I sat down with David Barnett, an author of ten books who has spent over a decade helping entrepreneurs buy and sell small businesses. David shares how a simple PDF lead magnet he created in 2014 evolved into his first published book, Invest Local, and how that experience revealed the power of books to serve as a lasting business card—one that opens doors to podcast appearances, speaking engagements, and unsolicited client inquiries from strangers discovering him on Amazon. Since then, he has built an entire catalog of titles, each designed to answer the exact questions his audience is already searching for.

David's approach to titling is deliberately data-driven. Several of his books began as free PDF downloads and only became full-length published works once the content expanded enough to justify it. His evergreen titles, like Franchise Warnings, have sold steadily for over a decade with no marketing push, proving that the right book in the right niche can quietly pay dividends year after year.

The conversation dives deep into David's 2024 launch strategy for Buying vs. Starting a Small Business, which marked a significant shift from his earlier approach of simply uploading a manuscript and walking away. The campaign revealed a frustrating reality about Amazon's review filter—roughly forty people told him they left a review, but many never appeared on the platform. Reviews from established Amazon reviewers were far more likely to survive the filter, and he repurposed unpublished reviews by placing them directly into the book's front pages, where they're visible in the free "Look Inside" preview and serve as marketing copy for prospective buyers.

Beyond book launches, David shares broader lessons from his eleven-year YouTube journey and his philosophy that the right audience matters far more than a large one. He also discusses how he uses transcription tools and AI-assisted editing to turn podcast conversations into case studies for updated book editions. The episode is a practical, grounded look at how a nonfiction author can build authority, generate leads, and create a self-reinforcing body of work without relying on paid advertising or viral moments.

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The opinions expressed on the show by the host or guests are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the views of Unicorn Publishing Company. Unicorn Publishing Company, the host, guests, and affiliates are not responsible or liable for any decisions made by listeners or actions taken hereto based on the information discussed in this podcast. By listening to this podcast, you acknowledge and agree to release Unicorn Publishing Company, the host, affiliates, and guests from any liability.

Friends and future authors, this is Lynn "Elikqitie" Smargis back again for another episode of Publishing for Professionals. I am super excited today because I have another fabulous guest to bring you. But before we jump into today's episode, my friends, I want to thank you for returning to my show. So thank you, returning listeners, and thank you to my new listeners for jumping in.

and taking a listen to Publishing for Professionals, make sure that you hit that follow button wherever you're listening or watching Publishing for Professionals so that you can get new information dropped to you straight every week. Well, my friends, I hope you're ready to take notes because I'm joined today by David Barnett. He's an international speaker and author of 10 books. He helps entrepreneurs around the world avoid risk via education and consulting, which he helps by

People buy and sell small and medium-sized businesses. David is here with us today to share his experience with publishing and marketing ten of his own books. He has a lot of experience with business books and how you can apply what David is teaching us today to your publishing acumen. David, thank you so much for joining me today. "Well, thanks for inviting me. It's great to be here." I'm super excited to talk about your books because you have a lot of experience specifically in marketing business books.

But before we jump into how you can get better, you know, reviews on Amazon or your marketing plan, let's first start at what you do and why you decided to use books as your business card. Sure. So, I'm a former business broker and I basically was looking for a way to use the skills that I got during that time in my career to create a new kind of business. So basically I still help people buy and sell small businesses, but my business model is one of a consulting practice.

Versus a brokerage. The difference is that consultants use the business model of attorneys and accountants. As I do work for clients, I charge them for the work I'm doing, versus a business broker who typically charges a commission fee for selling someone's business. I work with buyers as well, so we do a lot of analysis on companies that are up for sale. I work with people who've never bought a business before, and they're looking for someone who's been through it many times to help them analyze what they've been given and determine what a reasonable offer might be.

And I work with sellers as well who don't want to pay, uh, you know, sort of the types of commissions that business brokers often charge. They just are looking for a little bit of help, or maybe they already have a buyer. Maybe they've agreed to sell the business to the manager that they work with in their business and they just need someone to help them determine a price or what would be a fair transaction set up. And so I work with people in all of those different kinds of venues. Awesome. Yeah. And that's a lot, like when you sit and when you think about buying and selling a business, right.

