Do you have a story to share with the world? Are you an expert on a certain topic, but you can't get enough people to listen to you?
Writing a book is never easy. But, if you want to be successful, forget about the excuses, and just follow your instincts. You are on this path because the universe is trying to tell you something, and it's only fair to give it a chance.
When you write a book and have people reach out to you with questions, it means that you have become an authority. Slowly at the start, soon enough if you are dedicated you can start working on other platforms like coaching, and because you have the experience and the authority your rates have nowhere to go but up.
Learn how to how to establish authority with a book in this podcast episode.
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The post SNM175: How to Build Authority as an Online Writer With Paul Brodie appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free.
Connect with Jonathan Green
Do you have a story to share with the world? Are you an expert on a certain topic, but you can't get enough people to listen to you?
Writing a book is never easy. But, if you want to be successful, forget about the excuses, and just follow your instincts. You are on this path because the universe is trying to tell you something, and it's only fair to give it a chance.
When you write a book and have people reach out to you with questions, it means that you have become an authority. Slowly at the start, soon enough if you are dedicated you can start working on other platforms like coaching, and because you have the experience and the authority your rates have nowhere to go but up.
Learn how to how to establish authority with a book in this podcast episode.
▶️▶️▶️▶️
Resources mentioned:
Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM175: How to Build Authority as an Online Writer With Paul Brodie appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free.
Connect with Jonathan Green
Use a book to become an authority with special guest Paul Brodie on today’s episode. Today’s episode was brought to you by DesignPickle. Every custom drawing on my website came from the most affordable designers in the world at servenomaster.com/pickle. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve No Master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by bestselling author, Jonathan Green. Now here's your host! Hello guys, welcome to another in our continuing series of introduce with experts. Our current series is all about self-authorship and amazing things you can do, especially as we have more free time and more amazing opportunities, our lives had to see the silver lining on every single of one of those clouds and Paul’s gonna cover some really amazing stuff in our interview today. He’s gonna talk about why every business already needs to publish a book. It’s three pillars of authority which are: books, podcasts, and virtual summits. You know I like to do all three, so you gonna love that content and you’ll learn what it takes to become an actual Amazon bestseller. It’s some really great information, I know you guys gonna enjoy today’s episode. So glad you guys made it to the session. We have someone really really amazing who’s gonna gonna drop some really really amazing major knowledge bombs on you. We got Paul Brodie, who is a 15 times bestselling author, and he’s a SEO at the Brodie’s consulting group. As a book publisher, he helps attorneys, coaches, motivational speakers, and business owners, share their stories with a proven system. He’s a strong believer in systems. He’s helped everyone become a bestselling author. He’s also a host of the get published podcast, which recently celebrated their 500th episode. That’s awesome; my podcast barely has 150 episodes, so I am barely jealous of you there and I love talking about systems but before we dive into that, Paul, I’d love to find out what inspired you to write your first book? It all started on health crisis, roughly 9 years ago. I was right near 340 pounds, a diabetic with high blood pressure. Doctors had looked at me and said: Paul you are a mess, if you don’t get your act together or you’ll be dead in five years. So when a doctor says that and you are in your early 30s that you are going to be dead in 5 years if you don’t get your acts together, it gets your attention. So, what happened was, I lost 60 pounds, I am a big bone guy, I am 6.3, so I was able to carry the weight, but obviously, 340 pounds, that’s too much weight to carry. I lost the weight, and then I had this method to keep the weight off. You know, 5% of our population ever keeps the weight off. I wanted to share the story, but of course, I had no idea how to do it. No idea. So, what happened, the book was put off for 4 years. Finally, I am on a flight to Vegas. Recently I had a couple of friends that published a book, a lot of success. A friend says, and he told me, why do you keep making excuses and not getting this book out there? You have this amazing story, you need to share it. So what happened, I am at the mirage, by the pool, typing the entire outline for my book on my iPhone. A week later, 20,000 words over 3 days span, and then I spent the next month, which ironically enough, a lot of the knowledge I got, was for watching a virtual summit, by another