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Ep 559: What it Means to be a Bestselling Author | Lucinda Halpern Episode Recap

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, . And so that’s always a, always a laughter, a little bit of a, of a funny thing, but you and I didn’t know each other, but I’m so excited about what you’re doing. Thank you. I would love for you to just share the transparent, real deal on what does it take to get the attention of an a-list literary agent, and effectively a publisher, a major publisher. So if, if we’re talking traditional publishing, our audience knows that, that we have our own hybrid imprint, you know, Mission-Driven Press, that we can publish books. But usually if someone can get a huge book advance from a major publisher, we’ll tell ’em to go that direction much of the time. But a lot of people don’t understand that game and they don’t understand why you need a literary agent, and most of all, how to get the attention of somebody like you. ’cause I know you have people banging on your door all the time. So can you share a little bit on that? Yeah.
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. . I love that. So you said it takes three things to get a great book deal, great writing, big idea, irrefutable platform. You said the one that we don’t need is great writing. Yep. And is that because that’s a mon that’s a problem we can solve with money is great writing
LH (05:29):
. I love the way you put that. Yeah. You only need two of the three to get signed, to get an agent or book deal. So in the case of your nonfiction entrepreneur authors, it’s definitely about big idea and platform. The writer, as you said, can be outsourced or maybe you write well. But I always encourage, you know, my, my thought leaders and entrepreneurs, so many of whom we work with at Usin, the literary, why do you wanna be in a trade where you are not the expert, you’re the expert on presenting your business, beating the drum. You are being hired by a publisher to do exactly what you do so well. So if you know what you don’t know, and I only wanna be in business with people who know what they don’t know, I know what I don’t know, then you hire another expert to do that writing piece for you. There’s just no use in trying to do it all. So, you know, that is a problem to be solved with money. , uhhuh, , I think you’re right. Yeah.
RV (06:23):
Uhhuh , yeah. No, it’s
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. . And that’s where that key of writing becomes actually most important.
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. , I need a big idea. So you said the big idea has to be timely, but also timeless.
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. . And you go, oh, well, you know John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is timeless. It’s been, it’s been selling 2000 units a week for like, you know, a couple decades. Right. How do we spot the timely ideas?
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. . That’s what, that’s
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. . Right?
RV (10:01):
So that’s, so you’re saying it’s, it’s like something timeless. Mm-Hmm. . But it’s timely because it, it strikes this differentiation point. And is it, is it like one example of that formula is who it’s written for, like millennials or whatever. What are some other, is it always a who, like is it always the, the who it’s
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, , you know, all those things that we’re perennially interested in. But there’s some new appetite in the market.
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 . Like you’ve gotta be so sensitive to that now. It’s in
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 . And, and, and to make it, to make it stand out in the market. It’s kind of like you said, like basically like pay attention to what the market is talking about or pay attention to what the hot topics are. You know, pay attention to the news cycle. Is it all that kind of stuff?
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. . Yeah. So you’re not just gonna rewrite a version of the same book, you’re gonna write a new angle on a proven a new angle on a proven concept.
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. . And the goal is not new. The goal is like what works. And it’s really about platform, right? They’re just going, well, I can sell it to all my customers. I can sell it to all my people. And that’s dawning on me as you’re talking going, that’s, that’s a perfect fit for that person. But if you want a traditional publisher liter, a-list literary agent, big advance. Yeah. Half the battle here is the big idea. And in order for it to be a big idea, it’s got to somehow be new, different, unique, feel
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. . Yeah. And that was the, the game all changed for me when we figured out how to get our books distributed through Simon and Schuster. Yes. That was where, when, when, first of all, when we hit the New York Times and when we could get distribution through Simon and Schuster, it was like, whoa, this is hybrid. But it’s not really hybrid. It’s really as close to traditional publishing as you can get with just being inside the hybrid line for the reasons that you’re saying. Now, the difference is we don’t pay advances. People have to pay for us to produce the book. Mm-Hmm. . So, hybrid aside for a second. ’cause That’s a, that’s a fun, exciting area to me that’s like, you know, emerging and, you know, has lots of great things and some challenges and all that, but traditional publishing is still here. There’s still big advances. But when you talked about there’s three things you need, you need, you need great writing a big idea in a refutable platform, we don’t necessarily need great writing ’cause we can hire it. And the editors are really good. I mean, that’s another thing of traditional publishing that’s incredible. It’s just like, yes. My, my editor is freaking phenomenal. I mean, I’m absolutely amazing. The big idea, I hear you on it. I go, that’s good. What I have not, you come up with it
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, . Incidentally, my, my publisher at Hayas said that only 30% of an email list generally converts to books to book buys. Because if you’re an expert of any kind, it’s not, maybe your audience isn’t long form readers and book buyers, right. So you can’t like, make the assumption that everyone on your list is gonna buy the book. Oh,
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. . ’cause That converts even less. But anyways, that’s fascinating to go. And I think publishers are waking up to this. They’re going, Hey, I have someone who has 5 million Instagram followers. I’m gonna pay them a million dollars. And oh my gosh, they sold 2000 books. Not, you know, and they, they vastly overestimated the impact of social.
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 . And, and frankly, even for thought leaders, business people, psychologists, finance professionals, lawyers, they’re not going all over social media. They’re like, who has the time, the interest, the publicity sometimes bad for their business. So what I’m trying to instruct all of these folks to do and get signed is like, here’s some other ways you could prove and build your platform. You gotta be explicit about it in your letter. Mm-Hmm. a lot of people aren’t.
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, , is it interesting? It, does it have a platform? Let’s see more about it. Who are you, what’s the like larger bio? What’s the, you know where’s the sample writing? So you’ve gotta have that whole book proposal already. What you don’t need to have as a nonfiction practical business thought leader author is a full manuscript. And so I don’t wanna make everyone listening to this episode. Please do not write your full manuscript if you’re trying to get an agent. Mm-Hmm.
RV (27:03):
. Yep. They don’t, they, because they wanna shape the idea. The agent that wants to help you, the publisher, they, part of it is they’re buying the idea, but they want to shape the, the outline of it. That was something that, that I learned, which is another reason why it’s slower. It tends to be a slower process. ’cause It’s like, first I have to sell the agent, then we gotta sell the publisher, then we all gotta collaborate on what the outline is. Then we have to write it, then we have to edit it, then we have to sell it, then we have to, you know, do all this stuff. So it’s a, it’s a slower process, which to your point, it’s like another thing to weigh where you gotta go. You gotta balance. How much am I playing this like, big, big long game with a publisher and an agent? Mm-Hmm. versus like, I just want to tell my story. I just wanna teach my method to get it out there. It’s like a balancing act.
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 , even
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):
. Yeah. That, that is it. Lucinda, this has been so good as y’all, you could see this is why I wanted to have her on the book is out right now. Get signed, find an agent, land a book deal, become a published author Lucinda Halper and is who we’re talking to. You know, make sure you go, go check out this book and you know, this is the real deal on, on what it takes. You want to go traditional publishing. You want to get an a-list agent that’s in there. Or if, regardless of that, if you just want to go, how do I spot my big idea? How do I write the book and what do I need to be thinking about? If I’m going a different route, I still need to write a great book that’s in there too. So Lucinda, this has been amazing. I’m so grateful for you and my friend. We just wish you all the best.
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.

Ep 554: How to Close More Free Call Sales with Ryan Lang

0:02
If you follow the Brand Builders Group methodology, either as a client or just someone who benefits from our free content, you know that our entire strategy that took us from zero to 8 figures is giveaway content for free.

0:18
Teach everything you know for free and bite sized chunks and small, you know, all random miscellaneous order and then invite people to request free calls with you and then offer those people a chance to enroll.

0:29
And that’s how we have become an Inc 5000 company.

0:33
Two years in a row, zero to 8 figures in five years worked with all these amazing celebrity clients.

0:37
Well, a big part of that conversation is what do you say on those free calls?

0:43
So if you do all that right and you drive the free calls, there is an art form to how to manage those free calls, what to say on them, what not to say, how to follow up with those people.

0:53
And the man that you’re about to learn from is somebody who has helped us tremendously in that area.

0:59
He’s actually helped us grow our conversion percentage between 10 to 15% consistently in that one metric ever since we started working together.

1:09
So originally he was a Brand Builders group client and then he became somebody that we recognize.

1:14
His expertise is specifically in the area of sales in human performance.

1:18
And we hired him and you’re about to meet him and we’re going to talk about some of the things that we did together that he helped us implement that moved our conversion percentage in a very, very positive direction in very, very short order.

1:33
So his name is Ryan Lang.

1:35
The company he is a part of, it’s called Empire Partners.

1:38
He’s the Co founder of that company.

1:39
He has coached lots of people in the area of sales and humor performance.

1:45
So in addition to working with me and AJ and our team at Brand Builders Group, he’s worked with Russ Ruffino, he’s worked with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the New York Yankees, Conoco Phillips.

1:56
He has been involved in corporate like divestitures of hundreds of millions of dollars.

2:01
He also has certifications from digital marketer, the Transformational Coaching Academy, and is just one of my favorite guys who actually talks sales and understands the right way to sell and the right way to service people.

2:14
Ryan Lang, welcome to the show, brother.

2:17
Oh, man, thank you.

2:18
I’m so excited to be here.

2:19
Listen, after that introduction, you set your expectations right above low and I’ll try to rise up to meet them.

2:27
Well, man, it, it’s been great working with you, in fact.

2:31
And it’s, it’s funny because you know, you know this and, and maybe people who are watching know, but like AJ and I, the first company we built was a sales training company.

2:42
And we have very specific philosophies about how to sell.

2:45
And, and people were hiring us to teach them how to close and teach their teams how to sell and get referrals.

2:52
And then we built brand Builders group.

2:54
Brand Builders group in many ways is more of a marketing organization.

2:58
We drive all warm leads.

3:01
And so we went from a world where all we did was train our team to make cold calls and outbound sales to driving inbound where our sales team is pretty much does exclusively free calls with people who already are at least somewhat aware of us.

3:17
And then we got sloppy with our own sales training and and sales conversion.

3:21
And we hired you and you moved the needle for us.

3:24
And our team loves you.

3:27
And yeah, so we’re just, so we’re so grateful to have you.

3:30
And I think I’d really love to hone in on how to have free calls, what to do on free calls and, and all the things around the free call to convert it to a customer because and this is we’re, we’re only teaching people to do what we’ve done and, and we’re only doing things that work.

3:52
So tell us first a little bit about how did you get started doing sales training specifically for like thought leaders and coaches and consultants?

4:01
Because that’s, that’s one area that you have a real depth, deep expertise.

4:05
It’s not just sales training, but like sales consulting for personal brand specifically.

4:10
Yeah.

4:11
So I, you know, I, I have a very deep background in sales and, and really I think I got my first job selling something when I was like 15 years old.

4:20
Like you, you know, very, very, very deep background in sales.

4:23
And I’ve sold all kinds of things from things that are very cheap to literally things, you know, that are we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.

4:31
And when I transitioned, I, I had AI was, you know, Co founder and, and, and part of a, an 8 figure business in the energy energy industry and walked away from that partnership after many years.

4:44
And after I walked away and I, I decided to get into the coaching space, I realized very quickly that I wanted to learn how to do this over the Internet.

4:54
This is around 2015.

4:55
So we’re, there was still a lot of things in terms of selling online and, and you know, funnels and all of that stuff that we’re still newish at that time.

5:05
And I knew that I had to kind of figure that out.

5:08
Well, I got my **** kicked as a coach for the first two years and I finally went out and hired somebody to help me with both.

5:18
I thought it was just my marketing.

5:19
I wasn’t even thinking about sales.

5:21
Once I would get somebody in person, most of the time I could figure it out, I could close the deal, but I didn’t understand how to market.

5:28
And I, I hired a group to help me do my marketing and in that as part of it was a sales training.

5:35
And the interesting thing was Rory, that I, I literally did everything that they said and completely ignored the sales training.

5:45
Like 100%.

5:46
I was like, just give me this funnel stuff.

5:48
Just give me that.

5:50
You get somebody on my phone, I’ll close the deal.

5:53
And but I, you know, I had what I, you know, what I’ve kind of determined is sometimes the kiss of death in sales is that the first high ticket sales call that I got for my coaching business, I closed.

6:06
And so now I think I’m Johnny closer here, you know, and I’m like, I knew it, you know, just get me the leads and I’m going to crush this.

6:15
And I went over for like, I don’t like 3-4 months and I’m spending money on ads and I’ve got leads coming in the door and I’m not closing anything.

6:25
And eventually I got to a point where my financial situation got so bad that I had to, you know, I had to kind of slow things down.

6:34
And so when I did that, I, I went back to doing some consulting and oil and gas and kind of decided for myself at that point that I was going to not just master sales, that I was going to put away everything I knew and figure out how to master this type of sales specifically.

6:52
And so I, I went to work with the training that I had at that time.

6:56
I did some work and then eventually I, I helped a couple of friends with, with their sales.

7:03
I knew a lot of coaches and several of whom were, you know, very successful.

7:08
We’re struggling with their sales teams.

7:09
And I ended up being able to come in the door and close at, you know, 4050%, which is kind of unheard of.

7:16
And some of the types of sales that we think and talk about.

