0404 | The Future of Publishing with TedX Speaker & 10x Best Selling Author Melanie Johnson

Ea interviews, episode 404, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority Effect interview. Have I got some exciting news for you. Have you ever thought about publishing a book? Have you ever thought about doing a summit, A webinar, maybe a charity auction? I am so excited to bring the lovely Melanie Johnson back. You may remember her from episode 22 of the show. I have her right over here. She's smiling and everything, but she really needs no introduction and I'm going to bring her up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's EA Publishing method book dot com. Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Melanie Johnson. Melanie, how are you feeling today?

I'm feeling awesome. How are you, Mario?

I am great and I'm excited to have you back. It's been a minute, but I know you got some big stuff going on with the future of Publishing summit and I want you to just dive right into that. What it's about. Why should we even care? Because is there a future in publishing?

Well, first of all, you're on the summit. So that's the biggest reason, one of the biggest reasons you should care. Yeah. And rubbing shoulders with Mark Cuban because Mark Cuban is on the summit. He's one of the few top dogs that talks about the future of publishing and how it's going to change with all of the new technology. And of course you should still publish a book. You just published a book that came out recently. So a book is something that's been around for hundreds of years and I don't think it's going to go anywhere. But the technology changes. Publishing was disrupted when Amazon came on the scene and now we have new technology which most people don't even know. Like 5% of the people know what an NFT is, which is a non fungible token and how that's going to rock the publishing world. So we're launching a book, coming up with a non fungible token that will be on the blockchain and that is changing the whole nature and scope of publishing and what it's going to look like. So if you put it in your mind of like when the Internet first came out and you're like, what's a website? Why do I need a website? Huh? So it's kind of the same, like an nft. Why do I need an nft? So it's kind of the same thing. We're diving deep into that topic, but we're also diving deep into new and great ways to write a book. New technologies of how to publish your book. How are ways to market your book? One of the questions we had all the time, I mean we publish books just like you do. And after it's like, but the writing they think is hard, but then they get to the marketing and promoting, they're like, oh my gosh, that's even harder. That's harder than what I thought writing the book was. So we really dive deep into marketing. And what I love about this is a lot of it is book centric, but a lot of it applies to anybody in business. Almost 100% of what we teach you can use for your business or your book. So I really think it opens it up to almost anyone in any business. You're going to learn something that you can apply to your business as well as if you're an author.

So you're talking about NFTs and the blockchain and in this digital world. But what are your thoughts on actually having something you can pick up in your hands? Are these old fashioned books still tangible? Are they still, do they have a point to them? They're obviously tangible. What's the word I'm looking for? Are they still relevant?

Relevant, yeah. Relevant, I would say yes.

You know, everybody likes different formats. My kids, who you think, oh, they're probably just going to be audiobooks. Nathan and jj who we have game night with Mario at least several times a year. So you know, you would think they would just be audiobook, maybe e reader. But justice especially loves that physical book in his hand. The book itself will not go away. And the NFT really is not with the physical where working with some companies that are developing an E reader to go with the nft. Like you would have Kindle, but honestly the physical book would never go away. And if you're publishing a book, our philosophy is you should really have all formats and the new format will be with an nft. So I really think you still need that audiobook, hardback book, paperback book, ebook. Because everybody likes to consume content in different ways, just like some people. Even with today I see my kids, they never watch live TV ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Maybe. All right, the super bowl, that was it. Otherwise never ever, ever they consume theirs through YouTube. And then when they get the news, they get the news through their Instagram feeds. So everybody has something different that they like. They like to watch. So, like, I'm consuming my news generally through Hulu now, but then I also go into my newsfeed. So I like to get things different way.

Should always have all the different formats and use technology to its nth degree, if you can.

So with NFTs, I'm very excited to learn more about that myself, you know, if it makes sense for me, for my clients and, you know, moving forward in the future. It's very fascinating. But what about, you know, Facebook ads, Amazon ads? How about live streaming?

Oh, well, you've got to love the live streaming. I mean, I'll start with that first. So. And you're a big live streamer and big podcaster. We have a podcast as well. And one of the main things I love about that is you can repurpose it in so many different ways. Right. And when people see you in person, it's not just words. They're getting a feel of your personality, your values, who you are. They feel like they know you. They almost feel like they had a conversation with you. So. So when they're ready to do business with you, they don't have as many questions. They're really comfortable and feel like, hey, I already know you. I've already heard about you. I already know what your pitch is and what your product and service is. So I love that. And then the second thing I love is that repurposing. So, you know, you can take this interview and you can chop it up into a variety of different things. It can live as a podcast. You can make clips of it and put it on YouTube, you can make TikToks out of it. You can make Instagram reels out of it.

