#141: Derek Lewis on Getting Prospects to Come to YOU

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 141 and those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as any links to resources mentioned during this show. Given the choice between prospecting for clients or having pre qualified prospects come to you, I'll take the latter any day. And it's not that I don't enjoy or believe in prospecting. Quite the contrary, prospecting is still an essential part of marketing your writing business. And if you've been following me for any period of time, you know that I'm a big proponent of steady, consistent and smart prospecting. But getting pre qualified prospects to come to you through attraction marketing is much more efficient in the long run, and in many cases it's even more powerful than most prospecting methods. In this week's episode, you're going to hear from my good friend and colleague Derek Lewis. And Derek is a very successful book ghostwriter who commands somewhere between 50,000 to $75,000 per book he ghostwrites for his clients. And one of the many things I love about his story is the fact that he relies 100% on on attraction marketing. And that's because he has to, as you're going to hear in this interview. For the type of work Derek is doing, outbound prospecting is not really an option, and because of that, he's become a true master of attraction marketing. In this interview, he's going to explain how he does this so well and how you can start implementing some elements of attraction marketing in your own writing business, regardless of where you are right now in your journey. And by the way, I should mention that Derek and I are starting a small group coaching group in early January for established writers and copywriters and we're going to spend five weeks going deep into how to land $25,000 or larger book ghost writing projects, even if you've never written a book before. If you'd like to join us, if you want to learn more about this, send me an email@edblancher.com put the words ghostwriting coaching in the subject line and I'll get you all the details. Here's my interview with Derek Lewis. Enjoy. Derek, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you back. My friend.

Ed, it is always a pleasure and a unique experience when the two of us get together.

It is. It could be dangerous. We could get out of control. Well, I think we should start at the very beginning. For those who are just hearing your voice for the first time, they're not familiar with you, your background, the kind of work you do. Why don't you give us a quick summary of your business, type of clients you work with, and type of work you do for them.

So, Ed, I am fortunate to have the job of my dreams. I get paid a lot of money to help other people write their books. I'm a business ghostwriter, authority, architect. I work almost exclusively with business thought leaders who have enough experience and expertise and insights to write a book. Their challenge is that they're not a professional book writer. And so it's my job to get all of their ideas out of their head and onto paper and then organize it all in such a way that it's a legitimate book. So I've had the pleasure of doing that for authors on five different continents now. Still waiting for somebody from Africa to give me a shot so I can mark off six. And they have been. And it's a cross section of humanity almost. I mean, a Turkish economist, a French German consultant, a military governor, a Texas oil tycoon, an Olympian, people from SAP, from the International Monetary Fund, from ge, Disney, Pixar. I mean, it has been. It's been a ride.

One of the things I love about your story is somebody listening might be thinking, I don't know what I would be thinking. It's like, wow, lucky him. That's pretty amazing. He must have a lot of. Always had a lot of contacts, had an illustrious business career. I don't have that. Tell us how you got started, because I think many people are surprised when they hear about your humble beginnings in writing and copywriting.

So the first thing that I tell people who say, well, how did you get into ghostwriting? Number one, I did it the dumb way. So don't copy me. I did it dumb. But apparently stumbling into ghostwriting is just about the only way anybody ever becomes a ghostwriter. I've never met a ghostwriter yet who woke up one day and said, I think I want to go help other people write their books. Usually they're journalists or copywriters or they've written a book on their own and somebody approaches them and they're helping somebody else with a book before they even know the term ghostwriter. And so it was for me, I had done a lot of work with, with a family owned company here in Louisiana. Friend of mine and I decided to go out and start a small IT services company. And while we were trying to get that company off the ground, I was moonlighting, just doing copywriting and marketing copy for area businesses. And then started looking online and found a couple of people online who needed, needed some copywriting done. So then, but by the way, just.

To interrupt you real quick, that was the extent of your writing experience, right? You didn't go to journalism school self taught. Okay. So you were doing this on the side. You thought it'd be cool to write some stuff for different businesses as a side gig.

Yeah. In fact, so whenever I was employed I was like an in house consultant. So I spearheaded new projects. But it just so happened that they found out that I was a really good writer and editor. And so I just kind of got saddled with doing all of the copywriting for the company as well. Okay. So yeah, not even, I didn't even have somebody to mentor me into the, into the business. It was just. Oh, you know how to put a couple of sentences together. Hey, would you do our website for us? Oh, we've got this brochure coming out. You know what, we really need to put this resource together. Okay, give it to Derek.

And so you're doing this on the side while you're working for your friend's company. And then like what happened? How did this turn into your current situation?

