"AI Won't Take Your Job. But Invisibility Will." Listen to Shantel's Career Success Story.

There's so many ways you can promote your damn self. And I know for me, I used to be the hardest working invisible person that you've ever met. I spent my two-decade career in sales and I managed well over $1 billion. That's B as in bold, beautiful, and bodacious. I managed well over $1 billion in my sales career. Then I got laid off. I didn't have a personal brand. I didn't have a network outside of my job, and I did not know how to negotiate a 10% pay increase. It's not because I didn't know, but it's I just didn't have the words. I didn't have the confidence, and I did not frankly know how to vocalize my value. So I honestly believe that the best way to promote yourself is—

Chantel, how are you? Welcome to the podcast.

I am doing very great. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm excited about this, and I missed you so much because I was at Sisters in Sales, and I was like, I wish we could have hung out and just caught up in person.

I know, I was there in spirit, and everyone who spoke about how you killed it made me even more jealous, uh, but I missed you there too.

Thank you. I love to hear it. I never know what the feedback is, but I like to host very engaging workshops, so I'm excited to hear that. Before our audience doesn't know all your greatness, can you please tell me about yourself?

Absolutely. I am Shantel Love. I'm a speaker, executive at Pearson, and author of Promote Your Damn Self. And in 2025, HR's number one priority was employee engagement. And that's my lane. I marry my expertise of employee engagement as I am in Gallup's top 5% of most engaged teams. I marry that with personal branding to drive peak performance in organizations. I've spoken at companies like Walt Disney World, Amazon Web Services, re:Invent conference, and I'll be the closing keynote at Customer Contact Week in October. And companies typically bring me in to speak on manager effectiveness and AI fluency and to run my enterprise personal brand lab where employees learn how to become visible leaders without leaving their company.

I love it. I'm so excited. I watched your promo reel. I also started watching your reveal, your Amazon AWS presentation. So I feel the vibe. It's a good vibe. And I have so many questions for you. So let's jump into it. So you wrote this book that's called Promote Your Damn Self, and I started reading it, and there's a couple of things I want to talk about. But how does one today, like in this landscape, there's a lot of things happening. How do you promote your damn self?

There's so many ways you can promote your damn self. And I know for me, I used to be the hardest working invisible person that you've ever met. And I spent my two-decade career in sales and I managed well over $1 billion. That's B as in bold, beautiful, and bodacious. I managed well over $1 billion in my sales career. Then I got laid off. I didn't have a personal brand. I didn't have a network outside of my job, and I did not know how to negotiate a 10% pay increase. It's not because I didn't know, but it's, I just didn't have the words. I didn't have the confidence, and I did not frankly know how to vocalize my value. So I honestly believe that the best way to promote yourself is to think about your future self and to understand that the best advocate, the best voice, and the best person to vocalize your value is you and your voice and your value and your visibility is actually currency. I saw a stat recently from Stanford Business School that said specifically women lose over $782,000 over the course of their career because of the visibility gap.

Wow.

Yes, I know. Because they're—

that's not good news.

Yes, it's not good news. And I think to myself about that stat because There are a lot of professionals, a lot of women, a lot of just people in general that believe their hard work will get them known. And if you don't have a strategy around how do you make yourself visible to the people who have power, influence, and authority to promote you, if you're afraid to post your facts on how you're performing in your career on spaces like LinkedIn, if you're not Googleable, and what I mean by that, if you're not submitting and sharing your thought leadership and white papers and taking opportunities like this to be on podcasts, your voice only goes as far as you allow it. And it's important in this day and age with the AI takeover to understand that AI will not take your job, but invisibility will. So having a strategy on how to become more visible, being bold and brave on showing up on spaces like LinkedIn and raising your hands for projects and stretch initiatives within your organization will be the key differentiator and also some really critical starting points in building your personal brand and a brand that speaks for you when you're not in the room.

