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Getting Published as a Subject Matter Expert with Chad R. Allen

Episode 131

Play here (the red triangle below), on Apple Podcast, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Are you one of those people that really believes you have a book in you? Or maybe you’ve written a book already. Perhaps you self-published and now you’re thinking to yourself, “You know, I really think that I need to get published next time by a traditional publisher. I’d like a book deal.” Well, today’s episode with Chad R. Allen is right up your alley.

Chad is a writing coach and the founder of Book Proposal Academy and Book Camp who’s been on the podcast before. And today, we are going to talk about a lot of things that you can really relate to if you’re a subject matter expert.

In this episode, Chad shares the three ingredients of publishing success, the importance of building a platform before you submit any proposals, how many people he recommends having on your email list by the time you send out proposals, his thoughts on ghostwriters and whether or not they work for subject matter experts, at point in the process you should start looking for an agent, the basic components of a book proposal, the value of having being part of a community of others who’re also going through this process, his biggest internal hurdle to being a voice of influence, and more!

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more.  I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

Are you one of those people that really believe that you have a book in you?  Or maybe you’ve written a book already. Perhaps you self-published, and now you’re thinking to yourself, “You know, I really think that I need to get published next time by a traditional publisher.”  “I’d like a book deal.”

Well, today’s episode is “Write Up Your Alley.”  You’re going to get a lot out of this episode with Chad Allen.

Chad is a writing coach and the founder of Book Proposal Academy and BookCamp.  And today, we are going to talk about a lot of things that you can really relate to if you’re a subject matter expert.  We’re diving into that, because I’ve actually had Chad on the podcast before. He was in episode number 9; you can’t succeed as a writer until you take the first step.

It’s been two and a half years since that last episode aired and I really encourage you to go back and listen to it, because we do cover a few same things.  But for the most part, we really tried to dive into what it would be like for, in particular, a subject matter expert to get published. So, what we talked about here today is the reason that he made this journey from being a managing editor at Baker Books to actually working with authors to work to help them get their work out into the world.

We talked about the three seeds or pillars of book publishing success and how those specifically apply to subject matter experts.  And then we also discussed his biggest internal hurdle to being of voice of influence, which I’m pretty sure that you will be able to relate to.  I think we, probably, all can in some way or another.

Chad has a ton of resources available on his website which we will link too in our show notes, as always, at voiceofinfluence.net,

Here’s my interview with Chad Allen:

Andrea:  All right, Chad Allen, it is great to have you, again, on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Chad Allen:  Thanks a lot for having me.  I’ve been looking forward to this.

Andrea:  Me too, me too.  I was listening to our conversation from three years ago.  It’s really two and a half years ago about right now and I was just struck by how much neat was in there and how many good things that people had to chew on after that conversation.  And so, I thank you again for that and I know that today is going to be just like that was.

Chad Allen:  Awesome!  Well, yeah, I mean you and I, we always go into an interesting direction, so let’s see what we can do this time.

Andrea:  That’s right.  That’s right. OK, so the last time that we talk – well, the last time you were in the podcast, you were an editor for Baker Books.  Can you tell us what has changed for you and your career since then?

Chad Allen:  Yeah, big change – about a year and a half.  So, in about four months, little less than that, I will have been on my own for two years.  I worked in traditional publishing for about 20 years, worked at Baker for over 16 years. The last seven of which as editorial director of the Baker Books division, you know, overseeing 60 some books published a year and transitioned that out to working as a fulltime writing coach.  And people hear it were like “Gee, how do you do that?” Well, it sounds much more sudden than it was. I mean, I had been blogging for writers for years and that were sort of enabled me to make a smooth transition out of corporate into working for myself. So, that’s what I’ve been doing.

Andrea:  So, what is the lure or the…I don’t know, what was the draw for going out on your own and being a writing coach versus having so much influences as an editing director?

Chad Allen:  Yeah, that’s a great question.  I mean, there are probably few different factors but the main one, I mean, the reason I started the blog in the first place was because I was feeling called, like internally, like there was this, you know, I don’t know.  It is intuition. It’s God, it’s a sense of vocation, you know. You can use lots of different words to describe it. Some people might use the word God to describe it or whatever it is, like I felt this internal pull to begin serving writers on my own.

And part of that was, when I was working for Baker, I regularly had to tell writers “no.”  My job was to bring books under contract, but for every book I brought into contract, I said no to 20 others.  So, I was saying no a lot. I was like “I’m tired of this.” Like, I really think I can help writers. I want to say yes to them.  So, my blog really became a place where I could do that. And that sense, that internal pull toward that work only increased over time because I think I enjoyed the work and because I was seeing the response from writers – people who appreciated what I was doing.  And then of course, it really came to before when I started creating products that people started buying. That was real validation that I needed to move more and more in this direction.

Andrea:  So, what exactly do you provide as a writing coach?

Chad Allen:  Well, yeah, so this business I’ve started, full time at least, is less than two years old.  So, I’m still figuring that out. I can tell you this; one of my areas of specialty is helping writers with nonfiction book proposals.  That has become a real sweet spot, which of course makes sense because, you know, when I was in the traditional publishing space, I reviewed thousands of book proposals.  So, when a writer told me years ago, “You know, if you could help me with writing a book proposal that would be really helpful.” My first thought was “My goodness, I’ve literally reviewed thousands of book proposals, I think I would have few things to say about how to write a good one.”

Andrea:  Absolutely.

Chad Allen:  And so, my first product was, of course, called Book Proposal Academy and that was kind of the beginning of my move in this direction.  And now it’s just gone different ways. You know, you can still get the course but then you can also get 101 coaching with me. I provide a small-group experience now.  You know, it’s a six-month experience of building a platform and writing a proposal, that’s called Book Proposal Academy Elite. But the core competency, the core service is really helping writers craft compelling book proposals.

Andrea:  I think it’s interesting that the opportunity to say yes to writers is what drew you in because what I know of you and your voice, and I worked with you one-on-one as well, you are incredibly encouraging while being realistic.  So, it’s like you are saying yes to writers and then you’re also _____ to writers, I think, in order to help them to actually move forward.

Chad Allen:  Yeah, thank you for that.  I think that’s right, and for whatever reason, that space really works for me.  I don’t ever want to give writers false hope, right? Like, I don’t want to say “Oh, you’ll absolutely get a book deal.”  At the same time, you know, I have a pretty good sense of what you need to do to plan a book deal, and so I can see where a writer is.  I can see a path they can take toward getting to a traditional book contract. And because I can see those two things, I feel really comfortable encouraging them, guiding them, and helping them on the path to get where they ultimately want to go.

Andrea:  So, do the people that work with you usually – are they pursuing a traditional book proposal or is it possible that they might go self-publishing as well?

Chad Allen:  Yeah.  So, I would say, I mean this isn’t scientific but I would say, at least 75 percent of the people I end up working with are interested in a traditional book deal.  Many of them get one, but they all know and I told them, “If for some reason it doesn’t work out and you get tired of trying to pursue a traditional deal, don’t let your dream die, like, self-publishing is still a great option.”  So, that’s how that works.

Andrea:  Sure.  OK, one of the ways that I wanted to take this conversation today, to kind of narrow or focus a little bit more would be on subject matter experts.  People who particularly adept and understand a specific kind of subject matter within their career, their job, and they have something to say about that; sometimes their voice may not get or carry the same amount of weight that it could or maybe it should.  And it seems to me that it would make sense for them to shoot for publishing getting published as an author. What are your thoughts on the subject matter expert as an author?

Chad Allen:  Well, I think the first step is confidence in one’s own ability or in one’s own expertise and authority.  And I remember reading Brendon Burchard’s The Millionaire Messenger, and in that book he writes – it was the first book I ever read that said, “You know what, you have expertise…” and I’m saying this now to your listener’s, you have expertise that people will gladly pay you for.  When I read that, Andrea, I was like “Wait, really? Is that really true?” You know, it was like this spark of hope and that was really pivotal for me in the early days.

And so, I think that first step that is just trusting that that’s true.  You have expertise, you have authority, and your guidance in your area is just extremely valuable.  And I think the next step is to begin serving your audience. They’re out there. I promise you, you have a tribe.  And many of your listeners may have already started building one. But if not, like just trust your tribe is out there.  Begin serving them by creating content and that can come in the form of speeches, podcasts, blogs, or videos. I mean, there are lots of different ways to serve and audience.

You know, the best books are those that come organically out of the work that an author has been doing for a while, you know.  So, for example, if you were to write a book called Voice of Influence, you already did the Unfrozen book, but if you want to do Voice of Influence, you know that would come from years now of doing this podcast and serving your audience with this message, with this commitment.  And it would have more weight because of that work you’ve done.

So, right, I told writers “Look, don’t wait for a publisher to give you permission to serve your audience.”  I mean, we have a global audience at our fingertips. It is unheard of, right? It’s amazing _____ the influence that we can have.  So, start with that and then a book can come from that work.

Andrea:  OK.  I kind of remember you talking about maybe three pillars or something about a book proposal, am I right on that?

Chad Allen:  Mm-hmm.

Andrea:  OK.

Chad Allen:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Could you share what those were again?  You did talk about it in the other episode but share with us what those are again?

Chad Allen:  Well, they’re time tested.  They don’t get old. They’re kind of classic, the classic three ingredients of publishing success.  And this is true whether you’re self-publishing or traditional publishing – a great concept. And a publisher will sometimes refer of these as the three seeds; Concept, Crowd, and Craft.  So, Concept is what’s the problem your book is solving and how do you that in a unique way. The more effectively you communicate about that, the stronger your concept is. And great concepts market themselves.  That’s why they’re so important. So, start there.

And then Crowd and sometimes, you’ll hear the word platform.  This is the author’s ability to reach an audience. So, one way to do that is with a podcast, you know.  So, what is your ability to reach your audience – that’s your platform. That’s your ability to reach your crowd.  And then Craft is pretty simple – how good a writer are you? You know, is the book written in a compelling way? When you have those three things in place then you have the makings of a book that kind of have a big impact.

Andrea:  That’s great.  OK, so, the concept sells itself is got to be really good.  We did talk about that one a little bit more in the last episode.  I think it was episode number 9 of the Voice of Influence podcast, but we’ll link to that in the show notes for sure.  When it comes to crowd and craft, I’ve a couple of questions for you. So, I think that of all the things, most people are most intimidated by this idea of building a platform or creating that crowd for their work.  Why is that essential and how can somebody who is busy – they’re in their expertise and working on their projects or they’re in their job all the time. They’re not thinking in terms of crowd and to aim in building a platform, why should they think about that and how did they even begin?

Chat Allen:  Well, I would say, if somebody is listening to this and they’re feeling that internal pull as I did years ago and it’s not going away, then it’s important to marry that with the reality that we all have a little bit of time in about which we get to make decisions, you know.  How are we going to use that a little bit of time that we have to do with us we wish. And six or seven years ago what I started doing is getting up a little earlier and putting on my backpack and walk into my neighborhood coffee shop. I mean, I still have very fond memories of doing it.  And at 6:00 a.m., I’d walk into this coffee shop. The guys know Grand Rapids, it’s the Biggby on Michigan Ave., and I would go in there and I would start typing. And you know, it was just me and the keyboard doing our thing for a long time, but that is how I slowly began to build an audience.

And then you know, you meet people along the way.  You can naturally seek out people who can help you start building an email list.  But the thing is don’t get overwhelmed with… Sometimes, we let our fears about the future sabotage what we do in the process.  And I would just encourage people, “Don’t do that, just start today what’s one thing you can do today to move yourself forward, and then when you get up tomorrow, ask the same question.”  If you start with “Oh gosh, I need a thousand email subscribers,” you know and that could be really self _____. And you know, I love what Jon Acuff says “Don’t compare your middle…” Or in this case your beginning to someone else’s middle, you know.  Just start, would be my advice.

Andrea:  So, when it comes to actually doing a book proposal and getting published then what should people be shooting for in terms of platform on social media or in their email list?  What are the actual numbers that they should be shooting for?

Chad Allen:  Well, that’s a question I get a lot.  You know, “What’s the number, Chad?” So, the number of I would give people is I say, “Shoot for a thousand email subscribers.”  And email is really the metric that we’re using these days for the sizing of platform. Your Facebook following is important. Yeah, your Twitter following and Instagram; all of it is important.  But the key metric is your email list. And by the way, there are ways of converting your Facebook followers into email subscribers, but I would shoot for a thousand.

Now, we have authors with few of them a thousand email subscribers landed book contracts.  Yes, have authors with 20,000 email subscribers failed to win a contract. Yes, it’s one factor.  There are three factors and it’s one. But it’s an important one and so my role if I may, shoot for a thousand.  But again, don’t get overwhelmed with that in the beginning. In the beginning, just start doing the work because eventually, you know, you get there.

Andrea:  OK, a thousand doesn’t seem like it’s out of, you know…

Chad Allen:  Not for you, because you’ve been doing this before.

Andrea:  Right, right.  No, I mean, even it’s starting…I think the first number I ever heard was 10,000.  So, that totally _____ out. I was like “Oh my gosh, there is no way I could get published then.”  And so that’s the reason why I went with self-publishing Unfrozen in the beginning. So, it’s interesting that you’re saying a thousand.

Chad Allen:  Yeah.  Well, I have just seen a number of people get interest from publishers at/or even below that level.  So, if you have a great concept, if your writing is compelling, if your proposal is strong, you know, let’s say you have a great marketing plan, sometimes it’s that combination of things that can help a publisher capture a vision for you and your book.

Andrea:  OK, perfect.  All right, so in terms of craft, some people are very comfortable writing, some people might enjoy the idea of writing, but they don’t have time.  They like literally don’t have time. They’re so busy that they don’t have time to do it, to dig in and get better to their craft that sort of thing – to what extent have you seen ghostwriting work for folks like that?

Chad Allen:  Works all the time, yeah.  Yeah, and that’s true, some people – they have the expertise.  They have the authority in a particular space, so they really are the author but they need a writer to help get the content into book form.  So, I think, it’s a perfectly legitimate way to get a book into the world. And let’s face it, like if your expertise is, I don’t know, human resources and somebody else’s expertise is writing, you know, it kind of makes sense to combine the two to create the best book possible.  So that would take some resources, I mean, a ghostwriter doesn’t come for free typically, but it’s a great way to get a book into the world.

Andrea:  Do you recommend that if somebody wanted to go that route, do they try to find their own ghostwriter?  Is that where they could start?

Chad Allen:  Yeah.  I think so, yeah.  I mean, it wasn’t very often that we in the publishing world would…there were some cases where we really had a vision for a0. project.  We knew the author had, for example, a great platform but maybe the author’s writing ability, you know, needed a little help. And so, we would go and help them find a ghostwriter.  But more often than not, the projects came to us with the pair already in place. So, I would ask around. And the book you want to write, you know, in that space see who the ghostwriters are out there and start sending emails and see if see if you can buy in somebody who can help you out.

