they’re, they’re just hard things. But we each get to choose our hard, and this conversation with Chris was about, you know, you, you could choose right? To, you know, have that quick fix and have that drink in the moment, or you can choose to make a better, healthy choice for your life and
AJV (02:58):
Not do that. And again, not saying having a drink is bad. I’m not saying that. But for some of us, it is for some people it is. And it’s for each of us. We just gotta choose our hard ’cause it’s gonna be hard either way. And so as you’re, as you’re sitting here and listening to this, I just wanted to pose a couple of quick questions. One, what’s the hard that you need to choose in 2025? And it could be, it’s like, I’m gonna choose the hard of getting up at 5:00 AM to get in early morning reading time or time with the Lord, or going on a walk or going to the gym, right? Could it be that it’s like I’m gonna choose the heart of missing out on seemingly a lot of fun stuff because I’m committing to getting in bed by, you know, 9:00 PM it, I don’t know what your heart is.
AJV (03:49):
I’m just saying what is the hard that you need to choose for 2025? Because they can go both ways. There’s the good hard and the bad. Hard, but there’s hard either way. So that’s my first question is, you know, what is the hard that you need to choose for 2025? My second question to you is, what are gonna be the rewards of choosing that hard and the consequences of not choosing that hard in 2025? Because with any choice, right? There comes an opportunity for reward or for consequence. And if you know that there is a hard that you need to choose, and I can just tell you personally for me almost two years ago, it was, I had to give up alcohol. I knew that it had created a default mechanism in my life and my choices. It had a strong hold on the way that I was decompressing.
AJV (04:45):
And I had to give it up. And it was hard. And then it wasn’t
Ep 560: Grace Yourself with Chris Janssen
AJV (00:00):
Hey, y’all. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here today. And I am so, so excited for today’s guest for so many reasons. One, I love her personally. And as I get to introduce Chris, Jan since you guys formally in just a second, I have had the privilege of getting to know Chris over the last year in a variety of different ways. But she’s one of the sweetest, hardest working
AJV (00:51):
And how do you know if this episode is for you? So I invited Chris on the show today for two reasons. One, she’s in the middle of a book launch, right? So when I talk about hardworking
AJV (01:38):
Secondarily, though, we’re gonna actually talk about the contents of her book, which I think is just a really important topic. And Chris’s upcoming book is called Grace Yourself. And without getting too much into the contents of the book right now, let’s just say that it’s a great reflection of a lot of people are talking about dry January as we are in January, 2025 at the recording of this episode. And so we’re gonna talk about what it means to be sober, curious, and Chris’s journey on that path. So that is, that is who this episode is for. Now, let me formally introduce you to Chris so we can get to our interview, which is the best part. Chris Janssen is a leading results coach in performance and mindset. She’s a bestselling author who’s worked with hundreds of sought after creators entrepreneurs soldiers, small business o owners. She has been taught by and has worked with Tony Robbins on his team of results coaches. She’s a board certified coach with a master’s in counseling psychology with more than 20 years of experience. Chris, welcome to the show.
CJ (02:42):
Thanks, aj. I have the biggest smile on my face ’cause it’s so fun to be here with you. Yes.
AJV (02:48):
This is going to be an amazing episode for so many reasons. But I know that I just get asked all the time, like, what is it like, what do you have to do to have a bestselling book and what, what does that even mean? And since you’re in the middle of a book launch right now, and this is not your first book, what I would love for you to share with the audience is one, what’s been your journey of writing and publishing books up to this one? And how has this one similar or different than what you’ve done in the past?
CJ (03:20):
Mm. That’s such a good question. Yeah, because people ask a lot, you know, what, what do I have to do to write a book? And there’s so much to know, and I am a good person to ask because the first book I self-published and no regrets. I did learn a lot of what I wanted to do differently the second time, though. And so I kind of thought, like a lot of authors, I hear this a lot, that I would write a great book. I had a great editor. I had, I had help. I knew what I was doing. I’m really proud of it. It’s a really good book. It’s a coaching book. But I thought, you know, let’s, let’s self-publish. We’ll put it out there so people can start reading it. I didn’t, none of the, you know, the prep, right? I didn’t, I didn’t have the audience ahead of time. I didn’t think about lists. I just thought all that came after that. If you write a book, you then people start calling you
AJV (04:13):
CJ (04:15):
They, it was, they did not like, I thought though,
CJ (05:07):
I am still doing it a little bit backwards where I am writing this second book, and I don’t have a huge audience. I have a thriving coaching business. So I have kind of doubled up on the PR side where I’m using the bestseller bestseller launch plan strategy. And then I’m also using a little bit of PR to get me on more stages, right? Because I didn’t have that element. And that’s been phenomenal. I mean, that, it just, it’s like the butterfly effect. It just, people tell, people tell people, and then the message gets to get in the hands of the people. ’cause Not everyone wants to read a coaching book or a book on sobriety. And then when you have these specific audiences, though, those are the people who are looking for that material and they tell the other people looking for that material. Yeah. So it’s been great this time
AJV (06:03):
Around. Well, you know, I, I love that you’ve done it both ways, right? Mm-Hmm
CJ (07:07):
Right?
AJV (07:08):
I don’t have to go Right. Tell people to buy it. I don’t need to pick up the phone. I don’t need to like do a launch. I already have a huge following. If I write a book, they’ll just buy it. And we’ve literally heard people tell us that. And you know what? Nobody bought the book.
CJ (07:24):
Right? Yeah. We’ll sit on a black, in a black hole on Amazon,
AJV (07:33):
And so sometimes it’s not always about how big is the audience, it’s mm-hmm
CJ (08:09):
Get in front of targeted audiences. And you’re, before you even pick up the pin, know who your audience is, know who you’re writing to, and then those are the people that will, you’ll want to get in front of, to start talking about your book months before the launch and months after the launch. So the, those, those specific people, like if you have a following on Facebook or Instagram, a lot of those people might be your friends now. Like, let’s use me, for example, I have lot of friends and they follow me on my socials and they wanna hear what my kids are up to and this type of thing. They don’t all wanna hear about my book, and this book might not be for them. So I, it was the, the most helpful thing was getting help, getting in front of the people who want and need this.
CJ (09:00):
And then also not getting tripped up in the numbers, just staying focused on impact. You are a, a steward of your message. If God put it on your heart to write a book, especially if it’s a vulnerable book that was uncomfortable to write, then you, then your mission is to steward that message after launch for the rest of your life, really. And so if God put it on your heart, he’s going to help you do that. So the people will, the people that need to hear the message will show up. The reason for wanting to make bestseller lists though isn’t fame or numbers. It is the impact, right. It is being a steward of your message. And if it does make lists, your message, you’ll being a better steward of your message because it’s, it’s going to reach more people.
AJV (09:51):
Mm. I love that. I think that’s such a great clarifying distinction of hitting a bestseller list is not for ego or vanity or any of that. It’s, it’s, it’s a sign that you are doing what you are supposed to do and reaching the people that you wrote it for. Mm-Hmm
CJ (10:09):
Exactly.
AJV (10:10):
That’s really, really good. I would be, I would be so curious to go, so you said you’ve had some luck with pr,
CJ (10:17):
Right?
AJV (10:17):
Mm-Hmm
CJ (10:45):
So what’s, well, I, I’m a lucky one. My daughter, she’s 25, she runs a pr, an LA based PR company. She runs the UK division in London. So I had the advantage of one, the publisher, you guys sent me a, like a list of maybe 15 vetted PR places that they know love and work with. So that’s great. Have a rep get it from somebody you trust in anything, in anything to do with the publishing world. Trust is a big thing, right? People are out to make money on your dream. So no, these hybrid publishers, you know, you wanna have a reputable vetted people that you’re working with. So we, my daughter helped me take those, say 15 PR companies and reach out to the top five that, that I thought were really in line with my mission. So of the book like that. So, so not my mission as a coach, not my mission as a person, the mission of the book. And so those people I reached out to, and then, you know, there was one, I just had a gut feeling that stood out above them all. And, and I, it, it was a really good match. She’s been wonderful. And so the audiences I’m getting in front of are very in line with the mission of the book.
AJV (12:07):
So I think this is a great question because I think a lot of people hear about pr, but they don’t really know what it means. Mm-Hmm
CJ (12:18):
Exactly. Right. That’s why I’m trying to like, teach what I know from her.
AJV (12:23):
But I think it’s really like, so like for those who are listening, it’s like, okay, great, but what did they do for you? Like, give us some insights.
CJ (12:29):
Mm-Hmm
CJ (13:21):
So I’m writing some articles for different publications, and then you get to talk about the book and it tells you where to buy the book. So that’s all good. So that’s what this, but not all PR companies are gonna do that exact thing. Some are just more tv. Some are just virtual things. Some are more social media. Some do all of it. Some do a lot of in-person events. One of the ones I interviewed is here in LA and was going to get me in front. That was like my, I was trying to decide between this one and the other one. They were gonna get me in front of a lot of in my community in la a lot of like book signings or the, at the local bookstore, that type of thing, which is also really good. So that was, it was a tough decision because they’re all good. So there’s not one size fits all for sure. Like anything.
AJV (14:16):
Yeah. Well, I love that. ’cause I think what I hear you saying, it’s like, like with anything, before you go searching out a PR firm or like with anything else that you’re gonna spend money on, do your research and know what are you actually trying to get out of this mm-hmm
CJ (14:55):
Right? And like as a coach, we’re always very hyper-focused on the outcome. So what have a crystal clear outcome. So I came to the these inter these vetting these people with the outcome. The outcome for me was to make a bestseller list, right? Like I said, for the reasons I said. So somebody’s outcome might be to get well known or famous. Those are two different outcomes. So know your outcome before you start looking for who to work with.
