Welcome to the Book Brand Business Podcast, where we dive deep into all things books, branding, and business. I'm your host, Ben Gioia, and in this episode, titled "How To Guarantee Your Book's Success," we're going to uncover the essential strategies to ensure the success of your book. Whether you're a seasoned author or just starting out, these proven techniques will help you make a lasting impact and achieve your goals. Join me as I share my own experiences and the valuable insights I've gained from working with clients. From securing 5 figure speaking gigs to attracting 6 figure consulting opportunities, we'll explore how to leverage your book to make a real difference and generate revenue. Discover the power of committing to finishing your book, using dictation to capture your authentic voice, and so much more. Get ready for an enlightening conversation that will guarantee the success of your book.

Hey. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you are in the world. It's Ben Gioia from influencewithaheart.com. Super excited that you are here today. Thank you for spending a few minutes with me. And also, thank you for caring enough about your business and your book and the impact you wanna make in the world, to do something about it. Right. A lot of people dream, but a lot of people don't actually do anything about dream and then people die with regrets.

So thank you for not dying with regrets. And today, we're gonna be talking about How to guarantee your book's success. Once again, this is how to guarantee your book's success. And the good news is, yes, you actually I can guarantee the success. Here are the easiest ways and best ways to make it happen and the kind Stuff that I'm gonna be talking about and sharing with you today, are the things that I've put into practice in my own business, and these also the things that I teach to my clients directly. Right? Because I only teach the stuff that is proven and that has worked for me. Right? Really, really important and I suggest you, as you're serving the people that you serve, to think in the same kind of way. Right? Don't just teach stuff because it sounds cool and Don't just do it because everybody and their mother is doing it right.

Teach the things that are gonna make an impact because you have direct experience of them. And as we're giving a few more moments for a couple more people to join and transition from their last meeting, or Whatever is happening before this moment, just wanna give you a quick introduction to who I am, and I'm gonna talk about some successes, of course, and things that have happened for me. And none of this is to impress you. Right? I'm not here to impress you. Right? I'm here to impress upon you, the things that will will be impactful here for your business and also to show you more specifically how I put these things into practice. That's right. And the kind of results I'm talking about, client of mine getting a 5 figure speaking gig before or her book was published. But using the book to leverage an opportunity to get that speaking gig.

Right? Another client who published her book and about 6 months later, somebody from Google found her book and they invited her to speak and they paid her to speak. That was super cool. And she didn't have relationship with that person. That person found her book and invited her in the room or in the, in the Googleplex, whatever they call And, another client of mine, again, before the book was done, but using the book as leverage and using the book as a relationship builder was able to secure a 6 figure consulting gig before her book was published. Right? So lots of good things here. And a little bit about me, right, these days, I'm a four time or almost 4 time best selling author, podcast host, international radio show host. My teachings are used by more than 80,000 leaders and game changers around the world. I help folks write great books in as little as 5 weeks.

Enjoy the 5 figure speaking fig 5 figure speaking fees that's easy for me to say and attract that 6 figure consulting like I spoke about before. And a lot of this is before publishing. Right? For me, I always am thinking about and reminding my authors to think about how can you make use of your book before it's published, before it's even written to start making an impact, to start generating more revenue, and to start helping change the world a little bit more. A couple of other fun fun things I've done, thanks to my book. I've trained hundreds of millionaires at Stanford University. I've also So helped create helped a Fortune 100 100 company create an empathy video game, launched the world's largest magazine largest at that time, AARP Magazine, if you live in the United States. You know what I'm talking about, and you know that they will find you sooner or later. And, lastly, which is one of the my most favorite things, that I won a patient services award from ALS Association, that's Lou Gehrig's disease, for creating their 1st mindfulness program.

So a long time ago before Almost anybody really knew the word mindfulness, was able to do that and help some people with ALS, their families, their care caregivers. So beautiful opportunity a beautiful gift. And, yeah, let's, let's get into the content. Thank you all for being here again. Welcome, Welcome welcome to everyone. If you have any questions, you know, about this, of course, you can ask me, at the end of the session. And if you prefer to reach out to me directly, you can message me if we're connected. Right? Message me directly there.

You can email me, ben@influencewithaheart.com. And you can also just hop on a call with me at influencewithaheart.com/chat. K. So again, today, How to guarantee your book's success. This is what we're here for. And while there are no Ultimate guarantees and absolute guarantees in the world or in the universe. Right? There's a few things you can really count on for your book.

And a lot of people don't know this, don't practice this, and they're fairly straightforward. I I would say very straightforward. So I've made a list of 7 for our time together today. So things that you can do to guarantee your book's success, some is, some are more philosophical, Some are more tactical if you will, tactical and strategical. But, yeah, you, You're in for a treat here. Right? So the first one to guarantee your book success, commit to getting the darn book done. Right? You can't have a successful book if you get it done. Sounds painfully obvious.

I know. Get the freaking book done. I'm allowed to say that because I'm from Brooklyn. Get the Book done. Really, really important. Make that commitment. Right? And when you think about the book that you're bringing forth and you think about your audience, aka your reader, aka your ideal client. Right? I help folks with business books.

