Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Becky Robinson

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on this extension of the podcast, which— where we do some LinkedIn Live. So I'm really, really excited about today. So Becky Robinson, I'll give you just a very brief bio on her and then we'll just dive right in because that'll be more fun. So Becky is the founder and CEO of Weaving Influence. Which is a, I guess you call it digital marketing agency, book launch company. We'll get into that in a little bit. And she's actually gone to the other side from just supporting authors and such and thought leaders for a dozen or so years to being an author herself. So her new book, as opposed to an old book, I guess everybody's book is new, is called Reach: Create the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Message book, or I can't read my handwriting.

What's the last one?

Cause.

Cause. Sorry, I should go one more time. Message book or cause.

Cause, yeah. I have the handwriting of a doctor, but not the job of a doctor. So anyway, I've got to tell you, Becky. So Becky and I have known each other for several years, and I felt like the person at the horror movie when we used to go to movies yelling at the screen, but in a good way, when I was reading your book. Like, yes.

Oh, I'm so relieved.

No, I wasn't throwing things at the screen. Get the knife out of the drawer.

No, no, no.

I was shouting more the, the hallelujah, you know, you, you go girl, uh, as I was reading the book. I, I read it, um, in June. I was at, uh, it was like the first time I traveled in forever in Las Vegas, sitting outside in the scorching heat like a lunatic getting heat stroke reading it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it down. And then my Kindle overheated, so that was not a good sign. But, uh, anyway, welcome Becky. Come.

Thanks for coming. Thank you. And I'm so honored that you read my book, Peter.

Yeah, that's why. And the first thing I did was reach out and say, okay, we got to talk about this because this is fun.

Yeah.

So here we are. So let me just sort of set— you and I have, have had several conversations over the years, and I think we've, we've got a similar mindset perspective in terms of how you leverage things, build platforms, etc., not get sucked into it's all about book sales and units and all that. So Describe for folks sort of what Weaving Influence is and what you've been doing the last 10 or 12 years. And I want to pivot to the book side.

Sure. I'd be happy to. So I founded Weaving Influence back in 2012, which is about exactly 10 years this summer since I started. Although before that, I was doing some freelance support of authors here and there and really figuring out how to leverage social media to get the word out about books. We have primarily been working on business books over the last decade. So you and I, Peter, are definitely in the same space. Although I think the services that we provide to authors are a little bit different. We will often partner with authors about 4 to 6 months before they have a book that's ready to come out, and we work with them from the strategic level all the way down to the implementation and execution level, providing support in key areas like, you know, web, social media marketing, public relations, content marketing, virtual and live events, you know, any any of the levers that an author might want to use to get the word out about their book and expand audience for their book. We've been working with authors on those things over the years. And one of the other things that we've done is partnered with authors over the long term to build their thought leadership platforms and continue to grow the reach of their work. So the book really is an extension of that, in that I pulled together all the ideas and stories and approaches that I've been working with authors on over the past decade and, you know, put them in this product called a book. Yeah.

So let me ask you, I have so many questions. So first thing is congrats, because you have more courage than I. I have deliberately and intentionally not written a book, and several reasons. One is I'm a pretty terrible writer, but that's fixable with some help. But I haven't been able to justify it from a time, business, and energy expense, right? Because I know as well as most, as well as you do at least, that it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy. It's not just the writing of the book, but the whole process, the ideation, the writing, the marketing, the getting it out there. And I've always looked at it and said, yeah, there's lots of things I have an opinion on and a process and a methodology from my work, but I haven't been able to justify a book being such a mass market tool that it would be valuable. And it's early for you. It's only been a couple of months, but what are you finding on that side from a business ROI? You're the CEO of a company that spent, you know, months of your time on this.

Sure. Well, so a few things on that, and I could probably talk about that all day. I will tell you that I was reluctant about a book too. And in, in the book, I tell this story, and I, I'm gonna name-drop, so I just will. Back in about, it was 2014 or 2015, I was at a book marketing event out in San Francisco. And there was like a happy hour.

This is before you were touring with Jay-Z. This isn't when you were touring with Jay-Z or Beyoncé?