7:19
And eventually I, you know, ended up working for clients on demand and Rustrofino and my, my mentor in this type of sale, Mark von Muser, you know, I, I basically just said, look, I’m going to empty my cup.

7:34
Rather you fill it up and I will eat, sleep and breathe this every day.

7:40
And I did that for like a year and a half was the only thing.

7:43
I mean, I literally shut off all content.

7:45
I didn’t listen to anything.

7:46
I didn’t read anything.

7:47
I just ate, slept and breathe this all day long.

7:50
And that was kind of the beginning of what eventually became coaching people on sales.

7:56
And so these organizations, so like you mentioned, Russ Rufina, right?

7:59
Like these, these organizations in this model of driving free calls and selling a high dollar offers.

8:08
Yep.

8:09
Would you say that that model works in terms of growing companies that are really significant in terms of their revenue?

8:17
No question, no question it is.

8:25
There are a lot of people that believe that a lot of things have to happen before somebody lands on a sales call and, or discovery call and, and you then sell them into, you know, a high ticket offer.

8:37
And for those that don’t, you know, that aren’t familiar with the terminology, we’re probably talking about anything north of, you know, $3000 or something like that.

8:47
And not only does it, not only do I believe it’s effective, but I’ve watched it work and I’ve worked it through multiple organizations.

8:56
And my partner, Brooke, exactly the same with his work with Tony Robbins and Brian Bufini and John Asfrith, you know, that was the model for every single one of them.

9:10
So let’s talk about so, so where do the free calls come from?

9:14
So let’s start there because I’d love to just kind of like walk through the, the, the, the, the process.

9:20
So you mentioned ads, but like walk me through in these different organizations, including ours.

9:26
So feel free to like talk about what, what you see, what we do since you’re, you’re got, you know what, you’re behind the curtain here at Brand Builders group too, of like, where do the leads come from?

9:36
Where the best places for leads to come from?

9:39
Are there certain places that convert better or worse or you know, are are warmer or colder, etcetera?

9:46
And let’s just talk about that, that component or piece of it.

9:53
So there are a couple of different places that that the leads can come from when you when you drive them to a call.

10:00
So, for example, you know, the the Russ Ruffino’s model was you know that he kind of made famous was Facebook ad to landing page to webinar to call that that was that was the funnel that that can work.

10:19
The main key component.

10:22
There is something that warms the the the person up because I I need a reason to want to jump on your calendar, right.

10:30
So in the case of a brand builders, you’ve done an amazing job with, you know, getting people warm to your message and what brand builders does through the podcast that you’ve been on.

10:42
And so, you know, you’ve been able to drive leads direct to count at brand builders through, you know, through podcasts, you basically have the opportunity to rent authority and then you deliver like crazy, which is awesome.

11:00
You deliver a ton of value.

11:01
People get a lot out of it.

11:02
And they go, holy crap, if this is what I got out of this podcast, what happens if I end up working with this guy and his team?

11:09
And we can do that through a pod.

11:12
You know, in your case, it’s a podcast that’s got fantastic reach.

11:16
We can also do that through really, really good quality lead magnets brand builders, for example, has got an amazing study on personal branding, which is insanely valuable and very, very compelling information that can drive people to a call.

11:34
We can also, if you know it for those people that have done a lot of legwork ahead of time and have built up a good following in a good audience, you can also do that, you know, directly through e-mail marketing where, you know, we deliver a lot of value to somebody for a while, great content on social or via e-mail.

11:55
And then giving people an opportunity where we kind of describe what it is maybe that they’re wanting or describe what it is their pain points are.

12:03
And if they’d like to fix it.

12:04
Listen, we’d love to jump on a call and see if it would be a fit for us to work together and help you past your your problems to the dream that you really want to get to.

12:12
Yeah.

12:13
And that’s, it’s, it’s interesting because if when I sit back and I look at like, OK, here’s Russ Ruffino or Tony Robbins or Brian Buffini or, you know, like Tom Perry is one of our friends.

12:28
Like the thing that all of these have in common is you initiate attention, then you add a lot of value, then you offer a free call.

12:43
And whether you initiate that attention on social media or a podcast or an ad or speaking as another place where we drive a lot of leads, right?

12:51
Anytime, anytime I’m out speaking, I speak a lot.

12:54
So we drive leads.

12:55
We drive leads from that or even referrals, but even when people give us referrals, even when a referral comes in, we we give them a lead magnet and we try to make them watch something or do something before they get on, even though they’re already warm.

13:11
It’s like we really try to make sure that they consume some of our content before the call so that if they show up for that call, we know they know who we are, what we do, they trust us.

13:23
They’ve gotten value.

13:25
Sort of the law of reciprocity is set in motion and sort of tipped in our favor because we’ve already added so much value to people and it and that includes and that includes this podcast, right?

13:36
Like everything we’re doing is like, we’re just trying to give so much value to people that they go exactly what he said.

13:42
If I’ve learned this much for free, what how much would I get if I actually went through this like formal program?

13:49
So I love that.

13:50
And you’re, you’re saying that in general that those principles kind of apply across the board with the different companies you’ve seen that have been successful doing this.

14:01
No question, each of them did it in a slightly different way, but there was always some way to build familiarity.

14:10
And, and, and also, you know, you, you are a master at really helping people as, as really or just about everybody else that you mentioned.

14:20
They’re masters at helping people understand that there is a mindset shift that they have to make between who they are and where they are now and who they want to be and where they want to go in some way, shape or form.

14:35
There’s a mindset shift that has to be made.

14:38
And that’s one of the commonalities that I’ve really noticed, Rory, is that whether it’s a lead magnet or a great webinar or a podcast or a phenomenal speaking engagement, the, the best of the best have have the ability to get somebody to think to themselves, Oh gosh, that’s not what I thought.

15:00
It’s actually different than what I thought.

15:02
Well, what do I do then?

15:04
How, how do I make this happen?

15:05
If it’s not what I thought, then what is it?

15:08
And then, you know, if you get the what, then you need to know the how.

15:11
And, and that’s where your free call comes in.

15:14
You know, you can give them the what And then, you know, the, the free call is the, the, the gateway to the how.

15:20
Yeah, I love that.

15:22
That’s so, that’s so good.

15:23
I don’t even know that I’ve consciously thought about it that way.

15:26
But but we even teach in our sales training in BBG that sales is all about the gap.

15:31
It’s the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

15:34
And you got to be able to paint that future and then also help them realize without offending them that like they’re not there.

15:41
And then that gap is basically what they buy is going like, oh, if you can help me close that gap.

15:45
So I, I, I love that.

15:47
So, so let’s say someone requests a free call.

15:50
What should happen to increase conversions between the moment when someone requests a free call and when they show up for the free call?

16:01
Like so now let’s just say we got the lead comes in the person requests the call, there’s a whole window there.

16:09
What are some of those things that need to happen inside of between that moment and when you’re on the phone with the client?

16:15
This is such a great question and one of the reasons why is that most people don’t even think about it.

16:22
They’re just excited, right?

16:24
They’re just excited that somebody landed on their calendar and it’s like, oh great, they’re going to get on my phone.

16:30
But they’re absolutely are ways to increase conversion and part of it in, in some cases, we’ve seen a lot of efficacy with like a really good solid application.

16:46
You know, that that almost feels like a a bit of a homework assignment for them.

16:51
You know, prior to the call where you get to learn a bit about them, they’ve got to spend a little bit of time digging in on maybe what’s not working, what they really want, what they’ve tried in the past, those kinds of things that can be very helpful.

17:07
Most people think that applications are are just for the salesperson.

17:11
Now all of a sudden, you know, all the things that are going to help you close the deal.

17:15
It’s actually very helpful in the, when you do it right, very helpful in the context of the potential client because they’ve got to spend a moment thinking about like, OK, what isn’t working?

17:26
What do I really want?

17:28
What is kind of sucking for me right now?

17:31
So that’s one thing.

17:32
The other thing is making sure that you’ve got really good, solid, ample notifications.

17:37
So, you know, that can come through, you know, your calendaring platform like Callan Lee or any of the other ones have got very good, you know, notifications.

17:48
It’s through e-mail as well.

17:50
Just letting people know.

17:51
I mean, I think we take for granted, Rory, that that, you know, we’re not the only busy ones in the world, but we get awfully offended when people don’t show up to sales calls.

18:02
And if we haven’t taken the time to try to remind them that they’ve got a sales call, then we don’t really have any reason to get offended.

18:09
So that’s one small simple step.

18:11
And then lastly, I would say anything that you can send them, you were talking about kind of the resources to get people warmed up and anything that you can send them that will, you know, help them understand more about, you know, either a, what they’re struggling with, you know, the the types of solutions that you provide a client testimonials are phenomenal things to send before people get on a sales call instead of after, which is what most people do.

18:41
Any of that kind of stuff is really good.

18:43
And I would say that if you can, automation is wonderful.

18:46
You and I both love automation, but one of the things that I think is a lost art in the world of sales is personalization.

18:54
We’re so quick to automate everything that when you get a prospective client, if you can do what I would, you know, if you can take some steps that I would call, you know, pro moves, you do a little bit of research, find out who they are, look at their application, what industry are they in, what are they struggling with?

19:12
And then try to send them some things that are curated.

19:15
Send them one of your podcasts that you know what is going to resonate with them.

19:19
Send them a client testimonial that somebody that they would identify with, you’re going to be so far ahead by the time they get on, you know, your phone by that point, drastically increasing the chances that you’re actually going to get to help them.

19:33
Yeah, that’s so good.

19:35
It’s such a simple thing you can do, right?

19:37
And it’s like you read their application and you send them a note.

19:39
Hey, I saw you were struggling with this.

19:42
Here is one of our free podcasts or one of your vlogs or an or 62nd Instagram Reel.

19:47
Like here’s a link to a reel.

19:49
You should check this out.

19:51
You know, can’t wait to talk, you know, more like that’s that’s, that’s really, really good.

19:59
The next thing I want to ask you about is the free call itself.

20:03
What is the best way to position this free call?

20:07
And the reason I asked this question is because nobody wants to show up as a consumer as to a sales call and just sit there and be sold the whole time.

20:17
But if the company offers it as a free call.

20:22
Then people go, oh, I’ll just take advantage of this free call.

20:25
And they have, they’ve got, no, they’ve got no psychological orientation towards making a decision.

20:33
So how, how do we strike the balance?

20:36
And what is that balance between making the call valuable for someone even if they don’t buy, not making it a not making it a sales pitch, but creating conversions and also making it valuable for the client, but not just wasting your team’s time?

20:52
Like how do you find that balance in both what it’s called and what you do on the call?

20:58
And like, how long are these calls and what percentage of the time is like adding value to the client versus telling them about the program?

21:07
But this is so important.

21:09
And what it starts with is framing, which is one of my favorite subjects in sales in general.

21:16
And most people think that framing happens when you get into an engagement, but actually happens before the engagement ever even starts.

21:24
So to your point, what, what, what a lot of people do is when they offer a free call, they’re so concerned that that that people are going to run from the idea of, you know, a sales call or actually talking about, you know, doing business together, that they go heavy on the free.

21:40
And often times in their copy or when they’re explaining it in a video, it’s free, free, free, free, free, free, free or or worse, they say, you know, come to a free coaching session.

21:52
That idea, because as you, as you mentioned it in that instance, you know, I’ve now given people the expectation that it’s it, it’s a free coaching session.

22:02
You’re going to get a lot of lucky lose.

22:04
You’re going to get a lot of looky loos and people that are coming on your call saying, Hey, I want you to fix my whole problem in the next hour.

22:12
So the first key is making sure that you position this in a way where you set a good frame for what’s going to happen.

22:21
You know, in sales, you and I know that we are always holding slightly different postures in a sales engagement and any kind of conversation and that begins with copy or, or how you’re inviting them to the call.

22:36
So just to, to, to give an example, the way that I like to kind of frame this up is I like to say things like, listen, Rory, so you know, we talk a little bit, we, you know, about a struggle or hate, you know, if, if, if anything that you read in this e-mail resonates with you, but I’d love to invite you to a free 45 minute discovery call.

22:58
Now on this call, we’re going to take some really serious time and deep dive on what’s not working for you right now.

23:05
And also really where you want to go.

23:08
And if I feel like I’m the right person to help you get there, we’ll talk about what that looks like.

23:13
If not, I promise I’m going to deliver you a ton of value and it’s going to be an incredibly valuable experience for you one way or the other.

23:21
If that sounds good, you know, book now there’s your copy.

23:24
By the way, if you’re, if you’re listening to this right now, you can go slap that in your landing page.

23:29
But, and we call that the pressure free promise.

23:31
By the way, also in, in our pressure free persuasion, we, we, we brand a technique called pressure free promise, which is to say, I’m going to give you a good look at this.

23:40
I’m going to learn about you.

23:41
You’re going to learn about us.

23:42
My job isn’t to talk you into buying anything.

23:45
My job is to help us to figure out if we have a match, if we’re a good fit, I’ll show you how we can work together.

23:51
If we’re not, that’s totally OK.

23:54
And just letting people have permission to say no really makes them comfortable enough to where they might actually say yes.

24:05
And that’s such a simple thing to do that takes pressure off of you as a salesperson and pressure off of off of them as a prospect.