Andrea:  When people starts with their book proposal, what point in the process do they start that?  And should they be seeking out an agent before writing the book proposal? Is an agent even necessary?

Chad Allen:  Yeah.  You know, you can start your book proposal anytime.  My advice is to at least get a website up and start serving, you know, audience for a while and then as you begin to develop your concept that will makes sense to work on a proposal.  You learn so much about your book by just doing the work of a book proposal. In terms of agents, the larger publishers typically do not accept what they call unsolicited proposals. So, the only that you can get to hear with those larger house is with an agent.  And then different agents have different submission guidelines. Some want just a query, you know, just a description of your book initially. But eventually, you will need a book for all of it. The agent is going to need a book proposal to pitch your book to publishers.

So, I always recommend, even you’re pursuing an agent who doesn’t want a proposal at the beginning, it’s a good idea to have a proposal already written so that when the agent replies and says “Yes, I wanna work with you,” you have a proposal you can send them right away because eventually you’re going need that.

Andrea:  So, for those who don’t know, what are some of the basic components of a book proposal?

Chad Allen:  Yes.  So, there’s the cover page obviously, which is where you kind of present your title and subtitle.  It sounds really simple but actually your title and subtitle encapsulate your book concept – the first C.  We talked about how important that concept is. Your title and subtitle in many ways, they are your book concept.  So, very simple to put a title and subtitle on a piece of paper but the process of coming up with a compelling concept takes a lot of work.

Then, I will put up the major elements – there are more than these.  But the major elements are the cover page with maybe a few alternative titles and subtitles, the brief description which is a three-to- five-paragraph vision statement for your book, your bio, a table of contents and chapter by chapter synapses, your marketing plan and sometimes it gets divided into platform, and marketing plan, and then the writing sample.  It’s usually about three chapters of the proposed book. So, those are the major elements of a book proposal.

Andrea:  OK, so let’s see.  Is there anything else that I’m missing in terms of asking, you know, what is subject matter expert, in particular, would need to consider when they’re thinking about the idea of writing in doing a book proposal?

Chad Allen:  You know, you could ask a question like if someone out there is considering this but they’re nervous about trying to do it on their own, what might they do so that this isn’t quite so solitary.

Andrea:  OK, got you.  All right, if someone out there is thinking about doing this, they might be a little daunted by the idea of trying to tackle this on their own, what are some of the options that they have that they could do?

Chad Allen:  Yeah, that’s great.  So, I do think it’s really important to have a community that you’re doing this with.  And so, it kind of depends on what you want to accomplish. So, if you want to start a blog, to kind of begin serving your audience, there are communities or people out there who have an interest in the same thing.  And so you can search out those communities. With my friend, Jonathan Milligan, he runs Blogging your Passion. There’s a Facebook group and there’s this whole community of people who are interested on being on that journey together.

If you want to write a book and you want to be in a community of people who are trying to figure out how to write a book, I would point you to BookCamp, my own community of writers.  You can go to chadrallen.com and you can find the information on BookCamp where I kind of service a coach or community of people. You know, there’s some training involved, some mentoring.  You can get direct coaching from me in BookCamp, but that’s a great community. But wherever you go, think about what you want to accomplish and then search out communities either virtually or where you are locally that could support you on that journey.  Because you’re absolutely right, like if you try to do this on your own, I mean, you might be a little _____ but chances are you’re going to get worn out and give up, you know. So, I don’t want to see that happen. I want to see your listeners thrive. And so, yes, listen to that impulse and go find that community of support.

Andrea:  I think it’s a really good idea, because it can feel very isolating.  It can feel very lonely, especially when you’re trying to kind of confront some of your own internal battles that might come up because writing can be a very strenuous thing on your own soul.  Chad, when I think about that, I’m curious about you. What is one of your biggest internal hurdles to having a voice of influence for yourself?

Chad Allen:  Yeah.  Thank you for asking.  I think it’s, in many ways, the question that we all have to answer.  And I’ll tell you a little story if I could that illustrates this in my own life.  Last fall, I was having lunch with an entrepreneur – he’s a little farther along than I am.  His name is Bryan Harris. He’s my buddy, a friend from Tennessee. And we’re having lunch and he said, “So, what are you excited about right now?”  And I said, “Well, you know, I’ve never done this before but I’m really excited about getting a small group of people together and this wouldn’t be for everybody because the price would be a little higher than it would be six months that I would coach them on writing a book proposal and building a platform.”  “And we would become a community together as we do this and there’d be an _____ like halfway through and I would try to help all of these people land book deals.” “I’m really excited about that.” “But I’m nervous because I’ve never done anything like it.” And Bryan looked at me, you know, and he said “You can totally do that.”  He said, “I love this idea, you can totally do that.” “You can do that by this time next month.” “You can have 10 people sign that.”

And it was like, the fact that Bryan believed in me was everything.  And I went it off and sure enough, it didn’t happen as quickly as he said but I got some people signed up by then and that was enough momentum for me to carry on and it happened.  And it was an incredible experience. And so, I think belief in oneself is so important. And as long as I can keep the faith, as long as I can find people like Bryan to believe in me when I’m having trouble believing in me so that I can get to live my way into that belief from own self, “I’m all right.”  “I’ll do just fine.” But if I’m isolating, like we talked about before and I’m just struggling with myself talk, I don’t know. I think that’s like 70 to 80 percent of the game right there. Just believe in yourself so that’s would I would point to.

Andrea:  I really appreciate that perspective because I think there have been times when I’ve heard maybe coaches or mindset gurus who would say, “It’s all about your belief in yourself.”  “It’s all about that and you just need to believe in yourself.” It could just happen, like as though you could put the switch. But what you just told us that there are times when you have to rely on other people’s belief in you so that you can live into that and I also found that to be true.  It helps tremendously to have outside validation, not just to make you feel better, but to actually help you believe that it’s possible.

Chad Allen:  Yes.  So, seek those people out, absolutely.  Like even as we’re talking about, you know, Brandon Burchard did that for me in the book I read and then Bryan did it for me over lunch.  And now there’s another fellow that I’m in regular communication with _____. So, it’s not always going to be the same person but I would just encourage your listeners to be ______ about looking for who that could be.  Sometimes we do, we sort of to borrow the belief of others to move forward.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, Chad, again, people can find you where?

Chad Allen:  chadrallen.com.  So that’s chadrallen.com.

Andrea:  We will definitely be linking that in the show notes.  And is there anything else in particular that you would like to say to our listener before we leave?

Chad Allen:  You can do this, do your art, get out there, and make your difference.  You know, Steve Jobs talked about making a dent in the universe and we all can do that.  So, listen to that internal pull and take action – the world will be a better place if you do and you will be a better person if you do.

Andrea:  Thank you so much.

Chad Allen:  Thank you, Andrea.

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How Your Attention and Energy Can Change the Game with Neen James

Episode 53

Neen James is a speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of Attention Pays. Neen’s client list has included companies like Viacom, Comcast, Paramount Pictures, Johnson & Johnson, and more! However, Neen also loves working directly with thought-leaders who want to share their ideas with the world in a unique way.

In this episode, Neen discusses how she decided to center her message around the concept of paying attention, how she got the word out initially about her message, the three we pay attention, why you need to own your uniqueness, how to maintain momentum when you’ve been sharing the same message for a while, how to leverage your book long after it’s been launched, what a habit loop is and how you can break it, and more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Neen James Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Today, I have with me Neen James.  Neen is a speaker and entrepreneur who works in the corporate space and does some amazing things with her speaking and her writing.  She just came out with a book, Attention Pays.  So I’m really looking forward to diving into this book with Neen and just discussing your leadership in this area, Neen.  I’m so thrilled to have you.

Neen James:  G’day!  What a treat to be on your show.  I was so looking forward to have time together today.

Andrea:  Me too.  OK, so Neen, can you start by just giving the audiences a little bit more of a clue as to what you do on a day-to-day basis or for your career?

Neen James:  So I grew up in a corporate business in Australia.  So I worked in retail banking telecommunications in the oil industry.  You got to imagine, Andrea, I worked in Australia, right?  So I have this fabulous corporate background, but as an expert, I’m obsessed with getting the world to pay attention.  I think that when we pay attention, Andrea, companies make more money and we have better relationships.

I have the privilege of working with really cool clients whether it’s media companies, like Comcast, Viacom, Paramount Pictures, or maybe pharmaceutical, you know, Johnson & Johnson.  There are so many cool corporate people that I get to work with but occasionally I have the privilege of working with thought leaders.  I want to take their ideas and share them with the world in a very unique way.  I know that you have a lot of listeners like that.

So I love this opportunity to be able to solve some of the challenges.  For example, people that are in positions of leadership, they may have a message but they’re just not a 100% sure on how to articulate that to be able to grab someone’s attention and then keep it.  Or maybe they have people in their team who wants getting everything done before focusing on the most important things.  Or maybe, there are people that are out who want to be able to create attention-grabbing strategies for their company, their product or services and I fix that.

So generally I’m hired as the keynote speaker for a large corporate events or sometimes I go and work with leadership teams and do their retreats.

The reason I do what I do, Andrea, is I just want the world to pay attention because I think when we do that, we create this significant moments that matter.  So there is no day in the life of Neen James, not one day is similar.  It could be me still sitting here and my work out gear after I have worked with my personal trainer by FaceTime or me on a stage in front of a thousand people in some fabulous hotel and then everything in between.  It’s those late nights at the airport.  It’s trying to do business in a cab in Uber or a lift.  That is what so fascinating about this career that I’ve chosen, Andrea, there’s no day in the life of Neen James, not one day is the same anyway.

Andrea:  So do you love that variety?

Neen James:  Oh my gosh, I crave that variety.  I am not a person who’s good with routine and I learned that very quickly in career.  My ideation productivity is crazy.  But I’m a fantastic person to have in a brainstorming meeting but when it comes to the execution of all those ideas, I love handing them over to someone else.

So one thing I learned is I was a really great project manager to a point.  So I could brainstorm the projects, scope it out, create the budget, get consensus from everyone, you name it and I could do it.  But when it came to having to do like weekly reports or the routine of the projects, I had to have people in my team who are brilliant at it.

Even to this day, I have surrounded myself who are brilliant, people are brilliant at detail and execution and so that allows me the freedom to have a routine thing.  I’m a kind of personality that needs to be constantly challenged, constantly looking for something new, change, evolution and transforming something.  And there are people who are brilliant at execution, logistics.  So I have some really brilliant people around me like that.  I have some clients who do that kind of work.  So I think you just got to find what you’re good at.

Andrea:  Yeah, that’s really encouraging to people like me who are like you.

Neen James:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Yes, it is.  It is fun to be able to…if you’re an activator, you like to start things but you’re not great at following up.  It’s wonderful and it’s so encouraging to know that there are people who do that and who can take it all the way to the finish line.

Neen James:  You also need to make sure that you’ve realized not a single thing, like when I ran my first marathon, I realized…and by the way, I’ve never ran in my life so that was like stupid thing to do.  I started running and then I did my first marathon within like five months.  It was crazy but here’s what I love, running a marathon is not an individual sport.  It’s a team sport, right?

So what I realized was while I’m maybe being a person who actually steps to cross the finish line to use your analogy, it was really a team of people that got me there.  My running mate, my sister, my husband, my physiotherapist, and my doctor; you know like there were gazillion of people, not to mention that there were clients waiting at the finish line.  That’s crazy to me but what it showed me was, we don’t do these things on our own.  I always believed that success comes when there is a really cool group of people around you and that has always been my experience.

Andrea:  OK, so I want to start talking about this message, Attention Pays, because one of the things that fascinates is how people decide on the message.  I know that this is something that you’re brilliant at but this message and throughout the book, you touched on a number of different sub points, like leadership, personal branding, productivity, and even the environment.

Neen James:  Uh-hmmm, yeah.

Andrea:  So how did you decide that it’s really the attention piece that you wanted to focus on as sort of the front runner of these messages or the umbrella message?

Neen James:  Yeah, I was always known for my work and productivity.  So Andrea, I had a reputation in corporate.  I was the person who could be given a project that might be like…one of my projects. it was like 10 months behind.  It has to be delivered in two months.  I had to raise $10 million and I literally had two months to do it and it was just me.

I remember, I have always been given these projects where I could get things done.  It was something I had a reputation for.  I didn’t even really understand that was important until I decided to leave the corporate world and then people were always asking me “How did you do that?  How did you get things done?”

And I thought “Oh my goodness, surely people get this.”  I think what happened, Andrea, is when things are intuitive to you, you just take for granted that you’re really good, like with your singing, right?  You kind of almost assumed that because singing comes naturally to you, you don’t think other people know how to sing too because it’s a gift you have.  So productivity was definitely a gift that I had.

I realized the world needed to be able to get more done.  My big learning came when I realized you can’t manage time but you can manage your attention.  That’s what led me down this path to really explore.  If it’s not about time management, we don’t really have a time management crisis, we have an attention crisis.  So then I set about to try and solve “How do we get people to start to truly pay attention?”

I mean, think about it, Andrea, our parents tell us to pay attention, our teachers tell us to pay attention.  It’s so annoying when people tell us to pay attention.  We hear it all the time and yet, we don’t always pay attention to the right people, the right things, or even the right way.  That’s really what made me pursue this so it was interesting to me.

I don’t know if you know a fabulous speaker by the name of Mark Sanborn, but Mark Sanborn is a dear friend and a phenomenal speaker.  He has written gazillions of books including the Fred Factor, which is a fantastic book.  But Mark and I were sitting in his office and I was getting very frustrated with where I was in my career.  I had hired him for some advice and so I got to spend some time with him.  He has a brilliant program for speakers who want to really elevate what they’re doing.

And so I was sitting in his boardroom and he said “Look, what is this really about?”  I was so frustrated, Andrea.  I was like “Arrgghh, I just want the world to pay attention.”  He said “I know it, because that’s what you’re all about.”  And I was like “Oh man.”  So it was that conversation with Mark where we really came up with this whole clever framing of Attention Pays, instead of Pay Attention.  I will always remember sitting at that table with him.  He’s been a huge influence in my career and he’s a very dear friend.

Thought leaders are notorious for this, if you want to be a thought leader or if you are a thought leader, often, you’re so close to your own content that sometimes it’s hard for us to see it ourselves, right?  So think about your hair stylist. She can’t color her own hair as well as she might be able to call someone who’s sitting in her chair.  I think for me, I needed someone brilliant like Mark Sanborn to see the big picture for me and really force me to think about what was the most important to me.

What I had realized too through my whole career, I knew I how to get attention.  I knew how to give attention and I think those two things are very different but they’re vital.  So as a thought leader, you need attention for the message that you have for the world and so you need clever ways to not just get attention but to keep people’s attention in a time where everyone is so distracted.

