Gifting Your Way To Greatness: The Counterintuitive Path To Publishing Riches

Ready to make your mark in the competitive world of publishing? Join Juliet Clark as she sits down with international best-selling author and keynote speaker Patrick Snow. Patrick reveals his proven strategies for writing, publishing, and marketing your book to build a thriving speaking and coaching empire. Discover how to leverage your book as a powerful marketing tool, land high-paying speaking engagements, and attract a steady stream of coaching clients. Patrick shares insider secrets on crafting compelling book titles, designing eye-catching covers, and mastering the art of book introductions. If you’re ready to transform your expertise into publishing riches, tune in and learn from the best!

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Gifting Your Way To Greatness: The Counterintuitive Path To Publishing Riches

I’m going to jump in on our guest. I’m so excited. I’m going to be working on a couple of projects with Patrick Snow. He is an international best-selling author, professional keynote speaker, publishing, speaking, and book marketing coach. He does what I do, except without speaking. He discovered his gift for speaking at age seventeen while giving a pre-game speech to his high school football team.

Since then, Patrick has electrified more than 3,500 audiences on four continents to achieve individual and organizational destinies. As a publishing coach, he has mentored more than 1,200 clients throughout the world to successfully publish their books. Many of these clients have also gone on to be speakers, coaches, and consultants as well.

Patrick’s destiny message has been widely recognized in the media, including The New York Times and Forbes magazine. His book, story, and family photo were also featured as a cover story in the 2002 issue of USA Today. Patrick is the author of many books, including the international bestseller Creating Your Own Destiny: How to Get Exactly What You Want Out of Life and Work, which has sold upwards of 1 million copies in five languages in 108 countries worldwide since 2001.

This book and his second book, The Affluent Entrepreneur: 20 Proven Principles for Achieving Prosperity, have both been purchased by John Wiley & Sons in New York and published under their imprint. Originally from Michigan, Patrick graduated from the University of Montana in 1991. He lived in the Seattle area for more than twenty years until 2013, when he achieved his lifelong dream and moved to the beautiful island of Maui, Hawaii. Please join me in welcoming the Dean of Destiny, Patrick Snow.

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Patrick, welcome. I am so excited to have you. You are so knowledgeable.

Thank you, Juliet. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Journey To Becoming A Successful Speaker And A Best-Selling Author

It is. Let’s jump right in. Before we get to the five ways to become a bestselling author, how did you get where you are now? What was your journey in all of this?

I played sports all the way through high school and into early college, and my goal was to play in the NFL, but I had a back injury that ended my college football career. At that point, I turned my athletic discipline into my academics into personal growth and development. About halfway through college, I started reading massive numbers of books, maybe 1,000 or 1,500 books before 25. Through high school and college, I almost never read. It was in college that I started reading these personal growth and development books. I had always been a quote junkie because I had all these quotes from sports.

I loved speaking. I took one speech class in high school and one speech class in college. I got an A in both of those subject matters. I was a B student, so that offset the Cs that I got in chemistry and algebra and whatever else. Long story short, I gave a speech as part of my MBA program at the University of Montana. I was an undergrad, and I submitted a business plan to the MBA program. I got third place, but I got to go speak in front of 1,000 people, and I loved it. I graduated from the University of Montana in 1991, moved to Seattle, and started speaking to Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, churches, schools, FBLA, DECA, all these organizations, Rotary, and Kiwanis.

I was doing well speaking, but I wasn’t doing very well getting paid. I got free breakfast and free lunch and free dinner and free pens and free food, free parking. Finally, one day, I had a come to Jesus talk. I was like, “What am I doing wrong here, God? Why can’t I go from free speaking to fee speaking?” This message I heard back from the universe completely changed my life. I heard this back. People try to give me this quote, but it’s not me. I heard it from the universe.

It says this, “If you want what others have, you must do what others have done, and you will get what others have gotten.” I looked at my mentors, Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Dr. Stephen Covey, and John Maxwell, and all of them were doing very well as professional speakers. One thing in common was that they wrote and published a book, and they used their book as the platform from which they could stand to launch their speaking, coaching, and consulting careers.