24:13
And it’s you can do it in writing, you can do it with your words, you can do it, you can do it five times during the conversation.

24:20
But that’s really important.

24:21
And I like that was one of the things that when I think back to your time helping us when you started, like listening to our sales teams calls as you were, like, they’re not framing the conversation properly on the front end that there is the potential that a buying a purchase decision will happen on this call.

24:44
They’re saving it.

24:45
They’re saving it until the very end.

24:47
And then sort of springing it on someone and dropping in their lap like, So what do you think?

24:52
You want to work together?

24:53
And it’s like, that’s not a good framing.

24:56
That’s like dropping it in their lap at the end.

24:58
And they’re like, I don’t know what to do with this.

24:59
Like the objections come and I remember you’re like the team is not teeing it up properly on the beginning of the call, saying exactly what you just said, like, hey, we’re going to these are the things we’re going to do on this call.

25:13
It’s going to be valuable for you one way or the other.

25:17
If we can work together, I’ll show you how to do that.

25:19
If not, that’s OK too.

25:21
But you know, let’s have this and see if we can partner with you to get to the next level.

25:26
That that initial framing and that the first few minutes of the call and in the copy coming up in the video going leading into it is really been key.

25:36
That man, it’s it that that it is so important because what, what what I found at the very beginning, and by the way, this is what I’ve listened to literally thousands of sales calls in in this type of engagement.

25:51
And this is what most of them sound like.

25:53
It’s like, you know, somebody shows up and we go through the rigmarole about, Hey, how about that weather?

25:59
You know, man, Denver’s really awesome this time of year kind of thing.

26:02
And I think I’m building rapport.

26:04
And then comes the question.

26:05
And it’s something like, well, so tell me what’s going on and which leads to, you know, vomit, as I like to say, they vomit on you for like the next 10 or 15 minutes.

26:18
Your call, your call is way off track.

26:21
And worse yet, we think that we’re going to build rapport then as we go along by by, you know, relating to them.

26:29
Oh yeah, you know what?

26:30
I’ve been there.

26:31
Oh, I totally get it, you know, and, and sharing experiences.

26:35
And to your point, what happens is that we turn it into what I call a bro call.

26:40
Now all of a sudden I’m having I’m having a coffee chat with a friend and I get to the end of the coffee chat and I drop, you know, some kind of eight figure hammer on that person and they go, whoa, Rory, hold on a second here.

26:55
I thought we were friends, You know, I mean, and and so the frame it, it, it starts in your marketing, in your copy, and then it has to happen again at the beginning of the call where you set expectations.

27:09
Now one of the other key pieces too is that when you set the proper expectations at the beginning of the call, we talked so much in sales about building trust and an old school sales, you think that you build trust through ridiculous conversation at the beginning of the call and it’s not.

27:25
So one of the key ways that we build trust inside of a sales engagement is keeping our promises.

27:32
And when we set up the call in a certain way, and then we run the call in exactly that way, internally, they’re going, oh, he said he was going to do it like this.

27:43
And that’s exactly what he did.

27:45
You know, this is exactly what they told me it was going to be.

27:48
That’s that builds trust.

27:51
That’s so good.

27:53
And, and so would you say that the to delineate and to differentiate from the like bro call to the like helpful consultative decision making session?

28:07
Is that frame in the beginning?

28:09
And it’s, it’s just that what you said earlier, it’s just like, hey, here’s what’s going to happen today.

28:13
We’re going to cover these things.

28:16
And at the end of the call, I’ll share with you what it might look like for us to partner together.

28:21
And if you like it, great.

28:22
And if not, that’s OK too.

28:23
Is that basically the, the key to that?

28:27
That is, that’s the basic idea.

28:30
That’s the basic idea.

28:31
We, we take it as, you know, a little bit further by basically also just acknowledging that we were, we may need to dive deep on the call and, and asking permission to do so, which is also really key.

28:47
That’s another big problem that happens is that, you know, we hear a lot like, oh, you got to tell clients the honest truth and you got to be willing to, you know, call them out on their stuff and all the things.

28:58
Well, if you haven’t asked permission for that, try that out and see how that goes.

29:03
You know, you need a frame in front of that as well.

29:06
So that’s one little nuance that we kind of add in.

29:09
And then what do you cover on the call and how long should these calls go?

29:13
Yeah, great question.

29:15
So in the call in general, like loosely speaking, the the you know, we’ve got kind of our framing process.

29:22
And then then the next piece of the puzzle is, is discovery where we’re going to start by, you know, asking some some pointed questions.

29:30
Every person business offer is slightly different on that front.

29:34
When we talk about BBG, we, you know, we, we’ll ask somebody like, Hey, tell us a little bit about, you know, what’s not working and creating your personal brand right now, you know, something like that or, you know, what’s kind of the struggle in your personal brand that that brought you to the call.

29:53
And from there we, we go through a discovery process where we ask a whole lot of questions about, you know, what, what’s the, what’s the biggest challenge they’re currently facing?

30:04
How is that impacting them?

30:07
If that challenge were remedied, what would, what would it look like?

30:10
What you know, what’s kind of the dream?

30:12
How long has it been going on?

30:14
You know, etcetera, etcetera, things like that.

30:17
What I’m really looking for there is I’m looking to establish, you know, duration of, of the problem.

30:25
I’m also looking to establish frequency.

30:27
How often are they thinking about this?

30:29
Is this something that comes up for them often?

30:32
Is it a priority for them right now?

30:33
And also, I’m, I’m looking for intensity, you know, where else in their life is, is this maybe showing up if they’re really struggling with something, is it showing up in their relationships?

30:44
Are they, you know, is it showing up in, in their health, etcetera, etcetera.

30:48
So we go through that discovery process where we really understand more about the human being, the struggle, the dream.

30:55
And then once we get specifics on that, and I do want to use that word very intentionally, you have such a wonderful saying that, you know, the more specific, the more terrific and and never is that more true than in this part of the call.

31:08
If you lack specifics in the discovery phase of the call, you will fall short at the end.

31:15
So we want specifics.

31:16
And then, you know, from that piece, we kind of go into sharing it it if it feels like a fit at that point.

31:22
And this is a big key, you know, one of the things we’re so in alignment, you and I, on our philosophies about selling.

31:29
And I think we both believe very strongly that in order for us to say yes to helping someone, we have to believe wholeheartedly that we can do that.

31:37
So the discovery process is not just to learn more about the pain in the dream, but also to understand, can we help this person?

31:45
And do we want to help this person?

31:47
Is this the right fit for us?

31:49
Once we figure that out, we can kind of go through the, the solution portion of the call and the solution that was one of the other keys really in, in the increase of conversion rate.

32:02
You have I, I’ve told you this before and I’m going to say it again on air you, your frameworks are the are, are the, I think they’re the best in the world.

32:11
I think they’re bet they’re better than anybody else’s that I’ve ever known.

32:14
They’re phenomenal.

32:17
And we have a team of people at Brand Builders on our sales team that knows the, the, the these programs really well.

32:24
Several of them have experienced them.

32:27
And what was happening at the end of those calls at the beginning was that they were just, they were sharing the whole shooting match.

32:34
And it’s big, like the Brand Builders journey is, is is huge.

32:39
So they were sharing a lot and then giving a lot of options at the end.

32:44
And so that’s one of the other big keys is that once we get to the portion about the solution, we want to be very refined about the way we deliver it.

32:53
If at all possible, you want to try to take the pieces of your solution or your program that actually apply to the struggles that are having and perfectly match those and then offer them one option.

33:06
Even if you have multiple options at at the end of the deal, steer them towards one option and and leave something as a backup.

33:15
Because you know, as we all know in sales, the, you know, the confused mind doesn’t buy.

33:21
And that’s one of the big keys to finishing the whole thing strong.

33:25
And ideally, if you can complete one of these calls in 45 minutes, that’s rock solid.

33:32
What we usually like to do is to leave about an hour so that if somebody has any, what most people would call objections and we call limiting beliefs at the end of the call, then we’ve got 15 minutes to torpedo those and and hopefully we can move on within an hour.

33:48
Yeah, that that’s so good.

33:50
The, the one thing to add in there to, to kind of connect what you said earlier, like you, you talked about permission where you, you said early in the framing, do I have, do I have your permission to, to dig deep and to really get real with you?

34:09
That’s so powerful there.

34:11
And then I’ve also seen where you ask for that same the transition from the discovery portion of the call into the solution is also a permission conversation.

34:23
It’s almost like, as I’m saying this out loud, I’ve never actually realized this, but just as we’re talking you, you’ve got like the framing portion, the discovery portion and the solution portion.

34:36
And it seems almost like permission is the transition between each of those.

34:40
So the first, the first permission is do I have permission to dig deep, which sets up the stage for discovery and then asking their permission at the end of discovery.

34:49
Like if I’m reading you right, it, it seems like you’re very serious about this.

34:55
You know, would you be open minded if I share with you how our program works?

34:59
Like, do you want to hear how our program works?

35:02
Do you want to know what it would look like to work together?

35:05
Like, do I have your permission to share?

35:06
That is like it’s, it’s a, it’s a first, yes, it’s building, yes, momentum.

35:12
And it’s a really elegant transition and also a psychological powerful moment for them to go.

35:17
Yeah, I I do want to at least hear about the program.

35:21
If they say yes to that, it seems like they’re much more likely to like they’re much further along the buying line 100%.

35:30
And and it, it’s so true that that really is yet another permission frame.

35:36
And it’s basically to say, you know, we kind of the way we structure it as we do a little bit of a mini recap where we just kind of say, wow, Rory, all right, it seems like, you know, you’re struggling with AB and C right now.

35:47
I and, and really it’s affecting you here and what you really want is to be able to this.

35:53
Listen, if, if I could show you a way that that would help you remedy those challenges, would it be something that you’d be interested in hearing about right now?

36:02
You know, and, and if we think about this, this just goes back to good human communication.

36:09
I’ve now demonstrated, we talked about trust.

36:12
I’m now demonstrated to somebody that I’m present, I’m listening.

36:15
I’ve paid well enough attention to really understand the struggle and what, you know, what they really want, if at all possible.

36:22
I’ve given that back to them in their own words, which makes it even more powerful.

36:28
And then I’m saying, listen, if that’s really what it is, if I could show you something that would help you fix that and get where you really want to go, It’s not would you buy it?

36:37
That’s a key distinction.

36:39
As you said, it’s not would you buy it or can we do business together?

36:42
It’s can I just share something with you it, you know, if I believe it would help you pass these problems.

36:48
You know, if we’re having a good interaction at this point, the chances you’re going to get a no, there are slim to none.

36:56
It’s a, it really is a very elegant, elegant way.

36:59
And people feel good about that.

37:01
They’re going Oh my gosh, yeah, wow.

37:03
I mean, I just had to tell you everything that’s sucking.

37:06
I want out of the suck.

37:07
How do I get out of that yes, please tell me.

37:10
You know it’s also it’s like they’re asking to be shown the program versus just you dropping it on them and asking for a sale.

37:21
Like having that intermittent yes, right there is really important for them, for them and for you, because if they say no there, it’s like this is like conversation is over.

37:30
Like if they say no to that, they’re not going to, they’re not going to randomly say yes to a sale later.

37:35
So I think that’s that’s really, really cool.

37:39
The inside a brand builders group.

37:43
We we teach some sales training, pressure free persuasion.

37:46
We talked about the nine ways to close.

37:48
I want to talk about, I want to hear some of your philosophies on closing before we do that.

37:52
We only have a couple minutes left.

37:54
The if, if you all want to learn more from Ryan, like if you and I would say if you have a business, if you’ve got a business where you’ve got sales people doing free calls and you’re like, man, I need some support to come in and just like coach my sales team, work with them, listen to them or just get, you know, sales training in general.

38:15
Like I cannot recommend Ryan enough.

38:18
Like there are so few people we trust with this.

38:20
We know a lot about this space.

38:22
It takes a lot for us to hire someone to go, yeah, we’re philosophically aligned and we believe we’ve got stuff to learn from this person in this space.

38:30
And that is Ryan.

38:31
If you e-mail [email protected] and just put Ryan Lang in the subject line and then just kind of say, hey, we’d love to be connected.

38:41
We will connect you directly to Ryan because we recommend him as as one of our implementation partners and specifically are the implementation partner on this area.

38:49
Like if you’ve got a coaching business, so you got free, if you’ve got free calls coming in, selling anything, you got to work together.

38:57
So check that out.

38:59
Obviously inside of our curriculum, we have some sales training.

39:04
We talked about the nine different categories of closing questions.

39:08
I’d love to hear from you, Ryan, just a couple like 2 minutes on how to bring the call gracefully to a close, you know, and ask for the business.

39:18
If you’ve framed this right, you’ve gotten permission to go deep, you’ve done discovery, you’ve gotten permission to show them a solution.

39:27
You show them one specific solution option.

39:29
How do we wrap this up and actually turn this free call into dollars in the bank account and A and a changed life?

39:36
Yes.

39:38
So I, I think the very first thing that I, that I want to give someone on this call right now is that before we even dive into the tactical what to say, certainty sales is about transference always your energy and how you show up is going to transfer on your sales call and certainty is.

40:02
Of the utmost importance in this part of the call.