Yeah.

So think of all the different places it can be. And we're just spending our time here, maybe for a half hour, creating this, and you think, well, it's just a podcast. Oh, and by the way, we wrote a book called Podcast Authorized, which is how to turn your podcast into a book and your book into a podcast.

So you really have a purpose in that, huh?

Yeah. So then you can go ahead and have a book from your podcast as well. So that's what I love about all of that. Don't just stop there. So if you have a book, turn your book into a podcast, start talking about it, start doing live streams about each chapter and interview guests on the topics that you've written. About.

So we're going to go in two different directions at the same time and hopefully it's the same.

Some reason that doesn't surprise me about.

You, Mario, Because I want to make sure that people know who's really going to be here. Because I'm excited because there's a lot of heavy hitters here. And at the same time, my question for you is, you know, we're talking about repurposing the podcast in the book and all these different things. You know, one of the things I've said for years is take one of the chapters and speak about it on a live stream every day, you know, leading up to the launch. Hey, a week before, if you have a seven chapter book and you're launching seven days from now, maybe, just maybe talk about chapter one one day, chapter two the next, so on and so forth. But I love the marketing, I love the promotion. And honestly, it's surreal to say now, I love the writing, but what if someone's going, this sounds great, you guys are rock stars. But I hate writing.

I don't know if I'll ever, I like, I don't mind marketing in the promotion, but how do I get there?

You know, how do you help? How do you help them get the book done? And what do you suggest for someone at that starting point going, where do I even start? What do I even write about?

Yeah, you know, we have a lot of authors that come to us with that and they're confused. We call it the, you know, the book hamster wheel, the content hamster wheel. They're just rolling those. Should it be about my life? Should it be about my business? Should it be about, you know, the experience that I had when I was a kid? Should, you know, they just. And then it just keeps rolling around and they never, ever get the book done. So what we do, we call it a VIP content day. And we spend the whole day with you and we craft the book. But it's finding out your why, who your target market is, who your target person is. Speak to that one person. We've had people write a book just to the president of a company to get a job there. Come up with that person that you're really speaking to that you're trying to help with your book and you want to tell your story. So it's coming up with that structure and then telling those stories. And you and I both love, because I'm not a.

Writer per se, my son always says, mom, don't tell him you're not a writer. You wrote Books, you're a best selling author. And I go, but I'm like, Mario, I would rather speak my book. I would rather speak it, have someone interview me or do transcribe things and then turn it into the book. But I think you have to have clarity on who you're speaking to and the purpose of the book, what you want the outcome to be for you, your business and the person that's going to read it.

100%. It doesn't matter if you know you have a ghostwriter. You are a ghostwriter, you love writing, you hate writing, you know exactly who you're talking about or whatever. If you don't, you know, one of the things I say is start with the end in mind. What do you want the person to get out of the book? If the I'm writing the book for you, by the time you're on page 200, where do I want you to be versus where you started? And then you just bridge the gap from there. I mean, you can write about anything. I think everyone has three to five areas of expertise, whether it's in their business or not. That's a whole other story. But it's like there's a lot of stuff I can write about, but I started with one and went from there.

And I always say, you know, start with the money book, right? Start with the book that's going to propel you in credibility, propel you in the marketplace, help your business grow. And then you can have those other choices of, you know, you want to write the book of poems, right? Don't write the book of poems first. Write the book about your expertise and your niche first and give yourself credibility. And you can still tell your story within that by layering those stories in. We always tell our authors, you know, layer those stories in because that's how people connect with you and get to know with you within your expertise.

Yeah, there's so many great ways you can finish, but if you don't get started, I mean, what's the point?

Yeah.

So if you're listening, which you are, because there's no other option. I mean, at some point you have the audio on. Check out eainterviews.com futureofpublishing and you can take a look at the list I'm looking at here. And we have people like Mark Cuban, Laurel Langmire, Mike Koenigs, Anita henderson, Phil Palooka. Me, George Shepard, Melanie, Sarah McDermott, Venus Ramos, Amira Alvarez, Jen Foster, Candace Davis, Mike Pitcher. Sorry, Ed Rush, Andrea Glass.