There's way more to buying and selling a business than just like when you're buying and selling a home even, because you have a lot of considerations to make. And then you have to know what aspects or components of it are you willing to have a little wiggle room and which ones are non-negotiable for you. So those are all really hard because I've done that a couple of times and it's not fun buying and selling a business. can be, it can definitely be stressful. And you know, it's, it's interesting that people will often

Maybe come to an agreement on the price but then later disagree when they both realize that they each party thought different things were going on with the transaction. So it's not just what is the price of the business? But what does the buyer actually get in that transaction? There can be different aspects of the balance sheet working capital components that may or may not transfer over different fixed assets that may or may not transfer over And people have can have very different ideas of what it is that they're buying versus the seller

you know, what they think that they're selling in the transaction. So there's a lot to work through and you know, we open two or three new files every week here. So we're literally working, you know, I've been doing this for over 10 years. So we've literally worked with probably over a thousand people through this process so far. And just the fact that we've been through most scenarios before gives us an opportunity to show the way and prepare people for what is likely going to happen around the corner. So they're not surprised.

No, that's yeah, that's really awesome. And it's a great service. I recommend if you are thinking about it, contact David, because a lot of times, like if you're thinking about it, and you're not sure if you want to or not doing a consult with a business broker, such as yourself, David can give you a lot of clarity on if you do want to move forward with selling your business. And and so if not this time, when's when is the most beneficial time to do it? Sure.

Yeah, that's great. So at what point in the ten years that you did this did a light bulb go off and you thought, "I should start writing books so that I can expand my presence online and be seen as an expert?" At what point in that decade did you start writing books? "So my first book came out in 2014, and it was really driven by a unique idea. At the time, this was before I would fully launch my new business in its current format."

I was doing some local investing deals where I was investing money into small privately owned companies. And I thought, you know what, like I went looking for a book like that. I didn't find one out there. So I thought I could write that book. So my first author experience was actually just writing that first book. was called invest local. and then I turned to online social media to promote that book. And that's where I started to develop an audience of people that were interested in learning more about buying and selling small businesses. So.

Subsequent to that, I wrote another book about franchises called Franchise Warnings, where I talk about the downsides to that particular business model. know, there are probably a hundred books on Amazon about how to choose the right franchise, but I think mine is one of two or three books that actually tells you about the things to watch out for and why it may not be a good idea for some people or where the traps may be hidden in those big franchise agreements. That book really started to take off and what

12 things to do before you consider selling your business. And they started as PDF lead magnets, but very quickly grew and grew and grew to the point where they could actually be books that could go into print. And I ultimately also followed up with another book called How to Sell My Own Business. So all of these books, basically the idea was that if people were going through an instance of thinking about buying a business or thinking about selling their business,

and they went looking for information. There's a certain group of people out there who will naturally say, Hey, can I buy a book on that topic? And so they go into Amazon, they treat it like a search engine. They put in words related to their topic and they see what comes up. And so I was starting to sell books to people who had never met me before online, but they wanted to learn about that topic. And of course the book helped to generate inquiries with me for people that were looking for additional help. But at the same time,

In my own efforts, I could get on a podcast, for example, by saying, I'm the author of this book, or I would get booked to speak at a conference because I was the author of a certain book. And once you start to get five, six, seven, eight books, well, you really do stand out as someone who has put in the reps and has gone through the work of creating this content. And it really does open doors as far as a credibility builder. Yeah, for sure. And so what

point did you start realizing you had like 567 books. At that point that you have the multiplicity effect, what were some of your fi that you realized after my couple books? Like did you got more followers on you notice your email list what are the marketing t

Yeah. So, number one is inquiries. You know, I would, I would get emails from people who would simply say, I bought this book that you had written and then I found your YouTube video. So I also put out a YouTube video every week and I've got an email marketing list that people can also join. And so what started to happen was people would come into either the books from Amazon. They'd read the book, understand that I know what I'm talking about. And then they would decide to join my online audience.

about me or they would just go ahead and reach out and talk to me. Or it worked the other way. People would find me on YouTube, watch a couple of videos and you know, maybe they questioned, you know, does this guy really know what he's talking about? But I'm always talking about books that I've written in my YouTube videos. And so then maybe they go over and read the book, which then cements the idea that they might have that, yeah, I am qualified. I know what I'm talking about. I've got experience, et cetera. And so it is, the two sides kind of work together all the time.

And the ideal being that people will then move through the marketing funnel, right? So, you know, I've got the online content and the books, that's kind of the top level of the funnel. And then down below that, I have a couple of online classes that people can sign up for, which have a cost of a few hundred dollars, right? It's really a leveraged way to kind of learn the basics to a deeper extent. And then below that are the consulting services. And we have some, some standard packages. And I've also got a group coaching program for people that want to buy a business.

