Nancy Erickson — Stop Chasing Prospects

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All right. We're going to talk about how to get prospects to come to you, how to be the expert, the one that's sought after instead of chasing everyone else down. My name is Bill Gallagher. I'm the scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Happy to come back and talk to you every week about everything to do with scaling up, getting your strategy right, getting the team right, executing, optimizing the cash and developing yourself as a leader in every sense. All our shows and more, hundreds and hundreds of now@scalingcoach.com or here, wherever this is for you, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, wherever you're watching, listening. All right, we're joined today by Nancy Erickson in St. Louis, Missouri, and she's going to talk to us all about this. Nancy is the book professor and author of Stop Stalling and Start Writing. She coaches people and helps people get books out. We've covered this a little bit before, but with the focus on getting that audience in, getting in the listeners, getting in the viewers, the leads, that kind of thing to follow you and be interested to you. We want to tell some stories about what it's done for some people that you may have heard of before. So, Nancy, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks, Bill. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. So talk to us about your, you know, how you got into this line of work.

Sure. Well, kind of sideways, you know, a lot of times you have, you know, things that happen in life that you're kind of like going in this direction, then it's like, you know, and you go in another direction. So my background is actually in high tech and I was a systems engineer for IBM for a number of years. And then I also worked for Oracle Corporation. And so what happened? My career was going great and I got word that my father was diagnosed with A terminal brain tumor. And so I quit everything. Their life expectancy was about seven months, and that's about exactly what it was. So I kind of quit everything and went down to Florida to be with my parents during that time and a lit after, you know, with my mom, after my dad passed away. But when I came home, I was kind of like, huh, what am I gonna do now? I don't quit my job, you know, So I really felt hard about it, actually. I was. I was in a good financial position, so I could really examine what do I really want to do. And I didn't. It wasn't technology stuff anymore. And so I had written a lot of stuff when I was younger. I always loved to write, and I'd had some things published. And so I decided I'd go back to school and get a master's degree in writing, a master's of Fine arts. So I did that. And that's, you know, any master's program. Two years, kind of around the clock. And when I was specializing in nonfiction. And so when I graduated, two things happened. Number one, they asked me to join the faculty to teach writing at the university. And I started a publishing house, Stonebrook Publishing. So I wanted to publish what I call high impact nonfiction books. And those are books that create a change in the reader, you know, that are a benefit to others. We kind of say that we are. All of our books that we publish do two things for the readers. They offer hope and help. And many of them are business books. When we started Stonebrook, you know, right off the bat, I kind of got, you know, I don't know, lucky. I don't know if I like the word luck, but somehow I attracted things into my sphere that turned out pretty cool. One of them is that the first book that we published was written by a Holocaust survivor who'd gone to school with Anne Frank. And so our first book release we did in Amsterdam at their school, and that was really cool. And then shortly after that, we published a book called A Life in Parts. And we got back cover endorsements for that book from Sir Paul McCartney and Cindy Crawford. And so I was pretty happy with both of those, you know, out the shoot successes. But. There's always a but, right? But we were getting a lot of manuscripts submitted that had a seed of that hope and help thing, but they were so poorly written that we couldn't really find the message and we couldn't edit our way out of it. So I took a little bit of a step back and I. That's where the book professor part was born that, you know, we help people write high impact nonfiction books. But I wrote a step by step process to help people who aren't writers to become published authors. So that's how that all got. Got going. So we've been, you know, doing it for 10 or 12, 13 years now. So.

Pardon me catching my throat there. Let's talk about some of the great examples, right? And then I think from that we'll see some of the lessons in this process because as you've learned, it takes some work. You shared some things in preparation. Why don't you tell us maybe first about Joe Fingerhut?

