Do you want to write and publish a book that not only sells but also impacts lives? Then this episode is for you. Join Julie Broad as she shares her expertise in book writing, publishing, and promotion, along with the potential benefits it can bring to entrepreneurs. Make the strategic decision to tune in and seize massive opportunities today!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
If you’re finally ready to write a book, download your FREE guide to plan and write it fantastically by visiting https://booklaunchers.com/7steps.
About Julie Broad
Julie Broad is the founder of Book Launchers, an Amazon Overall #1 Best Selling Author, and the winner of 15 different book awards, including a Gold Medal in the Indie Book Awards. Her most recent book, Self-Publish and Succeed, helps non-fiction authors write a book that is set up to sell.
Connect with Julie
Connect with Us
To learn more about growing your wealth through multifamily investment opportunities, visit Monument Real Estate Capital and schedule a call!
Follow our social media pages!
Facebook: Monument Real Estate Capital
LinkedIn: Monument Real Estate Capital
Do you want to write and publish a book that not only sells but also impacts lives? Then this episode is for you. Join Julie Broad as she shares her expertise in book writing, publishing, and promotion, along with the potential benefits it can bring to entrepreneurs. Make the strategic decision to tune in and seize massive opportunities today!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
If you’re finally ready to write a book, download your FREE guide to plan and write it fantastically by visiting https://booklaunchers.com/7steps.
About Julie Broad
Julie Broad is the founder of Book Launchers, an Amazon Overall #1 Best Selling Author, and the winner of 15 different book awards, including a Gold Medal in the Indie Book Awards. Her most recent book, Self-Publish and Succeed, helps non-fiction authors write a book that is set up to sell.
Connect with Julie
Connect with Us
To learn more about growing your wealth through multifamily investment opportunities, visit Monument Real Estate Capital and schedule a call!
Follow our social media pages!
Facebook: Monument Real Estate Capital
LinkedIn: Monument Real Estate Capital
[00:00:00] Julie Broad
When you write the book on the subject, like solving somebody's problem, you can erase all of that weird years of business competition because now you're the author of the book. So it's a next level credential that takes away from the need for having some of the credentials in some spaces.
[00:00:18] Podcast Intro
You are working professional but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to retire wealthy and happy. Let's dive in.
[00:00:41] Ben Waller
Have you ever thought about writing a book? But you just haven't been able to pick up your pen and get started. Welcome to the retire wealthy and happy podcast. We created this podcast to provide financial tips and tricks to help you build up your passive income and also provide methods that you can use to protect your wealth so that you can plan a better future for yourself and your family. We're grateful to have this podcast sponsored by Monument Real Estate Capital. Monument Real Estate Capital, helping you retire 10 years early through real estate investments. On today's episode, we're excited to have Julie Broad with us. A brief background about Julie. She has been a real estate investor since 2001. She is currently the president of a company called Book Launchers and has been since 2017.
[00:01:26]
She's an entrepreneur. Speaker and Amazon bestselling author of several books, which we're going to talk about today. She was born and raised in Canada and when she's not working she enjoys crossfit and playing poker. A brief overview of what we'll cover in today's episode. We're going to talk about why you should write a book. We're going to talk about the company Book Launchers and how they might be able to help you. And third we're going to talk about her book. Self publish and succeed. Julie,
[00:01:51] Earl Cline
Welcome to the Retire Wealthy Happy Podcast. We appreciate you taking some time for us today, and we look forward to getting to know you a little bit better. The start, can we get you to just take a few minutes? Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started in publishing books as well as real estate for that matter.
[00:02:07] Julie Broad
Yeah, well, they actually are connected. I had a full circle moment just days ago because the reason I got into real estate was because of a single book. Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I read it in 2001 and immediately it was like, okay, I need to get my money working for me. And so I set off and bought two investment properties. And eventually that led to me starting a training and education company in real estate. And I became a full time real estate investor. With epically good timing in 2008, which was an adventure, but I got really good at raising money from other people because the banks didn't want to give you money to buy property at that time. It led me to start a newsletter and grow an audience and little bit by bit that led me to the opportunity to potentially publish a book. And so I was in talks with Wiley, and they actually approached me to begin with, and they, I told them, Oh, yes, I've got a great idea. And they said, No, that's not a great idea.
[00:02:58]
We don't want that one. But they wanted me. So they proposed another topic. And we built a proposal together, which is really unusual. And then they turned around and rejected me and said they didn't think I would sell enough books. I was devastated. I kind of smile and laugh about it now because it was truly a gift, but at the moment couldn't understand why other people I knew were getting book deals. And they led me on for three months working on this proposal to then not give me a deal. But I went back to my original idea and I self published, but being the kind of person I am, I wasn't going to just self publish. I was going to do it better than if Wiley had given me a book deal, which set me down a path of learning everything I could about book marketing and book publishing and all the things. And I ended up launching the book to number one on Amazon. I'm so number one in print books ahead of Dan Brown, ahead of Game of Thrones. And I was in the top 100 print books for 45 days. And when Wiley asked me what my next book was going to be, I said, I'm fine. Thank you.
[00:03:54] Ben Waller
You had your chance, right?
[00:03:55] Julie Broad
Yeah. And so that was kind of, that wasn't like from there I launched Book Launchers, but it kind of opened my eyes to the potential and the beauty and my investment company raised tons of capital. As a result of that book, my training and education company doubled in. Eyes in a year after the book came out and I saw the power of a book and it didn't matter that it was self-published. Nobody cared who was the publisher. All they cared about was what the book was going to do for them. And so four years later I dreamed up the company I wished I could have hired to help me with my books and I launched Book Launchers. So, so that's kind of in a nutshell how real estate ties to books and how I am where I am today.