Andrea:  Yes, absolutely!  You chose this concept, Attention Pays, which is really clever, then how did you figure out how to communicate this message in a way to decision makers so that they understood that they needed to have you come speak about it or to come help their teams with it?

Neen James:  My brain is this freakish place.  It’s kind of like crazy town up there and one of the things that happened to me is when I start listening to a thought leader or an information expert about the intellectual property, I see a contextual model in my brain.  I’ve always done it.  I don’t know why it is and that’s a little scary.  So I start to draw shapes in my mind and I think to myself “How would I sort that in different way so that people could remember it more.

So I’m a huge advocate for contextual models and I believe if you can have a great contextual model that demonstrates your intellectual property.  It commercializes your intellectual property so much greater because it helps other people see the value of yout ideas in a way that makes commercial sense.

Now, having grown up in corporate, I totally understand that corporates are about making money, full stop, period, end of story, that’s it.  So if you have a great idea, it doesn’t matter how great your idea is, if a company cannot understand how that’s going to contribute to their bottom line then all you have is a really great idea.

So what I’ve learned was in order for me to commercialize attention, I have to be able to tie back to how companies would make greater profits if they started paying attention to their existing clients so that they could get the upsale if they could pay attention to new clients, so they could attract the kind of clients they want.  So from a customer service and experience’s view, it makes commercial sense.

But I took it further to say, it’s not just about _____, it’s about to the team.  If you really want to attract attention in an organization, you’ve got to be able to grab their attention and keep them so that they want to be able to work with you.  So it’s about talent retention as well.  And then I also realized, because I’m Australian, I don’t know if this is just an Aussie thing or it’s a “me” thing, but Australians are very environmental way.  And because we have a small country, we protect our planet, we recycle, we do all these things that I just assumed everyone did until I moved to the US.

You know, when I walk into the grocery store and everything was like triple wrapped in plastic and at that point, Australia banned plastic bags, we’re talking like 15 years ago now.   So I think that for me, it’s also about paying attention to the planet.  The way that I’ve sorted the books is I really think we pay attention in three ways, Andrea.

I think it’s personally that’s one way to pay attention and personal attention is all about who deserves your attention, right?  So that’s being very thoughtful.  Professionally, it’s about what deserves your attention.  That’s about being productive.  That’s about getting the right things done.  And then globally, it’s about how you pay attention in the world and that’s very much about being responsible and being a contributor in our planet.

So if you think about attention personal, professional, and global and obviously I have a contextual model for that that’s really where I started.  I started with the contextual model and then I started to unpack my intellectual property under those guidelines.  What that does is makes it super easy for the reader to understand it.  So there’s the visual of the contextual model and there’s also the strategies for the person who wants to have the application and execution.

So I think thought leaders need to consider, do they have a contextual model for their intellectual property because if they do, they’ll definitely make more money from that.  But if it’s just great idea you have in your head or that you’re sharing a speech, blog, or a podcast, until you can make it easy for people to process, it’s just sometimes, because people’s attention is very split, you’re not going to be able to keep their attention, right?  So unless you have a really cool way to grab that person who wants to see it in one page, that makes a big difference.

Andrea:  I love contextual model as well and I’ve read up on some of the things that you published about them and enjoyed that section in your book as well.  I know that contextual models help people not just…they help people process it because it hits on so many different areas of the brain.

Neen James:  Uh-hmm that’s exactly, right.  Yeah.

Andrea:  So it really reaches people at a deeper level in a quicker level and they’re able to apply it more quickly.  But I’m curious, on a practical level when it comes to somebody who has a contextual model, how do you decide what to share from stage either for free or in a big setting versus how much to share in your book or with clients?

Neen James:  So I have an abundance mentality and I think you know that about me.  I give steps away and people are going to rip you up.  That’s going to happen.  Let me give you an example, one of my books is called Folding Time:  How to Achieve Twice As Much in Half the Time.  That book was published way back in, I want to say, like 2014 or 2015.  One of the things that I have in this book is, obviously, a contextual model.

So in the book it makes sense to be like a PDF that also it could go on a slide deck which is animated which could go on the website, which could also be unpacked because every chapter is just basically on text model.  When I’m on stage, I draw the model with my body using my hand gestures and then what I do is then I reveal the animated model or I do it at the same time.

So you can use models in very clever ways.  You can use them and draw them with your body as you’re explaining a really key concept to your audience.  You could use it in a blog and then you could unpack what that means in the blog.  You could describe it in a podcast.  You could even say to people, “What I’d like you to do is draw a Venn diagram with three circles.  Now, in the first circle, I’d like you to write the word, Time, and in the second circle, the word Attention, do you know what I mean?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Neen James:  So you can actually share with people how do you want them to use the model as well.  Something I’m widely known for is I always ask for a big pad of paper to be on stage.  Now, that could be in front of thousand people and every time the meeting planner assists me, no one will see it.  I’d say, “I know, that’s not for your benefit, it’s for mine.”  So because I pull people from the audience all the time that’s another thing I’ve become very known for, it’s because I want to create this facilitated experience with my audience.

So I’ll pull someone like you out at the audience.  I’ll ask you some questions or play it on the stage and then I’d be like “Is this your contextual model?”  And then the audience goes crazy and it’s the only magic trick I have.  But because my brain thinks that way, it’s easy for me to do it in public.  It’s easy for me to do it in private when I work with people on their message.

I have a call coming up where a founder of a brand created by agency is about to a launch and they’ve hired me to be able to create a contextual model that would be very essential in their messaging and essential on their website.  And here’s the other thing that’s really powerful, Andrea, is in every proposal I ever have to submit, if I’m submitting a speaker proposal or someone wants to ask about my services, my model is always included in my proposal.

Here’s one of the things that’s important for thought leaders to consider is because you are the only person who can articulate that model the best way, but it shows you have _____ of intellectual property.  It shows that you have really thought about the offering you have for the world.  So I cannot rave enough of how important the contextual model is.

Andrea:  That’s so good.  OK, so you don’t believe that there is a point at which you could share too much on the front end so that people don’t end up hiring you because you sort of giving it away.

Neen James:  Oh honey, there will always be like DIY, right?  So there’s always going to be DIY people, do-it-yourself, and that’s great.  Give them the tools.  Let them go for it, right?  And then there’s going to be people who would never be able to replace your energy.  So for example, all the meeting planners call me that energizer bunny – you know, the Duracell pink bunny, that’s so me and that’s what they’re paying for.  They’re hiring me to bring in energy to the environment, to the conference where I kick it off and create this really fun environment where everyone feels like “OK, I can do this,” right?

While I look little and I sound like I’m 5, then I can show them stuff like contextual models and go “Oh, and by the way, I’m kinda smart.”  And I think that that’s a lovely contrast when you consider what you’re doing for your audience is my only job is to stand in service at that audience.  So for me, I will do whatever they need at that moment in time.  If they need me to give them the model, you bet I will.  If they want take further on my slides.  I don’t care if they want a PDF from me, I’ll happily give it to them.

I think we need to have this place of abundance.  You will never be replaced if they want that life in person experience or they want your brain to coach them or mentor them.  No one will ever be able to do that, not a PDFs is going to ever do that for you; however, the PDF will show the value and I do believe not everyone is always in a financial place where they can afford someone like me, and so I’ll give them as much as they can to do it themselves.

If they get stuck and then they want my help then that’s another conversation to be had.  But I think as a thought leader, we have to have a role value and we have to deliver enormous value so that people literally want to just hire you and it doesn’t matter what your price is.

Andrea:  OK, so have you always felt this confident about your message and about yourself on stage and the value that you’re offering?  I love to ask this question of my guest, but where does your confidence come from?

Neen James:  Oh good Lord, no.  I have not always felt this confident and _____ they have, oh for goodness sake that’s so not true.  Seriously, like I still have like self-doubt, I’m like “What on earth am I doing?”  I remember when I sent a manuscript off to the publisher.  I pressed the send button and I was like “Oh man, what if they don’t like it.”  Oh honey, I think everyone has that.  Look, I’m as human if not more so, than everyone else.

But here’s what I do believe in.  I do believe that each of us as thought leader has a calling that is on your life.  You can call it something that doesn’t sound as woo-woo if that’s important to you, but for me, a big reason why I do this work is because the feedback I get, when people read the book and say “I had to put it down because I wanted to pay attention to my wife.”  Or “I had to put it down because I decided that I need to spend more time with my team.”

All the things they’re telling me that they’re doing as a result of listening to me in a speech or maybe they have read the book or maybe they listen to a podcast like this, that to me means that I’ve stepped in into my calling.  I’m doing what I mean to do on this planet.

So I think for me, that’s where my confidence comes from and you know, I once heard and I wish I know the author of it, but I heard someone say once, “You can’t be nervous when you stand in service.”  So my job has always been…I’ve always had that belief that my only job is to stand in service.  You know, I have this amazing performance coaches.  I work with Michael and Amy Port, and every month, I invest time with them.  They’re helping me to be better speaker on stage, because they come from an acting background so they’re brilliant people.  They’re great people, very accomplished as you know but they are truly the best in the in the business I’ve ever seen.

So I worked with them and what I realized was Neen James does not work with the script.  I can’t work with the script.  My brain is not wired to work with the script.  We have tried to work with the script and it just didn’t work and I was losing my confidence and Michael explained that I was looking to like…it was too sweet.  He could tell when I would step into the part of my brain that I was like “Oh no, I’m supposed to say this.”

But what we’re able to was what I’m really brilliant at is creating an environment for the people in the room, facilitating that experience.  So we decided to elevate all of that, Andrea, and what that does is I’m stepping into stuff that’s so easy for me.  It was so much fun and they’re still learning at the same time but it’s not a traditional way that other speakers might work.

When you think about the fact that you’re trying to encourage people to find their voice in their life, as you say, then this was the way that we find my voice.  My voice is not changing for them.  So I’m still going to sound like a Minion but it still works, right?

Andrea:  Oh come on.

Neen James:  So that’s another thing that you’re probably aware of.  As soon as I step on stage, I talk about my height, my voice, my accent.  We get it out.  It’s in the first two minutes to move on.  So I think too that sometimes the confidence comes from owning those things about you that are very unique.  So for me, I don’t apologize at all because they’re part of who I am and that’s one of the things that the meeting planners remembered.  It’s one of the things that the audience loves and treasures.

So for thought leaders, you know, I really want to encourage you, don’t be like anyone else.  Find the uniqueness that is truly yours and leverage that because that’s help people to remember the experience of you and you’ll be more confident when you step into that place.

Andrea:  Oh yes, leverage your uniqueness, and that can be difficult.  I mean, it can be because sometimes it feels a little intimidating or you feel like you should be something that everybody else expects you to be and you’re taking a pretty big leap of faith to step out and be you.

Neen James:  It’s true.  And then the other day, like because the book has launched, you know we launched…I think we sold like 6500 copies the first few days.  I mean, it was crazy.  I was very proud of that.  We came in number one, the best new release on Amazon.  That was so very exciting to me.  And then stupid me when I read book reviews for an old book that I had written years ago and some guys wrote, “Oh she sounds like a Minion, which is why I _____.”

It’s really quite enough that kind of review and it had nothing to do with my writing.  It has nothing to do with the intellectual property.  It was just that he didn’t like my voice.  I was like “Oh my gosh that’s amazing.”  That’s tough, like it could throw me for a loop.  I remember reaching out to some friends going “How do you do with these kinds of people?”  So I think we all get our confidence from that by the way, you know what I mean?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Neen James:  So those types of things that like “Oh man, what am I doing?  Why is this happening?”  So sometimes because as thought leaders, especially if you have this message for the world and you’re very driven as a leader, what happens is there’s a place of a vulnerability that occurs, right?  So when you step in the world and say, I stand for this, and then you write a book about it, “Oh good Lord,” right?

So you write a book for that and you are opening up your heart and putting it down in a platter _____ about the world.  It is an incredibly vulnerable thing whether you do a podcast like you, whether you write a blog, whether you write a book; you’re putting your ideas into the world.  When you do that, it’s a place of vulnerability but I don’t think people understand.  I think speaking is one of the most vulnerable things that you can do.  You stand on a stage and share with the world what you think and standing in service to people.  That’s a very vulnerable thing and yet, you have to have the confidence to be able to do it.

Andrea:  You know, I know that you’re friends with Elizabeth Marshall.

Neen James:  Oh I love that woman! If you’re listening to this podcast, stop what you’re doing and go and call Elizabeth Marshall.

Andrea:  I need to have her on here for sure.  I know that one of the things that she talks about is making sure that you continue to market your book after you put it out.  This is something that’s difficult and that’s difficult for me and we’re talking about follow through and execution before.  So when you’re somebody that kind of has a lot of energy on the front end and it’s harder to get all the way to the end of the finish line on your marathon, I think it’s the same way with a book or with a message in general.  It’s so easy to want to just start a new one.  So do you have any thoughts about where you’re at?  I mean, you’re just starting this launch, I mean really, it still a start in just a month or so.  But how do you keep going with the same message for quite a while?

Neen James:  Well, fortunately for me I had Liz Marshall and I had her in the process like the need to hire her because she’s brilliant and she knows the industry and she knows the _____.  But one of the beautiful things she said to me was, we’re talking about relationships, and I was talking to her about the fact that I felt like I was calling in every favor I possibly had in getting people to write testimonials and buy books.  And then now, I’m begging people to write Amazon reviews, like I felt like I was literally calling in every favor.

She said to me, you know, just be really conscious that this is a long term relationship game, it’s not about the launch.  It was a beautiful reminder that I think every author needs to start because it can be very consuming, the launch.  Now, the launch has happened and it was literally only two weeks ago and at the time, I was listening to this some amazing _____ but it was very, very fresh to me.  But as soon as it was launched, I went into an Evergreen Marketing Strategy.

So I hired a fantastic guy by the name of _____ and I have been building this phenomenal Evergreen Marketing Strategy.  So one of the things we talked about is yes, the book is launched and that’s great.  Now, I have to be very intelligent about actively leveraging all of the work that I put into the book.  Because that’s very easy to a point, Andrea, once you hand the manuscript in, I was like “OK great, that’s one major chunk of a project and then it launches.  “Well that’s great too,” right?

But then if you have published it with the tradition publishing, you couldn’t earn back your worth.  So you know, we all get these lovely words to _____.  That’s just funny, it’s doesn’t mean anything.  So I’m very conscious about you know to earn back very quickly.  And then I think for me, it’s very much about thinking, “Who do I need to get this book in front of?”  So it changes the way that I market.

I think it’s one of things that I would suggest the thought leaders if you’re considering publishing, whether it’s self-publishing, hybrid publishing, or traditional publishing; all of them have their own benefits.  All of them have their own drawbacks.  Determine a launch strategy for sure, but put more attention and energy into the Evergreen Book Marketing Strategy so you’re doing something every day to move your book closer to its goals.