I spent five years and $20,000 writing and publishing Creating Your Own Destiny. I made so many mistakes. I did so many things wrong. I updated it ten times into this 10th edition before I sold it out to John Wiley & Sons. At the end of the day, now, my speaking fee is $25,000. I don’t share that to be arrogant or narcissistic. I want to show you that I was a $25,000-an-hour speaker back in the day, I just didn’t have a book. I teach this concept. Without a book, you can’t get booked. If you want to be a race car driver, you need a race car. If you want to be a horse jockey, you need to have a horse. Without those resources, you can’t be a speaker, a race car driver, a horse racer, or whatever. That’s how I got into this industry.

I love that. I started a senior center. The places we start are not as glamorous as we think they’re going to be.

It’s stage time and practice.

The 5 Proven Ways To Become A Best-Selling Author

You’re good at some things in the publishing world that I want to talk about. The first is the five ways to be a best-selling author. People read a lot of stuff on the internet, and a lot of times, it’s not the right stuff. Tell us what those five ways are that you know work.

I made every mistake in the process. Ultimately, there are about a hundred decisions to make in the process of writing and publishing a bestselling book. I had a client who’s not very coachable send me his third homemade cover design and change his title three times in a row, all of which were going in the wrong direction. He said, “Patrick, I read somewhere that you need one big thing. You need one big thing for your book to do well.” I said, “Exactly. I know what that one big thing is. You need to spend the rest of your life marketing and promoting your book, 15 to 30 minutes every day.”

Most people do a 30-day book marketing campaign, 60-day, maybe 90-day. Oprah doesn’t call. Dr. Phil doesn’t call. They don’t end up on the front page of the newspaper. They abandon book one, then write book two, then three, then four, then five. The one big thing about this message, which I coach and teach, is that you need to spend the rest of your life marketing and promoting your book. A successful book is 5% writing and 95% promotion. With that being the case, I teach five ways to be a bestselling author.

The number one way to be a bestselling author is you need to speak. Bob Moawad taught me this. When you speak, business happens because your voice is your moneymaker. The more that you speak, whether you’re getting paid or whether it’s for free, the more you speak, the more you earn. The more you speak, the more books that you sell. The best way to spend the rest of your life promoting your book is to do workshops, teleseminars, live events, in-person keynotes, and workshops, all of the above. Be a podcast guest. Try to be a guest on a podcast every single day, Monday through Friday, for the rest of your life, and you’ll be a bestselling author. That’s number one.

Number two, our parents teach us never to judge a person by the way they look. Our creator says don’t judge at all. We should be non-judgmental. In the field of publishing, the only way that people judge your book is through its cover design. Based on that, don’t have your brother, sister, auntie, uncle, or someone in India or the Philippines, nothing wrong with those countries, I have great friends from both those places. Don’t have them do your cover design. Hire a professional. Have someone like yourself who’s been doing this for numerous years create a world-class cover design because people are going to look at your book cover and they’re going to see it in a minute and say, “That’s what I want.”

By the way, the biggest mistake people make on their covers is putting their mugshot right on the front of the book. I teach my clients that the front cover is for the reader, and the back cover is for the author’s photo. If you’re Mike Tyson, Cher, or Joe Montana, if you’re a celebrity or a movie star, you can put your photo on the front of the book. If you’re not famous, you can’t do that.

The number three way to be a best-selling author is that you need to have a compelling title. About 25 years ago, I spent $3,000 with a copywriting company, and they taught me the three bestselling, award-winning book title formulas. We don’t have time for all three, but I’ll give you the best one. The best one is you take a verb, and add ing to it to make it an action verb or a gerund. Similar to Creating Your Own Destiny, Balancing Family and Work, Achieving Unlimited Success.