I love it. I feel like you just dropped all the different bombs and dropped them. Okay, let's, let's unpack. There's a lot to unpack. So it's so like, I see myself in you because I've coached a lot of different women, especially, and people of, of color to, or people, even people who are nervous. I haven't— anybody who's not comfortable talking about their accomplishment, I've coached them. And I'm really hearing what you're saying. You, it seems like you had a shakeup moment in your life where you were laid off and then you had a realization and you don't wish for anyone that to happen to anyone. Right? So, let's break it down. So, there's a couple of things that you said, but I want to make sure that we get like the numbered version because people are like, ah, I need to do this. Where do I start? What is— if you have to prioritize the first thing you would start, if you need to start, go from invisibility to visibility. What is the first thing? And then we'll go to 2, 3, 4, 5. Because think about the world of somebody who doesn't post online, who doesn't know what their brand is. Where do you start?

Yeah, I would say start with being proactive, not perfect. And what I mean by that is begin to think about the what and the why. It is okay if you're saying that I want to make more money, that's your why. If your why is I want to climb the corporate ladder, or I want to start my side hustle, be proactive in that and begin to think how you can add value in that space. So be proactive, don't worry about being perfect. It's okay to start at 70% or 40% of your perfection. It's just about starting.

I love it. So tip number 1 is just get started.

Yep, right.

Get started. And I think it's something that you said before is articulating your value. So it's your accomplishments. If you're not comfortable posting your accomplishments on LinkedIn, that's a bold step. But what about even posting your accomplishments, like telling your boss your accomplishments in your one-on-one? Or even like sharing them in different forums internally at a company. That could be the first step is just progress, not perfection, and then being clear about your value. What's the second one?

The second one is document your impact. And what I mean by this is it's not that I'm great and I'm awesome. You want to document your impact and quantify every single thing as an executive. Your message is not magnetic if it does not attach to revenue saved, revenue generated, time saved. So you want to get into the practice of quantifying your impact. And this can be as simple as you may have done a team building, right? And people may say, okay, team building is a pizza party. But when you look at stats around team building and employee retention and employee engagement, you can pull from other people's expertise and white papers to articulate and vocalize the value of something as simple as a team building. So get into the habit of documenting your impact, documenting your wins. And I encourage my mentees to actually do it once a week at least. And if you think about it from that perspective, documenting your wins once a week, even if it's just one week, one win per week, over the course of a year, you will have 52 wins, 52 wins that you can use in a job interview, a performance review, to pitch a promotion. You can use it outside of work as well. If you're on a podcast or asked to speak on a stage or asked to contribute to a magazine article, it gives you something to pull from versus having to create from scratch.

That's important. Documenting your impact as a second one. And having a written— if you're not, if you don't know how to do it, I would add like maybe leverage a SMART goal methodology or even go and ask ChatGPT like, how do I— what are the metrics I could surface if I organize the events to be able to document my impact? So that's just it. Here, I just created a random prompt. Okay, what's number 3?

Yes, I love that. So number 3 is connect before you need it. What I noticed is that when I started my personal brand, I was desperate. I mean, I was so desperate. And when I realized that this could be a business, most of my clients actually were colleagues that came to me out of desperation where they were laid off and didn't know where to start. So I highly recommend if you're employed, if you're transitioning a job, starting a side hustle, connect with people who are doing the things that you aspire to do. Connect with them now. Build that relationship and don't build a relationship on what you want. Build a relationship that is mutually beneficial. And what that looks like is what you can offer them in exchange for what they can offer you. And some people think to themselves, I have nothing to offer. Yes, you do. So even if it's sharing an article or saying, hey, I saw this person or I met this person, I think you all would be a good connection with each other. Understand that value can look like a connection. Value can look like sharing someone else's thought leadership or white paper. Value is what builds a relationship and building those connections before you need it, because you don't want to come to someone and say, I haven't spoken to you in 20 years, can you recommend me for this job? That does not go over well. So begin to build that, that network when you're not desperate.

No, I think that's so important because nobody like I don't want to say this word, but nobody wants to feel used, right? So it's like you never, ever, ever, ever talk to someone and then suddenly you reach out because you need a favor. So I think keeping your network alive and building that connection forward. What would be the fourth one to be able to promote yourself?

