Join me as I speak with Julie Ann. the founder of Influence Publishing Inc. Over the past 10 years, she has published over 200 books and over 80% of those are international bestsellers.

She and her team help you write and publish your book or if you don’t want to write a whole book, participate in a collaborative book project. So many coaches love the idea of someday writing a book, if you’ve always thought about writing a book but been overwhelmed then a collaborative book is an excellent and fun approach where you work side-by-side with like-minded people while getting expert guidance.

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• Julie Ann
• Website: www.influencepublishing.com
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Hey welcome to sheet coaches coaches, I'm your host Candy Motzek. And I'm going to help you find the clarity, confidence and courage to become the coach that you are meant to be. If you're a new coach, or if you've always wanted to be a life coach, then this is the place for you. We're going to talk all about mindset and strategies and how to because step by step only works when you have the clarity, courage and confidence to take action. Let's get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of chic coaches coaches. I have got an ask the expert interview here. And her name is Julie Ann, and let me tell you about her. She is the founder of influence publishing, Inc. and she's a TEDx speaker. Over the past 10 years, she has published over 200 bucks and made over 80% of those international bestsellers. She claims to be the world's only dyslexic book publisher. And her TEDx talk on the gift of Dyslexia has had almost 100,000 views. She has been featured on British and Canadian TV, and in many international publications as well. She is a best selling author of Around the World in seven years, a life changing journey. And that is where she catalogued her journey around the world, from 1998 to 2005, by sailboat, train, bus and plane, she has been everywhere, and she has done everything. And now she lives in Puerto Vallarta in Casa de influencia, her dream retreat center, she's a dual citizen of the UK and Canada. And as I said at the beginning of the description, she is the founder of influence publishing. And that is why I invited her to speak on this episode, this company, one of their ideas, their aims, is to produce collaborative book projects. And she says that they represent the values of knowledge of the organization, business venture and influencers of their community. And sounded like such a fascinating thing. And I know so many coaches love the idea of someday writing the book. And I knew that this would be very valuable. So Julie, welcome to she coaches, coaches, I am so glad you're here.

Thank you, Candy, I am delighted to be here. And it's so much fun speaking to you again, in Vancouver. It feels like every time we talk, we just go deeper and deeper into all the fun things that we can be doing together.

Yeah, exactly. So tell me about these collaborative collaborative books. I don't know my tongue is twisted around that work. There you go.

I'd love to. I actually started doing these about five years ago. And I was definitely inspired by Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books. They had been around for a while. And and I thought to myself, well, why can't we do something similar to that. But instead of it being kind of random people that are writing to a loose subject, why can't we represent an organization or a nonprofit or a group of people that have come together for common goals. And so we started with a woman's organization. And we actually ended up doing nine books in the series, because it was so, so popular, and it created so many connections, so much collaboration, and so much fun. So, from that point on, there was more organizations that were interested. And, for example, we did two books with the wild and wise women organization, which has like 10,000 members. We did a collaborative book with Shirley Weir, and her menopause checks. And we did a smaller series of book called family tree where we were actually examining all the different kinds of relationships, mothers and daughters was one, then mothers and sons was another one. And I think the next one is going to be fathers and sons. So it's an opportunity where basically people can come together and collaborate. And as you said, it's often the fact that people will say, Well, I'd love I've always wanted to write a book, but doing it all by myself is too difficult.

So could you just Take us back to what exactly is a collaborative book? Because all the things that you described sounds so much fun. But some of my audience, they've never even heard of this term. So can you describe exactly what it is?

Absolutely. And that's the reason why I guess I use Chicken Soup for the Soul is it kind of a foundation because a lot of people have heard of that book. Another way of describing it, some people have called it an anthology. So generally speaking, we have between 10 and 20 authors that are in one book, and each author actually represents a chapter. So if we have 15, authors, for example, we usually have 15 chapters. And then the founder of the organization would usually do like an introduction, or actually talk about the theme for the book. So for example, let's say the book is going to be about mum printers, about entrepreneurs, which work from home, and they're also mothers. So what we would have in that book is 15, different mompreneurs, that are talking about their story, talking about how they became a mompreneur, what they were inspired, to do, how they did it, how they had the balance between the family life and the business life. And what you have then is basically 15 People that are all giving you effectively 15 different perspectives on one topic. And of course, you can imagine that what that does, when these people come together, it actually allows them to actually start communicating and collaborating together, which is why we call them collaborative books. Because basically, we're not doing this by ourselves. We're doing it with 15 other people, and under my management. So I'm basically like the project manager, if you like, I bring everybody together, and we start with a workshop. i My dream is that people will come down to porta Viar toe to do that. But obviously, that's not always practical. And so we do also do the workshop on Zoom, which I mean, it's, it's just as good in some ways as having a live workshop, because you still connect, you're all on video, and you're all in the same room at the same time. So imagine you've got 15 mompreneurs in the room at the same time, everybody is telling their stories, everybody's talking about their challenges. And everybody is discussing, you know, what can we do to help other people that perhaps want to be mompreneurs. So the one of the things that happens when you have 15 Women in a room like that is that they start to connect, they start to collaborate, they start to mastermind, they start to come up with ideas, and they start to do business with each other. They might even say, hey, you know, that's an area that I don't actually work in. And you do work in this area. So when I have a customer that says, Oh, I don't know anything about Instagram, you can say, Oh, my goodness, I know another mompreneur. And her specialty is Instagram. So please let me connect you with her. And so you can imagine that all of this collaboration starts to happen. Now, that's even before the book is done candy. Imagine when the book is actually being written. And all those ideas are being born. That once the book is actually published, and we're now taking that out to the market. And we now have 15 mompreneurs, with 15 networks that are promoting one another. So you know, when you're doing a book by yourself, as you know, candy, you know, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of work by yourself, it's a lot of work coming up with, you know, 50,000 words. It's a lot of work doing the editing, it's a lot of work doing all of the design work. And then when it comes to the marketing, now, it's basically just you, that's marketing the book, when you've got 15 people in a book, you've now got times 15 networks, that you can now market the book and can expose each other to each other's networks. So it's to the power of 15. And it's very powerful.

