Erica Glessing: Let’s go! I am ready to ignite on your show!

John Lee Dumas: Love it! Erica believes when you tell your story, you change the world. As the CEO of Happy Publishing, she’s a master of happiness and creative expression. Erica is a No. 1 international bestselling author 18 times over and runs the company Happy Publishing to give light bringers a bigger voice on the planet. Erica, take a minute, fill in some gaps from that intro, and give us a little glimpse of your personal life.

Erica Glessing: Alrighty, well I have two great cats. No, I’ve got some kids and a sweetheart and I have actually contributed now, I was counting up just for you, for this show, and I am looking at now 179 No. 1 bestselling authors with Happy Publishing.

John Lee Dumas: Wow! That is the ripple effect right there where you are just giving people an opportunity to share their voice, their message, their mission with the world. It’s just really exciting stuff. What I kinda want you to do right now, Erica, because you’ve obviously built up an expertise in this area, so talk to us specifically about what your area of expertise is as you see it and then kinda give us two value bombs, like two things that you think we need to know in this area of expertise that we probably don’t.

Erica Glessing: That’s interesting because when I looked at the value bombs, I immediately went to freedom is worth it.

John Lee Dumas: Right, done.

Erica Glessing: That doesn’t really have anything to do with publishing.

John Lee Dumas: No, and it’s nothing that we don’t know. We know that. I mean, what don’t we know, Erica? What’s something that you’ve figured out because you’ve created now those hundreds of bestselling authors? What’s some secrets? What’s some tips, tools, tactics?

Erica Glessing: I love this one. So, first of all, I’m a third generation publisher. I started writing in 1984 professionally as a news reporter for a little tiny newspaper and I just kept building up my career. So, it’s not something that I just jumped into. It’s something that I was born to and then kept working on and honing over the years. I actually can talk to consciousness of a book and I think one of the things that people are very mean to their books.

So, it’s their very first book, they’ve never written a book before, they’ve never done a book before, and it’s kinda like how someone might be to their business. Then they said, “Okay, now you make me a million dollars.” It’s like, what have they done for the book? What have they done to cultivate an audience? What have they done to set the stage for the book to succeed? What other things have they put in place around the book that give it kind of a happy nest to live in? Instead they just look at it and they’re mean to it and they’re like, “Perform now!”

John Lee Dumas: So, what should they do?

Erica Glessing: Well, what you want to do is you want to start – first of all, a book is part of a whole, a whole being, not like a digging hole. So, a book is a part of a contribution and it does best when augmented. So, it does best in an environment of speaking engagements, coaching, online classes, membership sites. A book does really well in kind of that big, warm environment where it can leverage everything else and not just be ‘it.’

John Lee Dumas: So, you’re saying within your book, it should be leading towards something else like a course, like a community. Is that what you’re saying?

Erica Glessing: No, actually a book can stand alone as entity that has a whole lot to contribute to the planet. So, a book can change the world, flat out. Your book can change the world. You can change –

John Lee Dumas: So, Erica, I’m still kind of waiting for some kind of tactic. I’m still waiting for some kind of expertise that you have about the area of writing books that we should know about.

Erica Glessing: Well, that’s interesting that you bring it up as though and as if there were one big piece of knowledge that could serve every human being on the planet. I would say go with something that you know, that you can teach, that you teach differently than anyone else, and then when you write it, write it with confidence. So, write it from a place of knowing and this will serve your audience.

It’s kind of like when you’re writing a bestselling song, if you’re just sitting there trying to make money when you’re writing it, it might not make bestseller. But if you really get in deep into something that moves you, changes you, has somehow done something in your life that is different than anything else, that will stir people and change others. So, you want to allow yourself to just feel deeply and I don’t know that that’s gonna be so unique. I don’t promise to be unique. It’s more like really jumping into your expertise in a way where you get moved and you change and then you share with others how you did that.

John Lee Dumas: Erica, what’s something you’ve changed your mind about? Like what did you used to believe recently that you no longer believe today?

Erica Glessing: Looking at that, I think the world is so different than it was when I was a kid. I was telling my kids the other day, they’re teenagers, “I didn’t have a phone. I had a phone in the kitchen,” like a real phone, and my daughter just looked at me and she’s like, “You didn’t have a phone that you carried around?”

John Lee Dumas: But I don’t want years ago. I just want six months ago. I just want something that you’ve changed your mind about in the last six months.

Erica Glessing: Right, so what that has done, that technology, that flow, is it’s made the world a global place. So, I would say 70 percent of my authors now are from different countries than my own. That’s pretty different. It used to be that I would really seek out authors in my own area, or in my own region, or at least in the United States. Now I would say it’s just a complete global community. I really feel I have shifted that awareness of the authors that would like to contribute to the planet with me as their publisher. It’s really shifted to global within the last six to eight months I’d say.