[00:04:31]
But I actually got to meet. Robert Kiyosaki just a few days ago, which is why I say I had a full circle moment because he came by my booth. I was manning a Book Launchers booth and he came on by and he's like, Oh, let's talk about books. He says, I know a few things about books. And he spent five minutes just talking to me. And I got to show him in one of my books where I mentioned him in his book. And yeah, it was fun.
[00:04:51] Earl Cline
I don't know if you realize this. I actually worked for Robert. It was probably 2004 to 2006, 2007, something like that. Yeah, I was one of his mentors. He used to come into our office. We were a subsidiary company. And so I didn't actually work for him. I worked for a coaching company that had the contract to do all of his, all of his mentoring at the time. And at the time he was just prolific writer. I still don't think he wrote all of the books himself. I think they were mostly ghostwritten. But you mentioned rich dad, poor dad. I don't think Ben and I interview a single person that's been successful that they don't mention that book. And what I found when I was coaching, and this may be a little controversial. I don't know. I don't think a single person could pick up his book and figure out what to do to buy real estate. It's not there, but yet this thing has launched real estate careers of thousands of people over and over again. I'm just curious, talk a little bit about what was so powerful about that book for you and why you think it is that it leads people down a path that Robert didn't spell out at all in his book.
[00:05:58] Julie Broad
Yeah, it's funny because after that book, I've read like David Allen and like I dove into like all the people who actually did talk about how to invest in real estate. But for me, it was the simple idea. My parents owned and ran a 20 room motel my entire life growing up. I grew up in a motel and I watched them, you know, run this business and work insanely hard most of the time for. Their money and their income, they created a job for themselves. And so for me, that really resonated when I read it in the book, because they were business owners, but they didn't have freedom. And so it was kind of that concept of I'm going to school to get a job and I'm going to basically do the same thing my parents did. And so it was that kind of mental switch of, I need to get my money working for me. Right. I'm, if I'm going to work hard for my money, my money also needs to work hard for me.
[00:06:42]
And for me, that was the simple thing. And I went through the list of things, which was stock investing. And I had actually done stock investing to pay for my first year of university, but I felt like I got lucky. I felt like gold went up at the right time and things just happened for me. I didn't really feel like I could repeat it. And then, you know, I was going through the other, the list. I was like real estate. Well, I think I could do that. That was for me. I can't speak for other people, but it was just that mindset shift that was insanely powerful. And I think that's the power of story made up or not, which I personally think it's a made up story, even though I don't think he's ever admitted it, but I think it's entirely made up, but it doesn't matter because it's the gift of the mindset shift that the story gave me.
[00:07:21] Earl Cline
Interesting. I'm sitting here thinking about Robert and real estate intrigue. You talked about gambling, or at least Ben had found that you're a gambler. And I, and I'm wondering about the correlation between investing in the stock market and your penance for gambling versus, uh, versus real estate and how it, uh, it's not, I, I think there's a little element of gambling, but I think the real estate is not near as, uh, not near as much of a risk. How's that?
[00:07:49] Julie Broad
So it's funny because I don't really see poker as gambling. I don't do anything else. You'll never find me at a slot machine. You'll never find me at any other table, but poker is kind of funny because it kind of teaches you decision making and it reinforces taking action. Because if you sit at the table long enough, it's going to cost you money. I think that's how life is. If you just sit there and do nothing, you're losing money and you can make. the right decision and still not get the outcome you want. That's life. That's poker. So there's an element of luck, but there's also poker pros for a reason. If you make the right decision over and over and over again, statistically, you eventually are going to come out ahead.
[00:08:25]
And so it is one of those things where it's, I don't necessarily see it as gambling. It's kind of, you know, similar to real estate. I think stock investing isn't gambling either, but. The thing that you can't control in the stock market is you really know what's going on in those businesses. So you can look at the charts and you can statistically kind of like poker, put yourself potentially with an edge, but I don't think you can ever control it. So I'd rather be the one owning the business personally. I'm curious.
[00:08:53] Earl Cline
Tell me a little bit about your First book, what was the subject to, I'm assuming it had something to do with real estate that they didn't love. Tell me a little bit about the book and why do you think the first publisher didn't, didn't really like the book?
[00:09:03] Julie Broad
Yeah, they said it was too general and they'd done general real estate before. The book was called more than cashflow, the real risks and rewards of profitable real estate investing. And it sounds general, I guess on the surface, but what I did that books hadn't done at that point was I explained how I ended up owning a property that became a crack house. I talked about how. My property manager robbed rent money from me, like right under my nose, and how I missed it, because I thought it was passive income and my property manager was taking care of me. But meanwhile, he raised the rent, didn't tell me he raised the rent, and kept the deposits the same on my property.
[00:09:36]
So there was things like that, and people at the time were really big on get rich. And they're not going to tell you about all the things that can go wrong if they're trying to get you to get rich and buy their expensive program. So I was sharing like, Hey, yeah, I did the yellow letter program and the police came to my house twice. And if anybody doesn't know what the yellow letter, it's like this thing, I think Ron LeGrand was the guy who proliferated this. And you send this letter that says, I want to buy your house. On mass and we did it and I think it's also the difference between Canada and the States But like people thought we were preying on their parents when they got these yellow letters and we got reported to the police So the police came to my house twice and the second time they were like, look, we know you're not bad people We know you're not doing anything wrong. But can you please just stop like we're getting all these calls So I told those stories the things that went well, but it was all those kind of Dramatic stories that people really enjoyed and appreciated and then they didn't feel so alone. They were like, a lot of people feel like they're doing things wrong because they're getting these tenants that I had to pull a knife on another tenant and lots of great stories. You know, I was meant to write a book.