40:06
And so I would say First things first, you need to make sure that your delivery of your offer is buttoned up, that it is clear and concise and that you are extremely confident in being able to deliver it.

40:20
If you haven’t practiced it, practice it.

40:23
Do some repetitions, borrow some friends and family, go in the mirror, whatever you got to do, record yourself doing it and then play it back and listen and go, man, am I, Does that feel certain?

40:34
Does that feel confident?

40:36
Because that beyond the words is the single most important thing at the end of the call.

40:41
The next thing is make sure that you’re you don’t get cute with your pricing.

40:47
So one of the other ways that we can confuse buyers at the end of the calls, we can offer them one thing and then we can come up with nine different ways that we’re pricing it, you know, or it’s $12137.43.

41:03
Don’t confuse people with the pricing at the end of it.

41:06
Make it very, very simple for them to say yes.

41:10
And the, the, the last piece that I would say as it relates to kind of, you know, a closing question is I really like to present people, while my, while my program offering may be the same, I do like from a pricing standpoint, one of the things that Brooke and I teach is, is just the same way that you guys do it at, at Brand Builders is to have a monthly option and an annual option.

41:38
If you’ve got some sort of a subscription, if you have two different payment options, I really like that because I’m not just saying, Hey, do you want to buy it?

41:47
I’m going.

41:47
So, you know, I’m explaining the solution and then I’m going to go and, and Roy.

41:52
So basically at this point, I’m going to keep this simple.

41:55
Notice my, my, my phrasing and my languaging.

41:58
Rory, at this point, the only thing left to do is, is, is just answer one simple question.

42:04
And that’s basically, you know, which option works best for you.

42:07
Is it the monthly option or is it the annual option?

42:11
And how can I support you?

42:13
This is something I learned from my mentor that I love.

42:15
How can I support you in getting to super awesome goal and getting out of, you know, super suck and that at the end of it is really, really powerful because I’ve now taken my my price and don’t use that word, by the way, use the word investment.

42:33
We like that word better, but I’m not taking my investment and I’ve linked it to the pain in the dream.

42:41
We all, you know, those of us have been sales for a long time.

42:45
Know that price without context is always expensive, and in this case, it’s it’s especially true.

42:51
I don’t like to just leave the price out there dangling.

42:54
Most people will go, OK, so Rory, you know, it’s $10,000 and then they just sit there.

43:02
So give them an option a Rory, you know, the, the investment is the investment is 10K and you can either do the pay in full where you know, you actually save two months and you can pay us 8.

43:12
Or if you want to do it monthly, it’s it’s 1000.

43:15
You know, it’s, it’s $800 a month or 900.

43:17
I can’t do the math 809 hundred a month, whatever it is.

43:21
So give them that’s a really important nuance, though, of like it’s 11 program option, but two payment options so that it’s not a yes or no at the end, it’s a this or that, it’s a this or that.

43:34
You know that that’s really good.

43:36
That’s really, that’s really good, man.

43:38
Well, Ryan, this, this was a master class.

43:40
Like literally when I tell people our podcast is worth just the content we give away on our podcast is worth millions of dollars.

43:48
This conversation literally is worth millions of dollars to the person who puts it into practice.

43:54
We’ve been the beneficiaries of that.

43:55
Like it, it, it can at least be 10s of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a couple years if you just implement the few things on this call.

44:07
So you’ve been so generous with that.

44:09
We’re so grateful for you.

44:11
We, we proudly recommend you because we, we, we formally were in the world of sales training.

44:17
We are no longer in the world of sales training.

44:19
So we push those, we push those people enthusiastically over to you specifically in this space.

44:25
You’ve been nothing but honest and had integrity and focus and most of all, service centeredness.

44:31
Like, at the end of the day, we just don’t believe in selling things to people that they don’t need or it won’t really help them.

44:37
And we don’t care how fancy the sales tactics are.

44:39
If it’s not going to help someone, we don’t sell it to them.

44:41
And I know you share that philosophy with us, brother.

44:44
So what an honor to have you and to work with you.

44:47
And man, we’re just cheering for you.

44:49
We wish you all the best, Rory.

44:51
Thank you and thank you number one for having me on the podcast and and also thank you for your trust.

44:57
It means such a great deal to me that you and AJ have have entrusted me to take care of your team and you are a friend, a colleague and and I’m very grateful for the work that we get to do together.

45:11
Brother, my pleasure, man.

Ep 553: Speak for Free to Speak for Fee | Toni Collier Episode Recap

WATCH THE INTERVIEW LISTEN TO THE EPISODE BELOW Something our guest Toni Collier shared in a recent interview has really stuck with AJ. Toni said that if you want to build a speaking career, you need to be so passionate about it, so called to it, that you’d be willing to speak for free! In […]

Ep 547: What Most People Get Wrong About Personal Branding | Jamie Hess Episode Recap

Ep 543: How To Find Where Your Ideal Clients are Gathering | Michael Mogill 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. Before you can sell to your clients, you have to find them , right? I mean, where do you find your ideal clients, both online and offline? This is an important question. If you know where they’re at, then you can go and be there and be, build relationships with them and get plugged in and then start doing business with them. But the question is, how and where do you find these people?
RV (01:01):
In this video, we’re gonna share with you the eight top ways to find where your perfect clients all hang out. Let’s dive in right away with number one. And the first one is, it should be where you hang out. It really should be, it should be all the places that you hang out. Why? One of our fundamental core beliefs at Brand Builders Group is that you are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Which means that if you are building a personal brand, it should be built around people that you’re trying to help. The people that you are best suited to help and who you are most likely to make a lot of money from quickly are the people who are like you were a few years ago. That is who you’re most powerfully positioned to serve. It’s who you are most divinely equipped to help support, which means that those people should be you.
RV (02:00):
They should have been you maybe five or 10 years ago or something like that, right up front. If you’re having a hard time finding your ideal clients, then you might be serving the wrong avatar because that means you are trying to reach someone who you don’t fully understand. If you’ve done the rest of your personal brand strategy right, and you’ve had a good strategist from our team, or if you’re doing it yourself, you should be dialed in on these people because it should be you. So ask yourself that question. Where do you hang out? What are the, what are the magazines that you read? You know, what are the conferences that you go to? And, and you really should know those if you don’t. That brings us to number two, which is ask, ask your current clients where they hang out. Send them a survey, call them on the phone, shoot ’em a quick email, like when you see them at your, in your next encounter, just ask, Hey, what are the books that you read?
RV (02:59):
What are the magazines you subscribe to? What are the podcasts that you listen to? What are the conferences you go to? What associations are you involved with? Who do you follow? Like ask your current clients. Where are their favorite sources of media? And there’s lots of ways to ask. You could do that in person with a email, with a survey, et cetera, et cetera. But ask, it is one of the legitimate best ways to find new pockets where your clients might be hanging out that you’re just not aware of. So go ahead and ask. It’s super, super, super simple. Number three is follow other industry leaders. You should follow other industry leaders. One of the biggest mistakes that personal brands make is that they forget, in order to be a great teacher, you must first be a great student. So you should, again, you should be studying, you should be learning, you should be following other industry leaders or other leaders who are in your space, not ’cause you’re gonna copy them, not ’cause you’re gonna steal their stuff, because you’re gonna learn from them.
RV (04:02):
And because that’s gonna help shape you and, and, and help you understand your space. It’s gonna help you know what’s already been written. It’s gonna help you in order to forward the conversation, which is what a thought leader does. A thought leader forwards the conversation. You have to be in the conversation, right? You have to know what conversation is being had. So follow the other industry thought leaders, because they’re gonna point you to resources and talk about people and events and tools and media outlets and groups that you can be, you know, plugging into. And that’s gonna help, help you understand really quickly where those people are. Which brings us to number four, which is kind of related. It’s podcasts. You should be listening to the podcasts in your space, right? Like they’re going to interview and feature other guests who are world renowned leaders in, in your space.
RV (04:54):
Now, our goal here, right as we build your personal brand, is that one day we want you to be the guest, right? I mean, one day you’ll probably be the host first, and we want you to get interviews with those other people. And then one day we want you to become the guest where you are the expert thought leader. You are the most world renowned authority. You are, you know, the leading, recognized voice in your space, but you have to kind of know who those people are. And so listen to the podcast and this plugs into number five, which is search. Use the search, search for your topic, search for your space, search for your audience in each of the search functions, not just Google, but search in the YouTube search bar, search inside of Twitter, search inside of Facebook, search the terms on TikTok, search the actual terms, and that will introduce you to the leaders, the influencers, the movers and shakers.
RV (05:49):
And it’s gonna show you the groups, right? Search on LinkedIn and, and you search a topic like sales and all the top sales groups are gonna come up. They’re all right there, right? Someone has already gathered your audience. That’s the great thing is while you want, while you build an audience, you want to find existing audiences while you build your own audience, which is one of the things we’re super passionate about, is teaching you how to build your own audience while you’re building your own audience. You need to find existing audiences, and that’s what this whole video lesson is all about, right? So use the search feature. Relatedly is hashtags, which is number six. Hashtags are going to help you find your people. And, and if you’re following industry leaders pay attention when they use a hashtag, right? If you don’t know what a hashtag is, right, it’s just, it’s just the pound sign and then a word, right?
RV (06:42):
Like, you know, we sometimes use mis pound mission driven messengers. And so if you’re following brand builders group, that’s like one of the hashtags that our, our people youth, right? So you would, if you were following us, you would pay attention and go, oh, there’s other people who are following this, this type of a hashtag. You gotta know what are the top hashtags in your industry? Again, this tool that I’m gonna share with you at the end of this video is gonna do all of these for you. So make sure that you stick around. Number seven is Google Alerts. Google Alerts. Google Alerts is one of the oldest features of Google. A lot of people still don’t know about it, but it still works really, really well. You can actually take any term that you would ever type into a Google search bar, and you can set an alert for that term.
RV (07:29):
And what a Google Alert does is it automatically emails you anytime that term shows up in a new published article or in a new online mention somewhere. So Google is scraping the web and it’s, it’s basically like making Google an employee for you, like a virtual assistant or something that’s gonna go scour the internet every day for all the new articles and all the new websites and any new mention of the terms that matter most to you. By the way, you should at least have a Google alert for your name, because you definitely wanna know when people are talking about you and writing about you online. So make sure that you set up Google alerts. And then finally, number eight, the tool is called Spark Toro. This is my absolute favorite. This is a tool that we discovered maybe about a year ago, and it is incredibly powerful because it basically does all of these first seven things for you.
RV (08:25):
What Spark Toro allows you to do is basically type in a topic and then it will tell you all of the people who are sort of like the leading authorities on that topic, or basically it, it scrapes the web and says, people who follow this topic also follow all of these people. The other thing it will do is you can say, you can put in a person and say something like, you know, whoever Mel Robbins and you say, I wanna reach people like the people Mel Robbins reaches. And so you could say people you type in Mel Robbins and Spark Toro will tell you, here’s everybody who has followers that are similar to the people who follow Mel Robbins. It’s a tremendously powerful tool. It it’ll introduce you to you know, branded, like branded or themed accounts or company accounts or just like communities as well as other thought leaders who you’ll be like, I didn’t even, I’ve never even heard of that person, even though maybe you have been in the space for a long time.
RV (09:26):
So we’ll include an our affiliate link to Spark Toro, but it’s a free tool. You get so many free uses of it, or at, at least at the time of this video, it is a free tool and you can use a couple free searches a month, and then you pay some very nominal rate to have access to this. So check out spark Toro. You can click on our affiliate link or just check it out on your own. But there you have it. There you have it. Eight ways to find your ideal audience. You have to find your audience before you can sell to your audience. And remember, before you can be a great teacher, you must first be a great student. So make sure you’re plugged in to your area and to your space to that you are one of these people in and among the crowd, so that you can then rise and raise your personal brand to where you’ll become at the front of that crowd.