I came across somebody online who was, who said they needed help with writing their business book. And dumb naive kid that I was, I said, well, you know, writing a book, I said, that's, that's. I'm already writing blogs and articles and stuff for other, you know, business owners. So, you know, it's just like a longer article, you know, just a blog times, you know, 10. I can write 10 blogs. A whole different ball game. But I found that out, you know, after the fact. But so she took a gamble on me. And also I did not charge anything near. But I severely undervalued myself, which is pretty common amongst solo entrepreneurs, especially those spring out. But I found out that I liked long form copy a lot more than I did the short form. I would much rather work on one project for six months than work on 10 projects, 10 shorter projects in that same period of time. And so again, dumb, naive kid that I was, I said, I'm not taking any more copywriting jobs. I'm only Going to be a ghostwriter from now on. So I didn't have any industry contacts. I didn't have really any in depth ghostwriting experience. I just knew that I was better at ghostwriting than I was at copywriting and that's all I had. And so as anybody could probably guess, I had to struggle for quite a few years before I found my footing, before I found some great people to mentor me, and before I started charging what I was worth instead of working for peanuts. Charging for peanuts.

And just so people understand what you mean by that, these days you charge anywhere in the neighborhood between what and what for a full length business book to ghostwrite the book, depending on the.

Project, anywhere between 50 and 75. These days.

$50,075,000. Okay, yeah, that's big numbers. And considering that because this story just described that first book that you severely undercharged for. What year was that? Just so we have some perspective.

2009.

2009. So we're not talking about 20 years ago. This is fairly recent. You've been able to go from just stumbling through a couple of these projects severely on the charging to now working with some of the folks that you just described. That's pretty remarkable. That's in, in freelancing years. That's not a long time. All right, well, that's good. This makes me a good segue from my next question because today we're going to be talking about attraction marketing. And I know you're a huge proponent of attraction marketing and using attraction marketing as a freelance writer, copywriter, ghostwriter, instead of doing relying too much on outbound prospecting, on what I like to call knocking on doors, and I'd like to, we'll dive deeper into this. We're going to, of course, peel some layers. But why are you such a proponent of attraction marketing? What do you feel are the advantages of that approach to the advantages over prospecting?

So for me, Ed, it wasn't really a conscious decision. It was more of trial and error. And for my particular vocation, it is, it's almost impossible to find somebody who wants to write a book and wants to work with a ghostwriter and has the money to do so. And I tried. And you know, I've even got like the avatar. This is what my ideal client looks like. This is their income. This is what they like to watch on tv. This is all the stuff that you're supposed to do whenever you're trying to figure out what is my target profile of the client that I want to work with. And Ed, I Don't know how many, how much money. And I have no idea how many hours I poured into prospecting through, you know, buying mailing lists and mailing people in affluent zip codes who were business owners and who had a household income above this certain level or certain income, or business owners who had just made the news in some way or another. Cold emailing, cold calling. I mean, just any kind of different prospecting thing that I could do to try to go drum up business. I tried everything. And whenever people would call me up and whenever I would land a job, land a project, number one, the only people who ever called me up, I would ask all of them, hey, how did you find me? Oh, I was searching around online, or I saw, you know, you had posted in this forum, or I had seen, you know, something else, an article that you had written online. So here I was, spending all of this time and money and seeing no results. And then on the other hand, I wasn't doing much of anything on this other end. And here's where all my clients were coming through. They all came through my website. And so one day I finally said, you know, I have been asking the wrong question. I have been asking, how can I find clients? And I don't know how to find clients. Nothing I've ever done has worked. No ghostwriter that I've ever spoken to knows how to find clients. So I said, you know, probably the question is, how do I help clients find me? And since that time, Ed, I have exclusively focused on attraction marketing. And it has. It's, it's. It's how I get all of my leads. I don't go cold calling. I don't try to convince people that they need to write a book. I know that there are a lot of people out there looking for somebody like me. And it's my job to put as many signs and signals and arrows out there so that they eventually come back and find me.

So, yeah, and I totally get it. I think what I'm hearing is that your prospects, it's a classic case of your prospects being invisible. So in the corporate market, for instance, or for most of us, we know who our clients are. At least we know who our prospects are. We know that they're marketing directors and medical device companies, for instance, if that's your target market, or if you go after small business owners or training companies, you just know where the companies are. And you can do the research and find the marketing director's name. But in the case of something like a book, you know what the demographics are. Of your typical client. But you don't know, when you take that population, who's actually looking to write a book and who's also amenable to the idea of hiring a ghostwriter. They truly are the classic invisible prospects, aren't they?