publisher. So, that information helped me, but on the other side, I needed to learn as much as possible to learn about the publishing side, but most importantly the marketing side. Because if you don’t do this right, you and I both know there are a million of books there out there. Long story short, we published it, marketed it, it became a bestseller. Then I wrote two more books based out of two motivational seminars that I do. They became bestsellers, then what happened it was time to end it. My initial goal Jonathatn, was to be a motivational speaker. I wanted to share this story and help people on their journey. But this is what happened: I had 3 bestsellers in a row, and people started reaching out to me, audience attendees, people are on my list, readers, going: Oh, hey, can you help me share my story? And that’s what happened. I coached people for a year and a half on getting their books done, publish it, market it, the whole thing, and that grew to a point where I was able to leave coaching career to focus on this full time. And now we are in the year 3 of doing this. What happened was we pivoted the second time, because what we found was this: people don’t necessarily want to know how to do this - they want you as a published that can do it for them. And that’s exactly how are business built. Not being afraid, not being stubborn to make a change. So, we shifted more from the coaching side to the free side because that’s what our main clients wanted. Our main clients are medical professionals. They are attorneys, they are consultants, coaches, speakers, business owners, and they don’t necessarily have the time, to learn all this. You and I both know nothing difficult about this industry, but there’s just so many tedious things that if we want to get them done, it can take up your entire lunch. That’s really interesting. What I wanted to ask was about this idea of pivoting, because I think that’s something where a lot of authors get stuck. How many authors that I work with started down the path on a book and get stuck at some phase for way to long. Whether it’s writing it for 2 years, or they’ve been designing a cover for 6 months. How do people know when they are on the wrong path or how to have the confidence to pivot their business? Pivot, or jump to a new category, or realize that the market has shifted? The best thing you can do Jonathan, you have to trust your gut. You have to follow your gut, follow your instincts, and realize that if the universe is telling you something, you probably want to listen. What happened was, the first person to reach out to me, said: Can you help me out share my story? Okay, cool. I can do this, but then what happened, a second person reached out, then a third person, and I am realizing there is a need for this. I’ve been called to do this. So, this is exactly what we are going to do: trust the gut, trust the universe, and just let it go from there. That’s very interesting. Do you ever think about the process? What’s more important is how does it affect someone’s career, like this? Does it make a difference per speaker? Are you gonna get more speaking engagements, does it affect someone’s authority, does it change their rates once they have the new level of status? Yeah, so I’ll give you a great example. Previously, we were charging $500 to go speak. After we published motivation 1 on 1, and it became a bestseller, it went from 500 to 1,000, 2,000, and now $3,000. Why did we do that? Because we have a book based off of that topic that we were able to leverage as well with that. That was a book signing, whether we included that as part of the costs – the point was we had a book on it, and also a bestselling book. One thing I want to be clear about is, a bestselling piece is a bestselling piece. What I mean by that: number one in at least one category then yes, you’re considering a bestselling author. Use that title. It’s not as much about using the title; it’s about how you leverage it. Obviously, if you are a public speaker, you could introduce yourself as a bestselling author and if that can be about a specific book you’re doing, that’s also a package with a seminar, with an event, or with a business. Those are some of the best leveraging points that you can have, but we also have different press releases, we introduce you to different podcast associates that we have relationships with because we also leverage that going: Hey, this guy is a bestselling author, he set this book coming out, which is why I feel they would be a great fit. For your shelf. Okay, so you can use one type of media to get access to other types of media. I can’t tell you how many questions I get: how do you do this, how do you get on a…But often that first step is the hardest. So, how do people know, which is the first step to do first? Great question. The first thing is write a book because everyone can be authority in something. Everyone’s got something great that they can share with the world, and that’s the main thing. And how do you do that? Again, you write a book. It’s a leverage point. It’s a credibility card. It’s like a business card. Do you know what happens with a business card? It gets put out of the way. But when you can get someone a book, and you had a great conversation with them. You go: Hey, I had a great