[00:10:40] Earl Cline
Interesting that and I've shared this before out of college started doing. I went right into property management. I did an internship. I work up to the point. I think at one point I was the regional vice president of a publicly traded REIT. The number that I published is pretty close to accurate is that I've been involved in about 80, 000 multifamily units in my career. And the interesting thing from a property management standpoint. Is it doesn't matter whether they're in Beverly Hills or Huntington Beach, or whether they're in the barrio someplace, they all end up being crack houses at some point. Jokingly tell people that I've spent my life chasing criminals out of apartment buildings, and the only difference between managing stuff in Beverly Hills versus someplace in the barrio somewhere. Is that the crack addicts in Beverly Hills probably have enough money to hire an attorney and fight you when you try to come, come back against them. So anyway, it's interesting. Property management takes a, an interesting turn and I don't think there's truly something passive income is very, very hard to achieve.
[00:11:46]
Even if you are asset managing, like we are or someone else, we're still spending a lot of our time dealing with property managers. And making sure that they are doing what they're supposed to, if you are investing in one of my portfolios or our portfolios, and you're not looking at your financials every, every quarter when we send them out or whatever it is, and calling up and asking a few questions, I say, shame on you, because we've been sold this bill of goods that passive income exists and we call it passive income. But I think you always have to have some sort of a control on your investments and know where they're at.
[00:12:28] Julie Broad
I agree. Even with books, people think book royalties or the proceeds, if you self publish, those are passive, but they deteriorate really fast. If you stop doing things to sell your book and talk about it. So it is funny that a lot of things, I guess, stocks, if you want dividends, that's passive, there's nothing to do, but I'd still read this financials, right? I'd still read the statements of the company and try and investigate what's going on. So yeah, it is funny. There really isn't passive income.
[00:12:51] Earl Cline
How long does it take you think to launch a book?
[00:12:53] Julie Broad
I mean, that depends on the author, really, because some people are good decision makers, they know what they want, they know their message, they know their audience, and so they can go through it faster than others. And it also depends where they come to us in the process, because some people come to us with an idea, others come to us with some work that's been done or a first draft. But, you know, the fastest book is about six months, and most of the time we take about nine to 15 months to launch a book.
[00:13:18] Earl Cline
Okay, the books that you're publishing, I'm assuming that most of the when you're self publishing, you're probably not printing them anymore. Aren't they mostly some sort of a PDF or something along that line print on demand?
[00:13:28] Julie Broad
So we are printing them in nonfiction because that's all that we do. It's still the majority of books sell in print audio books are starting to, you know, even out, especially if your audience is like a realtor or an entrepreneurial audience or a younger audience, audio books are kind of going neck and neck with print books and eBooks are the smallest part of the market for most of the nonfiction.
[00:13:50] Earl Cline
And those all, I don't know enough about. I actually, a partner of mine and I years ago decided that we were going to write a book on commercial real estate investing. We divided up the chapters and said, here, you write this one. I write this one. We got together and put his with mine and I'm like, Holy smokes. We are so pinnacle opposite in our writing style. It was going to take us three times as much to have somebody edit them so that they were cohesive as it would have been to just rewrite the whole thing. But writing a book, how much work is that for the average person?
[00:14:24] Julie Broad
Not as much work as it is to market and sell it. A lot of people think the writing is the hard part and truly it is hard. It takes emotional, intensive energy to write a great book, but some people can hammer a book down in 30 days. It depends on how clear, like I find the people who can write a book faster are speakers because they have been honing their message in front of audiences for quite some time, but you don't have to be the one that writes it either. Like what I would have suggested to you is to send your book to a writer. And have the writer rewrite it in one voice or be interview you guys and capture it from there. So there's lots of ways to write a book, but the hard part is thinking through the concepts, understanding your audience and really figuring out how you're going to have an impact on that audience with what you have to say.
[00:15:10] Earl Cline
Interesting that you said that. And I've spent a ton of time speaking, right? As a coach, as a mentor, I was on a public nationwide speaking tour for a while. Talking about commercial investing and that type of thing. So I think I'm pretty comfortable speaking. And literally the way that I wrote this book is I took my tape recorder with me when I went jogging at night. And I would just push the button and go through and tell some of the stories that I used to tell when I was coaching and use those to draw analogies. Then I'd come back and throw some statistics or that type of thing that I couldn't remember in there. But like you said, where you've honed that story over and over and over again, it didn't take me a long time to write the book. The problem was all the, Hey, you're an idiot. Quit pulling in, you know, that came out in my book because of the way I wrote it and I'm yelling at some car that just pulled out in front of me or, or something like that, but it's very interesting, the concept that storytellers are people who speak a lot, that it becomes very, very easy for them to tell their message.
[00:16:12]
And we find that all the time that Ben and I go sit down and have lunch with people. And my other partner, Roger, used to say, Oh, wait a minute. I've heard this story before. I can tell it better than he can now. So, so he, he'd go and tell my stories or whatever. So going forward, what do you think is the future of print book? You say these are print on demand. Is that the future? Is that where we're heading right now? Or is it a self published PDFs that are, that people are doing now?
[00:16:39] Julie Broad
People still want to hold that book in their hand. It is. It's very, very interesting to me how many people, they'll buy all formats. They like to have the print book on their shelf. They like to have the ebook on their phone and then the audiobook on their phone as well. I don't see print going away for quite some time because it is still so dominant, even though ebooks are substantially cheaper, right? A lot of ebooks get sold for 99 cents, 2. 99 and people will still pay 14. 99 for the print book. So I think the print book. Especially in nonfiction, that's, it's different in fiction. People who read a lot of fiction, they're not buying the print book. So for those books, you're almost already there. But as far as going ebook or PDF, as you say, but I think for nonfiction, I don't think we're quite a ways away from people not.