Here’s one for you. If you are suffering from ovarian cancer, I had a client in LA who wrote a book titled Beating Ovarian Cancer. How much more easy does it get? When you hear that title, Beating Ovarian Cancer. Is there any doubt what it means? Prioritizing Your Self-Care. These are chapter titles from some of my award-winning, bestselling author clients because they used that ing action verb.

If I were to do a book titled Create Your Own Destiny, that’s a command or a demand, and I’m barking an order to you. Nobody wants to be taught anything. When you say Creating Your Own Destiny, that’s a little bit softer. It’s a journey. It’s a process. That title formula not only works for the title of your book, but every one of your chapter titles should also begin with an -ing action verb gerund. In doing so, it’s more of a softer journey, a roadmap process. You, as the author, are the virtual mentor, and your client, the reader, follows you wherever they go because you’re not teaching and preaching. Number three is the title of the book.

Number four, you need to have a hook for an introduction. Everybody writes their introduction like this, “I wrote this book because of me, I, she ran away, he ran away, she cheated on me, he cheated on me, bankruptcy, foreclosure, divorce, this health issue, dog got hit by a car, cat got ran over by the truck.” I love animals, so I shouldn’t use those examples. The point of it is, “I’m a victim, so please read my book because of my victimhoodness.” Nobody’s going to read that. The average book is read through about 8 or 10 pages, and then the reader is bored, and they put it down. I’m okay if you talk about in the book why you wrote the book, but the actual book introduction should be about the reader.

“I feel your pain. I have been in your shoes. I want to help you achieve your dreams, your goals, your visions. If I can do it, so can you. Let’s lock arms together. Allow me to be your virtual mentor to help you create, experience, realize, and achieve your destiny. If I can do it, so can you. Are you ready to begin? Good. Let’s get started making this journey together.” You now see that you’re asking questions of the reader. You’re hooking them in like a fish, and now the introduction is all about them, and they can’t wait to dive into the content of the book. I call it the five-to-one rule.

Every time you say the word I or me anywhere in the book in the first person, you need to say the word you or your five times, and the same is true for a professional speaker. “I and me, I and me, I and me.” People think you’re a narcissist. “You and your, you and your, you and your.” Your book is a love letter that you’re writing to one reader. With that being the case, that’s what you got to do.

Finally, number five is you need to have great content, and by having great content, don’t edit your own book. Don’t have somebody that doesn’t know what they’re doing edit your book. Have a world-class professional do a full edit, do a full proofread, and when you do that, great things are going to happen. Those are the five ways to become a best-selling author.

I love that because I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “My grandmother is an English major,” but that doesn’t make you someone who should be editing books.”

I had somebody say, “My sister-in-law can do this.” I’m like, “Great, and your editor only costs this much, and my sister-in-law’s $500 cheaper.” I don’t know anything about your sister-in-law, and I can’t vouch for her work. A year and a half later, because the sister-in-law has a full-time job, the sister gives the book back and says, “I’m sorry, but, you know, two-thirds of the way done. I don’t have time. I can’t finish this project.” Meanwhile, the editor that we have on our team gets the book done in three weeks, and then a week of back and forth, and the book is done.

How To Leverage Paid Speaking Gigs To Sell More Books

When I worked with your editor last time, I loved that he stayed with his client through the formatting process because people don’t understand that when you go through formatting, you’ve looked at that book so many times, that you’re never going to see the mistakes at that point. You’re sick of your own book by that point. You encourage people and teach them how to get paid speaking gigs, which not only allows them to get paid for the speaking, but now you’re selling books at the back of the room. We’re looking for, “Does that person who’s hiring you to speak have an educational budget that they can buy those books?” Tell us, how does that all happen?

The problem is so many of our clients come to us, and they don’t have a highlight video created. They want to create a speaking career, and they published a book, but they can’t get a darn speaking engagement because they don’t have a highlight video to send to the meeting planner. The first thing that I have our clients do is as soon as their book comes off the press, within 90 days, on about the 90th day, I want my clients to do a book launch party.