Yeah, sure. So, you know, Joe Fingerhut was a, A speaker. That's his, his, you know, profession. He's a speaker. He does, he primarily speaks to teenagers and young adults. And so we worked on his book and when we released it, he started and, and people use their books for a lot of different things. Lead magnets you've talked about, Bill, you know, for people in the speaking arenas to get more engagements, you know, more contracts to speak if they have a book. So during the first year of his book release, Joe was actually able to raise his speaking fee twice simply because he had the book. And so. And that was the kind of thing that kind of got his name known because he was speaking more. Now he's very sought after in that youth genre, but he was able to, you know, just. And it was simply because he had a book, they were willing to pay him more. But I just, I also want to say something else. A book is not a book, is not a book. You, when you write a book, you need to make sure that you are putting forth your best foot. And I have seen a lot of bad examples. So your book should be able to do three things for you. It should establish you as an expert in your field. It should increase your credibility and it should help you attract a following. But the sure way to kill your credibility on page one is have a poorly written book. So we really stress the creation part of your book, that it is up to literary standards and edited to the highest standards. And obviously there's a lot of publishing commissions. We're not a self publisher. We're publishing a hybrid publishing house and we adhere to strict publishing standards set out by the Independent Book Publishers Association.

So you're saying if you do a crappy book, it doesn't really make you much of a leader.

I'm saying if you do a crappy book, you're going to spend a lot of money and get nothing for it except you might just, just trash your credibility. Because if people are like that's the best you can do. And I don't mean to slam self published books because there are some that are done very well, but people give me their books all the time. I'm telling you, I will look at them and I can spot it across the room, the covers. There's just a difference in the professional quality of professional designers books, book designers. And then you just open it. You know, sometimes people make like a 14 point font to make the book longer. I just all sorts of things that are make me think, no, you know, you really could have done better. But now this is already out there, so what are you going to do? You know, Anyway, there's a, it's like anything else, you know, the more you put into it and the more expert help that you have, the better the product will be. Self publishing means you're in charge of the whole publishing process yourself. Not that you do it yourself. You don't do any of it yourself. So you just get that expert help.

So you also shared a story about Canfield in Getting Ready. So talk about that.

Yeah. Jim Canfield is a Vistage speaker and if you're familiar with Vistage, it's a CEO network and they meet regularly with these groups. Are you familiar with it, Bill?

Absolutely.

Jim embarked on his book and there was an older book called CEO Tools and it was really outdated and so Jim's company had bought the rights to that book and then we totally wrote rewrote it for current day business environment. And so it's called CEO Tools 2.0. And Jim has been traveling around. He was actually awarded the top Vistage speaker the last two years in a row. And so he sold over 10,000 copies of the book. He's frequently booked as a speaker because of this book that we did because it's relevant information that is a, almost like a, like a primer for, you know, CEOs if you, you know, need to. I mean there's just so much involved in running a large business and it's all covered in that book. So he speaks on that topic as well. But I know they sold over 10,000 copies and you know, upward.

Yeah, so he put the thing out and, and how does that drive the speaking for him? How is he using it? Is he selling it? Is he making money off it? What do you say is the thing.

He is selling it? He is selling. First of all, people book him because of this book, CEO Tools 2.0. So he's gotten far more speaking engagements and also Vistage has endorsed the book, so to speak. And so they recommend it as a volume for their members that will help them to do their jobs as in a much better and more efficient manner. And so they, you know, recommend it to their members. So he sold books that way. But also it, you know, it catches on. He's caught on. He's getting known for this. And so I know that he's had been invited to Europe to speak on it and other European countries who also had Vistage groups.

Well, in his case he has a name that sounds like another best selling speaker author.

Are you thinking of Jack Canfield?

Jack Canfield.

They're not related. Canfield's not an unusual name.

Yeah, not that unusual. But it's gotta give him a problem.

If they think that he's written Chicken Soup for the Soul because a very, very, very successful franchise by the way. And I had another, another author, Stephen Denny. And speaking of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Okay, so in our method we teach our authors how to write a book. And when we're constructing their chapters, they're in problem solution sets.

And so why don't you share? I don't know if it's Joe or Jim or Steven or take us through kind of what their process was like and what you did with them and getting their book.