Yeah, no, no, not, not— that was another Becky Robinson, I guess. And so at that event, Rusty Shelton, who owns an agency down based out of Austin, Texas— I'm sure you know Rusty— he came up to me at this kind of happy hour. He said, hey, I know you've always wanted to write a book. I'm getting ready to write a book. What do you say we have an accountability deal, and we keep each other accountable to get the book proposal written and the book out? And I was like, yeah, no, no thanks. Well, so Rusty's done a couple of books in the time that it took me to get to my first book. And he followed through after that conversation. He partnered with Barbara Cave Henricks, who's amazing. And they did a book with Barrett Kohler Publishers back, I think it was 2015 when the book came out, maybe 2016. So I had, I had the same reluctance that you have, Peter, about kind of following through on my dream to have a book or my desire to put my thought leadership out into the world. And part of the reason is because selling books is really, really, really hard. It's even harder than I imagined. And so I would always weigh in my mind kind of the cost-benefit analysis that you're talking about of, you know, is the amount of time that I'm going to put into writing and marketing my own book going to be worth the impact that the book has in the world for my business or for my ideas? So I really did struggle with that, Peter. And, you know, like others during the pandemic, when things were, were kind of a bit slower, I revisited the idea of doing a traditionally published book.

Right.

Eventually, what I got to, honestly, was the fact that my company would be reaching this decade mark. And I thought, well, what if I time it so that I submit my book proposal, and I have my book come out, and it's all around the time that my company will celebrate a decade, and then I can have these 2 milestones at once and have this product of value to offer? So as it relates to juggling, you know, being the CEO of my own agency and writing the book, what I'll tell you is, that I mostly did the book in my off-hours time.

Yeah, but do CEOs really have off-hours? I mean, there's an opportunity cost, right?

Sure, there definitely is an opportunity cost. I would say that I did a lot of writing on the weekends. So I don't— I typically try to have a pretty boundaried life. I don't work on the weekends now. You know, in the beginning of my company, I worked all the time. I have one client who loved to meet me for coaching on Saturday mornings. Bill Treasurer. So I'm going to do some more name-dropping. Maybe people will catch this interview as a result of me mentioning their names. So I, you know, I used to meet Bill on Saturday mornings. At a certain point on my business owner journey, I stopped working on the weekends. I realized that unless I gave myself time to refresh and renew, you know, I wouldn't really be able to sustain the pace that I had. So, you know, in writing the book, though, I definitely did a lot of writing on the weekends. I did a lot of writing on Fridays that I would block on my calendar. I also didn't take any vacation time.

Hmm.

So if I look at my Google Calendar, calendar over the years and over the time that I did the book, there isn't a week that I took off. There isn't like a day that I took off. The days that I had blocked were for the book. So what I basically did is I exchanged what other people might do in taking a vacation, and I used the time instead to spend on a book project.

So let's, let's, let's go a little bit of a different direction.

Sure.

Obviously, you know, this is what Victor Kayam, where I, you know, I love the product so much I bought the company. You had the company first and then you became your own client to some degree, right? Were you a good client?

Well, you'd have to ask my team that. I sure hope I was a good client, Peter. One of the cool things that we had got the chance to do in owning like a book launching company and book marketing company is that we could experiment a lot and bring our ideas to life in ways that, you know, frankly, if we tried to price what we did to market my book for a client, No one would ever buy it. It would cost too much.

Right, right. So, but, but, but I mean, you could write that off as an R&D or, you know, or whatever. Yeah.

Well, yes, and my, my cost of my workforce is less than what I would charge a client. So there is a bit of give and take there. But if we were to price at our client-facing prices, all the work that my team did on my book, there's no one in the world who would buy it except for, you know, maybe someone Yeah, I don't know, someone who's not a client of mine yet.

Yep. So now that you're— what are you, 60 or 90 days post-launch now?

That's a good question. Yeah, about, yeah, about 3 months. It was, um, it was April 19th. April, May, June, July. Yeah, about 3 months.

