Ep. 26: Grow Your Audience and Sell Books with Kim Walsh Phillips

Welcome to the Pub Date Podcast, the show where two book broads discuss what should happen before, during, and after your book publication date. Brought to you by Broad Book Group with your host Vanessa Campos and Jen Dorsey.

Hey, happy Friday. Welcome everybody to the Pub Date podcast. Vanessa Campos, happy Friday. How's it going?

Happy Friday. We got a little bit of rain and it feels like actual weather in Southern California. What? So it's going great. How about yourself? Real weather.

That's amazing. We actually have decent weather in St. Louis for a change. You know, it snowed last week. This week it's 80. So that's typical St. Louis weather for you, but that's all right. So we're getting the kids outside and kicking them out of the house in the afternoon, which is nice because I'm tired of seeing them in the house. It's been a long, a very long winter for sure. Well, hey, we are so excited today because we have an old friend on the podcast. We have been wanting to have her on for a really, really long time. You know, she's someone who just brings joy and fun and excitement to everything she does. And if you're watching us live, you can see her cute hat today because she's always got something cute going on. That beautiful background there. We are welcoming today Kim Walsh Phillips. Kim is the founder of Powerful Professionals, a business coaching and education company. She was recently named number 475 on the Inc. 5000. She's a multi-seven-figure business entrepreneur with no business degree, and she has— she is a self-made woman, uh, 110%. She's the best-selling author of a couple of books from our old friends at Entrepreneur Press, The Ultimate Guide to Instagram for Business and The No BS Guide to Direct Response Social Media Marketing, both editions. She is just a renowned woman in this space. She's an in-demand speaker. She shared the stage with people like Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, Kevin O'Leary, and our old buddy Gary Vaynerchuk. Kim, welcome to the pod.

Thanks so much for having me. It's so much fun to be with both of you.

Oh my gosh, we go way, way back.

And way back, way back.

And something that we know about you and what we're going to talk about today is the fact that you are an absolute maven when it comes to social media marketing and how to do it no matter what kind of business you are in, whether that's being an author or whether that's being a professional in your own space. Um, we just, we've so enjoyed watching you grow. Um, for a business owner to being the business coach that everybody wants in their corner. So let's kick it off and have you tell us a little bit more about you. I gave the 5-second tour of your bio, but we'd love to know just a little bit more.

Well, as you started saying so kindly, that I'm a social media Maven, I want to be clear on something. When something we'll talk about later on in this interview is about a book I wrote, The Ultimate Guide to Instagram for Business. And when I got that book deal, it was based on the previous sales I had in a previous book. And I had 332 followers on Instagram when I was offered that book. I had no idea how to use the platform. I had no idea how any of it works. But when I was offered an opportunity to get an incredible book, I said, yeah, like, not, not why I can't, but instead how I can. And literally, that's how I figure out everything. So if you're listening to this right now and you're like, oh, she knows what she's doing on there, this isn't me, know that I didn't know what I was doing on there. I had to figure it all out. I had to figure it out in real time as people were watching, which is also an interesting way. So I did it very quickly, learning some simple strategies that work. So if you're listening, keep your ears open because they're the exact things that you can do to grow your business. Um, and that's what I do. I'm a business coach. I founded a company called Powerful Professionals after I had an original marketing agency that I grew to from struggling to thriving. I was able to exit that firm at a really big exit. And when I sold that company, I started my coaching business to show other people how I had grown it and how you can too without working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and sacrificing the time with your family. So I work with entrepreneurs who have real businesses who rely upon word of mouth and referral, and I show them for the first time ever in their company's history that they can actually drive business in using profitable marketing.

I love that. And you bring up a really good point, which is sometimes you have to fly the plane or build the plane while you're flying it. And so that's a really good lesson. Like, you don't have to be perfect at a thing before you start doing the thing, right?

Right. Well, you can't make things better until you do them the first time, right? So know that when you do anything, you're certainly going to be uncertain. There is literally no way to be certain about something before you do it. There's no way because you didn't do it head. So know that feeling of uncertainty doesn't mean that you're not being perfect. It means you're doing the exact thing you need to do to take the next step.

Absolutely. And, you know, speaking of our history together, um, you, you're an old Dan Kennedy pal, and I kind of came up a little bit, um, you know, with him as well. I think, you know, the, the first book you wrote with Dan— well, the second, the second, first book ever was with Dan.

Yep.