AJV (15:23):
Yeah. And so I know that you did this too, looking for publishers, so mm-hmm
CJ (16:17):
It’s, well, and they take the rights to your book
AJV (16:18):
And they own it, right? Mm-Hmm. And I think mm-hmm. For people who are going, well, if you listen to that, you just have to like, pick up the nuance of the creator at some point is always paying for it.
CJ (16:29):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (16:29):
CJ (17:02):
Right. So a few distinctions. One I’ll say even traditional publishing, you’re gonna spend money because you’re gonna have an editor help you make it look fantastic before you send the proposal in. So there’s always an investment on the author’s part. Especially with the, the first one to three books, let’s say. And, and technically hybrid publishing is self-publishing. We have, you’re, you’re technically called an indie author, like when I go into my books in book contests and stuff, because I’ve done hybrid the second time in self, the first time. They’re both in the self-publishing category as opposed to traditional publishing. So the greatest thing is you get to keep your rights. Now self-publishing can be done really well. Like I did self-publishing. The first time I hired a developmental editor, she helped me hire the copy editor, and I hired a cover designer and interior designer.
CJ (18:04):
And there’s websites in places that can help you. And I, it, I will just say this, all of me wanted to do hybrid because I didn’t want to be the one out there hiring these people. I couldn’t trust anybody. Mm. People need to know there’s not, every hybrid publisher is trustworthy, right? There’s Vanity Pub publishers, some of them will even take the rights if you can believe it and, and take a lot of royalties too. And so that is why I kept coming back to the self-publishing with the first one. And then when I met brand builders, I thought, okay, well I’m working with them. I already know and trust them. So that took care of the trust part. And then I heard you all were having a mission driven press, and I just thought, well, let’s get
AJV (19:39):
Yeah. And I, I, I think that’s such an important conversation on the trust part, because I think it’s all important at, at the end of the day, what’s most important in my opinion, is like the creator gets to keep what they create. Mm-Hmm
AJV (20:28):
And that is a big trust jump. Mm-Hmm
CJ (21:06):
That’s right. And it’s a really vulnerable process. Right. There’s I don’t get hit with a ton of rejection and, and criticism. It is vulnerable though. So you wanna be around people that, that make your nervous system calm. Mm-Hmm
AJV (22:00):
You know? I love too that you brought this up because I have also never heard anyone else bring up this part of, Hey, don’t forget, like, this is also an emotional ride for the author
AJV (22:47):
Mm-Hmm
CJ (23:46):
Right. That’s right.
AJV (23:48):
But I think that’s a good thing of like, the writing process is vulnerable, the editing process is vulnerable, the sales processes too. And it’s like, right there is a lot of people who are like, yeah, I love what you’re doing. Not gonna buy any. It’s like, great, thanks. Great welcome. You know, welcome to to business and to sales. Mm-Hmm
CJ (24:15):
It really is. I’m so fortunate I have my husband around me because he’s so great at business and he works from home, so he, you know, and he sees me working from home. So he’s been a constant sounding board for me to keep going. Don’t take it personally, to really believe in the impact and the message and have, have confidence selling, right? Yeah. So,
AJV (24:42):
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a huge thing for everyone to realize. Mm-Hmm. It’s like launching a book is like launching a business.
CJ (24:47):
Yes.
AJV (24:48):
Genuinely speaking. Now let’s talk about the book for a second. ’cause Okay. I wanna make sure that as we talk about the process of writing and, you know, publishing and launching a book, but you have a book coming out mm-hmm
CJ (25:03):
February, February
AJV (25:04):
18. Oh, is it February? February 18th? Yes. Okay. Yes. So we’re just a few weeks away. Mm-Hmm
CJ (25:14):
Grace Yourself, the subtitles, how to show Up for the Sober Life You Want. And I love the subtitle. So the subtitle of my first book is The First Book’s, living All In How to Show Up for the Life You Want. And I love Show up and for the Life you want because in coaching, we need to know what we want, right? That’s always my first question. What do you want? And we need to show up for the strategy to get what we want. Showing up iss easy when it’s easy, and we need to show up when it’s not easy. So for this book particularly, because it does share my story of sobriety to me showing up is for life is the opposite of numbing out when things get uncomfortable or checking out, and we can check out or numb in small ways and big ways.
CJ (26:06):
And it doesn’t need to be alcohol. It can be all kinds of things. We all can think of ways. I mean, it could even be biting our nails, right? There’s just things that we do to check out or not show up. And I’m writing this to let people know, here’s my story, but I’m using this story to couple it with my coaching tools to show you, you don’t need to be afraid. You can show up for life. And here’s all these tools to help you do that. So someone doesn’t need to be even in an act of addiction, and it doesn’t even need to be alcohol for this book to be beneficial, because you’re gonna take whatever that thing is, and these tools will help, they’ll help take the shame off, get it out of the darkness. Let let you know you’re not alone. Let you know there’s millions of people struggling with the same thing. We’re not unique. We don’t, you know, we’re not special. We are special just like everybody else.
AJV (27:24):
I love that. What, what does the title Grace Yourself, like, where did that come from?
CJ (27:32):
So I love this title. The, to me, since I am a Person of Faith, to me it’s God’s grace, and that’s unmerited favor. And I explain in the book how, to me, what I’ve seen with people that fall into negative patterns and addictions. A lot of us have control issues. We, because in essence, we’re controlling our state. We’re, we’re, we’re looking to control the way we feel or control not feeling the way we don’t wanna feel. And we do that, like I said, in with lots of different ways. And so grace, since grace from God is unmerited favor, it means I don’t get to control whether I receive it or not. And so as a person, as a young woman who struggled with perfectionism and rigid thinking, and really, you know, high achiever, I have to control everything. I did not understand grace as a young person because I thought I had to control everything I earned.
CJ (28:36):
I’ll tell you what I’m worth. I’ll tell you if I deserve it or not. The concept that something’s free, even if I don’t deserve it, just didn’t compute with me. So I go through that in the book and, and what I really want people to know is they’re worthy no matter what, you’re worthy and you get grace, even though we don’t deserve it. Mm-Hmm
AJV (29:23):
Mm. I love that. And I think it’s so applicable too to the story of sobriety. Mm-Hmm
CJ (30:11):
All these, right. We have the mm-hmm
AJV (30:12):
CJ (30:27):
No.
AJV (30:27):
Like, it, this is a, a very big growing trend. And I’m just one, so this book is like right on par with a lot of the things mm-hmm
CJ (31:12):
Well, I think it’s like cigarettes, right? We all
CJ (32:09):
I do identify as an alcoholic. I do go into detail in that, in the book and explain that there’s no la regarding labels use what label works for you. It energizes me because to me it was a solution to something that I was trying to quit on my own. Like, I walked into a meeting, heard, there’s this thing called alcoholism, and there’s all these beautiful women in the meeting that just beautiful humans that like, yeah, we’re alcoholic too, and there’s a solution and it’s not your fault. It’s like an allergy and you never have to have another drink again. That for me, took all the shame off my shoulders. It changed the narrative from I’m a monster because I can’t stop drinking to, I’m worthy of sobriety and recovery because I can’t stop drinking. So it, it’s so much easier now for people. I do think, I do touch on this in the book.
CJ (33:05):
I think that it’s important if you’re like me, where you kind of re because alcohol is a progressive condition, which means the more you drink, you don’t, you don’t build up a tolerance and get better at it. You get worse at it. And if you quit drinking for a certain amount of years and then pick it up again, you’re going to be worse off than when you started Just age. Does that, so it is, that’s a medical fact. It’s a progressive condition. So some people we, like we say, in recovery, you can’t you’ve been pickled, so you can’t go back to being a cucumber. Hmm. Even if you quit drinking 30 years and then decide to try it again, you can’t go back to being a cucumber. So the book is really for people like me who got pickled. Mm-Hmm. And we can’t go back.
CJ (33:53):
And we do have a stigma. Like it really messed with us. It messed with our self-worth. We dealt with shame and guilt. And I am all for all for any recovery movement. I love that people are sober curious that we have mocktails, that people are going alcohol free. And for these people, I, a lot of my friends and clients are doing this. And it’s wonderful. I don’t think those people all need a support community or recovery community, if that makes sense. People like me, and there’s a chapter or section in the book called Alcoholic Like Me. We, we have to be in community because the world is changing, but it still is the way it is. And so we have to be sharing stories. We can’t do it alone. And we need to stay in community. So we don’t, our forgetter doesn’t forget and start thinking that we are like these other people that can just quit for health reasons.
CJ (34:48):
Some of us just can’t. And so do make that distinction in the book. And I also say in the book, look, don’t, don’t diss anybody. If they wanna call themselves an alcoholic, if they wanna go to AA or don’t wanna go to aa, let’s not get hung up on these things. Recovery, sobriety, health, it’s all a win. We all have, we’d have different churches for people. We have different therapists for people. Mm-Hmm
AJV (35:32):
I think that’s really important. ’cause I think that that’s a great distinction. It’s some people do it for health reasons, some people do it. Because it’s a necessity, right? It’s a lifesaving choice. They have to make, there’s a lot of different reasons why people are making these choices. For the person who’s out there, who’s going, what does it even mean to be sober? Curious? Like what, what, what is the first step? What would you say?