Okay, so what is the biggest learning that you've had, you know, or biggest surprise? And again, You're coming at this from someone— how many book campaigns have you launched? Hundreds?

Uh, yeah, more than 150.

Yeah. So now what, what surprised you? What'd you learn?

Yeah, so I would say there aren't a lot of surprises. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I'll share a few kind of insights. So, uh, one of the things that we do with authors is we drive Amazon review campaigns because Amazon reviews are really important for social proof. So I was very public, Peter, about telling people that I wanted 100 Amazon reviews in the first month.

Yep.

And in order to drive those 100 Amazon reviews in the first month, we sent out over 400 pre-publication print copies of my book to launch team members, to colleagues, to about everyone we could think of. You know, I hand-signed—

I want to ask a clarifying question or two.

Sure, sure.

So the Amazon campaign thing I totally get, and, and, and it— the social proof is critical because if you go somewhere, you haven't heard Becky's name, she's a first-time author, the title looks interesting, cover looks interesting. and no one's said anything about the book, you're probably on to the next thing, right?

Yes.

So I think that's key. When you said you sent out the 400 ARCs or the galleys, the advance copies, did you send them out physical, land on my desk in a thump?

I sure did. We sent out 400 print copies. Now, to clarify, they were not galleys nor were they ARCs. They were finished books. So my publisher, Barrett Kohler Publishers, does ship books, finished books, to authors typically 4 to 6 weeks before the launch. So the books landed in my office around March 9th, and I physically hand-signed letters and bookplates, which are stickers that can go in the front of the book. We had bookmarks and stickers, um, and I packaged all that stuff here in my home office. You know, I do have shipping people, uh, because what we've noticed is that you do not get the same return by sending out PDFs or, um, e-galleys of books. The uptake on people following through on an Amazon review is far higher if they receive a physical copy of the book. And you have a chance to curate this experience that someone has. So the experience of opening up the envelope, of pulling out the book, of seeing that the author signed it, of, of reading a personalized note— you know, there's something visceral about that.

The note and the bookplate, I've got to tell you, it's maybe less than 10% because I get a lot of these in the mail, solicited and mostly unsolicited. And I will actually reach out to a lot of authors, and more often than not, it's people that I know or know of or whatever, and say, listen, sending that from your PR firm with a boilerplate letter like, dear Peter, comma, whatever, and not a signature and not a note from you is really, really not good. And I actually have it here. So Stephen M. Arcabi's new book, right?

Mm-hmm.

Trust and Fire. I got this unsolicited with a beautiful note that he wrote. And then after we had him on the podcast, another note. Now, I would have read this book anyway because I'm a huge fan. But I think the point is, yeah, do you want to sit there for a couple nights all night writing it? Probably not. It makes a huge, huge, huge difference because I also have a pile you can probably see over there, well, maybe not, whatever, of a bunch of them that just randomly come in the mail and they go there in the pile that I'll get to and they never seem to be gotten to, right?

Exactly. And think about if all you got was an attachment of a PDF or worse yet, if all you got was an invitation to, hey, go to NetGalley, Peter, set up an account, download my book. People won't do that. So, um, I set this goal of 100 Amazon reviews in the first month. I took the time and care to send out these packages, and unfortunately— oh yeah, so I actually calculated the expense of that mailing. It was $6,000.

Yeah, so not insignificant.

The $6,000 here, I'll tell you how it breaks down. My publisher did give me, uh, 250 free copies of my book. So the typical number is, I think, 150. I negotiated for more, so 250 250 of the books that I sent out were at no cost in terms of the book. I bought, on top of those 250, I bought 500 more. I'm continuing to distribute those. So the cost of the books that I had to pay for, plus the cost of the shipping— and we ship Priority Mail, you know why? Because media mail is unreliable. Um, and then the cost of the collateral, so the bookplate and the sticker and the bookmark and the letter, we estimated that at about $1 per package. And so if you add up all that money, it's $6,000 is what I invested. I would tell any—

You used a fulfillment house or something like that, right? So now maybe it's $8,000 or $9,000 if you actually— yeah.