Ep 537: Why You Want Your Book to Hit a Bestseller List | Rory and AJ Vaden Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
Why you want your book to hit the bestseller list. Now, I hear from a lot of people that hitting the bestseller list isn’t important to them because this is not a, a vanity project or, you know, they’ve already made it in their career. And this isn’t about popularity or they’re not trying to feed their ego. And I would say, yeah, it, it, hitting a bestseller list should not be about any of those things. And then I hear from another group of people, I wanna hit a bestseller list. And then remains the question about why, right? So this is a quick review of why every, everyone should want their book to hit a bestseller list. And it is not because it’s gonna make you feel good it’s not because you get some resume resume builder or some new notch on your belt, or it’s some pride thing that you get to brag about to your friends.
AJV (00:57):
Or it’s not an ego thing, or it, it, it shouldn’t be about feeding your self worth or making you feel like your content is worth something. I would say all of those are not the reasons. , why you should care that your book hits the bestseller list. So why should you, why should you do the work? Spend the money, spend the time, make the investment you know, invest your energy into making your book a bestseller list? And here’s why, because bestseller lists act like filters with thousands, if not tens of thousands of books being published every single year. There’s a lot of noise. There is so much noise. And bestseller lists act as a filter for the ones who have done the work to help their book get out into the world. And there is different varying levels of bestseller lists. There’s new bestseller lists coming out on the market.
AJV (01:56):
So I’m gonna talk about two in particular the USA Today National Bestseller list, the New York Times, but there’s others. Success Magazine is putting their own list out. There’s the indie list. There’s Publishers Weekly, there’s, there’s varying amounts there. Even an Amazon bestseller list if we wanna count that. But it matters because it acts as a filter. It helps people go through the process of helping define what’s a little bit more credible or not, right? Not saying that if you didn’t hit a bestseller list, it’s not a good book. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that with so much noise, our human brains need a filter of going, where should I put my time, money, energy, and attention. And what it does is it says, this author has done the hard work of helping their book get to X amount of people. And if that amount of people bought the book, there must be a, a varying level, a varying degree, levels of credibility of quality
AJV (02:59):
That is in this book. And that is really helpful. And like I said, there’s Amazon bestseller list, there’s Publishers Weekly, there’s the indie list. Success now has a list. There’s the USA Today List, and then there’s the New York Times. And I think through these different varying levels, it really does create a more intense filter, the higher you go up, right? But these filters help our brains process. Well, if this, if this list has recognized this because this many units were sold or this editorial, that means this. Many people bought it, which means this. Many people heard about it, which means there must be something to it. It is a credibility booster for your book. It is a filter for the noise. And most importantly, it gives your book the extra recognition that it needs, that it requires to be seen by more people, that it can help.
AJV (03:55):
That is why this matters. It’s why it should matter to you. It should matter that you do the work to hit the list so that you can help it get in front of other people where it has the potential to help them. If you are writing a book and you say, I don’t care about a list, then why are you writing a book? ’cause You should be writing a book to get it into the hands of the people. It can help. That means you have to do the work to get it into the hands of people. It can help, which means you, the author has got to promote it, sell it, market it, talk it about it. You’ve got to do the things. And if you do those things, hitting a list helps you do more of those things. So why should you hit the bestseller list? Because you want your book to change people’s lives. That’s why. And the list will help your book be filtered through the noise and get additional recognition and credibility to reach more people. That is why all authors need to care about making sure their book is a bestselling book.

Ep 536: 5 Things you Need to Know to Write, Publish and Launch a Bestselling Book with Rory and AJ Vaden

