Using Books As A Marketing Tool With Adam Witty

Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. Now, as you may or may not know, Dan Kennedy's book writing has been prolific. The amount of books that he has written and are available for you and continue to become available is nothing short of amazing. And today we're going to be listening to Dave D and Adam Witty as they talk about how Adam Witty has done the same thing in his business, how to use books as a marketing tool for your business. Now, Adam Witty is the founder and CEO of Advantage Media. He's an entrepreneur, author, speaker, teacher, consultant, and he and Dave are going to be talking about the entire book writing process and how you should be leveraging that as an entrepreneur to generate leads in order to network, in order to acquire customers, and to speak on stages. Let's listen in.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy. Should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like.

Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

Hello everybody, this is Dave D., Chief Marketing Officer of GKIC, and welcome to another Gold CD. Today my guest is Adam Witty. Adam is the founder and CEO of Advantage Media, an international publisher of business, motivation, and self-help books. Adam is also a really good friend of mine and one of the sharpest entrepreneurs I know. I'm kind of jealous because he's so young and tall. Adam is just an unbelievable guy. He's an in-demand speaker. He's a teacher. He's a consultant. Of course, he is an author as well of the book 21 Ways to Build Your Business with a Book. He's a co-author of different books including How to Build Your Dental Practice with a Book, How to Build Your Law Practice with a Book. He's a frequent guest on the acclaimed Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour. Adam has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, on all of the networks, ABC, Fox. He was named to the 2011 Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 list of America's coolest entrepreneurs. Well, we might have to question that a little bit, Adam. Coolest entrepreneurs? Quite frankly, I may have to question that credential.

It should have been most handsome entrepreneurs.

I think that's what it should have been. Exactly. And then last month, Adam was selected by the Chilean government to judge the prestigious startup Chile Entrepreneurship Competition. On this call, what Adam is going to do, what we're going to be talking about is how to write the entire book publishing, writing, the entire process. There's nobody better to talk to about this. I also want to talk to Adam a little bit about how we can use a book in our businesses to make money. Again, he has published written hundreds of books for CEOs, many for first-time authors. His books are in bookstores, they're on Amazon, and they're all built upon step-by-step blueprints. I'm really, really excited about having Adam. You should have a notepad out because this is a call you're definitely going to want to be taking notes on. Adam, welcome to the Gold CD.

Hey, Dave. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be with all your members. I'm a GKIC member myself.. I have been for the last 6 years. I've had the pleasure of working very closely with you, with Dan. We've had the pleasure of publishing a handful of Dan's books, and I just want to say that I really get and understand the plight of the GKIC member because in many ways I go through the same trials and tribulations as a lot of your members as an entrepreneur myself. In relation to book publishing, I have personally used a book to help grow my business.. We've now worked with over 350 individual authors, helping them write and publish a book to grow their business too. It's really a lot of fun to be on the call with you, just because I am a GKIC guy myself. I understand it. I embrace it. I really believe in everything that you guys teach your members.

Let's get right into this. I want to talk a little bit about why I should have a book as an entrepreneur. And how that helps to grow my business. I know that you have about 9 specific ways that someone can grow their business with a book. Why don't you talk a little bit about those?

I want to start on the big idea. The big idea is that a book, better than anything else, builds your authority, it builds your celebrity, and it builds your expertise. I don't care what industry you're in. I don't care if you're a doctor, a dentist, a financial advisor, a lawyer. I don't care if you own a brick-and-mortar business, a restaurant, or if you're growing a scalable technology company. There isn't a single business in the world where authority, celebrity, and expertise cannot benefit you and your business. There are so many ways that it helps benefit you and your business, from allowing you to charge premium fees to allowing you to be seen as the authoritative leader on a topic or on a subject, to making you a darling of the media. Everything stems from the authority, the celebrity, the expertise that a book can bring you. Quite frankly, Dave, when you look at all the different marketing vehicles that are out there, a book is best because a book, unlike anything else, does that. Experts write books.. And if you're not an expert about something, there's no way that you could possibly write 150 or 200 pages about the topic. And so we live in a society that has this high reverence for books. I mean, we as humans put authors on pedestals, right? I mean, again, authors are experts. And so by you having your own book, all of the prospects, all of the customers, heck, even all the employees and dare I say, members of your family. When you do a book, it puts you on a pedestal in their eyes as well. That has a magnetic effect on all other areas of your business. The old saying, "All boats rise with the tide." All boats certainly rise with the tide that a book can bring to a business. Absolutely.