conversation with you. I wanna give you a copy of my book; it covers this and this, and then by the way, I’ve also signed it for you. My number is at the bottom, whenever you are ready - give me a call, I would love to have a conversation with you, potentially work with you. That is the ultimate soft sell and the thing is, they’re not gonna throw it out, they’re gonna keep it. First of all, how many authors do you thing the average person, the average business owner knows? The average business owners, they might know one or two, but if you give them a book, they’re not gonna throw it out – they gonna keep it in their office, on their bookshelf. I have a stack of books and a lot of them are by other authors, form my clients, people from podcasts; it’s how you establish a relationship status and what are the main things I talk about Jonathan, is the book is the foundation of your platform. One of the things I know we gonna get doing later is we’ll talk about the 3 pillars of authority. That foundation and that base, it all starts with your book because if you are in start up and if you have written a book, you are in the position of asking a subject matter expert. Really, really cool. So, can you talk a little bit about mechanics? Like a lot of people, they wanna be bestsellers, and in my experience, I write the book, I click on upload, and once it appears on Amazon – the sales are gonna start rolling in. And that is not what happened with my first book. Eighteen months to get any traction. So I know that is still a sticking point for people, and when I started in 2014 it was very very different. The process has changed. So, what’s the right flow to do it? Is it just about asking your friends and family for reviews or there is more to it than that?? One of the main things is you have to invest in advertising. You have to invest in marketing. In my first book, we invested hundreds of dollars on different marketing companies. Those are the best companies you can utilize because their emails go to the viewers’ inbox. Viewers get tens of thousands of emails and they go: Oh, this book is for free. This book is available for 99 cents. Let me go and grab a copy of that. So that’s one of the things you need to be able to invest on, marketing. They do press releases, podcast introductions, a lot of these marketing companies do a lot of what traditional publishers used to do. But the thing is, even if you have a traditional publisher is probably because you have a large follow-in because traditional publishers don’t want to deal with the marketing side. They will recruit you if you have a big follow-up, that’s your list. But if you are in startup, you probably don’t have a list. So, how do you start with that? You start with a book. Inside the book you have an offer; you are giving away a checklist, or you gonna give away something of value to get their email address in exchange. You wanna offer them a strategy session, complementary, no pitch, where you can have a conversation with them, and tell what problem is they have that you are able to solve. Okay, so you go straight from the book to the email address and you try to get on the phone with people and the goal is to find what their problem is? So that then, you can sell them something whether it’s a course, or training, or consulting? Yeah, and a solution. I’ll give you a great example. I had a call at noon today from a gentleman in Kenya. It’s his first book, he’s a motivational speaker, but he doesn’t necessarily have the budget to utilize these services. There are a bunch of options like a bestseller blueprint and much better for him, he can afford it, but he still have to do all the work. We’ve given the blue print and that’s the other thing. We wanna make sure we have different options that we give to our respective clients because not everyone has five or ten thousand dollars a budget for a book launch. If you are in startup maybe you have 1.000 or 2.000. For my first book, I borrowed $2,000 from my dad, to actually get that launch done. And that’s the thing you have to realize, to make money – you have to invest money, no matter what level you are at. Whether you are doing it on a self-publishing site or through a company like ourselves or getting yourself a publishing deal, there’s always going to be an investment, and there’s also gonna be a time, and that’s always gonna be financial as well. Why should business owners in particular have their own book? Why is focusing on the backend so important for them? I know a lot of this is like I just wana get my name out there, I just wanna be able to say I am a bestselling author and they don’t actually have a connection. See, with some of my clients, and I only work with a few clients each year; the last one I worked with, I was like: Do you wanna make your money back, or do you just want to get your reputation? I wanna get reputation and then actually, I wanna start making some money back and I was like: Wow, you should’ve said that 6 months ago, that’s a different type of launch. And he said don’t give me email addresses, I don’t want it; and I know the real value of mailing lists. That’s the thing with so many entrepreneurs, so many small businesses. They don’t see how to turn a book into serious money. They don’t see that connection yet. The main thing