Yeah. And, and he is, he's a really great person to talk to about, you know, all of those, all those pieces to building plane while you're flying it. So, uh, you know, we got some great Dan Kennedy street cred going here too. Um, so speaking of you growing your audience from that 300 or so to now, you know, over 1.5 million— is that the current number?

Yeah, and through all my social media platforms, I have about 18,000 on Instagram now. Um, Facebook's my largest audience, but Facebook— between Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, I have over a million followers.

So how— tell us a little bit more about how that happened. How did you do it? What tips do you have for other people who are, who are trying to get there too?

When I was starting to do this, it was really when I was at the, um, tail end of growing my agency, and I knew I was going to sell, and I knew I was going from small— like, I had 32 clients at the time when I sold my firm— to wanting to reach a lot more people. And to let you know, within one year, we went from those 32 clients to 11,000 customers. So you can do it that quickly. And I focused on what's the fastest path to reaching the most people. And truly the fastest path is never by going to each person individually and trying to make a sale, right? If we did that all day long, there's a limit in the amount of time that we have. The reality is the audience that you want to reach already exists in someone else's audience. So the fastest path to growing your reach and growing your audience is by finding people who are not competitors of yours but complementary to what you do, and so that their audience is similar to yours, and you find ways to partner. So I will approach people and find a way to promote their thing. I've set up pop-up Facebook groups where we'll do book discussions. If someone else is releasing a book, I'll offer bonuses that I'll give out to support someone else's group, group book sales. I'll bring somebody in to speak to my group and encourage them to promote their book. So I leverage my audience to promote other people, their messaging, their products, their programs, their services. And then when it came time to promote my things, I already had people I had relationships with. I created value for them before I asked them to do anything for me.

Sure.

And if you're just starting out and maybe you don't have a deep well of connections, can you still do that? I mean, just kind of like start just on a smaller scale?

Yeah, I didn't have a deep well. I just would use what I had. So if you wanted to do something that, let's say somebody you love is going to launch something, a product, a program, a service, you can literally create a pop-up Facebook group. You gather a group to— I love it for a book— you gather a group together to do a book study, and you lead that book study on that book. It's a small group book discussion. That person doesn't know you, but when you bring to them, hey, I got— I loved your book so much that I put together a small group. Here's the group. Here's what we've been doing. We absolutely love it. Here's my— you could set yourself up with an Amazon affiliate link. So here's how many book sales I drove for your book. And you can show them that those are real tangible numbers. That's a very fast path to get someone's attention. Then you go to— I have more people in my life who would love to hear your message. Could I interview you? Then can I promote you to my audience? This is how you start to build a relationship. It's not by asking that person who doesn't know you to promote you, you find a way to promote them to your audience.

Absolutely.

And you bring up a really important point, which is the affiliate piece, which is also— I mean, that's a whole other show that we could do. But just real quick, just anyone can do that. I mean, anyone can set up an affiliate account, sell other people's products, promote other people's products, and get a little finder's fee kind of cut from Amazon, right?

Yeah, I love it. You get a little bit from Amazon, but even better, you can track, which is nice because you could bring to the author, this This is how many sales I generated for you. And it helps encourage them to do a partnership with you. But also it shows you the other thing that people buy. So now you get to know the habits of a target market because you're getting to know their interests and their buying habits. And you can look at other partnership opportunities, or even if there's an influencer for one of those other products, it might be someone you could go to to reach their audience. Like, really everything's a puzzle. I do have a quick funny aside on Amazon affiliate that I have to tell because It's, you know, we're talking books. So my first book comes out with Dan Kennedy, right? This happened after I read the book. His book changed my life. The No BS Guide to Direct Response Marketing was the book that changed my life because it showed me how marketing could equal results. I started using it in that book though. He says two things. He hates digital marketing and social media and he will not work with women with, um, hyphenated last names. And so I end up utilizing his stuff anyway on social, meet him, show him what I did. He becomes a client, asks me to co-author the book with him. That is a book now with social media in the title and a woman with a hyphenated last name. Both things came true, and it's one of his best-selling books of all time. Thank you very much. So, um, that happened. So anyway, we're doing this book launch, and I don't know how any of this stuff works, so I think I'm gonna go get— I'm gonna get a bunch of people to buy the book ahead of time. And I didn't know, like, this is all those things you learn By these things happening. That's why there's no like win and lose. There's win and learn. I learned. So I thought you couldn't actually have them purchase the book ahead of time on Amazon, that it wouldn't count towards your bestselling status on launch day. Um, so I sold all the copies of the book, took the money into our merchant services. Then I had a team that I brought with me to New York where we were having like the book launch party. I don't know why I thought they all needed to come in person. I'm not sure. But anyway, they We all went all around this WeWork space entering the orders in individually, 600 book orders at Amazon. And if you could imagine how many times my Amazon account froze, credit card declined, like I went through all the cards in my wallet, how many addresses were entered in incorrectly, how many books I had to order for the 7th time. And then it turns out this is completely against the rules of books. So none of those 600 sales counted in my rankings, nor did I get affiliate credit for them. And I got my affiliate account shut down for doing it.

