From Writing A Book to Giving Speeches with Debby Kevin

Embark on a literary adventure with Debby Kevin, the visionary behind Highland Press, as she unveils the synergy between storytelling and personal growth. Through the art of spoken word, she advocates for the authentic capture of one's story, defying traditional writing norms. We navigate the disciplined path from the conception of an idea to the publication of a book, underscoring the significance of a clear vision and unwavering commitment. Debby's expertise through Highland Press offers a beacon of support, emphasizing that your story, however ordinary it may seem, harbors the potential to create waves of change. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for speakers and thought leaders on leveraging the written word to elevate your platform.

NOTABLE QUOTES
"You want to be present. That’s a gift that we give ourselves when we do a pilgrimage." – Debby
"When I wrote my book, speaking out helped me…able to work through getting a lot of pages." – Philip
"It’s not taking pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, but it’s how you get that story to a raw form where it can be edited." – Debby
"One of the biggest things that most people don’t think about is the first question that I always ask: ‘What is your goal in writing this book?’" – Debby
"I’m a big fan of making sure that you schedule regular time to write." – Debby
"Blocking time out, being intentional with [it] is really important for us to actually write [the] book." – Philip
“Write a great book and make sure you have a cover that stops the scroll." – Debby
“Amazon is the world’s largest distributor of books and services so it’s actually important to be an Amazon bestseller." – Debby
“I love helping people understand the ways that [their work] can be published: traditional versus independent versus hybrid." – Debby
“The diagnosis of my son [with autism] actually saved my life because I was on a direct line to be completely burned out." – Debby
"Nobody thinks like you. Nobody expresses themselves like you. Your voice and your purpose is just as important as anybody else who’s already done it." – Debby
"You’ve made [your book] unique because you’ve shared you." – Philip
"There’s something about actually having published a book that increases your cache." – Debby
"You can leverage all aspects of your book for your speaking and if you do it the other way round, you have a great speech that could be transformed into a book." – Debby
"The book’s always the one that gives that wow factor." – Philip
"There’s something about having a book and being an author that in our cultural psyche, we value those books." – Debby
“If it’s a non-fiction book for business, motivation, or self-help, the shorter is actually better." – Debby
“It’s a great idea, especially for entrepreneurs or speakers to put something within the book that will drive people to a website." – Debby
“Don’t be afraid to fail forward." – Debby
“It only becomes a failure if we don’t learn." – Debby

RESOURCES
Debby
Website: https://highlanderpressbooks.com/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highlanderpress/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/highlanderpress 

Philip
Digital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-course
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions

Transcript

Philip Sessions: 0:15

What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the speaking sessions podcast. I've got Debra Kevan here. She is the founder and chief inspiration officer of Highland Press and she loves helping change makers tap into and share their stories and healing and truth with impactful books, which we're going to get into that here in a minute. She's guided hundreds of authors to craft and publish impactful books of which they are proud. Debbie or Debra whichever one you prefer to call her, just not Deb, make sure of that. She almost lashed me when I said that I'm just kidding.

Philip Sessions: 0:50

A graduate of Stanford University's novel writing program, graduated in 2021 with a master's degree in publishing from western Colorado University. She's trekked over 350 miles of the Camino de Santiago and her passions include travel, cooking, hiking and kayaking. She has lived in Maryland with the love of her life, rob, her sons and their puppy, fergus. That is when they're not off discovering the world. And today we're going to talk about the importance of having a book as a speaker and how it can set you apart from every other speaker out there besides, of course, your story. But before we get into that, debra, tell us a little bit more about yourself. We're excited to have you here.

Debby Kevin: 1:37

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. It's about one of my favorite subjects is having people claim their brilliance. A little bit about me. As you said, I live in Maryland and I need to update my bio because my husband and I completed the Camino de Santiago this October, which was a really big deal because I've been walking it since 2017, a little section. It's a historical pilgrimage that ends in Santiago, spain, so that's a really big deal for me personally and I run 350 miles.

Debby Kevin: 2:14

That's a lot Ended up being 500 total, so Wow.

Philip Sessions: 2:21

How long did? That take by the way, so walking.