CJ (36:00):
I think it’s probably yeah, they starting to ask yourself those questions. Could I live without this thing in my life? And it might not be alcohol. Like I said, it could be something else that’s a stronghold. And so I think that the important thing to ask is really get leverage on yourself and ask and write it down, what is the cost of giving this thing up? And be honest about it. Because there will be a cost, it will require some grit. It will require the neuroplasticity in your brain to change. It will require, you know, when you pick up a new workout routine, it’s gonna require going to the gym and doing that. We don’t just get biceps one time at the gym, so it’s gonna, there’s gonna be some cost, unfortunately. Unfortunately. I know. So be honest with yourself about that and write down what, what is the cost of removing this thing from my life?
CJ (36:53):
And then write down what is the cost of not removing it from my life? And really be honest and look at that. And that’s how you get leverage on yourself. And so if the cost of not removing it is greater, then you’re gonna need to find some grit, read some self-help books like mine and then, and get in community. Right. But I’ll say if someone’s trying to do this at dry January, I really want people to take the shame off of it. If they start my friend across the street, oh, I did dry January and I already messed up. Well, we don’t need, you didn’t mess up. You’re just, it’s all there. It’s, it’s not a straight line. Mm-Hmm
AJV (37:46):
Why do, that’s a great point. So why, why do you think that for the person who, who does resonate with this, and they go, well, I’m, I’m curious. And then some, like, I know I need to make a change. I know that there, I do have a stronghold in my life and I need to get rid of it. Why is it that’s that we, some people can just be like, cold Turkey, I quit. I’m, I’m never doing it again. And there’s others of us who it’s like, man, it’s like, well, I did fall off. Mm-Hmm
CJ (38:25):
Hmm. Oh, well we’re human really. I mean, and the reason for falling off is ’cause it’s hard. Mm-Hmm
AJV (39:05):
CJ (39:06):
Right. There’s always a cost. So so just, yeah, I think it’s because it’s hard. And so I think, and that’s what we talk about in recovery is hitting bottom. And I think people, it’s, I’ve heard so many stories over the last 18 years. Everybody’s, when you say enough is enough is looks different for everybody. Mm-Hmm
AJV (40:06):
Well, I love that honesty and that it’s like, why do people follow up? ’cause It’s hard
CJ (40:52):
Right. Well start with those questions I just talked about and ask what, write it down too. What, what did January give me? If you made it all the way through January dry, get honest about that and write it down. What did it cost and what did it give me? My guess is if alcohol is a stronghold in your life, that you’re gonna have more benefits that you got out of it. But write it down so you know. Right. And then ask yourself, well, why wouldn’t I wanna carry this on to February? Why wouldn’t I wanna keep doing it? And and knowing that any habit we, the best way to approach it is one day at a time. And so we say that in recovery all the time. And we don’t, we, if we come in and think, I need to be sober like the next guy for the next 20 years, we’ll we’ll panic and run out of the room because who can sink like that? So you just have to be sober right now for today. And maybe it’s not one day at a time, maybe it’s one minute at a time. And so just keep doing that and then do it the next minute and the next minute.
AJV (41:59):
Yeah. I think it’s good. It’s like we used to tease, it’s, it’s no different than getting healthy or losing weight. It’s like if you told someone you’re only going to get to eat fo you know, foliage for the rest of your life, people would be like, I’m never doing this. But if you can just be, just focus on eating salad today. Just get a salad for lunch. Just get a salad for dinner and wake up and just do the same thing. It’s like, it’s the difference of like the magnitude of, wait, am I never gonna get to have a cookie again? What do you mean Versus Nope, just pick a salad today. Pick a salad at the meal that you’re at. And it’s, it’s, it’s a lot like that is what I hear you saying. It’s like, just make the choice in the moment and then in the next moment and then in the next moment.
AJV (42:40):
And I think this is a, a great conversation. I I wanted you to have a time to talk about the book. ’cause I, one of the reasons that we wanted to partner with you in publishing the book is because Rory and I personally resonate with the message of both of us would not identify as someone who had a, a problem with alcohol, but we both identify that it, that it had a strong hold and the way that we were living our daily life both of us were fortunate enough to be able to go, we’re just not doing this anymore. Like, we’re done. But both of us recognized a pattern that we were no longer comfortable with. And it’s like we, yeah, I can only speak for myself, but you know, for those of you who are listening of going like, well, I don’t, I don’t really know if that’s me.
AJV (43:24):
It’s like, I would maybe have a glass of wine every couple of days, but here, here was the pattern that I noticed. I would always default to a glass of wine on a hard day. And I would also default to a glass of wine on a good day. So if it was a really good day, I wanted to celebrate glass of wine. Mm-Hmm
AJV (44:19):
It is, it is a negative trend that I can see in my life where as I started giving it up, I noticed it’s like, oh my gosh, they serve mimosas at breakfast, margaritas at lunch, you know, aifs for pre dinner. I was like, oh my gosh, it’s everywhere. And it’s, it was never so recognizable of like, oh man, the access, the accessibility is right. What had created some of the problem of it was there when you celebrate, it’s there and it’s a hard day. It’s there at the sporting event. It’s there, it’s at the adults’ table, at the kids’ party. And it was like, it wasn’t until I just said I can’t have it. It’s a hard no. Right. that I could actually even set limits for myself.
CJ (45:00):
Right? Yes. I mean, happy, sad matter, glad that’s how we drank. That’s, that’s a saying too. You know, it it, when you start thinking of it as, ’cause you had mentioned it’s hard to give it up, right? And when we start changing our language to what am I gonna gain? Like, we’re gaining all this other stuff, we’re gaining sobriety, and yes, we’re giving something up, but like you just said, it’s, if we think of it that we’re giving something up, we’ll, even subconsciously, we’ll feel sorry for ourselves. We’ll have a little pity party and then that’s really unfair to us because you’re right, it’s everywhere. It’s at the kids’ birthday party, it’s at breakfast. And if we have that mindset, it makes us feel like we’re not disciplined because we can’t partake or like we really don’t wanna have it, but it’s, we feel like we should almost, because it’s everywhere, which is the good news why it’s starting to not be everywhere. Right. But we, we wanna flip that mindset to, yeah, maybe I’m gonna miss out for 20 minutes or an hour or that first hit feeling, but what I’m gaining is so much more and really focus on what we’re gaining not on what is not on what we’re giving up.
AJV (46:19):
Yeah. I love that. I can’t repeat this enough. It’s like, it’s gonna be hard either way. Choose your heart. Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love that. Y’all I could talk to Chris about this for much longer, but our time is up and I want you guys to know where you can go pick up a copy of this book. So if you go to grace yourself book.com, you can get your pre-ordered copy right now. At the time of the release, there’s just a few weeks left, but very soon, February 18th, you can get your real copy in the mail immediately. Chris, what would you tell to the person who’s like, yep, I’m going to pick up your book. What, what would you wanna tell them and why they need to go do that?
CJ (47:04):
Well, first thank you and yeah, it, it’s, you are going to gain tools for that will just make you happier, really. Right. It, like I said, it’s, it’s really a book about what you’re gaining not on how to give up one thing. You know, you’re giving up one thing to gain everything and if you, you know, on the flip side, you could lose everything to hang onto that one thing and that’s not what we want. So this book will really reframe your mind to all the way, all the things that you’re gaining and all the things that you want for your life.
AJV (47:38):
I love that. Again, y’all go check it out, grace yourself book.com, coming to bookstores everywhere, February 18th. Get your copy now. Chris, thank you so much. It was so awesome to have you on. And everyone else who’s listening, stick around the recap episode will be coming up next. We’ll see you next time on the influential Personal brand.
CJ (48:00):
Thank you.
Ep 559: What it Means to be a Bestselling Author | Lucinda Halpern Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Something truly amazing just happened this week, which is that we had our 24th Brand Builders Group client become a national bestselling author. That means that they had hit the Wall Street Journal and or USA today, or Publishers Weekly, or one of the real major national bestseller lists. Not only that, but we had two clients that hit the New York Times bestseller list. We’ve had the eight that has happened eight times in the last 12 months.
RV (01:01):
So we know something about becoming a bestselling author, and I myself hit the New York Times bestseller list when I was 29. I wanna share with you some of the most popular misconceptions that people have about what it means to become a bestselling author and how you become one. So the first misconception that I think every author has, and I think a lot of people in the industry have, is exactly how you become a bestseller. Most people think that publicity and PR is what sells books. People think that it is social media and pr and that for authors, that’s their entire strategy. And when they come to us, they go, well, we hired a PR firm and you know, we’re, we’re gonna do some contests on social, and that’s what they think sells books. And I hate to burst your bubble, but PR and social media don’t sell a lot of books, not typically, and not for most authors.
RV (02:00):
And we have authors like our clients, we have pretty famous clients. It’s very normal that one of our clients gets on Good Morning America or The Today Show or some other national television show. And even on those national television shows, they might move a few hundred units, maybe 700 to a thousand units, even if you get that Hail Mary Miracle Dream come true shot on like national television, typically it’s not even gonna add up to around a thousand units. But to hit a New York Times bestseller list, you’re gonna need at least 10,000 units typically. And to even hit the USA today or the Wall Street Journal is usually several thousand units sold inside of a week. In fact, we have a whole data science team that is a part of Brand Builders Group that all we do is study and deconstruct and analyze these bestseller lists to understand what does it really take to get there?
RV (02:51):
And that’s part of why our clients are hitting it. But the misconception is that PR and social is gonna get you there. And here’s the, here’s the real secret. It’s not online strategy that sells books. It’s offline strategy, it’s offline relationships, it’s offline stages. It’s humans that you have a, a deep relationship with. It’s the people who already know you and love you, getting behind you and supporting you and telling all of their people in their communities and sometimes buying books for their people in their communities and, and creating opportunities for stages for you to be on. And that’s something that we talk about in our training, but social media and PR is not what’s gonna get you there. The second misconception that authors have about what it means to become a bestselling author is they don’t understand how much it depends on a team.