Well, so there's probably hidden costs there where I do have a shipping manager and her time wasn't accounted for in the 6 grand. My time wasn't accounted for. But here's the thing, Peter, before anyone hires someone like me to help them promote their book, my deeply held belief is that distribution of copies of the book into the world like seeds that can grow is way more valuable than hiring any publicist. So, and I coach people to that. Hey, look, before you decide that you're going to spend $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 with my organization to launch your book, you need to first put the money into getting the book into people's hands. Matt Holt is a publisher with Ben Bella. Matt Holt Books is his imprint. And he says there are 2 things that, that move business books: books in hands and butts in seats. So butts in seats refers to people at events. And, you know, You may have some control over getting invited to events, but what you do have control over ultimately as the author is, can you give your book away and get it into more people's hands?

Well, and stay there for a minute because this is one of the stressors that I have around publishing is that, listen, a publisher's success metric is really, really simple. Number of units sold less the cost, right? So advance, printing, publishing, whatever. Did we sell X number of books at some level of profit and black, white, win or lose, period, full stop. That's it for the publisher. Now, on occasion, maybe there's a brand builder and they're fighting for Obama's book or something like that, but let's parking lot the crazy outliers. For the most part, they've got to sell more books at a price that is reasonable and profitable, period. For an author, almost every author, and I'm talking nonfiction business, the folks that you and I work with, Mm-hmm. Book sales really are not the deal. Like, yes, it's nicer to sell more than less, but the revenue isn't the point. So, you know, I would argue in your game, you know, in your case, whether you sold 3,000 books or 30,000 books, 30 is better than 3. You know, I'm not the greatest math person. The better metric would probably be, wow, did this book help us acquire 10 new clients this year or 30? Right? And my point is, People get frugal with books. Like, get another 500 books in the right hands of right people. Go to people and say, hey, Becky, I love you. I respect you. I admire you. Who are 3 people you'd like me to give this book to? Right? Because my network is not going to be irrelevant people to that. Right? Like, there are things that you can do that are hand-to-hand combat, you know, asking people to do small things, things like that that are exponentially more impactful. Than some, some traditional PR things.

Yeah, and I think that we overestimate people's desire to buy our books. So one of the tactics that I'm using is every single time I have a call with anyone, you know, maybe it's a possible collaborator, maybe it's someone who's on my podcast, maybe it's a sales prospect, someone I'm trying to develop business with, it doesn't matter who you are, if I'm on a call with you, my next follow-up is, can I send you a signed copy of my book? In hopes that it will add value to your journey. I think a lot of authors think, oh, I'm meeting someone; maybe they'll buy my book. And they think, well, of course, I, you know, this prospect, you know, is considering hiring me. Why wouldn't they buy my book? And they think that someone will. We overestimate. They're not going to buy the book! They've got 1,000 other things going. But if you offer the book—

It's not even the, the $20 or whatever to buy the book. It's the effort. You have to— it's something else to do. And, you know, the stark truth is I'm a reader. I read a couple of books a week. I'm sure you read a couple of books a week. That's not normal. Not that we're abnormal. That's a separate issue, right? But, but most people aren't reading 2 or 3 books a week. So they might say, oh, hey, I wish you well. But they're not going to say, I read 2 books a year and yours isn't going to be one of them.

Right. But just the impact of sending that gift again, the personalization. So every week when I go to my physical office, the there's a stack of books waiting, and I sign them all, and I send them all out the door again. And I think—

What percentage of people, um, take you up on that? I would, I would imagine a vast majority.

I would say most people do take me up on it. Yeah, there, there are very few people, you know, occasionally I'll have someone say, oh, don't worry, I'll just buy it, or whatever. But for the most part, people are happy to get the gift of a book, and it's far better for me in terms of memorability, in terms of people understanding the way I view the world. You know, the best partner for me, in terms of someone who would hire my company to work with them, is someone who reads and gets the approach that we're recommending, because we're more likely to be aligned on, this is what marketing is and how to do it.

No, and I think that's a great point. 2 thoughts. One is, it would be an interesting sort of A/B experiment for you to say, you know, over the next month, not only am I going to make that offer, but ask them if there's somebody they'd like me to send it to on their behalf. That would be an interesting experiment.