The fourth one is tell stories, not stats. Oftentimes people believe that just because you have a whole lot of letters behind your name, you have titles and credentials, that that matters. It really doesn't. People relate to people who they can see themselves in. And I typically start my story off by my experience, and more people can see themselves in the experience versus the title. So share those stories about your victories and be okay with sharing some bit of vulnerability, but don't share anything that you haven't healed from because you don't want anyone to weaponize that against you. But it's okay to share that you messed up on a project and then share what you learned. If you're thinking about growing in your career, As a hiring manager and an executive, I will hire someone that made a mistake and learn from it and were able to create processes and workflows as a result of that lesson learned versus someone who's pristine and perfect, who's never made any mistakes. So you want to tell stories because stats may impress, but that story, it sticks and it sells.

Yeah, I love it. I think it's so, so important. And I love the part about You want to tell a story when you heal. Pam Weaver shares the same. It's like you want to share events and happenings after the fact such that you, you have to share it as a learning and not like you just have this raw emotional outburst. That's brilliant. And what would be the last tip that you have to promote your damn self?

So the last one is probably going to rub someone the wrong way, but I'm going to say it anyway. Number 5 is repeat yourself time and time and time again. The way that I was able to 10x my income in less than 5 years was because I was under the impression that when someone said no, it didn't mean no indefinitely. It meant no, not right now, right? So for me, as I was vocalizing my value, I went through 6 or 7 different managers, and I had to repeat my value, repeat the contribution, repeat the impact I made. And that's the same when it comes to personal branding, be it as an entrepreneur or be it as an employee who's building their brand on social media or on the World Wide Web. You want to become so bored with repeating yourself, uh, that you're like, man, I'm saying the same things over and over again. Because when you think of the way that most algorithms work, only a fraction likely less than 10% of the people are seeing what you're posting and you're missing out on that 90%. So you want to repeat yourself and cycle your signature stories, your signature impact until they stick.

No, I think that's amazing advice. And it feels like it's like your own hit song. So you want to— what's your favorite song or whatever song that, that comes to mind? Like Let's say like, I'm going to be full of oldies, like, "Real love, I'm searching for the real love." But I didn't have to Google it. I didn't have to search for it. That's a hit. So I think that's, it's, I love what you say because people don't realize that the difference between those who get ahead and who don't get ahead is that they leverage their manager. They keep repeating their accomplishments. I had a one-on-one with one of my former reports. Every one-on-one, the top of the, The top of the one-on-one document was promotion, update on promotion. I'm like, hey, we talked about it last week. There's no update. But I want to make sure, have you read my packet? Have you da da da? You want to review this? Yes, I did. But I think it's important because when the promotion committee gets together, right, imagine the committee, like senior people, if your manager doesn't know exactly your accomplishments by heart almost, then it's going to be harder for them to articulate your value and handle objections. So this one is gold. Thank you so much, Chantelle.

You're welcome.

So I want to move on and talk a little bit about what are your career advice to get ahead? Because you started, you've been over 11 years at Pearson, a net tech company, and now you're VP Customer Success. That's quite an accomplishment. Can you tell us, like, how did you get ahead so that people can learn from your own journey in the past?

Yeah, absolutely. I'll start with the truth that no one talks about. When you think about your career and the people that you work with, and when you think about your job, your job isn't your family, it's your first investor. When I think about it from that perspective, I think about where are the opportunities that I can leverage my investor to strengthen my skill set or introduce me to the future of work or the skills that are needed for the future of work, or what skills can I learn outside of the organization that will grow my influence, grow my power, grow my impact, be it inside or outside of the organization. And I think of myself, and I typically tell the audiences that I speak in front of, I think of me, Shantel Love, as a business. And you wouldn't launch a startup and wait until you're broke to find the capital. Right. You would not do that in a startup company. Yet what I realized is that professionals, they wait until they're overlooked or they're laid off to build their brand. And that is what led me to write Promote Your Damn Self, because I was constantly waiting for someone to advance my career. And it was over the course of the last 9, 10 years, I had 9 different managers and I kept rotating through the different managers and trying to convince them of how amazing and how great I was. And was working hard and long hours. And I was just like, this isn't working. So I had to try something different. And I started to think from their perspective, not my perspective. What do they need to be successful? Because they have someone that they need to answer to. What are they not thinking about that I know of? Because I've been there longer than them. And I made myself the most valuable and vocal person at the same time and made sure that I was having timestamps and asking for deliverables. So if I'm placed on a project, I would ask, okay, when this project is done, how do we evaluate my promotion or my next steps? What does that look like? What are our check-in frequencies are going to look like? How do we quantify the impact? And I do all of that before I sign up for a project, sign up for a stretch goal. I make sure that I have an agreement on the front end. So even if they left, We have something in writing that someone else can pick up on. And I believe that this is important. And I detail some of this in Promote Your Damn Self. And I find myself walking readers through how to align their expertise with their company goals. So if I decide to build a personal brand or a side hustle, it's not starting from scratch. A lot of people think that if I'm going to do a side hustle, I need to go back to school and I need to learn something different. No, you don't. Do what you've done well. Your entire career, your entire life, because it's a win-win. It's a win-win because you're advancing in your career, you're building a brand for yourself, and you're building a brand for your company. And I say this because one of the biggest mistakes high performers make is thinking that hard work automatically equals recognition. And it does—