Oh no.

So you can make mistakes like this and still have a bestseller, which we did, and still have a new Amazon affiliate account, which we do. But learn from my mistake. Just have them order directly on Amazon. Do not take the order and then place it yourself.

Oh my gosh, that is such a good lesson and such a good story. And yes, preorders, preorders are fine. You can do preorders. It's all good. I mean, oh my gosh. But the lesson that you take is is— it contains multitudes, right? Oh my gosh, I love it. Well, and that's so funny that you mentioned Dan, because, uh, you know, not to tell stories on Dan because he's not here to defend himself, but he definitely was not a social media guy and remains not an email guy even. So it's, uh, he, he knows who he is.

That's how the story— he proudly says that in the story I just told you.

I told on stage with him, so he knows all of the Oh, that's awesome.

I love this learning curve that you kind of put yourself, uh, in the shoes of the person who, who would be, you know, like, if I can do this, I can break this down, I could figure it out, so can you. And I love that you bring the value to a potential partnership. And I think that we really witnessed that when you released The Ultimate Guide to Instagram for Business. And I was— I think we were talking about this, and I remember very vividly that day when you did your digital launch. And how many hours were you live? Do you remember how many hours you were live?

Yeah, I mean, I think it was— I think it was like an 11 to 4 or 5, like 5 or 6 hours we were on.

Yeah, I vividly remember it was a day that the publisher was in the office. So I was like, all right, this is going to be good. I'm going to give him some updates. And I'm, you know, I think it was like hour 3 and I'm looking at the numbers and I'm like looking real-time sales. And I was like, she sold out her inventory, our initial print run. It was literally crazy to watch this. And it's just like, okay, real time, what am I going to do? Am I going to do print on demand? How am I going to get all these books out there? So I do remember going up to the publisher and saying, she just sold out everything. What do you want me to do?

Do you want me to do another print run? What's going on?

Like, give me some advice here. But it was amazing. Walk us a little bit how you came to the conclusion that you're going to do something live and you're going to start bringing people in, because it was pretty seamless and it was just— everything was like dominoes falling. It was like, this is happening and this happening.

It's like, that's so awesome. And, um, yeah, and then think about it though, we still had 3 more hours to go, so then we're having to keep selling book that day when it's saying on the site you can't get it. Yeah, basically like, just buy, just trust us, it's coming.

That was awesome.

And people get that now, but back then they really didn't. So that was super— that was also super interesting. Yeah, I did the same thing I talked to you guys about already in this, um, conversation, that we leverage the audience other people already had. So instead of me just going to my own audience, which is amazing group of humans, I leveraged— this was 2000, and, um, I think it was '16. So it was I didn't have as big of a following as I do now. And, but I interviewed people for the book who had a good following and I pulled other people in to the book launch day. And I just asked each person to come on and share one strategy that they have for marketing. So it was great interviews, people that I love, and each one of them offered a bonus that you would get when you ordered the book that day. And a lot more people do this thing now, but they didn't as much back then. So I basically took the, direct response, like live cast model to the book world. And we've done this multiple times, and every single time we hit bestseller, we get a ton of sales. It, it's, um, goes to new release and it usually ends up getting emailed by Amazon as one of the top new releases, which helps to carry out more sales. So it's great. And it's not that— it gives me an opportunity to, number one, feature other people, which is awesome because that helps my relationships with them. Um, they will be— it's people that will be more likely to promote book of mine to their list than they ever would a product, a program, or an event. So I can do partnerships with people who wouldn't partner with me on anything else. And it gives people a time-sensitive reason to get your book that day because those are bonuses that don't continue on after the book launch day.