Debby Kevin: 2:23

Well, I broke it down into sections and my goal was to complete, do the last segment before I turned 60, just before I turned 60. And I did that. I beat it by three weeks, so you, beat it, that's what matters I did. Yeah, it was a goal and is a challenge physically, but it's even more of a challenge mentally because you're really, really alone with your thoughts for a really long time.

Philip Sessions: 2:50

Yeah, I'm sure there's not much cell signal out there or anything, so you can't even have music. And if you did, the battery died.

Debby Kevin: 2:58

You want to be present, and that's really a gift that we give ourselves when we do that kind of a pilgrimage. So that was pretty cool.

Philip Sessions: 3:06

Yeah, that is really cool and being present is so important. And kind of speaking about being present, I mean, I know, when I wrote my first book, wow, there were so many other things that I could be doing in the time of writing. And then I found for me, and this may not be the best idea, but I really end up speaking my book out because, like, just typing I'm not, I'm not the greatest of typing, but just speaking out instead helped me a lot to be able to work through getting a lot of pages. So I typed it out and had maybe 30 pages like, oh, this is good. And then I read it I'm like wow, there's really nothing here.

Debby Kevin: 3:42

As I started speaking it out.

Philip Sessions: 3:43

that helped me out so much more. I think I got it up to about 90 pages, so it wasn't a ton more. I won the big book for sure, but definitely helped me expand on the ideas and everything for that book.

Debby Kevin: 3:55

I love that you, I love that you brought that up, because a lot of people, when they say that they want to write a book, one of the number one things that I often hear is well, I'm not a writer, I don't know how to write, I don't know how to tell my story, and I love that you gave yourself permission to do what you do best, which is speak, and I think that's a great way to actually capture that raw material so that then you can have it edited or edit it yourself, and so I think that that's a really important distinction is it's not literally taking pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, but it's how do you get that story to a raw form where it can be edited, and that's so important, and I encourage a lot of our authors to do that, because they do get stuck.

Philip Sessions: 4:43

Yeah. So tell us a little bit what's going. Maybe I don't know the business is necessarily the right way to say this, but tell us, like the mindset that you would give for people or how you would suggest for people to go about writing their book before we get into how that helps you with. The stage is, I know a lot of people in my network and I'm sure there's people out there as well that want to learn more about how to actually write a book, how to kind of go about that and everything, and maybe not go into KDP publishing or Amazon Direct Publishing, kindle Direct Publishing, anyways, and all of that, those intricacies. But as far as like the actual of writing it, what are some tips that you could give us to help us be able to start writing the book and maybe even get it to completion before the editor?

Debby Kevin: 5:31

I love that. One of the biggest things that most people don't think about is the first question that I always ask is what is your goal in writing this book? And so your goal could be just to claim your brilliance. It could be to get more clarity about what you're doing in the marketplace. It can be increasing your confidence. It could be to get into speaking gigs. It could be to get into libraries or bookstores or to be invited to speak at conferences. It can be a variety of different things and that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether it's fiction or nonfiction. What is your number one goal? What is your goal? Now?

Debby Kevin: 6:14

If somebody says I just want to be a New York Times bestseller, I really have a chance to have an opportunity to talk with them about what that means, because that's a goal that's completely outside of our ability to control. So I like to have people think about what's the big goal for this book and then all of the books. What are you looking to accomplish? And then the next thing that I love to have people do is really talk out, and I love doing this with them is talk out what this book would be about, like. What are the things that?

Debby Kevin: 6:51

What are the key messages that you want to include in the book, because then we can develop a really rough outline and then, when you have an outline, it's easier to write or speak what goes into each of those sections, because until it's actually on paper it can't be edited, so you've got to get the ideas out of your head and get them on paper. I'm a big fan of making sure that you schedule regular time to write If it's really important to you. I say put that first in your day, before you answer emails, before you start your work day, because then, even if it's only 15 minutes a day, you've prioritized it and that actually sets the stage for how important the work is for you.

Philip Sessions: 7:40

Yeah, those are two great ways, obviously thinking about the end in mind. What's the reality that you want once this thing is completed? And it's funny how we don't really think about that. I just want a book, I just want to be on stage, I just want to do this, I want to have that. But you don't think about what it looks like when you do have those things or you have done those things, and so that's definitely an important thing. And then you mentioning blocking out that time. That's another important thing, because clearly, if we're not willing to block out some time, it's really not a priority for us, it's just a be nice to have kind of thing.

