Publishing and the Need for Community | John Jantsch & Andy Paul | 434

And welcome, welcome, welcome. You're joining us on the LinkedIn Live version of the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. And today's going to be a lot of fun. I've got two really, really interesting and seasoned folks. We've got Andy Paul and we've got John Yang. Well, seasoned in the sense of thought leaders. Thought leaders.

Let's just say old.

No, I can't do that.

All the fresh spices have been applied.

Oh, yes. Exactly. Well, let me give you their quick bios and then we'll get in and defend the seasoning there. So Andy's got a new book that just came out this week called Selling Without Selling Out.

Sell Without Selling Out. Yes, thank you.

Sell Without Selling Out. And this is his third or fourth book.

Third book.

Third book. He's ranked number 8 on LinkedIn's list of top 50 global experts. His hit podcast, Accelerate Your Sales, was acquired in 2010 and since renamed Sales Enablement with Andy Paul. And then let me give you a little bit on John. If you don't know John, I'll just give you the shorthand for John is he is the father of duct tape marketing. And there are at least 6 books, maybe more out under that theme. And he's been at it for a long time. So we've got marketing and sales. And what I meant by seasoned, Andy, with all due respect, is between the two of you, you know, I think we've got, you know, 10 published books or something, which is more than most folks read in a year or two. So welcome to both of you.

Well, thank you.

Yeah. Happy to be here.

So let me start with, let's just start with books a little bit because you guys might know a thing or two and it's changed and it's evolving. What is different about getting a book out into the universe today? And what's kind of universal? What hasn't changed since you all both started?

Well, I think for me, the biggest thing that's changed, I mean, my first book came out in 2007. And it was a sort of novel thing for, you know, a small business person to have a book.

Yeah.

The most now is that, you know, probably since we've been talking, you know, 50 books have come out in the, you know, business space. So that's probably the most dramatic thing that's changed.

Well, let's stay there for a minute because I think where you're going now, because your focus is on the small business, is when you did it in '07, not as easy to do. Now there's a million services and a lot of other ways for a small business to get a book out, whether to credentialize yourself or whatever the case may be. You don't have to go through the big New York houses and all that stuff. So that's an interesting point there. I think there were, and there's good news and bad news in this, more and more people writing more and more books often. So now we have a signal-to-noise problem, right? Yeah. And, and there, there really weren't very many easy ways to get it out.

As you said, if you didn't have an agent who had access to one of the big, you know, publishing houses, it was a very tough road. Self-publishing was seen as kind of a you know, a less-than approach. Certainly, you know, today there's an entire industry around helping people publish books that are self-published, and it's become certainly a lot more— I think the cachet is probably still there to be with a Penguin or a Random House or somebody like that, but I think it's become a lot more acceptable. But with that has also come, it's become a marketing tactic. In a lot of ways more than being an author. It's almost like, yeah, this is another channel for me to be seen as an expert.

Yeah, well, and I think used to be, and then we'll get to you in a second, Andy, that the difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing was massive. Oh, well, you weren't good enough for New York, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think, A, that is just not true anymore. And B, a lot of what's— and it's not just black and white. There's a lot of stuff in the middle, hybrid, whatever. And I think what people don't discuss often enough is their business model variables as well, right? Like, you know, when you think about, oh, the big New York publishing house, not, you know, and they do some great things as well. It's typically not the greatest business model for an author when you take away in advance and the risk management. You know, if you, you guys know better than anybody, you're doing all the hard work to sell the book. So a partnership where you get 10 cents or 15 cents on the dollar, not exactly a partnership. Necessarily. But I want to get your thoughts, Andy. So given that you're, uh, yeah, I've done all three, right?

So yeah, um, you know, one that was, yeah, first was hybrid but leaning toward more purely self-published. Second one, traditional publishing. Third one, I'd say next generation hybrid, and with a great business model. And I think it just acknowledges that business model that regardless of who you publish with, it's still on the author to market the book and to sell them. Yeah.