For example, let's say I have my book. What are some of the ways that I'm actually going to use it to generate business? I understand it from theoretical standpoint, like you said, it builds my credibility. But how am I going to use it? Can I use it to generate leads? Give me an example of how I would. Let's just take that one specifically. I want to generate leads. Everyone wants that regardless of what business that they're in.

How would I use my book to generate leads? Great question. First of all, let me start with one premise. This is a quote directly from Dan Kennedy himself. "The worst way to make money as an author is selling copies of your book." But you can get rich off of the book, not from the book itself, but all of the invisible income streams that a book gives you. And so let's specifically take the example of lead generation. Okay, there's not a single member that's listening to this CD that doesn't want to generate more leads to their business. So the cool thing about a book is a book can be used in all forms of lead generation. If you're using the book in your lead gen in direct mail, if you're using it in email, if you're using it on your website, if you're using it in radio. We have a couple of authors that use their book in TV infomercials. There are all these different ways to use the book for lead gen. Here's the big idea, is that as you know, we live in a world where everything is now free. There's this great competition for free. Everybody is given free information. Download my free special report. Go to my website and watch a free 10-minute video. Listen to my free audio program. Like, everything's free. But the cool thing about a book is a book has a price tag on it. In society, humans know that, that there is a price to a book. Now, that price may be $15 or $20 for a book, but there is a physical price attached to it, and there's a physical manifestation of you're holding a book in your hands. It's not something that's intangible, that's simply a special report that's emailed to you. You've got this book that in the eyes of most human beings is incredibly valuable. Then what you're doing is you're using that to prime the pump for your lead generation. See, it's all about having better bait. That's something that Dan talks about all the time is that in today's age you need better bait if you want to A, generate more leads, and B, if you want to generate higher quality leads. You need something more attractive than the run-of-the-mill free report or free video on your website. And so a book is that better bait, because remember there's a physical price tag that's associated with it. So everybody always wants something that they would normally have to pay for. Whereas arguably, what price tag does a special report or a video have? It's hard to say. There's no widely accepted price that attaches to that. But a book has a widely accepted price that's attached to that. And when you offer that book as the bait for someone to come to your website, to call your 800 number, to give you all of their names, all of their name and information specifics about their situation, the problems that they're having, how your product/service might be able to help them, it can really do wonders in helping you generate more leads but most importantly higher quality leads than the ones you're currently getting.

Yeah, and then let me ask you though, why not just do, for example, an eBook? I just want to make sure everyone understands that we're talking about a physical book here, a "real book" that would be sitting on your bookshelf or sitting on your bedside table. Why not just do an eBook? It seems like it would be a lot easier, a lot less expensive, so on and so forth.

Yeah, you know, I'm reminded of something that Dan said a number of years ago. You know, Dan said that he would never read blogs. Now, we all know Dan doesn't use the internet, but he said, I would never read a blog even if Vicki printed the blog out for me and FedExed it to me. And he said, the reason I don't read blogs is because it's too easy. Everybody can go online and set up a blog for free. He said there's no barrier to entry. And of course, you and I know that money is a barrier to entry. And so the first thing is that there is cost to writing and publishing a real book, a physical book that looks as good as the bestsellers, a physical book that's in bookstores. I mean, there's certainly a real cost to that. Certainly, whenever there's a real cost to something, that immediately cuts out the 85% of people that don't have the money or aren't willing to spend the money. That's the first big principle that I would make. The second thing that I would tell you is that again, an eBook has in many ways the same value perception that a special report or a video has. There's not a widely accepted belief of what an eBook is really worth, what it should really cost. We have a widely accepted belief of what a physical book costs. The other thing is that if you sit down with a prospect, belly to belly, let's say you're in professional sales and you slide a copy of your eBook across the table, it doesn't quite have the same impact of autographing a copy of your book. Sliding it across the table and saying, "Mr. Prospect, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. As a small token of my appreciation, I'd love for you to have an autographed copy of my newly published book." Again, that's really— we call it in the publishing business, we call it the thump factor. The thump factor is when you throw your book on the table and you hear that thump, it's a real book. It's a tangible product. Rightly or wrongly, we as human beings place more value on the physical product. It's the same thing with you, Dave, at GKIC. There's a reason why more people buy the home study kits that have physical products attached to them than just buying an online course because they're getting something in the mail and it makes them feel like they're getting more.— the same content, but they feel like they're getting more.