[00:17:24]
Having physical books, but I do see audio really in the last two years in particular, it's really taken off. And I think audio is dominating the ebook. And what you are seeing is I think people who are listening to the audio are buying the ebook if they really like the audio. And I actually just did this myself. Dan Sullivan has a new book. It's awesome. 10 X is easier than two X. And I listened to it and I was like, this is so good. I need to have the ebook so I can actually like get some of the quotes out of the book. So I know I'm not alone in doing that.
[00:17:53] Earl Cline
If I turned the camera just a little bit, you'd see a great big shelf. It has tons and tons of books. And I've read most probably all of them I've read, but I actually prefer, especially at my age, I go out and walk for a couple hours at night and listen. To an audio book, and that's the preferred way to do it. But I love to have the book up on my shelf so that when people come over to my office, they go, Oh, wow, he's really well read, isn't he? Even if I haven't picked him up.
[00:18:17] Ben Waller
A status symbol. And they go, crash. This is brand new.
[00:18:21] Earl Cline
Talk a little bit about publishing and why it's so important and how that can benefit you. You know, getting your first book published and maybe a little bit about what that did for you. And getting your message out there, but why you think it's so important.
[00:18:33] Julie Broad
There's a few things. One thing that it does is almost everybody in an industry has the same credentials, right? And then they're competing on years of experience. So they're like, we've been doing this for 25 years. And the other company is like, well, our combined experience is 60. Well, when you write the book on the subject, like solving somebody's problem, you kind of erase. All of that weird, like years and years of business competition, because now you're the author of the book. So it's a next level credential that kind of takes away from even the need for having some of the credentials in some spaces. That's one reason why I really like it. But you have a business or a brand of any kind. To me, you're leaving money on the table, not having it because it's better than any marketing. Nobody throws books out, right? We donate them. We'll give them away, but it's very rare. I have pitched a few books. I'm like, this is so bad. It's not worthy, but it's very rare, right? You think about what you do with your books. And it's rare that people throw it out. So if you've written a good book, people are going to pass it along, or at the worst, they'll donate it or take it to a bookstore and resell it. So your marketing, your brand, your message, your story, it lives on for a really long time in a book. And it builds your business.
[00:19:41]
If you're a consultant, it tends to add a zero to your business. Your consulting fees, speakers, same thing. And for me, I kind of already noted, but it was actually surprising to me. The first phone call I got, it kind of felt like somebody was calling and saying, you want a free cruise, those, those spam calls, but somebody called me up and they said, I just read your book and I have 250, 000. And I want to invest with you. And I was kind of like, did you read about the crack house? Did you skip that chapter? And yeah, and I mean, we actually ended up buying that investor got us into our first commercial property because up until that point I'd only done residential. And it was really interesting. And that happened several times where total strangers. Came to me wanting to invest. And then, like I said, my training and education company, my courses that previously would take to like the very last day to fill up, they were filling up well in advance. I raised the prices on all of them. And it was phenomenal because people read it and they were like, I need to work with you.
[00:20:33]
And it got to the point where people be like shoving their. Credit card at you and you're going, wait a minute. Like, I don't think that you're the right fit for what we do or vice versa. And it was very interesting. And I see that with our clients too. If they write a well positioned book, that's the key though. You can't write a random book about something and think it's going to, it's going to make me famous. Well, you have to write it with an audience in mind and have an impact and a message that's going to matter to that audience. Very good, Ben.
[00:20:59] Ben Waller
Before we move on, Julie, before we move on, I wanted to ask you, would you say at any point or I guess at what point does being an author become passive income? Does that question make sense? Does it ever get to that point?
[00:21:12] Julie Broad
I don't think it does because when you stop, a lot of people call it their book baby. I kind of see why, you know, it takes nine months or even longer. to get this baby into the world. But a lot of people don't realize that when they put a book out there, they've signed up for life. Kind of like when you have a kid, if you stop promoting your book, it will stop selling my more than cashflow still sells inevitably though. I'm still talking about it, right? Like we're here, got a new book and we're talking about Book Launchers, but we're still talking about my original book. So it's still selling. And I say, well, I'm not promoting it, but no, then I really look at it and go, actually, I'm still talking about it. So that's why it's still selling. So if you stop talking about your book, it's going to stop selling.
[00:21:51] Ben Waller
So it's not passive. Interesting. Okay. So on our podcast, we talk a lot about different ways you can build up your passive income for retirement. That's why I asked that question. Cause at least me before this, I thought that at some point, if you're an author, you just have money rolling in, but it sounds like that's not the case.
[00:22:05] Julie Broad
No, I mean, there's money there. And what's cool is the book is intellectual property. And so when you have intellectual property, there's a lot of ways that you can make money from it. You can license it to a foreign publisher. And this is where you can kind of get passive income is because there's If you get a foreign rights agent, like a book like mine, more than cashflow, it's for Canadian real estate investors. I mean, it sells in the States, but it's really not going to get foreign rights deals. But if you have a topic that is interesting to people in other countries, like one of our authors wrote a book on autism, that's a topic that's hot in certain European countries right now. So foreign publishers might be interested in that. If you get a foreign rights deal and they do it, they're going to promote it.
[00:22:44]
They're going to market it. You're going to get royalties. And that's really passive because they're going to do pretty much everything. And you probably don't speak the language. So there's really nothing you can do to contribute in any way. So there is opportunity there. Some books get licensed or sold for movies or television. Again, that kind of becomes passive because they really don't want you involved. You know, Bear may not like that, but they really don't want you involved. And so you'll get some payment as those things happen. And that's passive. So to a degree it is there, but I'm kind of of the mindset that if you go into anything thinking passive, you're probably not going to put the effort into it that you should in order to maximize the opportunity and cover your butt.
