The way to #getnoticed is to publish as you. Here's how you can ignite your authentic story.

Hey, welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show. Today I'm delighted to have all the way from Canada, the West Coast of Canada, JB Owen. Welcome, JB.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening wherever you are, but thank you so much for having me, Jim. It's a delight to be here and loving talking to all your listeners.

Well, we're delighted to have you. And for those of you that can't see, JB has behind her a whole number of book covers that she's been involved with. She's got the chair, she's got the mic. So this is gonna be a great show because JB, you help people to get published and a whole bunch more. So over to you. How do you help entrepreneurs to get noticed?

Well, thank you for asking. Yes, I'm super privileged to work with a multitude of different authors, entrepreneurs, business owners, and experts. And what I like to do is help people tell their authentic story, their real story, the story about them, the journey, the process, the steps that they took to get to where they are so that their message is all about helping others. And so really blessed to teach people how their story matters in their business.

Start With Why. Can you just share with us how you're helping clients or entrepreneurs to articulate their why and then to take it through to the book?

Yeah, I think business has changed so much now. People are really wanting to work with people that are on the same vibration as them. There are so many businesses, we are so blessed to be able to work with people all over the world. Look, I'm talking to you today.

We're actually in flow with So how are you, if you like, building a process for someone? If someone comes to you, most people have an idea of what they'd like to do, but they're quite often doing something a little bit different, often where they found a way to make money. How are you helping them to, to discover being in flow and then taking that through into the whole wonders of publishing and promotion?

Well, like any great entrepreneur, right, you see a problem and you figure out how can I make it better. And so I was publishing solo authors for many years, and what I found was they just weren't making the money that they could be. It to the finish line. And why would they? I mean, how does one single person know how to write a book, edit a book, manufacture the book, typeset the book, print the book, produce the book, ship the book, sell the book, market the book? It's a lot of stress on authors. And what I was finding is they just weren't making it to the success that they wanted. Books, books were on the shelf, but then never being marketed out. And so I looked at my skillset and the things that I'm really good at, which is incremental. I love those micro wins, those little moves along the way that get people there. And so I broke it down into incremental ways that they could accomplish it. But then I looked at the second part, which was loneliness. A lot of authors get really lonely. It's a lonely process. You're so introspective. You don't have people to bounce ideas off of. You're not sure you're going in the right direction. And so at Ignite, we created this community where you could work with authors and have them as accountability partners, as masterminding. And then I did all the heavy lifting for you. We did the editing, we did the producing, we did the marketing, we did your social media. We took you bestseller, we loaded up everything, we created all the files that you needed. And so an author would show up with an idea and a vision and a message. And then we were like, okay, let's take that. Let's help you take that and then go to the stratosphere with your exciting idea. And so it was a real win-win because what we did was we let them be good at what they're good at. We're good at what we're good at. We save them time. We save them money. We save them effort and we make it really fun. I gotta tell you, Jim, if it's not fun, I'm not doing it. It's gotta be enjoyable.

No, I can see that, JB. And so how many people have you helped? Let's talk about, you know, you've obviously got a process and you've got a personality for success. How many people have you helped to get across that really long roadmap and number of hurdles of self-publishing?

Well, I'm very blessed. We have 700 authors on our roster. We've done 17 international bestselling books in the last 2 years. We've done multiple solo books. I've done my own book in the process. So we really have mastered the strategy. And for all of your entrepreneurs and listeners, it's about tools and strategies. You know, it's about systems. Success comes from systems. And so we've proven in 2 years, 17 international bestsellers with 700 authors, we know how to put it through a system, but a system that works for you. And the great thing for me as a coach and publisher and teacher and trainer and mentor for authors is like, once I show you the system, boom, you're off to the races. You can do it multiple times. And So we have authors who are writing 2, 3, our top author has written 6 books. And so we've shown them the system and then they really can quantify again their message and their delivery and produce a fantastic book.

And are you willing, JB, to share maybe what some elements of that system are? Because that would be really helpful for people to understand what you've built there.