Because they feel like they're getting more, they're willing to jump through more hoops to get it. Yeah, absolutely. The other thing, Adam, why we always teach at GKIC and what I've been teaching for years is to get something physical into the person's hands. Again, there's nothing better than a book, is the staying power of it. If you send me a book in the mail, That book is on my bedside table. That book is in my bathroom. That book is following me around. I can see it. It's a constant reminder of you, as opposed to an eBook which somebody downloads. How many times have you done this personally? You download an eBook or a special report and then you can't even find it on your computer and you totally forget about it. So it has that— the book has more of a top-of-the-mind consciousness. Benefit than anything else.

So it's really great. Now one of the things— Go ahead. Let me just say one thing. You make a great point. There's one thing that we never do with books. We don't throw books away. That is almost sacrilegious in our culture. I mean, we throw away newspapers. We throw away magazines. We certainly throw away direct mail.. But we don't throw away books. Now, we may not read it. We may let it sit on our coffee table. We may put it on our bookshelf. We may give it to a friend. At the very worst, we're going to go out of our way to donate it to the library. But we're not going to throw the book away. That's where the book has the staying power that really no other marketing material has.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So another thing that you talk about, Adam, is how you can use a book for networking purposes. So explain that to me a little bit, how I can— because again, I'm probably the world's worst networker. So tell me how I can make— no, seriously, you know, I've got some really good skills. That's not one of them.

So tell me how I would use that book to help me in my networking Okay, so there's two ways, there's two big ideas here. The first is pretty easy, the second is a very advanced strategy. The first is that there's a famous movie made a number of years ago, it was called Multiplicity. And Michael Keaton is the main character and, you know, his life is really tough. He's got a job and a family and kids and just doesn't have enough time to do all the things that he wants to do. So he meets this scientist who agrees to clone him. And so through the course of the movie, he gets 4 or 5 clones. And the only problem is with each generation of the next clone, the level of intelligence goes down a pretty big step. And so at the end of the movie, he's got 5 clones running around and the last one can't even tie his own shoelaces. But the point of that is to say that a book gives you the multiplicity of The book allows you to be in more places, to be in multiple places at once. The book allows you to be on somebody's coffee table. The book allows you to be on the bookshelf of your biggest prospects. The book allows you to have visibility, to have what Dan calls omnipresence. That's a big deal. The book gives you omnipresence. With omnipresence, you're able to network and connect with more people. That's kind of the obvious, but that's the big way that a book can literally help you expand and build your network. There's the old saying that it doesn't matter who you know, it's who knows you. If you have a book and that book is widely distributed through your key influencers and through your niche, your industry, more people are going to know you, which is going to automatically build your network really without you having to do much except for write, publish, and distribute, market the book. Okay. The second part, and this is the advanced strategy, you know, and Dan does a really, really good job at this and so we should use him as an example. Dan very strategically writes a book and purposefully includes certain people and certain companies as examples in his book. What Dan does is he builds out the marketing plan for his book before he writes. He's got this blueprint that he creates and then he very intentionally features certain people in certain products and certain resources and certain companies in his book. Then what he does when the book comes out is he contacts all of them and he says, "Hey, Dr. Charlie Martin, great news. You're featured in my book. How would you feel about buying 500 copies and spreading this book through your network?" Oftentimes they do. What Dan does is he picks all of the key influencers that he wants to get in front of and the herd of the influencer. Then he strategically integrates them into the book so they will be more receptive to want to promote the book for him. That's a key advanced strategy on how you can use a book to network with other people's networks.