AJV (00:00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here getting to interview my one and only the one, the only Rory Vaden. This is apparently our annual podcast together ’cause we did one last year and we are doing one this year. Y’all, I have asked Rory’s permission to interview him as my guest on this episode because we have found ourselves immersed in this unexpected world of publishing over the last, I mean, really, I guess 15 years now unexpected for me, maybe not for Rory. And as we have discovered some things that we find are really important to us as we’re writing our next book, and as we’ve been working with so many of our clients at Brand Builders Group trying to decipher the best way to publish their book and to write their book, it, it drew out some interest in us of going, maybe, maybe we’re not just authors in this space.
AJV (00:01:05):
Maybe we have a bigger role to play in this space. We’ve published traditionally before. We will not do that next time. I’ll reserve what we are doing as a part of the interview. But through this 15 year, you know, kind of adventure in the world of publishing, we’ve learned a lot. And we wanted to share some of that with you today. And that’s why I invited Roan to be my guest as to help reveal some very exciting things that we have going on in the world of publishing. But to also help everyone understand just the state of publishing. Like what does the industry look like today and what does it take to hit a bestseller list? And what is required of the author versus the publisher, and where are we at? And so that’s what we’re gonna cover today. So if you’re listening and you are thinking to yourself, I wanna write a book one day.
AJV (00:02:01):
This is for you. If you’re listening, going, I’m in the middle of writing a book. This is for you. If you’ve already written a book and you’re in the middle of launching your book, this is for you. So, in other words, anyone who has will or will ever write a book, this episode is curated very specifically for you. So Rory, thank you for setting aside some time to come and talk with me today. This is an added bonus. Get an extra hour of my day with you. Yeah, which is also great, but also I believe that I’m not, I’m not saying this biased because I’m your wife and your business partner, but I believe you have figured out something in the world of publishing that no one else has, has cared to or has done the, the work to. But what you have been able to curate, discover, uncover, and Systematize is nothing short of revolutionary due to a deep desire of knowing how to do this better for yourself and for others. And so that’s what I wanna talk about on the show today. So welcome to your show.
RV (00:03:07):
Thank you, babe. I’m so excited about this. I I’m spending an extra hour with you. Yes.
AJV (00:03:13):
So be super
RV (00:03:14):
Fun. As you know, I’m a nerd. I’m a nerd on this topic. So this was, so this will be so fun.
AJV (00:03:19):
Yeah. And so what I wanna do first really quickly is make sure everyone has like a, a solid background on our history in the publishing world as authors. And so very quickly because we don’t have a ton of time and we have a lot to cover, can you just walk everyone through your journey to becoming a published author? And not just that, but a New York Times bestselling author, and then a follow up with a national bestseller. Walk us through, how’d that come about?
RV (00:03:49):
Yeah, so really quick not talking about it, how it came about. Basically, the first product that I ever produced was like audio CDs. But then the second product was a self-published book. And it was, it was the very first skill that I did where I taught, I did Speaking for Money, was called how to Be Funny to Make More Money. That was the subtitle of the book. So the book was called No Laughs, NO toay it to No Laughs, KNOW, no Laughs to No Laughs, how to Be Funny to Make More Money. And I taught the Psychology of Laughter and what makes people funnier, which was something that I had to learn how to do. And so We Self-published that book in 2007. Then
AJV (00:04:37):
Is this book available for Purchase Anywhere?
RV (00:04:39):
No, we have buried it deep, deep into the archives. ’cause It was truly self-published, which means we controlled all the editorial, we controlled all the creative, we found our own printer, we did everything. We registered the I
AJV (00:04:55):
VM number’s, what it means. That’s what it meant to self-publish. Mm-Hmm not necessarily self-publishing today, but
RV (00:05:01):
Yeah. And we, we had to select the type of paper that we used and all the, there’s a hundred million decisions you have to make when you self-publish a book that you don’t even realize you have to make to turn it into a physical book. So, so there was that book Then Take the Stairs. It was a traditionally published book. That was our first traditionally published book that came out from Penguin Random House. Long story that we don’t have time for here about how we got a literary agent, and then how we got a book deal. And then that process took about three years, and then it took about a year to write it, do the presales. We release, take the Stairs in 2012, we hit number one on the Wall Street Journal, best settles number two on the New York Times. Then fast forward to 2015, we also released a second book with Penguin Random House called Procrastinating on Purpose, five Permissions to Multiply Your Time.
RV (00:05:55):
That book was one that we fully expected to be a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, and and a New York Times bestseller. And we missed both of those lists. And we could not figure out why, which is a part of what l led us to where we are today. But we did hit the, the, the Indie IndieBound National Bestseller List. So it was a national bestseller, even though we did not hit New York Times or USA Today or the Wall Street Journal, which are the big main ones. Then last year we soft released another self-published book, which is a children’s book called Be the Buffalo, which we haven’t even really launched. We just, it, it is available on Amazon, but we haven’t actually done the book launch for it. But we released it so that we could print it for our kids. We used Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, which is now, you know, the easiest way to self-publish today. And now we have our new book that will be coming out. We’re tentatively slating around July of 2025, which is the book you and I are writing together. And we have left traditional publishing and we are now hybrid publishing. And we can talk more about that, but that’s, hopefully that’s what you’re looking for. Yeah,
AJV (00:07:10):
And I think this is really important, and I think there’s a, a couple of things that just kind of wanna highlight in our journey of publishing is we have now published in all the formats, . I think that’s a part of going one of the things that we really believe in, in fact the message that we have at Brand Builders Group is teach what you know, and that’s a really core and central part of what we believe is that if we don’t know it, we likely won’t be talking about it. Definitely not teaching it. But what, when, when we do talk about something and when we do teach something, it’s likely due to firsthand experience through success and failures, failures more than successes often but you have to fail in order to succeed. And so I think it’s one of those things of, as, as we speak to this, this isn’t in theory, this isn’t abstract.
AJV (00:08:02):
It’s not what other people said. This is our direct experience. And I think that’s a really important context for the, the rest of this interview today is we have gone through the, the trials tribulations of all different formats of publishing. And our biased opinion is not meant to influence yours, but it’s to give you facts, right? We have our own opinions. We’ll reserve those for private conversations. But we will keep this high level and factual of expectations. And that’s where we wanna start is, you know, today there is a very, very feasible way to get your book published in three very distinct formats. There is traditional publishing, right? Which means you are working with a, you know, a New York publishing house. There is hybrid publishing, which means you have some investment, the publisher has some investment, and then there is self-publishing. And there is no easier time in the history of our country.
AJV (00:09:06):
We live in the United States. So I’m talking specifically about the United States to get your book published than ever before. Right? There, there was a time not that long ago that if you wanted to publish your book, you had one option and they got to decide if your book was good enough to get out into the world. That’s not how it is to today. And that is good, right? That is, that is powerful. Now, it also comes with pros and cons at every diff at, at every different level. And that’s what we really wanna talk about. So here’s my, here’s my question for you, Rory. Can you just break it down and help explain what is self-publishing? What is hybrid publishing and what is traditional publishing in a way that someone who has never gone through this experience could understand at a high level?
RV (00:10:04):
Absolutely. so basically if you start with traditional publishing, there are, here’s the advantages. The advantages are they pay you to write the book. So they pay you in advance against future royalties. And you have to earn out that advance before you ever make more money. But you never have to pay back your advance if you don’t you know, out earn it. So they pay you in advance to write the book. Then they owned the, they own the book. They actually own the, the, the intellectual property of that, those words in that order, which means they have exclusive right of where to print it, how to print it. They get to have final sign off on the title of the book. They get to have final sign off on the editorial, meaning the words in the book and what gets included and what doesn’t get included.
RV (00:10:58):
They also have the final say on the creative editorial, which is like the book cover. The way that the diagrams inside the book are laid out, the, you know, how big the pages are, they control the creative, they control the editorial. They also distribute the book. So they have, there’s a whole network in traditional publishing, which is publishers make the books, and then they, they send those books to distributors. Those distributors send those books out to retailers, and then consumers go and buy those books. And traditional publishers have a sales team that also calls on retailers and set tries to convince retailers to stock their books on the shelves. You know, of what, what’s new and exciting coming out? And it’s like a, there’s a whole chain. Some of the other great things about traditional publishing are the quality of the books is really high.
RV (00:11:59):
It’s the, it’s the, some of the best editors in the world. The distribution is one of the top things, which is that your book becomes available in airports and brick and mortar bookstores and can be translated into other languages. And there’s foreign rights deals, and sometimes those become movies and things. So that’s the, the, the fundamentals of traditional publishing. Let’s talk about self-publishing next, because it’s basically the opposite of all of that. So in self-publishing, you don’t get paid in advance. You have to pay. And why do you have to pay? Because you have to pay to print the books. First of all, you have to pay to write the book, right? So either you’re gonna write it or you’re gonna hire a writer and you’re gonna pay that outta your pocket. Then you’re gonna hire an editor, you’re gonna pay that out of your pocket.
RV (00:12:51):
Then you’re gonna pay someone to lay out the words on a page that’s called type setting. You have to pay for that. Then you pay for the graphic design of putting in the charts and tables and pull quotes. Then you have to pay for the design of the cover. Then once you actually have the book made and you have to find suppliers for all of those pieces, then you have to pay to print the books, right? And, and the good news is that you get to control that. And so the price to print the books might be lower. It might be like, you know, say four to $5 per book if it’s a hardcover book. But if you print 10,000 units at $5 each, you’re, you come out $50,000 just to get 10,000 copies of your own book. So you have to pay all the money, is the downside.
RV (00:13:41):
The upside is you have full control. You get to say whatever you want. You get to have final authority on the cover. The other downside though is you don’t have distribution. Now with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, they have made it super easy to do a lot of that stuff. And so your book can be sold through Amazon, but it’s not gonna be in airports. It’s not gonna be in Barnes and Noble. It’s not gonna be in Books a million. It’s not gonna be at, you know, Parnassus independent bookstore in Nashville. Those places are not gonna have that book. And so you’re naturally gonna sell less of those books ’cause fewer people are gonna see them. The other downside of self-publishing is the time it takes to figure all that out and to control all of that. The other downside of self-publishing is your book is not gonna be New York Times bestseller eligible.
RV (00:14:28):
And there’s some reasons why, but predominantly it’s because you will never s have enough books in print available at all the necessary retail stores around the country of where that book needs to be placed so that people could buy it so that it could all report to count for the New York Times. We have, we have figured out, very few people have ever done this, but we have figured out how to help a few self-published authors hit the USA today bestseller list following our system that we teach. And by the way, we work with client. We have done all three, as AJ has mentioned, we also work with clients regularly who do all three. But the dream of being a real national bestseller is, is pretty difficult and it’s basically impossible. There might somehow be a one in a hundred million chance knowing all the things we know that we could pull it off.
RV (00:15:27):
But it’s, it’s, it’s pretty much, and the other thing is the New York Times bestseller list specifically is there’s not only a quantity factor, there’s not only a distribution factor, there is also an editorial factor. That list ultimately is not objective. The New York Times was sued many decades ago, and the way they won the lawsuit was that they publicly said, it’s not an empirical only list. It’s an editorial list. And so they have very high editorial standards and thresholds. And so self-published books don’t usually cross those thresholds, even if they did sell enough volume in the right places on the right times. So you kind of weigh bye-bye to the, the, the, the New York Times, you know, dream. Then there’s hybrid. But
AJV (00:16:10):
Before we move on to hybrid, okay, you wanna preface ’cause there are some self-publishing companies today that really do help orchestrate and organize all of the things that we just said. Totally. So it’s not really that you’re in it on your own anymore. In the self-publishing world, there are many self-publishing entities that have all have, have orchestrated and put that all together for you. I think one of the, the things I think is important to note about self-publishing is really what is the purpose of the book, right? And I think that’s the same question you have to ask as we go through all of these is what am I trying to achieve with this book? What, what’s the purpose, the intended purpose of the book? And that will help a lot of going, is this self-publishing? Is it traditional or is it this, this middle thing called hybrid, which we can talk about now?
RV (00:17:04):
Yeah, so that’s a great point. You know, when we, we self-published our first book, we had to control all of that. We had to make all those decisions. Amazon, Kindle, KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing came on the scene. They have a whole process that helps facilitate a lot of that if you print through Amazon, but then Amazon gets to control the prices and things, but it helps tremendously. But you still get to own your intellectual property. That’s the other big advantage of self-publishing. You own the intellectual property, so you can do whatever you want with that book. You can create derivative products of that book. You have full control. And then when we did our children’s book last year, we used, as AJ mentioned, a vendor who helped coordinate. We paid them to help us with coordinating the self-publishing aspects of it. She was phenomenal.
RV (00:17:52):
We’ve had her on the podcast and I think we’re probably gonna turn, we’re probably gonna create a whole children’s book division here in the future, working with her ’cause she’s so wonderful. So when you get to hybrid publishing, now hybrid publishing is a blend of self-publishing and traditional publishing. So self-published books often are paperback, not always, but often when you do hybrid, you have access. There’s a hybrid publishing company and a lot of hybrid publishing companies are made up of people who used to be in traditional publishing who left traditional publishing for whatever reason, to go work at a hybrid publisher. So they have a whole process to produce a book that looks like a traditionally published book reads like a traditionally published, published book. Feels like a traditionally published book. So if you have a good hybrid publisher, and there’s, you know, there’s a whole gradient range of hybrid publishers and as well as gradient price points that correspond with each of those.
RV (00:18:57):
They a hybrid publisher though, the good ones, you could have your book right next to a book from Jim Collins or John Maxwell or Brene Brown, and you really couldn’t tell much of a difference. Versus with a self-published book, you can almost spot it instantly. And so there’s a brand equity piece of that that ties into this, that hybrid publishers can help you really create. So the big difference between a hybrid and a traditional publisher is that when you hybrid publish, you also have to pay to produce the book. So you’re not getting paid in advance. You have to pay the cost of producing the book. But much like a traditional publisher, you have a highly skilled team that knows how to produce the book. They also typically include editorial. So you get a top notch editor that you don’t have to go source and find yourself.
RV (00:19:52):
They’re usually included in the price that you pay and they help you edit the book. It also typically includes some element of graphic design for typesetting the pages, designing the cover, and it’s kind of sold as a package. Also, things like registering the ISBN number, those are things that, like the hybrid publisher takes care of a lot of the like logistical technicality things that you never know you have to think of. Now, so the downside is you have to pay, but the upside is you own all of the intellectual property, more like self-publishing. So instead of signing away all of your rights, you get to own them, which means if you wanna change the title of your book, if you want to change the interior of the book, if you wanna change the color of the cover, you have full control to do all that in the way you would.
RV (00:20:47):
If you self-published and you own all of the intellectual property rights to create workbooks and quote books and day planners and daytimers and whatever, whatever thing you wanna do, you maintain control of the ip, you can turn that, you know, into any type of coaching program, mastermind consulting, curriculum, et cetera. You need no sign off from the traditional publisher. The other big advantage of hybrid publishing is the cost of the book itself. So when you self publish, you get the books cheaper because you get to choose where they’re printed. When you traditionally publish, you get in advance, but then you have to buy your own book from the publisher. And usually it’s at a discount of retail. It’s usually around 50% off of retail. But like with, even today with Take the Stairs, we have to buy our own books. Like if it’s a hardcover, take the Stairs book, it costs us like $12 to buy our own book.
RV (00:21:49):
When you hybrid publish, you get to buy the books at much closer to a cost, which means, and the reason why this matters is because if you sell the books, you know, there’s two ways to sell. There’s to sell through retail channels, like stores like Amazon, Barnes and Noble Books, Ilion, you know, airports, independent bookstores, that’s retail channels. But then there are direct sales channels which are like through your website or at the back of a room when you’re speaking or to your consulting clients where they buy directly from you and they pay you when you do self-publishing or hybrid publishing. You know, people say you can’t make money from books, and that’s actually not at all true when you self-publish or hybrid publish. In fact, one of my mentors, Zig Ziglar said, the way to know which type of publishing you should do is you should ask yourself, do you wanna get rich or do you wanna get famous?
RV (00:22:43):
If you wanna get famous, you should tra you should try to traditionally publish. If you wanna get rich, you should self-publish. But Zig told me that before the world of hybrid publishing emerged. And so what hybrid publishing allows you to do is to kind of get famous, but also get rich because the other advantage of hybrid publishing is so, so, so that’s normal hybrid publishing, okay? Is you pay for the book, but you own the ip, you get the books at discount, but they can be but they look like traditionally published books even though you still have full control. And then do you want to talk about why we went into hybrid publishing?
AJV (00:23:28):
