Hey superstar! I want to dispel a myth that we all have and we all deal with this myth everyday, it’s regarding writing a book.
And even if you’ve written one book it happens on the next book, it happens on the next one, it happens to me when I’m tired in the morning. And it’s this myth that I don’t have the experience or expertise, the fame, or even the time to write a book. And, that’s just plain not true.
Many people think that you need to wait until you are into your life to write a book, or get some kind of publisher’s blessing, or some industry expert’s blessing, or some professional organization’s blessing, to write a book, or “I can’t write a book until I’ve proven myself as an expert and I’m famous”.
Some of the other things around time are: “well, it’s gonna take me a long time to do”, “it needs to be thick, this real thick book”, and “I don’t have enough to say.” Well, let me share a quick story with you.
These guys didn’t say that, didn’t wait that, and if they thought it, they pushed through it because they, for instance Russell Brunson, he really got himself on the map. Of course he had Click Funnels and he had some fame, but his book brought him out to just millions of more people, and it integrated him with millions of more affiliates and business partners and so forth, so, it brought him closer to a lot of people.
And of course the book helped so many people. That thing is like the Bible, I use it all the time. Brendon Burchard, same way, he started writing books. He was writing books before he became ultramega famous. Mel Robbins, same thing, it’s not the other way around. If you’ve got something to share, you’re an expert in it, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
My background with this is that in between I’d written Author Your Success, and then my second book was The Author Startup, and I thought I might give up. And this is based on the time it took to get Author Your Success done. I needed a faster system to write or I would lose my dream of writing a lot of books and helping a lot of people.
So, I went out and I developed a system for myself, to quickly get books out there, and now I’ve branched that into a lot of different areas. But, for instance I call it the Bookplan System, and that takes me from idea to published in 26 days.
The Author Startup took me 26 days to get done, because I used a simpler system and yet it is more organized for everyone who’s reading the book. It’s a much more thorough outline, and the way I delivered the book.
So, that book, even though it’s the same topic, self-publishing, it outsold the first book by 15 times, it was a bestseller for 4 months, it was shorter and better, and the people were leaving great reviews because they liked the fact that it got right to the point and gave them a lot of information, and, I didn’t ask for anyone’s permission.
And there’s always gonna be somebody that says you don’t have the expertise, all these trolls out there. And there’s the ones who don’t, because I’ve never had anybody who was valid, that had actual expertise, criticize me. They’re too busy helping people. These trolls that are out there doing it, they have nothing better to do, we don’t need to listen to them. Don’t ask for permission.
So I needed a system that would be efficient or I wouldn’t get it done. And, one of the things is, you don’t have to sit and write. Great story tellers and teachers don’t always have the attention span to sit down and do that. You can dictate your book, and that’s why this Bookplan System I use, I actually create a strong outline very quickly, and then we dictate the book, and it makes it so much easier, but it also makes it a lot clearer to understand and to read.
Now, some entrepreneurs might also think, well, “I don’t have the time to do that and learn everything.” Well, guess what? Frank Kern, and this book Convert, and now it’s Convert 2.0, but his Convert book, he wrote that thing in just a few hours. And he’s got a simple system for that, and I’m gonna share that with you later on, but the point is, he sold 50,000 copies of his book and he never typed a single word, and he got it done in a few hours and then turned it over to an editor, and someone else put it into a format, and then he just had to sell it.
So it can be done quickly, and this book, it’s great, it’s a great book. It’s one of the first things that I bought, to get into his world. And that’s why you need a book people, right?
So, here’s another one: James Altucher – Choose Yourself. This was written completely from blogs he had already written on these topics of basically self-help. And here’s the thing, he didn’t get permission from the powers that be in the self-help guru association to write a book, he had no historical experience in self-help, but he actually went out and just took his blogs that had great advice, information, experiences he had, and put it into a book.
And the book made a huge impact, it put him on the map of thought leaders that are helping people change and pick different paths in their life. And what’s really interesting is at the end of each chapter you’ll see “okay, that’s all for this week.” He didn’t even bother taking out the blog stuff, and that might annoy some people but it really doesn’t annoy the people that are important to you, because the people who are reading in between lines and getting the good content from his blog posts, are out there.
And you’ll see some people on it writing “this is just a bunch of his blogs.” Well so what? Is it good information or not? There’s always gonna be somebody critiquing you, and “yeah oh, you can get it for free if we go read his blog” Yeah, it’s not all in one book, bound and cool. So, this is a great way to do it.
Both methods Frank Kern, James Altucher, are methods that I share in my seven book-writing hacks for entrepreneurs, miniclass, masterclass, whatever you call it. We’ve got a book on that too, but these are ways you can get stuff done very quickly, so it doesn’t have to take you a long time to do it.
So the truth is, you are more than qualified to write a book. You need to do it now, I keep saying that. I’m gonna pound the table until you do. But, there are modern methods you can use to make it easy to complete, without wasting lots of time, and without learning new tools and all kinds of other weird stuff. Man, you can just go get it done and it’s as easy as having a conversation with yourself or someone else.So, that’s the myth, you’re qualified, it’s not gonna take you a long time. So I look forward to getting your book done. Talk to you soon.
I wanted to spell this myth #3 about Writing a Book. And this is one when you’ve actually got the book done. So you got over those pair, if you looked at myths #1 and #2 that I’ve talked about, myth #3 is once you’ve got a book done here, it is you get bestseller, and can make money on autopilot.
Myth #3 the exact title is, when I write a book the book makes me money on autopilot. And then what happens here? My book is a bestseller, but hey, where’s the beef? Where’s all the money? Well, let me explain what happens.
Most book sales are made on Amazon anyway, at 99 cents. At 99 cents, your royalty is 35% which gives you 35 cents a book. So to make $1000 in a month you would need to sell 2858 copies after your advertising costs. So whatever your costs were, you would have to add some more copies. But let’s just say you had zero advertising costs. You still had to sell 2858 books.
Most books only ever sell less than 200 copies. That’s a typo, the dollar sign, but anyway that’s still making my point for me. It’ll sell less than 200 copies and most of the courses out there and people are trying to teach you to sell more copies, which is a lesson in futility. Now resistance is futile, right? From the old Star Wars stuff.
The truth is, royalties are going to fall off after the initial surge. Yes you can play the algorithm, and you should, and you should build that up, if you launch it the right way the algorithm should stay intact for you, and even though it’s going to come down a little it should still send you a lot of books.
But you gotta sell, people aren’t selling 2858 books. Most of the authors you’ve heard of aren’t doing that. Just a few that are really in the top tier. So you’re advertising a royalty system, that’s just part of the plan. It’s not the endgame. The real money from a book is in building a list, your own list, and as an intro to your other products and services.
Now if you take a look, guess what? Most of the people entering Brendon Burchard’s life, and he mentioned it back in December, were people that read his books. But guess what he’s got for them waiting on the other side? Once they read his books they get exposed to Experts Academy, high performance academy, high performance coaching, all you know, the total business blueprint.
All his courses come, and most of them come into the world either through his social media and so forth, or through books. Like you can listen to somebody on social media but if you really want to know if they’ve got something to teach, you can read a book and just feel comfortable with them, well that’s what happens. But he’s not relying on that book income, he’s relying, his by far, his money-makers are these courses and his live events, and his coaching and so forth.
So that’s that. Same with Amy Porterfield, here’s a couple of her things. She’s got a ton of stuff too, right? Courses that convert, a list-builders lab. So these are a couple of courses that are just on the back end of her books. And this is where the money’s at.
Some people also think, “Well I don’t have a full product,” or, “I can’t do the tech stuff.” Well the cool thing is, you can get a book funnel up and running using somebody else’s template with the click of a button using Click Funnels or Card Sure or something like that. There’s processes you can follow to get it done, or you can even outsource it inexpensively with people. There’s these funnel fix-it guys I’m using for funnels, they’re unbelievably inexpensive.
So it’s much easier to make money with your back end products than chasing pennies trying to maximize your royalties. Yet that’s what I see like you know, you get 1% of the people out there that even actually write a book. And then of that 1%, like 99% of that 1% is sitting there chasing royalties when you could just make a switch in mindset and say, make 10 to 15 times as much right off the bat by just selling a $47 course on the back end of your book.