Yeah, super fun. What are some lessons from that first round? Because yeah, you're right, you, you really brought this to market and I can think of a few different platforms that are now doing— we're gonna call it the Kim Walsh model. Um, it's your model. Officially here. But what— are there any lessons that you learned that day or getting up to that day that you'd like to share? And it's like, maybe I should have done it this way, or, you know, it would have been really great if I had enhanced X.

I had back then this weird thought that I needed to go other places to do book launches because I did that with an OBS book and I did it again with this book. And you just don't want to be in a new spot the day you're launching your book with like internet you don't— I can't rely on, and locations. Like, I think for like for the rest of my life and for when I did my second edition of the Nobius book, I was here in my home office where I know where everything is. I'm super comfortable. And so I think like, is because there's so many unknowns that day, as much comfort as you can give yourself from like having your meals pre-ordered, having people around you that are awesomely supportive, and also being within a space that you're very comfortable in, I highly recommend. I mean, of course, if you're going to be doing media tours, you're going to go out and do the things you need to do. But besides that, I would recommend that. That would be one thing. Um, number two, that you— I— something I always do is that I plan the thank-yous ahead of time because you're exhausted when that day's over. You want to have— you want to enjoy the day, you want to enjoy the night of celebrating and everything, but you're like fried. But people still need to be thanked for being part of your journey. So we'll schedule gifts to be delivered the next day to all of our speakers on our livecast ahead of time. I'll schedule the messages I'm going to send out thanking people ahead of time. Like as much as you can prep your social media posts, your follow-up email campaigns, like all of that for me is done the week before the launch so that I can be like completely present in the experience, enjoy it and absorb it, and then be able to feel really good about taking the next day off to just enjoy.

A good celebratory day, like the recovery and celebratory day. You actually have an amazing team and, and some of the people that you've been working have been with you for a very long time, and I think that's just a true testament to who you are personally. And, and you're so lucky to have this really great core group. Um, well, do you have any, uh, platforms or, uh, processes that you would recommend, like, in a solopreneur, that they could get on, um, get on to schedule these things ahead of schedule?

Absolutely.

I use a, uh, one of the tools that I use is incredibly affordable. It's less than $17 a month and they'll do tasks for you. It's called Fancy Hands. It sounds dirty. It isn't. It is— they will do tasks. So you could say, you could literally put in a task for them. Here's a list of the people who are speaking at my event, their name and their email. Here's the gift I want you to send them in the card. Please schedule it so it arrives this day. And then you're not wasting any time going in and entering all those. They'll get it done. They'll send you the confirmation emails. Um, you can utilize them to come up to write thank you notes for you and send them out. So I— we don't ever want to look at, I don't have the bandwidth to hire a full-time person, but instead, how can I get someone else to support me? I'll tell you, one of the best hires that I did for my balance of family and work, because I have two young girls, is that I went to Care.com and I looked under personal assistants. It's a separate category under Care.com, and there are people who typically would go into like seniors' homes and them with things, you know, so they're used to doing tasks to help you in life. And I hired a woman through them to become my assistant, but she helps me with work and business and personal. So she'll send gifts out to people for me, but she'll also book my kids for softball camp. She'll also take my dog to the groomer. She'll also like, it's just those little things. And if you don't have the budget to have somebody do that full-time during your book launch time, you might wanna hire someone for like 3 to 5 hours the week the week of, just to help handle some of the regular things in life that don't stop so that you can stay focused and still get things done. You could also look it up as personal concierge. There are those people too. You could hire them by the hour. They might even come in and just make sure on launch day you've got, you know, you always have a water near you. They'll bring you your lunch. Just little things for self-care. My first book, I wore myself down so much that when the first book come out, I ended up in the hospital for almost 2 months. Months with serious pneumonia. And it helped me look at everything more clearly to say, how can I prevent this from ever happening again? And some of those things have been prioritizing self-care and seeking team whenever I can get support. So now I always have a, a liter drink by my side that I have certain number I want to drink a day. I make sure I get 10,000 steps in a day in the midst of the craziness, and I get help whenever I need I think that's such an important thing to note because for any author, self-care has to be a part of the journey. That's true.

You know, you are, you're doing all the things, especially if you are still kind of in that solopreneur kind of land where you may not have that core team to rely on. And sometimes you forget you and you're the number one team member, you're the core of the core. And so you've got to do that 100%.

Yeah.