Andrea:  OK, let’s just bring this down like my personal own experiences.  So I think my struggle has been with this, number one, I self-publish and so I don’t have the royalty issue.  I was really paying back my own family _____.

Neen James:  That’s more pressure than a publisher.

Andrea:  Well, it can be, it can be, or it can’t.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be so I don’t feel that responsibility.  I felt a responsibility to get it out but then it was kind of…and there’s a little bit of me that is a little bit like “What do I use it for me now?”

Neen James:  Ahhh, well then definitely _____ the different things that I know that I _____.

Andrea:  Yeah.  Do you have any thoughts about how…and I think I would also put out there too that I think that there’s also…and the reason I’m bringing this up for me is not just to get some advice from you, but also because I think that there’s a lot of people that struggle with this and that is that you continue to make yourself vulnerable by continuing to put it out there.  If you put it out there and then you take it away then you’re sort of like “Well, I tried.  I created it.  I did my best and now I’m gonna hide.”

Neen James:  What’s that thing in Sunday school that they used to teach and I thought that the phrase was something like “Don’t hide your light under a bushel,” or something like that.

Andrea:  Yes, yes.

Neen James:  That’s what makes me think of.  See, doing this way and then you have this beautiful product that you’re proud of when it was printed and yet, you know, you’re like “Huh, I’m exhausted.”  That’s the challenge too, right?  It’s the exhaustion that comes from getting it too the place where it’s in the world.  I think you have to fall in love with the product again.

So one of the things that I did was I handed the manuscript in in the fall of last year, but the book didn’t actually come out officially, you know, I got my hands on the very first copy in the beginning of last month.  I literally…I remember, I sat and read my own book and that sounds so self-absorbed…

Andrea:  Oh no!

Neen James:  And I was like “Oh my God, I love the story.  Oh my gosh, I forgot I write that.  Oh I love that,” right?  So what’s happens between handing manuscript in, or in your case going to print production, it is that you worked so hard to pull up this particular project.  And maybe it’s not book, maybe it’s a speech, maybe it’s a blog you’ve been thinking about it, maybe it’s finally launching a podcast you wanted into the world, or it’s finally designing a training workshop, whatever it is that you release into the world.  When I sat and read it, I was like “You know, I really like that.”

Here’s just some quick ideas of ways that I think you can leverage books.  If you have particular case studies that you’ve written about, you definitely reach out and make sure that it gets into the right hands of the person that you wrote about.  If you are looking to book speeches from it, be very deliberate.  I have a particular financial goal and number of speeches I want to achieve as a result of publishing this book and I’m going to track every single one of those.

I also think that it’s a very powerful way to be able to serve the world and thinking through, you know. so Melissa Agnes has a great new book called Crisis Ready.  It’s a phenomenal book and would make the most brilliant curriculum for universities and anyone in academia and schools.  It’s just such a fantastic book on how to build that invincible brand.

So I think what she’s really good at is understanding who she wrote the book for, and then think about, would your book be a great curriculum for someone?  And if so, how would you make that happen?  Some of my clients have done this, they bought the book in bulk and then they put something on it.  So for example, women in cable and television, this is in association for women who are cable and television obviously.

So one of my clients put copies for everyone and then put a sticker of _____.  It’s just really lovely.  So there are ways that you can also leverage the book and then for me, it is the required handouts.

So if I ever do a contextual modeling session with someone or with an organization, I ask that everyone has read that section in advance.  Now, you can also use it during your speech or your training workshop and you just make it required reading or required resource and so that’s another way to be able to move the book.

But I also think that the book can, you know, find its way into the hands of people which is quite serendipitous, right?  So you may meet someone and you might be talking about your particular type of expertise and then you invite them and say “Hey, may I send you a copy of my book.”  I never assume people want the book, by the way.  That’s another thing.  I think thought leaders get so obsessed with their _____ that they think like the whole world wants it.

I know myself, like I literally have a _____ sitting behind me that needs to be read, still there are books every time my friend publishes book, obviously.  But then people send me books all the time which is very lovely.  But if they know where the book was in my reading cue, it might be a little discouraging.  So I always ask permission.  I just say “Hey, would you like a copy of my book?  If so, I’ll be delighted to send you a copy.”  Don’t _____ they have to say yes.

Andrea:  Oh those are some great tips.

Neen James:  Yeah.  We just need to think about how do you cleverly leverage your book.  And then also think about, not just the book but you know, my book is about attention so, obviously, I’ve got to be a little bit more clever.  We had some special packaging design.  We had stickers design.  Inside the cover when I saw in it, we have this little like lipstick kisses that I stick on it.  Stupid stuff but, you know, I thought of as many different things that I could to grab someone’s attention.

And then if I worried about anyone, because the book cover is red, as you know I bought those little red sticky Post-It notes that kind of a little, I don’t know if what kind of sticky notes there.  But they’re little things like tabs and then if I mention anyone, I made sure, I put a red tab beside that section of the book so it grabbed their attention so they go straight to that page.

So rather than saying “Hey, I featured you on page 82,” I tabbed page 82 and then they would go find it themselves.  So there are little ways that you can also think about, you know, what is the role your book serves in the world and how could you leverage that and how can you get it in more hands.  You know, some people book sales are their aspirations.  For others, it is used _____ and for others, it might be just a really expensive business pad.  You have to decide what the role is of the book and then leverage it accordingly.

Andrea:  OK, so you’re so good with these tips, and so before we sign off, I want to go back to some of the ones that you gave in your book specifically.  One of the things that you talked about was the habit loop.  So when you were talking about it, you were also explaining how to break the habit of essentially checking your phone too often or those types of things.  So would you mind sharing with us about the habit loop on how we can break habits that are not healthy?

Neen James:  Well, think about what a habit loop really mean.  If you really want to change your brain, if you really want to change your habits, if you really want to change your focus, it’s not just the matter of saying “Oh, I’m gonna stop doing that.”  It doesn’t really work like that, right?  Which you’ve got to think about this; number one, you got to identify what are those attention triggers that are negative, the things that are really damaging.  Maybe it’s your relationships, maybe they’re damaging your productivity, or maybe you’re not getting goals that you really want.

So the first thing you’re going to do is definitely identify those negative triggers then you’ve got to take responsibility to make a change so that you can get rid of those triggers.  That might mean the simplicity of turning your cell phone completely off or putting it in a folder or putting it in your glovebox so you don’t actually drive and text at the same time.  You got to think about what that means, right?

And then what you got to do is once you do that, you got to then replace that with a new behavior.  So you have a new habit.  For example, when you get in to your car, if you put your phone in your bag if you’re a woman or in the glove compartment maybe, then that’s the new habit that you’re creating, right?  You’re breaking the negative habit of texting while driving and you’re creating a new habit.  So every time, you get into the car, your brain associates that activity with that.  When you think about this new habit, in order for this to new behavior to become a habit, you got to keep doing it.

Did you ever hear that stupid saying that it takes 21 days to form a new habit?  It’s not true.  It’s so not true, and so many speakers including myself, unfortunately, I believed it until I actually did some research and they said, the true amount of time that they find that it takes to create a new habit is actually 66 days.  That’s very different to 21, right?  So it’s about identifying the negative habit, it’s about making sure that you then create a new behavior.  And once you have that new behavior in place is that you keep repeating that that’s the habit.  Make sense?

Andrea:  Yes, and to the influencer listening, there are so many…I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of like specific ideas and examples that she gives in this book so you really need to get Attention Pays and let’s give them one more, shall we?  What about the 90-day promotional strategy?  I really, really love this.  I think that people need to think about this because it doesn’t matter whether you’re working for yourself or someone else.  You can be intentional about your personal brand, and so tell us about that 90-day promotional strategy that mentioned.

Neen James:   Well, everybody knows that we have a personal brand.  That’s not kind of new to all of the people who are listening to your podcast because you unpacked this so beautifully in your book.  People know the importance of the fact that you are a product then you got to treat yourself like a product as well.  But I also believe that when you think about it, like say for example…I think what you’re referencing is that, you want to be able to create…

Andrea:  It’s on page 66.

Need James:  I exactly knew where it is, believe me.  It’s like when you have a career plan…now, I say that confidently but that’s not a hundred century.  But this one I do know, when I was looking in my career early in banking, I realized that the people that were getting promoted were getting the attention because they were getting things done.  So here’s what I decided to do, I decided that I will have what you’re calling what we have in the book called, the 90-Day Fulfillment Promotional Strategies.  I decided, it would take me 90 days.

So basically, I would think 90 days is going to take me to learn the job then it’s going to take me another 90 days to master the job and it’s going to take me another 90 days to find my successor so that within 12 months, I could be promoted.  So three months to learn it, three months to master it, three months to find my successor and then within 12 months, I’ll be promoted.

Now, if you track my _____ you can actually see the _____ in banking.  I was promoted on leverage every 10 months.  As thought leaders influences leaders in our community, we have to look at our plans and think “What am I gonna achieve in this 90 days and then what am I gonna to evolve that in the next 90 days,” because I think we can our head around 90 days.  But people that are doing five year plans, huh, so much can change.

So what I’m trying to get my client to do is think about how can you accelerate your commercial strategy, and it could be for example, if you don’t work for someone else, maybe you’re not looking to get promoted inside the company if you’re not corporate.  If you’re an entrepreneur, I look at my business in 90 days cycle.  So every 90 days, I’m developing a new marketing strategy, a new message so that I’m constantly looking at the different modalities of the work that I do and how that can be received.

I could get my head around 90 days because you can also see a shift in behavior in 90 days, right?  So yeah, the 90-day strategy was something that I was notorious for in my corporate career.  I had a mentoring program for executives and I cancelled them to look at the same thing, because as leaders we also have to train our successor and I think that’s a gift many of us have.

So in corporate, we are always training the next person who takes our role and if you don’t do that, you can’t get promoted.  As an entrepreneur, we need to know what is our succession plan or what is the plan for our practice or our business so that you have that next-level thinking that allows you to decide how you’re going to take your vacation, what’s going to happen if you, you know, if something happens to your health.  We have to have succession plans and the ways.

Andrea:  Alright, Neen, this has been so great.  Thank you so much for taking time to be with us today and share just abundantly in your words from your wisdom, your brilliance, your experience and your energy.  Thank you for the inspiration as well.  We really, just really appreciate your time with us today.

Neen James:  It was my absolute privilege and thank you for everything that you’re doing in the world to help people find that voice so they can be that most amazing version of themselves.

Andrea:  OK, so Neen, where should people look to find more of Neen?

Neen James:  The good thing for me is there’s only one Neen James online.  So if you just Google it, neenjames.com, you will find me.  That’s the easiest way and you can follow me on Twitter or you can see my adventures in Instagram or you can find out so many free resources at neenjames.com.

Andrea:  Hmmm and YouTube channel as well.

Neen James:  Oh yeah, hundreds of videos, literally hundreds of videos there for free.

Andrea:  Yes, great!  Well, thank you so much, Neen

Neen James:  My absolute pleasure.  Thanks for letting me serve your listeners.

 

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How to Market Your Book Without Fear with Lindsey Hartz

Episode 42

Lindsey Hartz is a marketing consultant for Christian authors and publishers. She is also the the book marketing agency, Lindsey Hartz Creative. Lindsey has been a part of over 60 book launches and she was actually a big help with my own book launch a few years ago.

In this episode, Lindsey breaks down the four main struggles practically every single one of her clients have experienced, her tips for how authors can push past their fear and become comfortable with marketing their books, how to find your audience so you can begin marketing to them, why you should be collaborating with other authors instead of trying to compete with them, why you need to take your target audience on a “relational journey” as you communicate with them, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! Today, I have with me, Lindsey Hartz from Lindsey Hartz Creative, which is a book marketing agency for Christian Authors and Publishers. I know that whether you relate to the word “Christian” or not, you will definitely benefit from this conversation that we’re going to have with Lindsey, this book marketing expert.

 

Andrea: So, Lindsey, it is so good to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Lindsey Hartz: I am thrilled to be here. Thank you!

Andrea: Lindsey and I have kind of known each other for maybe a couple of years, I suppose, because I had a book coming out and I connected with Lindsey and she gave me some really great book marketing advice. Now, here we are, a couple of years later and it’s good to have you here.

Why don’t you tell people that are listening just a little bit more about what you do and how you got going, like why did you even get started with book marketing?

Lindsey Hartz: Great. Thank you! I am officially a marketing consultant for Christian Authors and Publishers. What that means in layman’s terms is I get to sit on my fabulous front porch and read amazing books. Then I get the privilege of connecting with authors and speakers to help teach them how to market that book well to the audience they have and to the audience they need based on what the book is about.

So it’s a lot of fun and it’s pretty much my dream job because I’ve always loved to read.

How I got into it? My background is actually in corporate marketing and project management. So out of college until about 2007, I was on kind of a traditional career path. I was working my way up the corporate ladder then my family and I walked through a pretty difficult season that year which resulted in my leaving work and to come home to rebuild my family. It was kind of one of those moments where we were at a crossroads of staying in the life that we had or moving forward into the life that we were meant to be in.

During that time, I personally was taking stock of my life, kind of my gifts and my talents and the purpose and the passion and that I was not pursuing and really trying to figure out who I was meant to be outside of a career that was really based on success and on money and on being overwhelmed and overbooked, and all that sort of thing.

My leaving that job was kind of the trajectory of the next phase of my life. I was 31 years old, suddenly lost most of our income, most of our affluence, but what we gained was so much more.

In that 10 or l1 years since, my family and I had a complete 180 in our life. That season led to our faith, as mentioned. I worked with Christian authors. That’s a direct result of my faith transformation during this time.

My family’s faith, our focused changed from, again, that success mindset and money mindset to focusing on ministry and serving others.

This business really came about because I was trying to marry what I was really good at and what I loved to do which, in my case, has really helped peoples’ lives be transformed through the written word and really do it in a way where I felt like I could make positive impact.

Kind of the impetus for the business was my actually walking into a bookstore and finding a book and picking it up that identified me personally, like who I was and the struggles I was experiencing. Really, the tension I felt between the pull of success, the pull of possession and the pull of wanting to serve, it really helped me see that I wasn’t alone in that. So that book and those words literally gave me the courage to change my life.

It’s really amazing to me that so many years later I get to run a business that helps me provide resources to, hopefully, do the same for other readers.

Andrea: It’s always interesting to me in these conversations to hear people who are doing coaching and consulting like you. They seem to, a lot of times, end up feeling like they’re at these crossroads of some kind in their life and that’s the reason why they go ahead and try this.

It’s interesting to me that you were able kind of… it sounds like you really cared about books because their personal impact on you and then you were able to say, “Well, what do I have to bring to that, that passion, and bring those things together?” Like you, said marrying them. Gosh, what a powerful combination. What an exciting thing to be able to do to put those things together.

