How to Unlock the Secret to Creating Value for Readers with Your Books - BM509

Are you curious how a “go-giver” mindset can supercharge your book marketing success and transform your author journey?

This week’s guest expert is Bob Burg, co-author of the international bestseller "The Go-Giver" and a renowned speaker on relationship-driven success and media training. 

Bob reveals how authors can leverage authentic value, influence, and media to promote their books more powerfully than ever.

Discover proven frameworks for building trust, increasing your reach, and cultivating a thriving fanbase—by focusing on giving immense value and embracing a true abundance mentality.

Key Takeaways:

• The Law of Value: Why giving more than you charge is the real key to selling books that matter.
• Expanding Your Reach: How income grows when impact grows—and what that means for authors.
• Authenticity and Influence: Why being real builds trust faster than any marketing tactic.
• Opening Yourself to Abundance: The mindset shift authors need to receive what their work is worth.
• Overcoming Obstacles: 24 rejections, one yes—and the lesson every author needs to hear.

An inspiring conversation packed with insights for authors who want their books to reach further and work harder.

Here's how to connect with Bob

Download Bob's free gift

Website

Buy a copy of "The Go-Giver"

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When Visibility Feels Hard, Podcast Guesting Changes the Game

If you know your book deserves more reach but visibility feels like a struggle, podcast guesting can open the right doors.

Podcast Connections gets you in front of the audiences who need your message and your expertise.

Contact them at PodcastConnections.co

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Transcript

Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas and tips from the masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today my special guest is Bob Berg. He's the co author of the international bestseller the Go Giver, which has sold over 1 million copies and has been translated into 30 languages. Between that and his other books, he's sold over 2 million books. Bob, it is such a pleasure to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest, expert and mentor.

Bob Burg [00:00:44]:
Thank you. Susan, it's always great to speak with you. It's been much too long. I know.

Susan Friedmann [00:00:50]:
Can you believe that we've known each.

Bob Burg [00:00:51]:
Other a long, long time and we just don't get to speak as often as it would be?

Susan Friedmann [00:00:55]:
I know. You said it was like 30 years. I was. Oh my goodness. That's pretty scary, isn't it?

Bob Burg [00:01:00]:
It is very scary.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:02]:
We both had other lives at that point, I think.

Bob Burg [00:01:06]:
Exactly.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:06]:
Yeah. But the Go Giver has really just shot you up into stardom. You're a celebrity. I mean, it's just obviously an honor to have you on the show and we've got so many people that we know in common. But let's talk about the premise of the Go Giver because it's such a beautiful book, it's such a beautiful story, and it's got so many lessons that I believe are so valuable to our authors. Let's start with you giving us a quick overview. How did this even come about?

Bob Burg [00:01:48]:
Many years before that, back in the 90s, really, just a few years after you and I first met, I had my first book out. It was called Endless Referrals. Back at that time, it was one of, I think, three books on business networking. Now there are, of course, hundreds of books on Business Network and I've read many of them and they're all fantastic. I learned from all of them. But back then they were, I think, three of us who wrote on the topic and it was really on relationship building. It was written for the entrepreneur or sales professional who knew they had a great product or service. They knew it brought lots of value to their customers, but they didn't necessarily feel comfortable working within their neighborhoods, within their communities, and building the kinds of relationships where people would want to do business with them directly and or refer them to others.

Bob Burg [00:02:36]:
So it was basically a how to on how to build the know like and trust relationships that would allow that to happen. I'd always enjoyed reading Parables since I'd been in sales. I think parables, which are stories. I think we all know that stories tend to connect on a deeper level than simply how to information. Both are valuable, but the stories just, they connect. And I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could take the basic premise of endless referrals, which was all things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know like and trust and turn it into a parable. The problem was I'm not a parable writer. While I can tell a story from stage, they are always things that actually happened.

Bob Burg [00:03:23]:
Whereas a parable is a work of fiction, including, you know, obviously proven principles. But it's still a story, a work of fiction. And so it was outside of my strength zone. So I sat on the idea for a number of years. Back in the early 2000s, I met John David Mann because he was editor in chief of a magazine I was writing for, doing a monthly column. And even back then he had a great reputation as a fantastic writer, terrific human being. And as we got to know each other more, I thought, you know, John is the guy. He could really take this and work magic with it.