Well, I absolutely, I love to share. See, one of the things is I want to do is teach you how to fish, not just give you the fish. So I never, I'm the kind of person it's like, let me show you how to do it so you can do it, because I might not always be here and we may part company. And I want you to be a success because your business is going to help someone else. Your message, your book is going to move the needle for someone else's life. And so I always teach my author, know who your reader is, understand who is your customer, who is asking for this book, who wants this book, who's going to walk into the bookstore and say, I'm looking for a book about this. Now, if you're writing a book that only satisfies your need, understand that it's a passion project. Understand that you're doing it for you. And that's fantastic. We have authors who have written stories about death, suicide. We have— I have an author yesterday, her husband died and he, his, his body went and helped 800 people through organ donation. And she wants to write a book about that. Now that's a very interesting book. Is it going to be a book for the masses? No, but it's a book for her. So know the difference between if you're writing a book for you or you're writing a book for your customer. If you want to go and have a book that is going to be the next business book, the next tech book, the next bestselling self-help book, then you got to think about your customer. What's your customer's problem? What does your customer need? What can you answer for them? And then you got to make it interesting. That whole what's in it for them is so important. It's not about you. It's not a bad date where you go and the guy's talking about himself over and over again and you're just sitting there. And authors make that mistake. They write books that's all about them. And the reader is like, hey, where am I in this process? So those are the 2 key things. things that I would say when you start, think about that process. And when you imagine your reader, then you're writing for your reader, you're not writing for yourself.

That's really good, JB. And I love that analogy. Yeah, if you go out on a social function and someone just meets you and talks about themselves, and yet that's often what companies do in their own PR, right? They talk about themselves all the time. But, you know, I published a book and it's a curation of 50 interviews that I've done. One of the challenges is about keeping momentum. What is the middle distance? People start with gusto, and they're kind of excited about the launch, but there's that middle part where people drift. How do you help people to get over that, JB?

Well, let me just tell you a personal story. So last summer, I decided— I turned 50, and I wanted to do something monumental for my birthday. So I decided to cycle on my tandem bike with my husband across Canada, 5,000 kilometers, we crossed Canada. Now I did it for a couple of reasons. I wanted to show people possible. I wanted to show people that you can have an idea and just get up off the couch and do it. I wasn't an athlete. I had never cycled that distance before. I never was even athletic my whole life. So, I wanted to make all of these examples to people that you can do it. So, to answer your question, it's about momentum. See, if I all— if I— all I focused on was getting to the 5,000K, I never would have made it to the 500K, to the 200K, to the 1,000K. And here's the interesting part about that whole process. And I love to talk about it because it lends itself to visualization. I needed to cycle 5,000 kilometers. We needed to do it in 56 days. That meant we needed to cycle 150 kilometers a day. I'd never cycled 150 kilometers a day. I live in Canada. We had snow up until May. I couldn't practice. And so what I did instead was visualize. I saw myself cycling. I saw myself pedaling. I saw myself getting there. I saw the mountains, the vistas, the horizon. I saw my legs moving. And when I visualized the process, what happened was when I got on the bike the very first day, I was able to cycle 98K, then 100K, 150K. We even got up to 200K a day. So how does that answer your question? It's about momentum. So you do a little bit one day, which gives you the courage and the knowingness to do more the next day, which gives you the power and the strength to do it the next day. Now, how do we apply that to our book? You want to map out your book launch over a period of time. So you want to map out my book's coming out in Kindle, my book's coming out in ebook, and then 2 months later my book's coming out in hard copy or my book's coming out in softcover copy. Then 3 months later, I'm coming out with my audiobook. And then 3 months later, I'm coming out with my supplementary course. And so what you wanna do is you wanna add things to your book and you wanna go for the long haul. You wanna go for the long game. And what a lot of people, we just wanna go for the short game, the short reward, the instant gratification. So you wanna think about the long game. How can I keep engaged with my clients? And you'll always have somebody happy.

That sounds wonderful. I hope your husband was happy, by the way, by your decision to cycle 5,000 miles as opposed to maybe going on a cruise, which he might have said, honey, that would be for our 60th. You've mentioned, Jamie, that you've got 17 bestsellers. Are there some common aspects or themes to those 17 that have separated those out from the rest of the 700?