Lindsey Hartz: Yeah. And I won’t say that the journey was easy. Obviously, I’m giving a synopsis of what occurred. But when I think back to all the struggle and all the heartache and all the pain that you go through of trying to figure out what really matters to me in my life and what impact do I want to make in the world, and then how can I make that impact on the world without sacrificing my family, which was very important to me.

When I think of the people that listen to this podcast, I think all of us are really just trying to do the same thing. We’re trying to make a little bit of impact to the people that we care most about and the people that we can help most, but we also have lives. We have hopes. We have dreams. We have aspirations. So when it comes to that personal brand and communication strategy in developing that, it’s really first and foremost identifying that for yourself first. Why are you doing this, and then how are you going to get there and keep the things that are most important first in your life.

Andrea: Oh, yeah. So true. This can get out of whack in the pursuit of trying to figure out what you’re doing.

You said it was more messy than you indicated. Can you give us a glimpse into what that meant for you, the messiness?

Lindsey Hartz: I think honestly, from a personal perspective, I had a lot of fear that I had to deal with because when you’re in a corporate environment the expectations are pretty clear. You have a clear career path, you have people holding you accountable, you have deliverables, you have performance reviews that state literally whether you did your job well or not, and you’re compensated for it. So I think in the corporate world, there’s a lot of validation that you get all the time, which can be positive, or feedback which can be like an area of opportunity. So it’s a much different world.

Then suddenly leaving that behind and doing everything on your own in kind of an entrepreneurial world, which is what most coaches and consultants fall into, right? So I think the messy part for me really boiled down to, in the beginning, lack of confidence. It was very scary to leave behind what I knew and what I had my master’s degrees in. Everything I had been working for and training for for years.

Not to be too overdramatic but I did feel literally like I didn’t… it’s like who I was was gone and I was left trying to figure out, “OK, now that I’m not that career woman, who am I? How do I live this life? How do I be a wife and a mom and how do I create a career that allows me to stay present in their lives?”

So I had to deal with lack of confidence. I had to deal with financial fear, I mean going from a paycheck every two weeks to never really knowing exactly how much money is going to come and when.

And I think confidence, it takes, honestly, a lot of guts and a lot of courage and a lot of bravery to get up every day and go, “OK, I’m gonna do what I know I’m great at. I’m going to help as many people as I can.”

Again, because of my faith, there’s a whole element of trust that that provision will come as long as I’m being obedient to what I feel as the divine calling. So that’s what I mean by the “messy”.

And then you also take into account just life. We all have experiences that just shake us. I think one of the misconceptions I had of the Christian faith, because before this I was not of the faith and then after I was, I had this misconception that just because I believed in God everything would be easy. That’s not been true at all. I think what’s changed is my awareness of the fact that really bad things happen to really good people and it’s going to happen to everybody regardless of your faith background.

But what my faith has allowed me to do is have a different perception of what I do with it. So I can let those circumstances and that messiness break me down and prevent me from making an impact, from loving people well, from serving well, and I can let it immobilize me, or I can let it activate me and help me keep going.

So I think, like I said, just different situations that happen with children, with jobs, with moves, with family, with friends, anything. You name it. All of that happens at the same time that you’re trying to live out your calling, or live out your job or live out your role. And every one of us has to take stock of how do we keep pushing through and working through this and be effective and have impact.

Andrea: Well said. OK, I’m guessing that what you learned in your own stepping out into this new role has really impacted the way that you work with clients and serve people who work with your agency. I’m wondering what kind of internal roadblocks or struggles do authors go through when they’re thinking about actually the idea of promoting a book or promoting themselves.

It feels like, I know because I’ve written a book, I know that it feels so personal when you birth a baby and you’re putting it into the world – the baby being the book, of course – and then there’s all this fear and then there’s all these other things that are quite similar to what you just described. How do you help people through that?

Lindsey Hartz: That is a fantastic question and I’m sitting here thinking out of the five years I’ve had the business, I’ve probably run about 60 book launches, had about a hundred clients that may not have been book launches, maybe we’re focusing in marketing, but they’re all authors.

I think I can really boil down the answer to this question to four main struggles that all of them have had. It didn’t matter whether they were a brand new author or whether they were self-published or whether they were traditionally published, whether they had a lot of experience or not. Every single author at any stage of their journey or their experience struggled with these things:

The first is actually comparison. I think there’s this question that authors ask themselves of, “Does my message really matter in the sea of voices that is out there?” The answer, of course, is yes. Your message does matter.

I tell a lot of my clients, especially when I have clients that have books that are similar to other books that are out, I always tell them, “You know, the topic may be the same but you are not. Your life experiences, your personality, your writing style, your unique perspective on that topic matters. There’s going to be an audience for you.”

So the whole notion of comparison is to shift it from comparison to collaboration, which we’ll talk about later and in more detail.

I also would think fear. There’s a very common fear because you said writing is kind of like a book baby. It’s a very vulnerable time. A lot of times authors have material in the book that’s personally difficult for them, or it’s difficult for family or friends. Sometimes there’s fear of, “What if my words are misunderstood by strangers or people who love me, or what if my words are rejected?”

There’s a lot of divisiveness in the world right now in terms of beliefs, in terms of politics, in terms of just all sorts of topics that everybody has an opinion. So when you put your words out there, there’s always the possibility that someone is not going to like it, or someone is going to misunderstand, or someone is going to be hurt.

So my response to this fear aspect of this is you have to be confident in the message that you were given and there’s a reason that it’s important. And just delivering it as well as you can with as much as authenticity as you can with as much integrity as you can, like your work in your brand will stand for itself.

But also having that healthy balance of knowing someone will reject it, someone will misunderstand it, someone will be hurt. You can’t change that but you can change your response to be one of caring and one of respect for that person. Because two people can disagree completely but still be respectful towards one another in their engagement about it.

Andrea: Lindsey, I think that is a really important point that we can’t guarantee that… like you said, people will get hurt. It’s just going to happen. It’s kind of like I love movies and so I always think of mostly superhero movies, because they’re so grand and I love them. Like Wonder Woman or whatever, you go into battle and you’re fighting for a cause and sometimes it just happens. People get hurt whether you want them or not.

Lindsey Hartz: Yeah. I think it’s part of, like I said, that bravery and that courageousness of putting yourself out there. We can’t be afraid to be ourselves. We can’t be afraid to use our gifts because they’re given to us for a reason. So just not having those rose-colored glasses on and thinking everything is always going to be amazing but just understanding if you’re taking a risk to help people, you’re also going to have to understand that sometimes conflicts will come. Again, instead of letting it immobilize you, let it activate you.

Andrea: Love that!

Lindsey Hartz: The last two comments I had that relate to this actually have to do with a sense of overwhelm. I think a lot of my authors feel like, especially with marketing and self-promotion, it’s like what are the right steps and how do I find the time to do them well.

There’s a lot of information on the internet that’s free, and that’s amazing. And the challenges, you could become overwhelmed listening to too many voices. And you could be overwhelmed with understanding how to take those steps and tailoring it to apply to your specific message. I think visibility. You know, how can I get my work in front of the right audience at the right time and make the most impact to their lives.

So I think those four topics are really the biggest struggles authors encounter.

Andrea: Yeah, those were good. Do you have any additional things that you would suggest that people do to become more comfortable putting themselves out there or dealing with these? Or do you feel like you kind of covered that?

Lindsey Hartz: No, I actually have a whole lot to say about that.

Andrea: Alright. Please do.

Lindsey Hartz: Yeah, because I think, honestly, this is how I approach my own business. I am not immune to feeling these things even though I teach these all the time. So when I find myself kind of getting caught in one of those traps, I go through this process myself.

The first thing I always do is to adjust my mindset. I believe in the power of prayer but even if that’s not something that’s part of your world, like taking stock of how you’re feeling and really thinking through, “Is this something that is honoring that will move me for forward, or is this something that’s gonna just make me fall apart?” You can always take stock of how you’re feeling and identify how you can move forward.

Ultimately, when you adjust the mindset, you need to trust that your message can and will transform lives and be confident in that. Your job, once the writing is complete, is to steward that message well through the many tools we have available and just understanding that you as an author are obviously fantastic at creating stellar content. That’s what you do, right? Writing words really gives you the ability to convey hope and healing, transformation, change. That’s your gift.

So if you’re not reaching the audience you desire with your message, just don’t fall into the trap of creating more content. Instead, focus on the root cause of why you’re not reaching the audience and fix it. It’s usually lack of consistency and visibility when marketing your work. So, again, just taking stock of yourself personally, remembering that you were made to do this, and then focusing on what really matters and fixing it is really key.

How you do that is you start with evaluation, listing out your strengths and your areas of opportunity as a communicator and a marketer. Like what are you great at and what’s most natural to you and what stops you in your tracks. My husband and I love therapy because we’re a little strange.

Andrea: I think that’s great.

Lindsey Hartz: So we have a loving long-term relationship with our marriage therapist. One of the things that she described to us early on was this notion of accelerators and brakes in our relationship especially when communicating. So I thought that was a perfect example to use here.

So when you’re communicating or when you’re trying to pursue whatever it is you’re pursuing, launching a product or a book, etcetera, like really figuring out what causes you as a person to accelerate and move forward with drive and passion and what causes you to hit a hard brake, almost like you’re hitting a brick wall. So literally grabbing a piece of paper, putting accelerators on one side and brakes on the other and just jotting down what are those things.

Then once you have those outlined, you can also apply that same principle to just where you need to connect with people. So there are tons of online and offline platforms and it’s figuring out where your specific audience is and focusing there, not trying to be everywhere all at once.

Andrea: Oh, yeah, it’s such a good point because, kind of going back to what you said the last point too, I think we can get a little too spread out both with our message and with where we’re sending it. It’s easy to get spread out. I know I feel that way sometimes and it’s hard to decide how we’re going to narrow that in on both regards.

So you said to try to find where your audience is and then just focus there. But how do you know? And maybe this is something that people are supposed to do before they write their book, but some people are self-published and they don’t necessarily have anybody walking them through a process of how to make sure that they find their audience or know who they’re writing for. So do you have any thoughts on that?

Lindsey Hartz: I do. I think, honestly, this is kind of the phase that happens after that evaluation because before you do anything, you need to understand what’s going to be easy for you and what’s going to be really hard.

Then the next step is really preparing, like learn what you need to and delegate what you can’t. If you need to take a course, read a book or go to a conference, that’s awesome. You can learn what you need to and you can implement the steps well. And if you can’t handle whatever activity you need to do that’s where you start looking at people resources so you can do what you focus on the most or what you love the most, which is writing.

So people resources could be someone like me. I’m a marketing and book launch consultant. Or it could be a virtual assistant, graphic designer, website or tech support, whatever the case maybe. Like understanding that, yes, there may be an investment in those things but you have to weight your time, your strengths, your anxiety, and your ability to get things done across that investment. And then really taking all of that and putting it into a plan.

So when we work through teaching authors how to have a plan for their content, especially as it relates to the book, we always have a step-by-step plan that has due dates – those are very important – of how you’ll create content and communicate with your readers. So that can include things… well, the most important thing is I blocked time on my calendar to focus on these tasks weekly.

Andrea: Good point.

Lindsey Hartz: I do not move it unless someone is sick. Because if you don’t block the time, everything else would become more urgent.

Andrea: Definitely.

Lindsey Hartz: So blocking time to really map out your content monthly would be beneficial for most authors to do. So what I mean by that is taking time to really determine a monthly theme of what you’re going to write on.

You can determine that theme in one of two ways. You can come up with your own suggested topics based on like an upcoming book, for example, and then survey your readers and ask them, “Hey, here’s a poll of these topics. What resonates with you most? And then write on those topics based on what your readers are asking for because that will increase engagement and interaction.

Or do a survey and ask them, “What do you wanna hear about?” and incorporate it. This is really a key piece of building kind of that brand and that community because most readers don’t want to be talked at. They want to be heard and they want you to serve them and give them what they need.

Andrea: Definitely.

Lindsey Hartz: They’re coming to you for your voice of influence. They’re coming to you for your expertise and your wisdom, but they also want it to be personal. They want a relationship.

So constantly asking your readers, “Hey, how can I help you?” and then following through on that really, really helps you connect with readers and they’ll remember that down the road when they have a book that is available to them to purchase from you.

Then once you have your theme and developing your content from that, you know, what blog post or newsletter topics related to that theme are you going to publish that month? What social media copy do you need? What graphic needs do you have? And then create a posting schedule for yourself.

That helps with two things. We talked about consistency earlier. So if do you this every month, you’ll consistently create your content in advance. Don’t wait until the month of, so you won’t be behind and you can allow for life situations. And then it helps with visibility because your readers are going to know what to expect from you. They’re going to know they can trust that, every month, this material would be coming out and they can keep coming back to you for more.

Andrea: You know, Lindsey, as I was listening to your description of what we should be doing and how you structured that and everything, I was thinking about how perfect you are for this, first of all, and then also how well your particular voice fits with the methods that you’re suggesting. I know that you took the Fascinate Assessment, which I invite any of my guests to take, and you came out with Alert plus Power, which is actually the same as my daughter, first of all.

But alert is also all about preventing power with care, so that planning ahead and teaching people how to plan ahead and get all of that straight and figured out is a gift that you have that you’re offering people, which I’m sure is different than other book launch consultants. So they’re going to do something different, but your specific voice, the way that you handle this is I just love that.

Lindsey Hartz: And I actually loved the Fascinate Assessment. To be honest, I thought I would come out something different, usually around relationship building because usually my strength is that whole empathy, relationship building, building bridges, connecting people. That’s usually what my gift things fall into. Even though most people think I’m always going to come out as detail-oriented and organized, those things are true about me but it’s actually not my personality. You know what I’m saying?

And this assessment, the Alert and Power, one of the things that said is you’re respected because of your relentless pursuit of what you believe in, and I thought that is so perfect because it’s true. It’s the core of everything that I do in my business. Because my business is not just a business to me, it’s first and foremost a ministry to serve others.

I think if a lot of authors, coaches, and consultants would perceive their businesses that way, you’ll find that you naturally communicate in a way that highlights that and draws people in and almost makes them feel comforted by you but they can’t always explain it. Instead of being repelled by salesy, markety language, sometimes I do, in a great, kind of your typical sales emails and stuff like that and to my communication, but for the most part, it’s always overlaid with that care, with that purpose, with that mission. That’s really, really important for people to know and understand about you.

Andrea: What’s interesting, though, is, Lindsey, that that is what you believe, that that is what you’re pursuing. You’re pursuing that relationship, you’re pursuing that connection because that’s what you believe in. But you’re doing it in such a way that you come across as the ace, the person that has things organized and all that. So it’s an interesting blend of things. I love that.

Lindsey Hartz: Well, the last thing I’ll say about that is I pretty much thought I was weird until I started running my own business.

Andrea: Yes! Oh, I hear you.