I teach my business clients is this: We mainly work with business owners, medical professionals, coaches, attorneys, aspiring speakers, entrepreneurs, and the first thing I ask them is, what do you want to get out of your book? What is it that you want and then we take it from that point. Most people, they are treated as a product launch. The thing we wanted to be clear about is we are talking about a product launch. It’s not just a book launch; you are launching something with this. I have 15 books I have published, became bestsellers on my own, and in addition to that, each book had an offer. Whether that was for public speaking, whether that was for a coaching program, we tie an offer for each and every one of those. So, one thing I emphasize with our clients is, what do you want to get out of this? We just did a book called “Women Enemies” for one of our clients, an attorney, and the main thing she wanted to do, she wanted to utilize it for public speaking, selling it on different podcasts as a leverage for some authority in that area. We also had a fertility coach that we helped utilize it. She wanted to utilize it to promote her brand, but also to write a fertility coach, which is absolutely amazing. So, what does she do? She goes to doctors and that thing, she gives a copy of her book, they get pictures together, posts it on social media, and they utilize it for the brand awareness, for the backend. That’s the main thing. If you are doing this just to make worldsies, you gonna be in disappointed because I think one of the biggest rackets going right now is Amazon charging for advertising where you have to pay Amazon to advertise your book in which on the Kindle site they gonna get 30% anyway. I look at it like Tom Sawyer. I think it sucks that you have to pay to get advertise on a platform that already carries your book. So, the main thing that I am talking about is leveraging the book, utilize it for your brand, and also leveraging it on the backend. The other side of it is doing public speaking, on different platforms, different non-profits, having your book with you, buying it in bulk. People wanna know what’s the easiest way to make their money back in terms of worldsies - do this: buy a100 copies of your book. They should be $2 to 3 each. Sale them for 20. Do the math. If you sold 100 books, well, you had a pretty good day, right? So, there’s many leverage points. Buy as many books as you can with the author price in, and get out there and sell them. Book signings, book launch parties, doing a book sign after speaking events; utilize it for regeneration. There’s so many different pieces that you can do to advertise your book, but don’t just be reliant only on Amazon sales. Because if you do, I think you’ll be in for disappointment. Okay, I thing that’s really good, because a lot of people don’t think about the money until it’s too late. I can’t tell you how many people have said I am gonna have a bestselling book, then I am gonna be a millionaire. Yeah.Yeah, I wish that was true. Boy, do I wish that was true. You said something earlier, I thought was interesting. The 3 pillars of authority, which I think you said: books, podcasts, and what’s the third pillar?What we are doing right now, my friend, virtual summits. Okay. And, can you tell us, how to use these 3 pillars to grow your business? I am very interested in this. I am kind of on a new campaign, my internet has gotten a little better; you know that. I have 2 different internet connections, so that I try to do these events for the morning because I only have internet from midnight to 8AM. I don’t have all time internet; I don’t know what that’s like. It’s a magical world. So, this I something that got me excited, because I am trying to do more guest appearances this year. Yeah, so one of the things just to be clear is this whole thing is not with the books. We started 2015, so that was the first level: the first pillar; that was the foundation. Three years later, upon advice of one of my publishing clients, he kept telling me: Paul, you gotta have a podcast. And I am thinking why in the world do I wanna mess with all that? The equipment, the logistics, the software. It’s unbeaten. But he said, Paul, I am gonna walk you through the whole process. And we did. What happened was late June, early July, 2018, we launched to get our published podcast. Today, we released episode 500 with Rob Kosberg from bestseller publishing. Five hundred episodes we have done since summer of 2018. Then what happened was, what was the next level? The next level was virtual summits. How did that work? Steve Nemec, who did a virtual summit a few years back with his wife Karen, brought the same question? Paul why don’t you do the summit? Same answer: too many things to do. Too many working parts, too much with the host and I don’t wanna spend $300 a month. But then he told me about his summit. You will $300 for the whole thing, but you won’t pay any monthly fees. He had my attention. He had my curiosity. I checked it out, I bought all the different stack promos that they had, and then we used that to do our summit, which, you were part of. We had 18 amazing speakers, we got our published summit, we got it out there, but the main thing is we survived. And in the beginning your goal is to survive, Our goal was