Got it. Got it. All right, so we've talked about first how to build— obviously it builds credibility, it builds prestige. We've talked about how to use a book as a networking tool. We talked about how to use your book as a business card, because that's obviously more powerful than just handing someone a little square piece of paper that goes in the circular file when they get home, because as you said, people don't throw away books. I really love those networking ideas. That's great. We talked about how to generate leads with the book, but how do I acquire a customer with the book? I know that's one of the strategies that you have. I generate the lead. Is that what you're talking about?

Is there another specific strategy for acquiring customers? I'll give you two great examples. They use these not to generate leads, but to directly acquire customers. So I'm going to give you two examples. The first one is Advantage author Brian Fricke. And Brian's a GKIC member, and he runs a very large financial planning practice in Central Florida. He wrote a book titled Worry-Free Retirement: How to Do What You Want, Where You Want, When You Want. Okay? Now, anybody that's like within 10 years of retirement those 3 questions are going through their mind. Am I going to have enough to do what I want, when I want, where I want? And so his book, brilliantly, the title addresses the 3 biggest concerns that are going through somebody's mind 10 years from retirement, which again is another advanced strategy of figure out what is the biggest agitation in your prospect's mind. And make sure the title and subtitle of your book are addressing that irritant, that agitation, that concern, that worry. But here's the point. So Brian writes this book and he prominently features it in his newsletter, which all of his clients get. And he sends a small box of books to all of his clients. And he attaches a note and he says, "Dear Jim, I've so enjoyed working with you and having you as a client over the last 6 years." I realize that a lot of your friends probably ask about who you use for all of your retirement planning and financial advising needs. And rather than you tell the story yourself, I thought that you might find this book a helpful tool to share with your friends. So he's got all of his clients that are now passing his book along to other people as a gift. And who doesn't like to give a book away as a gift to one of their friends. He's got his clients giving Brian's book away to their friends and he's had 5 people directly that have called him and said, "Hey, I got your book from my friend who's one of your clients. I read it and I'd like to meet with you." This is where it really makes a difference because for Brian, Each new client is worth about $10,000 a year to his practice. So he's acquired 5 customers directly from the book, not generating a lead but really directly generating a client, which is worth $50,000 a year to his business and his average client stays with him for I believe about 12 years. So that's where the money can really add up. Let me give you a second example. There's a gentleman named Carl Sewell, and any of the GKIC members listening to this CD that live in the greater Dallas, Texas area will know who Carl Sewell is. He owns Sewell Automotive, which is an 18-chain car dealership. And, you know, they sell Cadillacs and Lexus and GMC and Chevrolet and, you know, a variety of brands. And they are known for their impeccable service. So many years ago, Karl Sewell decides to write a book titled Customers for Life. And the entire premise of the book, he outlines what he calls his 10 Commandments for customer service. Okay. So Dave, anybody that's ever been in the market to buy a new car knows that if you're buying a Lexus, a Toyota, a Cadillac, you've got 10 different dealerships probably within your city that you can choose from. Or within your metro area. What's the big differentiator? Why do people buy a Cadillac from Hudson rather than Jim Smith? Well, it's probably because of service. That's the differentiator. It's really service at the end of the day. What he did is he had his book in all of his showrooms and he trained every single one of his sales reps to give a complimentary copy of the book any person that came into a showroom and test drove a car, no matter what. So Sewell Automotive is generating the leads to get them coming into the showroom to do a test drive. But after they do the test drive, the sales rep says, "Mr. and Mrs. Jones, thank you so much for coming in to take a test drive. As a small token of our appreciation, our CEO Carl Sewell wanted you to have an autographed copy of his book." "Hey, this is our gift to you." So they hand them the book. Now, the chance that most of the people read the book, probably slim. But I guarantee you every single one of them as they're walking out the door is flipping through it. And as they're flipping through it, they're reading about Carl Sewell's 10 Commandments for Customer Service. And of course throughout the book, he's got testimonials and these heroic stories of how Sewell went above and beyond to please a customer. How many people do you think don't flip through that book and then immediately turn around and go buy their car from Carl Sewell's Automotive Dealership?

