Juliet explores how they got to where they are and what the point of this show is going to be. First of all, go over and take the assessment and find out where your skill set lies at www.PromoteProfitPublishQuiz.com. The assessment is a pivotal piece of what they do to build audience through your books, products, and services. Even if you’re not interested in finding out what your skill set is, go over and explore the assessment marketing because it is the key to finding that audience and knowing exactly what they want. Juliet talks about the journey – how they got to where they are and why they do what they do – and what this show is going to be about.

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Promote, Profit, Publish: The Journey And The Vision

On this episode, we’re going to explore how we got to where we got and what the point of this show is going to be. First of all, I’d love to invite you to go over and take our assessment and find out where your skillset lies. It’s at www.PromoteProfitPublishQuiz.com. As you’ll find when we have our guests on this show, the assessment is a pivotal piece of what we do to audience builds for your books, products and services. Even if you’re not interested in finding out what your skill set is, please go over and explore the assessment marketing because it is the key to finding that audience and knowing exactly what they want. What we’re going to talk about is more of the journey, how we got to where we are and why we do what we do and what this show is going to be about.

I started my company back in 2010, 2011-ish, and it was the beginning for me of figuring out that the traditional publishing companies were doing less and less to help authors promote. They wanted someone who was already automatically going to be profitable for them. That’s great if that’s something that works for you. A lot of people were producing books for business and that wasn’t working for them. They wanted to go the self-publishing route because they knew they couldn’t get their book published traditionally. It’s a long drawn out process, eighteen months to two years by most accounts of people out there. There were a lot of things going on with those books that weren’t serving people as well.

One of them was that a lot of times when you were accepted for a traditional publishing contract, your book came out two years later and it didn’t look anything like the book that you put in there. The object of these companies was to make it more in the mainstream. They want to make a profit. We always have to keep that in mind is publishing companies are in business to make a profit. My second book came out and it was mediocre like the first book was. Sales-wise, it did better than the first book. My third book, Granny Heist, came out and it was a game-changer for me. I had a lot of sales over 20,000 I believe and over $25,000 in sales between my Kindle and all of those platforms that I use.

What was the game-changer for me is that back then, Amazon would actually put you into a mystery bestseller list. My book was number 38 between Janet Evanovich and Sue Grafton, which was amazing to me because I’m a huge mystery reader. Those were two of my favorite authors. Janet Evanovich, she still is with her silly gang of half-assed detectives. I love them. I don’t even know how they solve anything. Sue Grafton with her alphabet series. They were people that I admired and looked up to. Every time a book came out of theirs, I anticipated it.

What happened at that point in my career with this was that writing was an accessory, it wasn’t paying the bills. I still had a day job but I had people coming to me saying, “How did you do that?” A lot of it was platform building, getting out there and getting myself known. That’s where so many people struggle in this industry is, “How do I get myself out there and how do I get myself known?” Literally, platform building, you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and nobody will know who you are. It’s all about the sequencing of how you do it. It’s about understanding that your book is a product like all of the other products.

Here’s the problem in the entrepreneur space back then and it still is a problem. Many of us will have an area of expertise and we will decide we’re going to be a coach so we’ll hang out our shingle. We don’t have any business experience. We don’t have any marketing experience and most of all, we don’t have any money. That becomes a problem with so many of these people who are struggling. They have great intentions. They’re very passionate about their subjects, but they don’t have the business sense. Many of those people have been taken advantage of by coaches who don’t care much. It’s more about the volume than actually serving their clients. That’s pretty much across the board in the marketing world.

Let’s go back and look at 2013, 2014-ish. People were going out. They were writing business books. They were going to these big rah-rah sessions with writing coaches. These coaches were telling them, “The reason your products and services aren’t selling is because nobody knows who you are. A book will cure that. It is the end-all be-all.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t exactly the truth because what gets you out there and known are your platform-building activities. What are the things that are going to make you money every day? Where do you need to be known? Where do you have to go? Do you have to show up in a way that’s salesy? There were so many things going on back there. People were trying the internet marketing and it wasn’t converting. It was about doing this in the right sequence and building trust.

You can probably all remember a time when everybody was out there making $1 million on the internet. The truth was a lot of people weren’t. They were telling you they were. The people who were, were going to a lot of events. They had a system that worked. They were building email lists. They were building trust, trust and referrals in the marketplace. That’s what kick-starts you as an entrepreneur with a book. Around 2014 to 2015, people started bringing us their books and we started asking, “Why did you write this book?” “Because we wanted to hear what was your audience connection?” “Who is your audience?” A lot of the answers we got with self-help books was Jack Canfield’s audience is our audience. For us we were thinking, Jack Canfield didn’t pop up one day and write a book and become well-known. Everybody thinks that’s what happened with Chicken Soup for The Soul.

Promote Profit Publish: You need to be intentional in talking to your potential audience before you create anything so that you know you are creating the right product and service for them.