no, it does not.

It does not. But like for me, in my example, if leadership keeps changing, your results can be erased overnight. And that's why I created the companion to Promote Your Damn Self. I created a free 4-week mini course called the Enterprise Personal Brand Lab, and it's just 4 weeks. And I walk you through how to audit your current reputation, how to craft your brand story that sticks with decision makers, how to show up in the right rooms without burning out, because we all know that that, that can happen, and how to tie your personal brand directly to enterprise results. It's short, it's actionable, and it's completely free. And I'll be sure to drop it in the show notes so that you can make that progress over the next 4 weeks.

I think that's amazing. And so your journey to become a VP at Pearson is through a lot of self-advocacy, and you've been very strategic because you feel like you've been negotiating every single step because sometimes people don't negotiate. And they think that somebody miraculously promotes you. The reality is like every interaction is a negotiation. It is. Every single one.

Every single one.

And it's for those who have kids among us, right? The kiddos, it's every interaction is a negotiation. So think about that in your career where it's like, mommy, I want this, I want that, I want this, I want that. I'm like, whoa, what are you going to do in exchange? I think that's so important. So can you tell us a little bit more about how do you audit the personal brand? How do you audit your authority?

Yeah. So I think one of the simplest ways, the way that I think about how to audit the personal brand without an assessment or without having to get certified is really assessing and thinking about what are people saying about you in rooms that you're not in. And you can do a simple ask ask campaign. And I typically layer the ask campaign in 3 levels. So you can ask a peer, what do you believe my strengths are, right? Or what do you— what value do you believe I bring to the organization that no one else does? So ask a peer, and then you'll ask someone that's slightly above you, like a manager or a director, depending on the size of your organization. And then if you have proximity to someone who's at a vice president or a C-suite level, you can ask the same question. You can do this in a coffee chat. Most people will say yes to a 15-minute coffee chat because most people are too afraid to ask. You can set up a coffee chat and start to evaluate and say, hey, I want to build a stronger presence in this organization. I want to contribute on a larger level where I can make impact. And I'm starting with just doing a general audit of my brand. And most people will be honest with you. And when you ask that one question, what you can do is compare what you thought you knew against what people are actually saying. And that gives you a gap, right? If you have a gap, it gives you something to work towards and you can use that as a follow-up. I noticed that I perceived myself as this and you perceive me as this, and this is the gap. What strategies or what opportunities are available to help me to fill that gap? And then that way you have a strategy to fill that gap to get you more visibility and give you the answers that you are not assuming, right? Are the answers you get matter-of-fact, direct answers because you're asking directly how you're perceived versus assuming that you're perceived a certain way?

No, I love it. And I have more— so many questions about that. I'm trying to be polite. Not talk over the guest, that's common decency. So question, okay, in our world a lot of people are inauthentic and it's very— and where at work people wear a lot of masks. I remember I sent one of my reports to a senior leader and I said, I like, I told her to ask a couple of questions that were similar to your questions and the person gave like fluffy feedback that didn't mean anything and she took notes and she took it very seriously. And then I looked at all the feedback and it was like, I was appalled. So how do you press? Because a lot of people don't want to be on the hook. Some people want to be liked and then give the negative feedback and calibration rules. So how do you double press such that the real feedback comes out? We want the dirt, only the dirt. And we want the good feedback, but we want the truth. We don't want people wearing masks giving us feedback and then we never grow and we never go. You never get what you need to be able to develop it, also to thrive and advance in the corporation.