A lot of them. Again, a brilliant offbeat strategy because I think a lot of people— I think it's really important that story you just told because that just proves a premise that you said at the very beginning of the call, Adam, which was that Any business owner, any entrepreneur could use a book. You would think, "Well, how can a car dealer use a book?" There you go, right there. Absolutely. Yeah, just need to get creative with it. You briefly touched upon, and I think it's kind of obvious, if you want to get into the media, you need a book. Just give us a minute or so about how that process works.

Yeah, there's not a single person on this CD listening to this CD that does not want more free publicity.. The reason why it's so hard to get free pub is because most of us don't have anything to talk about, at least in the eyes of the media. The media solely want experts. They only want to talk to the authority in that niche, in that industry when they're doing a story, when they're doing an interview. We talked earlier about how the book makes you an authority. Well, it makes you the expert. So when a journalist sees your book, if it's something that intrigues them, they then want to talk to the author. So I've got dozens of examples of authors of ours that have used their book to get publicity. One of our authors is a criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles. He used his book, which is on negotiation, to become a legal analyst for Fox News, CNN, Court TV, and MSNBC. I've got another author who is a fitness model, and she sent her book to the maker of the Ab Circle Pro, which is the number one selling piece of fitness equipment currently on the Home Shopping Network. He got the book, read the book, realized A, that she knew what she was talking about, and B, that she indeed was a good-looking fitness model.. And he called her and said, "Hey, we'd like to have you come in and try out to be our official spokeswoman." Wow. And so the point is that the book was the ticket to ride. The book is what put these two people on a level above everybody else because, I mean, think about it. There's a lot of criminal defense attorneys that could go on the Fox News and give legal commentary. But most of them don't have books. So if you're the producer at Fox, Would you rather have the criminal defense attorney who's an author on your show or would you just rather have the plain Jane criminal defense attorney? Well, given the choice, you would always rather have the author. Absolutely. That's where you can really use the book to get a lot of free publicity that without it, it's just a much harder sell.

One of the things I think is kind of neat is that you talk about how you can use a book to become a speaker. I think a lot of people would think it would be in reverse. Okay, I'm a speaker so I come up with a book, which is obviously you can do. But you're saying a great way to get into the speaking business, to become a high-paid speaker, would be to have a book first.

Talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Nobody on this CD doesn't want free publicity. I can't think there's a single person listening to this CD that also wouldn't like to be a paid professional speaker. That doesn't mean you have to live as a speaker, but given the choice, if you're going to pay me to come talk, yeah, I would probably talk for free, so I'll take the money too. Speaking and authoring go hand in hand. The book is the ticket to ride. Same thing with the media and journalists. Meeting planners that are putting on events, they're looking for the best person. Because the biggest challenge they have is being embarrassed. If you're the meeting planner for IBM and you're putting on the sales conference for your top 500 reps, the biggest worry that you have is that you're going to bring a speaker in who's going to completely bomb, you're going to be embarrassed and possibly fired. And so everything that they're doing is they're looking for a speaker that has credibility because credibility gives them stability. And certainty, and that's what the meeting planner wants. So having the book gives you a level of credibility and certainty that other people that want to speak without a book just don't have. The second thing that it does is having a book gives you an immediate and logical topic to talk about. I mean, you're going to obviously talk about the book. That can be your keynote speech is the book. Then thirdly, you now have something to sell in the back of the room. One of our authors is a multimillion-dollar speaker. His name is Steve Gilliland. He wrote a book with us a number of years ago titled Enjoy the Ride. The premise of the book is that the true joy of life is the journey, not the destination. It's a motivational book. Book, gets you fired up. So he's very popular with sales conferences and the opening speaker at big meetings. So Dave, what do you think the keynote is? It's Enjoy the Ride. The title of his keynote speech is the same title as his book. And after he's on stage for 60 minutes and he gets the audience fired up, what do you think happens? There's a stampede to the back of the room of people that want to buy his books. He's getting paid as a speaker and he's making money selling books. They're lining up in the back of the room and he's autographing the books and he's a celebrity. The book is really, again, a necessary ingredient in order to be seen by the people that book speakers as the authority and it gives them certainty that you have something crystally clear to talk about.