Yeah, so let me talk a little bit about Stephen Denny. And so he has his business is they are mergers and acquisitions. They're business brokers. They help people when they're buying businesses or when they're merging businesses. And they do a lot of valuation pieces and that type of thing. They also have a lot of partners in the industry that they work with. And so their book series that we're developing is called you don't know what you don't know. And so I'm just going to grab something off my wall here, one of his, a couple of his book covers. So he's developed, we're developing this series and you can see that the covers are the same, you know, they look the same. Different colors, different subtitles. So within this series what we've done is we started off with developing chapters and problem solution sets. So one of the two things that's important for you to identify at the beginning is who is your audience and what is the purpose of the book. So let's key off that audience part. Okay. So he has a lot of audiences for his book. It's people who are buying business, they're selling business, or people who are Doing mergers, merging businesses. They're financial planners who are helping people, attorneys, CPAs. So what we've done with the book is it's kind of how to buy and sell business. And so there are always the same problems or issues to solve during that. And there's a chapter in each one of those along with the solutions. So in a series of books, what you do is you can kind of keep the meat of that book the same and then you can tweak the stories that you tell based on the audience that it serves. And so we're, we've done three books in his series so far and there's like, I think in total there's eight planned. It's a way to repurpose your material to reach a different audience. When I say it's kind of a chicken soup for the soul thing, what there's is stories that identify a different audience and then just market to that audience. It makes it much easier when you know who your audience is. It's way easier to market to them and reach them. Another thing in terms of kind of what I would say, expanding your book content like they're doing, because we build your chapter in problem solution sets. When you're finished with your book, you should be able to take out every chapter of your book and repurpose that material for other revenue producing products. For example, maybe you know, seminars or workshops or your own keynote, you know, addresses, if you're speaking online courses, you know, podcast material, blog material. I'm a huge believer in doing it right the first time so that you can replicate, you know, get those ripples going up. You know, everybody's not going to read a book, capitalize on that and reach them, you know, meet your audience where they are. It's kind of, I mean, you have different ways that you, you present Bill Gallagher to the world. Right. And your, your podcast is one of them.

Yes. Yeah. Different channels.

Yes.

Hopefully it's all Gallagher. Okay, good. So in your model there, you said there all problem solution sets for a particular audience.

Yeah, yeah. So when we follow a process that I teach people that we map out the entire content of the book before you start writing. And so, you know, depending on what your topic is, most people who are in business or have their own business or they have a product or service to offer, they understand the problems that they're, that it solves. Right. So, you know, for example, like I'll go back to Steven Denny in buying and selling a business. It's, it's for the, you know, for the sellers like, you know, I don't know what my business is worth. I don't know how to figure that out. You know, I don't know how to find a buyer. And those are all problems. And then what we do is we map those out and then we present the solutions in a very story driven methodology. We help them present the solutions. So the books are all very, you know, dense with stories. People aren't going to be interested in just reading how to do stuff. You know, you have to keep people entertained and engaged. Otherwise if you don't tell stories, they're not going to remember anything, maybe not even get through your book. And the whole idea, as I said earlier, is to have material that will offer your reading audience hope and help. And you can't do that if you don't have a method to get them through the material. And we use storytelling. We have some different storytelling formulas that we teach our authors that seem to hold up really well and they really get good at it.

So storytelling is a big thing, whether.

You'Re writing a book or whether you're giving a talk. Pretty critical.

Can you share some of that with us or talk about some of the stories that have been transformed by it so that we get a sense of that?