Yeah, I love that question for a couple of reasons. And I think that, you know, many people have been in a space where they've worn a mask and, you know, I call it for me, I had the great unmasking like 4 or 5 years ago where I was just like, I can't do it anymore. But what I realized in that question, when you ask, you will get feedback. It may be feedback that you like and that you may not like. And it makes me think of the book The Four Agreements. And one of the Four Agreements is not to take anything personally. And I think that that's a skill in itself, to understand that if you're getting feedback that is not favorable to what you believe, don't internalize it. And I think that that's easier said than done. But you have to think of who really knows you. My family knows me intimately like no one else. No one will ever get the Chantel love that my family gets at home. So if you feel like it's an attack an attack on who you are, take a pause because you have to think of it from that perspective. The people you work with only know you for the duration of time that you've worked with them, not your entire life. So don't take it personally. And also what I think about is people treat ChatGPT as like, you know, a child's toy. Like they don't treat it the way that it should be treated to bring value to your personal brand, to bring value to your career. You know, people will plug in, how do I take the items my refrigerator to make a meal, that's fine and all, but that's not the way that I would recommend using it. So if you're in a situation— and I just coached one of my employees in Australia on this— if you're in a situation and your boss has given you some feedback that feels harsh or it feels difficult to digest, I would prompt ChatGPT and I would ask it to act as a career coach that has 20 years of experience. And I'm working on receiving feedback to make me a, a better leader or a better employee so that I can build— fill in the blank. It could be build better character, build better business acumen, and to develop a strategy. And I would plug that in and I would talk to ChatGPT as if it were my career coach.

I love that a lot. I think it's great. But what if the feedback is fake feedback? People are afraid that you get angry at them and don't give you the right feedback. So how do you press the person such that you can get the real feedback that you need.

So some ways that I've done this before is if I believe that it's fake feedback, I would say, help me to understand, like, thank you for giving me that feedback. Can you help me to understand how you came to that conclusion? Or I would say, can you give me a few examples so that I can take them back and digest them and work on them? Or if this is happening before a meeting, I would send a meeting with an agenda item and I would ask 2 preparation questions, and I would say, in preparation for our conversation, these are the things that I would like to discuss in more detail. Can you prepare, you know, 2 to 3 examples or 2 to 3 talking points so that we can make the most out of this discussion? If that person is honest and transparent enough, they'll give you the truth. If they're not, I think we have another issue on our hands. So if it is someone who actually has the power to advance your career or terminate you, I would start to document feverishly and make sure that everything that I'm communicating is timestamped. And if you have trust with an HR partner, begin to document and have a paper trail with them as well. But if it is someone who has an ounce of, you know, integrity, they would be willing to expand on what was discussed in the conversation.

That's good. No, because what I've seen— I'm Canadian from Montreal, so people would give me— I have to translate Californian language because New York would give you very harsh feedback and you want to have a heart attack. Yeah, but in California everything sounds nice. Yeah, it's very nice for people, but people who want real feedback and the feedback doesn't come through, then they probably have to press and ask clarifying questions or even keep asking for feedback until the feedback comes. Or I like that what you suggested, sending questions in advance and asking for examples so that the person can— you want to get to the truth of how you perceive. And I think sometimes it's been hard for certain populations and certain people, oftentimes women and women of color, get the real feedback that we need.

Yeah, agree.

Okay, I think that's amazing. So now you published this book Promote your damn self. Yeah, I want to hear more from you of like what— like there's different ways to publish a book. There's self-publishing, there's hybrid publishing with, uh, hybrid type of publisher, and then there's traditional publishing, which is like the Wiley, the Penguin, the big names. So which path have you chosen and why?

