Ep. 35: How to Launch Your Book Like a Product

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.

Happy Friday, Jen. How are you doing?

Hey, happy Friday. I'm doing well. I'm recovering from college visits with my son, which is always a big, exciting new part of life as a parent. So I'm just— I'm kind of getting my bearings back, getting back into the world of business. How are you?

I'm good.

I am ready. It's Friday and my body knows it. It's supposed to get rain, so I'm really excited after this.

If it starts raining, I'm just going to stand in the rain for a bit.

I live in Southern California.

We don't get rain. We don't get rain. No, this is— are people going to be okay? Are they going to freak out?

No, I think we're going to start melting. Well, you know, I'm really excited today because we're getting to connect with somebody who we've worked with in the past who has opened our eyes to how to think about marketing ourselves. As the pandemic was happening, things were changing. He was so gracious in helping me kind of reset set my mind and figuring out, okay, what am I going to do next? And here we are, our book group.

Here we are. This is it. You found it. Congrats. This is a great, great guest. I'm excited to have him on too. I'm sorry, were you gonna say something? No, I didn't mean to step on you.

No, I'm just excited. I'm sorry.

That is okay. It's, it's good to be excited. Well, let's, let's not wait. Let's bring him out here. This is our old friend Terry Rice. Terry Rice is a business development consultant and a staff writer at Entrepreneur Magazine. He's also the host of Launch Your Business, a podcast that helps entrepreneurs make money, save time, and avoid burnout. His experience includes internal consulting roles at Adobe and Facebook. Based in Brooklyn, Terry's an instructor at NYU, speaks at business development events on behalf of Amazon and Google, and he's been featured as a subject matter expert by Good Morning America. Terry, welcome to the pod.

Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Oh, we're so psyched to see you. It's been a while. As we were discussing before the show got started, we worked on a book together when Vanessa Campos and I were at Entrepreneur, and you're still doing some great things connected with those guys and a lot of other great things. So we're just stoked to have you. Thanks for coming.

Yeah, absolutely. Just as a heads up, I do have 4 children. Some of them might come home, so you might hear them in the background, but we'll just roll with it.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's okay. That's the beauty of recording a live pod. You know, it's just there's a little extra sauce on the situation. It's all good. Well, why don't you tell us, Terry, a little bit about what you do? We just want to kind of get a little bit more of your backstory than what I, I just brain dumped all over the pod. So fill us in.

Yeah, well, as you can imagine, a lot of energy is spent raising 4 kids. But on the side, I also help solopreneurs and entrepreneurs build their brand and revenue. And that could be anything from their pricing, their services, how do they present themselves. As you mentioned, also a staff writer, entrepreneur, also have a podcast called Launch Your Business. But really my goal is to help people understand their zone of genius, how they can help individuals and organizations, and then get loud about it so they can get paid for who they are instead of what they do and find that fulfillment on the other side.

I love that. Can you talk to me a little bit about that phrase that you use, the zone of genius? Cause I, I hear it a lot, but I don't know that everybody really knows what that is.

Yeah, it comes from the book, uh, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, in which the author identifies 4 zones of competence. Uh, the first one is incompetence. These are tasks that you're not good at. You're never gonna be good at, just forget it. The next one is competence. Things you're, you're, you're okay at, but everyone else is just as good or better. After that, and you have to be careful here, is your zone of excellence. These are things you're really good at, you're talented, you're a recognized expert, but sometimes you get stuck there in your career when you actually want to move on to your zone of genius. And these are the tasks and activities that excite you. They give you energy. You can read 1,000 books about them and never get bored. And if you're starting your own business as a solopreneur, I highly recommend focusing on your zone of genius. That way, first of all, you'll avoid burnout and you'll be really excited about going to work every day as opposed to just going through the motions.

That's really smart. I have a lot of things that are in my incompetence zone. So I, you've now given me permission to not do them. So thank you for that.

Hiring it out.