So the whole idea is to bring people into this universe of content really, and then have them move down the funnel towards those other services. So as far as professional development of my practice, the books have been an integral part of that. I've had people, for example, question something that I'll put on Twitter, and they'll push back with some kind of troll comment.

Oftentimes I'm able to reply with, well, as a matter of fact, I wrote a book on that topic and then I'll explain my position further and I'll say the book is called this, you can find it on Amazon. And it's very effective at kind of positioning yourself, right? Versus just a he said, she said kind of thing online. Not that you're gonna convince any troll to go buy your book, but it's the other people who might then go and read that who...

who could potentially follow that thread and either go to the book or maybe just click subscribe and you know, sort of following you or, or whatever. Absolutely. Yeah. It gives you 10,000 % more credibility than that troll who's saying like, well, how do you know this? Like, well, I wrote a book on it. I mean, there's honest, obvious, honestly, no other better answer. You can give somebody that's going to stop them in their tracks because

What do you're gonna say to that? Like, your book is BS. I mean, they could say that, but then people who would read your comments would know that they bought your books. So no matter what, it's a win-win for you, right? I think that's great. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So when you were writing your books, David, how did you choose the topics for your books as you were going along? Like you wrote one and then you wrote two. Was it more of like a,

This is a question I'm getting a lot. how did, so how did you go about choosing your topics for your books? I chose the titles more so than the topics because of that whole Amazon as a search engine kind of idea. So for example, my book about how to sell a business is not called how to sell your own business. It's called how to sell my own business. And the reason for that is I looked it up, Google has a tool where you can actually look at what people's inquiries are, and how they're wording them.

And that's what people were typing into Google is how to sell my own business. And so I wrote that as the title and I said, okay, well, what would that person then want to know? So that book takes people through the entire journey, you know, what the landscape looks like as far as doing it yourself versus hiring a business broker, you know, how you prepare the business for sale, what kind of things the buyer is going to be looking for, what the buyer expects as far as pricing and cashflow and all that kind of thing to try to answer that question.

How do you do it? Well, here's how you do it. And the book is not that long. It's just over a hundred pages, but it gives people what they need to know in a bite-sized format that most people can digest in a couple of hours of reading. And then they can make their decisions. Do they go to the full service business broker? Do they contact someone like me? Or do they realize now that they know what they're going to be going through, that maybe they don't want to do that, that they just want to close it or something of that nature.

And so another question I have for you to follow up on that one. Are any of your books perma-free, David? And for people who are listening, perma-free means David would just offer the book as a freebie permanently just as a lead magnet. Yeah. So people that go to howtosellmyownbusiness.com are offered the new second edition of that book as a free PDF download.

People who sign up for my email list are offered a couple of books as free downloads, the 21 stupid things book and my new, glossary book that came out just last year. So, I do offer some of them for free. I always bring piles of them whenever I'm at a live conference of any kind or, or a workshop, in particular, when I want to get audience participation and, you know, ask the question of an audience, you know, people who are shy. Well, as soon as people start to realize there are prizes.

people get a lot more engaged. And so if I've got 10 or 15 copies of books that I can just give away to people in the crowd, it encourages more people to ask questions. And again, when they see the book in your hand with the cover and your name on it, et cetera, it's even more tangible than telling them you've written a book because they can actually see it, right? And they can flip through it and say, yeah, it's a real book. It's not a coloring book or something like that. Like it's really full of words.

That's awesome. I love that idea. I have never used that in a workshop before, but I am definitely going to use that in my next workshop that I do in person. That's an absolutely fabulous idea. All right, my friends, we're going to take a super quick break right here, but we come back. We're going to talk to David about how to increase your Amazon KDP book reviews for your business book. So hang tight.

you

Hey friends and future authors, we're back with David Barnett and David has dropped us some super awesome tips on when you're writing your book, how to pick your topic. And David, I especially loved when you talked about in the first part, like you're using the Google tool to find out like the specific words people are searching for, not just like, cause I've used Google trends before and that tells you topics, but it's nice to actually know the specific wording and that makes your book.

that just got more searchable. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know specifically how successful it's been, but I know it made sense when I actually heard it from somewhere. Someone was saying that they were doing this. I'm like, that absolutely makes sense. I'm totally going to do that. So it worked out well for that title. Yeah, for sure. So let's talk about how you had changed your marketing plan in twenty twenty four.

with your buying versus starting book, which has an absolutely fabulous cover. So if you can hold that, if you have that nearby, I'd love you to hold it up. Cause I love this cover. Cause it's like, you know, clearly shows like one versus the other, like how they're different. And I love that visual. So why did you decide to change your book launch strategy in 24 and what did you do to change it up? Well, so, you know, my previous books, it was all about getting the book out and available.