Yeah, absolutely. I want to say that Very kindly that Forbes magazine picked me up 2 weeks ago to talk about the Heart Center publisher. And I feel like being heart-centered and being authentic and being vulnerable in your sharing, like authentically share about you. A lot of people ask me about ghostwriting, like, can I just have somebody ghostwrite it? And what I wanna tell you, you can't have anyone swing the bat for you. You can't have anyone kiss your first, you know, love for you. You can't have anyone birth your baby for you. So really, you shouldn't really be having somebody goes right for you. Because when you go through the process, when you do the work, when you climb over the broken glass, when you dig deep to find the answers, then you are so proud and courageous to do whatever it takes to make your book work. You want to stand up on stage, you want to share it, you want to do podcasts, you want to do summits, because it's your work and you authentically, knowingly believe because you've done the work. And so I would say the common denominator in all of our stories is that our authors have done the work. They've gone through the process. They've learned what they needed to learn. They've studied. They've had the highs and lows of writing. I hate this. I don't wanna do this. This is so hard. Why did I sign up for this? And then the exhilaration of, oh my gosh, I am a writer. I can do this. My grade 3 school teacher, when she told me I wouldn't amount to anything, she was wrong. I can do this. And the lid is lifted. And all entrepreneurs know we need to have our lid lifted, our limiting beliefs, the ceiling of whatever we thought was possible, that needs to be shattered. And that happens when you do the work. And so I would say for all of our authors, we're known as the leaders of empowerment publishing. We empower our writers and we empower our readers. And that's what makes us different.

Okay. And it sounds like you both empower and energize them as well, JB, right? Because it's to say you can do something is great, but you've got to keep them going along through that long, through those long miles of the journey. So you've mentioned that you've got these 13, they're all heart-centered. Can you also then share for those entrepreneurs out there who say, I understand I can't ghostwrite, but I haven't got the time, or I'm not very good at writing, or I'm dyslexic, any, any sort of, I'd say, workarounds? Can you mention any tools, for example, that you can recommend for people? Any, any sort of, I'd say, workarounds? You want someone to be authentic, but they're not good at writing, they haven't got the time.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. We have so many authors where English is not their first language, where they are dyslexic. We've had people who are ESL. We even have an author who is blind and he has written his story. So there are some really great tools out there. I recommend otter.ai. It's a great tool that you can speak into, will transcribe for you and record for you at the same time. So that's super helpful. Many of you, you can write on Word and in Google Docs and then it'll read it back to you. And that is super helpful because it catches all those little mistakes that we don't realize that we make. Of course, there's so many companies like Upwork where they have editors or proofreaders that can assist you and help move you wrong is I want to tell people this. It's— I'm not great at spelling. I have a hearing impairment. I never learned to spell phonetically. I learned to spell through memory. So if there's a word like infatuation and I haven't written it in a while, I got to remember how it's spelled. And so as a person with a spelling issue and a hearing impairment, my school teachers always told me I would never amount to anything. I would never be able to do it. I was that kid that got my paper back with 100 red scratches and marks and correction and corrections on But here's the thing: spelling and grammar is the least of your worries. And for people who are obsessed over their spelling and their grammar, guess what? You can hire somebody for that. What you want to do is think concept, think theory, think theology, think philosophy, think message, think impact, think awaken. That is rare. That is where you want to head to. Don't get caught up in the spelling and the grammar. Now my favorite tool to tell everyone is to get up 30 minutes early each and every day and write then, right before you look at your phone, right before you talk Talk to anyone. I get up at 4 a.m. every morning, just before the kids, before my phone starts pinging, before everybody starts texting me, and that's my writing time. That's my sacred time. I don't look at my phone. I don't even. I I I also here's a great tip: I turn off my Wi-Fi on my laptop because when I'm writing, I don't want spell check to be underlining those words with red lines and and all that that spelling to pop up. So I literally will turn off Wi-Fi. I will write in Google Docs. as just to my heart's content, and I will do editing later after. So I put concept writing times, I'll assign research writing times, and then I'll assign editing time. So depending on how you're feeling, decide today is a writing day, today is an editing day, today is a research day. And the way you can also do that is when you sit down to write in those 30 minutes or 60 minutes before you start your day, just sit with yourself for a few minutes and ask the universe, What is best going to serve me today? If you're feeling creative, write. If you're feeling like you want to catch up, edit. If you're feeling like you want to be inspired, do research. And so you are the master of your writing. There is no guidelines. You don't have to write 260 words every single day and then you get the check mark. Trust yourself. Trust where you're at. You may need to do some research to get that next great idea. And so it really is you creating a habit, creating cadence, working the muscle of writing. And that's going to get your book done. If you did a paragraph a day, you would be done. If you did a page a day, you would be done. And what happens is people are like, oh, I want to go to the cabin and block off 6 days and write every day. And it never happens. And so your book never gets done. So do a little bit each day and you'll make it to the end.