Yeah. Yeah. By design, you should have maybe 3 or 4 things in your zone of genius, maybe less than that. And then there could be a lot in competence and incompetence, but fortunately it doesn't matter anymore because you're starting your own business. So you're free.

Well, I love the thing that you said, you know, get loud about it. And I feel like If you're starting something new, if you're not used to being in the spotlight, getting loud about it is, is a difficult thing for a lot of people. How do you help people get out of their own way to be able to get loud about it?

A few ways. One is I share my experience. So when I first started building my brand, I was like, okay, you have to do video. And I, and I did it, but I somehow looked scared and angry at the same time on camera. But it, it, it takes time, right? So you have to get those reps in. So I just say like, you know, you can't skip the part where you're not that good at something. But you can miss out on the reward that comes from deliberate practice in growing your brand. So I just level set that way and then just getting clear on what you want to talk about. And the easiest thing is to answer questions for your audience. So think of 10 questions that your audience has and then answer them with content. It can be written content. It doesn't have to be videos, but realize if you leave your best thoughts, perspective, and worldviews trapped inside of your head, you'll never be able to attract people to you. You're always doing outbound marketing, which is a great way to feel anxious and salesy and like you're bothering people at the same time. So given the alternative, it makes more sense to build a brand so you can focus on inbound marketing.

This sounds all very familiar. It sounds about very similar to a lot of things we talk about when we are writing a book.

Yes, right on.

And marketing a book. I mean, yeah, I think all, all of these lessons definitely apply, right, to launching a business, but also to thinking about how you want to position yourself if you want to do a book.. And, and I think that's a good way to get loud, right? Absolutely.

And you know, for everyone who's listening, um, Terry came into the, our little universe when we were all working at Entrepreneur with the opportunity and we were like, yeah, we think you'd be perfect for this to rewrite Start Your Own Consulting Business. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this was your first, your first, um, book, your first authored book.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack here. So the reason I even got a role at Entrepreneur, and this for anyone who has imposter syndrome, this, this story should help. The reason why I got a job working with, with Entrepreneur is I met the editor-in-chief, Jason Pfeiffer, when I was taking my daughter to a free gymnastics class here in Brooklyn, and I met him there. He has a son the same age as my daughter. So fast forward to, to now, that's how the partnership started. So When I was able to first write for Entrepreneur, I'm like, you guys know I don't know what I'm doing, right? Like, I got no clue at all. And I started off, you know, small just by doing basic interviews and copying and pasting. So when the opportunity came to write a book, I was like, sure, I mean, I want to do this, but it's like, I, again, I just took my daughter to class. Like, I don't know what uniquely I am skilled to, you know, to do in regards to this and just went with it. But yeah, I mean, it is, it was a process, a very great learning experience, and not to go too far into it, but as I was writing the book, I got better. So I had to go back to some of the earlier chapters and rewrite them. So even like during that process, I grew, but I was like, oh gosh, I didn't start off as hot as I could have.

I remember those days. I was there. But you know what? The book turned out so great and really, I think, just captures who you are and what you have to impart. And, you know, realizing your worth is something that you did for yourself, but also that you help other folks do. I think let's talk a little bit more about that. Like when you are at that sort of inflection point, whether it's something, a story like yours where it sort of was maybe by fate or, you know, whatever you want to call it, but you're being very intentional about, okay, I want to write a book. It's a goal I have for my business. Let's talk a little bit about that. Like when you are in that place of decision making, what all are you thinking about as an author other than can I do?

How not to mess up. And the best way to avoid messing up is being prepared, right? So before writing a book, before writing a business, do some research, right? See what's out there. So in regards to the book, I look, I went on Amazon and I found the top 10 books about consulting. I bought all of them. I read all of them and as I was going through it, I was like, okay, some of this stuff I already know, some of the stuff is new to me and some of the approaches towards storytelling I adopted as well. So I didn't obviously copy and paste, but that's how you, you remove that, that doubt by be, by being prepared. Right? So same thing with your business. If you wanna start a business, do some research on your audience, do some research on the industry, on competitors, join their email list, follow them on social media, and you'll learn so much to a point where you're like, okay, I'm very clear on the problem. In the landscape and how I'll solve it. So there's no cheat code, but that's the best way to remove any kind of reservations in regards to your ability because you're now prepared for it.