Okay. Let's move ahead here because I know that there are some of our members who are listening saying, "Okay, great. I get it. I can see all the ways I can use a book to make money to do all this kind of stuff.

Here's the problem, Adam.

I don't have a book." I don't have the book. You claim that you've got a system where someone can write a book in less than a week.

Yeah, I actually have a system where they can technically write a book in less than a day. So here's the big idea. There's 3 reasons why most people don't do a book. If I were on stage at a GKIC event, and I certainly have been in the past, most recently at the Super Conference in Dallas, When I say, "How many people in here have a book?" 10 to 20% of the room will raise their hand. I then say, "How many people would like to have a book?" Every single hand goes up. Then I say, "Okay, which of the 3 reasons applies to you?" Let's see if this applies to any of the listeners. Number 1, you don't like writing. For a lot of people, they just don't like writing. I'm one of those people. Number 2 is they don't think they're a good writer. Most people that don't enjoy writing probably don't think they're a good writer. Then thirdly, and this is the big enchilada, so to speak, most people don't have the time to write a book. The American Association of Publishers has found that the average author will spend 200 hours writing their book. The reason it takes so long is this thing called self-editing. So, Dave, when you're writing an email, you write a couple of sentences and then you stop dead in your tracks and you say, "No, wait a minute. Let me go back. Let me change that word. Let me delete that comma and let me reverse those two words." And then you write the next sentence. And then after the first paragraph is complete, you'll stop and you'll read that first paragraph to make sure it reads correctly and it sounds correctly. It's this thing called self-editing. So the average American can write about 500 words in an hour. Some 250 words in an hour. But it's really hard to write really, really fast because we have a habit that is uncontrolled to self-edit as we write. And then think about it, if you're writing a book, I mean, we're not talking emails. If you're writing a book, you're going to be especially critical as a self-editor because this stuff is going to be published. So that's why it takes so long. Now, here is a strength that most entrepreneurs have. They love to talk and they could talk for days and days about a topic or subject or business matter that they are passionate about. And most of GKIC members are very passionate about whatever topic, whatever business they're in. And so if I ask one of your members to talk about their business, They could go on until the cows come home. Therein lies the secret. It's talking your book, not writing your book. At Advantage, we have a proprietary program called Talk Your Book. It's for the ADD entrepreneur that wants a book, but the thought of sitting down and writing it is a total non-starter. What we do is we work with authors to help them outline the book. Then we interview them. That interview is recorded. That recording is transcribed. Then the transcript is ghostwritten into the manuscript of the book. For every listener that wants a book quickly, the secret is talking your book, not writing your book. You've got to start by creating a blueprint and an outline for your book. Then you have to have someone interview you on the topic and be very, very focused about keeping you on topic. Then you have that transcribed and then that transcript has to then go to an editor who's going to work with you very closely to developmentally edit, to line edit, to copy edit that book into the manuscript. Obviously, there's back and forth and there's work that has to be done with your editors. But the point is that for most authors where it takes them anywhere from a year to 2 years to actually write their book, you can literally get the content out of your head and onto the paper in as little as a day.

Great. Absolutely. Again, for the members listening in, Adam has a service, but don't separate that he can do it for you. The reality is he just gave you a system for doing it yourself. Right, Adam? I mean, someone could outline their book. Someone can ask someone, get someone to interview them, and they can do this without even using your service to get the book done very, very quickly. It's a really, really great strategy. Let's talk about the different pros and cons that there are to the different methods of publishing books. First, tell me some of the different methods that there are for publishing a book that our listeners could take advantage of.