I help folks position themselves as an expert with their book. So I always invite my authors to think about the people that you're serving with your book because those are the people who are going to invite you to, you know, come speak or do coaching or consulting or be their or whatever the case may be. So they're gonna have certain kinds of experiences with you from speaking to you directly, from hearing you speak, from a big risk about certain kinds of ghost writing. This is also a big risk for a lot of people if you're like me, right, we learned to write growing up, you know, very formally and, you know, we would bury the subject and the juicy stuff at the back of the sentence and we would write these long sentences with lots of big vocabulary words and, you know, we would Dress and struggle and is this the right word? Is this the right punctuation? Like, screw all that. Right? Really, screw all that. That approach does not serve your book. Right? And the good news about that is that you don't have to be a good writer. You can be a quote unquote terrible writer.

I know you're not. But you can be a terrible writer and still write a great book. And the reason or pardon me, the way you can do this is to make use of dictation for your book. Right? You don't have to dictate the whole book unless you want to, but make liberal use of dictation. Right? Because when you speak, when you're dictating, right, just like I'm doing now, right, I'm not pausing to think. Am I saying the right word? Am I this the right way? Am I using the right punctuation? Right? I'm just in my zone doing what I love and sharing it with you. Right? The here is my authentic voice coming through my words. And if I were capturing this, you know, in, you know, especially in AI dictation kind of software.

Shazam. Right? So you can have what is it? 5% of your book done in, like, 7 minutes if you think about it. You know, yes, you still gotta go back and edit it and do all those kind of things, But just wanna show you how powerful that tool is. So we started with commitment. We talked about dictation. The 3rd way to guarantee that your book get that your book succeeds, that your book is a success, that's easy for me to say. Right? Is to forgive yourself for past mistakes that you've made in your business. This is really, really important And there's a lot of people I know, right, who have written a book in the past or tried to write in a book in the past and ended up working with a really dodgy publisher or a terrible coach or whatever case may be and they sunk a lot of money into it and they're like, I'm never gonna do that again.

Right? And I totally get that. I never wanna do that again either. Right? But forgive yourself for what's in the past. There's always an opportunity to make more money. There's always an opportunity to create more impact. And if you do your book right, you know, and and make sure it's successful, you're gonna make so much more money and create so much more impact than what happened with that past book or that past, you know, know, unpleasant business experience. So forgive yourself for the mistakes you've made. Forgive yourself for navigating situations with sketchy people because that happens to all of us at some point.

Right? And move forward with your book. Okay. Ancillary to that is, is the 4th 4th way to guarantee the success of your book. Right? Fire the wrong people. Right? Don't hire the wrong people. Right? If you're working with somebody and they're not Up to snuff, if you're getting that feeling of, I'm not really sure, you know, I'm not getting the support, the, you know, the the guidance that I need. Right? Fire fire that person. Right? There are other coaches.

There are other publishers out there. Right? It is the Wild out there in terms of coaches and publishers in the book world, probably in a lot of other industries too. Right? But there are 2 sides of that coin of the Wild West. Right? One is that things are more difficult in some ways, because it's dodgy you don't know who you're working with, you know, until you find a good person, but you have more freedom and capability than ever before to bring your book in the world into the world faster and more effectively and in a way that truly aligns with yourself and your business. Right? So Fear not the Wild West. Right? Just understand the best practices and what to do about bringing your book into the world. Excuse me. So very, very important.

Some of you might be wondering about thinking about, well, you know, publishing my book. Do I use a traditional publisher? Or what do I do about that? Okay? So again, we wanna guarantee your book's success. This is the goal of what we're talking about today. So 99 times out of a 100, people like you, people like me, people like us, you want to use a nontraditional publisher. Right? You do not want to use a publisher, a traditional publisher. If anybody on this call is a traditional publisher, I'm not specifically bashing you. Right? Right? This is not to vilify you, right, but to help you understand that for people like you and me, professional self publishing is the way to go. Once again, professional self publishing is the way to go.

So, yes, it's self publishing. Right? But It's done by professionals. Right? Don't do this yourself because you'll do it wrong. You'll make mistakes. You'll lose time, money, and energy, and you'll end up in the back in the same place you were before if you've tried to take that path already. Right? Professional self publishing is the way to go Because you own your intellectual property, because you can get your book out the door much faster than you would with a traditional publisher. Right? You go with the traditional publisher. To find an agent much of the time.

Right? You have to write a book proposal much of the time and then you're giving up your creative and giving up your intellectual property when you're using a traditional publisher. So you wanna get the book out the door sooner, maintain creative control, and be able to put things like a call to action in your book. Right? So you can get people from your book to your email list. Make sure to use a professional self publishing company. For some wonderful folks. You can message me about that at any point. And Some people might say, well, what about, you know, if I'm working with a traditional publisher, I'm thinking about a traditional publisher, they're gonna give me an advance on my book. Most of the time, people don't get advances, right, unless you have a tremendous following, you know, or something else that really positions you for that advance.