Right. It's in a lot of ways, it's almost like making yourself a business proposal kind of in your head, right? So, you know, when you're starting a business, you're mapping all that out, you're doing an executive summary and here's what I want to do. And, you know, here are the things that make me unique. And I think you kind of have to apply that here too.

Yeah.

And, and here's another thing that I think a lot of people get wrong with their business or a book or with anything. What you need to do is deliver the content live a few times. So again, like the, the first book that I wrote was about starting a consulting business. So I put together a workshop, how to start a consulting business, and I delivered that several times live to get feedback from the audience. This part was confusing. This part was great. Why did you not say this first? X, Y, Z. So Again, if you want to increase your chances of doing well, deliver it live to people, get that real-time feedback and drop the ego and make adjustments, you know, as needed. But if the first time anyone hears this message is when the book is done, that's an issue. Even on social media, right? You can start writing about some of the topics there and say, wow, this one really hit, this one got a lot of engagement. This one, not so much. Was I confusing people? Is it boring? You know, what's going on? But all that testing and learning is super important because that's how you optimize going forward. And again, you reduce the risk involved with, with any venture.

Bonus points if you can actually get an audience to come in, listen to it, and actually give you feedback. This is really important because I feel like a lot of people, regardless of what you're working on, will think like, well, I need to build it and then I'll market it. And I think that's completely wrong. As you're talking, Terry, I'm thinking like, yes, that was like Perfect to start telling people what you were doing without telling people what you were doing and start building that community and start fostering that, you know, conversation around that. I'm curious to see like what tools, where did you kind of create these webinars? Did you have an email that was already created or did you build your email list around this specific venture that you were doing?

Yeah, it was really basic actually. I would look for venues in the New York City area to talk for free. So I was speaking at WeWorks, I spoke at the Brooklyn Public Library, I was speaking at just other organizations that would let me speak for free to their audience because I didn't want the revenue from talking, I wanted the information from the audience. So that's what I would do. And then it came to a point when I could do webinars and what I would say sometimes when I was speaking is, hey, if you want to learn more from me, I'm going deeper on this part of the talk. You know, next week during a webinar, give me your email address and I'll invite you. So that's more or less how it happened. So just mostly in-person stuff and then venturing off into webinars. But eventually I started getting paid for it too, which was pretty cool because when you have an audience that's willing to pay for your information, for your knowledge, okay, that's my target audience. Someone who actually invests in themselves because they're more likely to pay $30 for a book as opposed to someone who might have just casually stopped by the Brooklyn Public Library and said, okay, let's, listen to this guy talk. So the more at-bats you can get, the better. Again, this is what I call the golden link, right? If you can find the gatekeepers to your audience who, if you partner with them, let's say it's the Brooklyn Public Library, you get access to a larger audience, right? So I'm going to go to the Brooklyn Public Library and say to the event planner there, hey, I have this great talk on how entrepreneurs can start a business using the skills they already have in less than 30 days. What do you say? As soon as they say yes, that one yes gives me access to 1,000 people or more because they're going to blast it out to the email list. So I always tell people, find that golden link, whoever it may be, that if you can form a partnership with them, you get access to their audience in exchange for the value that you're providing.

That is key. I, I think that, you know, partnerships need to happen outside of the people that you're already talking to. So I love that you're, you utilize the library because not a lot of people think of the library as as a place of knowledge, ironically. But it is one of those places where it's not just, you know, borrowing a book, going in and, you know, beating the heat with some AC. They have a lot of community resources and building things. So your library, your civic center, your anything that's community-based, they're already tapped into what the audience wants. And now you— I mean, I think that's brilliant and I love that you did that. Thank you.