to survive. If anyone is trying to do this as a get-rich-quickly you are in for disappointment. There is a reason we call this pillar number 3. It takes years to develop those pillars. Choose your own adventure, figure out what the best route is for you, but the main thing is, start with the book and then build with a podcast and then from that point, potentially look to a virtual summit. And I’ve got books, I’ve got all 3. Public series in terms of the books, I’ve got podcast 1 on 1, which you can grab free Kindle copies of on Amazon right now. We freed the book because I don’t wanna mess with advertising. So we freed the book and it is actually in the first 1,000 of the free books. We are doing our 16th book which we call it “A Virtual Summit System” while I walk you with this process. One thing I noticed is there are not many great books out there about virtual summits. There is a market. One of the things that are evident when you realize there is a market, you utilize it as a leverage point for your business. The other piece of advice I wanna give is, who sponsors the podcast? Who sponsors the summit? Who you get to sponsor these events, the answer, if you have a business that you can wrap around it, they are the ones: Brodie consultants sponsor the podcast. Brodie consultants sponsored this summit. How you leverage that – advertising, making money in the backend. The podcast has brought in over 6 figures of revenue alone. You need to realize how to leverage it, just like the book. How you leverage your book, how you leverage your podcast, and how you leverage your summit to get those 3 pillars of authority. Okay, that’s amazing. That’s a lot of really great information today. What really would be the last piece of advice you wanna get people or even more important, what’s the first action step that people should take after they finish watching this training? People are never more excited or motivated than right after they’ve learned something. There’s always that gap: Oh, I am gonna start taking action in 2 weeks, but then it’s too late. They lose that energy. What’s the thing people can do today, what’s your big piece of advice to close this out?Last night I was having an event that reminded me, one of the speakers was talking about an Asian proverb: the best time to plant a tree was like 20 years ago, but the next best time is now. The same thing that connects with that is one of my favorite books by Lao Tzu, talking about the dream of thousand miles begins with the first step. First thing is have your phone, think about 10 talking points you wanna talk about In your book; this needs to be the foundation of your platform. That’s your book. You don’t even have to type the book. You have a voice meter app on your phone, utilize that. Speak out the first talking points, then speak out the second, and the third, and the fourth to get to your tenth and each of those talking points has to be about 8 to 10 minutes of audio. Short, sweet, to the point. Something they can read on a flight from Dallas to LA because less than 20% of our population ever finishes a book cover to cover. That’s the best advice I can give you: just do it. Get started, and if you are a traditionalist like myself, then go on Microsoft Word; put those 10 talking points in and start to type. One talking point for the next 10 days. Probably thinking, well, how in the world can I just do it? My answer to you is: literally just do it. I did a series of 10 solo casts on virtual summits. Guess, what I did with that? So, the information, I uploaded it to rep.com; used their AI feature, and guess what? I came up with the foundation of my virtual summit book and then went back there and cleaned up the audio. That definitely was a process, but if you are looking to get content out quickly - that is the best way to do it. Just get started; take the first step, because what you gonna notice is, step number 1 and step number 2, and then those steps become so much easier. But the thing is, if you’re gonna do it, start. Just start the process.That’s awesome guys. Paul has just given us amazing steps. He’s absolutely right. Really is about taking that first step because then the rest will fall into place and you’ll continue to get into that pattern. Paul, thank you so much. It was awesome to have you here and I hope everyone is really really excited, and Paul, thank you so much for this information and thank you for being here today. It was awesome. It’s been a pleasure. If you guys want any more information, just go to publicist.com and grab a free copy of our book, we got our podcast, and lots of great information to help you on your journey. Thank you so much for sticking around for today’s episode. You can find out more about Paul on brodie.com that’s B-R-O-D-I-E and you can see everything that Paul has to share, and he can help you grow your business and become an amazing published author. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next Tuesday with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to servenomaster.com/podcast now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No Master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you Tuesday.Ready to turn your book into a bestseller? Find out what other authors don't want you to know at servenomaster.com/secrets.