[00:23:21] Ben Waller
We got to get pretty famous with your books before they'll make a movie out of it. Right. Not necessarily. We've had several authors, depends like there's certain topics, right? We had a true crime author that probably could have done a lot of things with his book. Had he wanted to, he had a lot of really interesting opportunities come his way.
[00:23:36] Julie Broad
We've had people have be parts of documentaries. And then we've also had other people have interest. It hasn't come to fruition yet, but like, what do you call them? It's mini series. About their life story, so I don't think you have to be famous per se, but you do have to have a really powerful story and it helps if it's on trend with whatever Hollywood or the movie production companies are kind of looking for. Yeah, you don't necessarily have to be famous. They'll make you famous whether you like it or not.
[00:24:03] Ben Waller
That makes sense. I mean, we got to have a good story to start, right? So let's switch topics a little bit and talk about your company Book Launchers and maybe we've already asked this question a little bit, but do you want to talk more about how that company got started?
[00:24:14] Julie Broad
Yeah, it kind of came from the book, but then what I was doing, so I was in real estate and my investment business partner was my husband, who was my boyfriend when I started investing, and I kind of like looped him in. I was like, come on, like, let's do this just because I needed more capital. I'm like, hey, do you have any money? So thankfully we got married.
[00:24:29] Earl Cline
You have a job and I don't have one. So can you sign on loans for me? Pretty much.
[00:24:35] Julie Broad
Anyway, thankfully he liked investing and also thankfully we got married. So it all worked out. But yeah, it is kind of funny how I was like, so I got this idea. I know I'm going back to school, but you know, you're going to have a job anyway. We were building a real estate investments to, we built that business together. And at some point, you know, doing buying a house every month and kind of doing deals, it just kind of gets boring. And he was starting to pursue deals just for kicks. And I was. Kind of like one fell through and I sat down. I was like, this, you know, why are you doing this? And he said, well, you know, what else am I going to do? And so then he got into acting and that's kind of how we ended up in Los Angeles and moved to the U. S. was just because of him acting. But because he was getting into acting, I didn't have the guy that was running all the numbers. Because he was a mortgage broker at one point and he was my numbers guy.
[00:25:22]
I did pretty much everything else, but he would run the numbers and do the financing on the deals and did that for the education company too. So I started to go, Hmm, I don't want to run this company without him. Didn't really want to find somebody to replace him. So I started dreaming up a new company. Plus we needed a visa to move to the States. So I was like, well, if I start a company and started in the States, I can get a visa. You can kind of see there's definitely a gambler in me here. I'm definitely hearing it as I tell you guys this. Yeah. So I started Book Launchers as part of my visa to move to the States. It was the investor visa and that's what I did. But I dreamed up a company that kind of fulfilled the needs that I thought were missing in the market. Cause there's great editors, there's great writers, there's great PR people. But it was very hard to find anybody that was looking at the whole thing and basically building marketing into the whole process, which is what traditional publishers do.
[00:26:09]
They look, that's why I got rejected. They didn't think I was going to sell enough books. So I wanted to build a company that was doing the marketing at the end. So we pitch you for podcasts and live appearances and media and all those things, libraries, bookstores. book awards, Amazon ads, do all those things. And in order to be successful, we are setting you up from the very beginning, looking at where you want to go and what the marketing is going to be at the end. And we layer that marketing into the entire process. So I built that, that was really vital. And then the second piece was that I didn't like these companies that were charging 30, 50, 000 upfront for this book. I wanted you to cancel, be able to cancel if something went wrong for you or for us. And I also wanted it to be monthly option so that it was easier for businesses to kind of finance it and cash flow it. And so I set up a membership model, which nobody else has in this industry. And I layered marketing into the entire process. And you never have to leave us if you don't want to, because we're always going to keep marketing your book. And some of our clients have been with us since we launched in 2017.
[00:27:05] Ben Waller
That's awesome. So you guys are called a full package, a full service. Somebody comes to you with an idea. And we could start from the beginning and say, let's write this book. Let's edit this book. Let's technically publish this book and do all the marketing for it. Is there anything generally speaking that I missed in that what you do?
[00:27:22] Julie Broad
No, I mean, that's the high level view of what we do and the marketing gets planned throughout. So we plan your launch strategy. We're doing research, keyword category, pricing research, market research, your audience research. We do your training, media kits, speakers, one sheets. There's just so many pieces, but. Yeah, that's the essence of it. And it's one thing where people come to us because they are used to this a la carte model where they hire an editor, hire a cover designer. They're like, okay, we just want you to do editing. And we literally can't do that because we are not set up to just do editing. Cause while you're going through editing, we're also doing your keyword category research. We're brainstorming your title. We're looking at your chapter titles. So yeah, you can't come to us for a la carte. You come to us if you want somebody to take care of it all for you.
[00:28:02] Ben Waller
That makes total sense. And previously you mentioned that your company focuses on nonfiction books, correct? Yes. And the next question I want to ask you is like, who would be a good client for your company? Like, how do you pick that?
[00:28:12] Julie Broad
Yeah, people that have a bigger picture goal for their book. So somebody who wants to just write books and only write books, done a few of those. Like we've kind of done, like I said, we did a true crime and we've done some legacy projects, but our ideal client is that speaker, that consultant, that business owner, we have a lot of clients who've left corporate. And nobody knows how extraordinary they were in corporate, like the patents they created, or the company they built. And so now they want to write a book so that they can kind of transfer into a new career as a consultant or a speaker. And they write the book so that people actually learn about all the cool things they did when they were in corporate. So those kind of people are perfect because they're using the book to build their brand and they're not just interested in book sales. They're also interested in the things that doing podcast interviews and speaking engagements and all of that marketing can do for you because it's more fun if you're monetizing one activity in many ways.
