Light that, Sparkfire Nation, JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, with great shows like The Shake-Up. Today, we'll be focusing on how to use a published book as a marketing tool to grow your business. To drop these value bombs, I've brought JJ Hebert into EO Fire Studios. JJ is the nine-time award-winning author of four number one Amazon bestsellers.
He is also the founder of Mindstir Media, a top-ranked self-publishing company, part of the Shark Tank's Kevin Harrington and Marielle Hemingway. JJ has appeared in major publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur Inc., Business Insider, and Yahoo Finance, amongst others. And he's a writer for Entrepreneur Magazine and a member of the Forbes Business Council as well. In today's Fire Nation, we'll talk about how to even begin writing a business book.
If you struggle with time, we've got some answers for you. We'll talk about self-publishing versus traditional publishing, building a brand, and the best book marketing methods, and so much more when we get back from thinking our sponsors. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing, sales, service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back.
Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com slash podcast network. In today's on-demand digital world, our ideal customers have more good content and products to choose from every hour than they could consume in a lifetime. Being good is no longer good enough. The solution, passion, marketing.
Download your free passion marketing e-book to learn how to become a top priority for your ideal customers at passionmarketing.com. JJ, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. So for me, the biggest consideration, I think, is the fact that you have to be willing to sacrifice. For me, early on in the days of Meinster Media, the company that I founded, the success of Meinster Media really came from, originated from the success of my own book that I've been writing.
And so I was working in corporate America. I was miserable. And one of the things that I did early on was I was willing to stay up until 4 or 5 a.m. writing my book and putting in the time and really sacrificed a lot of sleep early on.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to that. So I think you have to be willing to sacrifice something, whether it's sleep, time in general, money, relationships even, although I don't recommend that. But I think sacrifice is key. So JJ, I recently and personally wrote a book, my first traditionally published book.
And I get a lot of questions now from people saying, John, I'm interested in writing a book. I've seen that you wrote one. Where do I even begin? How does one even begin to start writing a business book?
And frankly, I don't really have great answers, but you're kind of the expert on this topic. So how does one even begin to write a business book? A good starting point is coming up with a topic, first and foremost. I think that's fairly self-explanatory.
So if you are a leadership guru or you're a consultant, some sort of consultant, write on the topics that you know. But beyond that, choose a unique and self-explanatory title and subtitle. Once you have that topic nailed down, the title is incredibly important. And if you can add some of your topics, keywords into the title or subtitle, I think that's key as well to kind of allow SEO to kick in, especially within Amazon's algorithms or website.
So let's just say you're writing a book on leadership. If you can include the word leadership in your title or subtitle, that can do wonders for visibility on platforms like Amazon. Author John C. Maxwell is a master of writing effective book titles and subtitles.
One great example or prime example is his book, The Five Levels of Leadership, Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential. So he actually included the word leadership in his book title, and I'm sure that was strategic. So the book title is definitely important. And number two for me is always creating a stringent outline and remaining faithful to it.
You can't just fill into a book and wing it. You have to have a plan. So an outline can become your best friend during your writing journey. And writer's block is something that you hear about a lot when it comes to writing.
But I think writer's block for me is just a sign of poor preparation. I think if you have an outline, you'll be able to avoid writer's block altogether. So an outline for me is a chapter-by-chapter outline. You know, I'll really dig into, you know, the point of each chapter.
You know, what am I trying to get across in each chapter and just kind of pinpoint in advance? That way, when you do sit down to write, you'll know exactly where you're heading. And then the third key to writing a business book, in my mind, is designing a writing schedule that makes sense for you. And it needs to be attainable.
So for me, I always try to set some sort of daily time goal or page count goal. Maybe I'll set aside two or three hours a night. Maybe I'll aim for, you know, five or ten pages. You know, really, it's up to you.
And early on, you're not going to have a great feel for what your goal should be. It really will grow organically. But I do recommend probably a time goal initially just to get a feel for, you know, how many chapters or how many pages you're able to write within a certain period of time. And then just try to stick with that and be consistent.
A lot of value bombs dropped here. A lot of good things that you can really kind of identify where you may be lacking with your goal of writing a book. I mean, I really love that. Talk about the title and the tagline.
I mean, the clear, the conciseness. And then, of course, if you can add in a little cleverness while not taking away from your clearness and conciseness, always something to think about. That outline, so key, so critical. Like when I sat down and wrote out the 17 steps of the 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment, which was my tagline, I said, there's my outline.