That's great. It's a bit like fitness, isn't it? In that sense that when you first start, you're not very fit, your aerobic fitness isn't that good, but just by the act of doing it, right? So the making the time. I also really liked, JB, the point that That as long as you're creating something that's authentic, there isn't a right or wrong. Because many people suffer from that anxiety of, well, will it be good enough? But what you're saying is what you've got, if you can share that, then we can worry about the polishing, the editing, the promotion later.

Yeah. And if you think about who your ideal client is, then you're writing for them. So imagine you talking to them, sharing with them. I wrote a beautiful, uh, book, went bestseller in 8 countries, called Enjoying Parenting. So I had taken my kids out of school, I had unschooled them, I'd world schooled them. I'd non-schooled them. I had sort of done the gamut of all of the schooling things and parenting things. So I started writing a book about enjoying parenting. And what I realized was I, at first I was writing it to all those conscious parents, but they already know that. So I needed to shift my book and write the book for the parents who want to understand what conscious parenting is. Now, when I sat down to write, thinking of who is that person, and I knew exactly who that person was, I gave her a name. I gave her a persona. I knew exactly what her needs were, what her wants were, what her problems were. Then when I wrote, it was like I actually writing to her. And that helped all of the writing flow, because I knew who my customer was, who needed this book. And I think that is one of the mistakes that many authors make, if there is such a thing as mistakes. But they write for themselves, or they write for the intellect, or they write for the masses. I want every single person to like my book. Not everyone is going to like your book. Let me just tell you that now, Arsen.

And when you write for the very specific person, then like a magnet, they hone into your That's really good advice to focus in on the, if you like, the niche, but I'd prefer the idea that you're writing for an individual and even writing letters or speaking to them on your dictaphone. Of course, on a phone you can do record, can't you? And then upload that to Otter to transcribe later on. And JB, tell me, how have you as an entrepreneur got noticed? You've obviously done it for lots of other authors, but what about for you?

It's a great question. I go right back to authenticity. People want to do business with people they like. People want to do business with people they get to know. And when you tell your authentic story and you be vulnerable and you be you, be you, be exactly who you are. I gotta tell you this, when you're you, it's so much more relaxing and so much more enjoyable. It's so much less stressful when you just get to be you. And so be you all the time. Don't try to be somebody you're not. Don't try to compete with anyone. Don't try to follow someone else's journey. Your journey, your process, your experience, your fingerprint, your snowflake, it's unique to you. And so the way you get noticed is to be you. Be fun, be quirky, be silly, be intellectual, be whatever it is you are, but be that wholeheartedly and authentically. And that's the people that other entrepreneurs want to work with. You're either going to love me or you're going to hate me. You're going to enjoy me or you're not. But the great thing is when I be myself and I vibrate in my own way, I be silly, I be— I'm JB, I'm quirky, I'm fun, I'm full of life. Let's get it done. I'm a hard nose. Let's get increments. Let's make things things happen, then you're like, I want to work with her because I resonate with that. Now, people who are like, I don't like that, that's such a gift to me because then I don't waste their time and they don't waste my time. I don't attract the wrong customers. And so many people say, you know, my customers aren't fitting in, or I don't like my customers, or my customers aren't following through on my work. Guess what? It's because your customers aren't authentically understanding you, and that's because you're not authentically delivering you. And so how do you get noticed? You just be yourself. You be yourself on every level. You find your quirks and you find your strengths and use your strengths to your advantage and be that wholeheartedly because that strength and that talent was given to you for a reason. It's because the universe, God, whoever the higher power, they want you to use that strength. That's the thing that are going to pull people in and draw them to you. And you want to work with people that like you and enjoy you and accept you and admire you for you being you.

Those are the kind of clients you want Well, it sounds like you've attracted those and you're going to attract many more. JB, how can people find out about you and Ignite?

Thank you for asking. So I'm easy to find on Facebook. I'm the only JB Owen there, so you can easily find me. But of course, you can go to our website, igniteyou.life, igniteyou.life. And of course, go to Amazon and you will see any of the Ignite series. All the books are up there. And of course, you can find me on Instagram at JB_JBOwen. You can find me there.

That's where I'm Wow, you are radiating across so many mediums. It's amazing. JB, thank you so much for joining me all the way from Canada today on the, in your case, the actually rather well-noticed Entrepreneur Show.

Thanks, Jim. So pleasure to be here. Blessings to you and all your listeners.

Thank you once again for listening to The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with JB Owen. I'll put all that contact information in the show notes as always.