And so And that's a massive, massive, massive point because I hear people all the time, well, my job is to write the book, ha ha ha, right? Oh no, no.

As I tell people, we released yesterday the new book and as I saw on somebody, one journey ended and another one began, right? So the first journey just to get the book to market, write it, we've gotten that done now, now we have to sell it. And yeah, I mean, I, I think if you're going to go to that effort and you have to make that investment, then why not work with a publishing model, with a business model that will enable you to be rewarded for doing a good job?

Well, and I'll just add on that a little bit. I think a lot of times people— you're absolutely right, Andy, that it's like write the book and now I got to do the work of publishing or of promoting it. But the truth of the matter is if you're going to be successful promoting it, you got to really start that maybe before you even have the idea before of the book.

Oh, well, I'm a perfect example of that. I wrote my first book That's sort of my first act of thought leadership. And I didn't have a— this Peter Winick test because I talked to him right about that time. Yeah, I didn't have a blog, I didn't have a social following at all. And more than one person even at that time asked me, "So why'd you write this book?" And then the second book was a little bit better, but between the second book and now, especially with my podcasting, we've really focused on building the audience, building the following, so that when we are in a position to release a book now, we've got a much bigger built-in potential audience.

Well, I think there's a disconnect inherently built into the business model of the publisher and the author. So a publisher has to, be they self or not, look at a book as a sort of seasonal item. We're not going to invest in this over 7 years because we got more coming out of the sausage machine, right? But for the author, a book Not that everyone's writing Shakespeare or something. Book has a long shelf life, right? No pun intended. 5 to 7 years. There are books that are out there that are 5 to 7 years. And I think what you'll probably see now, Andy, with the data, and John, you can attest to this as well, when you get a new book out, it kicks up your back catalog. "Oh, who is this Andy Plah? That was a really good one. Oh, he wrote another one." Or, "John wrote, oh, let's look at that one." They don't look at, "Oh, well, that was written in 2007, so it's probably not relevant anymore." Well, we're hoping so.

Yeah, Duct Tape Marketing still sells very well and it's partly because I've really built— it's kind of funny, the book was— I mean, I don't know that I planned this necessarily, but I had a podcast already. I had a large following already. I was actually doing what the book I wrote about in the book for many years prior to the book actually coming out, which of course certainly helped it sell as well as it did. But then I have a business model after the book. I mean, I still use a methodology that we teach. We have courses. We actually have a network of licensed consultants who acquire and use our methodology under the name of Duct Tape Marketing. So, that kind of follow-on has made it so that it's still selling 14 years later, it's still selling 10,000, 15,000 copies a year.

Amazing.

Which is a big deal. So, I want to talk another issue that you guys both have in common, although you might not have thought about it this way, is people always talk about the book, it's a heavy lift, there's a launch, open the curtain, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of not theatrics, but there's a lot of effort and energy in the launch date and all this other stuff. But both of you do really, really amazing and beautiful things in terms of using thought leadership almost on a daily basis to elevate the brand and do the other things you do. You don't, you know, you don't go into hibernation a couple years in between books. So talk about the importance of the use of consistently developing, deploying, and curating thought leadership to meet your business objectives, because I think you guys are two of the best examples out there.

Yeah. I mean, for me, it's all focused on LinkedIn. And yeah, when I started my podcast in 2015, yes, I had virtually no following anywhere. And just through making the decision to be very consistent about creating content that could be posted on LinkedIn, whether it was a promotional post for the podcast or it was some other piece of thought leadership, we try to do something at least once a day that seems to have value for people. And it worked, right? We started gradually building this following. Now we're 180,000+ followers on LinkedIn and we have pretty good engagement. And so the last couple years, we're more focused on that as a metric and we track that very closely. And yeah, we've seen sort of exponential growth in the number of views we get. That leads to other business opportunities.