Those are the 17 chapters. Those are the 17 steps I'm going to go through. So because of that, I had zero writer's block because I knew exactly where I was going every step of the way before I even wrote one word in the actual book beyond that outline. And then having that writing schedule, like for me, like writing was something that I wasn't going to do if I just left enough chance.
But I committed the first two hours of every day for eight months was going to be writing and writing alone. And that equaled 480 hours in eight months. And I finished the book 71,000 words. So these are very key things when you're setting off to write a business book.
Now, everybody struggles with time on some levels, JJ. So Fire Nation, our listeners are struggling with time right now. What are your recommendations for them? You know, I think ghostwriting is something you could consider, although it is somewhat pricey, you know, for someone trying to break into the business book scene, put a business book out there, hiring a ghostwriter, which is basically a professional writer who will be writing on your behalf.
Sometimes the way to go. I know a lot of well-known entrepreneurs go this route. You can expect to pay usually between like $25K and $100K for, you know, a professional ghostwriter with a proven track record. The $100,000, you know, range would be more, you know, like a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter.
And the $25K would be, I wouldn't say bottom of the line, but certainly, you know, you're not looking at it, you know, some of the New York Times bestseller status or anything like that. But ghostwriting is something that you can definitely look into, and there's a plethora of options out there for ghostwriting services. But even beyond that, an anthology is something you can also look into. I'm actually creating an anthology right now with Shark Tank's Kevin Harrington.
He's one of my partners at Mindset Media, my company. And what we're doing with the business anthology is we're allowing about 30 different contributors. So each contributor or participant will add one chapter to the book. So it's kind of like a shortcut.
So you can actually be part of the business book without writing an entire book. So that's a major perk with being involved in an anthology is, you know, you're just on the hook for one chapter. It could be like 1,500 to 2,000 words. So it's kind of like a blog post.
So if you want to learn more about that, it's businessanthology.com. We'll take you right to the offering there. So Kevin and I are really excited about that anthology because, you know, it's an alternative to writing, like I said, an entire business book. It's an alternative to hiring a ghostwriter and spending 25K, 100K to work with a professional.
So those are the two routes that I would recommend if you don't have the time. So Fire Nation, I will say there's nothing against going the ghostwriter route. I mean, I personally was really thinking about it. I actually chatted with four different ghostwriters, very different personalities, very different writing styles.
And I enjoyed all my conversations with them. I was all collecting information. At the end of the day, I decided this was a book I wanted to write. So I did commit to the time of doing it.
But a ghostwriting route, if you have the outline, if you have the knowledge and you're going to put your blood, sweat, and tears into promoting and marketing the crap out of it, it is the way to get your message out to the world. Then go that route if that's the only route that you have. And it can always, of course, be a great route because maybe these ghostwriters have better writing skills than you would have for any number of reasons. And so they're going to be able to take your outline, your words, your thoughts, and put it into paper in a more eloquent and readable way.
Now, there's always so many debates around self-publishing versus traditional publishing. I've actually done both now. What are your thoughts on these, JJ? I'm definitely biased because I own a self-publishing company.
But I can tell you that I've been down both roads. I had an agent at one point for about six months. This was around the time of the Great Recession. So a lot of these traditional publishers weren't really taking on many new authors.
So I ended up self-publishing back in 2009. I sold over 100,000 copies of my debut novel, Unconventional. And I did that all myself. Most of the copies were sold on Amazon.
And this was around the time when Kindle was fairly new. And so I can tell you that with self-publishing, from my perspective, one of the benefits that I really, really enjoy with self-publishing is that there's a guarantee that your book will be published. Whereas with traditional publishing, usually you have to go through a literary agent. Sometimes it's just as hard to find an agent to represent you as it is landing an actual traditional book deal.
But you can expect probably about a one- to two-year time frame with most traditionally published books, whereas self-publishing, you're looking at about three months or so with our company. And that's with all full-service VIP treatment. So definitely the guarantee to be published, the speed to market is important. And with self-publishing, you can definitely get to the market much faster.
And then keeping control over your book. That's also crucial for most authors, especially business book authors, who are usually tying their content to their business. They don't really want a traditional publisher to swoop in and make all sorts of changes. So if you do get a traditional deal, make sure there's some sort of clause in the contract that allows you to keep some sort of control over the content.
But more often than not, self-publishing is the way to go in that regard. And then also royalties are a consideration. With self-publishing, you're able to keep a much larger percentage of royalties than you would with a traditional publisher. Usually like 85-90% royalties when it comes to self-publishing, whereas traditional, you might be getting 5% to 15%.