Well, because whenever somebody is thinking about writing a book, most of the time they don't go around telling everybody, hey, I'm thinking about writing a book. That's something that they often keep to themselves. And even whenever I would come across somebody who had the money, who was an ideal client and who was fine with the idea of working with the ghostwriter, the classic line I heard was, I've been thinking about this for a while. I think I'll be writing ready in maybe two or three years. Well, that's wonderful. I'm glad that you're going to be ready in two or three years, but, you know, I need to make my mortgage in the next couple of months. Yeah. So that just. That doesn't. That doesn't work. They don't. They. They don't. Yeah. They don't go around advertising the fact maybe, you know, they may leave a digital breadcrumb that maybe Google could do. What do they call it? Whenever you.

Oh, the cookies. Retargeting or retargeting through cookies. Yeah, yeah. But it's still not. They still have to take an action first in order to identify themselves. Right. So that still makes them invisible prospects. Now, here's the things, right? So if anyone's listening, well, that, that's fine, but that's. I'm not a ghostwriter. I think what you have to share here is extremely valuable because there's still a Sally case to be made for having some of your marketing be attraction marketing. Because the other thing we haven't talked about in your case, it's an extreme situation. You're not going to be able to do prospecting, period. You know, that's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. There are some benefits to this. So it's not just all bad news. However, the other aspect of attraction marketing is that it changes the dynamics of the interaction. You know, when somebody's pursuing you, when somebody's making the initial inquiry even before you have a conversation with them, that is like 10 times better than you actually knocking on their door. Right. You doing the pursuing, maybe even 100 times better. Right. So can you speak to that?

It changes the dynamic completely of me coming to you, asking you if you will buy what I'm doing. It's you coming to me asking if I will explain to you what I do. And then me qualifying to see if I'm going to work with you or not.

Yeah, so you mentioned something, because I want to get into some actual examples, but I wanted to set the stage first. You mentioned a word a little earlier, which I love, and that's the word breadcrumb. So essentially, you've created a series of breadcrumb trails to your business that helps the right kind of prospects find you. So tell us what that means. What are you talking about when you say breadcrumbs? And then let's get into some examples, some of the categories of breadcrumbs that work really well for what you do.

So once I started asking the question not how do I find clients, but the better question of how do I help clients find me? Then it becomes how do I put out some of these little markers or these little signs to get them to come home? So I think of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, right? Whenever they left home, they put out a trail of breadcrumbs to help them find their way back. And never mind that the crows ate them and that they actually wound up, you know, almost being eaten by the witch. We're going to ignore that, that part of the metaphor. It only goes so far, right?

Yeah.

So my job is to. Is to put out these, these breadcrumbs all over the place in the real world and in the. In the digital world. And the way I define a breadcrumb is it's something that it's. It's cheap and easy for me to freely scatter all over the place. Now, whenever my ideal client is out there looking, if they're taking the action to actually look for ghostwriter, one, that means that they're ready to write a book. Two, they're fine with the idea of working with a ghostwriter. And whenever they see one of those breadcrumbs, all they have to do is just find one breadcrumb and that breadcrumb is going to lead them back to my. To my webpage. Right. My website. And then my website does the job of. Of attracting those who would be a fit for me, as well as repelling those who we wouldn't be a fit for each other.

So the website basically gets those who would be a good fit to raise their hand and identify themselves, and then those who are not a fit to just bail.

Right. So if you're looking, you know, for. If you're looking to write a western or you have a fiction novel inside of you or anything along Those lines. That's. That's not my. That's not my back. I work with business thought leaders, so those who are business thought leaders, you know, they're not coming out with left field, with, hey, I've got a great, you know, weight loss idea. I'd like to write a weight loss book. I'm sure you do, but it's not something I can help you with. Probably not, but I can't rely on just one, Just one little, one thing, one method of getting people to find me. So that's why it's not like there's the secret formula or this magic bullet. It's truly something that you have to scatter all over the place so that the more that you sow these breadcrumbs, the more that you freely. That you scatter, and the more afar that you scatter these breadcrumbs, the more likely it is that there will be somebody come across one of those breadcrumbs and it'll lead them back home.

Gotcha. Yeah. So this is really about spreading those breadcrumbs far and wide, but still strategically right. You know, it's got to be in the right pools, if you will, the right tide pools to make sure you attract the right people. So let's go through maybe four or five or so breadcrumb trails that have been really effective for you in particular, and then we can get into some of the specifics as to why you chose those.