Should have taken some water. Regina Wamba, Bernice Bennett, James Factor, Andy Falco, Nathan Johnson, Derek Doepker, Carrie, Ray Barnum, Brian Judd, Alex Strathd, Jackie Lapin and April Cox.

Yeah, you do have quite the lineup. And congrats on pulling everyone together because I know this is no small feat. I mean.

It'S incredible. It's just absolutely incredible what you've done. And some of these people I heard, I was actually very excited because there's people on here I heard of and I, you know, had followed for a few months or whatever, like Alex. And I was looking through and I'm like, well, this is sweet. Obviously, Mark Cuban. I was watching Shark Tank last night. I mean, you have so many great people on here, but how do you. Why did you want to curate everyone.

And over such great niches? I would say within the discipline, because Amazon ads, like with Alex talking about and NFTs with Mark and Nathan, and, you know, live streaming with Andy and you know, I touch on the podcasting side of it, why podcast is important for authors. I mean, tell me your thoughts about it. Tell me some behind the scenes about how this all came to be and why did you pick who you picked?

Well, you know, it was back in April, I was listening to Gary Vee and he was talking about that he was going to do an nft. And I'm like, what the heck's an nft? So I started educating myself about it and telling my son Nathan about, hey, you should listen and look about NFTs. He's like, mom, NFT, whatever. And then all of a sudden he says, hey, people are making money with this. And next thing I know, he's launching NFTs and doing really well by doing it. But what it made me aware of is that we're at a precipice of a new horizon and everyone's business is going to change, which means the publishing business is going to change. So I really felt that this was the perfect time to educ our audience and expand our audience to know what's going on in the marketplace. Like, literally I spoke today at a group, there's probably 50 people there. And I said, does anybody here know what an NFT is? And literally two people raised their hand. So it's so new. But again, I take you back years ago, if I said, does anyone know what the Internet is? Internet? What's the Internet? Maybe two people would have raised their hand. So it's the time to really get started. And I wanted to be on top of this, but I wanted to do it as a gift. To our audience and to all the people we invited to speak to their audience. And people were chosen for specific reasons, like Mark Cuban. Out of everyone that I listened to that was talking about NFTs and Web 3.0, he was the only one that was talking about how it was going to change the publishing industry and how it was going to change books and textbooks. So I was like, oh, man, I want to be able to have him, have a conversation with him. And he was so gracious that he just. We emailed over there and he immediately said, yes, set this up. Which I was shocked. It's like, wow, you know, ask and you shall receive type of thing. And, you know, people like you, Mario, that are super experts in the green room that we had, you were sharing new technology with me on the podcast side already. So, I mean, you're. And that's just from when we interviewed on our summit. So that's just like a month ago. And all of a sudden you have something else that's new. The. The marketplace is moving so fast. Technology is moving exponentially. So, so fast, it's hard to keep up. So I wanted to have a gift of experts, of people in their field that could at least give our group and everybody's group that was in there a head start and not feel like you're drowning, but you feel like you're on top of it and you have the vocabulary for everything. And then you can start to pick and choose what you need to execute for your business and for your book of all these tools that we're giving you.

Well, I'm super excited about it. Not just to be a speaker, but I always have loved learning from people. There's times when I've gone to events and I am the speaker. Generally that's the case. But there's times when I go, I just go as an attendee, because I'm like, I want to learn this. I don't want to hear myself again. Because I've been saying the same stuff for over a decade, longer than that, depending what I'm talking about. And I always love sharing, and I always love making it exciting. But I know some speakers who have this, like, I'm the speaker, like, bow to me attitude. And I'm kind of like, I don't really know anything more than I knew, you know, I always like learning because it's like, okay, I learned everything I could last year. Well, it's a new. It's a new year. Things change. Like, if you're not on the cutting edge of that, it's like, I always want to be in a room of people learning, not just, you know, look at me on stage or whatever. So I'm so glad you pulled together who you did because I'm excited to learn from them as much as I'm very excited to share with your audience because I love doing it and I know I have a lot of good stuff to say, but, you know, I'm. You pulled together a great lineup. Kudos on that. And I'm also excited to tell everyone that, you know, I think it will fit into their budget. Why don't you tell us why you're making it so beyond accessible and what that price point actually is to get started in Attend Live?