A book launch party is an in-person event at a high-end hotel or a community center, you have ten volunteers on your marketing team, and they bring ten. There’s 100 right there. Your sphere of influence, you bring 100. You do media and other promotions, and maybe you get 100, 150, 200, or 250 people in the audience. This is your coming-out party to the world, letting the world know that you are an author, that you are a speaker. You may never have been paid to speak before, but this is your first opportunity to do so.

It’s super important to hire a world-class video production company to do a two-camera video shoot, one in the very back of the room, and then another one walking around you on stage, capturing the size of the audience. The book launch party is a three-hour event, and the middle hour of that three-hour event is you, as the author, giving a one-hour keynote speech from the stage on video. It’s okay if you screw up for 90% of the time, as long as, for 10% of the time, or 3, 4, or 5 minutes, we have world-class content, world-class video. As a speaker coach, I help people do that.

As a result of doing the book launch party, not only is your confidence boosted through the roof because you get a world-class highlight video, but you might also sell $2,000 or $3,000 in books. You’re a paid professional speaker, even if you’ve never done so. By the way, you make a coaching offer. You go for what Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen always said, “You must ASK to GET.” From the stage, you ask in order to get, and you let your audience know that 100% of your speaking engagements come by way of referral only. If you’ve benefited from this message, I encourage you to come to the back of the room, give me your business card, and I’ll gladly send out a copy of the book to the meeting planner. That’s how you do it. My successful clients all do a book launch party.

My unsuccessful clients, skip it, and then, as a result, they don’t do one. Once you do the in-person book launch party, then a week later, do the exact same thing, but do a virtual book launch on Zoom. Some people try to do them both at the same time, which is a little bit challenging, talking to the audience, and then talking to the computer, and talking to the audience. I like keeping them separate. That event will kick off your professional speaking career because when you ASK to GET, you’re going to be amazed. You should get 3, 5, 7, or 10 spinoff speaking engagements.

Every single time you speak, half of them will be paid, the other half will not. It’s okay if it’s not paid. I made $24,000 at an unpaid event by selling my coaching services in the back of the room. I might have made a couple thousand on books, but it wasn’t about the book, it was about the coaching. We can talk more about that later. The way that you market yourself as a speaker is to get the highlight video. Here’s what you need. You need a book. You need a business card. You need a highlight video. You need a speaker one-sheet. You need a speaker agreement. I don’t ever say the word contract because nobody wants to sign a speaker contract, but a speaker agreement that people sign.

You have those five things, and then the next thing that you do is open up your book. Once you find this out, there are five qualifications. Number one, they must have a meeting. Number two, they must have a date. Number three, they’ve selected their venue. They have a theme, and most importantly, they haven’t booked another speaker.

Once you qualify for those steps, then you open up your book, and on the inside flap, you write a nice one-page inscription to the meeting planner, “Dear Kathy Jones, I’d be honored and thrilled to be considered as a keynote speaker or breakout speaker for your sales conference this summer in Miami. If you select me as your speaker, I guarantee that you’ll benefit and be pleased with the results. Dream planner, Patrick Snow.” You mail the book.

The first $5,000 paid speaking gig I got, I was shocked, because I sent a book to the meeting planner. They booked me in Key Largo, Florida, for $5,000. Before that, in Seattle, I was running around in my car doing free gigs and $100 gigs, and $250, and $1,000, and $1,500 gigs, but I couldn’t get paid the big money. I sent a copy of the book, and sure enough, they called me and booked me as their speaker. I did what my mentors taught me. I showed up early like a politician. I was shaking hands at breakfast, asking this, asking that, saying, “I’m going to be your speaker. Please laugh at my jokes.” They thought it was funny that I was asking them to laugh. I got on stage, and they laughed at my jokes. I got a standing ovation, which, a lot of times in the industry, we don’t always get.

I’ve now learned how to do that naturally. At the end of that first paid $5,000 gig, this was in about 2001 or 2002, I went to the meeting planner afterward. I stayed in the room until the last person left, and I said, “I need your help. Please enlighten me. There had to have been other speakers that you interviewed. What was it about my message? Why did you book me? Please help me learn how to do better.”