It sounds so the things that sounds so interesting is first is there's this creation of a community. And you know, your example of mompreneurs you know, all of us who work from home as entrepreneurs, online entrepreneurs or coaches, it's, there's this place where we're reaching out and looking for people to be connected with and so a great way for you to find some like minded people. And then the second piece is that if you've got 15 people coming together and Bringing each of their networks and their email lists and their social media following to the book, think of all the eyes that get on that book that wouldn't normally, and it is for free. It's organic marketing. It's not this campaign advertising that so many people lean on. The other thing that's interesting is that, like you said, it's, you know, to the power of 15. Well, we know that when people come together, there is it's not just a linear increase, it's that exponential increase, some increase in feeling of community support, learning, creating a referral network, perhaps, and then the combined efforts of all of those people in the marketing, even if each of those mompreneurs, in your example, only did half of the market, and it would still be massive. So not everything on our shoulders, right? That's well, yes.

And I mean, the thing is, is because I am project managing the whole thing, then they really are having their hand held up throughout the whole process. Now, you know, some people feel very self conscious about their writing, they say, Oh, I don't think I'm a writer, I don't know how to tell my story. I would like someone to read my story, before I even submit it to the publisher, for example, I get that quite a lot candy, you know, like, even though I, I create an environment where I'm encouraging people to only write a first draft as a starting point, because then I can give them guidance. There's still this hesitation, where it's like, well, but but I still don't want you to see this because I don't want to feel judged. So can I share with the other people in the book first, and get their feedback before I share with you? And I'm like, Yes, of course. And we do we create, like a Facebook group where everybody can liaise with each other, we actually have many of the authors choose an accountability partner. So that as they're doing the writing, they can actually meet, say, once a week, they can give each other feedback, and they can read the chapter to each other. And then when it's submitted to me, I'm actually giving each person individual feedback. And we're going through a process which could be I mean, it could be as much as six or seven times going backwards and forwards. And so I'm always creating this environment where I'm saying to people, there's no such thing, as a bad writer, the only the only thing that you can be if you're like, bad at or that you have a challenge with is the ability to actually tell your story, the ability to be vulnerable, or the ability to kind of show your soft underbelly, because that's really what makes for a really good book. And so I'm inspiring people to do that. But sometimes they need a little bit of encouragement from the other people in the team, right? So it's not just me, that's inspiring them, it's actually everybody else that's in the book is inspiring one another. And, and that hand holding really makes them feel like they're not doing this. I mean, basically, they're not doing it alone. But it also becomes this really enjoyable social occasion, where effectively everybody has a common goal, everybody's coming together to basically write a book for the first time usually, and they're sharing their experience, and they're encouraging one another, and seriously can be the relationships that that form as a result of being in a book together. I don't think there's any other way that you could do that, because it's very, like you say, it's very organic. It's very natural. And it's, you know, you're exposing your, your underbelly, so you are vulnerable, and you are, you're, you're allowing people to see that side of you without the mask on. Right. So it's, it's a really unique situation.

And I think that, you know, so as you're talking and you're saying about this being vulnerable as you tell your story, and that that's some of the power is because of that emotional connection with the reader. But by having this community, the collaborative partners, that creates the safe environment that allows you to be a little bit more courageous than you might normally be. And I think so there's, you know, there's another benefit as well. So, such an interesting topic and the piece that you haven't spoken a lot about, but you know this role where you're basically the project manager or the conductor of the project. And so what that means is that if somebody He's interested in being part of one of these collaborative books, they do their part they show up. They know what their dates are that they have to have certain things done. They have their handheld throughout the process. And then they don't have to deal with all the other things like finding an editor, or finding somebody who's going to format it or deciding what the cover might look like. You've got you as project manager, leader, founder with that design, because you know what works. So no matter what they know that the finished product is going to be beautiful, right? And it's going to be something they can be proud of. So community, that synchronicity of having all of these people working together towards a greater cause. And then the end result is something that you can really be proud of something. Yes. And it's an amazing concept. And yeah, just you know, I really just loved that idea when you're explaining it to me. And that's why I knew that my audience would be like, Oh, what a cool thing. So if you're listening, and you really liked this idea, Julianne, can you tell us how people can find out more about you?

Absolutely. So if you go to my website, which is influence publishing.com. You can actually, there's a there's a section, which highlights our collaborative books. So you can actually look at the different collaborative books that we've done. We've done about 15 different projects of collaborative books, you can see the people that are involved in those projects and, and how they've worked together towards that goal. I think one thing that's really important candy is is understanding the credibility that happens when you're in a collaborative book, because we've got all these backlinks that go from our website, and we're featuring over 300 authors on our website, so influence publishing.com, you can have a look at all the books that we published all of the authors that we've published, and you can get a really good feel for how to get involved and how to move forward with a project like this. Don't try and do a book on your own when you can do it with 15 other people.