So this should be part of your master plan, I hope you think of it that way, and I’m going to give you some answers for it in Bestseller University coming out in the 2019 edition. You’re going to have some great stuff in there. We are going to be the only course, it’s going to be world-class, only course during the launch that has a plan for you, you know, getting to bestseller is like only halfway through, or two-thirds of the way through, right?
And then it’s turning it into an engine of your business so I hope that helps, and dispels the myth that you’re going to get rich on royalties. You’re going to get rich on your knowledge, helping others with your courses and your back end products, your coaching, whatever it is.
I just got finished with a Frank Kern Mastermind event on Traffic, and as you can see, if you’re watching this on video, behind me here, I’ve got the Atlantic here, right off of Miami Beach, North Beach area.
We just had the event, I’m spending a couple extra days with the family here, and I want to tell you what is hot off the presses. Nothing new if you’ve been listening to my podcasts, or what I’ve been talking about, but what I, they, stress, and the whole event was done by Hernan Vazquez, he is the head lead buyer for Frank Kern’s agency, his Facebook agency.
He basically said, in no uncertain terms, that the only funnels he would start are a book funneland a webinar funnel. I have been pounding the table about book funnels for a while now, but literally he said, they’re not spending any time with, they’re advising their clients to just either sell something right away, and it’s either my free webinar, where the opt-in is to get access to the webinar, or it can be an on-demand class, or a book funnel, where you’re selling a book for free plus shipping, and then they jump into a funnel and you’ve got order bumps and things like that.
So those are the things we’ve been talking about, and if you listened to my last podcast, myth number three about making royalties for your book, this falls exactly into line with that. We have got to expand our ideas, and I just saw, I just got another email about running Amazon ads and so forth.
Pleasantly, Nick Stephenson was the one that sent the email. He was talking about Amazon ads and so forth, but he was also saying look, you’ve gotta grow your own platform, you’ve gotta, cannot rely on Amazon for your sales, for your well-being. You shouldn’t be relying on anybody else, of course, but there’s a lot of, a heck of a lot of book buyers out there than you’re seeing on Amazon.
And then you’re competing with all those other little books, millions of books, so that’s the idea I wanna get through today, in today’s podcast, is just simply the fact that you’re gonna need a book funnel. The sooner, the better because the sooner you can start testing something, the better you can do.
One of the things I noticed about Hernan, and I was talking with some of my other Mastermind members, in this event, something I noticed about all the top guys is that they are constantly selling something, and their answer to everything is sell it, and tweak it.
So getting some kind of product done, getting some kind of book done, that is the key thing to do, and then you can just be tweaking your message, tweaking your sales copy, tweaking your landing pages. Everything else, but you should be selling, and that’s why I push most people that have either dabbled in writing a book, or have a book, to convert that into a book funnel.
One of the simplest ways is, if you’ve got a course already, it’s easy, you can back-convert that. So I discuss all, I’ve got seven book-writing hacks that I use to create books quickly and of high quality. You can find that at the link in this post, where you go, check out seven book-writing hacks.
The key here is, you’ve gotta get something done, and if you’ve got a course, you can move that back and forth, if you’ve got a blog, you’ve probably got a book written already. There’s multiple things like this that you already probably have written your book, if you haven’t already. If you have written a book, we need to take that, and turn it into a funnel, as soon as possible.
That’s a short message today, but I want you to think about it, check out the links in this post, go read about the seven book-writing hacks. I have those only available through in one web page, you can check it out there. Get that done, and I look forward to seeing your book out there, and I look forward, more forward, to seeing your book funnel out there.
Hey revolutionaries! Ray Brehm here! Bestseller Revolution!
I am still in Miami at the time of this recording, so if you listened to the last podcast, I am still here and I am just enjoying myself with some sandbars, way out in the water we’ve hiked out to, basically, me and the family.
I want to talk to you today about something pretty inspirational to me, it was the assistant coach in my college track, soccer team I should say, Doctor James Courans, he used to have a quote on his door, I wish I could remember it, I know wrote it down somewhere. Back in the day, we didn’t even have phones for snapshottin’ stuff from people’s doors, I had to basically take a piece of paper and hand write it. I’ve got it in a box somewhere.
But I know the gist of it, and you probably know this story too and if you do, put something in the comments, tell me about it, but it was basically a long quote by somebody famous and it talked about, the train is coming to the station, you’re getting prepared, and what a sad thing would be if your opportunity came and you were not prepared to take advantage of it.
And really, the idea is, every step, every trial, every error, prepares you for that moment. So every time you take a step towards that moment, you’re getting prepared to take advantage of the time that opportunity’s gonna show itself to you. And in that exact moment itself, you may or may not succeed, but it moves you closer and closer to that moment and that’s what we wanna do in our lives is just keep preparing for that moment where we’re actually gonna be able to take advantage of our preparation.
And if you look at all these, the lottery purchasers, lottery ticket purchasers, so for that, I mean, they’re just like, kinda, let’s buy it and hope our number hits, well the idea is not just hope and pray, it’s actually preparing yourself for that ideal client that comes along and then, let’s say an ideal client came along tomorrow, Would you be ready? Are you ready for that client? Have you worked with other clients that make you feel confident to work with this ideal client, this high level client? And so forth.
For me, what happened was, fortunately, I was just pushing forward, and I didn’t really know what my goal was, but my very first client came and asides from not being ready, I didn’t have a price for my services, I knew I could do what they needed me to do, so I was saved there ’cause I had done enough of my homework, I had tried enough stuff, I had done enough work launching a book.
But somebody came to me and wanted to launch a book and wanted me to do it for him, and at that point I was like, I had that little twinge where, I’m not quite ready, I should just turn him down, and it was like, no, I gotta start this now.
And I’ll tell you about that in tomorrow’s episode, that first client was Jeff Yalden, and the idea is, had I not been doing every other little thing that seemed insignificant at the time to get to that point, I wouldn’t have had the confidence, I wouldn’t have had even just the small notoriety I had at the time, that he would reach out to me to ask for me to do work for him, and I wouldn’t have had just the overall preparedness for that train pulling into the station.
So, if somebody was looking for an expert in your field and, you know, to speak or present or be a part of a mastermind, would you be ready? Can you answer that question to yourself? Would you be ready and if not, what can you do today to start making you ready? Because these opportunities, they can pass you by and wait a year for another one, doesn’t make any sense.
Most of the time, you just gotta get enough confidence and enough experience in yourself that you take a chance on that when that opportunity comes, even if you don’t feel ready, because you are never gonna feel 100% ready.
I remember shakin’ in my boots saying, oh my gosh, should I, can I do this? And then I sat back and said, wait a second, what he’s asking me to do, I know how to do better than most people, it’s just that I’ve never, I don’t have a contract, I don’t have a price, and we just agreed to it over Facebook Messenger and I’ll tell you that whole story tomorrow because I’m gonna keep sneakin’ it away.
But one of the steps you can take, and I’m convinced of this, is you can get your book done and show your expertise so when someone comes along and says, I need somebody with these expertise, you say, yeah, that’s me, oh, I’ve got a book on it. And one of the ways to do that is go to mybookchallenge.com, that’s my Five Day Book Idea Challenge, it’s completely free, you can check that out.
If you’re ready to go to the next step you can go to BestSellerUniversity.co, those are some things you can do to get that preparedness up. Having a book out there not only shows somebody else your expertise, it gives you confidence in yourself to do that. And it’s one of the best ways to do it, that’s why I keep harping on it, I hope you take that to heart.Check out one of those tools, mybookchallenge.com or BestSellerUniversity.co, and as always, you can check out the Revolution Site, you’ll hear that in a minute on my outro and we will talk to you soon.
P.S. Youru.tv [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/WbeIjD6nHulF/DGoV] is my “course of the month club” where you get frameworks to apply to your book and business.
The main goal of Youru.tv [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/WbeIjD6nHulF/DGoV] is to get you started on your path, while protecting your time (and money). It is all based on quick start frameworks (that I use).
https://www.youru.tv/ [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/WbeIjD6nHulF/DGoV] (Think of Youru as _You the Guru_)
Hey there Revolutionaries! Ray Brehm here! I am pumped to be here today!