Yeah, right. So we talked about getting the book written. Okay, so the book is written. Now, how do we get a book published? There are really 3 different options for most authors. I'll be very brief about this because when I talk about book publishing, most people fall asleep. So I'm going to go real quick on this. But there are 3 main ways. The first is traditional publishing. That would be Random House, Simon Schuster, HarperCollins. Think about the big New York publishers. That's on one side of the spectrum. On the other side of the spectrum, you have self-publishing, which is literally where you do everything yourself. Traditional publishing, the pros are credibility, prestige, and the fact that you have a big publisher who's essentially footing the bill for the book. The downside is that it takes usually 9 months to 2 years to get published. You first have to get an agent to pick up your book who's going to then try to sell your book to a publisher. The other problem is that you don't own the rights. Most authors that we work with are very entrepreneurial. They want to own the intellectual property and they want to control the process. With traditional publishing, you're giving that up to someone else. When you don't have ownership, when you don't have any control and it takes a really long time,. For the entrepreneurial author, that's typically a non-starter. But if you think you can get a traditional publisher, I am one to say go for it. I'm not going to tell you not to. But for most authors, especially a first-time author, the reality is that it is almost impossible this day and age to get picked up by a traditional publisher if you don't have a previous track record of success as an author or if you don't have a gigantic platform.

—Or wait a minute, Adam, or if you don't have a topic. I think it's going to be very difficult to go to McGraw-Hill, for example, and say, "Well, I want to write a book on auto repair for other auto repair dealers." They're not going to be interested in that kind of book, are they?

That's the problem. Most GKIC members, they are niche topic experts. And McGraw-Hill, they want books that are applicable to the masses. There's a pro and con. The pro of being applicable to the masses is that McGraw-Hill thinks they can sell more books. But the con is, and we know this by being students of Dan, is that it's really hard to be all things to all people, and it's darn hard to market to all people. You've got to be very, very specific in who you're trying to reach. When you're specific in who you want to reach, and that's how you use the book for lead gen, that's how you use the book to get publicity in your topic, then the traditional publishers become uninterested. Got it. On the other side of the spectrum, you got self-publishing. Self-publishing is exactly what it means. You do everything yourself. You write the book. You edit the book. You get your next-door neighbor who moonlights as a graphic designer to do your cover. The guy in your Rotary Club owns a print shop in your local community. You print up 1,500, 2,000 copies. They now go into your garage and you start hawking books kind of one at a time. The good thing about that is you can do it really quick. You own all the intellectual property. You own the rights. You are in full control. The problem with self-publishing is one, there's really no distribution. So, yeah, you can get listed on Amazon, but that's it. And a big reason to be a published author is the credibility of being able to say, "Hey, my book is available in bookstores." The other problem with self-publishing is that you've got to figure it all out yourself. You know, there's a reason why most of us don't change the oil in our car. There's a reason why most of us aren't our own mechanics for our cars. There's a reason why we hire professionals to do other things for us. Because we don't have the time or the inclination to want to try to figure it out ourselves, bloody our ankles and bruise our knees, and go through a steep learning curve. If your time is worth anything, self-publishing can eat up a lot of time with you trying to figure it out on your own. The other big con with self-publishing is typically books that are self-published oftentimes look self-published. The one thing that I would say to anybody listening is that the worst thing that you can do is publish a book that brings your credibility down. Books can. If a book is not done well, if it's not written well, if it's not edited well, it will lower your credibility and you would be better off not having a book at all. You've got to make sure that the book is written and edited and published in a capacity that really raises your credibility so people think more of you having read the book than prior to meeting you. And then finally, in the middle, there's that hybrid. Advantage Media Group, the company that I'm the CEO of, that is a hybrid between traditional and self-publishing., and we bring the best of both worlds together. So you own the rights, you own all the intellectual property, it's very quick turnaround times, and you are the boss, you're in control. But we have a professional team of writers, of editors, of designers, of distribution, sales, and marketing professionals that are as competent or more competent than those at Random House. And so we can give your book all of the professionalism and all the street cred, all of the distribution that a Random House or HarperCollins title could get. It puts you on an even playing field. That's kind of where the magic is with us.

We bring the best of both worlds together. Got it. You talk about that there are some mistakes that authors make. I want to just go over some of those. We don't have time to go over all of them, but let me just point out some specific ones that you talk about. You say that the number one mistake that an author makes is to clearly define the benefits of the book.