And this, it's not really a breadcrumb, but it is. So I'm going to mention it first because it works in tandem with everything else that you do, and that's SEO. Right. So everything that I put on my website is put there so that whenever somebody goes to Google or even Bing or, or, I don't know, Yahoo or some of these other places, and they type in, you know, working with a ghostwriter, business book ghostwriter, they should easily find me. So everything that I do, I try to put as much SEO out there so that somebody can easily type in and search and find me. So the other breadcrumbs that I'm about to talk, I'm about to mention, they have an element or I try to make sure that I'm able to use the element of that in SEO so that it reinforces the main thing, which is somebody sitting down at the computer just typing in Business book ghostwriter and bam. Derrick Lewis is hopefully one of the. For a while. I've been one of the first two or three on the Google results page. Probably the best breadcrumb trail that I've created so far. It is creating my own podcast. So it's. There's so many benefits. So one is that I get to. Whenever I create an interview with somebody else, most of the episodes are interviews with other experts in my field. You've been on there, we talked about your experience writing or co authoring the Wealthy Freelancer. I've had a literary agent on there. So having these people on there, one, whenever they share, whenever I post the podcast, interview the episode up online.

They.

Often will share it to their networks. Right. So then that's more breadcrumbs that's being spread through each of their networks. I make sure to post links to the podcast and all of my social media. So those are breadcrumbs that are being put out through my link and through Facebook and through Twitter. I put up a transcript online. So that way that's SEO. That's feeding back into this idea of this is a legitimate person, legitimate website that's offering good, valuable advice. That's what Google looks for, right? Legit websites that are doing real information. And then the podcast episode is something that's evergreen. I can continually promote it throughout the month or throughout the year because the advice that we're talking about in there is pretty timeless. So it's not just a one and done. Right. So you know, that one 30 or 45 minute episode I get to use in all these different places. So that's why you're talking about being strategic. So I get to do one thing, thing, and then I'm able to freely and easily scatter all of these other breadcrumbs and all of these other places. Right?

Yeah, they all work together.

Yeah. Oh, and then something else that we've been doing is taking the episode and also putting it on YouTube and putting the transcript on YouTube and putting all the tags on YouTube. So YouTube, you know, Google is the number one search engine in the world. YouTube is actually the second by traffic, by volume. So by converting the audio and putting it on YouTube, then we've also got all of those other breadcrumbs now in the second largest search engine in the world.

So really the podcast for you has been a content repurposing opportunity because you're able to take something, produce it once and then duplicate it in multiple formats and different platforms, which is brilliant.

Thank you. And then on the other side of that, I also like being a guest on podcasts. So a second breadcrumb that I do is I try to get on the relevant podcast. You know, if Somebody is talking about parenting, and that's not something that's really going to do much for. For me, if somebody's talking about weight loss, that's definitely not something I could talk about. But if they're talking about, you know, writing or publishing, or if they're talking about, you know, expert or content marketing or entrepreneurship or anything along those lines, any way that I could actually be helpful to their audience, and their audience could potentially be helpful to me by going and being on their. On their podcast, I'm, you know, getting pushed out into the. Into the devices and the. In the minds of, you know, hundreds or perhaps even thousands of people that I never would have otherwise. And then again, for their podcast, I can promote it on through all of my social media channels and continually post it through all my social media channels so that even though it's not my content, I can still get the benefit of that and then get the benefit of them promoting it to their side. And then the SEO that comes from people coming to my website cold or coming to my website through their website. So it sounds like in a podcast, it's one of the same, but these are actually two very different things. Having your own versus being a guest on somebody else's.

Yeah. And if I may add, one of the. If you're. And we're going to talk about how to make the decision as to which Breadcrumb Tales would be appropriate for you specifically. But one of the great things about. If you don't have a podcast today, you could start by being a guest, because that's an easy thing to do. Right. Just find and existing shows that have audiences that are either purely your own audience as well, or many of your ideal prospects would be listeners. So that's a great way to get started. Get your feet wet, get used to just doing podcasts, and then you could launch your own if you felt that was appropriate. Many people do it the other way, where they just launch their own podcasts and then they try to be a guest on other podcasts. Kind of what I did. But one of the cool things about what you just said, though, I just want to reiterate this because this is huge. I always look for opportunities that give me the most opportunities. Right. Because I'm trying.

That's a great way to put it. Yeah.

Right. And the podcast is one of those things that you create. You know, you could do one thing one time, and you get all these benefits out of it, you know, in terms of content repurposing.

So.