Right.

The second piece is, and I was going to get to this in a bit, but I'll get to it now, is as I read your book, many things in there weren't a surprise to me because I know you. We've had conversations, kind of know what you think and how you operate. What I love about what you just said is someone reads your book and goes, oh, this isn't for me. I was looking for the hack. Like, what's the 10 steps to be a bestseller? Like, they get it from reading your book that there are no easy ways, there are no hacks, whatever. You lay out exactly what your beliefs are, your processes, your methodologies, how you do things and why. So you don't need to arm wrestle someone. I think anyone coming into sort of weaving influence world is gonna go, yeah, this, wow, read the book and get it. Let's see, somebody's got a question up here. It's my perception most people are looking for a book that solves a problem or educates them on something that they are very interested in or trying to understand or improve.

Yeah, definitely. And, you know, the way I kind of frame this in the book, Shawn, is I talk about value. So if you want to contribute on topics, what you want to be clear about is the value that you have to offer, and then the people who will perceive that to be important to them. So, you know, not every book is for everyone. I wrote my book for authors, for leaders of nonprofit causes, or for anyone who wants to build leadership, thought leadership. And so for people who are looking to solve a problem of, hey, reaching more people, growing growing a bigger audience, making a bigger impact. The book that I wrote is educating them in that.

So stay there for a second because that's another amazing point in that when I'm talking to clients or potential clients early on and I'll say to them, hey, who does your work— who's your work for? Who's the book for? Who's your platform for? And there's sort of 2 versions of the answer to that question. One is the equivalent of, oh, everyone. That's the one that makes me cringe. And the other is some version of what you said, very deliberate, very thought out. You've got a piece on nonprofits. You've got a piece on nonfiction authors. If I'm a romance or a kids author, I'm going to put your book down after page 10 and go, I guess this isn't for me. And you're going to go, yeah, it's probably not. Maybe there's a nugget or two or something.

Yeah. I mean, I think there is some broad applicability to what I've written. But so I want to name drop again, Fauzia Burke. because, you know, if we name-drop enough on, on LinkedIn, we'll get some more eyeballs on our stuff. But, um, Fauzia Burke is, is someone who I credit with kind of this idea of you don't want to think about who might need your book ever, but you want to think about who needs your book right now.

Yes.

Because, you know, let's face it, if you say your book is for everyone, well, you know, let's think of something, um, a book about healthy eating, for example. You might argue a book about healthy eating could be for anyone because everyone needs to eat healthily, but I'm not going to go buy the book about healthy eating until I have an acute need because my doctor tells me I need to eat healthier, or I'm not feeling well, or some other thing. So I think authors—

Yeah, it might be a book for healthy eating for someone recently diagnosed with diabetes. Like, so now they've got a reason to change their lifestyle, not some abstract mom and apple pie concept.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I just think that you're setting yourself up for a world of disappointment if you think your book is for everyone. And the more specific you can be, whether you're creating thought leadership content, you know, like a podcast or a blog or whatever you're creating, or a book, whatever the content is that you're creating, the more direct you can be in who you're creating it for, the more effective the content will be.

And doesn't it make it easier to write when you know, when you're writing, you know, you have a vision in your mind of the nonfiction writer, the nonprofit cause person, etc.? So you might look at something and go, Hmm. Wow. They would really dig that. Or I'm not really sure that that's going to be helpful to that population. Sort of the constraints give you that gut check, right? Or support the gut check.

Well, and even better if you can think of a specific person, right? You know, if you can picture who they are, you know, like, I know my friend Nikki Soulsby, who's an emerging young—

I need like a special sound for name dropping. Ding, ding, ding. The name dropping.

Yeah, I know. I'm going to keep name dropping all day long. But like, so if I can think about Nikki Soulsby when I'm writing a blog post and I know Nikki has said, you know, is my content marketing a waste of time? And if I write a blog post or an article or a book that specifically addresses the frustration that I know that she feels because she shared it with me, then anybody who has that same pain is, is going to resonate with the content more because it was very focused.