And so basically what I did is I made them available on Amazon. I published it myself with KDP and it was there. And then, you know, nothing like I, people would come across it or they would find my YouTube channel, hear about the book, and then they would maybe go buy it. But it took a long time like that franchise book. You know, it took a decade to get as many reviews as buying versus starting to get in the first like 60 days or so.

And that because I never did anything to try to encourage the reviews on franchise warnings. It's just naturally organic from people who read it and I don't know, one in a hundred decides to write a review kind of thing. So for buying versus starting a small business, I really wanted to try to get the Amazon algorithm to work for me. And what that meant was, as far as I understood, getting

Purchases and getting reviews written and getting ratings so that the algorithm notices that there's activity around the book and so that the book will start to be presented to people who are strangers to me, right? That was that was the whole idea is like get Amazon to start selling this book if it if the algorithm feels that it's something people are excited about and so what I did for this particular book is I For the first time I actually created a launch date and I set that in the calendar

I wrote and finished the book and made it available to be released on that date. And then we had a marketing plan around that launch date. So I said, I have a YouTube channel. So over the course of the summer leading up to the launch, I did a special series about starting versus buying a small business where I talked about things that were tangential or in conjunction to the topics covered in the book. So it wasn't the same stuff. was

They were different topics, but they related to the whole idea of buying versus starting a small business. And the whole time I'm saying go to Amazon, sign up for the pre-order, know, make your purchase now, et cetera, et cetera. And then I also ran a contest where people could buy the book, leave a review, and then email us in the screenshot of the review. And we were giving away one-on-one consultations with me as prizes.

So we were trying to create excitement around that whole idea. At the same time, I ordered a couple hundred copies of the book and I got, you know, just from Vista print, I got some, some stickers with, with five gold stars. And it said, you know, I'd love for you to leave a review of my new book on Amazon. And I put that sticker on the front cover of those books. And I went to different conferences, meetings, anywhere I could, where I could find business people or people interested in business.

And I would give some kind of talk or we would do some handshaking. You know, I went to a conference down in Atlanta that had different meetups for different groups of people. And I met with all the small business interested people there and just gave away copies of my book and asked people to leave a review. And what I learned from that was kind of interesting. Not everybody who goes on Amazon leaves a review actually gets the review published. And so really it's the people who are the reviewers who are already engaging with that platform all the time.

who can log in and leave a review for a book they haven't purchased, right? If you buy a book on Amazon, it's there, they're welcoming a review from you because they know you bought it. But if you log into Amazon and you haven't purchased the book from them, I think they've got a different kind of filter on there to keep people from filling the funnel with made up or fake reviews. So, you know, I had about 40 people tell me they reviewed the book.

but the reviews never appeared. And so that was kind of interesting to learn. But I was able to get lots of people to review the book just from the promotion we did on YouTube and from running that contest. And then when I did share the book with people who had already left Amazon reviews for other books they had bought, those reviews seemed to get in pretty easily. Yes, because Amazon has that verified review piece just like for specifically what you said, right? Because so,

that people don't have 50 of their friends leave a review for a book they've never read, which I totally get. And so interestingly enough, when people said, hey, they sent you the screenshot, I reviewed your book, you can still use those screenshots in your promotional material, things like that. So it's not a complete, quote unquote, lost review, so to speak. So did you try reusing those reviews that didn't get published on Amazon for other media assets for your book?

Well, interestingly enough, what I did is I actually changed the book as it came out when I started to get those reviews. So I started to put some of the reviews, even the ones that weren't published on Amazon into the book. So there's a preview of the book on Amazon. Every book has this. And one little tidbit that I learned from listening to another podcast was, you know, this is your place to make your marketing pitch.

So in the very first few pages that people can access for free, I created a one page section which simply says why you should invest your time and money into reading this book. And so there's a one page sort of reassurance. This is what you're gonna learn if you buy this book and you spend time reading it. And then on the subsequent couple of pages, it's all of these reviews that people wrote for me, kind of reaffirming and encouraging that it is a good book that people should check out.