And then if you have an agent, sometimes you have to share the royalties with your agent as well. So I think those are some key considerations if you're looking at this self-publish versus traditional publishing debate. Fire Nation, there's always going to be debates. There's definitely pros and cons to both sides.
You need to add up your pros and then weigh them against the cons and then make the decision that is best for yourself. And we have a lot of great things coming up talking about building a brand. We're going to be talking about the best book marketing methods. When we get back from thinking our sponsors, with 3,600 hours of content on Netflix, 850,000 active podcasts with 48 million episodes, 350 million products available just on Amazon, and 30,000 hours of new content published on YouTube every hour, our ideal customers have more good content and products to choose from than they could ever consume in a lifetime.
But being good is no longer good enough. And this is where passion marketing comes into play. We must become a top priority for our ideal customers. It's really quite simple.
We need to identify the highest passions of our ideal customers and then build our businesses around those passions. Today's sponsor, Nathan William, is a serial entrepreneur who has built and sold businesses using passion marketing and has helped many other companies with their passion marketing. For example, he helped one company reach 40 million monthly social comments, likes, and shares using passion marketing. He's the host of the Monetization Nation blog and podcast, has given a TEDx talk on passion marketing, and even created an e-book about passion marketing.
And you can download the free e-book right now at passionmarketing.com. That's passionmarketing.com. Your content and branding speak volumes about your business, but it's not always easy to whip up beautiful polish on-brand landing pages, documents, quotes, and more for your prospects and customers, especially when you're not the marketing expert in your business. But that changes today.
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Learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity at HubSpot.com. That's HubSpot.com. So, JJ, Fire Nation knows this. Building a brand is key, but it's difficult.
How can we use a book to help? How can we use a book to build and grow our brand? Creating a business book can be key in terms of gaining credibility or becoming a trusted expert. I think it's one of the best ways to gain expertise in your market or your field and to be referred to as an expert.
And so I think the credibility play is huge when it comes to growing your brand through a book. Sometimes just having that book in hand, you know, almost like as a business card on steroids, if you will, can make all the difference, you know, in terms of getting, you know, higher paid clients or maybe attracting more media coverage. But even beyond that, you can use a book to generate leads and sales for your business, and that's not something to sleep on either. I mean, a lot of business book authors are including, you know, links back to their lead magnet or their website.
In fact, that's something that we're doing with the anthology that I mentioned earlier at businessanthology.com. You know, if you sign up there, it will actually allow you to include a link back to your lead magnet in the chapter that you're involved in. And you can do the same thing for a full-length book as well. You can link back to even more than one lead magnet, you know.
So if you want to, you know, get some of these readers into your sales funnels, that's another way to do it. And then also something else to consider is, you know, speaking gigs. You know, a lot of companies or organizations looking to book, you know, speakers for the next big event. They're looking for experts.
And if you can lead in with your pitch, you know, as a best-selling author or even just as a published author, sometimes that actually puts you ahead of your competition. And so I think those are some things you can definitely look at in terms of growing your brand with a book. So maybe let's talk a little bit specific about either yourself or maybe one of your past clients or somebody that you've seen do this really well, building a brand using their book. Give us one specific example.
Yeah, so we had a gal who teaches Italian online, and she wanted to create a book that she could use to basically, you know, drive traffic back to her YouTube page and back to her website. So she created this Italian guide, if you will. And it's actually a beautiful guide. She actually did some handwritten Italian in there as well.
And the book came out beautifully, and she is able to use the book, like I said, to drive traffic to her website, to her YouTube page. And so there's a lot of cross-promotion that's happened there. We also have another author who wrote about – she's actually a renowned individual when it comes to health and wellness. Her name is Cindy Clement, and she wrote a book on that very topic about some of the toxins that we allow into our body, whether it's through food or through the air or through, you know, various methods.
And so she wrote on that topic and used that to launch her speaking career. She's done really well with that, but became a number one Amazon bestseller as well. So, you know, a couple examples there, but, you know, there are numerous, numerous examples. So another thing I want to talk about are the best book marketing methods.
I mean, again, we're going to be focusing mostly on the self-publishing. That's your area of expertise. But that is one thing, that when you're self-publishing, it's not you, Fire Nation. Like, you are the book launch marketing manager.
Like, this is what you need to be focusing on to get your book out to the world. So what are some of the best marketing methods that you've seen for self-publishers? Having an author website is key. You need to have a home base, if you will.
And if you will. And you can. Not yet. set it up so that you have, like I mentioned, lead magnets on your website or opt-in forms.