So we've been in this very positive place, which is great. And I don't want to bring this down, but any, any frustrations or disappointments along the way?

Uh, well, okay, so I want to close the loop on the let's set a goal of getting 100 Amazon reviews in the first month. I did not make it. It took me 73 days to get 100 Amazon reviews.

Okay.

So that was like a learning. I don't know that I would say I was disappointed. You know, I often will set goals that are bigger than what I can achieve in hopes that just having that bigger goal will help me achieve more. So I can't say that I was like disappointed. I will say that every time I log into Amazon Author Central and I look at the BookScan number, which represents retail books Sure. The, the number is smaller than I want it to be. So to the name-dropping, Todd Sattersten is a publisher at Bard Press. And Todd says that for a nonfiction book to really break out and have a chance of having an impact over a long period of time, there's this number of 10,000 books that you want to sell in the first year in order to be able to set up yourself for success for, you know, longer-term momentum with book sales. So if you can't reach that 10,000 number in the first year, your chances of selling, you know, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 copies of your book diminish greatly. So to that, you know, in my head I have this 10,000 number. I want to sell 10,000 books. And in fact, the first print run that my publisher did was 10,000 print copies. And so, you know, a disappointment or frustration is This is hard and I don't know how to make it go faster. So the only kind of—

A couple of thoughts on that is, as you no doubt know, more nonfiction books do better year 2 than year 1 for lots of reasons. It's just an odd quirk of the marketplace right now. And the reality is you're not a publisher, right? So that if I were you, I'd be saying, whoa, yeah, 10,000, we're competitive, we want to get there, whatever. But that book's got a 5 to 7 year amortization schedule or shelf life. And everything that you're doing today, every conversation you're having, all that stuff, that's gonna extrapolate over years. To me, I'd rather have a conversation in a year from now saying, wow, what did that book do for you? And say, I can attribute 17 new clients worth X dollars and conversations I got invited to have that I never would've. And even proposals I got to submit, whether I won them or lost them. How did it— what— how is Weaving Influence a different company, a better company, 1 year post than it was without the book?

Yeah, that would be a great conversation to have. And, you know, I think having supported business book authors for a decade, Peter, one of the things that's tricky is people will say, well, you know, which of the marketing approaches that you took created the results you want? The truth is, it's very difficult to track. So while I might, you know, look at revenue, like I could look at 2021 revenue, and then I could look at 2022 revenue, and I could say, OK, well, we grew by X percent in 2022 compared to 2021, right? And then in 2023. But in order to know, like, how much of that was from the book, I think that part would be tricky. You know, in terms of invitations to events, you know, I got invited to this cool event coming up here in the Toledo, Ohio area on August 30th. It's a female author event sponsored by Owens Corning and Dana Corporation, and there will be 20 authors there and 700 women, you know, a focus on women in business, whatever. Like, I would not be invited to that event if I were not an author, right?

So that's an example of— you wouldn't— that was an event you probably didn't even know existed a year ago, nor cared, nor whatever. Now it's like there's— the velvet rope is opening to some extent, right?

Yes, for sure. So certainly my book is taking me places that I could not have gone without the book. And, you know, a year post-launch, we can sit together and say, hey, look, you know, my, my business had X percent growth. in revenue, or, you know, I went to these 5, 6 great events. Here's, here's another, like, surprise, and this isn't a disappointment at all, so I'm not going there on the negative side yet, Peter. What I've heard from authors is the most satisfying part of putting a book into the world is the subjective feedback that you get from people when your book has made a difference to them.

Mm-hmm.

And whenever I've heard that, I've been like, yeah, that's a really kind of like soft metric. Like, basically what people have told me in the past is like, it's the emails I get, it's the private messages I get where people say, I read your book and it's helping me. And I didn't quite anticipate how fun that would be.

Well, and I was going to say, along that line of thinking, what about the other piece? Because I hear this from a lot of clients saying, listen, I don't care if I ever sell one book, but part of that process forced me to get my thinking tight, my methodologies clear. you know, things that were fuzzy weren't fuzzy before. How much of, how much of that holds true for you as well? Because a lot of what, what is in your book had already been operationalized as the part of the way Weaving Influence runs and does things and interacts with clients. But how much, how much of that was a forcing mechanism?