Not yet. Okay. I think that, you know, as we’re kind of like going through this interview, there’s really five things that you need to know to write, publish, and launch a bestselling book, right? And that’s what this whole episode about. And the first thing that we’ve been talking about is publisher type. I mean, that’s the first thing that you really have to decide is like, what, what publisher type of, because that’s a really important factor of if you wanna have a bestselling book. And so back to purpose and intent, perhaps that’s not what you care about. I think there is a reason of why to have one that we can talk about. But that’s the first, the first thing. The second thing, these are in no particular order is the marketing of the book. The, the third is the selling of the book.
AJV (00:24:08):
The fourth is pub dates when you actually publish the book. And the fifth is actually making money with the book, which is ROI, which Roy just mentioned. And as we go through this interview, you’re gonna get all five of these things. But I think one thing that’s really helpful to, just to kind of sum up this first one, which is publisher type, is to think about it like this. My good friend Alison Trobridge, who has a hybrid publishing company and a self-publishing company, and also an app called Copper Books. I love how she phrases it. She goes, you have to think about self-publishing like a bootstrapped entrepreneur, right? You’re figuring it out as you fall off the cliff, right? You’re building it as you go and you’re self-funding the whole thing, right? It’s a bootstrapped entrepreneur. Skip to self-publishing. It’s like private equity, right? Or
RV (00:24:53):
Sorry, skip from self-publishing. To which one? To traditional traditional publishing.
AJV (00:24:57):
Traditional publishing. And it’s like private equity, right? It’s like you better come with a well-vetted plan of how you’re gonna market and sell the book, and they only wanna invest on a sure thing, right? They want proof. They wanna know how you’re gonna make money. This is a private equity, you make pennies on the dollar, but they make a lot, right? It’s private equity. Then you have hybrid publishing, which is like a business partnership, right? And there’s a time and a place for all of those. But I think that if you can just go, okay, bootstrapped entrepreneur, self-publishing business partnership, right? We both have skin in the game here, there, this is a true partnership that’s hybrid. And then private equity is like a traditional publisher. If you just wanna kind of categorically think about ’em that way, it will help you just kind of go like, where do I fit based on my audience size my investment abilities my, my writing abilities, my timelines, the purpose of the book all of those things really go into this really huge conversation of publisher type. Now as Rory mentioned we are in the middle of writing our next book and we, it will be a hybrid publisher published book. But there’s more to that story because we ourselves have gotten into the hybrid publishing space. So in January of 2024 we, this is a, a sister company, it’s an extension of Brand builders group. We launched our own hybrid publishing imprint called Mission Driven Press. Now Rory, why did we do that? Like why did we get into the hybrid publishing space?
RV (00:26:36):
Great question. And by the way, if you go to mission-driven press.com, there’s a great table that shows you the advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing, hybrid publishing, and traditional publishing all in one table that we put together. So it sort of summarizes what we’ve been talking about so far at mission-driven press.com. So why did we get into tradit or hybrid publishing? Why would we leave one of the biggest publishers in the world where we got, you know, we were earning over six figures in advances and we hit the New York Times bestseller list. Why would we leave that and go back to hybrid publishing? Well, there’s a few reasons why in general, hybrid publishing is a great avenue for people who are entrepreneurial minded, people who know how to run a business and know how to market, know how to sell, and know how to make money.
RV (00:27:29):
Hybrid is really good because you get the quality and the gravitas of a, of a really, you know, beautiful book that looks like a New York published book. But you get the profit and the, the return on investment the way you do with more of like a self-published book. It’s more of an investment. It’s you’re investing in and you’re getting a return. The reason why we didn’t hybrid publish sooner is because typically historically hybrid publishing books were not eligible for the New York Times bestseller list. And there’s kind of a couple reasons why I think that is. One was that they, they often didn’t meet the editorial standards of New York Times, which are extremely high, extremely high. You might think you’re a great writer, but like it’s a whole different level to, to get the New York Times to sign off on your book, editorially speaking. But the other reason is more practical, it’s more functional, which is in order to become a New York Times bestselling author, first of all, it takes a huge number of units sold in a week.
RV (00:28:44):
And this is something we’ve spent years figuring out and just trying to understand because it’s, it’s a, it’s, they don’t publish much information about how it works. And so, you know, we’ve put together a team that tries to understand what are the ethical rules that the New York Times wants people to play by, and how much does it really take to hit the New York Times? And I’ll share with you a key data point. This is a proprietary data point that’s been compiled by our data science team internally that in the year 2023, okay, if you look at the, a full calendar year of 2023 on average, the average book that hit the New York Times the first time it hit sold 18,401 units in a week on average. So just that alone says you have to move a lot of units, but you also have, those units have to be sold in a variety of different places.
RV (00:29:41):
This is a term known as distribution, meaning it can’t just be 18,000 units sold through Amazon. There’s gotta be the New York Times. Apparently nobody knows for sure. This is a little bit like the Google algorithm, like we don’t, nobody knows for sure, but we’re using the hints they give us along with experience to kind of create a validating set of triangulated hypotheses that then become proven over time. But they have to be sold in lots of places. And self-published books are not sold in lots of places. They’re usually sold on Amazon and through your own shopping cart and your own shopping cart. Sales don’t count for New York Times because the New York Times only recognizes certain reporting retailers. And the industry leans heavily on something called BookScan. And only certain retailers report to BookScan. So your direct sales are good while you make money on them.
RV (00:30:32):
They do not count for the major bestseller lists when you sell through your website. The only sales that count are the officially recognized sales that happen through retail reporting outlets, typically that report through book scan and or the New York Times. So you have to sell a huge number of units. And in order to sell a huge number of units, you have to have a huge number of units in print. Most self published books. And most hybrid publishers are never gonna print that level of inventory. ’cause It’s a huge risk, right? I mean, imagine if you were the publisher, if it was self-published to go, I’m gonna print 20,000 books at $5 each, that’s a hundred thousand dollars just to have enough inventory available to even have a chance. And it’d be super risky on the editorial side. And that’s, and most hybrid publishers also won’t make that investment.
RV (00:31:19):
So most self-publishing never has the distribution necessary to hit like the New York Times. And almost all hybrid publishers also do not have the distribution required to hit the New York Times. That is traditionally that the historically that has been a feature set that only belonged to traditional publishing, they had distribution. Remember they have that channel of, they sell to distributors who sell to retailers who te sell to consumers. Those sales report through BookScan, and they were, those retailers report to the New York Times. And that was a feature set only available to traditional publishing. About two years ago, our team started to notice something very unusual. We noticed a hybrid publishing company that hit the New York Times repeatedly. They hit with, and they were signing pretty big authors like Glen Beck John Maxwell, Joan London like Mike and Peggy Rowe. And these are major books that were, that were hybrid published that were hitting the New York Times.
RV (00:32:33):
So we established contact with them. We wanted to figure out what was going on here. How is this pulling, how are they pulling this off? You know, because previous to a couple years ago, we’d always been told it was impossible. And we had never seen evidence that it was possible. Well, as we built a relationship with this team, we came to found out, find out something incredibly powerful. This company was started by some very high powered tra, formerly traditional publishing executives. And they were able to structure an arrangement where they are a hybrid publisher, but their books are edited. They have the, the editorial level of like a, a a, a major five New York publisher. And they actually have distribution through Simon and Schuster. So it’s not like Simon and Schuster. It is Simon and Schuster. It is a hybrid published book that is printed on Simon and Schuster Printing presses.
RV (00:33:39):
It is shipped from the Simon and Schuster warehouse. The Simon and Schuster sales team calls on retailers the way they would for a normal Simon and Schuster book. And those, it, it has the same distribution chain, the supply chain, so to speak, as a, as an actual traditionally published Simon and Schuster book. And that is why they were hitting the New York Times. They figured out a way to where hybrid publishing could move one step closer to traditional publishing, but it stays just inside the line of traditional publishing in that you own your ip, you control the creative, the author gets to determine the title. But then here’s the other awesome thing that they do. The author doesn’t have to pay to print all the books the publisher pays to print to, to, they pay for the initial print run to satisfy the initial retail estimated sales.
RV (00:34:38):
That is another massive feature set that historically was only available through traditional publishing. So that is when the world changed, is we said, this version of hybrid publishing is as close to traditional publishing. It’s all the editorial, it’s the distribution, it’s the supply chain, it’s being bestseller list eligible. It’s producing a book that is world class, you know, with an an in. You cannot tell the difference between it and, and a normal major book. And yet you can own the IP control, the creative. Now you do still have to pay the cost. So that’s the one sort of, the one sort of downside is you still have to pay because you have to pay to produce the book. But there’s all these other things. And that was when AJ and I said we think with that week. So we started a partnership with them. We created our own imprint, which is called Mission-Driven Press. And so now we offer hybrid publishing through Mission-Driven Press, but that has distribution through Simon and Schuster and has all the editorial and all of these things. And so we said, we’ll go first as authors. We believe in this so much we’re going to abandon traditional publishing, which was something we spent years of our life. It was a desperate dream of mine to do. And we’re abandoning that for what we believe is more of the future, at least for our audience, which is hybrid publishing. And that’s why we started Mission-Driven Press,
AJV (00:36:13):
You know, and I think it’s really important ’cause I think the, the whole concept of being able to, you know, have a legitimate bestselling book that is truly bought by other humans, which is a really important part of the integrity of the process was a really validating moment of this is a space that we could really get into. The other really validating moment for us was, and I think that most really successful brands, no matter what they are they succeed because they really, they were really solving a problem for themselves. And they realized that if they had that problem, others did too. And I think one of the things that made me want to get into this is when we went through years and continue to go through years of trying to make editorial changes to Rory’s previous books, including titles and covers and being told, I know that it’s your book, but no, can’t change the title, can’t change the cover, can’t change the words in the book.
AJV (00:37:13):
No. And it’s like, but we have, we have all this proof of if we did these things that would, it would make, it would, it would have a big impact. It would make more sales. You would make more money. Publisher. The answer is no. And realizing that even though you wrote the book and it’s your ip, what what really happens in traditional publishing is you sell your ip, it’s no longer yours. And to have that realization before, during, and after, as, as anyone who’s a content creator, and I just wanna put it in a a personal context of, you know, those are your stories and you are giving them away in exchange for dollars and cents, right? They’re not yours anymore. The those frameworks, those points, the stories the content is no longer yours. And many times, not even the derivative rights to do more things with that, you have sold that for a payment.
AJV (00:38:05):
It’s no longer yours. And I don’t know if people really understand that as they step into that. And that was a very eye-opening moment for us when we had all this statistical proof and data of how all of these other things that were happening with a different title change would move the needle. And, and we can’t, we couldn’t, we were told no, because at the end of the day, it’s not really ours anymore. And the thing that was again, something we’re like, man, this should never happen again, is believing that no editor has the right to tell you that this can’t be published when it’s yours. Sorry, this part of that story, I know it’s true, but it’s too much for here, right? These words, that name can’t use those. And that’s a, that’s a really sobering moment for the accuracy of your story and the heart of your content.
AJV (00:38:57):
And just realizing as a content creator that you are giving that up for a paycheck. And sometimes that’s okay and in others it’s not. And when it’s not having a good alternative, like a hybrid publisher really made a lot of sense. And so that, that’s another component of just realizing those mm-hmm, like this really is something you are giving away not for money, but it is not yours anymore. And I think we stepped into this going like, Hey, our story is not for sale at any cost. It is not for sale. We’re gonna tell it the way that it happened and the way that we want. Now I think with all that said, as we, we stepped into launching mid mission-Driven Press, there was another realization we’re gonna talk about for the next 10 minutes of this interview. Well, okay, great talks a lot about the ability to hit a bestseller list.
AJV (00:39:46):
How do you actually do that? Right? And I don’t care if you’re self hybrid or traditional, how do you do that? Because that doesn’t matter. It’s the same amount of work, right? To make that hell happen. But I think one of the things that is really important to note is that there is a huge gap and this is across all three options, self, hybrid, and traditional. No one actually knows how to market and sell their book . And so even as we were working with this awesome partner that has this distribution, and it’s like there was still this interesting gap of the publisher and the author really not knowing what to do, spending funds in the wrong places at the wrong times, doing things in the wrong order not probably paying enough attention to the sales and marketing side of things like titles, subtitles, covers those are marketing things, but really a lack of knowledge and awareness of what it takes to actually move books, right?
AJV (00:40:49):
What’s the work involved, what’s the investment involved? What’s actually required to sell enough book books to take a run at a bestseller list? But then also I think it’s a equally as important thing to realize. The other big gap was just knowing when to do it right? Because so many things in life, it’s all about timing. Launching your book is no different. It’s about timing. And I think that as we stepped into this and that’s why this is really a sister company, a brand builders group, which is a personal brand strategy firm. This is the fulfillment side of book strategy, right? But you gotta have a good writing plan, a good writing strategy. You have to have a good publishing strategy that’s mission-driven press. But there also had to be a good sales and marketing strategy to go and execute. And what authors don’t realize is that authors are the salespeople, you know?
AJV (00:41:46):
And I think that is where we really said, Hey, we we’re gonna fill this gap that’s clearly missing. There is no mystery of what it takes to sell books. It’s just some people choose not to do it, whether they don’t know it or they choose not to do it, right? And that you can be in either category but there, there is not a secret. It takes work. And that work is very specific. So Roy, if we could just move in for the, the next 10 minutes to talk about the sales and marketing side of what it actually takes to have a bestselling book, that would be great. And if we could also incorporate the timing component, right? So when we think about marketing, selling and the timing of those things, the nuance of that what, what would you tell the audience is the most important thing to know about how to market your book, how to sell your book, and when to publish your book?
RV (00:42:37):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. So one of our, our brand builders group mantras that we say all the time is that writers write, editors edit publishers, publish distributors, distribute retailers, retail. And nobody sells the book. Nobody knows how to sell the book. Nobody wants to do the work of selling the book. Nobody has a plan for selling the book. And typically, most authors and publishers and literary agents and publicists spend all of their time and money thinking that publicity and PR or soc and social media are gonna be the things to sell books. And while we believe in publicity and we believe in social media, those rank towards the very bottom of the list of things that we know that actually move books. There’s lots of great reasons to do social media and pr, but if you think those are gonna be the things that actually cause people to pull their credit card out and buy the book, you’ll find that you are very mistaken.
RV (00:43:47):
And we’ve seen this time and time again. So one of the things, if you really want your book to be a bestseller, first of all, I think high level, you gotta understand the big buckets of what’s going on here. And so we talk about, again, at mission driven press.com, we sort of lay this out. There’s four, like when people say I wanna write a book, there’s actually four major phases of that project. Phase one is writing the book. Historically, brand Builders group has always been able to assist people with writing the book. We help them find their uniqueness, we help them create their frameworks, we create the big idea. We can help them create an outline for it. We can introduce them to ghost writers if they need them. But you, it’s writing the book. That’s like stage one. Stage two is publishing the book, which is, you know, publishers don’t sell books.
RV (00:44:40):
Publishers make books. Publishers don’t know much about selling books. You a lot of authors think they would, but that’s not what publishing is. Publishing is about making books. It’s about the editorial, it’s about the distribution, it’s about the, the, all the million decisions about what makes a great book. But it’s not so much about selling it. And, and that’s a big mistake that people make. So inside of publishing the book, there are the three options we’ve talked about mostly on this podcast, right? That’s what we’ve been talking about. Stage three is selling the book. So you write the book, then you publish the book, but now you gotta sell the book. And this is where our deepest level of expertise is at Brand Builders Group is teaching people a replicable system, a duplicatable system, a proven system to get real humans to buy your book.
RV (00:45:34):
And when I say we have a system for this, as of last week, we help our 51st brand builders group client, who has followed our system and become a New York Times Wall Street Journal, or USA today national bestselling author. We’ve done that over 50 times in the last couple years. And what we don’t do is we don’t tell authors to buy their own books. If anyone ever says what you should do is buy your own books that you should run, right? Number one, it’s very risky to do that. And it’s number two, there’s some questionable ethics around buying your own books just to make them count for the bestseller list. But number three, it doesn’t accomplish the actual goal, which is changing lives, helping people, and also building your brand and your business. So what we do is we teach a system and there’s seven main mechanisms that we teach people for how to sell books, okay?
RV (00:46:33):