Yes, I self-published, and I decided to self-publish Promote Your Damn Self intentionally. And, um, what I mean by that is, uh, becoming a publisher means I'm not only the author, I'm the publisher, which means I purchase my own ISBN, which means I own my rights. I keep my royalties. And in a world where too many people lease out their brilliance, I chose ownership intentionally. And the reason why this matters is because I don't look at Promote Your Damn Self as just a book. It's my intellectual property and it's a business asset that keeps working for me when I'm sleeping. And I think that the barrier to entry is so low now that anyone can be a publisher, which is great because it gives people the ability to monetize their intellectual property and their expertise. But when you decide to publish solely on a platform like Amazon and you use the ISBN from Amazon, if you don't read the fine print at the bottom of your agreement, that means that what people miss out on is that Amazon is the only place that you can publish the book, that you can sell the book, because of the terms of agreement that they have. Now, if you decide to go and buy your own ISBN, which is only $150, through Bowker Key, you become a publisher, which means you can publish other books or other people's books if you choose, and you own all of the intellectual property, which means you can print the book and you can sell it anywhere that you want. You can sell it out of your house. You can sell it on the moon if you want to.

Okay, I will tell Jeff Bezos that.

Yeah, don't tell Jeff or Elon. Yeah, they may get an idea.

Yeah, Eric, read the ISBN of the moon and Mars, and that's it.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not gonna be surprised. Remember, you heard it first on this podcast.

On this podcast, The Top 5% Method with Katheline Jean-Pierre and Chantel Yes, yes, yes. And while we're at it, don't forget to follow, subscribe, share with your friends, and write comments. Talk, even if it's just write an emoji. Come on, write one emoji on Spotify. Let's keep going. So you decided to self-publish, promote your book, Themself, because you want to get your intellectual property, but also what you've learned to be able to advance as a VP of customer success at Pearson after a massive layoff. And a shake-up in your life. So this is like your mini Bible for yourself, but also to help share, spread the word with other people who need that message, who need to start promoting their brand such that they're ready if they will be laid off. And we've seen there's been like, what, 85,000 layoffs so far this year? And I stopped counting, so I might be off.

Yeah, it's, it's insane. It is insane. And even speaking of the layoffs laid off. You know, I've seen stats that says specific to Black women over— and that number is probably higher now— well over 300,000 Black women have been displaced, is the words that they use, laid off or reduction in force. And when I think about owning my intellectual property, even while holding an executive seat, what I want people to understand as I say, promote your damn self. We find ourselves contributing to the greater good of these large corporations, companies, and organizations. And when you think of a company or organization, at the core, it is an entity that is ran by human beings for the most part. And what I learned in my experience is to never rent out your brilliance. Own it, because what you don't own, you can't leverage. And if you understand that as just the simple way of being, the simple way of owning who you are, your brand, your intellectual property, you can fill in the blank. You will look at yourself so differently. You will look at what you're doing on a day-to-day so, so differently. But The reason why I say ownership is because my book has become my loudest ambassador. It's opened doors.

You got to tell me more. Like, which doors did they open?

Yes, it's opened doors to speaking gigs. It's opened doors to allow me to do executive coaching. It's opened doors to corporate contracts without me having to cold pitch. The things that I did not know that a book can accomplish, and I will tell you that I learned a lot through this journey, and I'm going to tell you two mistakes that people make too as they publish a book so you don't make those mistakes. But what I learned is that my book, I've done— instead of selling the individual books, I do that. I've come to organizations and conferences and sold my book as a package. So I've sold packages of books to their entire audience in exchange for me speaking, right?

Instead of saying, you're gonna pay me $5,000.

Yes. You think you can buy $5,000 worth of books?

$5,000 worth of books. And then what happens then?

What happens then is that my book becomes the only business card that people pay for that they never throw away. So they'll keep— they'll get the book, it'll be in their house, they may walk past it, flip through the book, they'll read something, they'll post about it, they'll tell their friends about it without me having to do anything in exchange because that's my business card. And, uh, the two mistakes that I will say that people make when writing a book. Writing a book is not the hard part. Writing a book is the easy part, actually. What is the hard part that I underestimated was once the book comes out, then what, right?

You have to market the book because it's not— it's not going to sell itself.

That's when it really starts. You have to market the book. You have to talk about the book. You have to get on stages to tell people why they should buy it.

I went up one because the topic is fascinating.

