0 (2s):
Lights that spark Fire Nation JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the shakeup 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 have brought J. J. Hebert into EOFire studios. J. J. is a 9-time award-winning author of four #1 Amazon Best Sellers. He is also the founder of MindStir Media, a top-ranked self-publishing company partnered with Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington and Mariel Hemingway.

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J. J. has appeared in major publications, such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, Business Insider and Yahoo Finance amongst others. He’s a writer for Entrepreneur Magazine and a member of the Forbes Business Council as well. And today 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 cell 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/podcastnetwork in today's on demand digital world.

0 (1m 36s):
Our ideal customers have more good content and products to choose from every hour. Then they could consume in a lifetime being good as 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. J. J., say what's up the Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (2m 5s):
So for me, the biggest consideration, I think is the fact that you have to be willing to sacrifice for me, you know, early on in the days of monster media, the company that I founded, you know, this, the success of mainstream media really, really came from, originated from the success of my own, my own book that I had been writing. And so I was working in corporate America was miserable. And, you know, one of the things that I, that I did early on was I, you know, I was willing to stay up until four or 5:00 AM writing my book and putting in the time and really, really sacrifice a lot of sleep early on. I think a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to that.

1 (2m 47s):
So I think you have to be willing to sacrifice something, whether it's, you know, sleep or time in general money relationships, even although I don't recommend that, but I think, you know, sacrifice is key.

0 (2m 58s):
So J. J., I recently in personally wrote a book my first traditionally published book, and I get a lot of questions now from people saying John, like I've written, I'm interested in writing a book I've seen that you, that you wrote one, like, 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?

1 (3m 28s):
A good starting point is, you know, coming up with a topic first and foremost, I think that's, that's fairly self-explanatory. So, you know, if you're, if you are a leadership guru or you're a consultant, some sort of consultant, you know, right on the topics that you that, you know, and, but beyond that, you know, you know, choose, choose a unique and, and, you know, self explanatory, you know, title and subtitle, you know, once you have that topic nailed down, the title is incredibly important. And if you can, you can add some of your, 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.

1 (4m 13s):
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 that can do wonders for, for visibility on platforms like Amazon, you know, author John C. Maxwell is a master of writing effective book, titles and subtitles. One of one great example or prime example is his book, the five levels of leadership, proven steps to maximize your potential. So we actually included the word leadership in his book title, and I'm sure that was strategic. So the book title is definitely important and, you know, number two for me is always, you know, creating a stringent outline and remaining faithful to it.

1 (4m 57s):
You know, you can't just go into a book and wing it. You have to have a plan. So, you know, an outline can become your best friend during your writing journey. And, you know, writer's block is something that you hear about a lot, you know, 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 you'll be able to avoid writer's block altogether. So for a, you know, an outline for me is a chapter by chapter outline, you know, I'll really, really dig into, you know, the, the point of each chapter, you know, what, what, what am I, what am I trying to get across in each chapter?

1 (5m 38s):
And just kind of pinpoint in advance that way, when you do sit down to write you'll know exactly where you're, where you're heading. And then the third, the third key to writing a, 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 it 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 10 pages. You know, it really is. It's up to you and, you know, 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.

0 (6m 33s):
And 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 you could 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 17th 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. And 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.

0 (7m 22s):
And then having that writing schedule, like for me, like writing was something that I wasn't going to do if I just left it up to chance, but I committed the first two hours of every day for eight months was going to be writing and writing alone. And that equals 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 has struggles with time on some levels, J. J.. So a Fire Nation, our listeners are struggling with time right now. What are your recommendations for them?

1 (7m 54s):
Oh, I think ghost writing is something that you could consider, although it is somewhat pricey, you know, for, for someone trying to break into the business book scene, put a business book out there, hiring a ghost writer, which is basically a professional writer who will be writing on, 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 a 100K for, for, you know, a professional ghost writer with a proven track record, the a hundred thousand dollars, you know, range would be more, you know, like a New York times bestselling ghost writer and the 25 K would be, I wouldn't say bottom of the line, but certainly, you know, you're not looking at it.

1 (8m 38s):
You know, someone with New York times bestseller status or anything like that. But ghost writing is something that you could definitely look into and there's a plethora of options out there for, for ghost writing services. But even beyond that, an anthology is something that you can also look into. I'm actually creating an anthology right now with shark tanks, Kevin Harrington. He's one of my partners at mine, stir media, my company, and what we're doing with the business anthology is we're allowing a, you know, about 30 different contributors. So each contributor or participant will, will add one chapter to the book. So it's kind of like a shortcut. So you could actually be part of a business book without writing an entire book.

1 (9m 21s):
So that's a major perk with being involved in an anthology is, you know, you're just on the hook for one chapter could be like 1500 to 2000 words. So it's kind of like a blog post. So if you want to learn more about that, it's businessanthology.com will take you right to the right to the offering there. So we're Kevin and I are really excited about that anthology because, you know, it's, it's an alternative to writing. Like I said, an entire business book, it's an alternative to hiring, you know, a ghost writer and spending 25K 200K to work with a professional. So those are the two routes that I would recommend if you don't have the time

0 (2s):
Fire Nation, I will say there's nothing against going the ghost route.

