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:

• Lindsey Hartz’s Website
• Download Lindsey’s Notes and Project Plan Templates

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