Philip Sessions: 8:14

And I can't remember where I either listened to it or read it somewhere, but there's I think it was, if I remember correctly some published author that probably done like 20 or 30 books he's done a lot of different books and he would talk about that, how he would block out so much time, and he would say, whether I write or not, I blocked out the time. He's like there would be days where I'd sit there, for I think he would do like an hour. I'd sit there for an hour, write nothing, and there would be other days where I'm like just writing the whole hour long and I'm getting so much done and so just blocking that time out, being intentional with that is really important as well for us to build that, actually write that book. And so you mentioned about number one. Was it Wall Street Journal bestseller? I can't remember which one you said, but I know there's times bestseller, yeah, and you have time.

Philip Sessions: 9:07

Yes, well, there's also Wall Street Journal, so that kind of goes in line with what I want to talk about. I'm kind of curious your thoughts on this because the circles I run in, especially with Amazon bestseller, essentially it's more just a popularity game. Whenever you launch it, you just get a bunch of your friends to buy the book and then also in your number one in that category, well that, and then you also make sure the category has like three other books in it so you can be number one in that category versus, let's say, general business probably have millions of books you have to pass over. So if you go I don't know aquatic business book, you're probably going to be able to get number one pretty easily. There's probably not that many. So there's like kind of a game to that and how you said that New York times bestseller. You can't really control that. What are some things that we can do, maybe to get there, at least to be in the running for New York time bestseller or Wall Street Journal bestseller or anything?

Debby Kevin: 10:05

Well, I think the Wall Street Journal just announced that they're no longer doing bestsellers, which is kind of a shocker.

Philip Sessions: 10:11

Oh, wow, that is very recent.

Debby Kevin: 10:13

That may have been just last week. So New York times bestseller, that that's really a popularity contest, because you can have books, whether they're self published, hybrid published or traditionally published. They can sell millions of copies. But if there's somebody, it's a very subjective thing to be a New York times bestseller. So I've known authors who have been on the New York times bestseller list before and their latest book doesn't even make the cut. But there are people who are I'm going to say, prince Harry's book. Right, he was a ghostwritten book. He didn't even write it himself. It's very clearly in his voice automatic New York times bestseller.

Debby Kevin: 10:56

A lot of it is who you know, how you know and what you can do. So I say here are the things that are within your control. Number one write a great book, and great is to the best of your ability. You hire a wonderful editor to help you get your messages crystal clear and help you be as professional as you can. The second is make sure you have a cover that stops the scroll Because, as you mentioned, most people are buying their books these days online, whether it's through Amazon or Barnes, noble or their favorite independent bookstore. Everybody's looking at everything in a thumbnail. So you've got to have a cover that stops the scroll, a really great description of your book and who it's for for them to push this purchase button.

Debby Kevin: 11:43

I want to address something that you said about Amazon. You know about it being a popularity contest. Here's the truth about Amazon is it is the world's largest distributor of books and services globally. So it is actually important to be an Amazon bestseller, and what you said is exactly right is knowing what categories and keywords to pick in combination so that it gives you the best opportunity to get that Amazon bestseller status. Because when you do, amazon pays attention and they start putting you on lists so that people who are outside of your friends and family, who are purchasing your book, actually can say oh, if you like this book, go find Philip Sessions book on motivation. This is also really well rated, so that's actually within our control. So if we have a really robust launch process that gets our book on an Amazon bestseller list, then Amazon starts doing some work for us and on our behalf, which is great.

Philip Sessions: 12:47

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. I never correlated that part of it, but yeah, you're right. And then just having that of course gives you that credibility when you go share your book rather than you just have a book you've got a number one bestseller book.

Philip Sessions: 13:01

Yeah, no matter which way you did it, I mean, clearly you still have to have enough friends or enough following to be able to get there. So it's definitely not a knock necessarily on anybody that's doing it and that's just part of the game. So we got to play the game the way that it was written, if you will, and everything. Yeah, totally did not even put that pun there, but I guess that's the best puns and you don't even realize it. There we go, man, that was funny Anyway. So let's transition here a little bit. So I know you also do some speaking correct.

Debby Kevin: 13:37

I do. Yes, I talk a lot about books. What about?