0 (9m 60s):
I mean, I personally was really thinking about it. I actually chatted with four different GOs writers, very different personalities, very different writing styles. And I enjoyed all my conversations with them. And I was all collecting information at the end of the day, I decided this was a book I wanted to write. And so I did commit to the time of doing it, but a ghost writing 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 crop 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 not always, of course be a great route because maybe these ghost writers have better writing skills than you would have for any number of reasons.

0 (10m 44s):
And so they're going to be able to take your, outline, your words, your thoughts, and put it into paper anymore. Eloquence in readable way. Now there's always so many debates around cell publishing versus traditional publishing. I've actually done both now. What are your thoughts on these J. J.?

1 (11m 0s):
I'm definitely biased because I own a cell publishing company, but I can tell you that I'd been down both, both roads. I had an agent at one point for about six months, and this was around the time of the great recession. So, you know, a lot of these traditional publishers weren't really taking on many, in many new authors. So I ended up self publishing back in 2009. I sold over a hundred thousand 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.

1 (11m 45s):
Whereas with traditional publishing, usually you have to go through our literary agent. Sometimes it's just as hard to find an agent to represent you as you know, as it is landing and actual traditional book deal. But, you know, you can expect probably about, you know, one to two year timeframe with most traditionally published books. Whereas self-publishing, you're looking at, you know, about, you know, three months or so with our company and that's that's with all, you know, full service VIP treatment. So, so, you know, definitely the guarantee, you know, to be published, the speed to market is important. And, you know, you can, with self publishing, you can definitely get to the market much faster and then, you know, keeping control over your book.

1 (12m 28s):
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 often more often than not self-publishing is the way to go in that regard. And then, you know, also royalties are a consideration, you know, with self publishing, you're able to keep a much larger percentage of royalties than you would with a traditional publisher. Usually like 85 to 90% royalties when it comes to, you know, self-publishing publishing. Whereas, you know, traditional, you might be getting, you know, five to 15% and then if you have an agent, sometimes you have to share the royalties with your agent as well.

1 (13m 17s):
So I think those are some key considerations. If you, if you're looking at this, you know, you know, self-publish versus traditional publishing debate,

0 (13m 25s):
There's always going to be a debate. There's definitely pros and cons to both sides, usually 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, but talking about to building a brand, we're gonna be talking about the best book marketing methods. When we get back from thanking 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 of products to choose from than they could ever consume in a lifetime, but being good is no longer good enough.

0 (14m 11s):
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 Gwilliam 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 to reach 40 million monthly social comments, likes and shares using passion marketing. He's a host of the monetization nation blog and podcasts has given a TEDx talk on Passion Marketing and even created an ebook about Passion Marketing. And you can download the free ebook, right at PassionMarketing.com.

0 (14m 54s):
That's PassionMarketing.com. Your content and branding speak volumes about your business, but it's not always easy to whip up. Beautiful, polished 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 with HubSpot CRM platform, you can create a shared library of marketing approved content, ensuring everyone in your company can get the right content out to the right people anytime. And from anywhere, whether you're looking to create landing pages that align with key sales plays documents with already approved sales assets or quotes and proposals, you can send to customers in seconds. HubSpot's CRM platform has you covered, you can even collect e-signatures and receive payment via Stripe, having content tools as a foundational aspect of your CRM platform just makes sense.

0 (15m 43s):
And with HubSpot, you do learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity at HubSpot.com. That's HubSpot.com. So J. J., 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 and

1 (16m 7s):
Creating a business book can be key in terms of gaining credibility or becoming a trusted expert. I think it's one of the, one of the best ways to, to gain expertise in your, in your market or your field, and to be referred as an expert referred to as an expert. And so I think that the credibility plays huge when it comes to growing your brand through a book. Sometimes just having that book in hand, you know, almost like as a, a business card on steroids, if you will, can make, can make all the difference, you know, in terms of getting, you know, a higher, 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.

1 (16m 50s):
And that's, that's not, 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, you know, their website. And 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, you know, we'll, we'll actually allow you to include a link back to your lead magnet in the chapter that you're, that you're involved in, and you can do the same thing for a full length book as well. You can, you can link back to even more than one lead magnet, you know, so if you want to, you know, get, get some of these readers into your sales funnels, that's, that's another way to do it. And then also something else to consider is, you know, speaking gigs, you know, a lot of, a lot of companies are, or organizations looking to book, you know, speakers for their next big event.

1 (17m 39s):
They're looking for experts. And if you can lead in with your pitch and, you know, as a bestselling 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

0 (17m 55s):
Maybe let's talk a little bit specific about either yourself or maybe one of your past clients or just somebody that you've seen do this really well, building a brand, using their book, give us one specific example.