She said, “We got 47 emails from 47 speakers all over North America, and we watched about 5 or 10 of their highlight videos. They were all great videos, but I got to tell you, Mr. Snow, you were the only one, the only one, that mailed a signed copy of the book.” I was like, “Wow.” I said, “What did you think of the book?” She said, “I’m sorry to tell you, but we had seven of us on the speaker selection committee, and we were so busy planning this conference that not a single one of us read your book.”

At that moment, I realized, it’s not about the content of the book to get the speaking engagements. It’s about giving the book away to meeting planners because I’ve learned that a book is the world’s greatest marketing secret in the history of all business. The book is an attraction magnet, a physical website. It is the single greatest thing that you can do to launch your speaking, coaching, and consulting career. People say, “How do you go out and sell a million copies of your books? How did you land 3,500 paid speaking engagements on four continents over 25 or 30 years?”

The answer is, after that first experience in about 2001, I went home, and over the next twenty years, I gave away 5,000 copies of the book. People say, “I want to be a bestseller. I want to be a highly paid speaker. How do you do it?” All you have to do is go to the post office every single day and mail out signed books to meeting planners, podcasters, bloggers, journalists, radio and TV producers, meeting planners, and consulting opportunities, coaching, and speaking gigs. That’s what you do. That’s how this industry works.

That’s amazing, and I want you guys to notice something. He said to have that party in a high-end venue. We have someone coming up who’s doing hers at a very nice art gallery in Los Angeles. I would say the thing that people always want to do is, they want to go to Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble is going to have a minimum number of books that you have to bring in, and if they don’t sell them, then you get hit with returns. I love this because anything that happens to not get sold, you’re not going to get dinged and charged back for. There’s a lot of practice in there for what you want to do with this.

You’re right, and we get all of our clients in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookstores worldwide, and global book distribution. I tell our clients that, bottom line, a bookstore, and Amazon.com are lousy places to sell books. We do it for credentials. We do it for Amazon reviews. You have to remember, they take 70%, 80%, 90%, and oftentimes they’re slow-paid. They might pay 3 or 6 months, or 90 days later.

All my clients who focus on selling books and the Amazon algorithm might make $100, $200, or $300 a month in the book-selling industry. My clients who focus on gifting books strategically to speaking, coaching, and consulting opportunities make $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, and $20,000 a month. I learned early on that bookstores are fun and cool, but don’t waste your time. Set it up for the reviews and then move on.

Selling Coaching Services Alongside Your Books: A Strategy For Success

That’s probably the most valuable thing you’ve said, and convincing people, because there’s so much in their head about the ego of it versus “I want to monetize.” You have to go one way or the other with that. Excellent. You also mentioned selling coaching as well. That is something that I used to do when I went out and spoke. It wasn’t about the books as much as, yes, I have the book, but now I’m going to sell the coaching. That’s when I walked out the door with appointments and opportunities to sell more. Talk a little bit about that if you would.

Many of my clients say, “Patrick, I don’t want to do coaching. I don’t have time for coaching. How am I going to fit that on my calendar?” I said, “Let’s look at this scenario. Let’s say you get paid $10,000 to speak. There are 500 people there. Someone shows up at your table, they buy a copy of the book, and they say, ‘I want to hire you as a coach, and I want to pay $10,000 to be part of your inner circle.'” I asked that client, “Would you be willing to accept that $10,000?” “I would accept the $10,000.”

The biggest mistake that people make in coaching is they sell their services by the hour. Maybe they charge $100 an hour, $250 an hour, or even $500 an hour. I think that’s a huge mistake because nobody ever got wealthy selling their services by the hour. Entrepreneur Magazine says that coaching has been the hottest industry to be in for the last several years because everybody wants to super-accelerate the level of success that they can get. The best way to do it is, if you want what others have, you must do what others have done, and you’ll get what others have got.