Well, I can tell you a little bit about the formula that we embrace for telling stories. First of all, stories have to have a point, right? It could be like my teenage daughter was one time driving home from school. She's talking and talking. I'm like, honey, what is your point? She goes, I don't have a point. I'm just talking. You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. We teach people to tell stories. It's kind of an arc of a story. And there's three elements to it. And the first is the elements are like what it used to be like, what happened and what it's like now. And that's kind of a classic compare and contrast. So you tell people what things were like before they were in the position that they were in. What's the pivotal moment that changed everything? And so like, okay, so the story I told you at the beginning about how I got into this when I had the high tech career to now being a publisher, that pivotal moment was that my dad got ill. That's what changed everything and started things going in a different direction. Then the what it's like now things is the improvement that has taken place in that example that you're telling. So that's kind of a natural way to tell stories. It doesn't sound formulaic, but it still gives the reader the benefit of learning the lesson through somebody else's eyes. The other thing about storytelling is that you're writing reader probably won't have the exact same situation as you're presenting, but when you tell stories, it activates a part of your brain that it just starts to work on you and it helps you to work out your own solutions to things that might have been elusive to you before. Got it.

Well, when I think about the. The storytelling, I think there's sort of two categories that we see folks a lot grappling with.

The first one is the most obvious.

Like how something came to be, like telling the origin story of the business.

Or that kind of thing. And.

And with that, I always have them open with something that's a hook, like either a stat or a factor, but very often at a moment of inspiration where they realized something was a problem. Like, my dad was dying and I thought about my life and I thought, oh, this stuff doesn't. I don't care about this. I don't want to talk about this.

Or have this about me and my.

Funeral or like that kind of thing. And then I'll have them go back and then build that before case.

So opening at the point of crisis, then building all that other.

Yeah, because you gotta grab them, right?

Because I don't really care about any of that stuff.

Exactly. Well, that's kind of what we do because a lot of times we'll have our authors. We might even have a short first page. That's the crisis point, you know, in their life. And then you fade back and work toward that. But you have to get people's attention, and you have very little time to do that. Even less and less, I think, as we move forward in the years. If you can't grab somebody's attention, then you've lost them.

The other one that I think is really relevant to a lot of people right now, and our CEOs have to work with, not just the CEOs, but all the leaders have to get good at this, is telling a story that hasn't happened yet.

So.

So they talk about a moment of crisis insight or something like that that grabs people. They build all that back, which is the recent past. And then they talk about the future that they haven't created yet, what they're building and envisioning, that kind of thing. And that is like how they're going to resurrect their company from a stock slump or how they're going to fix.

A problem in the industry that's plaguing.

That they haven't yet. That's more of a pitch or a.

Vision story for something that is yet to be.

Yeah, actually that's really valuable to do too, because if you can get your vision down into a story form, you can start to believe it and feel it and it starts to get some momentum. So that's a good approach.

Yeah, it's really great.

All right. Well, we've hit some great points today.

The point of writing a book and.

Becoming a better storyteller is not about the book sales.

You're not a fictional writer or whatever.

You're writing something that you're going to build and use in your business and you need a really well written book, but you don't necessarily have to be the great writer to do it. You can work with a writing partner, you can work through a process to that.

And then you're going to build that.

Into workshops, other media, other channels and.

All the other ways that you might.

Reuse it to build your business beyond. I think it's really useful for folks. If you want to know more, you're going to go to thebook professor.com and check out Nancy there@thebookprofessor.com Nancy, thanks so much for coming on with us today and for sharing some of your stories and your clients and really appreciate it. Thanks again, Aaron, for listening for watching. Like subscribe, like get them wherever you are right now, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, that kind of thing. Follow us so that you get them every week. We put a new show out every week and if you want to drop us a line, if you want to find a coach or something in your area, you're going to go to infoscalingcoach.com that's our email address that works. Infocalingcoach.com and we'll see it and respond to you. Thanks again everyone for listening. Big shout out to Vern Harnish, author and creator of our Scaling up framework and the originating Rockefeller Habits, and to Wanda Mitchell who produces our show.

In the background gets everybody ready in.

And out, the folks at Podfly Productions.

Who get our show edited, the audio, all that stuff going right up our.

Show notes Albert Burge, Anna Codina, Tim McGowan. Thanks again everyone for listening for watching. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep Scaling Up.

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