And I always tell people I use my day job to inform my books. I wish I could go get in a cabin and write a book, but what I really do is I do the stuff that I write about. And so consequently, by staying in the game, by practicing marketing every single day, it kind of informs my ability to then write about what I see and don't see and what works and doesn't work.

Yeah. Well, I love how that's so integrated for you, John, in terms of there are people— and some of it is style, some of it is writing style, whatever— so, "I'm in book mode, leave me alone, you know, hold my calls, blah, blah, blah." And they go to the proverbial cabin or whatever. And, you know, what you're saying, and we see this a lot as well, is, "Listen, every day I'm out in the field, I've got an opportunity to learn something. Every client I interact with, every—" You have stories bubbling up from your coaching network, etc., to say, "Well, what's new? What are people doing with Clubhouse or something topical or whatever. And then you could not forensically, but use that as the feed into the book. Because to me, I would rather put something out on LinkedIn that took me an hour or two that failed miserably than a book. Right. So there is the effective use of sort of thought leadership on a frequent basis as a market test. Yeah.

Well, I like to say it's like the comedian going out and playing small clubs. Is you're developing material and you test material on LinkedIn. And I've got my Evernote file that I keep my ideas, quote-unquote, "idea file." I think I've got close to 1,000 ideas in there that are just sitting there waiting for me to say, "Okay, I'm going to write on this one now," or this, you know, "I'm back inspired to be inspired by this one again and I'm going to post something on it." So you just, to John's point is, yeah, I've interviewed 1,000+ people for my show, got my own set of clients that I deal with. It's like I'm just gathering.

Yeah. The shortage of ideas is typically not the struggle. It's which ones to go after. And I think I love that we're living in a world where you can separate your own ego or judgment from reality, meaning oftentimes somebody puts something out and says, "Oh, wow, that was the most brilliant thought I ever had, and man, everybody's going to love it." And then crickets.. And then there's another time where you're almost embarrassed to send send because you're like, this is, I'm not happy with it. And that's the thing that takes off. And I think it's about having the data today through all the tools to say, wow, I hit a nerve here. Let me throw something else out in that vein. Let me try something else. Let me do that. And if you're developing in isolation, you're missing those opportunities on a minute-by-minute basis. Yeah.

Go ahead, John. Sorry. I was just gonna say, I'll tell you a story about writing my last book. I actually signed a contract for The Ultimate Marketing Engine on March 15th, 2020. So give people a minute or two to think about what was going on then. Yeah, right. And I was like, oh crap, nobody wants to read a book about how to market in a time of a global pandemic, right? And so I was kind of like, I'm at a loss, the direction I'm gonna go with this. And it actually, the real through thread of the book came about from me working with some of my clients and seeing how they were responding and seeing the ones that were really thriving were actually ones that were important in the lives of their customers. And that sort of learning, that spotlight on that sort of essential idea was something that became crucial to the whole book itself. And it was really to the point of paying attention to what I was seeing emails come back from customers of customers saying things that really ended up informing, hey, this is how we have to market today. This is the idea of getting, being customer-centric can no more be lip service. We have to actually make it central, a central strategy to not just to our marketing, but to our business.

Well, I think that's the difference between sort of the theoretical and the applied, right? So what we saw way back in March of 2020 and are seeing starting to dovetail a little bit is those that listen, those that really figure out like, wait, I have a restaurant that used to mean that's a place where people come to dine. How do I redefine what that is? Like what actually, you know, this is a place to nourish people. Okay, well, they can't come here, right? So it forced people to really think who they are and where they fit in the lives of the customer and sort of open these windows of experimentation. And I think you've seen some folks do a splendid job of that and some folks do an awful job like anything else. Yeah, I think that's really true.