Successful people are successful because they’re willing to do what their successful coaches have done. That’s what we got to do. That naturally leads to the information empire. We can talk about that in a minute if you want. At the end of the day, the challenge with coaching is, to succeed as a coach, number one, you need to make offers. Nothing happens in business between buyer and seller until an offer is made. You, being the coach, need to be the one making the offer.

All day long, every day, by phone, by text, by email, by social media. I’m constantly putting this message out there, “I’d be honored and thrilled to offer you a complimentary, no-obligation, 30- to 60-minute writing, publishing, marketing, speaking, coaching consultation by phone, FaceTime, or Zoom.” If you don’t ASK, you’re not going to GET. You then do the complimentary discovery call. Never say the word free because free is cheap, and there’s no value.

It’s always, “I would be thrilled to offer you a complimentary 30-, 60-, or 90-minute consultation.” During that time, you listen. Nobody’s probably listened to this person in months or years. You listen your way into the sale. At the end of the call, you tell them, “Here’s what you got to do. You got to do what, what, what,” and you overwhelm them with the “whats.”

You then say, “When you make an investment in my coaching system, I’m going to give you the how, how, how.” They need time to think about it. I always give them 2, 3, or 4 freebies. That is I help them completely create their book outline in those last five minutes. They go, “I haven’t paid this Patrick Snow a penny, and he’s already helped me nail the title of my book, my table of contents, my book outline, my theme.”

By the way, the number one most-booked speaking topic on planet Earth is leadership and self-leadership. You need to have those chapters in the book. The number one most-booked coaching topic on planet Earth is empowerment, transformation, and change. You need those chapters in the book. I give away the freebies. We won’t finish the call until I get the next appointment on the books. Typically, within a week or two weeks, they make that investment.

I love coaching. I moved to Maui eleven years ago and love it. It’s the best place in the world to be a coach. It’s probably the worst place in the world to be a professional speaker because we’re six hours to the West Coast and twelve hours to the East Coast. I’ve doubled down on the coaching, and I love it. People say, “Why did you move to Maui? How did you move to Maui?” I said, “Because I could.” They’re like, “What do you mean?” I said, “I’m a coach. As a coach, you need a phone line and Internet access. That’s it.”

I’m of the belief that coaching, as a servant leader, is one of the most honorable things that you can do in giving to others. I learned from one of my mentors, Zig Ziglar, as a young man. He said,  “You can have everything in your life that you want as long as you help enough other people get what they want.” That’s what coaching is. The best way to pick up a new coaching client is to strategically give them a copy of the book because the coaches out there don’t have a book.

I think I read something not too long ago that 20% of coaches make a full-time living in this business, and 80% are struggling. What knowledge do the wealthy 20% of coaches have that the poor 80% are missing? That is the smart, brilliant, savvy marketers of the 20% of coaches all have a book, and they use their book as their platform to coach, consult, and speak from. Hopefully, that answers the question.

Using The Information Empire Flowchart For Business Growth

I love that. I don’t work at selling my books. When we engage a new client or a discovery call, we automatically mail them out. They are gifts, whether you choose us or not, to get yourself started right. That’s great. Tell me about the Information Empire flowchart.

Before we do that, there’s one thing you talked about earlier, the gifting budget. That is to deliver the speaking engagement, you ask them prior to the speaking engagement, “Do you have an education materials budget or a gifting budget?” They might pay you $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000 to speak, but then they might buy $10,000 in books. Let’s say, in doing that, you sell 1,000 books in one day. I will tell you, I don’t know anybody on planet Earth who is selling 1,000 books a day on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. That drives that point home. I didn’t want to forget that.

What I coach and teach is how to succeed in the Information Empire industry. I’ve recognized and experienced this flowchart. These are multiple steps. Step number one is you write and publish your intellectual property in the form of a 250-to-300-page hardcover book because those 50- and 60-page booklets are so thin that there’s no spine. A lot of them are done on Amazon. They’re a booklet. That may be a $500 speaker. You’re not going to get $25,000 to speak with a 75-page book.