Sure. Well, I'll share a little bit of, of the journey to writing the book. There's at least like one major aha moment that I had writing the book that I would not have had clarity about without writing the book. And that's the 4 commitments that I have in my book. So in my book, Some weird kind of audio interference, maybe on your end?

Oh, I don't know.

No, it's gone. It's gone. It's gone. All right. So in my book, I say there are 4 key commitments that any, you know, thought leader or difference maker has to make in order to get the biggest possible reach for their work. And I'll say that, so Reach was not the intended title of my book. So just the idea of defining reach in the way that I did in writing the book, that was brand new because I wrote the book. I would not have gotten there without it.

That's awesome.

Yeah, so the— and I wouldn't have gotten there without name-dropping Neil Mallett, my editor at Barrick Collar Publishers, who said, hey, look, you know, if Reach is going to be the title, we need to define it, and we need to make it really crystal clear. So like, I can't even take credit for that. It was like Neil pushing me and saying, hey, Becky, your book is called Reach. What is reach? we need to make, you know, we need to crystallize that. So reach equals expanding audience plus lasting impact. So for me, it was really important to define reach in a different way because most people just think about reach as like, how many people are there and can I, can I expand?

Well, I think that's a really critical point because sometimes, you know, the word reach is not a proprietary word and it has preconceived notions. People assign a meaning to that, something to that concept, to that. You didn't undefine it, but you deliberately defined it your way, right? So when you speak of reach, you mean it this way, the influence, audience, et cetera, not the most information to the most people for the least dollars or some other way that an ad agency might on a cost per thousand basis. So I think that's, it's kind of cool. It gives you an opportunity to create a definition that you can really hang a lot of things from.

Yes. And the other thing that I would say is the original subtitle for the book actually wasn't the subtitle that we published with. So the subtitle that we published with is Creating the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause. And the big audience thing, I think, is what sells, right? You know, people want to know, how do I reach more people? The original subtitle was Creating Lasting Impact for Your Message, Book, or Cause, which, if we're honest, that's what I care more about. And I think it's only when you view both of those things together that it all makes sense. So it's really like neither subtitle was the right subtitle. It's like creating the biggest possible audience and lasting impact. Because you can get, you know, you could have a viral video, you know, for example, if this conversation went viral on LinkedIn and millions of people watched it, you know, that's cool. Probably not. I could name-drop all day.

Yeah, unless one of us gets struck by lightning in the next 3 minutes. I don't think that's gonna happen.

Right. But suppose it did, in a way, it's meaningless unless we have a way to stay connected and bring value to those people over time. So it's really both/and; it's not one or the other. You don't just want a bigger audience. What you want is the ability to have an impact with that audience over time. So that is something that I would not have come to apart from, you know, the editorial process in finishing the book.

Yeah.

The other part I wouldn't have come to is the 4 commitments. And when I wrote the book initially, I called them the 4 Factors. Isn't that weak sauce?

Yeah, the 4 Factors sounds like a physics equation.

It's so boring.

Or a band from the '60s that had like one hit. It's a one-hit wonder from the '60s or something. Yeah.

So again, I have to credit the editorial team for saying, hey, 4 Factors, we can come up with something better. And commitments is what we landed on. And commitments makes perfect sense because this crap is hard.

Yeah.

So like, you're not going to expand your reach, you're not going to make an impact unless you're committed, unless you keep showing up, you know, unless you bring value in, with consistency, in a generous way, over a long period of time. So like the word commitments was just perfect. The other thing that we toyed with, and I, I still feel like longevity— I love the word longevity, because I do think in order to build reach that you need to show up over a long period of time. And Dorie Clark did an amazing job in The Long Game. The Long Game. Exactly. Now, to be fair, I Ding, ding!

There we go.