Philip Sessions: 13:39

your speaking journey.

Debby Kevin: 13:41

Yes, so my speaking journey really began when I was in the corporate world. I say I'm a corporate refugee, but I did a lot of speaking in groups about communication and particular with change management like really getting people on board with something that was happening, and so I studied a lot of those things when I was in corporate. But, taking transitioning that into my current role as a publisher, I really love helping people understand the ways that they can be published, like those three big buckets traditional, which is what most people think about, versus independent, versus going a hybrid route and what those things mean. And speaking about that has really, first of all, it's just, it's of service to the community right. Most people think I need to get an agent or I need to do that, and that may very well be your role, but it doesn't have to be. And it really goes back to that question that we talked about in the very beginning is like what is your goal with this book and then how can you maximize that? So my speaking journey has evolved over the course of my career to from teaching to presenting to at the corporate.

Debby Kevin: 15:00

One of my favorite things that I did I was in charge of change management at a Fortune 500 company and we had eight major projects running concurrently that were changing.

Debby Kevin: 15:12

It was going to change the entire structure and layout of the entire company and so we had a management meeting annually where we brought in all of senior management from all across the company and normally it was people standing up on stage just droning on about what their stuff was going to be.

Debby Kevin: 15:33

So I pitched this idea to the president and senior vice presidents and management of the company and said let's do a play and you guys are going to be the actors in this play and we're going to demonstrate to everybody here all of these projects by you being in the role. So the manager, which is the equivalent of a director in most other companies of the call center, played a call center representative who was taking a call from a client who had a power outage. It was a power company and to this day people still talk about that. But we wrote a script and we had practices and getting people on stage to think about how they could demonstrate as opposed to just telling, and it was so much fun. So that was also. You know, writing that and directing that play for all intents and purposes was kind of a big deal.

Philip Sessions: 16:32

Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun and was that kind of like the catalyst for you to move on to doing the business you do now with publishing.

Debby Kevin: 16:41

No, my son, my youngest son, was diagnosed in 2010 with autism and, as you might imagine, running a section of the company where it was touching every aspect of our business. I was working about 70 hours a week. You know. I would go in early, come home, take care of my kids and then put them to bed and work until like 11 12 o'clock at night, every night.

Debby Kevin: 17:09

So when my son was diagnosed with autism, I realized although they'd always been my focus I really needed to learn a new language, and so I took a leave of absence. And it was during that leave of absence that I realized the toll that that particular job and that function was taking on my, my health and my family, and so I, at the end of that leave of absence, I decided, very bravely, to not go back and really focus on my family, and during that time is when I went back to school. When my kids were in school, I was, you know, learning how to write and publish and do all of that yummy stuff. So that was the catalyst for me leaving the corporate world.

Philip Sessions: 17:51

Wow, yeah, and I can imagine that would be a handful. For sure. I know my wife and I we talk about we've got one and and so far there's nothing immensely wrong with her, anything and everything, and we're thankful for that and for people like you that had to deal with that. Our hearts are out for y'all because we understand and we've seen the burden. My mom's a or was a special needs teacher, so she was always around kids with mental disabilities and stuff like that and it's definitely it takes a lot out on a parent and everything it is a lot. So I can imagine where a change needed to happen.

Debby Kevin: 18:27

It's amazing you were able to make that change and really step into that, because I'm sure it's scary it was the first time I'd been unemployed since I was 16, wow, and and I felt really unmoored by that, to be perfectly honest, but it was the best thing. I say that diagnosis of my son actually saved my life, because I was on a direct line to be completely burned out and they literally Phillip, they replaced me with five people.

Philip Sessions: 19:00

Wow. So yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah, working all those hours and it's amazing how that happens, how somebody can be doing so much, and you know we could go down that rabbit hole, how corporate kind of treats people.

Philip Sessions: 19:16

We won't go down that, but I'm glad that things have worked out for the better for you and everything.

Philip Sessions: 19:22

And so going from being the publisher now having written that play, if you will, for the Fortune 500 company and everything, and you speaking on stages, I'm sure that's transformed your life completely. And so the power of a book is so powerful, and one that I can think of that's probably most people in self-development have read. If it wasn't their first one, it was one of the first ones is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and we think of books like this, and maybe ours will never be quite that way, but we could potentially have a book like that. So what would you say to people to help them be encouraged to start writing their own book, because we think of books like Napoleon, think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, or, for the new people out there now with Alex Hermozie's books $100 million leads, $100 million offers, how these are just phenomenal books. People are hearing about them all the time and maybe they feel like theirs isn't going to be like that. What are some words of encouragement that you would give to them?