And we can, we’ll deep dive on those for a minute here. But then you have stage four, which is processing the books or reporting the books. So you write the book, writing the book, publishing the book, selling the book, and then reporting the sales. And when it comes to where the rubber meets the road of making sure your sales report you know, to become a bestseller list or become a bestselling author, you have to make sure that your sales, whatever sales you generate, whether that’s 50 books or 5,000 or 50,000 books happen in the appropriate way so that they get recognized by the reporting outlets. We’re not trying to game the system, we’re not trying to cheat, we’re not trying to lie. We’re not trying to make it look like you’re selling more books than you are. We’re just trying to make sure that every single hard earned sale that you created gets counted and that’s it, right?
RV (00:47:29):
So that’s what we’re trying to do. And, and so we actually provide that service for free for any of anyone who’s a brand builders group client, whether they publish with mission driven press or not. If we’re helping you write the book or we’re doing the sales strategy, we do that part because we want your hard earned work to be recognized. We’re not really in the just the business of doing that. We just do that as a service because there’s a lot of people who do it wrong, and there’s a lot of misconceptions and frankly, there’s a lot of shadiness around it and a lot of disorganization and a lot of people have lost a lot of money. And so we just said, we’re gonna just take care of this piece and we’re gonna provide it for free. And we don’t care if you sell 10,000 or a hundred thousand or 10 books.
RV (00:48:10):
I mean, we do, we wanna help you sell. I just mean it’s not like we will only provide that service to like the big famous authors we work with. We provide it for everybody because we were, we were aspiring authors at one point too. So that’s the four stages. Now, if we zi deep dive here, what AJ’s asking about is how do we sell books? That’s stage three. What are the mechanisms? Okay, so I already told you the biggest thing that does not sell a lot of books is PR and social media, which is ironic because that’s what everybody thinks will sell books. And, and I just wanna spend a minute on this. PR is very important. PR is huge for brand building. If you do PR right? It can be huge for list building, but pr in and of itself, going on Good Morning America and thinking that’s gonna sell all your books is not a very good strategy because it’s very, very difficult to get that slot.
RV (00:49:07):
And when you get, when you get that slot, if you get that slot, which is, you know, one in a one in a hundred thousand, you, you’ll be shocked at how little books it sells. And we have, we have clients every week who are on like every month for sure that are on Good Morning America, Fox News, today’s show, you know, various things with Oprah. And you know, several of the biggest podcasters in the world are clients of ours, right? Louis Howes and Amy Porterfield and Ed Millet. We know exactly how many books are sold from being on those shows, but a national TV hit usually sells somewhere between 800 to 1200 units. So it’s not nothing, right? But it’s a very far cry from 18,000 units. If you’re trying to make a run outta New York Times or, you know, tens of thousands of units, if you’re trying to change the world, it’s not gonna happen that way. So
AJV (00:49:56):
Now there are a couple of PR mediums that we have seen that are better to do such as podcasts,
RV (00:50:04):
Right? Yeah. Podcasts are a high return on the buck for how small the audience is. So like the biggest podcast in the world typically are not gonna move as much as a Good Morning America hit, but the audience they’re reaching is much smaller. So as a percentage, because you go, you know, let’s take our book about personal branding. If we’re on a podcast that only has a hundred thousand downloads, but all a hundred thousand people are entrepreneurs will sell way more books to a hundred thousand entrepreneurs who listen to us on a 30 minute podcast interview than we will being on Good Morning America reaching millions of people for a three minute segment of which only a small fraction of them are entrepreneurs. So podcasts actually are a great strategy because one of the things that we talk about is you have to think of your online audience as an offline room.
RV (00:50:57):
And sometimes authors go, oh, I don’t wanna be on that podcast. It’s a small podcast. It, it only gets, you know, a thousand downloads a month. But if you were standing on stage in front of a thousand people, you probably would take that opportunity. You probably would be excited about that. And that’s more of what podcasts are like. It’s a thousand people focused on you giving you their full attention for 20, 30, 40 minutes. So we’re big fans of podcasts. Now you have to have strategies for how to convert those. And this is what it comes down to. I know we’re running short on time. Here’s how you sell books incentives in one word. The secret is incentives. And what you do is you give people additional incentives to order the book. And I’ll just share with you a really quick tip here. Here’s how to sell 50,000 books.
RV (00:51:51):
I can teach you this in 60 seconds. What you do is you get 10,000 people to buy one copy. And so you give some people some extra incentives. If they buy one copy, then you get a thousand people. You try to find a thousand people who will buy 10 copies. And so you come up with a few more incentives that they get if they buy 10 copies, and then we wanna get a hundred people to each buy a hundred copies and they get a really big incentive, and that’s another 10,000 units. Then you wanna find 10 people who will each buy a thousand copies. That’s another 10,000 copies. A great incentive there would be to like give away a speech and say, Hey, if you buy a thousand copies of my book, I’ll come speak or I’ll make an appearance or something like that. And then if you can, you try to find one person who would buy 10,000 copies, you know, and that might be like $300,000. So you’d have to give them some really, really, really big incentives. But you
AJV (00:52:49):
Let us know when you find those people because we would like to meet them
RV (00:52:53):
And, and, and, and there are those people out there. There are those people indeed. So incentives and that’s part of what our team helps you do is help you think through those strategies, think through those incentives. We’ve got templates and scripts and examples. But the point is, get real people to buy your book. And yes, we’ll use incentives to help them, but people know they’re buying books, we’re talking about the book. They’re real humans with real transactions. And you’re doing the hard work it takes to create a movement and change lives. And if all goes well, our team will help make sure hopefully those sales get reported properly and hopefully those sales get counted. And you get listed as a bestselling author and we’ve got a great track record of doing it because we’re trying to do it the right way. We’re trying to do it. We openly, honestly, in transparency with retailers, with publishers and with authors, it’s not about trying to just buy your own books to game the system. It’s doing the work it takes to tell the world about your book and that your book deserves to have that work.
AJV (00:53:57):
Yeah, and I would say one of the things I think it’s really important to kind of sum a lot of that up is like, that is sales. Y’all Like that is when the author has to step into the role of salesperson. And a lot of authors that we know that we have encountered are they’re writers, they’re content creators, they’re, they’re in the words. And this is having you step off the pages and picking up the phone, making phone calls, sending emails, getting on podcasts, getting on stages. And part of the incentivized system is sales psychology, right? It’s a reward system. You give me your money now for nothing. ’cause You’re not gonna get a book right now, but I’m gonna give you this, this, this, and this, and you’re gonna get the book later, right? This is a sales psychology, it’s a reward based system of stepping into an arena that maybe you’re not aware of, maybe you’re not even comfortable with.
AJV (00:54:50):
But that is at the end of the day, what moves books. We do this all day, every day with new authors every single day, every week having launches. And I can tell you right now, the people who go, I will sell my book, those are the books that sell , the people who say, I will pick up the phone, I will send the emails, I will do the podcast, I will do the speeches. They sell books. And I think this is the last thing that I would like to leave on. Now, why would someone do that? Like, why, why would someone do that?
RV (00:55:20):
Well, you know, on this point, Robert Kiyosaki had a, a great quote on this. He said, you have to remember, it’s not called New York Times Best Writing Author. It’s New York Times best Selling author. This is a sales game. And like anything, whoever is selling the most is, is, is getting the word out there. And by the way, we do this for new authors. We also do this for the biggest authors in the world, right? John Maxwell, ed Millet, Lewis Howes, Amy Porterfield. Like we have helped Eric Thomas et the hip hop preacher, we’ve helped some of the most reputable, credible personal brands in the world build their brand by helping them do this stuff. We’ve had three of our clients have followed our system and pre-sold a hundred thousand copies of their book, like Pre-sold during their launches. So this stuff works at the highest level and it works if you’re just starting out.
RV (00:56:15):
But you know, the reason you would wanna be a bestseller is statistically you make, you make a lot more money in advances, in speaking fees. You get better media opportunities. I mean, look, you know, just to use Lewis Howes as an example, ’cause he’s a client and a close friend. Everybody wants to be on Lewis Howes podcast, everybody, it’s one of the biggest podcasts in the world. And every week his team gets flooded with books that get mailed to them. And when they open those books, there’s two piles. There’s the no pile, and there’s the maybe pile. Being a New York Times bestselling author doesn’t automatically put you in a, some type of a yes pile, but it pretty much almost always puts you automatically in the maybe pile. So you’re gonna separate, you know, it’s the, the, the, what is it, the wheat from the shaft.
RV (00:57:03):
Like you get separated from the crowd, that you get a real, legitimate, honest look by literary agents, by public publicists, by speaking opportunities by ma you know, being invited to be in part of, you know, VIP groups and stuff like that. But I do wanna just leave everybody with this, aj. It’s really important to know that you should do this and we’re really good at it, and we teach you straightforward practices that are ethical. There’s no, there’s no manipulation, there’s no deception. It is just hard work. But we give you the templates, we give you the tools. That’s what our clients pay us for. And you should want to do this because you want to sell a lot of books, right? But you have to remember bestseller lists. Don’t change lives, but books do bestseller lists. They don’t really change lives. They might change your life.
RV (00:58:01):
If anything, they’ll change one person’s life. They’ll change the author’s life. But nobody on the world, nobody in the world cares. If you’re a bestselling author, they care about, can you help me? Can you, could you have advice, insights, inspiration that will help me in my life? But either way, to reach a lot of people, you need to do the work of getting the book out there. So bestseller lists are fun to go after. They are meaningful. They, they do, they do matter, but they’re not the thing. Nowhere near are they the ultimate goal here. You know, they’re a fun game as a checkpoint to kind of go after. But this is about changing lives. This is about helping people. This is about making a difference in the world, and it’s also about helping you build your brand and your business by getting your, your message out there. So we try to, you know, we wanna pursue bestseller lists. We think that we’re pretty good at it. We got a strong track record, but it’s not the end goal. It’s, it’s a side goal of going, let’s help you get your book into many people’s hands as possible so that your book can make the world a better place. That’s what this is about. That’s why you started bestseller lists. Don’t Change Lives, but Books do.
AJV (00:59:12):
Yeah, and I would just add, like, why would you wanna do all of this? It’s a calling, right? You can’t not, amen. It’s a calling. It’s something that’s been placed on your heart that you feel like you have something that has the power to help someone else. And having it in writing words on pages it matters because you know that if somebody else reads it, it can help them. It’s a calling. And it has to be that first because then all the work is worth it. And it doesn’t know, it doesn’t matter how many copies are sold, it’s worth it knowing that it could potentially change the trajectory of someone else’s life. It’s a calling. That’s why you do it. And so we’re so excited to be a part of Mission-Driven Press. We’re so excited to be able to more deeply serve our community.
AJV (01:00:01):
And if you are an aspiring author or you’re in the middle of writing that book or you’ve got your book done and you’re trying to launch it, I would encourage you guys go check out our website, mission driven press.com, fill out our author form and tell us about your book. So Mission-Driven Press. There is a form that says, tell us about your book. If it’s a future book. It’s a book in motion. It’s a book heading into launch at any stage. We wanna hear about it, see how we can come alongside you, see what we can do to help you get that book into the hands of people that it can help. So, mission-driven press.com. Fill out the form. And y’all, thank you so much for listening. Rory, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. Everyone else, we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 533: The #1 Best Way to Get Referrals | Sara Hardwick Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
I’m gonna make this sweet. I’m gonna make this short, and I’m gonna tell you the number one way to get referrals. This is very easy, very simple. Give them first, if you wanna become an expert at getting referrals, then become an expert at giving referrals. There is no better thing to do in the world in order for someone to give you a referral than for you to give them one first. This, it’s an act of generosity. It’s an active initiation, it’s an act of service. It’s an act of you showing them, but you believe in what they do. But there is also this overarching law of reciprocity that just exists in the universe. That, and it’s, this isn’t why you do it. You’re not giving to get, you’re giving to give, but as a result of giving value, of providing connection, of establishing an introduction of giving something of yourself, there is this natural inclination in humanity to want to do that in return.
AJV (01:10):
It is harder for you to ask someone of, to ask something of someone before you have given them something first. I think that’s where a lot of sales hesitation comes from. And in this case, I think it’s where a lot of referral hesitation comes from. You feel bad asking, you feel guilty asking, you feel salesy asking. And I think a lot of that stems from a lack of confidence in conviction of knowing that you have provided them value before you ask. And there’s a lot of different ways that you can provide value. I’m just using this. One example of what you can do is give an introduction, give a referral first. There is value in that connection. There is a value in that introduction. I’ll make sure it’s a good one, right? But it doesn’t even have to be a professional one. Like maybe it’s a referral to a vendor.
AJV (02:04):
Maybe it’s a referral personally, right? But as you’re thinking about your network, your sphere of influence, your clients, past clients, whatever, pay attention, right? That requires active listening skills. That requires being present, but pay attention to what people are talking about, what they’re asking for. Perhaps it’s just a, a, a book recommendation, right? It’s a, it’s a connection of going, Hey, I heard you talking about this thing on our last call. I’m gonna send you the link to this book and then actually do it, right? That is providing value. Perhaps you heard him talking about taxes. It’s like, Hey, I don’t know if you’re looking for a new CPA, but mine has been amazing. Let me connect you to him. Perhaps they were asking for business, right? It was an I be like, you know what? I’m gonna inquire a little bit about that. I’m gonna say, Hey, person tell me, tell me
AJV (02:59):
Who it is that you’re exactly, that you’re looking for. Like, who’s a great client for you? Like, I’m gonna be intentional of going, okay, I’m gonna genuinely think about that and I’m gonna refer you to someone. I’m going to connect you to someone. That doesn’t mean they’re gonna buy from you, but it does mean I am listening and providing value to you through connections and introductions. Perhaps it’s a, a podcast episode. It could be a book, it could be a vendor, it could be actual business connections. Maybe it’s a personal connection. Maybe you heard someone say, Hey, we’re struggling to find extra, extra childcare help in the summers. And it’s like, oh, man, I have a whole deck of amazing people home from college. Let me refer you to them. Y’all like, the list goes on and on. If we can just reshift how we think about connections, introductions, and the word referrals specifically, it will change your mindset on what it is.
AJV (03:51):
Because really a referral is just an introduction, right? It’s a, it’s a connection. And that could be to a, like I said, to a book, to a podcast, to a course, to a, a vendor, to a, a prospect, to a, the list goes on. But what I know is that often the, the sales hesitation, this sales reluctance comes from a deep seated issue of have I earned the right to ask for this? Like, have I provided enough value that would, that would give me the confidence in asking for something in return? I, I know that it comes from that deep down for most of us, maybe not all of us, but for a lot of us. And I also know that some of us just aren’t gonna have that natural hesitation to ask for something. And that includes help, right? Which is really what we’re doing here.
AJV (04:38):
We’re asking for help. And so the best thing that you can do is not ask for it, but just give it, just give it and give it so well and give it so freely that the person then says, that was so generous, that was so kind. What can I help you with? What do you need help with? And then you need to be prepared, right? And that’s when you need to know clearly what do you need help with? What, what, who do you need to be referred with? What vendors do you need to meet? Like, what clients are you trying to connect with? And that, that is a clarity conversation that you need to have with yourself about who do I wanna be referred to? What I, what am I looking for right now? What would be helpful? Because I know personally, I get asked for referrals and introductions all the time.
AJV (05:25):
And the, and the other party can’t clearly tell me why or who , right? They go anyone who hires speakers. And I’m like, okay, I’m gonna need a little bit more than that. Like, what kind of speakers? What kind of company? What kind of budget are we talking about? That’s on your job. You have to know exactly who you wanna be referred to. And in my, in my world, I would like to know what company, what title, what person because then it’s an easy yes or an easy no for me. And even if it’s a no right now, doesn’t mean it’s a no forever. It just means, man, I don’t know
AJV (05:57):
Anyone in that seat right now, but let me make a mental note of this so that I know for the future. And I think that’s the other part about asking for referrals and asking for introductions is it’s not a one time thing, right? It’s not, there’s not, there shouldn’t be this huge buildup to this. One thing I’m gonna ask for this one time, and I hope I get it. It’s like this is a continuous thing, which means you should be giving continuously. It’s like how can you con consistently and continually provide value to those around you? And that means you’ve gotta be in their life. You have to know what’s going on. Could be through social media, through texting, through networking meetings, through phone calls, but this is called relationship building. Yeah, it is. And that takes work and it takes time. And that means it needs to be a part of your business strategy.
AJV (06:43):
This, this is a business growth strategy. This is a life strategy. This is . This is a revenue strategy, right? You spend time in other areas of your business and it, there’s, there’s time carved out. Time has to be carved out for relationship building biz dev, right? That, that’s a part of this. But what I know is that the most fruitful and the most awesome thing you can do to, to get, is to give. But you do not give to get, you give without expectation of receipt. But you give so well that people want to give back to you, thus you get right. So that is the number one way for you to get referrals, is that you simply give them first.

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Category: SELLING

Ep 559: What it Means to be a Bestselling Author | Lucinda Halpern Episode Recap

Ep 558: How to Land Book Deals with Traditional Publishers with Lucinda Halpern

Ep 555: Nail the First 30 Seconds of a Cold Call | Ryan Lang Episode Recap

Ep 554: How to Close More Free Call Sales with Ryan Lang

Ep 553: Speak for Free to Speak for Fee | Toni Collier Episode Recap

Ep 547: What Most People Get Wrong About Personal Branding | Jamie Hess Episode Recap

Ep 543: How To Find Where Your Ideal Clients are Gathering | Michael Mogill Episode Recap

Ep 537: Why You Want Your Book to Hit a Bestseller List | Rory and AJ Vaden Episode Recap

Ep 536: 5 Things you Need to Know to Write, Publish and Launch a Bestselling Book with Rory and AJ Vaden

Ep 533: The #1 Best Way to Get Referrals | Sara Hardwick Episode Recap

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