[00:29:05] Ben Waller
Make it a lot simpler, right? I want to ask you this question, and we've talked about it a little bit already, but what challenges would you say people face when writing a book, and how does your company help them overcome those?
[00:29:16] Julie Broad
The list is long, but they really come down to kind of what I call the four monsters. And so they're all internal, almost always, not knowing where to go and not knowing what to do is part of it for sure. But then if you hire a company like ours, we have an entire step by step process built. So that kind of erases that. Right. The fear of failure, the fear of success, imposter syndrome, those are really, really big things. And those things rear their head. It's kind of like if you've ever read Stephen Pressfield's book, The War of Art, he talks about the resistance, really good book, really easy read. And he talks about the resistance and how those things that we know we're meant to do, but suddenly your kid gets sick or you blow a tire on your car.
[00:29:55]
Like, it's not actually those things happening. It's the resistance trying to stop you from your greatness. And I think that happens with a lot of authors, right? It's things that seem legit, but at the end of the day, if you're truly committed to something, you'll find a way to get it done. And it's really interesting to kind of see how it rears its head. Fear of judgment is very real. I think a lot of people. Get held up. They don't tell the stories they should tell. They don't actually share the message. They should share because they're afraid and I can speak from personal experience. I had people that did not know my coaching clients. My family didn't know about some of these horrific things I dealt with in my property and I was really scared to share them.
[00:30:32]
But I also kind of knew that if I didn't, this book wasn't going to be good enough. And so that's kind of what we help with, right? We, the coaches will coach people through that and really encourage them to go deep enough that the book will be good or great. We really try to go for greatness as much as possible and then guide them through the process so that when these monsters pop up. Yeah. In whatever format, they're able to kind of navigate it and covers are the other place we see these monsters come up. People will go through 42 iterations of a cover only to arrive back at cover design number two. That's not a bad design. That's your monsters. So I think support.
[00:31:12] Ben Waller
So it sounds like you're coaching these people, support and coaching and making sure they get to the finish line.
[00:31:16] Julie Broad
Yeah, I think it's really important to have support, whatever that looks like for you. And also be aware that the support at home or the people who share the same last name as you, they aren't necessarily going to be the ones that give you the kind of support you need to get a book out there, at least a book that will be great. It varies, but we've seen a lot of good books go bad because somebody else Is afraid their own monsters. They have their own monsters. And when you're about to do something great, their monsters can be problematic for you as well. So we do our best to try to navigate those situations too. But those get a little delicate at times.
[00:31:52] Ben Waller
Well, in other podcasts, we've talked about just success in general and how a lot of. Times when we're talking about success, there's the element of being on a team and having the right players in your court. And there could be people that are in your life that support you in this scenario, but that doesn't mean they have any knowledge or expertise about how to publish a book or that they're really sending you in the right direction, which is why bringing you and your team on could be really good.
[00:32:16] Julie Broad
Yeah. Getting expert advice. I think in anything you do, done what you want to do and learning from them. And then leaning on the other people in your life to kind of help clear the way for it.
[00:32:25] Ben Waller
Absolutely. Now, Julie, if somebody comes to you and either you think they're not a good fit, or they decide they're not a good fit for the company, what else could they do to work towards launching their own book?
[00:32:35] Julie Broad
There's a few things. Part of that is why I wrote Self Publish and Succeed, so that there is a guide for all the pieces that you need and all the people you need to hire and what to look for. So that is one thing, especially if it's nonfiction, you know, the book is a great place. And I refer a lot of people to the book. And then from there depends on your goals with the book, but hiring, there's some great kind of places where even we hire editors from Read Z, which is a website that has editors and designers. And then Urban Writers is another kind of marketplace where you can hire different people. So you become the general contractor. And so you have to hire and manage those people and kind of know what you're looking for, but you can save money. And for some people, that's one of the factors, or you can get a very particular, like a technical. Expert for a certain type of book, and so that's often what I kind of combined recommend is have the guide from the book and then hire the right people.
[00:33:27] Ben Waller
That makes sense. And I also want you to give a shout out to your YouTube channel here. Just tell us briefly what your YouTube channel is all about.
[00:33:34] Julie Broad
Yeah, it's booklaunchers.tv and new videos every Tuesday. Tuesday and Friday, and it is all about writing, publishing, and marketing a book. So I have more than 500 videos on the channel now, and there's pretty much every question that you probably have about nonfiction book writing and publishing is answered. And if it's not posted in a comment and I'll shoot a new video because I'm always looking for new ideas.
[00:33:56] Ben Waller
I watched a couple of those videos and I thought to myself, if anybody's trying to write a book, like she's giving away all the answers right here. So For our listeners, if you want to write a book, go check out her YouTube channel. And as a reminder for our listeners on today's episode, we're talking about why you should write a book. Julie mentioned like how that impacts your brand. We've also just talked about her company Book Launchers and how they could help you if you're looking for an expert team to be a all in one package with coaching and life coaching kind of added on top of that, we're also going to talk about her book self published.
[00:34:26] Earl Cline
And As I'm sitting here, I'm curious if I decided right now I was going to write a Started we didn't get it to publishing just like a lot of other people, right? Earl. I'm sure there's a lot of people that have a couple of books sitting on their computer somewhere If I came to you and said I want to start what would that look like?
[00:34:44] Julie Broad
Yeah, I would first ask you what success looks like So what's kind of your big picture goal for your book.