Number one, write and publish a 250-page, high-quality, ultra-bright white paper hardcover book. When you take the dust jacket off the book, you want the actual book cover to be printed on the actual spine on the board. Do the bright white paper so it doesn’t turn yellow. That’s number one. Number two, you take that book, which is now your world’s greatest marketing secret, and you strategically gift that to your coaching prospects, consulting prospects, and meeting planners.

Number three, as a result of them receiving the book, on the back flap of the book, they’re going to have the website information. Step number three is they see your domain name because your book is nothing more than an arrow that points to the website. Step number four, they watch the highlight video, and all they care about is, are you good, or are you boring? Are you arrogant? Are you a prick? Are you nice? Are you kind? Are you gentle? Are you humble? Are you willing to stick around and do a keynote speech? Will you show up for breakfast? Will you stay for lunch? They want to know that. They can feel your energy and your passion.

I once got a $10,000 gig in London, Ontario, Canada, and they said, “Can you bring that level of passion to our stage?” I said, “I can.” They said, “I almost got fired last year because I booked this boring speaker, and they almost got booed off the stage. We want high energy and passion.” I’m like, “I can do that.” That’s the purpose of the highlight video. Next, I think I’m on step number five. They book you as the keynote speaker. Sometimes you get paid. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get paid a full fee.

Sometimes you get paid a half fee. We ask that gifting budget question, educational materials budget, because we want the keynote fee, and we want to sell a bunch of books so they can insert the book into the amenity bag upon conference registration check-in. From the stage, you do an hour, hour-and-a-half, or two-hour keynote speech in front of this captive audience. The more time that you get with the audience, the more they fall in love with you. If they give you an opportunity between a 30-, 45-, or 60-minute speech, you want the 60-minute speech.

If they say, “When do you want to speak?” The best time to speak is 10:00 or 10:30 AM. The reason why you want that slot is now people are awake, and you’re going to speak all the way up to the lunch hour. You’re going to ask people to come to the back of the room, and on your lunch hour, you can pick up a copy of the book. Here’s the deal, if you like it, tell somebody about it. If you don’t like the book, keep it a secret. Don’t say a word to anybody. You now have an hour during lunch to sign books. That might be the difference between selling $5,000 in books or selling $500 books because you don’t want to be back-to-back-to-back and stuck with only five minutes to sell books.

What now happens is I think step number five, and I might be off slightly on the numbers. The numbers aren’t as important as the concepts are. They now rush to the back of the room and they buy your books. It’s like a kid going to a baseball game. The kid wants to take a foul ball home with them from the baseball game. They want to take your book home as a souvenir. They now do that. From the stage, you mentioned that 100% of your speaking engagements come by way of referral only. You have now 8, 10, or 12 people saying, “You need to contact this person. Here’s their card. Here’s their phone number. I’ll send a group text to introduce.”

The 6th or 7th step is you might have 5, 7, or 10 spinoff speaking engagements. Those people go home, they read your book, and they miss your energy. They miss your passion. They’re not following you on social media, but now they call you up and they say, “Patrick offered a complimentary consultation.” They now call you and then they hire you as a coach. Meanwhile, while all that’s happening, you have the corporation or the organization that booked you, and they’ve got all kinds of pressure from their board of directors about not hitting their metrics and their revenue goals.

They now realize, “This Patrick Snow is a consultant. Maybe we need to hire him and send him out to go do 10, 15, or 20 gigs for our whole corporation throughout the country. Maybe we hire him as executive leadership business coach for 6, 9, or 12 months.” You then get the consulting income. The last step on this flowchart on the information empire is that all of the 1,000 people who heard you speak, those who care and who have a big heart are going to follow you on social media, and they are going to open up their database and become your fans, your tribe, your joint venture affiliates. As a result of that, they will then make connections for you.

