Introducing The Published Author Podcast
This very first episode of The Published Author Podcast started out as a trailer, but show host Josh Steimle realized he had so much value to share, he just went ahead and recorded one incredibly informative episode!
Josh is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker. He’s now launched a new venture - Published Author, and this is The Published Author Podcast.
Author of Chief Marketing Officers At Work and with two other books in progress, Josh gives impressive examples of entrepreneurs who’ve created and encountered exciting new opportunities, all through writing and publishing a book.
TOP TAKEAWAY - YOU CAN DO THIS
If at this point you’re telling yourself you can’t do what the Gary Vaynerchucks, Gary Kellers, and Anne Lamotts of the world have done, stop. Remember, everyone starts from nothing. And, as Anne Lamott said, perfectionism is the main obstacle between you and a first blank draft.
Yes, your first draft will probably be ugly, but that’s OK. Josh and his team will coach you and help you along your journey using a comprehensive range of proven tools and systems, including Josh’s own 7 Systems of Influence.
In fact, in this episode Josh asks you to take the first step. Think of yourself as an author. Say this sentence: “My name is - fill in the blank - and I am an author.”
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Josh isn’t just going to help you write a book. He’ll show you to create an all-important thought leadership system. By creating a thought leadership system with activities like courses, speaking, and consulting, you’ll create a tribe that’s keen to follow you and listen to what you have to say. The core content for your thought leadership system will be your expertise and your unique offering - and this will be the material for your book.
In this episode, Josh goes into significant detail about his approach to writing, coaching, thought leadership, and content calls to action. In fact, even if you’re not ready to write your book or sign-up for one of his Published Author programs, you’ll learn a significant amount about writing and thought leadership from this episode and the Published Author Podcast.
LINKS
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUBLISHED AUTHOR PODCAST
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ABOUT THE HOST
The Published Author Podcast is hosted by Josh Steimle, founder of Published Author. Josh is a book author himself and his article writing has been featured in over two dozen publications including Time, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable, and TechCrunch. He's a TEDx speaker, the founder of the global marketing agency MWI, a skater, father, and husband, and lives on a horse farm in Boston. Learn more at JoshSteimle.com.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Josh Steimle
A special welcome today, because this is the first ever episode of the Published Author Podcast. I'm Josh Steimle. As mentioned, I'm your host. And today I'm going to introduce you to who I am. So you know a little bit about my background, as you hear me interviewing the authors and publishing experts, editors, ghostwriters, all these amazing people. We've already recorded 20 episodes at this point. I'm going back in time to record this first episode. But we've already got 20 in the can for you and a bunch more scheduled.
I'm also going to talk to you about the 7 Systems of Influence, because this is a framework that is going to come up a lot in these discussions as you listen to these podcasts. And I want to make sure that we're on the same page about this.
So first off, to tell you a little bit about myself, I grew up in Los Angeles. I've got three kids. If you're watching this on the video, you only see two kids and rabbit, because this is a little bit of an old photo. But we adopted a 14 year old girl from China about a year ago, and she's part of our family now. Just need a new good family photo to put up.
In 1999, I started a marketing agency called MWI. And we're still in business today. I've turned day to day management of it over to my partners. But working at MWI, learning about marketing, this was an amazing entrepreneurial experience. But when I say amazing, what I mean was, it was terrible. We had a lot of ups and downs over the years. Mostly downs, but enough ups to keep us in business and to keep me excited about working towards what I knew was the potential of this business.
In 2013, we got our lucky break. I got the opportunity to start writing for Forbes magazine. And writing for Forbes led to writing for all sorts of other publications. Over a three year period, I wrote more than 300 articles for two dozen publications like TechCrunch and Mashable and Time and Entrepreneur and Success and Inc and VentureBeat and all these different places. And that led to speaking opportunities around the world. I got to speak in front of 1,000 people in Hong Kong at a TEDx event and got to speak in Singapore and Dubai and the UK, just all these other places. It was amazing.
And that led to a book deal. I was able to interview 30 CMOs from companies like PayPal, and Spotify, and GE, and Target, and the Home Depot. And these became part of my first book Chief Marketing Officers at Work. And because of that book, one day, I got a phone call from somebody who invited me to spend a week with Richard Branson on his private island with about 70 other top marketers, as they're with some of the top ad agency and marketing firm people in the world, marketers from Twitter and Under Armour and all these amazing companies. And I'm like this smallest guy there. I'm thinking, how in the world did I get here?
And I'm looking back at this point over my history, writing for Forbes, getting the book deal doing the speaking engagements. And I'm thrilled with the results. But I'm also looking back. And I'm talking about three years ago, I'm looking back. I'm looking back at this. And I'm thinking, how did this happen? Because I didn't do it on purpose. It just kind of fell into my lap, things happened and one thing led to another. But I'm trying to figure out how did this happen? And how can I make this happen in the future.