I was thinking about that with the journey of writing my own book is after I started, I had a draft written right before the start of the pandemic and yeah, sort of set it aside just because I wasn't really motivated for a while to really sort of finish it and sort of see what was going on. And yeah, my book's about human-centered approach to selling and it's sort of funny seeing at the start of the pandemic as everybody saying, "Yeah, oh yeah, we really got to lead with empathy." And I'm like, "This is new, right? This is new knowledge. We're supposed to lead with empathy suddenly?" And it sort of inspired me to sort of double down on that part of the book that I'd written and sort of cut out some other things was that, yeah, I think people have sort of missed the opportunity in large measure of the lessons that we could have learned through the pandemic. And especially in the sales world, I think there's an opportunity, the B2B sales world, an opportunity to really fundamentally reset how we engaged with clients and how we help them through their buying process. And I think unfortunately, well, maybe not unfortunately because I think it'll help people buy my book, but I think we missed an opportunity to do that. And—

Well, when we talk about terms like trusted advisor, I mean, there's a lot of terms that get thrown out that in the abstract, like mom and apple pie, everybody agree with. But I think now that the dust has settled a little bit, organizations, you know, to your point, Andy, on the B2B side said, wow, that entity, that person, they were a trusted advisor during a time of need. They were really there. And they couldn't say to me with a level of authority or gravitas, this is going to be okay. We've done this 100 times before, which is why we usually work with them. They're going to say, here's what I'm thinking. This is why I think it's going to serve you best. Let's, let's I've got your back. Let's do this. And I think that was really interesting.

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I want to shift for a moment to think about or share your thoughts more importantly on, you know, a book is not the end-all be-all. And if we think of it as a product roadmap, I think that oftentimes what happens is people think of the book and they put all the effort in. And a book to me is one door into the store or realistically the beginning of a potentially long-term relationship. So let me start with you, John, because you've got a lot of interesting sort of moving parts to your business. So how do you What's the journey? What's the product roadmap that you hope folks take? Because you're really clearly defined on your end user in the market in terms of small business, but what is the hope that you're going to— where are you going to take them?

Well, to me, it starts with a point of view. I mean, a book is really just an explanation of that point of view, for me at least. I mean, I know a lot of people do all kinds of research and come to a conclusion about a book or what should be in a book. But for me, it's always started with the fact that the idea that marketing is a system. So that kernel of an idea, you know, was a, was a huge innovation in the world of small business. At least I covered, you know, I went out there and said it a couple of times in front of audiences and went, oh, they're all nodding their head. And so I was like, I'm maybe I'm onto something. So, so that kernel or that point of view is really informs everything. So then the book just becomes a very large conversation with the reader about that point of view. But I think in terms of the roadmap, my blog and my podcast were probably more critical in terms of kind of launching that because it was 300-word, 500-word conversations, 700-word conversations that led people to want then the through thread that connected it all together.

Well, and stay there for a moment because I think that's a radical shift in consumer, the end user of the book, right? It used to be the choice was Hey, this guy's got a book, I'm going to read it. And that I don't even care about the money, $20, $25, whatever. But it's really like, geez, I don't know this guy, John, 6 hours of my life. I don't know. But that was the choice we had. And then the world changes. 15 years ago, TED Talk, 18 minutes. Awesome. Right now, it's like, oh my God, 18 minutes is like, you know, reading War and Peace or something like that when you, when you listen to folks. So how do I get a little essence of you? 300? Yeah, I could be standing online at Starbucks on my phone reading a little piece. So then I go a little deeper and a little deeper. So I like that concept of sort of the build to the book from that standpoint. Yeah.

And I think, you know, to the point we talked about very early on, the fact that there's so many books out there now, you know, my last book came out on September 21st. There were at least 7 people I knew who had a book come out on September 21st, you know, that were like friends, you know. And so it wasn't like, you know, other genres. I mean, they were business, you know, marketing space books. And so now that idea that somebody's going to choose one book over another, they've got to already have that trust established somehow, just because as you said, to invest the time.

Yeah. Yeah, spot on. I mean, that's again why we invest so much time in LinkedIn and what we're doing is because we're building that relationship, building the level of trust and we do it, yeah, small bite at a time. Consistency is really hugely important. Topics. Yeah, we could probably be more aligned on the topics we're going to put out, but it's a little more purposeful. But yeah, we're always experimenting and see what people are going to engage with.