Yesterday I mentioned I was going to talk to you about my first client. Well I guess my first real client just walked in the door. This is my son little Ray here. He did a book called Dreamtime at Stepping Stones. He didn’t really pay me , except with love so that really is a first client.
But, the first client that I mentioned to you yesterday, is Jeff Yalden, and this guy is a bonafide hero. He goes around speaking about teen suicide at High Schools all around the country. High Schools, Junior Highs. He’s the number one teen motivator in America.
And he just happened to be in a Mastermind Group with me. I had published about three books at the time, but I was really starting to figure out the system of Marketing and Launching a Book. He came to me and he just all of a sudden messaged me out of the blue, and I didn’t really talk to him, liked a few of his posts in one of our groups.
He just sent me a message says, “can I hire you to do my launch?” And I’m like, wow! And as I mentioned on yesterday’s podcast, that took me by surprise, and I was like eh, I’m not quite ready. You know I had this feeling, like I don’t even know what price to charge, I don’t have a contract, but what he was asking me to do I knew how to do. I, you know, I had nailed it.
In fact, I even was ready to try something new that was even more powerful. And that was trying to get him Bestseller during the pre-order period. And so I suggest we do that with him. But, first thing I did was just clarify what he was looking for.
So I said, you know, “you want me to coach you? or you want me to do it for you?” He was like, I just want you to do it for me. And I remember just messaging a couple of friends, and asking them, I don’t even know what price to charge here.
So, once I came up with a price I finally said well here’s what, I’ll do it for this price. And sent it over, and then there was like, crickets for like ten minutes. And I’m like, oh my gosh I’ve offended this guy, right? Because that’s what we are always afraid about. We are offending somebody because we are charging too high. It’s almost never the case, but except to ourselves that we worry about the value of charging for what we’re worth.
And so that was my big thing, and he came back to me and said, “let’s do it”. We got it done. We blew it out of the water. He has sold a ton of books. He’s gone on to do two or three more Bestsellers. And in fact he has learned it all on his own. And now he kind of launches himself. He’ll give me a quick call and say hey do I got all this right? And so forth but, the key, and you know what is really cool? We’ve become tight friends, after that we have become good friends, and he is doing a lot of great work out there.
So, I’m really excited about that first client. And had I not done enough, just enough to feel confident enough to respond to him, you know that would have never happened. I probably would have delayed even helping anybody for six months. But after that, it was just a stream of unadvertised referrals to me for people to help in the same way. And they were like, “oh you helped Jeff, you can help me”.
“So, being ready for that first client is super important. Taking that first client is super important. And taking the chance on yourself, and charging for your real value is super important”.
So this stuff can happen for you if you get your book done, you get some expertise out there, you feel confident. And by the way, writing your book is neither just about you showing expertise to somebody else. It’s about you building your own confidence by doing the research, putting the book together, putting your thoughts together in the book. It’s super important for it, what you want to do in your life.
So I hope that helps. We will see you in the next episode. Talk to you soon.
P.S. Youru.tv [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/UpQyPECeFilF/DGoV] is my “course of the month club” where you get frameworks to apply to your book and business.
The main goal of Youru.tv [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/UpQyPECeFilF/DGoV] is to get you started on your path, while protecting your time (and money). It is all based on quick start frameworks (that I use).
https://www.youru.tv/ [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/UpQyPECeFilF/DGoV] (Think of Youru as _You the Guru_)
Today I interview @Michelle Lange LIVE on “How to Leverage Video to Grow Your Audience for Your Authority-Building Book.”
Ray: Hey there revolutionaries! Ray Brehm here and I’m excited. Today I am speaking with Michelle Lange on How to Leverage Video to Grow Your Audience for your Authority Building Book.
Michelle is a video and online marketing strategist. She helps entrepreneurs, coaches and experts go from best kept secret to household name. Her clients have done six multi-six and seven figure sales using her video and online marketing strategies.
I’m going to ask Michelle all about how to leverage the power of video and if you find these tips helpful, we’ll also share how to access Michelle’s upcoming free online training where she’ll be sharing how to close 400% more clients in the next 45 days with high converting video to sell and speak to sell funnels. Even if you’ve never successfully sold from video or stage before, you can find the link to register for that training above or below this video, wherever it is. So let’s dive in. Welcome Michelle.
Michelle: Thank you Ray. It’s great to be here. And Ray, just so you know, I’m going to be referencing some of my notes because I know you have a really specific niche audience and I want to make sure that I serve them to the best of my ability. So I have a whole checklist of things I want to make sure to cover today. So sometimes you might see me glancing at my screen to make sure that I do not miss anything.
Ray: Good. And if you see me glancing at my screen, I’m probably looking at the football game and the other monitor over here. No, just kidding.
Michelle: Sounds awesome!
Ray: Just kidding! So we are so okay. Our audience is all about books, I would say it’s, you know, 80 – 90% entrepreneurs with nonfiction books that are looking to build authority, looking to build audiences, but we’ve also got some fiction people and they’re going to need video too. But let’s focus on what you got for us. And I guess my first question is: Why is video so important for growing your audience and for an authority building book?
Michelle: That’s a great question and I’m glad you mentioned the different types of authors that may be watching. A lot of this content is geared for the nonfiction writer, the expert, the coach, the author of the entrepreneur who wants to build their brand through that book. However, if you are a fiction writer, I still encourage you to listen because there are some things that can actually apply to your book and some key takeaways that you may get as well. So Ray, one of the reasons, one of the many reasons why video is so important for growing your audience is that you can’t be everywhere once. And video puts you really on a worldwide stage where you can be broadcasting to living rooms across the nation, and the world through a single video. And so it’s really as close to being in a room with an audience as you can get.
Michelle: And it really allows you to create a much better level of know, like and trust factor, that emotional rapport. People get a three dimensional experience with you where they hear your voice, they see your nonverbal communication. So it’s a much more dimensional way of communicating than text alone. And then for those of you who are, you know, really driven by data, it’s good to know that 500 million people right now are watching video on almost a daily basis. And the Wharton Business School did a study that showed that people are 72% likelier to buy your product or service when video is used, and video used on social media increases engagement by as much as 1200% so it’s pretty powerful.
Ray: So you’re saying 500 million people are watching me right now? I´m just kidding.
Ray: No, I could tell you just from experience and that’s why I got you on is that things completely changed when I started making it a habit. Not always daily like it probably should be. But putting out there on video, putting out videos is I just feel people talk to you different. Even when they reply to my email list, emails, broadcasts, you know, they’re responding back like they’re a friend and that’s what I want of course too. And that’s because they feel closer connection by seeing me, I assume.
Michelle: Yeah, definitely. There’s no replacement.
Ray: So, what types of videos are we talking about? What should people be creating to grow their audience for their authority book?
Michelle: That’s great questions. So, you really want to be building your audience well before the book comes out because by the time you roll out that book, you already want to have an audience that knows you, likes you, trusts, and hopefully it’s been anxiously anticipating on waiting for this book. You don’t ideally want to have a cold audience. It’s going to make your sales a much higher, steeper hill to climb. And so there’s, when you think about any type of marketing funnel, there’s three phases.
There’s Attraction. When people just find out about you, they don’t know you yet. And the goal with videos in that phase is really short, digestible videos that will hook your audience quickly and get their attention and there are specific videos for that, which we’ll dive into in a minute. The second stage of the funnel is Engagement, where now they’re in your pipeline.
Michelle: They’re either on your list, they’re following you on social media, or they’re in your social group. And now you can do a little bit of longer form content because they know who you are, you’ve already gotten their curiosity and they’re gonna want to watch. And then the third phase is Client Conversion, where now it’s time to put an offer in front of them. So this is where you’re talking about any type of video that will enroll them in your offer, which in your case is getting them to buy your book. So, let’s start with client attraction videos and the best place to get started with that.
So I would say at least 90 days before your book comes out. And that’s the minimum. If you can start this process while you’re writing the book, even better. You want to look at your book and I’m thinking for this specifically nonfiction authors and you want to look at all the different words of wisdom, golden nuggets, tips, strep outages that illustrate a key message that you want to share and pull out from your book. I would just go chapter by chapter and pull out from your book little nuggets that would create interesting one to two minute videos. And so Ray, let’s give me a topic that you may have written a book about in the past. I’m putting you on the spot.