Yeah.

So over 90% of books sell fewer than 1,000 copies. So you can make the math, right? And it costs— if you self-publish and you don't know that over 90% of books sell less than 1,000 copies, you're probably not even break even. So there has to be a bigger purpose because there's different models. So tell us about marketing of a book.

Yes. Yeah. So what I will say is that that stat, I was one of the alarming stats because you see all New York Bestselling Times, and you assume and presume that, you know, uh, you're able to sell 150,000 copies of your book. And I have not, so I will not pull the wool over your eyes. But what I have done was I was able to sell— this year, October the 18th will be the 1-year anniversary of my book launch, and I've already sold over 1,000 book copies of my own within the first 4 months. So I would say that the marketing happened ahead of the book being sold. So when I decided to write the book, I shared it in communities. I solicited folks' feedback. I got early reviewers and early readers, and I connected in every single community that I was a part of and had people champion and promote the book on my behalf. Podcasts are a really great way to talk about your book and promote your book because because podcasts live forever, and most people who listen to podcasts, they finish them. More than half of the people who listen to podcasts, they finish them. That doesn't happen when you're listening to someone, someone's audiobook. It doesn't happen when you're in an audience and listening to someone speak. So it's a really great vehicle to sell and promote your book. So what I decided to do was take advantage of those avenues and connect and pitch myself, and I a whole pitch script on chapter 8 on how to pitch to podcast hosts, on how to get on podcasts so that you can speak about your book, your product, or your service. But the marketing itself is a function of not just social media. That's not marketing. That's, that's not marketing. A lot of people think social media is marketing. It's getting your product in. Then it's not necessarily your product. I'll retract that. Getting the transformation into the hands of the people that need it most. Themselves, and that can be corporations, that can be organizations, that can be affinity groups, and really understanding the value that the book has on their, on their organization and look at it from their perspective, not yours as a business owner.

So give me a little bit of like— so you talk about the marketing of a book. I want to summarize. First, it's like you requested feedback from people who would pre-read your book and reviews, and then secondly, you sell the book instead of selling your services, because then the book is selling itself because people would read it. And then you talked about corporations, so making sure the book solves a deep problem for a corporation, because that, that way the corporation can become your customer. And then of course you did some kind of like, you did social media, but that was not it. Are there any tactics that I'm missing in terms of— because I see a lot of authors come to our show And I have a lot of authors who are my friends as well.

Yes, yes. So I, I would say that those strategies work very nicely. But also, just because the book is valuable to you doesn't mean that the book is valuable to others. I've given out my absolute best chapter for free, like the best of the best chapter for free, and after they've read that chapter, they're like, I need the book. Like, if this is that good I want the book. So the chapter that I typically give away is how to monetize your expertise. And I teach people how to look at what they do in their 9 to 5 and give them ways to monetize it on stages, how to ask for a pay raise, how to negotiate a pay raise, how to pitch podcast hosts, how to start a company if you decided to start a company without having to get an LLC. I give that chapter away because I know that it's so valuable. And I know that the creator economy is growing. I know that consultancies are growing as well, and people don't know where to start. So that chapter, the book in itself, the chapter in the book does the marketing for me.

Wow, that's brilliant. I love it. And then for our audience, I want to talk about the other types of publishing as well. And before I do that, Yeah. So, Chantal, you sold 1,000 books in the first 4 months, but where are you now after a year? How many have you sold?

About 4,500.

Okay, so there's good growth in terms of being able to push it through. So there's different models. There's self-publishing, when you carry most of the cost. There's hybrid publishing, so you can have a hybrid publishing house. There's different types of publishing houses. We do that, where normally you have to pay for marketing. Might be up to $10,000, but you can keep some of the rights versus the last part, which is traditional publishing. So a couple of my friends are big, big influencers. I'm talking about millions of followers. They're able to have advances of like $1 million, $1.3 million, $1.1 million for their book. And then other of my friends, they, they're still with big publishers, but what they sell, they sell consulting tips.

Yes.