And so now move that from the marketing side, right? So basically the book, the short form, all that, in essence is you're building your brands. That's a marketing function and maybe attracting net new clients or whatever into Andy world and John world, right? Then what? So, once I read the book and fall in love, John, we'll start with you, if I'm assuming I'm the target avatar because why else would I be interested in reading this, what would you like me to do next or what are my options?

That's a gateway drug for where we're going now, Peter. So, my hope is that some people will then say, "You know what? I love the book. I love the concepts.

I love the action steps, but I need a little help." doing that.

So here's our, you know, $299 option. Come join our community that is, you know, $1,000 a month. Some percentage of you are going to really want to be in this high-level mastermind with me that happens to be $30,000 a year. And so that, you know, as a business model, you know, and those are just kind of made-up numbers, but as a business model, you know, that's how I think we need to think about, you know, a book is that some people are going to then start come into your community And whatever the number is, 15%, 20% of them are going to want more and 20% of that group are going to want more and 20% of that group are going to want more. So, to really maximize the book, you want to have that. Some people call it a ladder of products, but to maximize a community of followers, I think it really is just the proven practice to have that kind of ladder of offers. And there's a big relationship.

I think we're a big human need to make that connection between content and community. Because I read a book, it's a solo activity, right? And now it's like, whoa, there's a whole bunch of other like-minded duct tape marketing folks there. Andy, how would you think about that?

Let me just add one more point on that, that I also think we've gotten kind of tired of the, oh, I'm going to go take another course or I'm going to read another ebook thing, right? And so this idea of cohorts, small cohorts, I think is And maybe the pandemic sort of caused a little bit of that because we're not going to conferences, we're not getting together in sales meetings like we used to. And so I think that that idea of facilitating small cohorts is, right now at least, is an extremely powerful approach.

Well, one of the cool things about the facilitation is if I go to see a workshop that either of you are presenting or a keynote, it's you're the expert and I'm the sponge. But a cohort, we can all learn. I mean, this by its very nature is, yes, you're still the expert, John, but I could learn from Sally, Mary, Joe, and Steve that are in the group as well. So, Andy, what's your take on sort of the productization ladder or whatever you want to call that, the roadmap?

Yeah, well, try and follow a similar path. As you know, we're sort of rebuilding ours as we talk, but yeah, I sort of look at it sort of 3 levels, I guess, is from the selling perspective or sales perspective, as I see the book as sort of a level of creating perspective change. So on an individual level, what can individuals do to sort of change their perspective on the task that's in front of them? In this case, B2B selling. I see the next level sort of as behavior change. And so we do have a digital online community that people can join, low cost, they have courses and we're looking at doing some cohort stuff out of that as well. And then the third level is more culture change because certainly in the sales world and more of an enterprise, we gotta be able to change the culture so we can change, you know, initiate change from both directions, from the top and the bottom. So there we're looking at, you know, doing assessments and diagnostics to be able to say, okay, let's identify these problems on a systemic level and how can we address them?

And I think there's a continuum for people to think about and it's, you know, there's a consulting side, right? Where the organization or whatever you can apply the intellectual property that lives in a book or lives in your other thought leadership as a consultant. It doesn't mean you only have to be, you have to be the only one doing the consulting, but like relatively high ticket, solving a real problem for a real client in real time based on their data. They may or may not care about the tools that you do. And then the other side of that continuum is totally scalable solutions. Like, you know, John, like you, you know, an e-course where it's saying, okay, let me, you know, what I'm selling to you is capabilities development so that you too can be a duct tape marketer and do the self-piece. And there's a lot of stuff in between. And I think one of the places where the creativity is applied is on great thought leaders that put stuff out there in so many unique and creative vehicles. That's where the fun stuff happens to me. Yeah.