Yeah, I'll give you another one too. If your topic is aligned with a, like a major at a college, let's pretend it's like accounting just to make this up, right? You can reach out to local colleges and say, hey, professor of accounting, do you ever bring in guest speakers? I have this topic about 3 trends I expect to happen in 2023 for accounting, and I would love to deliver it to your students. What do you say? So you get a yes eventually from that person. You get testimonials from the professor as well as the students. And you also get street cred saying, I spoke at XYZ University, right? So again, who's that gatekeeper that gives you access to a larger audience and how can you provide value in exchange for that partnership? That's all you have to do.

Right.

And then you're on your merry way.

Yeah.

Right.

And I think every college campus has an SBDC on campus. Right, Jen?

That's actually what I was, uh, unmuting myself to say.

Yeah.

SBDCs are a great— small business development centers are a great resource as well. They do all kinds of free or low-cost programming for members or just for the general public. And so if you can do a similar move with them, link up with an SBDC, then you're kind of baked into an additional community there. And I think for all of these speaking opportunities, you can always take it up a notch and say, would you like to buy some books? Yes. As a part of my speaking event, or if they don't want to do that, provide a coupon code or you know, do some kind of giveaway or, you know, just, you know, always be kind of working your book into that process if you have a book. As Terri mentioned, if you've got one that you're kind of noodling on and thinking about, you can start dropping some hints to that crowd that, hey, I'm working on this book project and it's coming up. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so I have to ask you, Terri, as someone who has been in consulting and you work one-on-one with people and you help them find you know, get into their zone of genius and, you know, then you became an author. What part of that is the easiest part for you to do and what part of your business? Because it sounds like you're just doing a lot of things, but which is your favorite part to do? Which is your least favorite part to do?

I'd say there's two favorite parts. One is just creating content because you, you know, you're this individual with these thoughts and you're like, let me just see how this lands with people. And you ship it, and all of a sudden it's like you get all this great feedback, whether it's my newsletter or, you know, social media or whatever else I'm doing. So that's a lot of fun, and we can talk more about how to have a good newsletter momentarily. Another fun part is talking to someone who has like this raw talent, but they're just convinced they could never start their own business for one reason or another, and saying like, did you know you can do X and Y, and you're on your way? And I'll give you an example. There's this one woman I talked to, and she's like You know, I'm really good at UX design and employee benefit programs, but what is that? What does that actually do? And I'm like, why don't you offer consulting on how companies can improve the UX of their employee benefits site? Therefore, they'll actually use it more. And that's the whole point. So now that's her niche is she's an expert at helping companies improve the UX of their employee benefits site. Right? So we all have this zone of genius, but one of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein is, you know, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it's going to live its whole life thinking that it's stupid. So some people, or a lot of people, or they really are geniuses, but they're in the wrong context to flourish from that. So what I help them do is understand their zone of genius and then change the context so they can get rewarded for it.

Love that. You're an amazing parent. I've never seen you parent, but I know that you're an amazing parent just because of the way you, you think right now.

Well, wait till they come in, see how I react when they start making noise. But, but you also asked, asked about what I, what I don't like. I mean, a few things are this, it's mostly admin, right? I don't like invoicing. I don't like any kind of admin task, right? Anything where it's like, you know, add this to the spreadsheet, update my website, upload my blog, upload my, my podcast or whatever. That's why I have a virtual assistant who does all that stuff. Because again, with 4 kids, you're short on time as it is, or anyone's, you know, time constrained. Again, you want to stay in your zone of genius and focus on things that are core to your business. These things are important and they're often urgent. I'm just not good at it or it won't get done. It won't get done correctly. So I outsource, delegate, or automate all that stuff.