RV (03:42):
In fact, the way that we say this at Brand Builders Group is there is no such thing as a bestselling author. There is only such a thing as a bestselling team. You need a team because you need a lot of people to rally together to pull this off, right? Even though Rory is a New York Times bestselling author, the truth is, I’ve only gotten there because I’ve had lots and lots of people support me and help me and be on that journey. So you need literary agents, typically, and publishers, and you need graphic designers, and you need social media, and you do need email, and you need speakers program managers, and, and you need strategists, right? And that’s part of what we do, is we quarterback and control the whole strategy to pull this together to really, really make it happen. Because the part that everyone misses is selling the book.
RV (04:33):
Writers write editors, edit publishers, publish distributors, distribute retailers, retail, and nobody actually sells the book. And that’s what our team at Brand Builders Group does. We have strategies for how to sell books, how to actually get people to pull out their credit card and buy books in a way that makes the bestseller list tick. So that your hard earned sales get registered and counted and hopefully report in the most optimized way so that you can get the dream of becoming a bestseller. But you need a team. You need, you need to enroll everyone around you. Hitting the bestseller list is not about tricks. It’s not about hacks. It’s not about gimmicks. And it certainly is not about buying your own books to get on the list. What it is about is taking every relational asset you have and pointing them all in one direction at one moment to create a huge spark so that you move the most books possible and get that, you know, that big dream of becoming a bestseller.
RV (05:36):
And that leads me to the fourth misconception that people have about becoming a bestseller, which is, what does it mean when you actually become a bestseller? Well, here’s what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden you’re gonna get a call from a producer to host your own television show, or that emails are gonna flood into your inbox with invites to go speak around the globe for tens of thousands of dollars. It doesn’t work like that in many ways. The day after you become a bestseller, your life will look no different than it did the day before. So it’s not some magic pill or secret sauce that suddenly makes your life easy. But what it does do is it opens doors, it makes things possible, it gets you in front of more people. I mean, think about it this way, if you are a podcast host and you get pitches several of our clients at Brand Builders Group are some of the biggest podcast hosts in the world.
RV (06:34):
Louis Howes, ed Millet, Amy Porterfield, Jasmine Starr, right? People like this, they have huge podcasts. And just imagine that they get pitched every day, people wanting to come on their show. They don’t have time to read all the books, they don’t have time to watch all the videos. They don’t have time to learn about every person who wants to come on the show. So what they typically are gonna do, either literally or at at least metaphorically, is they’re gonna divide the list into two piles. There’s gonna be a no list, the automatic no list, which is gonna be a big pile that grows really fast. It’s just the automatic nous list. Then there’s gonna be another list, which is, we’ll give ’em a second look. We’ll give them a bigger chance. We’ll spend more time. And if you are a bestselling author, there’s a much higher chance that you will go from the no list to the maybe list.
RV (07:26):
And that’s where it starts. The same is true for speaking on the biggest stages in the world. I personally have spoken at several of the biggest speaking events in the world. That is an amazing honor. Many times that happens because people are looking at lots of speakers and they look at all of these different things. There’s all of these different, what academic criteria do they have and how big is their following? And what is their message and how good are they on, on stage? And how funny are they? And all these things. So it’s one notch on the belt, but especially if you’re gonna be paid a lot of money, if someone’s gonna pay you a lot of money to come speak, that means somebody’s job is on the line. Somebody is recommending to say, we should hire this speaker and we should pay them this money.
RV (08:11):
Well, it’s a lot easier to justify if we go, they have all of these credentials, right? They meet all of this criteria to justify getting a higher fee. Becoming a bestselling author is one of those things. It’s one of the most, the biggest pieces of notoriety and credibility that there is. So it does open doors it does open relationships. We, we hosted an event this summer where I, I coed this with my, my good friend Donald Miller and Mike Mcal and John Rulon and some of my other friends. And we hosted an event, and the event was free to come to, but here was the catch. You had to be a New York Times bestselling author or someone who had sold a million copies of a book to get invited to the party, right? So that opens doors, it opens relationships. So it’s just one more thing that, that, that really gets you a chance to, to get in the second look pile, to get in the maybe pile to get in the separate yourself from everyone else pile.
RV (09:09):
But what matters more than anything else is realizing this bestseller lists. Don’t change lives, but books do. Bestseller lists don’t change lives, but books really do. If you become a bestseller, it’s maybe gonna open some doors. It’s gonna do some really great things. But what really matters more than a bestseller title is getting a lot of people to read your book. Making a difference in the world, having your ideas spread, ha having, having your concepts out there, improving and elevating humanity. That’s what being a bestselling author is all about. It’s not about just some silly title or some vein recognition, and it’s not just about getting more opportunity for yourself. Those are small games to play. The big game to play is to go, how do I get lots of people reading my book? How do I get people sharing my book? How do I get people benefiting from my book? And that has to do with first writing a great book, and second, doing everything you can in your power to let people in the world hear about it. So does being a bestselling author matter? It sure does. But what really matters is having a mission that makes a difference. Having a mission is what matters. But if you wanna become a bestselling author, you need to make sure that you don’t have these four common misconceptions.
Ep 558: How to Land Book Deals with Traditional Publishers with Lucinda Halpern
RV (00:03):
Hey, my, one of my biggest dreams and one of the most important moments of my life as a personal brand was the moment I got assigned by a literary agent. And that took me years to figure out. It took me years to even understand who they were, what they did, how they worked, and then trying to get ahold of them to where I could actually talk to one and understand like how I could possibly build a relationship. And I figured that out. It eventually led to the book deal that became Take The Stairs, which became the New York Times bestselling book that launched my career. Well, today we are going to shave years off of your learning curve because you are about to hear from one of the most successful literary agents in our lifetime. Her name is Lucinda Halper. She has worked with several bestselling authors, several of my friends, Dan Martel, Ron Friedman I’ve known, I’ve known them for years.
RV (01:00):
So she has signed book deals for authors as a literary agent with Maj, all the major publishers, penguin Random House, Hachette, you know Simon and Schuster McMill and so forth and so on. They have represented several New York Times bestselling books in all different categories. And Lucinda is was never my agent. She would not sign me. I could I actually didn’t know her back then, but she has been a friend and someone that I know is an expert in this space. And she is switched sides to become an author. And she has a new book coming out called Get Signed, find an Agent, land a Book Deal, and Become a published author, which is coming out or came out from hay House. Yeah. earlier this year. And she is we love Hay House. And I was like, man, what an opportunity to learn from somebody. So she agreed to come on and basically teach her knowledge for free. And I was like, this is so perfect. So, Lucinda, welcome to the show.
LH (02:04):
Thanks so much, Rory. If I had met you with Take the Stairs, I would’ve signed you right away, so don’t worry,
RV (02:10):
Well, thank you for saying that. It’s funny because Michael Hyatt is a good friend of ours, and he has someone who works on his team, who was the acquisitions editor at Thomas Nelson, who turned down take the stairs, and now I see him all the time,
LH (03:24):
So I’ve simplified this to a very like, easy way to understand it, which are these three keys, right? That every publisher and agent are looking for. ’cause Agents have to think like publishers. We all have to think like the media, and we all have to think like readers. So those three keys are great. Writing a big idea, and an irrefutable platform. What’s interesting for your audience is you really only need two of those three keys. Can you guess which ones they are? Rory, can you guess which they might be? Idea. Idea and platform.
RV (03:55):
Idea and platform.
LH (03:56):
So the first thing that an agent, and I’ve quizzed editors on this, we interviewed about 20 New York editors, big five houses, literary agents and bestselling authors on like, what they look for in first time authors. The idea leads and the idea, by what I mean, a big idea has gotta be something that is timely and timeless and feel really of the moment, but like, it’s going to stay, right? So if you’ve got that big idea, which means it’s, it feels a little new and different, but it’s proven ground to be popular. And then you’ve got this platform, which we could spend time talking about. I know your company builds platforms so well. That’s really about an author’s public recognition in their field to their audience. If you’ve got those two things, idea and platform, you should be a slam dunk for any literary agent or publisher. And if any of your authors listening, or your aspiring authors and thought leaders listening are thinking, yeah, but all I’m looking at all these query guidelines and I don’t know how to query these agents and how to get through to them, and that, you know, their guidelines are so confusing, I can assure you that we’re all actually looking for just those two or three things.
RV (05:13):
Mm-Hmm.
LH (05:29):
RV (06:23):
Uhhuh
LH (06:24):
Really different for fiction. Right? And, and it’s different ’cause I’m sure you work with memoirs also. People are writing their life story.
RV (06:30):
Yep, yep. We do some of those. We do No, almost no fiction. We other than a few kids’ books.
LH (06:35):
Right? So, so there you go. If you’re writing your life story, which many of these like land on my desk as memoirs as their life story, and we transform them into something that’s much bigger. But if your intent on writing your life story, the writing’s gotta be so beautiful. It’s gotta, it’s, you’ve gotta see the movie. Mm-Hmm.
RV (06:58):
Hmm. I love that. So yeah, one, one of my favorite quotes is from a guy named Dan Sullivan, and he says, if you have enough money to solve a problem, then you don’t have a problem. And if you get a big enough book deal, then you can hire someone to do the writing and you don’t have a problem. Right? Yeah. So then the, the, so we go, great, one third, we can just cross off right away. And we go, we gotta get a big enough book deal so that we can just pay the writer. And now we’re already a third of the way there, but then the big thing is going okay, in order to get a big book deal. Mm-Hmm.