My question would be, you know, to bring in help and to have some extra helping hands What about like the tech side of things? Because I know not everybody is, is super tech savvy. So I mean, you know, getting on Zoom like, like we're doing right now isn't super hard, but like coordinating something that's like this where you're having guests popping in and popping out. And do you have any, any advice for people who want to do this but maybe the tech piece scares them a little bit?

Keep it super simple. You could literally use Zoom, the, you know, the, the application. You're going to want to have a paid account because if not, you'll be shut off after 40 minutes. But a paid account on Zoom, you set up a Zoom meeting and it will give you a registration form.

Mm-hmm.

So you do not need to do something complicated. And then with all of your speakers, you can list all of your speakers on there, a description who each of them are, and you can literally just have people go to Amazon to get your book the day of your launch. You don't need to have tech in any way in order to be able to utilize that. And/or you can actually do your entire launch inside of a Facebook group. Facebook will let you go live and you can bring guests on.. So if you wanted to, you can do the whole thing there. It does not need to be complicated. But if you're like, okay, I have a little bit of funds, I am going to— I'd rather have this done well, hire it out. I don't know why as entrepreneurs we think we're supposed to learn all the things. Like when I got dressed today and I put the hat on and the shirt on, I wasn't like, I am going to forge myself a hat out of felt. Let me get my hat hammer and let me make my shirt. And oh, if my car needs gas, let me and get gas out of the mines. I don't even know where gas comes from, obviously, but okay. So what I'm saying is like, we understand we should just buy those things, but for some reason we're like, when it comes to our business, we're supposed to do all the things. We are not supposed to do all the things. It's also why I don't ask my barista at Starbucks about, you know, my mom's knee replacement surgery. No, no, no.

I—

they don't know better. I don't know better in a lot of things in my own business. So I go to the experts, and I hire them to do it for me so I could spend more time doing things myself. So either if you don't know tech, do simple. You over— if you love it, go learn it, like, that's great. But if you don't like it, either use incredibly simple tech that doesn't require you to figure a bunch of stuff out, or hire it out so someone does it for you.

100%. I love that. That's why we have Paul, because we don't know a darn thing about the tech side of podcasting. So Paul's our man.

So Kim, what is your favorite, maybe the even underrated social media platform that you just like feel like this is me, this is my home, this is how I express myself?

Oh, I'm not going to pick a favorite child, but the under— I love them all. I really do, for different reasons, because they all work for different reasons. Um, because I love my longer form engagement with my lives on Facebook. I love doing reels on Instagram. Um, LinkedIn is fantastic for going live as well. But really, the most underrated platform that I utilize on a regular basis is still Clubhouse. And I know it's not as popular maybe as it was when it first came out, but I love— I have a weekly show on my own channel there, and I have a weekly show on somebody else's channel there, and I am able to reach thousands of people every single week who are action-oriented, ambitious humans who are choosing to take action on that platform. Um, it's generated over $1 million in revenue in my business in the last year, and I have met some of the— my best friends that I've ever met have come from that platform, and some incredible business partnerships. So I love it. It's the real-time interaction of a podcast. So, um, it's just an incredible software— I mean, incredible network.

I want to hang out with you all day, all the time, because seriously, like Jen mentioned, you bring such a good energy, and you are a giver. And I think that that's what makes you successful, So I'd love to share with the audience, how can people reach you? What is your favorite interactive? I think you just said Clubhouse. But what if somebody is not interested in Clubhouse, which is fair? I personally don't have it because I'm an Android user. Womp womp.

Yeah, Androids are on it. You don't need an invitation anymore. Everybody's there. All are welcome. All the cool kids are there.

I'm no longer cool. This is how I don't know the social medias. But if people want to learn more about you, where can they find find you?

Yeah, so I purposely have 3 names because that means you can find me everywhere. Kim Walsh Phillips. So choose your platform that's your favorite and find me there because I'll be there. Our company is called Powerful Professionals. You can find us that there as well. And that's one of those things we thought of that name. We look— went to GoDaddy, powerfulprofessionals.com was available. We're like, okay, that was meant to be. So I'd love to meet you there.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Kim. I'm really excited about your business, your platform, and Jen and I just love watching you. We seriously do love watching you, watching you grow, watching you share. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for the support, and I love the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, it was our pleasure. Come back again.

Absolutely.

All right, cool. Well, we will see everybody next time. I want to thank our producer Paul Roberts of OC Talk Radio and our executive producer Emily Carpenter-Polzkamp of Little Red Communications. We'll see you next time.

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