So they go with— they have half a million consulting gigs based on their books. So people are chasing a different way. If we start with the big influencers, which are the influencers who have a million plus followers, get a million dollar advance, that's one model where much of your money is upfront. You might not make more after that, but it's a sales job because they're going to give you the million dollar if you hit certain milestones. And if you have an audience of a million, they're likely going to be able to buy your $20 off, right? So that's gonna happen. So that's the way they monetize it. They might not be interested in consulting business stuff. My other girlfriend who has an amazing book, her— she doesn't want to become a New York Times bestseller because those, those influencers are going after the New York Times bestseller. So she doesn't care about becoming a New York Times bestseller. What she wants is to be able to get the book in the hands of the right people, and that's happening. Consulting gigs are just sitting there. Different model, different value. Yes, right. And then the self-publishing route is a bit more what, what you're doing is, uh, you're working out to speak in there. So you're like the typical portfolio professional. So you have a day job, which is you're a customer success person, and then you also have speaking engagements, and then you have your book, and then you have your coaching as well. So how many figures has that, has that been able to generate for you on a yearly basis? Just to help people, because a lot of our listeners are into important to call out.

And one of my superpowers is transparency. So I do own two different companies. So my company, Chantel Love LLC, is where my speaking, publishing, and author business resides. And then I have a real estate business that's passive, where we have real estate where we rent out across the US. Our property. So we're going into this business, I will say that it was very different because my real estate business is now very passive and this is a very active business. And year one, it was just trying to figure out like how to get my bearings before I even launched the book, because even before the book comes out, you should be selling your book. And without the acumen and me leveraging my network and going through YouTube University, my first year I made $24,000. And I mean, this is my first year speaking, my first year selling the book, my first year really trying to understand the business platform and the business acumen of it all. And then my second year, I was able to bring in about $77,000 in my business with less speaking engagements, less travel, and strategically positioning the book sales in bulk versus trying to sell one-to-one to consumers. So that's what that looked like. I got a bit smarter and I started to be unafraid to reach out to people who were doing it successfully to gain strategies. But that's what it looked like.

To six-figure in two years. But you became savvy. Then the next book, you're going to know how to get it and you're going to have the networks as well. That's amazing. And what's your tip and trick to get those speaking engagements? A lot of people are like, I want to become a speaker passively while I have my day job. What is the best approach to put people in confidence and hire you?

Honestly, when I think about speaking, most, most people are already speakers. Like if you've run a meeting or a kickoff, if you are a team leader, you are a speaker in your own right, but you're just not a speaker of your own business or your own organization. And for me, most of my speaking engagements actually come from communities, network, and people that I already know. And I think oftentimes— well, let me take a step back. I started off doing everything the wrong way. And what I mean by that is I was submitting all of these pitches cold. I was applying to all of these speakers, like these call-to-speaker events, filling out all of these applications. And I've probably done hundreds of them and never landed one, if I'm being perfectly honest.

Wow. So that's not the way.

Yeah, it did not work for me. It may work for someone else. But what worked for me was leveraging the industry that I was in. And customer success is not like something that I click my heels about, but employee engagement is. So I started with the low lift where I would speak at industry conferences for free and get my recording, get my speaker reel up. And then I started to price myself in the speaking industry. So I started in the customer contact tech space, the customer service and customer success space, and I would speak on employee engagement as well as personal branding. So I've been doing that for a couple of years now, and I get paid to, to do that. And then I love speaking to women's organizations, and I'm a part of several of those women organizations, and many of the women in the organizations have referred me to paid speaking opportunities, or I've ask them, hey, you all know I'm speaking on XYZ, or I have a speaker topic on the Enterprise Personal Branding Lab. Would you be okay with referring me to the training department or the head of learning and development of your organization? And take those warm leads as opportunities to position the value and position the offer that I have. But most of it has come from the network. Most of it has come from people seeing me speak at industry events and asking me to come into their organization to speak as well.

But you also have a podcast.

I'm starting my podcast, so it is coming out soon. The I Promote My Damn Self podcast, where I will highlight readers from my book that have actually implemented the strategies from the book and have gained success. So that is coming out.

So it's so funny because this is a perfect segue to end our conversation. I think that's super important because I saw the Chantel Love Show and I thought that was your podcast on YouTube, and I was like, oh, she got a podcast.

Look at that, it's all about perception.