Yeah, it's. We wanted everyone to be able to have it with no barrier. So it's zero dollars. It costs nothing. It's absolutely free. You can listen to all 27 speakers. But, you know, hey, I get it that not everybody has time. It's February 24th through the 28th. They're like, you know, I got a lot of stuff going on, and maybe you want to pick and choose just the speakers you want to listen to, but we made it super affordable. If you want to get the recordings, then you can listen to it anytime you want, and you can share it with your team members, with other people. It gives you plenty of time to take notes on things. So it's only $97 if you sign up for the VIP. Plus, I just want to say in the VIP area, there's about $50,000 worth of free stuff in there. So not only do you get the 97, the, the, all the. For $97, you get all of the recordings that you can listen to anytime. You get about $50,000 worth of information and bonuses. Free stuff in there. I think that's a good roi, don't you, Mario?

I think with. I know of one thing that's going to be in there at least, and I know that is at least worth.

A couple tens of thousands and a couple of years of time, because that's how long it took me to curate it.

Yeah.

But yes, I think, I think that's a great roi. And thank you for making it accessible for everyone because I, I, I don't take any of this lightly because I remember when I had $5 and I spent four on highlighters and a dollar on a used book on Amazon, and it's like the stuff you can learn from books and other people.

I mean, look at Nathan. You said you and him last year were like, what's this. And look at him now.

Yeah.

Why don't you give a little glimpse of, you know, he's a speaker. Why don't we talk about that? His success story.

Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, you say he's a speaker, and I don't know that he would say that he's a speaker.

He's what he's with at the summit. You can learn from him. That's true of marketing NFTs to make them massively profitable.

Well, the other thing, he's been a teacher slash speaker. He's been doing things with Tai Lopez where Tai Lopez has had him on his little, I guess you say, like webinars. Like Ty will pop up and say, hey, I brought all these, you know, crypto whales or NFT whales to teach you about this. And one of them is Nathan. So I think it's so funny because when Nathan. Nathan's 21 and when he was a senior in high school, I took him to a live event at Tai Lopez's house, and Tai Lopez grabbed him and said, hey, this kid's going places. And they have it on video and now he's actually on the inside telling them how to market their NFT project that's coming up. It just kind of blows my mind. So, yeah, I just told this story today, I call it the Mercedes story because Nathan started doing Instagram marketing and he would sell ads on different Instagrams and do social media and chatting for people where he would charge him a service. And he's gotten very, very good at it. And then I mentioned the NFT thing and then he was like, mom. Well, when he was making some money with that, he rented a Mercedes and he thought it'd be fun for a day to rent a Mercedes amg. And the guy rented it from, he told him he did this social media stuff and he goes, oh, I know a couple guys that do the social media stuff. So I connected them and, you know, they followed each other. No big deal. Then down the road, Nathan wanted to buy a Mercedes. And I was kind of at one of my weak points in life. I will just say I was kind of run down and emotionally run down and physically run down. I had come back from taking care of my ill mother. And so the idea was that he was going to make money with the Mercedes and he was going to rent it on Turo, which is kind of like Airbnb for cars. So we ended up getting the car and I say we at the time, but then it turned into just be him and he went to go put it on Turo, and they told him he couldn't put it on because it had a pending recall. So here, his whole marketing strategy of how he was going to make the payment went up in smoke. So what he did in Nathan fashion, he just blew it up all over his Instagrams and said, hey, I'm starting this luxury car rental company and I have a Tesla. I have this Mercedes. So one of his former teachers rented the Mercedes and he took another student out to lunch. And the other student named Griffin, said, hey, Mr. Ball, I really love your car. He goes, well, it's actually not mine. He goes, it's my other student, Nathan Johnson. And he told him what he did. He says, you know, he does Internet marketing, does a lot of stuff on Instagram, blah, blah, blah. He goes, oh, man, I need to meet him because I want to launch an nft. So they did this project. It was, you know, I would say mildly successful, not super successful, but it did all right. And Nathan, of course, posted it all over his social media and Instagram, and the two guys that he was introduced to because he rented the Mercedes, saw it and they said, hey, we want to do an NFT project. So we brought Griffin along with them. They all got together, launched this NFT project called Goat Society, and they sold it out in five minutes for $3.2 million. And then from there, Mark Cuban's company, this was not even tied to Mark Cuban being on our Summit. Nathan had DM, Mark Cuban's company that does NFTs to help them market Goat Society. And they said no. So Nathan mentioned. DM'd him afterwards and said, hey, I just want to let you know, I did it all myself and this is what happened. And so now, guess what? He's working for them as the CMO for all their NFT projects. He's currently launching an NFT for Kellogg's, for Coachella. He did one for Miss Universe. So he's just. It went from. He was just thinking about mom when he launched the first one and they made $3.2 million. He said, just think about it. He goes, like, three months ago, I never even heard of an NFT. So I want to tell people the lesson of that is too, that, you know, my son was in college and he's wondering, what am I going to do when I get out of college? The job that he's doing now didn't exist a year ago. Nobody was doing it. So think about all the jobs that may happen, you know, when your kids get out of college or even next year if you're in a business, how your business may change and new jobs are going to come available. They talk about the jobs that are being lost because of AI automation, but there's going to be all these new jobs that are going to be created, but you need new skills for those. So part of the purpose of the summit is to teach you what's coming out and maybe pick up on the skills you may need to learn to be in this next wave of technology.