So you should offer some sort of value in return or in exchange for contact information. So maybe you're giving away some sort of free report or something that relates to your book. You should have that author website and lead magnets set up well before your book is even available and you should be testing it. That way when you do write your book and you implement that lead magnet in your book, you already know that the lead magnet works.
You should also have an email marketing campaign set up around that lead magnet. So when people opt in, they're getting a series of automated emails. You can use something like AWeber.com or even Constant Contact or MailChimp to set up an email marketing campaign and that'll trigger automated emails, a series of emails once someone signs up for that report or whatever you're offering for free in exchange for information. So the author website is key to email marketing.
Setting up that lead magnet and sales funnel is key. Beyond that, you can use social media to drive an incredible amount of traffic back to your website. I mean, I use Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads, and obviously I rely a little bit on the organic side of things too. But be ready to spend some money on social media ads in particular to drive traffic back to your website, back to your offer, your lead magnet on your website.
And once you get those people signing up or opting in on your website, you can email them basically in perpetuity, unless of course they unsubscribe. But having your own list is key and you can use social media to create that list by driving traffic to your lead magnet. And then some other considerations, obviously podcasts are huge. I wouldn't be on one if I didn't believe in the power of podcasts.
And obviously you can reach a large amount of people in a very short span of time. But then creating your own opportunities I think are key too. I think some authors forget that you can hustle just like you would at the beginning of your business and you can contact some of your local news outlets. You can contact book bloggers.
There's all sorts of book blogger lists on Google. If you just Google book bloggers, you'll see probably millions of results. But you can also go on to websites like goodreads.com, G-O-D-R-E-A-D-S.com. And that's owned by Amazon.
It's a social network for book lovers. So it's kind of like Facebook, but everyone on the website loves books. So goodreads.com is something that I spend a lot of time on and I would recommend. And you can also offer giveaways through Goodreads and giveaways just in general are a great way to generate exposure.
And you can also offer a giveaway and ask that people who win or receive the book write a review on Amazon. So yeah, I mean, hustle is definitely something that you need to do just like with any new business venture and you're starting from scratch and you're creating your author brand. So I think that covers it fairly well. You are going to have to hustle, Fire Nation.
I mean, again, going through some of the things that JJ talked about, author websites, key, having a place to drive people, ads. We found some definite success with Amazon ads as well, which is really interesting to see. Podcasts. I mean, I was on 345 podcasts.
And shows like Instagram lives and Facebook lives in 75 days promoting the book. Like that is something that I just overcommitted to because I knew the effectiveness of it. You can do different giveaways. JJ mentioned goodreads.com.
Something that I think you need to think about. If you have a real specific, amazing solution to a real problem with your book, go to different Q&A sites like quora.com and some other Q&A sites where people are asking questions that your book has the answer to. And then you can give the best of it in advance or it will get upvoted and it will be there for all time. Being like this constant lead magnet for your book.
So JJ, you shared a lot of value bombs, brother. Give us the one key takeaway that you want to make sure Fire Nation really gets from our chat today. Any call to action you have for our listeners to share it now and then we'll say goodbye. There's a lot of value, like I said earlier, in joining an anthology.
If you're looking to become a published author without having to write an entire book, you can go to businessanthology.com and sign up. Outside of that, certainly go to meistermedia.com and you can download a free publishing guide where we outline our entire process and show you all the different packages that we offer. And we are partnered with Shark Tank's Kevin Harrington, so you're in good hands and hope to see you soon. Fire Nation, take these calls to action.
Make sure that you are listening, learning, consuming the content in the areas that you need help with from the experts. And I know Fire Nation, you know that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JJ and JLD today, so please keep up that heat and head over to eofire.com and just type JJ in the search bar. His channel's page will pop up with everything that we talked about here today.
And JJ, I want to say thank you, brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, today's value bomb content was brought to you by JJ.
And Fire Nation, if you've ever thought about creating a podcast of your own, the podcast journal is for you. It is gorgeous. It is faux leather and it will guide you step by step in the creation and the launch of your podcast in 50 days. Visit thepodcastjournal.com.
Use promo code podcast for a $15 discount as a thank you for listening to my podcast and I will catch you there or on the flippity flip side. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing, sales, service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back. Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com slash podcast network.
In today's on-demand digital world, our ideal customers have more good content and products to choose from every hour than they could consume in a lifetime. Being good is no longer good enough. The solution, passion marketing. Download your free passion marketing ebook to learn how to become a top priority for your ideal customers at passionmarketing.com.