Ray: My books are all about writing books, but I can tell you something on top of my mind that I need a video on right now, is putting links in books. Here’s what I want to do: is create a, quick training on look, if you put these long links or Dropbox links in your book, one, you can’t change them later if somebody bought your book and you need to change it. And so I want it teach about link shorteners. There’s link shorteners that can fire a pixel. So anyway, I want to do a training on that. What´s the best way to do that?
Michelle: Let’s say that’s one of the chapters of this book. Ray might pull out one specific tip in that regard, which is use Bentley links and share why, and then what he can do. This is what I recommend when you’re still writing your book, have a preview chapter that people can go to download. And so every golden nugget video you make is designed to drive them to that preview chapter that they can go and download. And so if you have a few different content buckets, like let’s say I write a book on how to create a high converting video platform and there’s three major sections of my book. There’s going on camera, there’s writing great content and there’s launching your video. I might choose to have three different preview chapters, one relating to go any on camera, another to writing great content and another launch great videos.
Michelle: So that at the end of any golden nugget I share relating to that specific bucket, I can drive them a preview chapter that takes a deeper dive that way. Let’s say I do a golden nugget video on the number one thing you should do before you turn on any video camera. And let’s say the tip is all about warming up. At the end of the video I can say: Hey, I’m about to roll out my book, how to create high converting videos on a budget or you know, some title like that. And then I’ll say: I have a preview chapter where I go a lot deeper into, my on-camera tips. You can download that here. So you can either have one preview chapter they can download or if that one preview chapter is not a good one to use for all your different golden nuggets, then you can do a couple of them. But basically you want to be dripping out these little bits that get them interested in the book and get them to opt-in for that free chapter and get them on your pre-launch list. That’s the goal of those attraction videos to attract them with some great content nuggets that get them into your pipeline.
Ray: And how long should those videos be?
Michelle: That’s a great question. So ideally just one to two minutes. So there’s been a lot of studies that have shown on Facebook that after the minute mark people start dropping out. The advantage of keeping them to a minute is you can also use them in your Instagram feed and you can use them in your Instagram stories, with your feed. If your videos are longer than a minute, you can go on Instagram TV and it will post. You can opt to have the first minute of that video show up in your feed. So don’t worry if it’s two minutes long, but as if you can get them down to a minute, that would be ideal.
And remember, you’re not giving away the farm, you’re just giving them enough to get interested in taking the next step with you. Okay? Yeah. And ideally you’d be dripping out at least one or two of these a week. If you really want to go to town, you could even do three. And if you plan ahead what all your golden nuggets are going to be, you can shoot them all in a batch, you know? So if these are one minute videos, you might be able to schedule a half day and just knock out 20 of them if you’re, if you’re fast on camera or even 10.
Ray: So for 90 days we are talking about 12 weeks approximately, or I guess that’s 13 weeks. If t’s a quarter and then, three a week. So 36 to 39 videos, one to two minutes each, basically 36 to 72 minutes of shooting, of actual recording time. So, what type of videos do you recommend for the next step where you’re engaging people now you’ve attracted them, maybe they had gone and checked the chapter out. Maybe they’ve opted-in, you know, what am I doing next?
Michelle: Okay, so now you can take, if you’ve done a content calendar with all your different nuggets, right? So these are the three golden nuggets I’m focusing on, or three tips, three strategies. Golden nuggets can be comprised of many things. Remember tips, strategies, stories that have key takeaways. Now with the engagement phase, you can go longer on them. You can take a deeper dive into any one of these topics. So that could be a three to five minute video. It could be a 15 minute Facebook live or YouTube live, or your broadcast to both. Or it could be a deep dive interview with you on that specific topic where someone else interviews you and you share about that topic. And that interview can be anywhere from a half hour to 45 minutes. So now you’re taking those nuggets but you’re just doing a much deeper dive.
Michelle: So maybe instead of one strategy, you can actually share three. Maybe you can share the equivalent of what you would cover in half of a chapter. So you can just go a lot deeper with the engagement videos though you do want to remember to always have that call to action at the end where they can either opt-in for your free preview chapter or if you’re getting close to the book launch, they can perhaps opt-in to be on your, you know, first notification, early access list for the book. So expert interviews are another bucket that we just mentioned longer form golden nuggets.
And then also another thing that’s really great to do are behind the scenes videos. So I’ve seen a lot of authors do this where if their graphic designer deliver some cover art to them, they might actually print it out and hold it up on camera and ask people like: “Hey, I’m so excited! I just thought my cover art for my book that’s coming out next month. I would love it if you would vote or let me know which one you like!” and just start involving your audience in your process.
Let’s say you’re about to sit down and write a chapter. You can talk, you know, to your audience about what you’re going to be working on today and what, that’s why. And that’s important. And so you just, you can really involve them in every phase. So people, a lot of times think, “oh, what am I behind the scenes is going to be so boring”. But it might be boring to you because it’s your everyday life. It may not be boring to someone else.
Ray: I suffer from it. It’s like, who’s going to want to know?
Michelle: Totally. Totally. It’s kind of like a healthy humility on social media, but then you know, it’s like, am I so self-important that I’m going to post about, you know, but I really think that it’s actually a gift to your audience because there may be some people that really are excited to know about your book and maybe that book is going really help them.
Michelle: And, and another thing you can do, if you’re about to even go on camera and do an interview with somebody else, you can pop on and do a quick video. “Hey, I’m really excited. I’m about to interview with Ray Brehm and these are the three things I’m going to be covering. And the video goes live on Tuesdays to make sure you go over to his business page and check it out!” So you can always do little traffic driving videos to other places where people can see longer form content with you. The whole goal of these behind the scene videos is to get them excited about the book that’s coming.
Ray: Okay. Couple of questions. One is if someone’s just starting out, they don’t have an audience… these videos, are we talking about usually doing them via paid ads or are we just Facebook live being on our business page, or personal profile?
Michelle: That is a great question. So all of the above. So if you can, you’d be surprised if you can boost your videos that you’re putting out there for as much as like, as little as $10 a week or a couple of dollars a day, you would be shocked at how many more views you’re going to get. So you could boost it either to a specific target audience, and this is something where you’d want to consult with somebody who specializes in Facebook groups or you can boost it if you already have a robust following on your business page, you can boost it to people who already like your page. And, and if you do have a robust following, I think that’s a really good place to start. You can also upload your email list and create a custom audience. You can also create a look alike audience that’s getting us more into the weeds of Facebook ads.
Michelle: But basically you’d be surprised at how many people will see it at a very micro budget. I did an interview on my Facebook business page, boost it for a week for $20 and it got 3000 engagements and I think 254 play throughs from the beginning to the end, and it was a long interview. It was about 45 minutes. So you know, if I was doing that every week, imagine by the end of the month I’d have 12,000 engagements with my video.
So checklist. Really, I know you’re about to see the checklist I would give you, it’d be the Facebook page, boosting it on your Facebook page, putting it in your Facebook groups that you run. You don’t want to be putting it in other people’s scripts unless you have permission. And I’m getting it out there on your LinkedIn getting even, I would even choose to have your best each week and getting it out to your existing list. Especially if you’re an entrepreneur who already has a list that this content will be right for.
Ray: Okay, that’s great. It’s great because… well, the second part of my question, I forgot. No, I do know what it is now. I’m just kidding. I do know what it is, but I love, because interestingly this is where I think a lot of people that I talk to are coming from is like, well I don’t know who’s going to read my book. I don’t have anybody, you know, asides from, you know, many hundred friends I’ve got. And just the boosting post or the just running some simple ads that helps. Now the second half of that question was: When you get to these engagement videos that are longer, you know, interviews, things like that. Are you running those ads too? Or is that now just kind of on my platform?
Michelle: Yeah, that’s a great question. So you can still do those. So going back to that long form interview I did with Tanya to target on speaking that we boosted those that video too to those who already liked my page. And that’s a long form engagement video and that’s the one that did so well. They, you know, got 254 play views and so yeah, you can definitely boost the long form videos, the engagement videos, especially if you’re boosting them to people who already like your page. They’re a warm audience already. If you’re boosting though to people that do not know you yet, I would start with boosting the shorter videos, the one minute, the two minutes, because it’s easier to get a micro-commitment on that. And then you can, you gotta test everything. You can try testing out the three to five minutes if those aren’t doing as well.