So I began to research influence, and I created a framework called the 7 Systems of Influence. And those seven systems are vision, genius zone, audience, content, action, collaboration, and love. And when all of these systems work together, it's kind of like an automobile or a car. You've got all these different systems, steering system, navigation system, exhaust system. When they all work together, you can get from point A to point B predictably, reliably. And you can grow your business. And that's what I was trying to do is I was trying to grow my marketing agency, MWI.
So I started to recognize that there are all these attention generators out there. There's PR and social media and advertising and your website and word of mouth and your blog, and webinars and podcasts. And all of these things generate attention, they come into your sales funnel, and then you funnel people through a process. And eventually this turns into customers and cash for your business. And I want to do more of this. And so I wanted to understand how to influence people to get into my funnel. But I also in addition to making an income, I also wanted to make an impact. And so you're probably like me. If you're an entrepreneur, you want to grow your business. But you don't just want to grow your business. You want to make a difference in the world.
Now, as one of my favorite philosophers said, Jack Handey, I'd rather be rich than stupid. So we all want to make money. We all want to make an impact. And we want to make it in the most efficient way possible. We don't want to waste a lot of time. And I looked at all these different attention generators, speaking and writing and all the things I could do. And I thought, what really ties all this together? How does this all connect? And how can I use these things to create a certain type of synergy? Wouldn't it be great if there were some magic wand that would make all this work really well kind of be the core component of that car that gets me from point A to point B, gets me to where I want to go?
Now somebody who knows a lot about magic was Walt Disney. In 1957, Walt Disney created a strategy map. And on this map, he's got his TV programs. And he's got a place for music and merchandise, and the theme parks and comic strips and publications. And right in the middle of this map, he's got the movies. And then he's got all these lines going every which way connecting these things and showing how they all relate.
The movies are the core of the Disney Empire. Think about Disney without the movies. Where does the music come from if you have no movies? Where does the merchandise come from if you don't have any movies? What would the theme parks be if you didn't have the Disney movies? It all ties back to those movies. That's the core of the Disney Empire.
And when it comes to being an entrepreneur and creating influence, and leveraging that influence to grow your business, what I found was that core piece kind of like the movies for Disney was a book. So you've got different buckets that you can make money from as an entrepreneur. You've got your business. Of course, that's your main thing. But you can also do consulting on the side and make money there. You can do training. You can do coaching. You can do speaking. You can put on your own events. You can launch online courses. You can have membership groups. But if you have a book, it ties all these things together. And it gives you credibility and authority. And it makes everything work so much better.
Now, if you're more of an established entrepreneur, you might look at all those things and say, “Yeah, I don't really want to start online courses or get paid to speak. I'm just interested in growing my business.” So as a more established entrepreneur, you might be interested more in speaking and PR and social media, and maybe launching a podcast, marketing, and advertising. But really what you're trying to do is direct all of that attention into the bucket of your business. Still, a book ties all these things together, everything that you do together, and makes it all that much more effective.
And some people who have thrived because of books that they've published, one of these people is Gary Keller. He's the founder of Keller Williams Realty, which is the largest realty company. They sell more homes than anybody else in the United States by a long shot. Couple of years ago, Gary Keller wrote a book called The One Thing. And they've sold millions of copies of this book. It's been Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today bestseller. It's been translated into 35 languages.
Now, this book, it's not a book about real estate. It's not about how to buy homes. It's not about how to sell homes. It's not how to live in a home, has nothing to do with homes. It's a book about focus and goal setting. And yet, Gary, he credits this book with putting Keller Williams over the top as a business. He said The One Thing, the book changed our image forever. And I don't know exactly how it worked. I don't know if it allowed him to sell more houses or attract the right kind of real estate agents to work with him. But whatever the case, that book made his business even though it had nothing to do with his business.
Now, I mentioned that I was on Richard Branson's island for a week. And when I was there, I was on a boat ride. And I sat next to this woman and said, “Hey, what do you do?” And she said, “Well, I co-founded an ad agency. And then I just left. And now I'm working at Nike and helping them with their marketing.” And I said, “Oh, how big was the agency that you founded?” She said, “Oh, about 600 people.” And I said, “Wow, that's big.” I mean, my marketing agency, it's tiny, compared to that. And I said, “So how did you grow your agency that big?” She said, “Oh, my co-founder, he writes a lot of best-selling books. And they've sold really well. And they bring us a lot of attention.” And I thought, “Wait a second, who's your partner?” She said, “Gary Vaynerchuk.” And I said, “Oh.” Yeah, of course.