Bob Burg [00:03:58]:
I told him I had this little idea about this story. I certainly didn't have anything mapped out and would he be willing to take a look at it. And as he tells a story, he said to his back then fiance, now wife of I think 15 years, Anna, because the book's been out for a while now. But he said, you know, I really don't have time to do this. But it's Bob, how can I just say no without at least talking it over with him? And this is where I bring that up because that's where the relationship really comes in. We have that no like and trust relationship. So at least he took me seriously enough to discuss it. Ana and John were visiting her mom who lived over on the Gulf coast of Florida.

Bob Burg [00:04:37]:
I live on the east coast in Jupiter, near West Palm Beach. One afternoon they took a four hour drive over here and we had about a three hour dinner and discussed everything about the book that we saw in terms of possibilities. He still wasn't quite sure, but about three weeks later he called me and said, you know, I think we've got something here, let's do this now. The funny thing is it only took a few months to write the story. And again I credit that to John. He is a just a fantastic writer. But we were turned down by 24 New York publishing houses before the 25th one said yes and they turned out to be the perfect partner. But that 24.

Bob Burg [00:05:16]:
They were definite nos. You know, a lot of fellow authors or people who want to be authors, they're surprised that that happened. And they think, well, but the book's been so successful, why didn't get it just get picked up right away? Because that's not how it works. You know, now when we're. If sometimes we're fortunate enough for that to happen, that's great, wonderful. But now that's not usually how it is. Probably the prime example of that was Mark Victor Hansen.

Susan Friedmann [00:05:43]:
I'm just thinking of that. I just. You took the words out of my mouth.

Bob Burg [00:05:49]:
Turned down, like by 215 publishing.

Susan Friedmann [00:05:51]:
Exactly.

Bob Burg [00:05:52]:
They've only sold, like, close to a billion copies. Yeah.

Susan Friedmann [00:05:56]:
So J.K. rowling is another example of that.

Bob Burg [00:06:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. We adjusted along the way, though, because our agent, she had fantastic relationships with the publisher. So she did a. A terrific job of getting feedback. And John and I both agreed we would take our egos totally out of this, listen to the feedback, understand that sometimes it has nothing to do with us and sometimes it does, and adjust it accordingly. And again, some of those adjustments work. And eventually Portfolio, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House, picked us up.

Susan Friedmann [00:06:32]:
Fantastic. And the rest is history almost. But let's look at some of these lessons, some of these principles that you have in the book, which are so valuable to anyone. But obviously our listeners are authors, as you know, and I love the idea that success comes from giving more value than you expect in return. I know that your number one law is the law of value. Let's talk a little bit about that, because I. Books have value. The information in the books have value.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:07]:
But how do you interpret that? And what would be the lesson for our listeners?

Bob Burg [00:07:14]:
Let's look at it this way. If you have a book that has a selling price, and it will just name a round figure, $25, and somebody buys the book from you. Let's say it's a book on. Again, I'm just naming anything on building a sound financial future. And they buy that book from you for $25, and they're able to put hundreds of thousands of dollars in their savings and investments that they never would have known how to do without your work. Well, you certainly gave them much more in value than you took in payment. So they profited greatly. And you profited because obviously the book did not cost you $25.

Bob Burg [00:07:56]:
So that's really the first law. We start there, but then it's the second law that I think Brings it together a little bit more because that's the law of compensation, which says your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. You sold this book for $25. And let's just say that again, depending upon who you published with or whether you independently published or whether you hybrid power or whatever that your profit on it was, we're just going to say $5. Okay, you made a profit of $5. But if you sell 100,000 books, well now it's $500,000. I mean, it's really as simple as that in terms of understanding how the law of value works along with the law of compensation. It's combining exceptional value with significant reach.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:53]:
Which is so important with our authors that reach the impact. And then another law is that law of influence. Talk to us about that.