Michelle: Stick with the one to two minutes. But then those who watch for at least a minute, you can then retarget reboost to them. The longer ones. So this is like a, technique used a lot with marketers where you’re retargeting the people that watched your video for your first video, you know, for at least a minute you’ll retarget them with the longer from content. And there is one thing that I want to say cause you mentioned a couple of times the challenge of not having an audience you yet, this is where getting on other people’s platforms who do have an audience that is your ideal client is the best way to go. What I recommend people do is put together what they call their Dream 100 list. Now it doesn’t need to be literally a hundred people. It can be 20 people, it can be 15 it can be 25 but put together a list of people.
Michelle: I like to start with a warm list, people that I already know through my community, through mastermind groups I’ve been in through coaching programs, I’m in who also served the same audit. And so like you and I have a very similar avatar. And for a person that has an audience like I do, enrage does. We’re always looking for valuable content you can put in front of our people that extends beyond our own content. So for example, my people want to know how to build an authority building book. And so it’s about the people where you could add value for their audience and if they have a following and they’re willing to interview you and put it up on their platform, now you’re getting exposure to more people. Just be sure that at the end of that interview you do have some type of call to action, like an opt-in to get on your, early notification list for the book or a preview chapter, which I think would do really well. So that you’re capturing the leads who watch that video.
Ray: Yeah, that’s been great for me. The Dream 100. And of course this is what we’re doing right now. It’s exactly that you’re providing great content for people to watch, that know me. So what happens next? So we’ve, engaged, now the book is launching and we’re kind of in the conversion stage of the funnel. What type of video content should be people be putting out there now?
Michelle: Yeah, great question. So, sorry, can I circle back for one moment about the expert interviews for the expert interviews? Make sure it always ties into your book. Pick one specific asks, reflect about the book to deep dive into so that you can say, you know, there’s a lot more I cover about this in my book. You know, so make sure obviously that it relates to your book, but I just want to make sure that was clear. Going back to the final phase, the Conversion phase. One thing that you can do, and again this is all about getting you as much exposure as possible, is if you do have friends that have a big audience or any influencers that you know that have an audience that’s right for your book, ask if they will review your book, ask them if you know, tell them you’ll give them the book.
Michelle: If they, you can even recommend which key chapters they should read so they don’t have to read the whole thing and ask if they were make a one to two minute video just giving their input on what they thought of the book. Of course these are going to be people you probably already have a relationship with because reading a book is a big time commitment, but you know, people in your mastermind, close Friends, is anybody that has any type of audience. It would be great to get a review. And here’s the thing, even if they don’t have a great audience, still get a review for many. One who’s willing because if they say great things about your book, those are videos that you can edit and leverage and post and really use as social proof that your book is amazing. So book review videos are one type of video.
Michelle: I would keep them short, keep them to like one to three minutes. You don’t want to go crazy on it. Also one thing that can be really great is a promo video that positions the value of the book. So this is when the book is now available. You want to be able to talk about what people will walk away with, what are the benefits and transformations they’ll get out of reading it. What’s unique? You know, what makes it different? Make sure that you share some type of hook that makes it stand out from the other books out there. Have a similar topic. Then most importantly, tell them where they can go and get a copy. Now if you’ve gotten other people to review your book and to talk about the book and to give you some amazing soundbites, you can edit into 10 to 22nd one liners of what other people said on camera.
And if the quality of other people’s videos is not great, you can always share their soundbites. You ever see those reviews on television where there’s a black screen and the white words come flashing up? You can share them as text on the screen, you know, one or two liners that other people set. Yeah.
Ray: That’s good advice because you get different quality from people when you’re asking for reviews. And it’s always like, can I just not, I just can’t use this cause it doesn’t look good. But that’s a great idea.
Michelle: Yeah. And if other people are going to film testimonials, just give them a few tips. Like: Hey, it’d be best if your camera’s horizontal. Make sure that you’re well lit. Try to get you know, a lamp in front of you so you have some light. Make sure your sound is good. I mean these things are very basic, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t do any of those things. And so just giving them a few different tips. You can also offer to interview them on Zoom and if you have your Zoom in speaker view, then you can kind of guide them and make sure they look okay and they look right. You can ask them questions that they answer and then you can get that Zoom video edited so that you’re cut out of it and you just take the best of their soundbites. So that’s a really great way to get a video from other people.
And one last thing is to continue to do those interviews. Especially when your book is like available, you want to set up almost like an a small interview tour where you can get on as many people’s platforms as possible. Speaking about the book, you want to make it easy for the person interviewing you by pre-writing, some interview questions that they can ask you about the book, where you’re sharing your best takeaways and try to keep those interviews to about 30 to 40 minutes tops.
Ray: So for you, in your case, because I know for me in my head and maybe it’s just me, but I’ve got to think other people´s thinking is like, okay that seems like a lot of work. Do you have, how do you do that? You’ve got a content schedule or, you know, an outreach schedule where you’re getting the promos, you’re getting the interviews you’re getting, you know, you’re scheduling the golden nugget. That is, how do you organize all that?
Michelle: I love that question. That’s a great question. So, this is how I would start. I would start with, what I do is I do an Excel spreadsheet, and remember how I mentioned the golden nuggets? I would put down some columns that are the different categories of golden nuggets. So one category, especially if you’re a nonfiction writer, are golden nuggets that address people’s greatest challenges. Another category could be golden nuggets, and golden nuggets is just another word for key takeaways that address any of the false beliefs. They’re right. So for example, my clients have the false belief that video doesn’t have to be expensive, right? So I can miss PBIS that right away by showing them how they can set up a DIY studio for $200 or less if they’re going to shoot on their smartphone. So you want to think about all the false beliefs that you need to bust through.
Michelle: Then another category can be stories that show a key takeaway, and they can be your stories, client stories, or even stories in the public domain, right? So if I wanted to tell the story around a chapter I have on do your video now, don’t wait. Don’t wait until you’re perfect. Don’t wait till you’ve lost 10 pounds. Don’t wait till your pros FICO away. And then I could first start off with the story of Oprah Winfrey who back in the 80s chose not to wait. She chose to move forward despite her weight. Despite that she didn’t fit the American stereotype of what a woman on camera should look like back then. She didn’t wait. And what if she had waited? Imagine what we all would have missed out on and what she would have missed out on. So you can take stories in the public domain that illustrate a key point from your book and share those stories and then pivot to the takeaway.
Michelle: So you have all these content categories you want to do brain, just a brained up for each of those categories. And what I recommend is you can either do them by category, like let me think about all the key challenges, my book addresses. And then let me think of all the key stories I can pull out from the book. Or you can just go through chapter by chapter and start filling in your spreadsheet of every golden nugget you can find. So the name of the nugget, what page it’s on, and what would be a good title for that video. And you fill out that spreadsheet. So if you’ve done your brainstorming well, you should be able to come up with about 20 to 30 topics. And if you’re going to put out two topics a week, you’ll probably have 10 weeks of video, three topics a week, you know, so that’s going to give you a start.
Michelle: Now for your interviews. I recommend starting with a warm audience. Start with the people you know. Right. So like Ray, we know each other through Jeff Walker’s launch club. It’s a lot harder to get an interview with, somebody who’s really well known has a popular podcast. Unless you’ve got a book that has such a unique story, such a unique hook. Right? So you want to start with what’s going to be an easy yes. And as you’re building your interview skills, it’s also a real safe place to start. You don’t want to get an interview with Brendon Burchard and then you know, stutter all over on camera. Right? So start within your community. Who do you know who even find out if any of your coaches, coaches or mentors would be willing to interview you. And so that’s where you would start.
Michelle: And then what I just do systematically is I’ll go through maybe five at a time and I’ll schedule a time where I’m going to reach out to all five and you know, five a day and I’ll say: Hey, – in the case of your audience – I have this awesome book coming out. It’s going to be about X, Y, Z. Tell them why you think it would benefit their audience. And tell them that your intention, you thought it would be great if you could provide some valuable content for their audience that they could use to nurture their list and their Facebook group and their community. And would would they be open to chatting about the possibility of you’re doing an interview with them on their platform and then either they’ll say, yes, I’m interested, or no, I’m not. But then say if you’re interested, I’d be happy to hop on the phone to discuss.