Well, I think Jon's right though on the trend with the cohort is whether it's a mastermind, which is not specifically a cohort because that's more open-ended in terms of duration, but yeah, there seems a big trend of wanting to do things together. Well, that's the peer-to-peer thing.

Yeah. We don't know if that's a function of COVID or we haven't all been to Orlando and Las Vegas 32 times a year like we used to or whatever.

No, I think, I think some of it's just trends. I think part of it's generational to some degree. And, and I think it's, I think it's good. I mean, I think from a thought leader perspective, I think that's something, my perspective, an easier sell than, hey, let's go get 10,000 people to sign up to be a subscriber. Individual subscriber to something.

And I think it's also the sort of the inherent nature of accountability and taking action and things that happen in those cohorts too because I think we all go and it's like, "Oh, that was a great speaker," or "That was great information," or you read a book or you go through a course and there's no sort of lever to make you take action. Yeah.

It's that positive peer pressure to say, "I don't want to go to the next session and somebody ask, 'Well, what did you implement?'" "Oh, the dog ate my homework." Right? Because it's easier for us to let ourselves down than to let down others that we're working with. Totally. Right. Yeah.

Interesting. And just the accountability to show up and participate as well. I think that's a big part of it because you look at what the value people get from masterminds. Yeah, it's the peer interaction. One, I think the other key thing, it's not the leader necessarily. It wouldn't necessarily be— Sure. I don't know, John, what your experience is, whether people, yeah, if you do survey of people in a mastermind, they think the value is John or the value is everybody else that's in the group?

Well, I think most people, if a mastermind's put together, the value is in the other people that the facilitator knows. Yeah, right. And that, because that's, you know, we've all been in these where there wasn't a good dynamic in the group and then you've been in ones where you're like, wow, this group, they're all rock stars, you know, right there with me kind of thing. And that's what makes it sort of magical. Yep.

And I think, you know, another thing that both of your audiences might have in common is a sense of loneliness, right? Because entrepreneurs tend to be lonely and individual sales contributors, even though they're part of a team and part of an org, are lonely. And I want to be with people like me that are struggling from the same issues. Any thoughts on that? Oh, I think it's very powerful.

Yeah, I think that that's actually sort of the tagline we had on our digital community is, yeah, You never have to sell alone. And because sure, yeah, as an individual, doesn't matter, you work for a company or whatever, it's you own the number, right? You're, you just go to sleep with the number at the top of your mind. Yeah. No one's sharing it with you. So yeah, loneliness I think is a big thing and seeing the impact of that in sales because especially during COVID is, you know, some majority of B2B sellers in recent surveys are reported some, you know, mental wellbeing issues.

Yeah. In my consultant network, you know, about 75% of them are solopreneurs because that business model is possible. But, you know, it's funny, we survey them all the time and over and over again, I came for the tools and the training, but I stay for the people, you know, because ours is kind of a renewal membership type of thing. And so we thought we were building training and we really built a membership organization is what it amounts to.

Right. Yeah. And I would argue, John, that when they're signing up, they're not even thinking about the community. So, they might sign up for the content, but they stay for the connection and the community because after a while, you kind of go through the content. The content is not infinite, but it's bringing it to life contextually with people that you've come to trust and admire and become friends with and all that, that bring for stickiness. So, cool. So, as we start to wrap up here, any final, no pressure, but incredible words of wisdom from either of you?

I think I'd just say, yeah, if you think about writing a book, to John's point earlier, start building your audience well in advance.

Yeah, great point.

And John, what do you got? The advice I've been giving people maybe for years, but seems more relevant right now, there's a whole lot of overwhelm in marketing because there seems to be new channel, new platform, new way to participate in platform. I'm telling people right now, figure out what you don't need to be doing. Figure out what's working and focus on that, double down on that. Do less, spread yourself less thin, and you'll have a lot great— much greater impact.

Yeah, great, great stuff. Well, I thank you both. I appreciate you both. Thank you, Peter. I'm a fan of both of yours and wish you all the best. Thanks for spending time with us today. Thank you. Thank you.

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