[00:34:52] Earl Cline
And then is there a procedure where you decide if I'm right for you, I'm sure that I would decide we'd interview each other and find out if we were right for each other. Assuming that that, this is something that we both think will be beneficial to us. Where would we go next? You help me design the book. I'm assuming most of your clients probably pay you some money to get started. I'm, I'm assuming it's not all the money on the backend to do one. What's that look like?
[00:35:12] Julie Broad
Yeah, I kind of touched on, we're a monthly membership. And so you would activate your membership. You can prepay. So if you want to prepay six months or a year, you can prepay and there's a slight discount. But you can still cancel at any time. There's no contract and it's all terms and conditions that kind of outline our membership. If you have a book that's written, we start with an assessment because we do have a standard of kind of where we want books to be. Again, because while you keep all rights and you keep all royalties and you're ultimately the CEO of your books, you make all the final decisions. We are the ones that are out there pitching you to media and speaking and live appearances and podcasts. And so we've had it happen a couple times where we've sent a book to somebody and they've said, this is not book launcher standard. Like what happened? That's horrifying for us. Cause we build these relationships with people and we want them to like, not even have to hesitate.
[00:36:03]
Be like, Oh yes, Book Launchers books are always amazing. And so that's something that we really work hard. Never hear that again. We never want to hear that again. So we put it through assessments and you don't want to hear that either. Right? Like that's not something you would want to know about your book. So we do an assessment and we figure out. Does it need more editing? Has it been positioned well enough? Like, does it have a strong enough hook and a clear enough audience for all of this? Um, and assuming that is, we'll put it through the whole process, but you do, you activate your monthly membership and then it's month to month. And at any time you cancel or you can stay with us for as long as you want our marketing support, it's very flexible and everything belongs to you and everything's in your name.
[00:36:39] Earl Cline
You don't get a piece of the back end of the books or any of that kind of stuff.
[00:36:42] Julie Broad
No, we benefit by you when your book is doing well and you're benefiting from the exposure that we're getting with the book marketing, you'll stay with us. And we've seen that over and over again. And eventually most people, they stay with us and then they're like, Hey, I've got another book. And so when we get these beautiful long term relationships, I think we have three or four books, three or four authors that are on their third books with us now. I think there's eight that have done two with us. So we really enjoy those long, those long relationships.
[00:37:08] Earl Cline
Turned out to be profitable for the most, I mean, the book that I was looking to write, I could have cared less if it made any money at all, right? It was just to like, like you started out. I just want to get my name out there. I want to establish myself as an expert some way, and I'm assuming that a good share of the, uh, that's what the, a good share of your clients are probably trying to do, but does it ultimately end up profitable for some of them?
[00:37:33] Julie Broad
For some not definitely not all, um, at least if you're just going straight off book sales, right? For some people, all they need is one client at like, you know, if you look at a realtor as an example, they need one commission and the book is paid for. Um, and so it does vary on your industry, you know, one speaking engagement or two speaking engagements, especially if they have like a book add on, um, you know, that can pay for it. So it really how you're getting your ROI, but off straight book sales. I Don't know because if somebody doesn't stay with us for years and years, we don't see their sales data, but I would venture probably half of our authors don't make it back on book sales alone, just because you're making four to six dollars per book sold even less if you're selling ebooks for 99 cents or 299, you have to sell thousands and thousands and thousands of books. To recoup, you know, what it costs to professionally publish a book, which is why it's so hard to get a traditional book deal because they're doing the math and they have even tighter margins and they're looking to make it on vault, like mass volume.
[00:38:32] Earl Cline
And I'm just looking here. What, you know, why not use a traditional publisher? I think you probably already answered that question, right? They're looking at this and going, this one's probably not going to succeed, right? So if you're going the traditional route, they're only going to pick those books that are. Really going to light up the sales chart.
[00:38:48] Julie Broad
That's part of it. The other thing is intellectual property, right? The publisher owns your intellectual property. If you get a traditional deal. And this really became apparent with two of my friends that did get deals with Wiley. And one of them, he eventually left the real estate space and Wiley republished his book under somebody else's name and gave him no credit for the book. And it was stunning to me because like. It was, he also had two coauthors that got no credit and the two coauthors were actually in real estate. Still, they just weren't on the contract with Wiley, but it was kind of one of those moments where I was like, how can they do that? And he said, you know, it's morally gross, but legally it's their book. Like they can completely do whatever they want with it. And then the other scenario that happened was a friend of mine got approached by a production house that wanted to produce a television show for HGTV from his book. But Wiley wouldn't negotiate with the production house. And so he had to buy his book back, which meant buying every copy that was in circulation in all the bookstores in order to actually film the pilot.
[00:39:46]
And so he flew down to Florida, filmed the pilot, and then HGTV decided not to take the show. But, you know, he, I don't blame him. I would have done the same thing. I would have wanted to pursue the TV show to see what would happen too. How difficult is it to market a book? It takes trial and error, right? Because if there isn't one solution, there's not one answer to what's going to make a book sell, having your own audience is enormous. Like if the audience is a fit for what your book is about and your book can help them, that will sell a lot of books really, really quickly and easily, but getting new audiences, it sometimes takes a bit, we just had a client per book, and we pitched a set number of places every month. And usually we have 20 to 40% success, like a month of pitches. You know, if we pitch 10, as an example, we would have two to four wins. But with her book for two or three months, we just couldn't find an angle that people wanted to talk to her about.
[00:40:41]
And then we finally, I think it was the fourth month and we finally figured something out. And then I think they had almost 50% of her pitches that month got a win. So that tells you that you can't just try one thing. And a lot of people think they're looking for that magic bullet. So they try one thing and I'm like, this doesn't work. Um, so you have to be persistent and you have to be willing to try a lot of things. And then when you find something that works, just go, like, keep going. I keep doing that over and over again until it stops working.