Lindsey Hartz: I’m like, “Why am I like this?” Then as I kept learning more about the confidence in myself and my skill set and the way my mind works, it totally makes sense to me that I do the business that I do, that I run the business the way I do and that I’m not ashamed to do it.

I also teach my clients the same thing because, at the end of the day, again, marketing is more about building relationships with people and drawing their stories out of them so they understand they’re not alone. That really what marketing is.

You can go find tactics and checklists and sales formulas and all that sort of stuff and there’s very real, strategic reason behind that. I’m not dismissing it and I do use it, it’s just that that is the form and structure of what you’re doing, but the actual words have to be the “why”. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to help people? How do you want to change their lives? That needs to be more prominent in your work than all form and function.

Andrea: Yeah, good stuff. So is there anything else that you would recommend that authors, coaches, consultants who want to be authors, message-driven leaders who are thinking about sharing their message in this way, is there anything else that they should be clear on pretty much before marketing their books but maybe just things that they could be working on even now?

Lindsey Hartz: Absolutely. I have two main things. The first one is relational and the second one is strategic. I mentioned earlier that we would talk about collaboration later and that is now.

Andrea:   Sure. Great!

Lindsey Hartz: I want everybody to have in their head collaboration, not competition. So when you’re developing your marketing plan or you’re trying to figure out what to do with your book, you need to realize that you’re not meant to do this alone. You need to remember that you have a unique voice. You need to remember that there is a whole community of people out there that may have a similar topic or similar audience that you can connect with to increase the impact and influence of your work.

So take the whole comparison-competition piece out of the equation. Remember that there’s enough audience for everyone, and practice genuine outreach where you’re _____ with your peers to learn more about what they do and share more about what you do. Be generous, helpful, and authentic as you develop a relationship with your peers and build trust with one another. The big no-no is your first contact, second, third, fourth, or fifth should never be an ask. You’re building relationships with the people so don’t fall into that trap of reaching out to someone just to ask them for something and they don’t even know who you are.

Andrea: Yeah, don’t make it a transactional.

Lindsey Hartz: Right. It’s a relationship. So what’s important about this is I get questions all the time. “I just signed a book contract. What should I do for marketing?” And I’m like, “Build relationships with people,” because in the traditional publishing world that means they have 18 to 24 months usually before their book is going to come out. I’m like, “Start now building relationships.”

That doesn’t mean that everybody that you connect with in month one is going to turn into a collaboration, but you have to develop those relationships to see where it goes without expectation. And then also give people time to get to know you, to get to know your work, to get to know your heart before you ask for an endorsement or to be on your launch team or to promote your book.

I’m not telling you anything that I have a personally experienced so all of this information is stuff that I had to work through in building my business. I will tell you that my attitude towards collaboration and not competition is why I run a business of word-of-mouth referrals for five years. It’s because I genuinely care about people.

There are some people that we connected and it wasn’t really a right fit, we still talk because I’m interested in them as a person and I might know someone who needs their services.

So it’s really understanding you can’t look at every person you connect with this as someone to further you. You have to look at every person as someone that you can connect with, that you can give and receive from potentially. Sometimes, you’re just giving with no receipt and that’s OK.

Then when you do get to the point where there’s a natural relationship or collaboration that you guys can connect on, you always thank them personally. Send them a note, call them, send them a gift card, send them flowers, whatever. Don’t take for granted their time and their investment in you. So basically, don’t be a taker.

Honestly, I don’t think people do this on purpose. I think they just get so busy and so overwhelmed and they’re on so many deadlines that they forget the basics. I don’t know if you ever read those Ms. Manners columns?

Andrea : Sure!

Lindsey Hartz: I kind of grew up on that stuff because my parents were very much into etiquette. So I always think of those old lessons of “treat people the way you want to be treated” and “thank them even if they couldn’t help you”, like just be genuine.

The strategic part actually has to do with your email list. So we hear all the time about how people are overwhelmed with social media and algorithms change and they don’t know where to connect with their readers and they don’t know what to do. My philosophy is that if you’re focusing on building your email list first and foremost, that is your property. It’s permission-based marketing so you’re asking these people for permission. They’re giving it. That means they have signed up to hear from you and they want to hear what you have to say, so communicate with them.

The collaborations I was talking about earlier help you build that audience through word-of-mouth marketing and then social media is really just a way to amplify. So many authors get this a little bit backwards. They focus on the social media aspect first, which can be really like throwing tiny little pebbles in the sea hoping it gets seen.

To be honest, because of the social media platform is not being something we personally own, we’re subject to their changes. We don’t have any control if they change their algorithms or they change their policies. So when you have your email list you have a retain list of readers, potential customers that you have access to, that you can communicate with no matter what happens in the social media landscape.

Then once they’re on your list, make sure that you’re creating a journey for your reader once they join. So don’t have people sign up and then not communicate with them. Make sure you’re leading them through the resources you have, how you can help them transform their lives, gain their buy-in or ask for their feedback as you’re working on projects.

Ultimately, pique their interest with content related to your upcoming book, because that is what the email list is for, of course being generous and soft-hearted like we talked about earlier. But then the other thing is make sure that you’re not afraid to make, occasionally, a clear call to action or ask of your readers.

So if you focus most of your efforts on serving them and every once in a while you say, “Hey, I have a book. If you pre-order here, now, you’ll receive this.” That’s an ask. And, “I have a new product that’s coming out. If you wanna hear more about it, sign up here.” “I’m looking for people to interview on this book topic. Hit “Reply” and let me know when we can get scheduled.”

You have to learn how to integrate those kinds of asks into your email marketing from the very beginning because then your audience is used to you serving them and occasionally making asks of them. So it’s not so weird when you suddenly you have a book and you’re like, “Hey, I have a book.” So what you want to do is make sure you have a relational journey that isn’t full jarring to your audience. Make sense?

Andrea: Oh, yeah. Oh my goodness. So many, so many valuable things here, Lindsey. I can’t believe how much you’ve packed into this little interview. Love it!

So another thought that I do have is I know that not everybody feels like they’re prepared to do all the things that you’ve just suggested and so I just want to offer a little bit of comfort to the listener, too, that even if you’re not ready for everything, you can get started with something. And you can continue to build and make it a work in progress, basically. That you’re continuing to build this journey and you’re continuing to build the content and all those things.

So don’t be afraid of the big picture thing that might feel intimidating. Instead, use it as your vision for what you could do and what you’re headed towards because I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now if I had waited until I had it all figured it out. Because every few months, I’d be like, “Oh, this is this new thing that I can implement.” Or I have a better sense of what I’m doing, and things like that.

Gosh, Lindsey, thank you so much for all of those really helpful tips and that encouragement. I really appreciate that.

I know that you had something planned for our listeners, so why don’t you tell them about that right now?

Lindsey Hartz: Absolutely. What I’m going to do is I’m going to provide a download of the notes for this interview, because I know there’s a lot of great inspiration in what we talked about.

Andrea: It’s awesome!

Lindsey Hartz: I always love your insights and commentary, but also just kind of those step-by-step plans that we talked about.

So I’ll have the download for the notes for the interview and then I also have two free book launch project plan templates that actually start from the moment you know you want to write a book.

So planning for a book launch is not just about the time period around the release. It’s what you do before, to engage with the right audience and build the email list. It’s what you do during the launch to actually create your marketing campaign and get the message out. And it’s what you do after the release to continue ongoing promotion and to continue to connect with readers.

So at the link provided, you’ll be able to access the notes and those plans. I’m just looking forward to connecting with you.

Andrea: Awesome, Lindsey!

When she said “the link provided” that means they’re going to be in the show notes. So you can find the show notes at voiceofinfluence.net/42. You can find that link with all that information that Lindsey is talking about in the show notes at voiceofinfluence.net/42. So go to voiceofinfluece.net/42 and that’s where you’re going to find the link that Lindsey was talking about with all these amazing stuff that she’s providing you.

Thank you so much, Lindsey, for your voice of influence with authors and to help get people’s message out into the world. Thank you so much for being here.

Lindsey Hartz: Thank you for having me. It was a true joy.

Andrea: Awesome!

END

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You Can’t Succeed as a Writer Until You Take the First Step

Episode 09 with Chad Allen

Chad R. Allen (@chadrallen) blogs about writing, publishing, life, and creativity at www.chadrallen.com. He is an editorial director for Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, and works with such authors as Mark Batterson, Larry Crabb, Kyle Idleman, Chip Ingram, Kyle Idleman, and N. T. Wright. Allen was featured in Christian Retailing’s “Forty under 40” report and has written articles for Conversations, Radix, Relevant, and PRISM. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and has an M.A. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame. He and his wife, Alyssa, live with their two children in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Chad R. Allen’s website

Book Proposal Acadamy

Brendon Burchard’s book, The Millionaire Messenger

Listen here, on iTunes or Stitcher

Transcript

Andrea: Chad it’s great to have you on the Voice of Influence Podcast.

Chad: Ah I love this! Thanks so much, Andrea, for having me. I appreciate it!

Andrea: Okay, so I can’t go any further without asking you about Nebraska. Did you grow up in Nebraska or did you just go to school here?

Chad: Well, I was an Air Force brat, so I move around quite a bit in my childhood. But I did both high school and undergrad college in Nebraska.

Andrea: Aha, and so I’m from Nebraska so that was definitely something that I wanted to ask you about. So how did you get from Nebraska? You’ve been all over and now you’re doing so many amazing things with Baker Books but then also on your own. So did you get from there to here?

Chad: Well, so I graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Cornhuskers in the spring of ’96, and from there, I wandered around a little bit trying to find my way. I ended up volunteering for Douglas Gresham in Ireland of all places. Doug is the general consultant for the C.S. Lewis Foundation, C.S. Lewis PTE Limited. He’s also the stepson of the late C.S. Lewis. And so some of your listeners might know C.S. Lewis, he wrote The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe and the whole Narnia chronicle series as well as many other books.

So I flew out there in ’97, and I volunteered at his ministry there in Ireland. But part of that was just assisting him with his C.S. Lewis work. With that ministry, I got to see anything related to C.S. Lewis. New books would come across his desk for review and approval. And so I was exposed to the world of publishing through that volunteer opportunity and was just blown away. Because what I saw was that there was this whole back end to publishing and that people had actually an influence on the final product, and I was really captivated with that.

So that led to an interesting publishing and eventually working at Baker in Grand Rapids. I started out as a copy editor or project editor and then eventually made my way to acquisitions and now have been editorial director for six years.

Andrea: I know that you write as well, but not just write your own books but have an influence on other people that are writing books. You and I share very similar interests in that. That’s really interesting. So how did you decide that that was something that you wanted to pursue instead of going right after writing or something else like that right away?

Chad: Yeah, so you know, I was immediately intrigued with the ability to make a book better than when I received it and to really help an author craft their manuscript in a way that would make it as compelling as possible. So that was what initially brought me into publishing and I continue to do that work today.

About six years ago, I did start to feel this kind of pull toward doing my own writing, and so I started my blog to write about writing and publishing and creativity. So I do both now. I write my own stuff. And by the way, my wife is a great editor who helps me refine my own content and then I also continue to do the editorial work.

For me, it’s all about bringing what’s inside out. It’s about helping people do their art and get their content into the world. There’s just nothing that brings me more joy than that work.

Andrea: Why do you feel like it’s that important that people are able to bring that inside out?

Chad: Well, I think that we each have a unique voice. I was just talking to a coaching client earlier this morning and she was really struggling with…I think a lot of people struggle with this. You know, what I have to offer unique and to other people who talk about these things.

And I said, there’s nobody who’s going to do it the way that you do it. What you have to offer is unique. What comes easy to you does not come easy to others. The expertise you have in your particular area, you know, other people don’t have that and they need you to the extent you’d feel called to offer it. They need you to do that.

So, so much of work, Andrea, and probably this is why you have your podcast is to encourage people that their voice is valuable and it’s not going to happen unless they take the risk of getting it out there.

Andrea: With me, when it comes to this podcast and the passion that sort of drives it, it does have a lot to do with my own struggle in that area and then finding my voice and overcoming and that sort of thing. I’m curious if that is a similar thing that you found for yourself. Do you think that’s part of the reason why you’re so interested in helping other people find their voice in writing and creativity and drawing that inside out? Is that something that you struggle with personally?

Chad: Absolutely. I remember reading Brendon Burchard’s book, The Millionaire Messenger, not because I wanted to become a millionaire but because my friend, Andy Traub recommended it to me. He was the first person I heard say, “People really want what you have to offer if you just have the guts to offer it.” You know, there’s something here about trust and taking a risk and maybe a little bit of faith. And I just sort of trusted him and I went for it and that was six years ago when I launched the blog and I’ve been pleased to help a lot of people.

So I think that’s the other thing about this Andrea, as you do it, you know, we’ll make the road by walking it, right? As you do it, you get more and more confidence because you do see people reading your stuff and interacting with it. Yeah, sometimes I’ve seen a blog post in the world that doesn’t get much activity. That happens but then the next one I write does get some activity.

And so a little bit of success can be a big encouragement. You don’t have the opportunity for that success if you don’t get the first blog post out there, you know what I mean? Or the first article or the first podcast or whatever it is.

Andrea: Or the first 10 to see that all of them sort of matter and not everyone of them like you said will end up being that important or that popular. Yeah, I’ve certainly struggled with that in trying to figure out with what is the thing that resonates with the audience, who is the audience and that sort of thing. Is this something that you help people figure out?

Chad: Yeah. So I created this course called Book Proposal Academy. And again, this comes out of just putting myself out there and seeing what might happened. I was in a little Mastermind group when we’re talking about whatever we’re up to. And one of the people in the group said “You know, Chad, if you could show me how to write a book proposal that would be awesome.” I was like “Well, I’ve reviewed a few thousands in my career. I think I could help with that.”

So I created this course called, Book Proposal Academy. And what it’s specifically helps non-fiction writers do is write their book proposals and book proposals are how you eventually get published in the traditional publishing world. But what I found is that book proposals are also just a great way to develop your concept, to build out the structure of your book, to learn how to talk about your book, to make your concepts stronger, to think about the marketing of your book, and to begin actually writing your book because any book proposal that’s worth it. So includes a writing sample of the actual book.

So it’s been this great sort of tool for helping writers break through the barrier of getting started on their book projects. So that’s one way that I’ve helped people do that. The course is called Book Proposal Academy. Your listeners can find it at bookproposalacademy.com and that’s been a wonderful tool to help people. A lot of people have these scattered thoughts about a book they want to write. They struggle with getting started and I found that writing a book proposal is great way to break through that barrier and actually get your book into the world.

Andrea: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and I can only imagine how valuable that is to people who are longing to write a book but they’re not sure where to begin and to develop their concepts. This idea of developing a concept I think is really interesting. What kind of things do you suggest when people are thinking about that maybe they have a book in their mind that they’d like to write? How do they turn that idea into a concept that’s really, really powerful and could get the attention of an editor or publisher but also would actually sell?