Talk about that in a little bit more detail because that sounds like it's really important. Yeah. That's the biggest mistake. The mistake is they don't define the benefits of the book. There are over 250,000 books published every year. On top of that, you've got more content that is being put in front of people. You've got more commercial messages than at any other time in our lifetime. So what is it that we say that compels someone to want to give us their time and their attention? Because getting somebody's attention is not an easy feat. So you've got to say and you've got to articulate in your title, in your subtitle, in the COVID of your book, you've got to articulate what's in it What's in it for me? You've got to think through the mind of the reader. What's in it for me? Remember, bait the hook to suit the fish, not the fisherman. The biggest mistake I see, Dave, is that most authors, they write a book, they title a book, they design a book so it's something that they like. Okay, well, that's great. It's your prerogative to do that. If you want people to really read your book, And to care about your book, you have to remember that buyers of books, readers of books are intensely selfish people. If you can't clearly articulate what they're going to learn, how they're going to grow, how they're going to be able to make more money, how they're going to improve their marriage, improve their finances by reading your book, you're not going to make the sale.

You talked about how Dan, a little bit earlier, and I'd like to spend a few minutes on this, really thinks through the marketing plan before he even sits down to write the book. That was a real eye-opener for me because I think what most people do is they write the book, then figure out what their marketing plan is going to be. You say a big mistake that an author makes is not having a marketing plan before they write the book. I'd like you to discuss a little bit about what goes into this marketing plan, what you've got to think through so someone who's listening could really do this before they even start thinking about talking their book, writing their book, getting their book published or anything like that.

You're absolutely right. You've got to write the marketing plan, write the title, write the subtitle of the book before you write a single word. That's my advice to anybody listening.. And the big thing that you have to consider is who is your target reader and what is it that you are going to say to them that they are going to really want to learn, what they are going to want to hear. So you have got to figure out who is your market and then what is the message. The medium is figured out. The medium is the book. But this is what Dan calls the three-legged stool, the triangle, the marketing triangle, message, market, medium. So you have got to figure out who is your market Is it women? Is it men? Is it older folks? Is it younger folks? Are they college educated? Are they not college educated? Are they affluent? Are they more middle class? You've got to drill down as deep as you can. I mean, Dan's talked about choreographing who is your perfect customer and then literally giving your perfect customer a name and giving them all the attributes. My perfect customer, his name is Jimmy and he's a mechanic and he's a member of the Kiwanis Club, all that kind of stuff. You need to do the exact same thing for the reader of your book. You need to choreograph who is your perfect reader, who is your perfect customer of this book. Then once you have that figured out, you have to make sure that you're outlining a book that delivers a message to them that they care about and that's going to literally make an impact on their life. If you can't connect those two dots, Again, there's not a sale.

It's very, very important that you intentionally think through these things before you write the first word. Excellent. Also, you talked about something that Dan does is strategically thinking through, okay, well, I'm going to incorporate this person or this company into the book, tell a story about them. Do you have any other little tips like that about—

I guess it's really more of the content that goes into the book that directly ties into the marketing. Again, it all starts with that blueprint and figuring out, laying out what the book is going to look like before you write a single word. That's where, okay, we're figuring out who's our target reader, what am I going to say to them, and then what people, what companies, what resources, what products and services am I going to feature through the various chapters of the book that help me achieve the marketing goal of getting this book spread out to other audiences. You're factoring all of these things in together at the same time. Literally, you're whiteboarding this. You're charting this out. Whether you're writing the book, whether you're working with a ghostwriter, whether you're working with a company like Advantage, this all needs to be figured out and communicated so indeed you and your writing partners can make sure you're delivering on this. The point is, and the big idea is that most authors don't give any credence to planning.

They just start writing, and that is the biggest mistake you can make. Fantastic. Well, Adam, again, really, I took notes on this call because, as you know, we're in the process of doing my book here, and you really got me thinking about, hey, you know what, I really need to think a little bit more in depth about what needs to go into this book to accomplish all the goals that I want to accomplish and not just be a vanity piece for myself. Right? That's right. Yeah, really, really outstanding. Thanks so much.

You are a handsome, charming, and very tall man. I think that's key. David, it's been a real pleasure being with you today. I wish all of your members the best of luck in their writing and publishing adventure. And, and just remember that every single person on this CD, if they want to grow their business, if they want to take it to the next level, a book can be an integral tool to help them do that.

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