That’s all you do, you follow that over and over and over for the rest of your life. Everybody wants to narrow-niche their book. The problem with that is that when you speak, business happens. You don’t know who’s in the audience. I once did a four-country tour throughout South America speaking to the human resources industry. I know nothing about human resources other than I’ve had some jobs early in my career before I retired at 34 years old. I don’t know anything about human resources.

I once spoke to a human resources consortium, and they booked me to speak at all these other countries. My point of it is, don’t worry about your target market. Your target market is any organization that sends you a check and it clears your bank account. If it does that, then they’re in your target market, and God will open doors for you. All you’ve got to do is speak. That’s that information empire flowchart. I’ve been using it, practicing it, experiencing it for 25, 30 years. It’s so true. It works every time.

You gave us so much to think about now. If you’re interested in talking to Patrick and exploring this, text me at 661-313-7120 and tell me you want to talk to Patrick, and I’ll do a little bit of vetting and we’ll get you over to him and his team for the book development. By the way, this is what I love about him. His packages not only include the book development and deep copy editing that your book needs, but while you’re publishing with us, he will teach you all of this that he told you about speaking. You have the knowledge you’re gaining while your book is being formatted and all those good things made into a book that you can hit the ground running once that book is in print.

I like Patrick because I was born Patrick, but then all the way through school, my friends and family called me Pat. In the mid-80s on Saturday Night Live, That Pat came out and you remember, I couldn’t tell if it was a he or a she. They started calling me That Pat my senior year, and it was all in good fun. I went off to college, and they said, “What’s your name?” My name is Patrick. I was Pat the first eighteen years of my life, and now, at 56, the last 18 to 56, I’ve been Patrick, but don’t call me for dinner and we’re good to go.

That is hilarious. My maiden name is Dillon, and I was almost Matthew Patrick Dillon. Think about that. How awful it would have been to go through life as Matt Dillon. Some of you may not even be old enough to know what I’m talking about. Was it Gunsmoke? I think it was.

I don’t know. I know who Matt Dillon is. I don’t remember movies, though.

It’s not the actor. There was a 50s or 60s show, I think, called Gunsmoke, and the sheriff was Matt Dillon. When my parents told me that, I was like, “Thank God I was a girl.” Patrick, thank you. You guys are going to see more articles in the magazine. Patrick has graciously given me a whole bunch of content to work with. You’re going to get a lot of this in the magazine too. He has so many great ideas, and he’s so successful at this. Thank you. I appreciate you coming on.

Thank you, Juliet. I’m so honored and thrilled to partner with you and be part of your team. I’m humbled. Thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Patrick Snow
• Patrick Snow on LinkedIn
• Entrepreneur Magazine
• Creating Your Own Destiny: How to Get Exactly What You Want Out of Life and Work
• The Affluent Entrepreneur: 20 Proven Principles for Achieving Prosperity

About Patrick Snow

PATRICK SNOW is an international best-selling author, professional keynote speaker, publishing, speaking and book marketing coach. He first discovered his gift for speaking at the age of 17 while giving the pre-game speeches to his high school football team. Since then, Patrick has electrified more than 3,500 audiences on four continents to achieve their individual and organizational destinies.

As a publishing coach, he has mentored more than 1,200 clients throughout the world to successfully publish their books. Many of these clients have also gone on to become speakers, coaches and consultants as well.

Patrick’s “DESTINY” message has been widely recognized in the media including, The New York Times and Forbes Magazine. His book, story and family photo was also featured as a cover story in a 2002, issue of USA TODAY.

Patrick is the author of many books including the international bestseller, Creating Your Own Destiny, which has sold upwards of one million copies in five languages and 108 countries worldwide since 2001. This book and his second book, The Affluent Entrepreneur, have both been purchased by John Wiley & Sons in New York and published under their imprint.

Originally from Michigan, Patrick graduated from the University of Montana in 1991. He lived in the Seattle area for more than 20 years until 2013, when he achieved his lifelong dream and moved to beautiful island of Maui, Hawaii.

Please join me in welcoming, “The Dean of Destiny” Patrick Snow…

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