I think you bring up a really good point by mentioning the virtual assistant. I think a lot of people, whether they're running a small business or they're doing events and speaking and, and writing a book, a lot of people talk themselves out of the fact that maybe they need that kind of help or that they can afford it. It's even more affordable than ever now to, to hire a VA, or, you know, to, to jump on Fiverr or Fancy Hands or some site like that and kind of get a little assistance to to help you do what you do. You don't have to go out and, you know, make a big hire to make all those things happen, right?

Yeah, the, the service that I use is called ChatterBoss, and the reason why I like them so much is because you have one assistant who can manage your entire remote team. So right now I had her go on Fiverr and find a copywriter to help one of my clients. So we're still using Fiverr, Upwork, XYZ, but my assistant is the one managing all those people. And I'm out like playing with my kids or I'm at the gym or something. Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense for the majority of people and I know they started like as low as $500 a month. So once you have a plan, you can say, all right, what do I need to get done? And will I make more than $500 from this? If the answer is yes, go hire someone, right? But I don't think anyone should hire a VA if they don't know what the plan is, like what they need help with. And that goes back to having like your OKRs, your objectives and key results. And then from there, what are the tasks that need to be done and how can you pick up someone to help you with these things?

Absolutely. And you know, that goes for, for starting a business or, you know, as we mentioned, if you just want to have someone lend you an assist with doing events and doing speaking and, and all that good stuff, which hopefully eventually will make you enough money to justify that.

So Terry, you've been an author. Would you do it again?

I would, I would. I, uh, I want to figure out what the story is going to be, what the topic will be, because I want to make sure that I'm— I think— I don't know, I don't think you need to have a unique idea because every good idea has been taken. Like, that's, that's the way it is. But you can always put your own spin on it. I just want to be very thoughtful about what it is. I mean, I have an online course right now that helps people start their own solopreneur career, so maybe it'll be aligned with that. Yes, definitely. I just want to make sure it's the right move that I can get it out quickly too, because right now the reason why I'm so focusing on solopreneurship is there's a lot of people that are hurting right now. You know, they're forced to go back to work or they feel unfulfilled and they just feel confused. And in my course, I remove all that confusion and give you a clear path towards entrepreneurship. But I want that, I want to help people now, right? And the thing with the book is you got to make sure you have enough runway to get that out in time. So it'll be something that's more evergreen and I won't feel like a sense of urgency because I want to be a perennial bestseller. You know, I just want to have it like just keep on going and going and going. So yeah, that's the, that's the thought I have about it.

Well, we're excited to read that. I definitely think you're, you know, having done it already and knowing what you loved about it, what you didn't love about it, um, basically offset to somebody else. And if you have the right team to help you do that, I think that's really important and always just First step is take that first step.

That's right. Absolutely. Well, we can't wait to see what you do next, Mr. Terry Rice. It was so nice to see you today. Please come back. We would love to have you back to talk a little bit more about business and writing and coaching and consulting and just all of the cool things that you do.

Yes. And Terry, where can people connect with you? Where do you like to connect with people?

Yeah, well, my website is TerryRice.co, and then on social media, I'm at @It'sTerryRice. LinkedIn, I'm pretty active there too. Just look for Terry Rice and I'll be there smiling, looking at something. But yeah, that's the best way to find me.

And your podcast is available everywhere?

Correct. Yeah, it's called Launch Your Business.

Perfect. Listen to it. It's— he's got some really good guests on. I just saw that you would talk to Dori. You've been writing for Entrepreneur for so long and you're just sharing the extra wisdom. I really appreciate you coming onto our show.

Absolutely.

Thanks for having us. This is great.

Yeah, thanks. Well, we want to thank Terry for joining us, as well as our producer Paul Roberts and our executive producer Emily Carpenter-Pulskamp of Little Red Communications. We'll see you next time. We hope that you gained some valuable insights into the world of book publishing. Head over to broadbookgroup.com to learn more about us and all our services, and be sure to check out all our social media at Book Group. Until then, keep publishing.