And I'll add in, maybe refine what you already know because.

Yeah, good point.

Just because you know something, you know, maybe it was applicable a decade ago, five years ago, heck, six months ago. But I remember, you know, I'll also say not only is he good at NFTs, but he's also good at cash flow, the game. But I remember in the summer when we were playing and in the fall and it was just like, even in those four months, it's like you were talking about it and you know, it's going well. I was like, hey, congrats, you know, hope it continues, you know, with all the best. And then like few months later, it's just like non stop, it's going better and you know, now it's later in time, few months later, it's, you know, and I just saw what he posted the other day. I was like, you know, good for him. He's. He's been doing so much behind the scenes that, you know, relatively, you could say happened overnight, but it's been a year and he's been working his tail off the entire time. It's not like it was one transaction and that was it. I mean.

Yep. Like you think it's like, you know, that overnight success. So when Nathan was barely 13, he asked me to buy an Instagram account for him. And I didn't know you could buy an Instagram account. It's kind of. Maybe I shouldn't even be saying that. Anyways, he acquired. We got an Instagram account, I think.

It'S safe to say, because there's a lot of people who talk about buying up websites, buying up Facebook pages.

Like with writing, especially if there's 15 blogs on writing, you can acquire that blog and their readership and put it into your website.

Probably true. So anyway, so he was 13 and it was $5,000. So what am I, like crazy mom? Like, I'm a single mom. Like $5,000 was huge. Don't ask me why, but I did it. And he started to cash flow with it. And then something happened and he got hacked and we did. We lost the account. And then he didn't do it for a while, but then he went back and he was still monkeying around. He didn't own an Instagram, he just had his own. And then he worked for somebody else placing ads for their Instagram. So he's been doing this since he was 13 and now he's 20, 21. So you think, well, gosh, he's been doing it for almost eight years, right. So it's not an overnight success. He's been doing this really for a long time. So think about whether you're 30 and you've been doing something till you're 38, and then all of a sudden you hit it really big. You can't say, well, oh, that just happened to him overnight. Yeah, so he's definitely paid his dues. And I give him credit because he works a lot. I mean, and these people, they don't have normal business hours. At 10 o' clock at night, he's on a meeting. You know, 6:00am he's on a meeting. I'm like, do you guys ever stop? Like, is there any type you don't.

You know, do this? He already built up the team of people, too. It's not just him and one other person. And, you know, that, that alone takes a lot because, you know, we both done that and it's like, you know, just keeping that together is.

An accomplishment, let's say. So, yeah, you know, I'm excited. We, we don't have time to go through everyone, but I mean, the people we touched on in Mark Cuban says on Shark Tank, I think I listened to him last night. He's like, it only takes that one time, you know? So one of my final thoughts would be whether you resonate with one person more or another person more. It doesn't.

Enjoy them all. Learn something from all. But even if there's one you resonate with, it can be worth it for that alone. There's been many times I've gone to events or attended trainings or whatever, and I'm like, if I hear from this one person and get one one thing.

It'S all worth it. So check out the lineup. Check out EA interviews.com forward/future of publishing. You'll see the lineup I got on one of the monitors here. Melanie, what are your last thoughts on it?

My last thoughts are, stay relevant, keep up with innovation. Mario does an amazing interview. It's worth the price of admission just for him. Even though the mission is for free. So definitely, definitely go to the future of publishing. Check out the link that he's put in here and you'll really be glad that you did. You'll feel like you grew exponentially.

Well, I am so glad we got to chat again. It's great seeing you as always and with that Expert Authority world. We'll see you on the next one. Have a great day. God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24? 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.