Chad: Yeah that’s such a great question. So the first thing to know is that the formula for publishing success is platform, big platform, plus great concepts, plus great writing equals publishing success. So you wouldn’t want to leverage a platform and service to a concept that’s weak because it’s just a waste of influence. You don’t have to spend all the time and energy into writing a great book if it’s not in service to a great concept because then you just invested a lot of time and energy that’s not going to go anywhere and that sort of wasteful.

So a great concept is really important. What I encourage writers to do is to first think about the need that their book is addressing, the itch that their book is scratching, and to really brainstorm what that is. What is the need that your book is responding to? And then even talk to people, would you buy a book that helps you do so and so, and even go to your Facebook tribe or just friends and family and ask that questions to get really clear your mind what’s the pinpoint that my book is going to relieve.

Once you have that firmly in place then I encouraged writers to brainstorm possible book titles and subtitles. When we talk about concept that can sound really amorphous and hard to get your mind around but titles are concept labels, they make concepts concrete. So as you play with different titles, you’re playing with different concepts. So with the need that your book is addressing in mind, you brainstorm working titles and subtitles for your book.

What I encourage people do, and I have folks who have actually done this through a pizza party, they’ll invite over all their most creative friends. You describe the need that your book is addressing and then you get them brainstorming titles and subtitles.

Andrea: What a great idea!

Chad: Yeah, so you just keep doing that until you have three or four strong titles, subtitles combinations and then you go to your Facebook tribe wherever you go for feedback and you say “Here are my top three or four titles, subtitle ideas, which of these would you been most likely to purchase?” And that’s the process that I encourage writers to use to develop a great concept.

Andrea: Yeah, those are great tips and great suggestions so one thing that you mentioned that you start with the need. And I think that a lot of times as somebody who really cares about making a difference and wants to get a message out into the world, sometimes we start with our own desire to share something instead of starting where other people are at, which sounds like you’re suggesting. Start where people actually feel the need.

So yeah, I just find that really interesting. How do you bridge that gap? How do you go from having an idea that’s inside of you and a passion that’s inside of you and turning it into something that’s actually going to meet a need?

Chad: Yeah, that’s the kind of million dollar question because we have these passions. We have these desires, this internal pull to write about something or to get some sort of message into the world and that’s really, really important. It’s important to know what that passion is to have a sense of that, but the real magic is when you can find the intersection between your passion and the world’s need.

You know, Buechner has this great quote about the place you’re called to is the place where your deep gladness meets the world deep need. And so I think both are really important, but definitely making a priority of determining what the need is and using your passion to meet that specific need. That’s the place where you are going to find the hearing and you’re going to be able to have increasingly more influence.

Andrea: There are a lot of people I think who might say “Well, I don’t need other people to read what I write.” I hear this a lot. “I’m just doing it even if it’s just for one person,” and that sort of thing. I can see why they would say that and I can say why I may have said that in the past at the same time I think that’s almost like cut out to finding this intersection that you’re talking about and it’s really hard work to find that.

Chad: Yeah. I mean, I do write just for myself sometimes. That’s called my journal.

Andrea: Right.

Chad: That’s really valuable, you know, there’s definitely a place for that. And there are things that I share my journal. I certainly wouldn’t share with the world. But I’m doing my blog, I want to serve people and yes that’s good for me. It helps me kind of untangle my thoughts and help me figure out what I wanted to say.

There’s a great quote about “How do I know what I think until I see what I say.” So am I getting something out of it? Absolutely, I’m getting something out of it, but I also want to help people and I just find that I get more readers when I’m speaking to issues that they’re really facing, that they’re really struggling with. And so I get a much better response when I’m zeroed in on serving people that I do when I’m focused on, you know, what do I have to say?

So it’s finding the intersection. And it’s a dance and it is difficult work. It’s also really energizing work when things go well. And like you said, sometimes you got to do this for 10 posts. Sometimes you got to do this for five years before you really see the results of your efforts, but the journey is worthwhile. So I hope that’s helpful.

Andrea: Yeah. Well, what’s the journey been like for you? So you already have a job, a really good job and doing something that’s really important and that’s your calling then you started to blog and what not. Did you immediately find a readership or has it taken a while to kind of get going?

Chad: It has taken a while for sure. Yeah, I mean what I did and what I encourage beginning bloggers to do is to get your first 10 articles written, and you know save on your hard drive before you even publish the first one, just so that you start getting into the rhythm of writing and sending your work into the world. So that you have 10 posts in the queue and then you can tweak them before you actually hit publish. That was how I started.

And you know, Andrea, those are some very fun memories for me of waking up early in the morning. Like you said, I have a fulltime job, but I would wake up and still wake up early in the morning most days of the week, and I often go to a coffee shop. And those are some of my best moments, right? Just me and my keyboard making something happen. I still love it. I get goose bumps even thinking about it now.

But yeah, it does take a while and it takes savvy you know. You learn ways of getting more and more eyeballs on your contents. I think a lot of it begins with learning that it’s really okay for you to ask people to read your stuff. You know, “Hey, I just wrote this. You might find it interesting, check it out.” You know, getting past the initial hurdle of asking people to check out what you’ve done is an important stuff to take. So it does take time.

And definitely if you’re going to do this, it’s important to have the long view in mind. I mean, there are stories that people who have sort of overnight success, but they’re the exceptions that make the rule. So definitely, you have to be content with the journey and the satisfaction of just giving your stuff into the world. But recognize that as you do it overtime and as you learn more and more techniques for attracting readers to what you’re doing or listeners to the podcast that you’re broadcasting. The longer you’re out it, the more people will learn about you that’s been my experience.

Andrea: Hmm, so when people are going through this process of trying to find that voice in writing, whether it’d be through using a book proposal or blogging, do you have anything in particular that you suggest people do in terms of taking care of themselves or how that relates to finding their voice?

Chad: Ah, I think that is so important. I’ve always been fascinated with the interplay between sort of caring for ourselves and serving others. I travelled quite a bit for work and we’ve all heard…anybody has been in an airplane has heard the flight attendant talked about, you know, if the pressure in the cabin goes down and the oxygen masks fall off and you have a small child with you, please place the oxygen mask of yourself before helping others. And I think that’s a metaphor for how we should approach creative work. We have to be taking care of ourselves if we’re going to help people to the best extent possible.

So when I talk about self care, I think about things like getting enough sleep. I think about eating well. I think about being connected relationally with people who are supporting me. You know, who’s your team? Who’s helping you do your creative work and how are you interacting with them on a regular basis? I think about the stimuli that I put in front of my cerebral cortex. What books am I reading? What shows am I watching? What podcast am I listening to that are going to help me do my most creative work? What’s my calendar like?

What kind of time am I committing to my art and how do I do that in a way that honors the work that I’m doing but also the person I am and my need for sleep and taking care of myself. So I encourage people to think about, how are you going to take care of you as you do this creative work? Because it’s when you’re living a full healthy life that you’re going to be able to produce the best content and help the most people possible.

Andrea: That’s some great advice. I self published a book recently and in that time of me writing, everything was so focused on getting this message out of my body and my head. Like I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I didn’t even attempt to be published because I didn’t have that platform yet, and I just have this message inside of me that I had to get out somehow.

So I think I got so focused on just getting it out that it was easy to let other things slide, and yet I think if I were to look back and talk to myself back then, I would say something along the lines of “You have time. Take a breath. Make sure that you are doing these self-care things that you just suggested.”

One thing that really stood out to me was this idea of having a team around you that you connect with relationally and talk about. Is it easy to find that or how do you develop? How do you know who belongs in that position in your life when you’re trying to develop a message?

Chad: Yeah, I think there are at least three ways you can go about that. One is to enlist a mentor, and just think about somebody who’s farther along than you in the journey that you want to be mentored in and whether it’s creativity, health, blogging, or podcasting. Think of somebody in your current circles who may have more experience than you do and it could be somebody who lives near you, or it could be somebody that you’re just connected to via the internet and ask them.

You know, “Could we get together once a quarter?” Say, once a month or once a quarter, whatever works. “And you don’t have to do anything but show up and I’m going to ask you questions. I would just like to spend that time with you.” If you’re going out to lunch, make sure that you pick up a tab for lunch. I’ve done that to really great effects.

Another way is just a 1 on 1 meeting, so maybe somebody who is a peer of yours. It may not make sense for them to be your mentor but they’re somebody who’s also on the journey. So you have a rhythm of going out with them for coffee or lunch once a month again, once a quarter, or once a week whatever makes sense and you commit showing up with say 15 minutes of content that you’ve picked and they commit to the same thing. And you take notes when they’re talking or at least mental notes so that you are learning from them and they’re learning from you and you’re on the journey together.

And the third way would be developing what Todd Henry calls a ‘creativity circle’ where a group of people get together and they talk about, you know, “What are we working on right now?” Why do we need some accountability? What do we want to have accomplished by the next time we get together? And I’ve done those once a month, and again, they’ve been extremely helpful to me and supportive to me as I move forward. There are of course paid opportunities out there; coach, different mastermind, coaching groups that you can pay to enter and those are also worth checking out.

Andrea: What do you think is the value difference or why would somebody choose to seek out somebody like you to be their coach, their writing coach instead of finding a friend to talk to? What’s the difference there do you think?

Chad: Well, I think it’s just a different kind of help and somebody maybe the help they need is the help that only a friend can offer. I think the value of a coach is that a coach has walked this path before and they’re going to help you save time and energy so that you can just be more efficient and see progress more quickly. A coach can also help you with the accountability piece.

A friend maybe able to help you with that but if you’re paying a coach to keep you accountable then it tends to… You know, what I’ve noticed, Andrea, I guess when I pay for something, I’m much more likely to be invested in it with my own time and energy than if I’m getting a service for free. So that’s just the reality of human nature but I think both are important. I would hate to pick one against the other, but coaching does offer some things that other relationships don’t tend to offer.

Andrea: Yeah, that’s a good point. What else do you think you would like to cover, anything else that we haven’t really talked about?

Chad: I think this had been a really good dialogue. Sometimes an interviewer will ask me, you know, they’ll think about the audience they have in mind and they’ll say the people who are listening this podcast are tat tada tada tada. If you could only offer one piece of advice, what would it be? Maybe, we could end like that if you wanted to.

Andrea: Yes, absolutely! And also I’ll ask you where to find you, where people can find you and that sort of thing too. But I want to make sure that we didn’t have anything else that we need to cover. So Chad for the Influencers that’s out there listening, thinking that maybe they have a book inside of them that they’re not really sure where to begin. We know that they can come to your Book Proposal Academy and potentially take that course from you, but what was be the first step that you would suggest that they do in order to get that book out there to explore that idea?

Chad: That’s so great and it brings to mind a story, Andrea, if’ you’ll indulge me.

Andrea: Of course!

Chad: I remember when my son was about 4 years old; we went to Chuck E. Cheese. And this is not something I recommend usually to anybody because it just a lot of noise and a bunch of consumerism. But one thing that he came away with from the trip was slinky. And I think slinkies are pretty awesome toys. And it wasn’t long before we got home and he was trying to do what they do in the commercials.

He was trying to get the slinky to walk down our stairs. He just kept trying and took the top front of the slinky and slams it down to the next step, and to be honest, it was not just going off. And I thought “Oh boy!” You know, I’m going to have to break it for him. He was 4 years old and I’m going to break it to him that what they’re doing in the commercials isn’t possible in real life.

But little Lucas, he just kept trying. He kept trying to put that top of the slinky on the next step. And all of a sudden, I don’t know what he did, but he did something just right because he did the same thing again. He put it down on the next step and off it went 17 steps all by itself and it was like an incredible moment.

I remember, he was at the top of the stairs and I was at the bottom of the stairs and we both looked at each “Well, it’s happening.” And I looked at his mouth, it was wide open and it jumps up in the air and his hair was all over the place.

Now, what I want your listeners to do is post that image in their minds that image of a little boy jumping into the air with his eyes wide open with his hair flying everywhere because that’s what is possible for them if they keep trying the first step. So the first step could be writing a blog post once a week. It could be writing 250 words every week. It could be writing that chapter every month. It could be posting their podcast once a week or once a day or whatever it is.

Whatever it is to take the first step and the key to taking it over and over again until something hits, until something happens that goes just right, that’s what they need to do. Focus in on that that first step. They need to take over and over again, and if they do that and they do it faithfully, they can’t go wrong.

Andrea: Wow that’s a great advice. Thank you so much for all of this advice about writing and publishing. So Chad, where can people find you if they’re wanting to learn more about you?

Chad: Yeah, I’m at chadrallen.com and the same both on Facebook and Twitter, chadrallen, and you can find me on those various places.

Andrea: I’ll be sure to link to your website and that show notes. And I would also mention to the Influencers listening that there are a lot of great resources there. So please go ahead and check them out and the things that are free. I love some of the things that I’ve seen on your website. So thank you for all of the things that you’re doing to help us, to help people like me and the Influencers out there to be able to develop their own Voice of Influence as you’re using yours.

Chad: Thanks, Andrea. It has been a lot of fun!

 

 

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About the Voice of Influence Podcast

00 Episode & Transcript

In this episode you’ll learn about the premise of the Voice of Influence podcast and what you can expect.

  • Do you want to know that you belong somewhere and your voice can make an impact?
  • Maybe you know your voice matters, but you want to make it matter more.
  • Why my creativity, sensitivity and intensity is both a blessing and a struggle.
  • Andrea connects her experience as a vocal student at Belmont University and the University of Nebraska – Kearney with the idea of developing a Voice of Influence.

Mentioned in the podcast:

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Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea Joy Wenburg and you’re listening to the first episode – the About episode of the Voice of Influence podcast. In this episode I’m going to share with you just a little bit about myself and the premise of the podcast and what you can expect.

So I am Andrea Joy Wenburg, author of UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You. I grew up in Holdrege, Nebraska. I loved my experience there. I had lots of great friendships, amazing teachers and opportunities to learn and grow. And what I found out there was that I could sing. Now, this podcast isn’t about the singing voice, but it relates so give me just a minute to tie it all together for you.

I found out that I could sing and it was something that I really loved to do. I would get up in front of an audience and sing and I felt like I could really connect with the audience. I felt like they were hearing my message and when I was particularly in the zone – feeling the message in the song, I felt like I was really connecting. And I thought, “you know what? I want to do this for the rest of my life. I want to connect with an audience like that.”

So I ended up going to school at Belmont University in Nashville, TN because I thought I wanted to be a recording artist. I wanted to stand up on stage and connect with an audience.

Well, it didn’t take me too long to realize that I actually don’t have the drive to do what it takes to pursue that dream and that though I wanted to be the next Sandi Patty (a gospel singer at the time), I realized when I got down there that there were a lot of other girls wanting to be the next Sandi Patty, as well. So it became evident that I didn’t have that start quality or the drive to pursue that dream.