I know who Gary Vaynerchuk is. Well, Gary Vaynerchuk does a lot of social media, a lot of video, a lot of posting. He's active on all these platforms. And he gets a ton of attention from social media. And yet when I asked her how she grew VaynerMedia, how she and her partner group VaynerMedia, her response was the books, the books that Gary wrote. So VaynerMedia today, it's $131 million agency. They've got over 700 people working for them. They've got clients like GE, PepsiCo, 20th century Fox, Chase Kraft. And she gave all the credit to Gary writing these books that put them on the map.
A little bit smaller company. You may not have heard of that has used books to put themselves on the map and grow is Arbinger Institute. They wrote a book. And when I say they, I mean they. There's no author on the book other than the Arbinger Institute. But they wrote a book called Leadership and Self-Deception. And they wrote this book 20 plus years ago. Over the last 20 years, they've generated anywhere between two to $14 million per year off of this book. They don't really do other marketing. They just have this book. And this book brings in consulting gigs, and sometimes $14 million a year worth of consulting gigs. Not bad for a book.
So there are lots of other entrepreneurs and thought leaders and influential people out there like Simon Sinek and Tim Ferriss, and Rachel Hollis and Stephen R. Covey, people who have written books and those books have put them on the map, and helped them to grow their businesses.
Now, these are all famous people. And these are big numbers and big examples. But the message I want to get across to you today is you can do this. Just because you're not a Stephen R. Covey today or Rachel Hollis today doesn't mean you might not be Rachel Hollis tomorrow, or Stephen R. Covey tomorrow, or Gaynor Vaynerchuk tomorrow. You can do this everywhere. Everyone started from nothing at some point. What's going to stop you is perfectionism.
So Anne Lamott famous author, she wrote a book on writing called “Bird by Bird.” And she said, “Perfectionism is the main obstacle between you and a blank first draft.” I put lame in there when I say it, but she used a more colorful term for first draft. The first draft of your book, the thing getting in the way of you is perfectionism. Because your first draft, it can be ugly. It's okay.
So these 7 Systems of Influence that I'm going to go through in a little bit more depth now are going to teach you how to create the foundation to write a great book that connects with your ideal audience, and moves them to take the action that you want them to take, that's going to turn your dreams into reality. So let's start with system number one: vision.
So you might have a vision for your book. You want to sell a certain number of copies. You want it to be a best seller, you want it to be translated into a bunch of languages and generate a certain number of sales. And you want to impact a certain number of people, perhaps. That's the vision I have for you as well. I want you to write a book. And I want you to be able to say later, this book changed my life forever. This was a turning point in my life. So that's the vision that we're talking about when we talk about your book.
Now, maybe it doesn't need to be a best seller to change your life. Maybe it doesn't need to be translated into a second language or 35 languages. Maybe you don't even have to sell that many copies of your book. Maybe you don't have to sell any copies of your book. Maybe you can send 50 copies of your book to the right people. And that's going to be enough to change your life. But whatever the case, I want you to write a book. And I want it to change your life. And that's why I'm starting this podcast is to help you know how you're going to write this book, and what you have to do to get through the publishing process. That's why I'm interviewing these authors and publishers and editors and all these different people so that you can learn this. And the dirty secret is, I'm trying to learn all this stuff myself.
Yeah, I've written books. But I want to write more books. And I want to write better books. And I want them to go further. And I want to impact more people. So I'm just like you. I'm a student. And I'm learning alongside you. And I love interviewing these people. It's a lot of fun. Trust me. We've got a lot of fascinating episodes coming up. And they're not fascinating because I talk. I'm just asking a few questions. It's the people who are talking to people I'm interviewing. That's the fascinating stuff.
So the first step is to figure out why you're writing this book. Is it to grow your business? Is it to impact people? Is it both? But specifically, what's your why? Nietzsche said, “He who has a good enough why can deal with anyhow.” If you have a strong why for why you're writing this book, you'll figure it out one way or another. I want to help you along that journey with this podcast. But even if I weren't here, you'd figure it out if you had a strong enough why.
So the next step is to start thinking of yourself as an author. I want you to fill in this blank in this sentence: My name is blank, and I am an author. You don't have to already have a published book to be an author. As soon as you start working on your book, you're an author. Now there's a difference between an author and a writer. A writer is somebody who gets paid to write. It's their job. It's their career. An author is somebody who is writing a book. As soon as you start writing that book, you're an author. And the sooner you start thinking of yourself as an author, the more you're going to adopt the author mindset, which is going to get you through some of the challenges that you're going to face, because writing a book is hard. It is difficult. But we're going to make it easier with this podcast.
So we've already talked about the entrepreneurs thought leadership system, which was this idea that you've got your book, and you've got these buckets around your business, consulting, courses, events, speaking, coaching, all these things. So I don't want to just help you write a book. Because if you just write a book, and you just stick it out there, nothing's going to happen. Maybe some friends and family are going to buy it. But you're not going to get that much spread. You're not going to get that much exposure. But if you create a thought leadership system around your book, you have courses, you do public speaking, you do consulting, and you weave that same topic of your book into all these things, you're going to build things like an email newsletter, maybe a launch podcast. But you're going to build an audience and a tribe and following. And then your book is going to go that much further. And everything's going to turn out better for you if you build that thought leadership system.