And then on that call you’ll schedule a time and you’ll send them some interview questions in advance and you’re on your way. So don’t be afraid to reach out. A lot of people will be happy to do it because it solves a problem for them. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs, they want to be putting out content on a weekly basis. You just solved one of their challenges, which is what content am I going to put out next week?
Ray: So that’s, yeah. One of the things, and I’ve heard you mentioned a few times in a court and we’ve talked even offline about this, but live video, why is live video important for growing your audience or creating authority or making more sales of a book?
Michelle: Yeah, I think live video has this unique quality to it where it’s very immediate. Your audience is right there. They can ask you questions. People get notified when somebody live and so it’s going to show up a lot more easily in their notifications and in the algorithms than if you just did prerecorded. It also really lefts lets you off the hook if you tend to suffer from perfectionism paralysis because you’re live, you can’t redo it. So it really forces you into a situation where the time is now you’re on and you just do the best you can. And the audience is a little bit forgiving too when there are little flubs or technical problems cause they know that it’s live. So it really gives you this awesome immediate interaction with your audience.
And what’s great is you can take questions at the end, you can comment back to them. And I think Facebook live is a great vehicle to use. Instagram live is good. I think you get a bit less exposure with Instagram live. I find I get more exposure with Facebook live because I can boost it and pay for more people to see it. A YouTube live is something you can experiment with. And Ray, I know you use a platform called Restream. Io that allows you to broadcast live to 10 channels at once, right? 10 different places.
Ray: Yeah. It’s pretty powerful because I can stream not only to one platform like Facebook. I can stream both to YouTube and Facebook into my Facebook page, my personal profile, into my groups that I own. I can stream to all of them at once. So that’s, helpful. And you know, of course Facebook for sure is we’ll show the live video and kind of draw attention to it and let people know your live a lot more than just posting a video. But I like what you said because this for me is, you know, it’s all about, okay, what’s the time commitment? You know, I mentioned it before with the outreach and oh my Gosh!, that sounds like a lot of work. And why I liked live video is that one, there is the forgiveness.
So it’s like, Hey, I screwed up. I should’ve said this and I just say it online. Right. But too, I don’t have to prepare, I don’t have to video and then edit because that’s the piece that’s kind of stops me. Even just from the publishing standpoint, if we go back to the attraction or engagement videos, if I get bogged down like, well I need to put the intro video on or I need to put the other, you know, the trailer, you know, the departure trailer on or whatever you call it. Well let’s just, okay that’s going to take couple hours. I’ll do that later. But if I can just jump on and say what’s on my mind and you know, there’s a little bit of thought behind it but you know, you can have a quick outline for that then. That helps a lot.
Michelle: I agree. And every single video I’ve talked about so far, you can opt to do all of those live, your golden nugget videos. You’re behind the scenes videos, your expert interviews, even your promo video if you want. Although that might be the one video you may want to do prerecorded just so you can really make sure you nail the content exactly as you’d like it. Because that’s really a sales and marketing video. But the one thing I want to say also about the live that is really cool is that if you do a live that went really well, you can download that live and upload it to a YouTube link and share it with your list. Or if it lives on your business page, you can just share the link directly to the live with your list so you can really take that live and repurpose it on other platforms. Another thing you can do too, especially with any of your long form interviews, is you can do what I call nugget hearing, where you slice and dice some of the best nuggets out of there, like one minute nuggets, five minute nuggets, three minute nuggets, and you can drip those out on social media. So it’s all about leveraging those pieces of content and repurposing them as much as possible.
Ray: Well, I just wanted to let know that, while you were talking reserved nuggetteering.com if you want it, you can pay me a royalty. Yeah.
Michelle: You know what? It’s Erico, from Jeff Walker’s community who created that. I can’t take credit for that.
Ray: He came up with “nuggetteering” name?
Michelle: “Nuggetteering”. He’s out of Brazil. He’s a brilliant marketer. He has Product Launch Formula licensed in Brazil and he hires “nuggetteers”. So these are editors that he finds on Craigslist. He auditions them by saying, I’m going to give you this one piece of content. I want you to cut for me five great nuggets and any pays them, you know, for their audition. And based on that, he chooses the best “nuggetteers” so that he does not have to spend a lot of time telling them what the best nuggets are. Brilliant, right.
Ray: That’s great. I know, and the term “nuggetteers”. So if you’ve got your strategy in place, you know, we’ve gone through the three types of videos. What’s the best way to launch your videos? So they are seen by the most amount of people.
Michelle: Yeah, it’s a great question. So one big mistake people make talk about repurposing, is they’ll post on maybe one platform or two and that’s it. And I like to say there’s 10 different places you can be posting that one video. Now you don’t have to do all 10 but the more places you put that video, the more eyes that have the potential to see that video. And it starts to feel like you’re a big brand. That’s everywhere.
So these are the 10 places that I recommend. If you were to make a checklist: on your Facebook business page, in any Facebook group that you run, in your Instagram feed. And remember, if it’s a longer than a minute, you’ll need to post on Instagram TV, in your Instagram stories, on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on your blog, and then send the best of your one or two weekly videos to your list. And then if it’s a great interview, extract the audio and put it up on your podcast if you have one.
Ray: This is. I’m marking this down! This is a great interview! It’s going on my podcast!
Michelle: Thank you!
Ray: So one of the things you’ve talked about, and I haven’t really asked you directly, is you’ve talked about something called a Visible Impact System. Tell me more about that.
Michelle: Yeah, definitely. And so, if you’re an entrepreneur that’s written a nonfiction book, I would think it could be because of a legacy, but it could also be to build your authority and to build your credibility as an expert and to be seen and more known and respected by even more people. And so I would imagine unless you’re wanting to make a living as a bestselling author, that it’s also a vehicle so that people will find out more about your products and services. So video is a great, doing a book is a great way to get the word out there of who you are and what you do. Video is a great way of getting the word about the book out there, but also the word about your services out there and speaking is an amazing way to reach an audience and have them turn from cold to warm super quickly because they’re right there in the room with you.
Michelle: So what is the Visible Impact System, it’s a combination of speaking from stage and speaking on camera, selling from stage and selling from video, building your audience on stage and building your audience on video and bringing those two together because we’ve found my business partner and I, Tanya Targett -she’s the speaking expert. I’m the video expert-. We did an analysis of some of the biggest people who have the biggest businesses in the service based entrepreneur community like Jeff Walker and Brendon Burchard.
And 80% of their sales come from these live events they do where they’re speaking on stage and they’re selling people into these high level masterminds or high tier coaching packages. And only 20% of their sales are coming from their products, their books or their digital courses that they’re selling through online launches. And so, if you really want to build that robust six multi-six seven figure business, the winning combination of video and speaking are two of the best ways to do that. You can really close those higher tech, higher ticket sales through speaking and once you have a book that’s also going to help get you booked to speak, which I think is interviewing with you about soon Ray. Right?
Ray: Okay. I believe so. Yeah. I don’t have my calendar in front of me, but yeah, that’s my own personal problem… I don’t have it all in my head. What’s the best way for people to learn about that?
Michelle: Definitely. And so, we are going to do this free online training where we’re going to walk you through how to create your speak to sell and your video to sell funnel and then how to use the two of them together to actually grow your audience and your sales very quickly. So Ray will be posting the link either above or below this video. And if for any reason you can’t make the free online training and you just want to connect with me personally and see how you might be able to use these strategies in your business, you can reach out to me at: michelle@mlangemedia.com
Ray: That sounds awesome. I need to take a quick break because my head is about to explode. That’s an old Chris Farley joke. He was trying to learn the alphabet and they got to be in these like stop. You’re on my head to explode. But anyway, cause this is great stuff. So cause look, most of the people that are watching, at least from my audience, they’re like, hey! I’m just trying to break in or I’ve got a book. I’ve got some entrepreneurs coming in that need a book of course, but the combination of having that book and then the actual ability to reach out and get speaking gigs in the book helps with that.
And the speaking helps with the book. And those both help with the selling from stage a. That’s I that should be of interest everybody. And the one thing I, maybe you can tell me your experience with this, but I, one thing I think is it same goes for books and then it’s, if you start thinking like, okay, I’m working on my book, but that’s speaking thing, that’s five years, 10 years down the road, it shouldn’t be based on your Oprah example, right? People can get there quicker if they just have the knowledge of how to get there.