Bob Burg [00:09:02]:
Well, this one says your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first. Now let me qualify that if I may, because it sounds a little counterintuitive when you first hear it. When we say place other people's interests first. We're not saying you should be anyone's doormat or a martyr or self sacrificial in any way. Absolutely not at all. But it's as Joe the protege and the go giver learned from several of the mentors in the story and as you and I were talking about earlier, the golden rule of business is that all things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know like and trust. And there's no faster, more powerful or more effective way of eliciting those feelings toward you in others than by genuinely moving from an I focus or me focus to an other focus, a focus on that person, in this case a focus on your readers. And just like in sales and I used to when I spoke at sales conferences back in the day when I was actually getting on planes and going to places to speak, one of the first things I would often say to my audience is nobody is going to buy from you because you have a quota to meet.

Bob Burg [00:10:19]:
They're not going to buy from me because you have a sales goal. They're not going to buy from you because you need the money. And they're not even going to buy from you just because you're a really nice person. Even though I'm sure you are a really nice person. People are going to buy from you. They're going to do business with you only because they believe that they will benefit more by doing so than by not doing so. The most self interested thing a salesperson can do is to take their focus off themselves and put their self interest to the side and focus on pleasing the customer. And it's the same with a book, right? We may love our book, but nobody's going to buy our book because we think they should buy it or because we love the message or because we would like to earn a nice income from it or we have a sales goal from it.

Bob Burg [00:11:12]:
They're going to buy because they believe they're going to be better off by doing so than by not doing so. And it's the only reason we can expect that they would buy. So when we write a book, what we're doing is we're focusing on how it is going to touch the lives of the reader. And it's the same when authors appear on podcasts. And I know you're a huge advocate of appearing on podcasts and I agree with you, I've been doing it for a long time doing these. The host and listeners, they don't care about your book. They care about how it's going to touch the lives of the listeners and how the host is going to benefit by sharing that message. We need to always remember that it's never about us.

Bob Burg [00:11:59]:
I very rarely use always and never right, especially in one sentence. But we always have to remember it's never about us.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:06]:
It's never right.

Bob Burg [00:12:07]:
It's always about those who we are trying to serve.

Susan Friedmann [00:12:11]:
Yes, it's a great exercise. Whenever I find that I'm writing, I, I, I, I'm like, no, let's turn this around and make it more reader centric, reader focused as you say. And it's about them is what are they going to get about from it than what I'm going to give them. It's like, what's their benefit? I love that there's another law, authenticity. Now we know influence, authenticity. These are two words that get used so often now they've become almost like trendy. But talk to us about that. Authenticity.

Bob Burg [00:12:52]:
Yeah. The law of authenticity says the most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. And in the story Deborah, one of the stories mentors, she shares an important lesson that she learned early in her career. And that was that all the skills in the world, the sales skills, technical skills, people skills, as important as they are, and they all are very, very important, they're also all for not if you don't come at it from your true authentic core. But when you do, when you show up as yourself, day after day, week after week, month after Month. People not only feel good about you, they feel comfortable with you, and they feel safe with you because they know who they're getting. And it's a very powerful element of human nature that we have a desire to understand our world. Consistency is very, very important.

Bob Burg [00:13:46]:
We crave consistency, and yet we live in a very inconsistent world. Right. With very inconsistent people. So when you show up as yourself, it's very, very powerful. Now, that said, and I thought you brought up a great point about authenticity being such an overused word. I agree with you. And it's also, I think, been hijacked in a sense, especially since the proliferation of social media. It's almost like they're vying to prove that they're the most authentic people out there.

Bob Burg [00:14:16]:
And it's almost as though authenticity has now taken on the meaning of no boundaries. Just say, post, write, whatever, just whatever you want, whatever just comes to mind. It doesn't matter who you offend or what language you use or how you present yourself or insult people or whatever, because it's authentic. And I disagree with that. I don't see that as necessarily being authentic. It would be like the guy, Susan, who says, well, I have anger issues and I yell at people a lot, and if I were to act any differently, that wouldn't be authentic of me. Oh, that's malarkey. You know, it simply means that person has an authentic problem that he needs to authentically work on in order to become a better, higher, more effective, authentic version of himself.

Bob Burg [00:15:06]:
Really? I personally define authenticity as simply as acting congruently with your values. And I think if we do that in our writing, in our speaking, in our podcast appearances and the articles we write, I think then we're on the right track. But we.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:26]:
That's beautiful. Yeah. Our values, that those come into play. What's most important to us? Being nasty or angry at people, calling them names, if that's authentic. But is that part of your value system? You have to question that. So I think that's at the core of that. That's beautiful. And then our fifth law is the one of receptivity.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:52]:
Talk to us more about that one, because that one is also super important.