John Lee Dumas: Now, let’s talk about your journey as an entrepreneur and specifically within that journey, I want to hear about the worst moments, the lowest of the low. So Erica, what is that worst entrepreneurial moment?

Erica Glessing: Oh God, I just remember ordering all these books when my first book came out. I just ordered so many and put thousands of dollars into marketing and I can’t even tell you how few copies I sold. I didn’t know what SEO was yet. It was 2006. I didn’t know how to put keywords up for it. I didn’t know how to let people find it. I remember carting these books to a speech I was giving. I go in, everybody was super nice, and I think I sold like three books or something, which didn’t even pay for the gas. I was like, “Huh. Okay, I did the book. I published the book. I had a publisher. What is going on?” That was kind of a rock bottom moment in my book journey.

John Lee Dumas: So, let’s kinda get more into that. I mean, you wrote the book, you published the book, you ordered all these copies, you were trucking them around with you, you were trying to sell them. Looking back now, in hindsight, what were the mistakes you made? You said SEO kind of vaguely, but specifically what were the mistakes that you made that now you’re here ten years later in 2016 you’d be like, ‘Erica, tsk tsk tsk’?

Erica Glessing: Well, I wasn’t willing to help people figure out what the book was. The book didn’t know who it was. I wasn’t willing to help do the keywords and help figure out the phrases and help figure out the domain names and help figure out how to get people to find it.

It’s funny because the next book I did, Happiness Quotations, I actually got the dot com before I wrote the book. I’m like, ‘I am not making that mistake again!’ Then I also found out there were a hundred thousand global monthly searches for the term ‘happiness quotations’ before I wrote the book, so I knew I was gonna contribute to happiness on the planet. That’s my favorite subject to write about. Then I knew it already had an audience and I tapped into how to have the audience come to my – that’s how I ended up with 60,000 fans on Facebook. It’s just so easy to find. So, it was big key learning.

John Lee Dumas: Ten years later you launched another book with a new mentality and everything shifted, Fire Nation. So, listen, if something didn’t work the first time, it doesn’t mean give up, quit, go away. It means let me examine what I did wrong and let me see how I can shift and maybe do some things right. I can tell you one of those steps needs to be finding people who have come before you who have experience, who have sold books, who have gone down that path and learn from them because we’re all standing on the shoulders of giants. For me, that was an a-ha moment in podcasting, Erica. What would you say one of your greatest a-ha moments is today? Tell us that story.

Erica Glessing: I love that story, thank you so much for asking. It was 2014 and I was sitting there, I was having dinner in San Francisco. We were overlooking the ocean and it was this lady named Carly and we were looking at Happy Publishing and we were kind of looking at it like third person, like not like it’s Erica’s business. We were just kind of putting it outside of us. We’re going, ‘What would it take for everything to change?’ It goes best-sellers status. I swear to gosh, John, I was like, “No way! I cannot do that! I am not up for that! I do not have that kind of money! I do not have that rate!”
Oh my gosh, I went through the biggest resistance. Then I went, ‘Huh. What would the world be like if a hundred people became No. 1 bestselling authors with Happy Publishing?’ It was like this huge yes, like I could feel it. It was palpable. I went, ‘Huh, that would really help all those people.’ I just said okay and I came back and I had some authors I was working with, and I go, “Okay guys, January,” because this was November, I go, “We’re gonna be all No. 1 bestselling authors.” They haven’t bought into that when they had signed up with me, so they were kinda like, ‘What the heck is she up to?’ I mean everybody changed everything in the whole of Happy Publishing. I don’t know if you could even feel the energy of it. It was like, ‘What?’

John Lee Dumas: So, let’s kind of walk through that though. You made that mindset shift, you got people on board. January comes, what happens?

Erica Glessing: Well, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. So, it starts with a mindset shift, but what I ended up doing was I had authors coming up, so I always have authors for future books that are engaged with Happy Publishing before – whatever book comes out like next week, I’ll have authors lined up for the next quarter, right? Maybe the next six months. So, I just took all the authors from the future who were already in contract with me, and I said, “Okay, guys, we’re not gonna do this alone.” What I offered was everybody who helped get the first book to No. 1, those authors would help the second book and so forth. So, everybody agreed and committed to help, say, three books. Then that way I was able to pull in more authors into the picture. Really, bestseller is about numbers so when you have a huge contingent of people that support the book, you can get bestseller.

John Lee Dumas: Let’s kind of talk about your lessons that you learned from this. You obviously had this epiphany, this a-ha moment, you took action, you put things out there, and that’s one thing that I kinda want to take away. Fire Nation, make a statement, make it public. Say it to your friends, your family. Say it to your listeners, your fans, your audience. Fill in the blank, just say it. The world, the universe needs to hear what your intentions are. That’s just a reality. You need to hear it. You need to be saying these things to yourself.