Michelle: And one thing that’s really good to know is that you can do a lot of sales of a very small room. One of my clients was doing a lot of launches online and he was like, you know what? I want to do a one day event taking the best of the program I’m launching. And just teaching this to a live group and then having an offer at the end where he takes them through a 12 week program. And he had only 13 people in the room. And Tanya, my business partner, coached him on some speak to sell strategies, how to, how to position the offer, how to make the offer, how to close them in the room.
And he closed 40% of the room and made $12,500. And this was a room of only 13 people that he filled just by calling his warm audience and letting them know he was doing a one day event, which was I think like a a $97 investment. So you don’t have to speak on huge stages in order to generate revenues and you can also speak in other people’s meetup groups, in other people’s, you know, masterminds. And actually as long as you present a way to continue the conversation with you at the end of that talk, you can parlay that into sales as well.
Ray: You know? Yeah, I recall. Because I think the thought is like, I don’t want to speak to a small eye, you know, how do I get from zero to this thousand people crowd yet, you know, every time I’ve seen Brendon Burchard present, he’s showing that very first room where he had like three round tables of people. And that was his very first event. And he shows the pictures of that and everybody starts where they are and moves forward. And the quickest way to do that is get help, you know, and the pieces of that you don’t understand. And that’s what we’re about. So awesome.
Michelle, I’m pumped. This is great information and we will put the link above, below, to the sides, behind… We’ll probably not behind the video, but if you want to check out the free online training, what’s the name of the training?
Michelle: It’s: How to close up to 400% more clients, by the power of video and speaking.Ray: I knew that, but I didn’t want to have to say it again. You’re better at say that to me. So with that, we’re going to say goodbye everybody. Thank you so much, and thanks for joining the Revolution and let’s get those videos going. Let’s just swamp Facebook with all our author videos and get moving everybody. So thanks Michelle and we’ll talk to everybody soon.
Listen to this amazing podcast episode hosted by Paul G. Brodie in which I talk about how to use Bookbub to advertise your book !
Paul: Hello. I am Paul Brodie and thank you for joining us for another episode of the Get Published Podcast where we help authors get published with a proven system that works today. We’re being joined by Ray Brehm, author of Author Inc. and many other books. Ray, welcome to the show.
Ray: Thanks Paul. Glad to be here.
Paul: Well Ray, it’s a pleasure to have you. Are you ready to begin?
Ray: I’m ready to begin. I am sitting from the left to the right on your radio dial. That’s what they used to say in the old days with the football when I listened to the Cleveland Browns, they’d say the Browns are going left to right on your radio dial just to give you a visual image.
Paul: Nice. All right. Right. Question number one, what is the one piece of advice that you would give to a first time author who is currently writing a book?
Ray: All right, well if they are currently, if you are currently writing your book, I’m going to just steal a quote from Rachel Hollis that I heard at a Brendon Burchard event that has stuck with me ever since. And it’s something that I struggled with in the beginning and it is: “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle”. And you know, you and I were off the air a few seconds ago or a few minutes ago and you said something and I’m like, I just felt this wave of intimidation come over me just because of the, your prolific podcasting expertise. And I’m like thinking: Oh my God! I’ll never get there myself! And that I was doing the exact same thing that I’m telling you not to do now. Is hey, I’m not 462 podcasts in! That’s okay. I’m starting where I am and you know, I’m a whatever podcast in.
And that’s probably the most important thing I, you know, I think you can do with anything is you can’t compare yourself to the people that are, have been doing it longer. And if you’re looking at, so this can happen if you’re writing a book you go out and you’re looking at other books and you’re like, Oh my gosh, they’ve got 800 reviews. Or look at all the celebs that wrote editorial reviews on the book. Don’t worry about any of that. You start where you are and you keep moving and get that first book done and don’t worry about anything else cause you’ll get there too.
Paul: Absolutely. And I remember we were talking about it and I said, Hey, you’re going to be episode 462 and you were like: four sixty what? I’m like, Hey, it’s, we’ve been doing this a year and a half. Everyone’s got a process. It’s just things tend to evolve. We started doing an episode a week and it just snowballed from that point. And that’s what I tell everyone. You can’t compare yourself to anyone but you because if you start comparing yourself to this person or that person, then you really just lose the focus of what you want to accomplish.
Ray: Oh my God! You did all that in a year and a half! Now I’m intimidated again!
Paul: No, as I say, it took a life of itself. So as I say, we, we’ve tapered that down now that’s, we’re still releasing one episode a week. Oh, I’m sorry, one episode a month, every day, Monday through Friday. But you know, we have a tapered down things a little bit just because it did take a little bit of a life of itself. Well, Ray, what do you feel is the hardest parts about getting published?
Ray: I, think, you know, it kind of relates to question number one. It’s the confidence piece. I didn’t actually start writing my first book until I read something that convinced me that I could become a bestseller on Amazon. And it’s wherever you can find that confidence, take it and use it and realize that you’ve just got to take that first step.
And a lot of times it’s just a little bit of, you know, something I read gave me the confidence that, hey! like the way they explain how to get bestseller. I know I can do that. And I’m here to tell you, and you probably are too, Paul, that anybody listening to this right now is able to become a bestselling author on Amazon. And if you know that, it’s a lot easier to let the creativity flow because you’re not worried about what happens next, logically you just can stay in your creative mind and not worry about that.
Paul: Absolutely. Well, let’s talk a little bit about market and a little, a little deeper into this. So please share a marketig strategy that you have used in your book launch or book launches that has worked well.
Ray: Well, we’re living in a time where we can perform highly targeted marketing of people. And one of the things that I’ve been doing for a few years now, but when I discovered it, it was just a game changer was the ability to target specific people for your book. So for instance, in what I’m specifically talking about is in my case, the game changer for me was realizing when BookBub came out. That’s bookbub.com they came out in their author platform with, -they used to do these feature deals, or they still do and you had to apply for them and barely any, you know, it was very hard to get selected. I know a lot of famous people that still haven’t gotten been selected-, but then they came out with their, their basically their paper click and pay per impression platform.
And that was a game changer because it’s, you know, you can run ads on Facebook, but there’s, you know, a lot of different ads going on. Bookbub is a platform of people that are looking for good deals on good books and they do some things that Amazon doesn’t even do. And they’d let you target by specific genre for one, which doesn’t work quite as well, but by specific author as well.
So, for instance, if you’re writing a self help book and you know, you know, or you think you know that readers of Tony Robbins would be interested in your book, you can target specifically people that either like Tony Robbins or bought Tony Robbins books on BookBub’s platform and I call it “author look alike”. So I go out there and then, so if I know that I can run some tests on that for very inexpensive and see what the click through rate will be and get people over to Amazon.
So you run it on their platform book post platform, but you’re giving them the Amazon link or, or you know, you can go see other retailers, I look Barnes and Noble and so forth. And this gives you a highly targeted idea of who likes your book. And then, if I have success with that, I can go on Amazon and look at Tony’s author page and see the top 12 other authors that people buy in addition to Tony. So if somebody buys Tony’s book, they also like buying from a Napoleon Hill for instance. And I can now go and pull that person, test that out. And so I go and just pull authors and most people know, like the top five authors that they want to emulate. Well those are the people you want to target the readers of as well. And it’s very, very powerful to target those specific readers.
And in fact, a year ago I released a book called Snowball Book Launch and I was doing this and what you think isn’t always the case, I thought, okay, it’s going to be other self-publishing gurus. Readers want to read my Snowball Book Launch book turns out the number one click through rate I got was for readers of Gary Vaynerchuck’s books and I would’ve never guessed it, but I went through this process where I was finding lookalikes and then testing in, you know, Gary popped up under somebody, maybe a couple levels down and I was like, okay, let’s try Gary and his people clicked through more than anyone else.
So you never know and it’s a great way to test. And also, and then you can actually use data from BookBub and and put it into keywords in your Amazon ads and so forth.
Paul: So are there any particular strategies that you recommend for authors out there that once he utilized their book with BookBub to promote it on there?