LH (07:37):
Yeah. Yeah.
RV (07:38):
How do we know what, I think we know what ideas are timeless. You look and see which books have been selling for decades, right? Mm-Hmm.
LH (07:59):
Yeah. Well, even just to add to what your friend Dan said, you know, the way I say it is, it’s not a problem, it’s an expense. Right.
RV (08:08):
Good. I love that. It’s
LH (08:09):
Not a problem, it’s an expense. And mainly these authors that you and I work with are looking at the book as a calling card, as a tentpole, you know, holds together the other businesses, but is really an investment on what they’re going to be seeing on the backend in terms of their courses and their speaking and everything else. Amen. So the timely, timeless, by the way, I’m the only I’m, I’m the only person that I know of who’s actually identified that equation. And so what, what I want people, when they’re listening to this interview to understand is this is a formula for them to think about it. But it’s not, it’s not as though you need to fill in a sheet to your agent or your pub publisher that you’re aspiring to and say, here’s what’s timely. Here’s what’s timeless. You just wanna be striking those cores.
LH (08:56):
Yeah. So, ind terms of figuring it out, the timely, easiest way to think about it is the new and the different. If you’re thinking about John Maxwell’s book that’s existed on the shelf and is a bestseller, you have to compete with that now, right? If you’re writing a book in the same category. So instead of saying to an agent, because we love comps, comparative titles, we love to envision what this book has the power to be. Instead of saying, my book is just like John Maxwell’s Law of Leadership, you now need to say it’s like the laws of leadership for millennials or for people who work in Silicon Valley, or with this sort of twist to it. It’s like, it’s adding your different, what we call your differentiator that makes it, that makes it timely. And really paying attention, like doing the data collection of, of what’s selling in the market. The number of people that you and I both, both work with who wanna write books, write books, but haven’t read books or don’t read in their genre, a lot of ’em. And then how are they gonna know what’s popular with selling? Mm-Hmm.
RV (10:01):
So that’s, so you’re saying it’s, it’s like something timeless. Mm-Hmm.
LH (10:26):
For? No, it’s not. No, it’s not. And it’s just paying attention to like what’s in the current conversation. So I think of a book I represented as an example that was about I talked to her today, so it’s on my mind, like minimizing consumption, right? So she could have pitched her book, which was ultimately called the Year of Less. It was more, it was like a secret, like the secret for another generation. But riding the wave of this minimalism of van life, of people like, of Marie Kondo, right? Those are the sorts of categories that make her book timely. And so she’s, the, the timeless is always those universal themes. It’s like love and loss and resilience and how to get rich and how to lose weight,
RV (11:18):
It jumps One book that’s, that’s selling like crazy, which is a phenomenal book, is called The Psychology of Money.
LH (11:25):
Yes. Love that. Yeah.
RV (11:26):
And you go, it’s just a book about money. There’s a bazillion books about money, but it’s the psychology of it. It’s not the, it’s not the empirical, you know, it’s not the analytical or the tactical. It’s more of like the, the emotional parts of money. Yeah. That’s what we tried to do with procrastinating on purpose. My second book was the emotional Side of time management. That’s how we pitched it and got the deal. But it was really about how to multiply time. And my Ted talk went viral ’cause it was called How to Multiply Time. And it’s all about the emotional side of time management. Mm-Hmm. But we didn’t call the book How to Multiply Time. We called it Procrastinate on Purpose. And that’s a fatal, that was the fatal mistake. I talk about why the idea was good, the title was terrible, and that’s what tanked it. But anyways, the psychology of money would be maybe, is that a good example of going, it’s about money, but it’s like a new example, new spin on it. Example,
LH (12:16):
Although yours is an even better example because Title Aside, had that book been pitched and published today, it would be incredibly timely. ’cause Now there’s so much burgeoning about eq psychology. Mental health is huge. Wellness is everywhere. You know, I was thinking today I am like, if, so if we have another wellness day for someone else in my company, you know, there’s, there’s
RV (12:44):
Big deal. Yeah.
LH (12:46):
So mental health, emotionality finding its way new masculinity, Brene Brown, all about vulnerability, right? Like, these things are all coalescing, which means that your book, if it were sold today, would absolutely strike those chords of timely and timeless and may have had a different verdict.
RV (13:04):
Interesting. Well, maybe you can sell it to my publisher again. Maybe they’ll pay based on the terrible performance. Maybe they’ll pay even, even more money. The second time story. The, the so I think, so one of the things you said here is you, you said something like, pay attention to what’s happening in the go. Go back to that for a second. So
LH (13:26):
In, in inside I’ve got these it’s right in the intermission, there’s a, there’s a great story in it about our friend Ron there. Four types of writers who get book deals. And they’re the ideator person who has great big ideas, always prolific in their ideas. The data collector, who does the market research, who figures out the comps, those comparative titles that are selling? Well, the everywhere is whose person has a platform very visible. And the and the crusader. And the crusader. That’s who I’m through, through That’s who you are. It’s, it’s usually the type I work with is that combination of idea or crusader that is constantly relentlessly advocating. The problem with the crusader who runs a company is so many people for so many years have said, you gotta write the book. I love your story. You know, you’re surrounded by yes men essentially.
LH (14:18):
And what they’re not doing is going out into the world, particularly in business books and seeing that this has been said before, dude, it’s been said like 20 times. And, and another issue that most aspiring business authors. ’cause I love business books. I love to represent business books. I can learn some, like any, any book I can learn from is a book I wanna represent. But so many of them come to us as memoirs. It’s like, I just wanna tell my story of founding an amazing company and making millions of dollars. Like that’s not interesting. Let’s, let’s consider how this can be applicable and universal to a wide audience of people. Not just the people who work for you and not just your spouse and your sister-in-Law, but how this can be applicable to a wide audience of people. And how we’re gonna make it timely and stand out in the market. Like what’s its contemporary hook or appeal
RV (15:12):
Uhhuh
LH (15:26):
A thousand percent. But you know what? Right now, and it is here to stay. Diversity and inclusion is like the order of the day, right? Yeah. So if you are not writing from that perspective, you should be including portraits of others, anecdotes of others from that perspective, right? And so that’s like a small twist that you can be making in your pitch to show that you’re not just like your average. You, you know, I hesitate like how much of this is gonna be edited, but you’re not just like your average person sitting around and writing a book ’cause you feel like it and you feel like you’ve got a message to share. It is going out there and seeing what hasn’t been done. So the number of people come to me, say, I’m writing the next Ben Hardy, or what’s that book that everyone loves to write? Hard thing about hard things. Another Ben good to Great. I’m writing the Next Good to Great. It’s like, fantastic. Those books were are 20 years old easily. So what’s the new book that people are talking about and what is it missing that you can expand on that you can lend your unique vantage point to?
RV (16:30):
Mm-Hmm.
LH (16:41):
Right? But the issue with this crusader type that again, love to work with the crusaders, the ones who run companies, is that they’re not out there. They literally don’t have time to go about searching the market and doing the data collection. They’re just saying their spiel. And people are like, oh, that’s amazing. It should be a book. A keynote’s not a book. Yeah.
RV (17:02):
Yeah. And I would say it’s, it’s interesting, a lot of who we publish at Mission-Driven Press, they are the crusaders. They’re going, I’m not so concerned about a new idea. I’m concerned about sharing. This is what’s worked for me hardcore tactical. And it’s like, it’s, in many ways, it’s not really new. Mm-Hmm.
LH (17:50):
Radical feel, feel like something we know. You know, it is, it is a Hollywood business. Publishing is a Hollywood business. So a lookalike, what what I mean by that is it’s a lookalike. This is an X meets y. So we wanna feel like there is a po a popularity around this. But you have a new spin. What I like about what you just said about your particular clients is that it is highly how-to imp practical, which is also a trend in the market we see for books by entrepreneurs. Again, veering away from the life story unless you’re like the guy who runs Disney, you know? Yeah.
RV (18:22):
Unless you’re celebrity, like the life story place,
LH (18:24):
The life story piece is not what we we’re looking for is the replicable is the useful. And always being oriented toward your reader, which is different from your employee, is, is how I encourage aspiring authors to think. It’s not just like the big advance though for many of our authors. Funny, your, the name of your press is called Mission Driven Press. It’s about impact, mission, legacy. And you just don’t get that. If we were to speak about why even traditionally publish it in the first place, why even work with someone like me? It’s because you’re just not going to get those distribution possibilities, those media opportunities, foreign rights, general word of mouth, unless you’ve got at the moment that pedigree of a traditionally published book.
RV (19:11):
Mm-Hmm.
LH (20:27):
Yourself, you gotta come up with it yourself. Right? We’re with a team. Gotta
RV (20:30):
Come up with it.
LH (20:30):
It’s not like the publisher gives it to you, or the agent gives it to you. Totally.
RV (20:33):
And I, and I hear you on the big idea. I’m totally with you in my experience, and you tell me if you have a different experience, if you have a big idea, you need a big idea to get a book deal. But if all you have is a big idea and you don’t have a platform, you not gonna get a very big advance. True. So, so when you start talking about not only getting a book deal, but getting a big advance, the platform, I think is the thing that probably matters the most, is that matters the most. True or false.