Jack had been around for quite a while. He had been doing a significant amount of internet marketing. He was well-known and that was his big break. It’s like that Hollywood waiter who’s been waiting tables for fifteen years and all of a sudden, he’s the big guy in Hollywood. People are saying, “He’s new, he’s this, he’s that. He’s been around for a long time paying his dues.” We were seeing that people were coming to us and saying, “I’ve been told that this book will help me sell more products and services.” The problem was when we went back to those products and services and we explored the whole idea of why they did it and who their audience was, the fact was they didn’t have an audience. They weren’t talking to people. They hadn’t queried their audience or they weren’t talking to the right people. People weren’t interested in their products because they had been created because I thought there was a need. That’s what we do.

I see a need in the marketplace. What’s pivotal here is you may see that need, but then you’re in the position of convincing people. That never goes well in the sales world. You need to be intentional and talking to people, your potential audience before you create anything, so that you know you are creating the right product and service for them. That’s where we began. In 2016, we transitioned our whole business to start going back and serving those authors who were bringing us books and saying, “Let’s put of publishing this. Let’s go back all the way and find out why these products and services aren’t selling. Let’s start communicating with the audience.” We developed a system that is three parts. We call the first part foundational tools. The second part are your getting known tools and the third part is your, “Let’s monetize now.” That takes a tremendous amount of capital and patience and being able to do that. Remember, this is like a business. Most businesses don’t go out and start selling their product. They need capital. They have the idea. They need capital manufacturing. It’s the same thing here. Keep your day job when you’re going through this journey because that’s why people run out of money.

They lose a job or they quit their job and say, “I’m this coach now,” and unfortunately, this all takes money to be able to do. It’s a very rare individual who can build their own platform. That’s what we’re all about and what we’re going to explore is those foundational tools. How strong is your message? Who is your audience? Are you connecting? Do you have an avatar? We do a lot of this with assessment marketing, which we’ll talk about as well. We have a proprietary system that not only helps you be able to connect and query that audience and develop content because content is essential, but be able to begin to lead generation. At the very minimum as an entrepreneur, if you have one-on-one coaching you console. Let’s get that refined and let’s get some of that sold and see what these people tell you they need instead of what you are assuming they need.

This is huge. This is a big piece. There isn’t a company that goes out there with a physical product who doesn’t establish a need first before they get their capital. We have intellectual property that we’re selling when we’re selling books, products and services. We have to be able to go through the same process and do the same things. What we’re going to be exploring with the guests who are going to be on is, how do we get that client avatar? How do we start the book? How do we do this assessment marketing and get clear on who our audience is and what they need? How do we go back and develop and then get ourselves out to the world? We need that book. There’s no doubt about that, but we have to write the right book. We have to have the right talk. We have to be getting ourselves on stages and in front of massive amounts of people.

One of our clients did that. She had a book. She wasn’t selling enough. We developed the assessment marketing for her. She spoke in front of 400 people and had tremendous results. One of the things that we’ll be talking about a lot too is conversion. One of the early things that happened with the books was people were bringing us these online marketing attempts, “I have landing page. I have an opt-in. I have a free giveaway, but the problem is I don’t know how to get people there. My ads aren’t working, my whatever it was wasn’t working.” It wasn’t always the efforts getting people there, it was the conversion once they got there. There are so many moving parts to all of this. Many people come to us and we see they have all these scattered pieces. They don’t know how to bring them together.

This is going to be a journey and for many of you, you may have to go back to the very beginning and reassess an audience. You may have to connect with some of these people that we have as guests and talk about, “How do I develop that signature talk? How do I develop that assessment and get it out there, so I can start connecting? How do I get great content out there?” The world is shifting into a value paradigm. How do I prepare content, which is a must that brings value and builds trust and develops my well-known nest? How do I get out there and get known and build all this without being super salesy? That’s another thing that kills you in the internet world is salesy convincing.

This is going to be a journey as we go through this exploring all of that and finding out if we have a platform already, how we can make it better? If we don’t have to have a platform, how to start out on the right foot and refine those products and services and find out why they’re not selling? How we can do a better job? How we can generate more leads? For those at the very beginning, how do we start from scratch? One thing that we’re going to talk about here over and over and if you don’t like the sound of this, this probably isn’t your blog and I invite you not to read any further. All of this takes work. It’s a business. It’s a process. It’s a growth process.

As you go through building your platforms, you’re going to find that you’re going to grow on so many levels. You’re going to rebrand because you’ve grown. The key to all of this is promote, profit and then publish is our way of saying, “Let’s go out and get yourself well-known. Let’s generate profit and not wait until after the book is out there. Let’s get all of the pieces integrated and moving.” You as an entrepreneur, a coach, an author, a speaker or a small business, let’s get you making money before you even think about the next steps in the book. Thanks again for stopping by.

Important Links:

• www.PromoteProfitPublishQuiz.com
• Granny Heist
• Janet Evanovich
• Sue Grafton
• Chicken Soup for The Soul
• https://superbrandpublishing.com

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