Yep. You know, to be fair, I wrote about longevity before I read Dori's book. But it works. We toyed for a while with using the word endurance or the word perseverance instead of the word longevity, because a commitment to perseverance, you know, helps to bring the truth to light that if you want to make a big difference, you just have to stick around. But what Dori says is, you know, it's not necessarily that those people who make a big impact over time They're not necessarily better than everybody else. They just outlasted everybody else. And people give up way too soon.

Well, there's, there's, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people approach a book as a race, you know, like a sprint versus the marathon. It is a marathon, you know, it is a never-ending marathon to some degree for many.

So yeah, so it's so funny that you bring that up, Peter, because a couple of times I've mentioned this, I always said it's a marathon, not a sprint. I have a new way. It's not either. You know, a sprint has a finish line. A marathon has a finish line. I know, I've run 10 of them. You know, eventually you stop. Um, and what I now say is it's not a marathon, it's not a sprint, it's a lifelong commitment.

Yep.

To showing up to run. So I think that if authors can disavow themselves that book marketing is a project that has a completion date, they'll be far more successful in sharing value.

But that, you know, that, that— so let's end on, on maybe this thread. I think Again, this goes back to the disconnect or the lack of alignment between what's great for the author and how the book industrial complex works. So the publishing world thinks of a book and says, hey, Becky, your book's a spring release or a fall release. And I'm like, what is it, a piece of fashion? Like, is it a wool sweater versus a bathing suit? That's a stupid way of thinking about things. It's necessary for them because they can't put in the resources in a specific book over an indefinite period of time. So they typically go, oh, 90, 120 days, we're gonna really show Becky the love, and then after that, maybe we'll answer her call, you know. Um, but PR tends to work like that, book launch tends to work like that, publishers tend to think like that. And I think it— the, the burden and the onus is going to be on the author in perpetuity to always be running that race, right? To always be looking for ways to, to grind and, and, and get attention to the book and their work.

Yeah, it's sort of like a marriage commitment. And I, I can't remember the name to drop, uh, but the women who founded a company called Bibliomotion, which has now been subsumed— I can't think of their names— I heard them say one time, you have to be married to your message. And so for an author who really believes in what they're writing about, who is like committed to sharing value on a particular topic, that's not a commitment that ever goes away, the same way that, you know, hopefully a marriage is for life. Yeah.

Wait, wait, to finish that thought, because I, you know, it's Jill Friedlander and Erica Hyman from Bibliotheca.

Yes, thank you. I think Jill is the one who said, you know, are you married to your message? Gail, I'm glad that this has been helpful to you. I'm thrilled that this has helped.

Thanks, Gail. Cool. So let me wrap us up. So thank you not only for coming on today, but thank you for writing the book, actually. And again, And some of it was when somebody else says something that I believe is true, it makes me feel like either I'm smarter or I'm not the only lunatic out there saying it. But it's well written, well done. I think for your target market, which is a market that we share, it's an incredibly powerful and thoughtful book. So if you're thinking about writing a book, if you've written a book, if you know someone that's right, or you have a cause or a nonprofit, grab the book, read the book, and I guarantee you'll take away 3, 4, 5 ideas that you will not be able to forget over time.

So here's an offer for people who love Peter Winick and are watching this video.

Oh, name drop! Thank you. Say that again.

Yeah, Peter Winick. I'm a big fan. So if you want to send me a private message on, on LinkedIn, I will send you a link where you can give me your address if you live in the United States, and I'll be happy to sign and get a book out to you. Peter, also an offer to you. You mentioned another tactic to try is, you know, ask someone Who do you know who needs to read my book? Peter, send me some addresses, up to 5. Tell me who you want me to send the book to. I'll tell them it's a gift from you. And I want to like, you know, actually follow through on what I believe, which is my book in more people's hands is going to do more good than me waiting for people to choose to buy my book just because they saw me on this interview.

Yeah.

So send me a message if my book could be of value to you on your journey, Gail, or anyone else who's watching or watches this later.

So this is like our version of Oprah, and you get a car, and you get a car.

And you get a book, and you get a book, and you get a book.

So thank you again. Thanks so much. Thanks for sharing time with us today.

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks, Peter.

Thank you.

Thanks.