LH (21:03):
True. True, true, true. And also, I, I tried to approach this unscientific business of publishing as a science, and I’ve actually done some of the math on like, oh, they’ve got a hundred thousand email list subscribers. They got a hundred thousand dollars advance, they have 500,000 TikTok artists. They got a $500,000 advance. Like it sometimes is that unfortunately simple? Mm-Hmm,
RV (21:48):
And I, I have a secret and I I love Hays. Oh yeah.
LH (21:50):
Tell me.
RV (21:51):
There’s no way It’s 30%
LH (21:54):
You think it’s a higher than you should than no
RV (21:56):
Way lower.
LH (21:58):
Yeah. Right. But I mean, is like that they overestimated. Yeah. They,
RV (22:01):
And that’s a, I mean, 30% is a generous, so if you have a hundred thousand email subscribers and they give you a $30,000 advance thinking, you know, or whatever, based on 30,000, it’s like that’s being super generous. The reality is, if you send a hundred thousand emails, only 3% of those are getting clicked on anyways. Right. So, you know, 20% are getting open, 3% are getting clicked on. You’re talking about you got 3000 people. Like, so email is, I’m not saying email is not important. It’s still to this day, in our opinion, the most, the single most important metric, way more important than TikTok and social media and all that stuff. Mm-Hmm.
LH (22:51):
Totally. But if we were just to look at, ’cause this is a burning question for all aspiring authors about the way that agents assess platform.
RV (23:00):
Yes.
LH (23:01):
Just to give you some like very basic and overlooked secrets, people are gonna Google you the minute we pick up your pitch. If we’re even interested, even if, if you’ve got us with the idea and you’ve indicated that you have some sort of credential to write this thing, the next thing we’re gonna do is Google you. Because why would we want to get into marriage with someone we haven’t Googled? You know, like this is a lifetime relationship. So we Google you and we find, eh, there’s nothing. Well, that’s a bad indication that you have any public recognition around you. So what you’re going to have to tell us in your letter, if you’re not all over social media, is I have this email list of X numbers, I do this amount of speaking year, I have these like five people in my network that could all end endorsements and their, their names you’d probably recognize. And in fact some of them are on your client list. Right. So this is like, those three things alone, network speaking and email list are three things that we can’t necessarily find out about you unless you tell us in the letter. And so the optimistic message of get signed is here all the different ways. And by the way, this is cross genres, this is for fiction, for children’s, for memoir. It’s not just for business
RV (24:08):
Books. Oh, really? Interesting. I was curious. I was curious about that. Well,
LH (24:11):
This book is, this book is for any writer, any stage, anything they’re writing. And because I’ve tried to craft the universal rules
RV (24:20):
For how Yeah. But and and that’s even what you’re saying, like, you know, platform matters even for those non, for even for fiction writers and even for those people. ’cause That doesn’t equate in my mind ’cause that’s not our space. Like most of our space is nonfiction.
LH (24:32):
Yeah, yeah, it does. I mean, again, with, with moderation, right? So like, if you wanna be a fiction or, or a children’s book writer, it is much more about that timely, timeless idea and the writing itself. So there’s a different weight being placed on two of those three keys.
RV (24:48):
Ah, that makes sense.
LH (24:49):
Nonfiction space. But any way you cut it, like you should be working on your public recognition because how else are you, how proving to the first agent who googles you, that someone knows who you are.
RV (25:02):
So you’re saying if you show up blank on Google, it’s a very uphill, a very uphill battle. It’s
LH (25:09):
A totally uphill battle. So for my, for the older folks in our community, ’cause we’re, as you know, we do a ton of coaching workshops, live events, and we’ve got a lot of people who are 50 and above writing the books that they always dreamed of writing. And they’re like, I’m not going on Instagram
RV (25:49):
And a, a letter meaning the letter to the agent. Yeah. And then in turn, the book proposal y’all put together that you pitched to a publisher. ’cause They’re gonna go do the same thing and they’re gonna find the same result and be like, who, who you guys sell this to?
LH (26:03):
So wait, good clarification on that for your audience in terms of what you need to even be at the stage where you’re pitching your book. It can, it’s not just a query letter. And then you get in conversation with someone like me and you pay us to do the book or we develop the book together. That’s not, that’s not how the traditional model works. You have to have that pitch letter. The minute someone like me says, we’re interested, send us your book proposal. You’ve gotta have this 50 page roadmap of what the, it’s basically a sales document of what this book looks like, how it’s gonna be, does it have a plot,
RV (27:03):
LH (27:52):
Yeah. But more than ever, I mean, I’m thinking of authors of mine, like Jake Wood, I don’t know if you if you work with him, but he did tours in Afghanistan and Iran. He runs, he used to run a nonprofit called Team Rubicon. You know anything about this?
RV (28:04):
Heard of Team Rubicon? Yep. Yeah.
LH (28:05):
So he’s a phenomenal guy. Speaker, author, you know, all of the things. But he was classic in terms of the client I worked with. He’s like, assumed I wanted this book out yesterday. We’re not waiting three years to get this out on shelves. Well, pub day arrives and you’re like, wait a second, this is way too soon. I’m not nearly as lined up as I want things to be. Right. Because, you know, it takes so much groundwork, it takes such a village and you’re never really ready when it comes out. But more than that, the people who contact me and say, this book has gotta be out tomorrow, immediately my antenna goes up because I’m thinking if this can’t be successful in five years, it’s not a book I want on my list because it doesn’t have that timeless appeal. Publishers love the New York Times bestseller list. Like we love the New York Times bestseller list, but what they really want end of day is the long tail.
RV (28:56):
Yep.
LH (28:57):
The book that sells on the long tail.
RV (28:59):
Yep. And the other thing is, if you, if you tell an agent or a publisher like, I want this out tomorrow, that means you better have your whole marketing and sales plan not planned. It better be done. Like it, it takes six months, Tori, just do a proper marketing and sales plan. And so it’s like if you’re trying to advance faster than that, you better have the thing on lockstep. Yeah. Before you go, I know we have to wrap up soon. Yeah. I wanna ask you about advances because I never like to ask authors what their specific advance was. I don’t like to ask publishers what their specific advance was, but in general terms, I feel like literary agents can talk. You are more educated than anyone. I’m like, what’s realistic Lucinda? Like, if I’m a first time author with 20,000 email addresses, you know, can, what, what am I talking about? Like, realistically, I know the range depends on how big the idea is and, and obviously stuff like that. But like, do do authors get more than a half a million for an advance? Do they get more than a million for an advance? Like what are the, what are the ranges and the quick, you know, factors on that? Yeah, it
LH (30:08):
Was super rare. I mean, I would say that I remember looking back at like Todd Herman Steel and it’s widely advertised, so it’s, you know, I’m not sharing anything I shouldn’t share, but I think he was like the last in the space that I’d seen as a new author to get a million dollar advance in the space. We’re talking about pre pandemic, right? So it’s like, if you’re James, I don’t know what James Clear got paid to begin. I’m guessing it was a handsome advance because he built that list way past 20,000. You know, so he had, he had it all on lock. So I, I’m taking a roundabout way of answering your question. The six figure to half a million is very much the sweet spot for authors that are first timers, but have a robust platform, a great idea, and then if they hire a writer and do a great proposal, like that’s also gonna help. Right? so that’s sort of like where we’re, where we’re focused
RV (31:02):
And what’s robust platform
LH (31:05):
Robust would be more in the range of like 50 or even past a hundred. But it’s a composite, right?
RV (31:12):
Like a hundred thousand email addresses.
LH (31:14):
Yeah. But I’m ta I’m talking about not just that data point alone, but they’re doing speaking, they’ve got 20 people they’re connected to are gonna have ’em on their podcasts or blurb the book or do X, y, Z for them, right? It’s this composite. So it’s network, it’s speaking, it’s email lists, it’s social, it’s media that you’ve obtained. Like how widely recognized are you by the media? How often are you on the media circuit? So to qualify the advance based on just an email list. Like, I don’t, it’s not enough anymore, right? It’s all of these things that can lead to a six to seven figure advance. But we’re seeing the seven figure advances, mainly not with the first time authors at this point, but with the proven track record they’ve had like
RV (31:58):
If they’re like a celebrity, like a reality TV star
LH (32:00):
Oh sure. If it’s Oh, a thousand. Yes. A re I’m, I’m talking more in our spot of like business books, thought leaders but celebrities. Absolutely. You you would be looking at that. Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
RV (32:10):
LH (32:57):
Thanks so much, Rory. Love it. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Ep 555: Nail the First 30 Seconds of a Cold Call | Ryan Lang Episode Recap
RV (00:06):
Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden, and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. Over the course of my career, I have had to cold call a lot. I knocked on over 20,000 doors when I was in college as, as a door to door salesperson. After I finished graduate school, I then worked for an enterprise software company selling anti-spam like spyware and anti-spam filtering software to large corporate enterprises. And then my wife and I built an actual sales consulting company where we cold called on large companies and small companies to train their salespeople how to sell.
RV (01:08):
And as an author, I’ve, I’ve cold called on literary agents as a speaker. I’ve cold called companies to get speaking engagements. I’ve made tens of thousands of cold calls. And how you open your cold call makes a big difference. And, and when it comes to cold calling, I think most of us get super nervous and super, like when we’re nervous and when we’re afraid and when we’re scared, it’s usually about nailing those first 30 seconds. Like we’re most nervous about what do we say and what happens in those first opening seconds? And it really is important that you get it right. And most people don’t. Most people get it wrong. In fact, most of the sales trainers and most of the scripts that you ever come across are awful. They’re, they’re terrible. They’re stupid. Like they, they’re, they’re, they’re horrendous. They don’t make any, they don’t work like and so I wanna talk to you in this video, I’m gonna share with you first of all the mindset of what we’re after here when we are cold calling.