Bob Burg [00:15:58]:
The law of receptivity says the key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving. And this is really nothing more than understanding that, yeah, you breathe out, you also have to breathe in. It's not one or the other. You breathe out carbon dioxide, you breathe in oxygen, you breathe out, which is giving. You breathe in, which is receiving. Giving and receiving are not opposite concepts. Rather, they are two sides of the very same coin and they work in tandem. The challenge is that is not the general messaging we receive from the world around us.

Bob Burg [00:16:41]:
If you look anywhere and everywhere, there's all sorts of anti prosperity messages coming our way. And for many people, this includes everything from upbringing to environment, schooling, news media, television shows, movies, popular culture, cultural mores. We're constantly just hit over the head with these anti business, anti prosperity, anti abundance messages. It's very easy for that to get into the, not just the conscious mind that we could deal with, but into the unconscious, the subconscious, and carry these messages around so that when we're out there bringing great value, immense value to the marketplace and the money or the whatever it is that we're looking to attain, to receive from the world around us starts to come to us, well, what do we do? We sabotage ourself or we sabotage that value coming our way. And we are not as receptive as we could be. And we don't even know we're doing it.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:41]:
Yeah, that's one I've learned from over the years, is that I'm great at giving. I mean, I give, I give presents, I give information. And yet when somebody gives it to me, oh, no, no, that's okay. You know, you didn't have to bring me anything or you didn't have to give me anything. I'm like, I'm rejecting their gift.

Bob Burg [00:18:03]:
Yeah, exactly.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:04]:
And I think when I learned that, I was like, oh my goodness, whether it's something I want or not, I still need to be gracious and say thank you, I appreciate the gift, I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Bob Burg [00:18:19]:
Exactly. And once we're aware of it, and I would go so far as say it's only once we're aware of it that we can do something about it. Because we certainly can't overcome a problem that we don't even consciously realize we have. It's one reason why I'm a big believer in making a proactive study of prosperity and prosperity mindset. And people like Randy Gage and David Nagel, people like Lisa Peterson and Ellen Rogan, Sharon Lecter, Ken Honda, these people all write wonderful books and have blogs and videos and all sorts where really they teach prosperity and abundance thinking on a deep, deep level. And 99 of what they teach is simply how to get past those emotional blocks that we don't even know we have. And it's very important because if you want to be a successful author, you've got to be able to receive that which you have earned. And I do Want to mention one thing, if I may, Susan, that when we talk about the premise of the Go Giver itself, it's that shifting your focus from getting to giving.

Bob Burg [00:19:28]:
But when we say giving in this context, we simply mean constantly and consistently providing immense value to others and really understanding that not only is doing that a more fulfilling way of conducting business, it is the most financially profitable way as well. Not for any kind of way out there. Woo woo. Magical, mystical type of reason. Not at all. It's because it ties into human nature. You know, when you're that person who looks to give value to others, people just feel, you know, they feel great about you and, and they want to be part of your life. They want to be in a relationship with you, they want to do business with you, they want to tell the world about you.

Bob Burg [00:20:11]:
They want to be what we call your personal walking ambassador. So the Go Giver system methodology, what have you, is not something that is, you know, again, in any way magical or mystical. It's structured around really understanding and embracing human nature.

Susan Friedmann [00:20:30]:
Yeah, when I think about it, I mean, for me, this podcast is a way of giving. Having you wonderful experts presenting those to my audience. That's my gift to my audience as well as obviously the value that each and every one of them has shared over the last 10 years. Which blows my mind. But yes, yes, it just makes you think in a whole different way about this. That's so beautiful. So if you were to tie this all up in a bow, what would that be, Bob?

Bob Burg [00:21:05]:
I would say understanding that the value that you are providing others needs to be seen from their viewpoint, not ours. Because value is always in the eyes of the beholder. Right. Value can be defined as the relative worth or desirability of a thing, of something to the end user or beholder. What is it about this thing, this product, service concept, idea, book, book's message that brings so much worth or value to another human being that they will, in this case, buy the book and then want to do your, whatever your follow up is, your coaching, or whatever ancillary products or services you have. It's always asking yourself as you're going through this, how do I make this valuable to that person? Not through my viewpoint or what I find to be of value, but through what they find to be of value.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:01]:
In order to find that out, you have to know them and understand them.