Debby Kevin: 20:31

I would say, first of all, that's perfectly normal. I mean the fraud factor that flag flies high and the closer you get to finishing your first draft, to actually pushing the publish button, that fraud flag flies high and gets loud. I often say we have gremlins sitting on our shoulder and we need to say thank you very much. You're only trying to keep me protected, but I've got this. So, really learning to give yourself those positive affirmations, that's one thing.

Debby Kevin: 21:03

One other thing that I often hear is it's already been said before Napoleon Hill wrote about it, philip Sessions already wrote about it, brunne Brown already wrote about it. That's the truth. That could be a very true statement for what your topic is, but here's the one thing that is also true is that nobody thinks like you, nobody expresses themselves like you, and your voice and your purpose is just as important as anybody else who's already done it by you sharing part of your story in a book. That can transform people's lives. If it's one person, how impactful is that? If you just shine the light on the path so someone else can make their own decisions and their own brave steps into filling the blank, why wouldn't you want to take that opportunity to do that those things are normal, to have the fears pop up and maybe surround yourself with people who encourage you and ask you about your book and how is it coming?

Philip Sessions: 22:09

I love that. That's a very similar thing that I say when it comes to public speaking, because we think of Tony Robbins when we think of public speaking. He said so many things on the motivational and just teaching you about life and stuff like that perspective or spectrum, whatever you want to call it. There. It's the same way with the book. There's so much information out there. Everybody has written something about that book, but the cool thing is that you've made it unique because you've shared you the same thing with you speaking on stage. You have shared you.

Philip Sessions: 22:44

Now we're going to finally get into what I said we were going to talk about at the beginning, which is how can a book help you with speaking on stage? I really want to break this down. So let's start out at the beginning of just having a book and you want to get on stage. I know it helps distinguish you, but how have you seen that it's helped distinguish you? And maybe some other authors that you've helped from the publishing perspective that you know of went on to speak later. How has it helped them be able to be distinguished as a public speaker, to getting on stage?

Debby Kevin: 23:19

That's such a great question. So when you're writing the book, what it can do is it can increase your confidence in that you really do know what you're talking about, so that actually can inform what you're speaking about on stage. So your book can be a platform that you can draw from to create one or two or three different speeches that you can share to different audiences. So I think that's a really important distinction. Another distinction is let me ask you this question when you meet someone who says I'm an author, what does that do for you? Do you automatically think, oh, this person must know what they're talking about. Right, so it automatically, even though they're just human beings like the rest of us?

Debby Kevin: 24:07

I'm an author, you're an author, but there's something about that process and actually having published a book that increases your cache. A lot of places that you want to speak will ask if you have a book because they want to know that you're clear about what you're speaking about, and they might even offer it to the audience members. They may purchase your book. They may allow you to sell from your book from the back of the room, have a little bookstore. So there are a whole lot of different reasons. You can do them as giveaways. You can leverage all aspects of your book for your speaking and if you do it the other way around, you have a great speech that could be transformed into a book, and it's a very circular and self-supporting process.

Philip Sessions: 25:00

Yeah, and those are all amazing things, and I've found to this day still like having a podcast, having written a book and being a public speaker, the one that always seems to be like oh wow, is the book. I mean, the podcast is like, oh, that's pretty cool. A public speaker, oh that's pretty cool. But the book's always the one that gives kind of that wow factor. There's some reason.

Philip Sessions: 25:24

Even though I don't want to necessarily like put you down or anything with this, I feel like a podcast, as long as you're continuing to keep it going, that's definitely more time dedicated to that.

Philip Sessions: 25:36

But for some reason, people and it's definitely something that you have to dedicate a lot of time and a lot of focus to but people seem to think that the book is a lot more focus and dedication to, and I guess if for one book versus one podcast episode. For sure, but a podcast in general should be a lot more in depth over time than a book. But there's definitely a lot of dedication and focus put into a book. Plus, you're putting a little bit of yourself out there, especially depending on what the content is, but you could be putting a little or a lot of yourself out there, and so that's the thing that I found that a lot of people. That's the wow thing when you, if you want to do something that really makes you stand out, it's the book. There's not a lot of other things that can really trump you having a book and everything.