And then here's something Else I would add that podcast has two functions. And many of these things that we're talking about have two functions. One is attracting people to you who would have never found out about you otherwise. And then number two, once they start checking you out, especially with a medium like a podcast, is you start building trust. So those are two separate things. It's oh, Derrick Lewis. And suddenly they check out your website. Maybe they sign up for your newsletter, but then it's like listening to you. After three or four of those episodes, you start feeling like, you know, Derrick Lewis. And with any high ticket project like a book or anything that involves a great degree of risk, you know, you do white papers, you do branding strategy for companies. Those are things where the prospect really needs to trust you before they hire you. And if they already come into the conversation when they first contact you, you've already built a lot of that trust with them. You can't buy that anywhere. That's not something you earn overnight. So that is just something to keep in mind in terms of how these things work. Because there's that other value that we really didn't talk about here.

Right.

Anyway, I digress, my friend.

But that, you know, it all folds in and works together. And a great marketing plan is one where one piece of it reinforces and supports all the, all the other pieces of it. So we're talking, you know, specifically really about a specific type of lead generation. But it fits within the broader marketing plan that you should have if you want a consistent and sustainable source of good leads.

Well said. So what would be, what's another breadcrumb trail that has worked well for you? We talked about SEO, which is kind of a breadcrumb trail, but your own podcast, being a guest on others podcast. What's another one?

I wrote my own book, the business book Bible. Everything you need to know to write a great business book. So Ed, it is. So I did print on demand, which means that the digital files are sitting on Amazon's web servers as well as Ingram Sparks web servers. You can go to Amazon and you can order a hard copy of the book and they print that one copy and then send it to you. So it doesn't have nearly the quantity, you know, a tweet or a podcast or something like that, but it has a lot more weight. So whenever somebody goes to Amazon and they, you know, they search for how can I write a business book? They'll come across my book, which is, you know, how to write a business book. And then whenever they, even if they don't Order it. Just them coming across it. Oh, who is this, who is this Derek Lewis guy? Let me go. Wow. He actually helps people write books and he's got, you know, a couple of other resources on how to write business books. And I've got, I get, you know, a sales report, I don't know, every month or every quarter, whatever. And I mean, there are people in the UK and Germany buying my, buying my book from, from Amazon uk, people I will never, you know, I'll never meet unless they pick up the phone. And maybe a couple of the people that I talked to, actually, not one of them did. So that, so I'm putting that book together. It's a lot of work. It doesn't have, like I said, it doesn't have as much traffic. I can't get as much traffic out of it as I could other places. But Ed, just the first client that I got from them finding my book and reading it and then reaching out and talking to me more than paid for all the time and effort and money that I put into creating the book. And because, you know, I do pretty expensive projects, I only need, you know, it would be wonderful if the book only turned up one or two people a year for me. Right? Because just one person, the first person more than paid for the books. Every other person that finds me because of my book is just lagnap or gravy, as some might say.

I love it. And I think this has some of the elements that we just talked about too. It's got the trust building aspect of it because you start reading somebody's book in, the credibility you're building is they're reading your step by step instruction and advice. You can't buy that kind of trust. Right. And credibility. So that's, that's a, that's fantastic. And we, you know, we didn't even mention the search engine. Amazon is a great search engine, right? So somebody's looking to maybe write a book. Maybe you're capturing people who think they're going to do it on their own first. So where do they go? They go to Amazon. How to write a business book, how to write a book. Suddenly you come up, they buy your book and you start showing them what it takes and they start realizing, you know what? I don't know if I really want to do this myself.

It is a lot of work, a.

Lot of reframing that goes on. Right. And.

Endless editing.

Yes. No, but just reframing the way they're. Some of your prospects. Think about this. Oh, yeah, it's Kind of indirect reframing. Right. Thinking about and showing them all the moving parts and what you got to think about. And they start realizing, you know what? I thought this would be just sitting there and typing away. Not quite. We can all do this. So this is not. Again, guys, think about. Okay, well, I write white papers and case studies. How could you write a book that's geared towards a very specific audience on something related to white papers or something related to case studies or something related to content marketing or lead generation or whatever it is you do? I would think backwards in terms of what kind of project would I want to get more of? What do I want to be known for? And then work backwards and figure out, okay, what kind of book would attract the right kind of prospect and enable me to maybe start a conversation with them.

And before I even had a proper book, I had a shorter ebook that, that I released on all the ebook platforms. How Business Authors Work with Ghostwriters. So, you know, the title is pretty on the nose. And it was, you know, it was probably only, I think, 8,000 words, you know, something pretty, pretty short.

So this doesn't have to be a huge production if you wanted to start with an ebook.

