10X YOUR BUSINESS WITH A BOOK TIPS FROM 20+ SUCCESSFUL AUTHOR-ENTREPRENEURS CONTENTS How do you actually use a book to grow your business? 02 Tips from 20+ successful author-entrepreneurs on how to grow your business with a book 05 Where to from here? 21 So who am I? 22 So you have a book... but how do you actually use it to grow your business? A book is a business card on steroids. It’s the difference between the entrepreneurs who get highly paid speaking gigs and those who have to beg, plead and hustle to run workshops for free. It’s why some entrepreneurs compete on price and others charge five times the industry average and still have a six-month waiting list. Right? Yes, writing a book has its perks – it positions you as an expert, gives you negotiating power, educates the market and presells your prospects. But there’s a catch… None of that happens on its own. The day after you write a book, your inbox is not going to be flooded with interview requests from journalists. You won’t have an automatic influx of new clients who are eager to pay you ridiculous rates. Andevent managers won’t be calling you to fly you first class to exotic locations to run high-end retreats. And the Ferrari that was supposed to be waiting in the driveway with a red bow on it? Unless you already had the Ferrari before you wrote your book, it’s unlikely to have materialised just because you got published. The problem is that so many entrepreneurs think that, just because they’ve written a book, all of the business opportunities they want will magically come flooding in. After all, that’s how we sell the dream... grammarfactory.com 02 ‘Become a published author and your revenue will increase 300%, you’ll get featured on national TV and the biggest brands in your industry will be happy to fund the next stage of business growth.’ I know – I’m just as guilty as anyone else in the entrepreneur publishing space. I’ve written articles and given talks about the power of publishing to transform your business, and I’ve seen clients who have experienced incredible success as a result of publishing their books. But the truth is it’s not about the book. Yes, you need to write a good book. You need to choose the right idea, and it needs to be professionally produced. But even if you get that right, if you don’t know how to use your book to grow your business. If you don’t know how to leverage your book, it’s going to be about as useful as any other business card or brochure that’s stuck in a drawer. No one will see it. No one will get value from it. No one will learn about your business from it. And no one will buy your products and services as a result. Instead, all you’ll have is hundreds of books stacked in your garage, and an investment of thousands that hasn’t paid off. So what should you do instead? As an entrepreneur, how can you write, publish and leverage a book so that it will grow your business by 20%, 30%, 50%, even 300%, rather than just becoming an expensive paperweight? To find out, I brought in the experts. I reached out to over 20 entrepreneurs and authors who have either successfully leveraged a book to skyrocket their own business success, or have coached others in how they can do just that. I asked each of these experts the following question: What is your #1 tip on using a book to grow your business? 03 grammarfactory.com This article shares their best advice gained from hitting the bestseller lists, building multimillion dollar businesses and establishing themselves as thought leaders. Who are these experts? Here’s the full list: Joel Friedlander | Jeff Goins | Jesse Krieger | Josh Steimle | Benjamin Hardy | David Hancock | Matthew Gartland | Mohit Pawar | Austen Allred | Mark Lack | Charlie Hoehn | Mike Michalowicz | Tom Corson-Knowles | Michael Hanrahan | Angela Lauria | Tom Morkes | Tyler Basu | Derek Doepker | Marian Hartsough | Jacqui Pretty Now let’s dive in with 20+ tips on how you can grow your business with a book! grammarfactory.com 04 Joel Friedlander Once your book is published, remember to always refer to yourself in biographies, signature lines, and profiles as an author who is an “expert” on your subject. Your book will become the ultimate door opener for you, allowing you to enhance your authority in your field. This can make a surprising difference in how you are perceived by others. As an author, you are the “person who wrote the book” and you should emphasize that perception as vigorously as you can. Never forget that it takes initiative and hard work to actually publish a book, and that’s why many of your colleagues, competitors, and peers haven’t done it. But you have, so take the position of expert authority, and that book will pay off for you in a big way. Joel Friedlander is a book designer, blogger and the author of A Self-Publisher’s Companion: Expert Advice for Authors Who Want to Publish. He is the proprietor of Marin Bookworks in San Rafael, California, a publishing services company that has helped launch many self-publishers since 1994. thebookdesigner.com Jeff Goins Create a Facebook group to interact with readers of your book, then listen to them! Jeff Goins is the author of four books including the national bestseller, The Art of Work. He publishes new articles on his blog and records podcasts two to three times per week, hoping to continually serve his readers. goinswriter.com 05 grammarfactory.com Jesse Krieger My #1 tip for using a book to grow your business is to have crystal clarity on what your readers will want to do or know next. By having an understanding on where your book fits into the overall trajectory of your reader’s life and growth, then you can position your deeper-engagement, higher-priced offerings as the logical next step for your reader to take. For example, with my book Lifestyle Entrepreneur, I knew that if readers came away from the book believing that a lifestyle of travel, freedom and opportunity is possible, and that an online business structured to be run from anywhere in the world is the way to achieve that, then working with me to train them how to build that business is the next logical step, based on their commitment level to their goals. In another example, we published a book called Launch Your Business by Rosetta Thurman and planned the book launch around her live event by the same name. Now the book becomes a feeder to her future live events, where she enrols long-term coaching clients into her masterminds. Jesse Krieger is an international bestselling author and the founder of Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press. He has signed two publishing deals on two different continents and has navigated the world of becoming a bestselling author - twice. It has been his honor to work with 100+ authors from around the world to achieve their dreams of writing and publishing a book. jessekrieger.com grammarfactory.com 06 Josh Steimle Start utilizing your book as a marketing tool way before it’s published. I run a digital marketing agency. We sell services to marketers at all levels, including chief marketing officers. My book Chief Marketing Officers at Work includes interviews with 29 CMOs from companies like PayPal, Target, Spotify, GE, and The Home Depot. From the day I made the first call to get the first interview with the first CMO I was already using my book as a marketing tool, because I knew there was a chance that CMO might be interested in my agency. The same goes for all the other CMOs I contacted for the book (I had to contact a lot more than 29 to get 29 interviews). But that was just the tip of the iceberg, and if I never get a lead from one of the interviewees that’s just fine. I’ve used research from the book to create a full list of Fortune 500 CMOs which I posted on my blog and in a CMO group on LinkedIn where it has attracted thousands of views and hundreds of comments. The one post has been consistently getting over 2,000 views per month by itself. I then did some simple analysis on that list and found out that Fortune 500 companies with a CMO perform 15% better, on average, than companies without one, and that became another blog post that has become popular. I’ve taken excerpts from my book and turned those excerpts into articles that are getting published on Forbes, Inc, CMO.com, and other outlets. I’m pushing promotion of the book on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and I’m working the speaking circuit and am already getting paid to come talk about my experiences writing the book and what I learned from all these top notch CMOs. And as I write this, the book isn’t even out yet! These are just a few simple examples of how to market your book for your benefit before the book is out. The message here is that it’s never too early to start. Josh Steimle is speaker, writer, and entrepreneur. He has written over 200 articles for publications like Forbes, Mashable, TechCrunch, Entrepreneur, and Time, and is the author of Chief Marketing Officers at Work: How Top Marketers Build Customer Loyalty.