Debby Kevin: 26:28

Well, like Jim Rohn I think it was Jim Rohn, you know, one of the early motivational speakers who said that you can tell the wealth of someone by their library. And I was at Edith Wharton's home in this past summer and toward them it's called the Mount and it's in western Massachusetts, and they the largest purchase that they made in the restoration of her home was purchasing her original library and it was something like 2000 volumes and it was well over two and a half million dollars to just to get her books not her books that she wrote, but her personal library back to the house.

Philip Sessions: 27:11

Wow.

Debby Kevin: 27:12

So I think that you know there's something about having a book and being an author that, because it is such a commitment and there's so much mystery that surrounds being an author, that it's just something that I think in our you know, cultural psyche that we value those books.

Philip Sessions: 27:36

Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense too, but it is interesting how, like that's the thing, that's the wow factor.

Philip Sessions: 27:42

So I would say for those that are thinking about writing a book, definitely write a book, get with Deborah. She can certainly point you in the right direction, of course, help you out as well, but at a minimum point you in the right direction to help you along that journey, because it is important to get that book out there. But you also mentioned about how you can take this book and it's a way to kind of show proof of what you can speak on, which is a very unique thing. I think a lot of people, when they read a book, or write a book, sorry or read it to you, I guess they just think about I'm going to give some information out, and not necessarily the fact that they can leverage that book for getting them on a stage one, like hey, look, I've got a book, this other person maybe doesn't, and then, two, that it can also have a couple of different speeches, perhaps within that book as well. So can you elaborate on that all, because that's very interesting to me, yeah.

Debby Kevin: 28:38

Well, if you think about if you're pouring yourself into your book right and here I want to just pause and do a little side note is, when I'm saying a book, if it's a non-fiction book for business or motivation or self-help, something like that shorter is actually better. People who have a book that is 150 pages or less, 93 percent of people who pick that book up will read it from start to finish. The more pages you get, the fewer people are going to read it all the way through. They may pick it up, they will lose interest or whatever. So it's better to have a shorter book. So it doesn't have to be war and peace. In fact that would be to the detriment of your audience because our attention spans are so much shorter these days.

Debby Kevin: 29:28

But say, you take your book and I see you have your mindset over motivation behind you. You could go through there and look at the chapter structure and you could say this particular chapter, I could blow out and make this a speech. It could be looking at the whole arc of your book and saying here's the start to finish. I can go deep on one part of this and give the high level framework as part of my speech, or I could go a little bit deep on all of the chapters. I could look at this section and say this section is really powerful. I want to have a speech. That's this particular section.

Debby Kevin: 30:12

You've got the content already in your book. You just reverse engineer it to create the speech, you create the slides or to create your speaking points and, coming from your goals, each chapter has an arc. We're ought to. The whole book has an arc, so each of them are many sections that could be blown out into a speech. It can be blown into a podcast interview. It can be blown out into a program. If you decide you want to have an online program to teach somebody something, you could blow it out that way as well. There's so many ways. You can take snippets, your own quotes and make social media posts out of it as well. It's such a wealth of information.

Philip Sessions: 30:59

Yeah, especially the amount of time that we spend on that, and why not leverage it for something else? Speaking of leveraging, I've seen people do different things, like a QR code on the back, or they might mention like, hey, you can check on my website here, or some, let's say, a Facebook group or something that's important for them, that it ends up turning into a legion magnet, if you will. What are some tips maybe for people from that perspective as well, that they can leverage that book a little bit more, besides the quotes, besides creating the speech, which I would love that idea and everything but how could they use that as more of a legion where they've got that website or something within it, or digital course, whatever inside the book?

Debby Kevin: 31:44

Yes, that's such a great point because, if you think about the way people purchase books, unless they're your friends and family, they're probably not going to tell you and you won't even know who purchased your book. So it's really a great idea, especially for people who are entrepreneurs or speakers, to put something within the book that will drive people to a website. And I always say look at what's the content of your book. So, maybe it's so, it's. You're basically giving them something for free in exchange for their email, Right? So think about in terms of back to that big goal. Well, what is the big goal you want to always and I do this with our fiction authors as well what can we give people that is valuable to them? Number one is you can give them an autograph, right? And so people are like, well, I don't want to ship books back and forth? Well, you don't have to.