RV (02:04):
And then I’m gonna talk you through the, the two most common mistakes that we see when we watch people, like when we’ve coached people who are cold calling, or the mistakes that I, I have made, right? I mean, out of 30,000 or, you know, more thousands and thousands of cold calls. I’ve made a lot of these mistakes myself. So I’m just gonna share with you the things that don’t really work. And then I’m gonna share with you a three step process here towards the end of exactly what you should do when you’re making cold calls. If you want to nail those opening seconds and, and have an actual chance. First of all, let’s talk about the mindset, right? What is, what’s the, what’s the mindset here? The, the mindset is serving, not selling, right? That’s everything that we’re about at brand builders groups, service centered selling.
RV (02:48):
So the mindset is always serving, not selling. So the mindset isn’t how do I trick someone? It’s not how do I manipulate them? It’s, it’s not what’s the, the ninja, voodoo tactic that I can magically say that’s gonna somehow take someone who wouldn’t buy and make them a buyer. I’m not trying to like sneak something under their radar, right? That’s not what it’s about. Now, service centered is, is being confident. It’s being direct, it’s being confident. It’s also being aware that for many people, the answer’s gonna be no. And that’s okay. Your job as a service centered salesperson is not to magically take someone who’s a no and make them a yes. And that’s not your job. If you think that’s your job, that is gonna create pressure on you. That’s not the job of a service centered salesperson. The job of a service centered salesperson is to find all of the people that could genuinely benefit from your product or service.
RV (03:43):
That’s it. To find all the people who could benefit from, from your product or service, and give them a genuine, honest look, a genuine opportunity to buy what you are, what you’re selling, or, or to show them, right? I, I often don’t even think about it as like, my job is to sell. My job is to find them, and my job is to show this to them. It’s really their job to decide whether or not it’s the fit. And right there is the mindset shift, right? Like, it takes you from that adversarial of like me against you. And this is like some type of a, of a combat where I’m, I’m given some manipulative, high pressure, slimy sales tactic from some video you saw on the internet, like, or, you know, one of these old school sales training manuals or something. It’s not that, right?
RV (04:31):
It’s just being direct and saying, Hey, here’s who I am. This is what I got. This is who I talked to. Can, can it help you? Right? So I want you to understand that that mindset, like your job is not to sell. Your job is to serve. Now that said, you’re going to, you’re going to be dealing with some, some sales resistance, right? People have a natural resistance to being sold something because of all the bad advice and because of the, the decades of horrible training that has gone on, you’re gonna have to combat some of that. So your internal mindset is one of, of service. Also externally, the things that come out of your mouth, they should sound more like you’re talking to a friend and less like you’re giving a formal pitch. And you’ll, we’ll, we’ll, you’ll understand here when we talk about some of these mistakes.
RV (05:21):
But, but I want you to, to approach the whole thing as it’s not adversarial, right? You are, it’s not you versus them. It’s you in service of them. You’re there to see if you can help them. And if they’re gonna say no, if they’re gonna reject, reject you, they’re not rejecting you. They’re, they’re rejecting this thing that you have. And so that takes a lot of the pressure off of you right up front. In fact, one of the things that we say at Brand Builders Group all the time is there is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. If you shift this sales encounter from one away from the idea of it’s me versus them, and you shift it too, it’s me for them, it’s me with them, it’s me coming around and sitting on, on their side, and then I’m gonna talk to them the way that I would talk to a normal person, like the way that I would, that I would talk to a friend, the, the way that I would talk in real life, not the way that a robot would sound, or some weird cheesy professional salesman with sound.
RV (06:18):
Okay? So that’s, that’s the mindset. Now, let’s talk about the mistakes. Okay? So here’s, here’s the most common mistakes. Mistake number one is leading with your company name, right? So if you say, Hey, it’s Rory Vaden from Brand Builders Group, that is a mistake. Why? Because they’re not gonna recognize your company name most likely. And whether they do or they don’t, that’s not how friends talk to each other, right? You don’t call someone and say, call your buddy and be like, Hey, it’s Roy from Brand Builder’s Group. What’s up, man? You wanna hang out? Like, that’s not how we talk to in real life. It’s not how we talk to normal people. Now, by not sharing your company name, I’m, we’re not trying to be misleading. We’re we’re not trying to hide anything. We’re not hiding anything. We’re just going, look, if my job is to honestly serve them, if my job is to help them take an honest look at what I have, if, if my job is to present to them something that may or may not help them, I have to give them a, an honest chance to do that.
RV (07:18):
And so I also don’t wanna do anything that is going to negatively, you know, work against that opportunity. So anything that immediately signals and, and, and ties into their fear that I’m just, you know, some slimy salesperson or something, I wanna stay away from that, right? I just wanna have an honest human conversation. And so usually I will stick with first names if I’m cold calling, right? So, you know, say, you know, Hey, is it Lisa? Hey Lisa, this is Rory. Why? Because that’s how people talk to each other, right? You call your friends usually by nicknames and stuff like that. You don’t call and you don’t use people’s last names. So I want to create this sort of friendly conversational tone, just like I would in real life, talking to a real life friend. So don’t lead with your company name. The other thing is don’t ask them a question right away.
RV (08:08):
Now, I’m a fan of questions, questions are good questions. Great sales is more about being a great question asker than a great talker. I really believe that. And there is a place for questions, and we’re gonna use a question here soon, but don’t, don’t start your conversation with like, Hey, Lisa, it’s Rory. Do you have a minute? Like, nobody has a minute, okay? Nobody does. Like, nobody has spare time. There’s not a, there’s not a sales call that I’ve ever made where someone was like, you know what? I was just looking for someone to talk to. Thanks for calling. Like, I, I, I, I actually would love to talk to somebody. They don’t like, they’re busy, right? They, they, they, they weren’t sitting around waiting for you, and it accomplishes zero by asking them if they have time. If they have a minute, also, they go, how you doing?
RV (08:53):
I don’t care. I don’t care to tell you how I’m doing. Right? So that, that kind of cheesy fodder, that pandering, it doesn’t work. It’s just not helpful. You’re not, it doesn’t serve them in any way. And, and what we want is we wanna serve them. We wanna be useful to them. So we wanna shape the conversation to be helpful for them right away. And, and doing a question is going to create that, that sales resistance right up front because they go, man, I don’t know you. Like, that’s what they’re thinking, right? They’re going, man, I don’t know you. Like, who are you? What? Like, why are you bugging me? That is what they are afraid of, all right? So don’t do that. Don’t do one of those two things. Don’t lead with your company name. Don’t use your last name. And also don’t ask them some frivolous question.
RV (09:38):
Don’t pander to them. Those are telltale signs that you are a cheesy salesperson, that you are just another solicitor, right? Talk them in a normal voice. Use first names, okay? And, and now let’s talk about the three step process for how you do want to execute that call. Step number one, we’ve already talked about this a little bit, is a conversational tone. You’re going to use first names not last names. So you’re just going to make sure that you say, Hey, Lisa, this is Rory. Okay? Not this is Rory Vaden, because you don’t introduce yourself with last names like you do. I mean, that, that is a sign that you’re a stranger, right? Now that said, I’m not gonna introduce my last name, but the very first thing that I’m gonna say after my name is I’m gonna acknowledge the fact that we haven’t met yet.
RV (10:29):
Why? Because I’m gonna come forward with that. I’m gonna say, look, I know that you’re thinking, who the heck am I? And I don’t need you to rack your brain. I wanna let you know that we haven’t met yet. So I’m gonna take a confident stance of, of making it clear that we don’t know each other, but maybe we should, but also maybe there’s no reason for us to talk, okay? So I wanna sort of stand confidently in this space. And so a line, there’s many different ways you can say this, but an example of a line you would use is you would say Hey, is it Lisa? Hey Lisa, this is Rory. And you and I haven’t had a chance to meet yet. Or I’d say, Hey, Lisa, this is Rory, and don’t worry, don’t try to rack your brain thinking about where we’ve met because we we’ve not been introduced to one another yet.
RV (11:10):
Something like that. So I’m going to let her know, or him right up front that we haven’t met. That’s, that’s part of the relationship. So they go, okay, great. So now I have, I’ve just opened the door. Instead of getting an immediate door slammed by going, oh my gosh, you know, hi, this is Rory Vaden, okay, slam, I don’t know, Rory Vaden, hi, this is Rory from Brand Miller’s Group Slam. Like, I’ve never heard of your company. Hey, this is Rory, how you doing? Slam? You sound like a salesperson. Why? I say, Hey, is it Lisa? Hey Lisa, this is Rory. And you and I haven’t had a chance to meet yet. Okay? I got, I got a little window here, not much, right? But I’ve bought myself an extra half a second, which is all I need to execute step two, okay? So step one of how to do this right, okay?
RV (11:58):
Is to, is to let them know that you haven’t met yet, and be right up front, be open, be honest. If there’s any chance of someone giving you an extra second is through honesty and openness. So that’s what we’re gonna do. Let them know that we haven’t met yet. Now, that gives me a, an opportunity, a fraction of a second to get to step two, which is to use this phrase, the reason, this is a magical phrase. The reason, the reason I’m calling you there is a, a, a psychological trigger that happens when you hear the reason everybody p peaks interest, right? They tune in, they pay attention because you go, great. You are getting to the point. Now, here’s another common mistake is people say, Hey, this will only take a minute. I’m not a fan of saying that, because first of all, they don’t have a minute to waste.