Ray: Well, I would, so if you have to have an a book published, so it’s either in preorder, or book published and then you can create an author account on BookBub and the strategies I would use they, they give you the option of pay per click or pay per impression. I found that when I’m trying to generate for one test data and actual lots of clicks, paper impression works better faster and the paper click rate is still the same per impression means you pay, like you might bid $8 dollars to get a thousand impressions in people’s email boxes.
And that usually ends up being about the same even sometimes better than if you chose the paper click option, which would take a lot longer. And when we’re trying to test or we’re trying to drive sales for bestseller, we want as many clicks as possible as soon as possible.
So I use the paper impression and I target only readers of particular authors and I’ll go through 20 or 30 in the beginning to kind of test it out. And then the successful ones, I’ll start pulling their look alike lists from the Amazon author pages and put them into the BookBub in separate. I leave them in separate ads so I can see the results per author. And you’ll see amazing results if you do that.
Paul: Now you mentioned “look alike lists”. So tell us a little bit more about how that works.
Ray: Yeah, so, if you ever heard of the a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, I think it’s so, so I mean that’s what I call, in fact, I call my chapter that in the soul book launch. But the idea is that it, you know, the six degrees of Kevin bacon is this urban folklore, although I think it’s kind of true. I don’t know, but that any actor in Hollywood can be connected via least six movies to Kevin bacon. So if, you know, Tom cruise was in a movie with Val Kilmer who was in a movie with blah, blah, blah, blah. And then within six movies you get to Kevin Bacon, like, cause he was in all these movies.
Well, the same theory is here is how do we get these, this list of authors to target. And generally what I do with like people that I’m working with, I’ll say, okay, give me five or 10 people that you want to emulate. And we, we write down those authors and then each one of those authors, we go look at their author page in Amazon and right below their picture it’ll say people also bought from these authors. So, for instance, like I said, Tony Robbins is there and you look below and the also boughts and it says, okay, Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, you know, whoever else, now we’ve got a list of 12 more authors we can target.
Ray: And I do. So the 5 or 10 that they gave us to me originally, we create 12 from each of those five or 10 and sometimes you get duplicates. But now with those, let’s say there’s 10 we’ve just created a list within 5 minutes of 120 authors that we can target in BookBub. And then if you take it another level down, it’s, you know, whatever that, you know, a thousand or 1200 or whatever, but just doing that, that first degree and then into the second grade, we can get 120 authors that we should try to target in BookBub.
And so I call that lookalike authors. So it’s like who, who else, what other authors are like this author, the readers like this off these other authors. Who are those people? And, and let’s test them and target them. And a lot of this we do during preorder when we’re launching a book because then I already know before the book even releases what type of readers are interested in this book.
Paul: Excellent. Well speaking of books, I’d like to know what is your favorite book and what was the number one thing that you learned from it?
Ray: Well, I will say this. My favorite book is always the one I’m reading right now. And right now I am reading Flip the Script by Oren Klaff and it is about sales and it’s about basically it’s the anti pushy salesperson way of talking to people relating to people. And you know you and I were talking about this offline but it’s, it’s one of the best way, you know, every author should be from the beginning putting together a plan, putting together a Dream 100 which a Dream 100 is like who are the hundred most influential people that you would love to be friends with and partner with and affiliate with and cross promote with no matter how high up they are.
Ray: And that’s your Dream 100 list. And you should be working on connecting with those people, whether, you know, and it might take a year or two, but some people it might take a lot less time. And the way to do that is to offer them some something, you know, value, like getting on a anthology book with you or so forth. And so getting to the concept here of the Flip the Script book, he talks about this status alignment. And it’s, it’s how to get people that don’t know you or even skeptics to give you the time of day to give you the respect you deserve. And that’s by aligning your status. And so we talked about like whatever your expertise is in, you’re letting them know that in the beginning of the conversation.
So if you, you know, if I came to you and we didn’t know each other and I said, Hey Paul, I’m putting together an anthology book and I want to put you on it. And you know, you might be like, yeah, okay, whatever. But if I, if I’m talking, if I talk to you about, Hey, you know, that we can never have too many leads, we can never have too many exposure, too much exposure, we can never have too many books in our library as authors on, you know, on your book library and Amazon or whatever. Yeah, I’ve got a solution to add another book in and handle and add to each of those things for you. And the fact that I know that and I know that that’s always something that you’d be interested in or other self-publishing people or entrepreneurs that helps build the status alignment when we start talking.
And so that’s one of the things that I think people get caught up in is I’m publishing a book. I don’t know much about publishing yet, but you know what your topic of your book is. You know, the expertise. You can reach out to people like that. And those are the people that whose audiences you want to talk to you anyway, and they, they want to talk to your audience. So work on the status, you know, figure out what your status alignment is and don’t be afraid to start.
Paul: And for a final question, what is your favorite quote and why?
Ray: This goes with the book thing is, it’s whatever is in the top of my head at the time. I’ve got a lot of favorite quotes. I’m going to go back to Rachel Hollis. I mean this is, you know, what’s amazing about her is she’s kind of like, she’s got a mom blog right when she spoke at this event. And I’m like, she, I was just writing quotes down from her the entire time and look, one of the things, probably the biggest fear of all of us when we’re publishing and there isn’t necessarily a cure for it, but this quote will help is the fear that we’re going to get bad reviews or attacked or the trolls and, and and that’s sometimes stops us on the tracks. You know, I sat for a day, my first book launch. That Snowball Book launch.
There was four people waiting for that thing to release and they went out and wrote these scathing reviews and they couldn’t possibly read it cause it came out within an hour. And I’m like, Oh my gosh!, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. And then the real reviews came in and we all are going to have trolls. You put yourself out there, you’re going to have people trying to bring you down because they don’t want to try.
Which brings me to the quote, which is another Rachel Hollis quotes and it’s: “Don’t let people in the cheap seats take an expensive view of your life”. And that sticks with me because there’s always trolls. Never once if I had somebody that was, that I looked up to, I haven’t seen, and maybe you could tell me if I’m wrong, Paul, but I haven’t seen anybody that I look up to ever write anything bad about anybody. Nope. They just don’t do it. So the people that are out there waiting to write something bad rather than help people are there in the cheap seats. Do not let them take an expensive view and your life.
Paul: Exactly. Haters gonna hate that. That’s right.
Well, Ray, I want to thank you for being a guest on the show. What is the best way for people to find you online?
Ray: I would say the best way is to go check out bookflix.tv You can find my information there and you know, we’ve created a platform where people are just getting started. It’s a comfortable place. You get coaching and coaching in the group. It’s very nominal to get involved and learn a lot of the stuff that’s going to give you confidence and in your path to publishing bestseller, monetizing it’ll give you, even give you confidence to work with people like you, Paul, they got 462 million podcasts out there that’ll give you confidence. And so, but just go take that next step, get the book done. It’ll change your life.
Paul: Right. Thank you once again for being on the show, and I wish you all the best in your author journey yet.
Ray: Thanks, Paul. Thanks for being. Thanks for having me on.
Paul: Thanks again for joining us today to learn more about how you can be featured in our brand new get published business book, go to get published podcast.com
Last chance to view this year’s GET PUBLISHED SUMMIT. [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/JEer97UQ2Va4/DGoV]
Some of the Speakers Include: DAVE CHESSON, Honoree Corder, Jonathan Green, Scott Allan, Gundi Gabrielle, MARC REKLAU, Mary O’Donohue, Derek Doepker, Michelle Kulp, Brian Berni, Alinka Rutkowska, Ray Brehm, Gin Stephens, Ashley Emma and many others.
Be sure to check out the interviews I bolded since you don’t have much time.
It is free to attend, but you can upgrade to lifetime access to the sessions if you like.
Register and start watching Free here:
Get Published Summit 2021 [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/JEer97UQ2Va4/DGoV]
P.S. I am running the behind the scenes tech for Paul, so if you do upgrade to the premium pass, I will know. And I HAVE A SURPRISE BONUS FOR THOSE WHO DO UPGRADE TO THE PREMIUM PASS (USING MY LINK). Just be prepared to do it right away for the big discount.
Get Published Summit 2021 [https://raybrehm.krtra.com/c/JEer97UQ2Va4/DGoV]
P.P.S. Some other things you may find helpful when you are ready:
Ray Brehm 