Yeah. In fact, that's probably the best way to start. So that you've got something that's shorter, something that's easier to put together, something that doesn't feel as daunting and overwhelming, and something that you don't have to put a whole lot of resources into that is time and money. So for me, whenever I got ready to create my full length book, I knew how to do was not something that was a daunting, overwhelming task for me. It was something that I could put together and something that I could afford to put together well. But if you can't afford the time or the money to put together a book, then do something smaller. If you can't even do an ebook, then do a smaller E booklet, do a smaller resource or a really well written PDF, do something appropriate. And again with it in mind that this is something that I can freely or cheaply and easily scatter as often and as far as possible.

Love it. Love it. Let's talk about one more. Do you have another one that that's worked really well for you, Ed?

I hate writing blog posts. I hate blogs. I hate short form copy. Which is why I got out of copywriting and went into into ghostwriting. And for years I tried to make myself blog regularly because that's one of the tenets of online marketing. You have to Have a blog. You have to blog regularly and you have to post and you have to do this and you have to do that. Until finally one day I said, you know what? I give myself permission to hate blogging and to not do it anymore. So I stopped. I just stopped. And instead what I really like doing is getting in depth on. On a subject. So now instead of having a lot of short blog posts, I will only a few times a year I will have a really long. It's like one webpage, but it's super long and really in depth on one particular topic. And then I post that as a standalone webpage that just kind of floats out there in cybersecurity space. And whenever people come across it and find it, they read it and they get some great value and then they say, well, let me go to this guy's homepage. Then they click the home icon and then they're at my website. So it's not blogging and it's not something that I do a lot of. There's only a few, but it's something that I really enjoy doing. And there's one of them I did like this. And in fact I just got, just today I got a call from a theater in Maryland or Minnesota, one of the in places, and they wanted to know if they could use some of that copy and credit me and put a link back to my website from there. So this theater in, you know, somewhere up north is going to, they're doing something with ghost writing and they're going to have copy on their webpage and they're going to have a link back to Derek Lewis dot com. Wow, how cool and how offbeat is. Is that, you know, so this is a whole market segment that I would never have been able to get. But because, because I put good content out there, people want to reuse it and link back to me.

That will happen, won't it? Serendipitous events like that. I just had someone from gotowebinar contact me and in fact it was such an incredible offer that I thought, let me make sure this is legit. They apparently a webinar that I did recently got a lot of. Not only did we get a ton of ton of people attending and registrations, but I guess other metrics they look at in terms of engagement during the event. Anyway, it ended up being one of their top 100 marketing webinars so far this year, which is shocking to me. I thought, well, wait, I got this.

Congratulations, I got this little mic.

Yeah. So so far it looks Legit, Right. But I got this micro niche that. And I'm thinking, how could that be? Well, they want to publish it and feature it on this section of their website. And, you know, of course I said, okay, sure.

Publicity, yes.

That is a total offbeat, freakish thing, which, you know, I don't know if it'll amount to anything, but this is a big company saying we want to feature. You know, this is an example of a good webinar and maybe it will attract a handful of people over the next few months to my little world. So this will happen. I agree with you. When you put out great content out there, you never know how it's going to help you. One thing I'd like to do, Derek, is maybe link to a couple of those articles on the Show Notes page for this episode. So I'll make sure to do that. You know, that leads me to my last question, which is these are all great ideas and there's all kinds of examples. And I think if you're listening, you by now kind of have a feel for what we're talking about. Maybe you're thinking, well, I don't like the idea of a podcast, but Derek said he hated blogging. I actually like blogging and I'd like to do that. How do you make the decision? How do you would advise people to, if they're not doing some of these things now, to start moving in this direction? Because this can feel overwhelming. Wow. These are a lot of big things. So how do you make sure that you start taking the right steps and not give up because you're overwhelmed with this idea?

Well, so that's the exact word. If you are feeling overwhelmed, then you're doing something wrong. This is not something should be daunting, should be something that, that discourages you, something that you have to motivate yourself to do again. Breadcrumbs are something that should be easy to create and easy to scatter. So whenever I say you don't just mean time wise. I also mean like mental, mentally, or, you know, the energy budgets. There's some things that they may not take very long to do, but it's like pulling teeth. Take so much out and you get, you feel exhausted. Then. There are so much to these things that we do, Ed, and we can lose ourselves for hours doing these things. And whenever we get finished, we feel more before we sit down.

I'm with you. Yeah. So it's got to be the kind of thing that if the cognitive load that it requires is massive, maybe kind of go to the next idea. Right. That feels a little bit more doable in terms of mental energy.