1 (18m 9s):
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 back to her website. So she created this Italian guide, if you will. And it's actually a beautiful guide. She actually did. There was actually some, some handwritten Italian in there as well. And the book came out beautifully and she is able to use, use the book, like I said, to drive traffic to our website, to our 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.

1 (19m 0s):
Her name is Cindy Clement, and she, 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 use that to launch her, her speaking career. She's done really well with that. And her book became a number one, Amazon bestseller as well. So, you know, there, there are a couple of examples there, but you know, there are numerous numerous examples.

0 (19m 28s):
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, is that your area of expertise, but that is one thing that when you're self publishing, it's on 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

1 (19m 54s):
Having an author website is key. You need to have a home, a home base, if you will, and you can all, you can set it up so that you have, like I mentioned, lead lead magnets on your website, so, or opt in forms. So you should offer some sort of value in return or an exchange for contact information. So maybe you're giving away some sort of a free report or something that relates to your book. You should have that author website and a lead magnet 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, and you implement, you know, that lead magnet in your book, you already know that the lead magnet works. You should also have a email marketing set up email marketing campaign set up around that lead magnet.

1 (20m 38s):
So when people will opt in, now they're getting a series of automated emails. So you can use, you know, something like a weber.com or even constant contact or MailChimp to set up an email marketing campaign. And you know, that that'll trigger automated emails, a series of emails when someone signs up for, for that report or whatever you're offering for free in exchange for information. So the author websites key, the email marketing setting up that, you know, the lead magnet and sales funnel is key beyond that. You can use social media to drive incredible amount of traffic back to your website. I mean, I use Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads.

1 (21m 21s):
And obviously I rely a little bit on the organic side of things too, but, you know, be ready to spend some money on social media ads in particular, to drive traffic back to your website, back to your, your, your offer, your lead magnet on your website. And once you get those people, you know, signing up or opting in on your website, you can email them basically in perpetuity, you know, unless of course the unsubscribed, but, you know, having, having your own list is key and you can use social media to create that list by driving traffic to your, your lead magnet. And then, you know, some other considerations, obviously podcasts are, are huge.

1 (22m 1s):
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, you know, creating your own opportunities I think are, are key to, I think some authors forget that you can, you can, you know, you can hustle just like, just like you would at the beginning of, of your business. And, you know, you can contact some of your local news outlets. You can contact book bloggers, there's all sorts of book blogger lists on, on Google. If you just, if you just Google book bloggers, you'll see probably millions of results, but you can also go onto websites like go GoodReads.com, GOODREADS.com.

1 (22m 45s):
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 good reads.com is something that I've spent a lot of time on and I would recommend, and you can also offer giveaways through good reads and giveaways just in general are a great way to generate exposure. And you can also, you know, offer a giveaway and, and ask that the people who win, win or receive the book, write a review on Amazon. So yeah, I mean, hustle is definitely something that you'll need to, they need to do just like with any, you know, new businessmen venture.

1 (23m 25s):
I mean, you're starting from, from scratch, you're creating your author brand. So, you know, I think, I think that covers it fairly well

0 (23m 34s):
And have to hustle Fire Nation I mean, again, going through some of the things that J. J. talked about, author websites, key, having a place to drive people ads. We found some definite success with Amazon ads as well, which really interesting to see podcasts. I mean, I was on 345 podcasts and shows like I like Instagram lives and Facebook lives in 75 days promoting the book like that is something that I just over committed to because I knew the effectiveness of it. You can do different giveaways. J. J. mentioned GoodReads.com, something that I think you need to think about F you have a real specific, an amazing solution to a real problem with your book, go to different Q and A sites like quora.com and some other Q and A sites where people are asking questions that your book has the answer to.

0 (24m 25s):
And then you can give the best definitive answer. It'll get upvoted. And it will be there for all time being like this constant lead magnets for your book. So J. J., 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, share it now. And then we'll say goodbye. There's

1 (24m 47s):
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 business anthology.com and sign up. But outside of that, certainly go to minster media.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, Kevin Harrington. So you're in good hands and hope to hope to see you soon

0 (2s):
Fire Nation, take these calls to action, make sure that you are listening, learning, consuming the content and the areas that you need help with from the experts.

0 (25m 23s):
And I know Fire Nation that you know, that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with J. J. and JLD today. So please keep up that heat and head over to EOFire.com and just type J. J. in the search bar in his show notes page will pop up with everything that we talked about here today. And J. J., I want to say thank you brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value of the 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 bond content was brought to you by J. J. and Fire Nation. If you've ever thought about creating a podcast of your own, the podcast journal is for you.

0 (26m 5s):
It is gorgeous. It is full leather, and it will guide you. Step-by-step in the creation and the launch of your podcast and 50 days visit the PodcastJournal.com use promo code PODCAST, free $15 discount as a thank you for listening to my podcasts 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 podcast network at HubSpot.com/podcastnetwork in today's on demand digital world.

0 (26m 51s):
Our ideal customers have more good content and products to choose from every hour. Then 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.