That’s why I’m a big fan of journaling. You put it down on paper. It’s gotta be there in print. You see it, you imprint it in your mind, in your subconscious, in your conscious, and the wheels start moving. So, what’s your biggest take away, Erica? What do you want to make sure that Fire Nation gets from you’re a-ha moment story?

Erica Glessing: Absolutely do the journal with Entrepreneur on Fire. Go get the journal because honestly, you start writing down where you want to be – what you’re doing, you’re getting these neural pathways set up before they actually exist. So for me, the road to bestseller didn’t exist yet. So, the first time, it was hard for everyone to get their arms around it. But when I just stayed completely firm on it, committed to it, I wrote it down, I wrote ‘Happy Publishing authors will become No. 1 bestselling authors.’

I completely committed to it. That meant we all had to kinda get our arms around actions we’d never do before. If you’ve never done something before, it doesn’t feel the same. It’s like going out and trying out for the basketball team when you’ve played hockey.

John Lee Dumas: Good analogy.

Erica Glessing: So, it’s not gonna get there day one. It’s not gonna feel the same as a sport you’ve done before, so you want to just keep committing to it. I love what you just said about setting your intention. I’m a firm believer in that. That’s something that I actually practice every single Sunday. I do write down my intentions for the week. I look at my intentions for the month and the year and I look at where I am compared to where I set out to be and luckily I make movement. Then I look at what blockages are in place that are not allowing me to grow beyond my limits.

John Lee Dumas: Yeah, and if you don’t make movements, at least you know you’re not making movements and that’s the key as well, at least to recognize that. So, Erica, bringing things to today, what are you most fired up about right now?

Erica Glessing: I’m so excited about building your book as brand. I’m so thrilled to help, it’s mostly solo-preneurs, but I’m doing a couple managers of real estate companies. I’m working with authors with authors on their own solo books and that’s a very different animal than the group books. I’ve done quite a few group books. So, I’m working on this and I built a free master class about that, so I’m super excited about building your book as your brand.

John Lee Dumas: Well, I’m super excited, Erica, about the lightning round. So, Fire Nation, don’t you go anywhere because we’re gonna take a quick minute to thank our sponsors. Erica, are you prepared for the lightning round?

Erica Glessing: Let’s go there!

John Lee Dumas: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Erica Glessing: I think it was fear of the unknown. It was fear of could I make all that money on my own because I made good money when I worked, so I wasn’t poverty stricken. I had good jobs. So, it was more like could I build the infrastructure for a business. I was raised as a writer, so to become a publisher – it was just fear and I just had to keep getting over it.

John Lee Dumas: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Erica Glessing: One of the things with Access Consciousness, it’s is a practice with Dr. Dain Heer, and he says, ‘Don’t go into conclusion. Ask questions.’ So, I like to ask questions like ‘how could I be different today from yesterday,’ ‘how could I out-perform and out-create yesterday?’ That’s from Dr. Dain Heer from Access Consciousness.

John Lee Dumas: What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?

Erica Glessing: I’d have to say journaling. I journal all the time. I write down my gratitudes and I write down where I want to be. I write about now, I do all of 2017, so I write down what would it be like, it’s now December 2017, what’s gonna be different. I love where I live, but could I live somewhere even better.

John Lee Dumas: I’m gonna have to send you a Freedom Journal. Send me your address.

Erica Glessing: Done.

John Lee Dumas: Share an internet resource like Evernote with Fire Nation.

Erica Glessing: One of the things I’ve been playing with right now is Voice Note to Speech, which is a speech to text on Chrome. You can actually turn it on, on your desktop or phone and you can just speak and it will create words. So, I love to write with my hands, but I’m playing with writing with my voice.

John Lee Dumas: If you could recommend one book, Erica, what would it be and why?
Erica Glessing: One of the books that changed my life a lot was by someone named Ryan Blair because I wanted to give someone different for your listeners than some of the ones – I love some of the lists that you have at the back end of the Best Books to Read. He wrote a book called Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain and he actually went from being a gang member to running a huge billion dollar company as an entrepreneur. He has a new book out too, but I love Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain by Ryan Blair.

John Lee Dumas: Erica, let’s end today on fire with a parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you and everything you have going on, and then we’ll say goodbye.

Erica Glessing: Alrighty! So, HappyPublishing.net/books is my free master class on building your book. So, HappyPublishing.net/books is a free class I built. I took a lot of time on it and I’d love it if your listeners would enjoy it with me. The next thing I would part with is just really express yourself. Express yourself in video, express yourself is podcasts, express yourself in books. You’re gonna change people when you do that and just really open up and express yourself. You’ll change the world.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You’ve been hanging out with E.G. and J.L.D. today, so keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com. Just type ‘Erica’ in the search bar. Her show notes pages will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today. Best show notes in the biz, Fire Nation, time stamps, links galore, and of course, HappyPublishing.net/books. Get over there, it’s a killer master class that Erica spent a lot of time on, Fire Nation. Erica, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Erica Glessing: Thank you.