And even within advance, I mean, the money's lovely, sure. But if you think about, Okay. Well, I'm getting this much money upfront, but I'm still giving up all this creative control and I have to wait for my book to come out in the world, you might actually make a whole bunch more money and create a whole bunch more impact, right, by doing professional self publishing. So really, really important there. Okay? So last 2 parts of this, You know, ways to guarantee that your book is a success, right, what we're talking about today. Don't worry so much about selling your books. Right? Wait. What? What? What? Wait.

I'm an author. Right? I'm I'm supposed to be selling my books. Right? Yes and. Right? So selling your your books is is lovely. I'm not opposed to book sales. Right? But most of the time, folks like you and me, right, the biggest leverage that we're gonna get is not from the book sales. Right? If you think about it, think about your own experience reading books. Right? Most people across all genres of books, fiction, nonfiction, the whole deal, they don't read the whole book.

This is one of my favorite math equations in the world because you get your book done, get it printed, and Hardcover books are fabulous because they make you look like an extra extra expert. Right? And get your book into the hands of the 1 to 10 to 20 people who can get you to that $100,000 much much faster. Right? Those 1 to 10 to 20 people who have audiences that you can access, thanks to your book because of the relationships that you've developed with your book. Right? And this is where people really really mess it up. Right? Because there's the traditional thought of I have to sell a bunch of books. Right? And again, book sales are fine, but think of the relationships and think of how much more impact you can make. Right? If you heard me talking about, when I did that, consulting with that Fortune 100 company. Right? I was able to affect 20,000 of their employees through the work I did with this company because of that partnership.

Right at that point, when I got that gig, this was quite a few years ago, you know, I probably had 400 people on my email list. Right? But suddenly, I had Access to 20,000 people. So think of the partners, the relationships, the people you love to serve, who you can serve, the organizations that they work for or people who can connect you to organizations and let the leverage come from the relationships from your book rather than scrambling around trying to sell a whole bunch of books. Right? And books are great because you have books. You can include them in your speaking fee if you're a speaker. Right? Hey. Hire me to speak and you get a 100 free books or whatever that is. Right? Really, really fantastic.

And you realize that if you give away or include the fee for, you know, 100 free books into your speaking fee, then everybody in the audience has your book. Right? So that's potentially a 100 more leads. Right? When I spoke at Stanford University and offered free books, right, the people in the audience were from 1 country pardon me, 1 company and they hired me to speak at their headquarters the following year because of that event and because all of them walked away with books in their hands. Okay? And then the last part of this, again, we're big picture. We're looking at how to guarantee your book success. Right? We talked about committing to getting the book done, talked about the efficacy of dictation, connecting to your authentic voice. Right? Forgiving your past Business mistakes, forgiving yourself, fire the wrong people. I don't just work with because that's what you've been doing.

Like, if they're not working for you, whether it's a book or anything, just, you know, fire the wrong people. Life is too short. Instead of a traditional publisher, make sure to use a professional self publisher. 99.9% of the time, that's the way you wanna go. Don't focus on selling the books. Right? Focus on using your book to develop relationships with people. And the beauty of that, and this bridges into Number 7, right, is to have conversations with your ideal clients about the book you're writing as you're writing the book. Okay? So even before your book is published, even before your book is finished, reach out to people who are your ideal clients about book you're writing.

Right? Hey. I'm writing a book about such and such a topic that we both care about. Right? Would you be willing to chat with me for 20 minutes and then you chat with them, you ask them a bunch of questions, and then you know what to put in the to questions and then you know what to put in the book because you got input from your ideal clients. Right? Proverbial horse's mouth. Right? So talk to your people. Talk to your people. Find out what they need, what they want, how you can help them, and then Use that understanding as the lens from your book. Right? You're an expert.

I'm an expert. We're we are all experts in our stuff And the danger of being an expert is that we can go out and say something like, yes, you know, I know this thing that will help a bunch of people and it's Absolutely true. Right? Like, what you offer is absolutely true. But if you rock up to somebody and say, hey. This is what you need. Right? The natural human response is like, I don't need that. Back away, you know, back up. But if you meet the person or the company or the organization at that place of what they want.

Right? And then get them in the door and give them what they need. That's what changes the game. Right? So remember, remember, remember. If nothing else, get book done and have conversations with your ideal clients about the book you're writing, especially before it's done, and keep doing that forever and ever and ever from there because your book is always a great reason for people to have a conversation with you. So hey. Thank you very much. This has been an absolute pleasure to be able to share this content with you. Thank you all for being here.

Remember this was the 7 ways to guarantee yearbook success. And, you know, these are the kind of results that have brought my clients 5 figure speaking fees, 6 figure consulting gigs. Right? 1 of 1 of my folks got to speak at Google. Right? Thanks to her book and you can do this stuff too. Right? The The publishing world, for people like you and me is so much more available than ever before. If you avoid the knuckle heads out there. Happy to help you with any of that. Please message me.

Please email me at ben@influencewithaheart.com. And I wish you all the best, And thank you so much for writing your book. Take good care, and we'll see you next time. Cheers.