Yeah. It needs to be something that you like, something that you're comfortable with. So the very first step is to make sure that you've got your niche down. So if you are. So, for instance, whenever I first, very, very first website that I had up, it was really just a blog. And even though I was a ghostwriter, for some reason I loved. Well, I mean, I love writing about entrepreneurship, but for some reason, that's what my blog was about, was about entrepreneurship and inspired entrepreneurship. And I guess I was thinking that, you know, entrepreneurs would. Would read the blog and then they'd like what they. The person behind what they read and said they want to reach out to me. And it, you know, I did, I got a couple of people off of it, but it wasn't targeted to somebody who was actually looking to ghost a book on entrepreneurship. I didn't talk about ghostwriting or books pushing or writing at all. I talked about just strictly entrepreneurship. So I didn't really have my niche identified and have in mind what would be valuable for them to read, for them to know, for them to ingest. So, number one, know who you want to find you so that you can put stuff out there that they can find and say, I would like to learn more because this person is talking about stuff I want to hear more about. Then second is I would just identify two to three media that you enjoy creating content in. Ideally, one of them, at least one of them would be online. And ideally, at least one of them would be offline. So offline in the real world would be speaking engagements or being in a newspaper or writing. My mentor's mentor always did a column in the Costco Trader magazine and she got, I don't know how many leads that she got because people would shop at Costco and they would open the magazine and they. And she did more, I think, like memoirs and that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's a much broader cross section. So it made sense for her to do Costco, but something in the real world, right? Something not just digital. So everything we've talked about so far has really been digital breadcrumbs, but you need to have some offline breadcrumbs as well. So I've done like a couple of local radio shows. I'll go into a radio show and talk to somebody about ghost writing and what is it is. And that only hits a very local geographic market. But it's a tangible. It's. It's the real world breadcrumb for me. I like talking to people and I also like talking. So being having my own podcast and being on podcast, that's natural for me. I hate blogging, so I'm just, I'm not gonna blog videos, you know, doing videos. I've started trying to do some YouTube videos. It's something that I kind of enjoy but I'm not really good at. So that's something that will become a good breadcrumb for me in the future. But it's not really a good breadcrumb for me right now. It's a skill that I have to develop. So again, something that you like doing, something that is easy for you to do, something where you can create content quickly and easily and without a whole lot of, of energy. And then once you've identified that media that you know the digital medium and the real world medium, then you need to think about what kind of content could I create. And it's really anything around the person that you're going after. So for instance, if you are, are a. Give me somebody, not a ghostwriter, and give me like another kind of freelancer.

Well, let's just say a business to business copywriter, right? Writing for tech and financial services companies, Right.

So I mean that's a huge field. I mean you could write articles about tech and finance and tech communications and financial communications and, and what are the best ways? Internal versus external. The different topics that you could talk about or write about or vlog about or blog about are almost endless. And you can have a mix. You don't have to just talk about. This is how to work with a B2B copywriter. You can talk about for people who are trying to be better at communicating. Anything you look at your target market, you find, find who you're actually talking to. And then anything that would somehow help them do their job or their life or whatever it is, they're doing better. And then in addition to that, you can also talk. So for me, I talk about, you know, business books, I talk about writing business books, I talk about publishing, I talk about getting a literary agent, I talk about how to create manuscript proposals. But sometimes I also do business book reviews. So I'll write a review on a really great business book that I read. So that's not how do I find a ghostwriter? That's just this guy knows his stuff about business books. Where I was, you know, there was this one particular book I came across and I really liked it and I wanted to see if it was ghostwritten and lo and behold, I came across Derek's page. He didn't ghostwrite it and the book isn't ghostwritten, but because he put in his title of ghostwriter, he came to my page.

Love it. Love it. So, yeah, that part, I mean, we could do a whole episode right? On finding the right topics. I say do that, right? It's what aspects of your work, again, should be.

Things that you can easily talk about, things that you're comfortable talking about. It could be stories and anecdotes about the, the time that you were working with the. And this happened or, or, you know, things whenever you're thinking about working with the B2B copywriter or here are the best sites to review B2B copywriters or anything along those lines. And you want to create a lot of it because with breadcrumbs, you're, you want them to be good quality breadcrumbs that you're really going for. Quantity. One of few places where I say that quantity is as important as quality. Because, like, for my book, you know, my book is a lot of time, you know, took a lot of investment, very high quality in terms of content and relevance and value. But it's pretty limited on how far I can spread it, you know, unless I want to buy, you know, 10,000 copies and ship it to random people all over the world.

Well, Derek, this has been very informative. I know this is something that when I talk to writers and copywriters out there, many of them understand the value of doing this. But I think what you've done here is you've really explained just in real terms how this can impact your business, right in how this works long term to help generate not just leads, but the right kind of leads who are at the right place in their buying journey, if you will, to make what you do more fun and enjoyable. Because let's face it, we want to spend more time writing and doing the things we want to do in our personal life and less time selling, less time trying to convince prospects to hire us. And if you're doing this the right way, what will happen is that the people who come to you will already be pre sold to a certain extent before even having that first conversation with you.