Yeah, and it's become very popular now and I'm blanking what it's called, but basically in the first part of your book where you mentioned Amazon does the preview for the first five pages, that you can put like two pages of reviews and or like recommendations from other people in your industry, why you should read the book. And so that's a good piece to put in there. In addition, I always recommend people put their QR codes.

so people can scan them and have a QR code like Linktree or something that has multiple links. So it refreshes as you can change it out so that you're not having to worry about it. I put this QR code in there, but now it's not good anymore because the links change. So yeah, that's to your point, an amazing marketing piece is to use those first preview pages, because even if someone doesn't buy your book, if they're interested in your newsletter, they can type in your newsletter or scan it with QR code.

And you've got somebody on your email list and now they're in your ecosystem, which is gold as we both know. Yeah. And at the back of every one of my books, I have a little blurb about other books that I've written too. So the, you know, the whole idea is cross promotion. And I've had people reach out to me that say they've read all my books, just because they like my YouTube channel and they want to learn more. You know, a book is cost effective. Like they don't cost a of money. And so it's a, it's a.

It's an easy threshold for someone to cross if they are interested in learning more and they just want to invest a little bit of money. I've never really earned a ton of money from any of my books. As you know, Lynn, like it's not a big money earner. The real benefit is in the promotional side and getting people to convert into consulting clients. But I find that if you write a book that it has an enduring interest, you know, you really can

Using some AI tools, now, use Otter to transcribe a conversation and then use that to kind of whittle it down into sort of a case study kind of five, six page document that tells a specific story. It's becoming easier and easier to turn your universe of content into stuff that can really add value for the readers within the pages of a book.

Yeah, speaking of that, I actually have a book on draft on my Google Drive, which is like how to repurpose your content into a book. Because if you have content, that's one of the easiest ways to make a book is to create an outline and then see what content you have and pull it in for your book content. Because, you know, that takes a lot of the heavy writing off of your plate if you already have that content. So that's a super smart way to utilize content you already have.

So David, this has been great. I know my listeners have got a lot of value out of this. For those of you who are on YouTube, you can see where David's books can be found. And so for David, people who are listening to audio, can you share with them how to reach out to you, how to find your books on, and then also how to connect with you online? Sure. Well, my name is David C. Barnett and davidcbarnett.com is my blog site.

If you go to DCB, which are my initials, dcbbooklist.com, it goes to my Amazon store where you can find my Amazon books. put them all together in an Amazon store. But if you're interested in learning more about buying or selling, financing and managing small and medium sized businesses, go over to davidcbarnett.com. There's a sign up there for my email list you can join. And if you type my name and the word small business into YouTube or any podcasting app, you're going to find like, I don't know.

900 videos or podcast episodes. I've just celebrated my 11th year on YouTube. So it's been quite some time. Well, congratulations. That's a long time to be consistently publishing on YouTube. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you know what? Consistency pays off with the algorithm. If you have a regular publishing schedule, that's what they like to see. So I always encourage people, you know,

I think that I was publishing every week for two years before I hit a thousand subs. And you know, most people quit, right? But even during that early period, when I had very few subscribers, that channel was delivering me clients. And so I always tell people don't confuse the vanity metrics of YouTube with success in consulting or working with clients. You don't need a big audience on social media. You need the right audience.

who are people that have a problem you can help solve and they're looking for somebody to give them the shortcut to whatever solution it is that you do. And so, I kept producing those videos because I kept getting clients. Eventually my numbers went up. Today I have 75,000 subscribers, but it does not relate. Like I don't have 75 times the business.

If you create content that answers somebody's question, they might type into the internet, then you could come up with the solution. And that's a way for you to meet someone who could end up hiring you. Right. Absolutely. And to your point too, actually a thousand subscribers doesn't sound like a lot on YouTube, but according to YouTube metrics, like if you have a thousand subscribers, you're doing better than like two thirds of the people on Amazon or on YouTube because you don't need a million subscribers to be up there.

higher in the percentage, in, to your point, the consistency really pays off. And yes, the vanity metrics don't translate into clients, but the consistency definitely does because people see you over and over and over again. And that's what click gets people to click on your link for sure. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today, David. This has been awesome and amazing. And I know this, like I've, I've learned some new things too. So thank you for coming on today. Well, thanks for having me. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks Lynn.

All right, my friends. So, you know, I love assisting new authors and returning authors get past their mindset of writing and publishing hurdles so they can have a smooth publishing pathway and be confident in self publishing their nonfiction books. And so if you're not sure where to start and you need some assistance, go to write for you.me, click on the discovery call. We can spend 15 minutes together so I can help you and stand by your side.

And walk you through the self-publishing process. Until next week, this is Lynn "Elikqitie" Smargis reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born.