[00:41:08] Earl Cline
It used to be Amazon was a bookstore. Today, they're something completely different. But how difficult is it to get your book into a traditional bookstore where people go and look at it. Is that even a thing anymore?
[00:41:20] Julie Broad
Yeah, you can do it. It takes like a couple phone calls and a couple physical store visits to do it. The math sucks though, because what happens is in order for a bookstore to buy it, unless you give it to them on consignment. So if you buy the book, give it to the store and then they'll pay you after they sell it. But if you want to try to do bookstore distribution on mass, What happens is, not only do you have to set your discount rate, without going too crazy with that, but you have to set your discount rate to 55%, and that's all books sold then. There's no ability to be like, only when Barnes Noble buys this to put it on their shelf will we give 55%. All of the purchases, online, offline, doesn't matter. They're going to have that 55% discount. But even worse than that is when a return comes back to you. You're not just paying what you got paid. You have to pay what the bookstore paid plus what you got paid back. So where you might have made 6, the bookstore probably paid 10 or 11 for the book. And now you have to pay them 10 or 11 because the wholesaler took that, but now you have to cover it. And so it really stinks to do mass bookstore distribution as a self published author if Say COVID hits, and you have a bunch of stores that carry it, and now they have nobody coming in and buying books, and they return a whole bunch of books, um, you can get hit with a pretty big bill.
[00:42:36] Ben Waller
Just for our listeners, I was able to read part of, uh, Julie's book, Self Publish and Succeed, and I wanted to mention that I really liked how it was structured. From the start, she talks about how you start writing, how you market the book, and how you become a bestseller. So, if any of our listeners are wanting to write their own book, I would highly recommend checking out Julie's book, Self Publish and Succeed. Or possibly looking at her company Book Launchers. Cause it sounds like from Earl's experience here, you might have a book in your head that never actually makes it to the finish line. And if you're serious about doing it, those are some great resources, including her YouTube channel. So Julie, I also wanted to ask you, we talked about Self Publish and Succeed. We talked about More Than Cashflow, and I know you have at least one other book called The New Brand You. I got that right.
[00:43:17] Julie Broad
Yeah. Congratulations. Cause you're one of the few that actually gets that title, right?
[00:43:21] Ben Waller
It's a funny verbiage, but I like it. Yeah. Are those the three books? Do you have other books you've published?
[00:43:27] Julie Broad
No, but I have a new book coming out in October called self promote and succeed, which is a followup to self. Publish and succeed helping you market the book. And so that'll be out in October of 2023.
[00:43:38] Ben Waller
That's awesome. Look for that in online and everything. So Julie, before we get into our final questions, uh, we're almost out of time. Is there anything else that you would like to tell our audience about publishing books or anything about your experience you feel would be valuable?
[00:43:50] Julie Broad
Well, I can say for Earl and everyone else that a book that doesn't get published never has an impact. So all those books just sitting there, I would highly recommend bringing them to life because it's great legacy for you. You know, I've had authors say they're not afraid of dying anymore. They're, they're, they're happy that they did this for their kids, but really for the reader, the one reader that it can impact, impact them on your computer.
[00:44:12] Ben Waller
Influence. That's very important. Thank you for sharing that. All right, Julie, we're going to jump into the final four. This is four questions we have ask everybody that comes onto our show. So the first question is, tell us what is your favorite business book?
[00:44:24] Julie Broad
My new one now is, uh, 10 X is easier than 2 X by Dan Sullivan. Loving that book.
[00:44:29] Ben Waller
I've heard a lot of people talking about it, so I need to read that one. Julie, tell us what brings you happiness.
[00:44:34] Julie Broad
Impact. Helping others. Always.
[00:44:37] Ben Waller
That's a great answer. Sounds like you're doing a lot of that with your company. Tell us or describe to us what your future retirement looks like.
[00:44:43] Julie Broad
I'm never retiring. I'll probably play poker more, but.
[00:44:47] Ben Waller
She's going to be a full-time poker player. Guys, Julia, one last question for you. What do you think is the best way to give back?
[00:44:53] Julie Broad
Well, conveniently, I think writing a book is a phenomenal way to give back.
[00:44:57] Ben Waller
Yeah, because it's a legacy they can live on even after you're gone, right? So that's a great point. Julie, tell us, where can our listeners find you online? You've mentioned it, booklaunchers tv.
[00:45:06] Julie Broad
That is my baby, YouTube. When you comment there, it is me that responds everywhere else. On the internet that you find me, it's not me that responds booklaunchers.tv. That's me. So head on over to the YouTube channel. We also have a resource for everyone, The Seven Steps to Write a Book that will be set up to sell. And you can get that at booklaunchers.com forward slash seven steps. It's the number seven steps, and that will help you get started and give you all our other links too.
[00:45:32] Ben Waller
And we'll put all those links in our show notes for everybody to, to be able to access.
[00:45:35] Earl Cline
Julie, thanks so much again for taking a little bit of time to meet with us today. I've thoroughly enjoyed meeting with you. I haven't sat down to rewrite my book. It's been probably 10 years that it's been sitting on my computer and there's always other things, but you have literally inspired me. I may pull that out. I think. For all of our audience out there that are thinking about why they should write a book. I think that they're getting in touch with your company would help them to succeed with it. Uh, encourage them to, uh, go ahead and look up the, uh, book, the Self Publish and Succeed. Sounds like it's a, it's an incredible way for people who are thinking about that to, uh, to get started. So we really, really appreciate your time with us today. To all of our listeners out there. Thanks for joining us on the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. And we will see you all next time. Thank you. Thanks, Julie.
[00:46:25] Podcast Outro
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