RV (12:51):
And I, it’s almost like I’m saying, Hey, if you can just endure this for a second, that that’s not it. And I don’t wanna say I’ll get to, I don’t wanna waste time saying, I’ll get to the point. I wanna just get to the point. And that’s what they want too. They don’t wanna hear you say, you’ll get to the point, they just wanna hear you get to the point. So get to the point. So you say, hi, is it Lisa? Hey Lisa this is Rory and you and I haven’t met yet, but the reason I’m calling is, and so right there you have these, all of these things happening, firing in that opening moment. We’re using first names, right? We’re not using last names, we’re not using company names, we’re keeping it casual. We’re talking the way that we would talk among friends, yet I am openly, transparently, and honestly letting her know that we haven’t met yet.
RV (13:37):
Okay? So now she doesn’t have to worry about is this a, like, is this a weird something going on? Or like, who is this person? Say, Hey, we haven’t met yet. So I’ve got the slate clean. And now in step two, I’m saying, the reason I’m calling is I’m not telling her I’m getting to the point. I’m just getting to the point. Don’t waste time telling people that you’re gonna get to the point, just get to the point by using the phrase, the reason, the reason I’m calling is, and then here’s step three, and this is where their magic happens. If you’ve never done this before, this will sound different to you. But this is different because this is not what most people do which is one of the reasons why it works. Okay? And here, here’s what I want you to do. Talk about who not what.
RV (14:24):
In other words, don’t talk about what you’re selling. Don’t talk about what company you are from. Talk about who are the kind of people you talk to. Alright? So I’ll say that again, don’t talk about what, talk about who are the kind of people you talk to. And we’re gonna do this in two ways. We’re gonna first start generally, and then we’re gonna be specific. And when you talk about who not what, this is the magic. And, and if there is a secret trick to great cold calling to it to oring, it is this, it is talking about who not what. Now, I wanna let you know, like there’s no ultimate secret here. A lot of this is just a numbers game. A lot of this is you’re just gonna deal with rejection. A lot of this is you have to just do hundreds and hundreds and thousands of thousands of calls until you get comfortable doing this kind of a thing.
RV (15:14):
But if there’s a secret, if there is a, if there’s a magic strategy, a magic technique that will tip the odds in your favor, it is talking about who not what. And there’s two types of who. There’s the general and the specific. Okay? So let’s, let’s talk about the general. So I’ll say, the reason I’m calling is because I am the one talking to all of the, and then usually I will insert the job title, and then I will insert like the, the area, the geographic region. So when I was knocking on doors when I was in college, I would say I’m the one talking with all the moms, with students here in the blankety blank school district or with students here in, you know, whatever, Nashville, Tennessee, or Brentwood or Davidson County. I would say, I am talking to the who. This is super powerful.
RV (16:05):
I mean, I’m telling you this works in all different scales, all different environments. So when I was selling enterprise software solutions, I would say, Hey, I’m the one talking with all the IT directors for all the, all the large, you know, software companies or all the, all the companies based here in Cherry Creek, Colorado, for example. So I would say the who, the job title in the region, like the geographic region. You could also say in an industry. So if you’re calling by verticals in industry, right? You could say, you know, I’m the one talking with all the, all the, you know, mortgage bankers here in the western United States, but make the geographic region, the more specific, the more terrific. So, so narrow the region or narrow the industry as much as you can. And because it shows credibility, and it, it shows, it shows specificity, which is what you want.
RV (16:56):
Because you what, here’s what happens psychologically when they hear that you are talking to all the IT directors for all the companies in Cherry Creek, Colorado, or all the moms in the Davidson County School District. Or if, if I’m calling to sell, you know, a keynote speech, I might say, I’m talking to all the event coordinators for all the companies who have events in Orlando. Now it shifts from who are you? ’cause I’ve just said, who am I? This is what I’m doing. And it shifts to them asking the question, am I the right fit? Right? So the it, it turns their focus psychologically from who, who are you? I don’t know if I like you. What are you doing? And all this sort of like sales resistance to am I the right person that you’re trying to reach? And that’s good because we want them to be thinking about themselves.
RV (17:47):
All of sales is about that. All of sales is getting them to shift the focus away from you as the salesperson and onto them and their situation and their needs. And so by letting them know who are the kind of people that you’re talking to, then you’re, you’re more likely to create a connection with them. Or they might say, oh, that’s not me, and that’s great. So we just saved the whole conversation. They can put you in touch with, with the right person. So lead with the who and say the job title from the geographic industry or, or the geographic region, or say the job title of people in this industry, or whatever vertical or territory that you are working in terms of whatever your sales territory is. Okay? That’s what we wanna see. So that’s the general, and it immediately has them going, am I qualified?
RV (18:35):
Like, am I the right person? Am I, am I the right candidate? And that shifts the focus off of you, the salesperson, and on to them, which is what we want. We want the whole conversation, the whole relationship to, to not be focused on you, but on them and their needs. So I’ll say, Hey, Lisa, this is Rory, and don’t worry, you and I haven’t had a chance to meet yet, but the reason I’m calling is because I’m the one talking with all the IT directors for all the small businesses right here in Cherry Creek, Colorado. Now notice how I’m, I’m, I’m narrowing down to the job title. I’m saying the small businesses. So this is like business type and the geographic region. You wanna use as many of those qualifiers as you can when you do this because you want to check and you’re going to use the criteria that they will relate to, right?
RV (19:23):
You want them to, you want them to go, Ooh, I am an IT director of a small business in Cherry Creek, Colorado. That is how you, you, you’re gaining momentum. Now notice all of it’s happening in their mind. That’s all, all of sales is communication, it’s human behavior, it’s psychology. So most of the conversation is, is happening in their mind. And that’s what we’re designing this to in a way to make it comfortable for them. This isn’t about magically squeezing your way past them or manipulating them. This is putting them in a state of psychological comfort. It is helping them self-identify quickly are, is this a conversation worth having? So, hi, is it Lisa? Hi Lisa, this is Rory. And you and I haven’t had a chance to meet yet, but the reason I’m calling is that I’m talking with all the IT directors of the small businesses in the Cherry Creek, Colorado area.
RV (20:16):
That’s the opening, that’s the general who. Now I’m gonna follow up with the specific who and the specific who is, I’m going to use examples of the other people that I’m talking with. So I’m going to use the names of our preferably clients, okay? Now, typically, you know, there’s some logistical details here and some legal implications in, in certain scenarios in certain industries. So one of the things you wanna do is get the permission to use the, the name, image and likeness of your clients. This is more of a contract thing. Or just at least ask ’em and say, Hey, do you mind if I let people know that we’re working together as I’m out introducing myself to other people, and you just ask for their permission? And you need that so that you can use it here. Now, if it’s your very first day and you don’t have any customers, you can delicately and carefully and specifically mention, these are people you’re talking to, they’re not clients.
RV (21:14):
As soon as you have clients, you wanna use the client’s names because the client’s names give you credibility because of the specificity. Even if they don’t know that person, they probably will know that company, or they will at least relate to the idea that it’s a similar type of person in a similar type of company, in a similar type of geographic region or a similar type of industry as the one they, as the one that they are in. And that gives you credibility, right? So you would ideally, and now if they recognize the clients or if then that’s, that’s a game changer. I mean, that is the secret sauce. That is the magic is if they recognize people that you’re working with. So get the permission to use their name, image, and likeness and use customers as soon as you can. In the beginning, if you don’t have customers, you can just say, share I’ve been talking with, but be very specific that you are.
RV (22:07):
Don’t imply that you’re working together. Just clarify. I’ve been talking to people that some of whom you may know, like so and so and so and so and so and so. But here’s the dynamic of this conversation. The whole dynamic is based on who, not what, who are the kind of people you’re talking to? Who are the kind of people you’ve been working with and, and who are the kind of people that you have relationships with? Notice you haven’t said what company you’re with, what it is that you’re selling. We’re trying to open a conversation based on who. And this is why in some of our other training videos, we talk about using tools like LinkedIn and things to help identify and know and, and have names and references of people that they actually will recognize because of the tools of modern day.
RV (22:52):
But let’s say you didn’t have any of those, you would say, hi, is it Lisa? Hey Lisa, my name is Rory and you and I actually haven’t had a chance to meet yet, but the reason that I’m calling you is because I’m the one talking with all the IT directors here in the Cherry Creek area who all work with small businesses. In fact, you might know some of the other IT directors I’ve been talking to by chance. Do you know Tom Williams over at x, y, Z company? Or maybe you, maybe you know Mike Lorenzo, or maybe you know Jim Johnson or maybe, you know and they may not recognize any of them, and that’s okay, but, but they might recognize the company names. And the more specific, the more terrific. So if you’re, if you’re, if you’re using names, like if your clients, if you actually have clients that are recognizable or they work for companies, you’re gonna gain a lot of traction in that way.
RV (23:44):
I wanna mention, don’t ever use a customer’s name if they don’t, if they tell you not to or anybody’s name, if they tell you not to, but you’re not doing this for you, you’re doing this for them. Why? Because this puts them at ease. This helps your prospect reduce their sales resistance. It helps them reduce this, this friction, this automatic no. And it allows us to have an honest conversation amongst friends, and it allows us to open up what hopefully will be a beautiful relationship. It might be a short relationship if it’s not a fit, but we’re shifting the focus away from me as this cold calling solicitor, and we’re shifting the conversation over to them and their needs by talking about who not what. So for more insights and information on the psychology of influence, make sure that you hit subscribe on my channel. Follow me here below. If you have a question, leave a comment. But this is what I’m spend my whole life studying on the four levels of influence. So I’ll hope you hit subscribe and check out some of our other videos.