Bob Burg [00:22:06]:
And you ask questions and you research and you do all the things that help you to understand from that person's view. You're spot on.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:16]:
Yeah, that's Beautiful. How can our listeners find out more about you? The book?

Bob Burg [00:22:23]:
Yeah, Best way is just to go to berg b u r g.com and everything is pretty much there, including, if they'd like, they can subscribe to my Daily Impact email that goes out five mornings a week.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:36]:
Beautiful. How did you manage to get that? That's a great URL that you got there. You must have got that very early in life.

Bob Burg [00:22:46]:
Well, do we have a second to tell you the story?

Susan Friedmann [00:22:48]:
Absolutely.

Bob Burg [00:22:50]:
Back in the 90s and understand even, you know, now, I am not a technically adept person. Okay. I have people around me who are, which helps. But back in the 90s, I knew nothing about any of this stuff. And the Internet had just started to come about. I knew nothing about it and at the time didn't want to know anything about it. Well, I get a call from these two guys in Silicon Valley who said they had a technology startup and they built it through the principles of. Of my book, Endless Referrals.

Bob Burg [00:23:20]:
Okay? And I thought, well, how would you do that if you're technical? Because again, I didn't know anything about. You know about. They said, well, no, it's still this. You teach the basic peer. It's still technology or not. It's still human to human. It's still all about the relationships. Which of course turns out to be true.

Bob Burg [00:23:35]:
But at the time I didn't. So they said, we just wanted to give you a gift to thank you for all you've done for us through the book. And I said, well, thank you. What do you. And they said, well, we want to show you how to buy something called berg.com. and I said, well, why would I want to buy something called burg.com? and they said, just trust us in this case, you want this. I said, okay. So they walked me through the process.

Bob Burg [00:24:04]:
I got burg.com. didn't think about it for another three years or so, four years, but boy, am I glad they called.

Susan Friedmann [00:24:10]:
Oh, my goodness, what a beautiful gift. You accepted that gift. You see, this is your principles in action. That's beautiful, Bob. As you know, we always have our guests leave our listeners with a golden nugget. And I know you've given us so many golden nuggets, but what's one more?

Bob Burg [00:24:31]:
A mentor years ago said, if you want to make a lot of money in sales and business and we could apply it to selling books and all the things that we do after the book is sold and so forth, he said, don't have making money as your target. Your target is serving others now when you hit the target, he said, you'll get a reward and that reward will come in the form of money. And you can do with that money whatever you choose. But never forget, he said, the money is simply the reward for hitting the target. It's not the target itself. Your target is serving others. And I think as long as we keep our focus on that target, we're nine steps ahead of the game in a ten step game.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:17]:
Talk about a golden nugget. That was several golden nuggets. Wow. Thank you. Really appreciate all of this sharing that being on the podcast. I mean, it was serendipity. As you know, we connected with a mutual friend, so it's amazing how things work. And as you said, we've known each other for 30 years.

Bob Burg [00:25:42]:
I know.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:42]:
You know, even though we haven't necessarily been in contact all that time. But hey, we come back together and it's like, yeah, as if we've never been apart.

Bob Burg [00:25:51]:
Yes, it's really true. And I find that happens a lot with my friends from the National Speakers Association, who, again, we can be in contact once every five or 10 or even 15 years. And yet you just pick it up as though it were yesterday.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:06]:
It was yesterday. Beautiful. Thank you so much again for sharing your wisdom.

Bob Burg [00:26:10]:
Oh, thank you, Susan. Thanks for all you do for so many of us. And thank you for having me on. What a joy.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:16]:
I appreciate that. And listeners, if your book isn't doing or selling the way you want it or expect it to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. Because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy and it's time you got the returns you were hoping for. So go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Here's how to connect with Bob

Download Bob's free gift

Website

Buy a copy of "The Go-Giver"

*************************************************************************
When Visibility Feels Hard, Podcast Guesting Changes the Game

If you know your book deserves more reach but visibility feels like a struggle, podcast guesting can open the right doors.

Podcast Connections gets you in front of the audiences who need your message and your expertise.

Contact them at PodcastConnections.co