Debby Kevin: 32:39

You can actually create what's called a book plate, and a book plate is a sticker that someone submits, you know, on your website. They want to get an autograph from you and you can autograph it. Maybe send them some flat swag, a bookmark, a magnet. They get their autograph, they peel the sticker off and they stick it in the front of their book. So an autograph is a great one. It could be a checklist, you know, maybe, for, like, I'm seeing your mindset over motivation and maybe there is something within that book that could be a checklist that someone could download ways that you can increase your motivation or ways to check your mindset. It could be an excerpt, could be a free chapter, could be a free chapter of your next book, Right, All of these things are great ideas. It could be any number of different things. I'm just riffing here. It could be an invitation for you to come and speak to their book club.

Philip Sessions: 33:40

Yeah, no, that's great, you could run a contest yeah those are all great.

Debby Kevin: 33:44

Yeah, we did a children's book where we had a riff on flat Stanley so kids could. The parents could go on the website and request a flat mis-obo, so the kids would color it, cut it out and then send photographs of them taking this character all over the all over the place. So it gets engagement and excitement for people. So there's all kinds of different ways. Stickers Think about what you like to receive from authors. Yeah, wow, that's really cool.

Philip Sessions: 34:15

Yeah, I never thought about that yet Got my will spinning on something that I could do with that, with my next book and everything, yes, especially your next book right.

Philip Sessions: 34:24

Yeah, I gotta leverage that for sure, especially for the speaking gigs and everything but. Debra, this has been great. I appreciate you sharing your insights about what it looks like to publish a book, some thoughts on how you can do great things to create lead magnets with your book, to be able to differentiate yourself as a speaker and really just as a person in general by having a book and everything. So this is some great insights. But I want to get to our last question, which is if you could only share one message for the rest of your life, what would that message be? Don't be afraid to fail forward. Hmm, care to elaborate on that at all? I mean, I love that Don't be afraid to fail forward. It's so powerful. But I feel like there's something inside of you that there's a reason why you said that.

Debby Kevin: 35:10

Yeah, I think you know, when I look back on the things that have gone maybe not as I had hoped in my career or my life it's when I stopped to look at the lessons and the gifts in the imperfection or the gifts in the perceived failure, that I learned more about myself and what my mission in life is and what my purpose is, and it allows me, every time that that happens, I get more clarity and more courage to keep going forward. So I think if we aren't as afraid to fail and really it only becomes a failure if we don't learn that's another sort of iteration of that. But really, what are the gifts in the things that didn't go right?

Philip Sessions: 36:00

Yeah, and I know I've learned a lot more through failures or through things that didn't go my way than I did from things going my way all the time. And I think Bill Gates had something along those lines that you really don't. I forget exactly what it was, but it's like you know you could win and win and win and have success after success, but until you finally fail, until something goes wrong, you really don't truly learn from anything, or you?

Philip Sessions: 36:28

learn a little bit, but you don't really know and learn enough until you actually have a failure happen, whether it be in a system or whatever it be. When things are going great, everything's great, but when you finally fail, you get those learning lessons for sure, and I think that's a great message Don't be afraid to fail forward. Yeah, thank you and Deborah, if people want to get to know you more, want to even work with you, where's the best place for them to reach out to you?

Debby Kevin: 36:57

I would say the best place would be our website, which would be Debbie, or just HighlanderPressbookscom, and it's Highlander, like the book Highlander.

Philip Sessions: 37:09

Okay, yeah, we'll have that on the show notes for sure.

Debby Kevin: 37:12

Yeah, that's probably the easiest because we have a lot of information, we have a lot of free resources, we have copies and links to all of the podcasts, like this one, on our websites. So we have a lot of resources for would be authors, independent authors or people who want to even work with traditional publishers.

Philip Sessions: 37:31

Yeah, all right, cool, deborah. Thank you again for coming on the podcast and sharing such amazing value for those of you out there that are thinking about writing a book. Get out there and write it, because your message matters, whether it's in paper or on a stage.