I redirected my focus to helping other people find and use their voices. I went back to school in Nebraska to become a music teacher. Now, what was interesting is that I refused to even apply to this school when I was in high school because I thought, “I’m never going to be able to stretch my wings in Nebraska.”

Well, when I got back to UNK, my experience with a vocal instructor there went above and beyond any music experience I had in Nashville, which was surprising to me. When I stepped into Dr. Foradori’s office, she asked me “So, Andrea, do you know about this or that” and I said, “Ya, I get all this!”

But as we got going in lessons she realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. And at one point she said to me, “You know, Andrea, once you really understand what it means to connect your breath, you’re going to carry with you a foundation for singing that’s going to carry with you no matter what you sing. Once you understand this one concept and it really clicks inside of you and you get that, it’s going to totally transform the way you sing everything else.”

Eventually I did get that concept and it did totally transform the way that I sang everything else. I did have that support underneath of me with breath and what it took for me to sing like I wanted to sing.

Now, I say all of this because since then I have focused more on what it means to find and develop a voice of influence in the world, because there is something else that I really care about.

I’m somebody who cares a lot about – and I think maybe everybody does – that we want to know that we have a seat at the table. And when I say seat at the table, I’m thinking like when you walk into a cafeteria and there’s a bunch of people sitting and you wonder, “where do I fit?”

And when I say seat at the table when talking about is when you walk into a room and there’s a bunch of people sitting around maybe it’s like a cafeteria and you’re wondering, which table do I fit at? Where do I fit?” This is something that I really struggled with in my life. I wondered “where do I really fit?”

Well, it’s nice to have somebody turn around and say, “Well Andrea, why don’t you sit down at our table. We want you to sit here.” That feels great because then you feel like you belong and are excepted and you connect. With other people. The thing that I really realized, though, was that’s not the only thing I want. I also want to know that when I say something, it matters. That my voice makes a difference. So, if you’re sitting at that table and you’re thinking, “I don’t really feel like these people are listening to what I have to say.” Or you start to speak up and they say, oh that’s stupid.” Or they write you off. Or they say it doesn’t matter, or whatever. They don’t have a respect for what you have to say for your vioce.

That’s a little harder place to be in. Because then it feels like you are being used, not like I belong and I making a difference, “they invited me to sit here, but I’m not actually getting to have an impact on the dialogue.” Which is different than saying, I want to have all of my ideas taken for everybody to believe everything that I say, and that the buck stops here, kind of thing. I’m not saying that.

I’m saying that we want to have our voice matter in the dialogue of life.

So, when I think about that, and I think about the voice of influence and what that means how that relates to what it means to have a voice, I realized that there is something really special about this idea of the connecting of breath on the one side, and how that applies to the way that we connect with other people with our voice of influence. When we have certain things, When we change certain things about the way that we speak that or message or the way that we are communicating, when we change those certain things, or we get those certain things, then our voice, no matter where we go, in our relationships, at home, at work, or in the world. Whatever audience you’re trying to speak to, when you really carry with you that voice of influence, it will matter more with everybody, everywhere you go. And your voice and message has a better shot of actually making a transformational difference in the life of the person you are speaking with.

Because, when we really do have that voice of influence, it’s not just about saying, “this is what you should do, this is what I want.” That sort of thing. It’s not necessarily that, because we can always try to shame people into doing what we want them to do. But that’s not the kind of person I think you are. You are the kind of person who really once to make a difference in the heart of a person. Because you know that when somebody changes on the inside, it’s going to come out in so many different ways on the outside. And that is way more powerful than just changing and outward thing.

So, this podcast is about developing a voice of influence, understanding where it comes from, why we are the way that we are. Who we are. What we really want to say, and how we can say it in a way that is truly a transformational kind of message.

That is the basic premise of this podcast.

I want to mention that last year I published a book called UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the real you. And that book is actually my story about me and my voice. So, if you are ever interested in reading or listening to that book – I am currently working on the audio version and it will hopefully be out very soon. So, if you are listening to this in the near future, it’s probably out. You can look it up on Amazon or find it here.

It’s my story about me, and trying to understand what my voice is like. Coming to grips with the fact that I am super creative, but also really sensitive and that being creative, sensitive and having a lot of intensity – that those things altogether became both a great power, and a great struggle. And something that could actually get in the way of me using my voice and connecting with other people.

That is what the book is about, and I would encourage you to check it out if you’re interested. And now I want to tell you what you can expect from this podcast.

We are going to be on a regular rhythm of 1, 45 minute interview and one short after show kind of episode where I will be speaking for maybe five minutes, reflecting on something that came up in the episode before that. The interviews will be interviews with experts, leaders, Thought leaders – people who really have well-developed voice of influence or something they can really speak to that would be helpful or interesting to you.

It’s really important to me that you don’t just listen to the interviews and forget them. So I want to offer these little episodes that you could listen to on the way to work or whatever, and be something you could chew on that would really make your voice matter more.

That’s the basic rhythm, that we will have an interview and then a short segment. And for April we will be doing an interview and a short segment, two times each week. We will be doing a lot of those episodes in here in April 2017 and after that we will settle into a rhythm of an interview on Monday and a short segment on Thursday each week.

That is the basic premise and what you can expect from this podcast. I also want to let you know that I’ve opened up a Voice of Influence Community Facebook group for message-driven leaders. So if you are interested in communicating with other people who want to develop their voice of influence, and discuss different things that come up on the podcast, then that would be a great place for you. I would love to have you.

And the final thing I want to mention to you is that in every beginning and ending of the podcast, we say, “Your voice matters, but you can make it matter more.” And what I mean by that, is that inherently, because you are a human being created by God, your voice – your thoughts and feelings and how you express them, that matters. And no matter what anyone tells you, I believe that you matter, and your voice matters.

However, I do think that there are some people who are able to develop that voice in such a way, that we can make it matter more. Meaning, we can make a bigger difference. So although you really cannot matter anymore or less in one sense, in another sense, in the sense of how much impact you have on the world, and relationships and things like that, you can make your voice matter more. You do that, by developing it. You do that by using it.

It’s just like when I was in Dr. Foradori’s voice studio and she would have me sing, and if it didn’t come out right, she would have me mimic her, or she would give me the tools that I needed, or she would suggest that I try something new and feel something different in my mouth or that sort of thing. And she would also help me find the right music for my voice. Which, I think is like finding the right message for your voice of influence.

There are many different correlations that I will be making or referencing here on the podcast, but my point in the end is that I really hope you will take the time to develop your voice of influence. And rather than just be somebody who sings every once in a while in the car so that nobody else can hear them, if you are listening to this podcast, it is because you don’t just want to sing in the car. It’s because you want your voice to matter beyond the immediate where you are at right now. You wanted to matter in your relationships, in your home, in your work, and in the world.

So, that’s what we’re here for. I am so glad that you are here. And I hope that you will join me in the voice of influence community Facebook group. You can find a link to that here or search for it in Facebook.

Thank you so much for being here in this about me episode. I am truly honored that you have given me a few minutes of your time today and anytime that you come back, man! I am really honored that you would take the time to be with us. So thank you.

Your voice matters. Now let’s make it matter more.

Join the Voice of Influence Community Facebook Group here.

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Beware the Frozen Heart

Unfrozen Prologue

It’s hard to be real. Real is risky and leaves me wondering what others will think of me when they know that I’m not the perfect wife and mom. What will they think if I share my doubts and struggles? Well, a couple of years ago I decided it was time to share my journey through dating, marriage, postpartum depression and anxiety because I long to see the “unfreezing” of women everywhere.

Unfrozen: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You released August 28th as a Kindle Bestseller in multiple categories! I want to share with you the prologue, the moment just before everything changed for this wife and mom of two little kids.

Thanksgiving, 2013

Thanksgiving, 2013

“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Aaron sighed. We were nearly home from spending Thanksgiving weekend with family.

“I know.”

As we prepared to pull off the interstate, I looked out the window at the Nebraska prairie whizzing past. He always had work to do. I’d spent the past three years taking care of our kids while Aaron attempted to dig out of the paperwork hole he’d fallen into as a small business owner. It wasn’t something we could do anything about and I felt bad for him, but…. How will I ever get myself out of this hole as long as he is in his?

“What are we going to do when we get home, Mom? Can we play with friends?” I glanced back at our 6-year-old Amelia. Her intense need to have our schedule planned out in her head made it difficult for me to feel like I was ever on top of things.

“No. Today isn’t a friend day.”

“Well, what fun thing are we going to do?!”

My muscles wound tight as she spoke, and then I glanced at Grant. His little body looked as tired as I felt. Grant spent the first four years of his life waking up at 4:00 a.m. Chronic sleep deprivation threatened to strangle the life out of me. I probably looked like it. Thankfully, we were at a point in Grant’s life when I didn’t have to wake up with him every morning, but I was still tired. Oh, so tired.

The truth was, I was also angry. It seemed like my kids, my husband, our dogs and even God were in on this conspiracy to keep me awake and on edge. I simply couldn’t catch up. Just as soon as I began to feel rested, someone would have a bad dream or need me when I went to sleep. I didn’t like having to fight for my sanity, but what choice did I have? If I didn’t, I was utterly defeated on most days by 7 AM.

My consolation was that we could afford a few distractions. “I think I’ll take the kids to the new Disney movie this afternoon while you work.” The thought of theater popcorn and a large Coke took the edge off the disappointment of another lonely Sunday.

“OK.” He looked at me apologetically and then pulled into our garage.

Leaving the kids in the car, I slipped into the house, through the laundry room and into our kitchen. I opened the pantry door to grab our popcorn bucket, but it was full of mismatched lids and containers. Dumping it out onto the shelf, I shut the door and sighed. I’ll get them later.

I shook away the acknowledgement that I had no intention of cleaning up my mess. Looking around our expansive kitchen, I mused again at how empty it felt…about as empty as I was.

“We’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Tears threatened to spill out as Aaron kissed me goodbye. I felt like a shell of the vibrant woman who married him 8 years before. While I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t happy either. I wasn’t sure what I was.

A few minutes later, I shooed Amelia and Grant into the crowded concession line at the movie theater. Glancing down, I saw Grant lying on the ground. “Grant! Stand up!”

No matter how early he’d gotten up that morning, I didn’t want to have to hold him while we stood in line for popcorn.

I looked at my adorable kids and shook my head. A couple days before Amelia told me she was tired because Grant was waking her up at 5:00 a.m. every morning. I was incredulous. “Why?!”

“He just wants to play,” she told me.

No wonder they are fighting by 11:00 a.m. every day! If only there were a simple way to get more sleep…

“Mo-om!” Amelia insisted I come out of my head and back into the concession line. “What time is it?” She was the most time-aware 6-year-old child I knew. “What time does the movie start?! We’re going to be late!”

“Shhh. We’ll be fine.” I scowled. Having my thoughts interrupted irritated me, and I had no intention of going into this movie without popcorn.

There had been a time when I watched grown-up movies to stimulate creativity and intellectual analyzing. Now I went to children’s movies with the kids, hoping I wouldn’t poke my eyes out with boredom. And that’s why we’re not skipping the popcorn.

A few minutes later, we found seats in the front of the theater and started stuffing kernels into our mouths by the handful. I heaved a big sigh, wondering what the movie was going to be about. Based on the trailer, I expected Disney’s Frozen to be nothing but a fluffy children’s movie about a cute snowman and a reindeer.

The movie began and my disgruntled musings about my sleep-woes were interrupted by ethereal vocal sounds. I looked up to see Cinderella’s castle transitioning into the snowy dark of night and one big, bright, beautifully complicated snowflake.

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Don’t forget your free bonus. Sign up for the Video Discussion Guide in the menu above this post.

Cocking my head to the side, I squinted. The dark mountainous landscape developing before my eyes seemed anything but fluffy. Out of nowhere, wide-toothed saws ripped through the mountain lake ice, and a chorus of men’s voices declared the dangers of a frozen heart.

I hadn’t anticipated a musical. I love musicals.

Soon, a castle near the mouth of a fjord appeared. Inside the castle, Anna jumped on her sister Elsa, as Elsa lay sleeping in bed. And then little Anna asked Elsa if she wanted to build a snowman. The girls, Anna and Elsa, appeared to be the same ages as Grant and Amelia.

Playful, early morning innocence cut through my icy exterior as violently as the sawing in the first scene. How did they know?

Quiet sobs escaped, and the eyes of my heart opened wide as Elsa created a magical winter wonderland experience for Anna. By the end of the “Do You Want To Build A Snowman?” montage, enough tears had flowed to thaw the edges of my frozen heart.

Somewhere in my spirit, I sensed a voice whispering, “This movie is a gift to you, Andrea. Receive it.” So for the next two hours, my heart opened, and I wept as I watched my life unfold before my eyes in a beautiful metaphor on the screen.

~Excerpt “Prologue” from the book Unfrozen: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You

Reach Chapter 1 by clicking on this button.

Read Chapter 1 Now

UNFROZEN is on sale at a special price of $2.99 (paperback $15.99).

AJW_FacebookProfileImage_11The Kindle and paperback versions of the book are available through Amazon.com. Come find me on Facebook and let me know you downloaded and don’t miss the free bonus: “Unfrozen Video Discussion Guide” in the menu above this post. It’s perfect for friends or mother-daughter conversations.

Click Here for the direct link to the book!

What others are saying…

This book will leave you feeling brave, encouraged, entertained and inspired. The great storytelling will make you want to read “just one more chapter” while the depth and wisdom offered will make you slow down and think about how it applies to your own story. Unfrozen will challenge and encourage you to not shrink away from who you were created to be. If you’ve ever felt frozen by your circumstances or stage of life or felt like you have to hold back a big part of who you are, this book is for you.

Susan Manes, Owner of Mathnasium, former Community Engagement Manger at Creative Trust Media

How refreshing! An imperfect author! Andrea’s raw reveal gives integrity to her infectious invitation. It turns out that God has chosen, loved, and released only the truly flawed, but uniquely fascinating, image-bearers to give voice to his love!

Neal Brower, MDiv, LLD
Pastor, Author, EFCA District Superintendent

Unfrozen would be a fantastic read for both adults and teenagers alike, and a great resource for parents and youth leaders to utilize with teens and young adults as well as women’s ministry programs.

Christina Klausen, MA
Recource Center Coordinator, Community Church Fond du Lac

Few books have the authenticity to change one’s perceptions of life or move one to action. This one does! I feel inspired, energized to become “unfrozen.” Through beautiful, descriptive prose, the author shares her own experiences and ways of overcoming fear, anger, resentment, confusion and so many other emotions that can hamper living life to the fullest, or as she says, “becoming unfrozen.” The stories are compelling and entertaining reading in themselves, but they also offer inspiring insights into how to make life changing decisions. It’s a great read for women of all ages.

Amazon Reviewer

Buy it here.

 

Unfrozen from Andrea Wenburg on Vimeo.