Yeah, it's really nice, Ed, that I, I don't waste any time prospecting or, or, you know, knocking on doors or cold calling or warm emailing or anything like that. I focus on creating content and finding different ways to scatter those, those breadcrumbs because. And that's things that I know will absolutely have an effect. I'll get a return on investment out of that versus spending an hour or two hours cold calling and not come across a single, a single potential lead. Now everybody can do attraction, market, marketing it because everybody has people who are looking for you.

Derek, thank you very much for sharing these ideas with us. And before we wrap up, where can listeners learn more about you and your work?

Best place is taking them home Derek Lewis.com D E R E K E L E W I S Wonderful.

Well, well, thank you again Derek. Always great to chat with you.

My friend here as well. Ed. I sincerely hope I've helped somebody today.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more@b2b launcher.com.

You to do something where you can create content quickly and easily and without a whole lot of energy. And then once you've identified that media that you know, the digital medium and the real world medium, then you need to think about, well, what kind of content could I create? And it's really anything around the person that you're going after. So for instance, if you are a give me somebody, not a ghostwriter, and give me like another kind of freelancer.

Well, let's just say a business to business copywriter, right? Writing for tech and financial services companies.

Right. So I mean that's a huge field. I mean you could write articles about tech and finance and tech communications and financial communications. And what are the best ways, you know, internal versus external. The different topics that you could talk about or write about or vlog about or blog about are almost endless. And you can have a mix. You don't have to just talk about. This is how to work with a B2B copywriter. You can talk about, you know, for people who are trying to be better at communicating anything you look at your target market, you find who you're actually talking to and then anything that would somehow help them do their job or their life or whatever it is, they're doing better. And then in addition to that, you can also talk. So for me, I talk about business books, I talk about writing business books, I talk about publishing, I talk about getting a literary agent, I talk about how to create manuscript proposals. But sometimes I also do, you know, business book reviews. So I'll write a review on a really great business book that I read. So that's not how do I find a ghostwriter. That's just this guy knows his stuff about business books. Where I was, you know, there was this one particular book I came across across and I really liked it and I wanted to see if it was ghostwritten. And lo and behold, I came across Derek's page. He didn't ghostwrite it and the book isn't ghostwritten, but because he put in this title of ghostwriter, he came to my page.

Love it. Love it. So, yeah, that part, I mean, we could do a whole episode, right? On finding the right topics. I say do that, right? It's what, what aspects of your work.

Again, should be things that you can easily talk about, things that you're comfortable talking about. It could be stories and anecdotes about the time that you were working with the. And this happened, or, you know, things for. Whenever you're thinking about working with a B2B copywriter or here are the best sites to review B2B copywriters or anything along those lines. And you want to create a lot of it because with breadcrumbs, you want them to be good quality breadcrumbs, but you're really going for quantity. One of the few places where I say that quantity is as important as quality because, like, for my book, you know, my book is a lot of time, you know, took a lot of investment, very high quality in terms of content and relevance and value. But it's pretty limited on how far I can spread it, you know, unless I want to buy, you know, 10,000 copies and ship it to random people all over the world.

Well, Derek, this has been, this has been very informative. I know this is something that when I talk to, to writers and copywriters out there, many of them understand the value of doing this. But I think what you've done here is you've really explained just in real terms how this can impact your business and how this works long term to help generate not just leads, but the right kind of leads who are at the right place in their buying journey, if you will, to make what you do more fun and enjoyable. Because let's face it, we want to spend more time writing and doing the things we want to do in our personal life and less time selling, less time trying to convince prospects to hire us. And if you're doing this the right way, what will happen is the people who come to you will already be pre sold to a certain extent before even having that first conversation with you.

Yeah, it's really nice, Ed, that I don't waste any time prospecting or knocking on doors or cold calling or warm emailing or anything like that. I focus on creating content and finding different ways to scatter those breadcrumbs and that's things that I know will absolutely have on an effect. I'll get a return on investment out of that versus spending an hour or two hours cold calling and not come across a single, a single potential lead. Now everybody can do attraction marketing, Ed, because everybody has people who are looking for you.

Derek, thank you very much for sharing these ideas with us. And before we wrap up, where can listeners learn more about you and your work?

Best place is taking them home. Derek Lewis.com D E R E K E L E W I S wonderful.

Well, thank you again, Derek. Always great to chat with you, my friend.

You as well, Ed. I sincerely hope I've helped somebody today.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a product collection of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.