So what we're here to figure out with this podcast is not just how to write a book, but how to build your email list, how to launch a podcast, how to get speaking gigs, how to do all these things that are going to support your book and what your book can support. It’s true synergy. All these things work better together. And the sum of the whole is greater than each of the parts. I think I said that a little bit wrong. But you know what I'm saying.
Now, when it comes to this thought leadership system, would you rather do it the hard way or the easy way? If you're like me, you want to do it the easy way. One of my favorite quotes is from Frank Gilbreth. He said, “Choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” That's what I'm all about. Let's figure out the easy way to do this.
So let's go to system number two, your genius zone, because this is going to start to show you some of the easier ways that you can get through some of the challenges you're going to face ahead as you write this book and create your thought leadership system. So the genius zone is made up of the characteristics, the knowledge, the experience, and the skills that make you you, that are unique to you. So here's how to find your genius zone.
First, you find your expert zones. So Usain Bolt, for example, is the world's fastest man. And he can run about 27 miles an hour. A bear can run about 39 miles an hour. So let's say that you and your friend, you're walking through the forest. And suddenly a bear starts to chase you. How fast you have to run, to outrun that bear and not die? The answer is faster than your friend. And that's what I mean, when I say an expert zone. I don't mean that you're the best in the world. I mean that you're just a little bit ahead of the guy next to you. Your expert zones are everything that you know something about, a little something about. So you might know a little bit something about computers or marketing.
For example, for myself, I lived in China. So I know a little bit of Chinese. I grew up skateboarding. So I know a bit about that. I've run a marketing agency. So I know about that. I've been a CEO. I've lived in Utah. I love politics. I love following it. And you start to combine these things, these different expert zones. And you overlap them. Kind of like a Venn diagram, you've got the circles and everything. And then they overlap. Where the overlap is, that is a potential genius zone.
So, for example, I mentioned skateboarding and marketing. I grew up skateboarding. And I ran a skate shop when I was a kid. I've stayed in touch with people in the industry. So, yeah, I know a little bit about skateboarding. But so do millions of other people. By itself, that doesn't make me special. That's not my genius zone. And marketing, I know a bit about marketing. I've run a marketing agency for 20 years. I wrote a book about marketing. I interviewed a bunch of CMOs. But there are a lot of other people out there who also know quite a bit about marketing.
So by itself, that doesn't make me special either. I couldn't make marketing my genius zone all by itself. But if I overlap these two things, and I ask myself, how many people in the world know as much about marketing and skateboarding as I do? I don't know. Maybe 10. That gives me something pretty unique. I could make that my genius zone. And I could go to Adidas or Nike and say, “Hey, I know all this stuff about marketing. And I know all this stuff about skateboarding, and I can help you to sell a ton of shoes to teenage skater kids.” I've chosen not to make that my genius zone. But that illustrates the point of how you combine your expert zones to make a genius zone.
So you list out all your expert zones. And then you say, “My genius zone is 1, 2, 3, these three things put together, or maybe it's four, or maybe it's five.” So there might be a bunch of things. And if you're on the podcast page, or you're watching this on YouTube, go down into the comments, tell me what your genius zone is. I'd love to know what your genius zone is, what you've come up with. But it's combining those expert zones and looking at and saying, “Wow, when you combine these things, who else has this? Who else can do these five things or has these six things in their experience? What is it that really makes you unique and special?” That's your genius zone. Knowing your genius zone makes a lot of things easier, trust me.
So system number three, in the 7 Systems of Influence is your audience. Really, we're talking about your ideal audience. There are eight things that make your ideal audience. One is that they're like you. The second thing is that they need what you have. The third thing is that they also want what you have. Because sometimes people need what you have, but they don't really want it, even though they really need it. You know they need it. They don't know that they need it. Or maybe they know they need it, but they don't want it. I mean, like broccoli, you know. We all need it. But we don't necessarily want it.
Number four is they have the money. Five, they require minimal education. Your ideal audience, you don't want to be spending a ton of time educating them on your product, your service or whatever you're trying to get across to them. It's better if they just get it. Number six, they energize you. You come away from interacting with your ideal audience, and you have more energy rather than you're drained of energy. Your ideal audience will commit to the long term. They'll work with you today. They'll work with you five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road, that's better than if they're just one and done. And finally, your ideal audience spreads the word about what you do. They're an evangelist for your product or service.
So if I was trying to figure out my own ideal audience, I would look at myself and I'd say, well, who am I? Now, I'm an American. But I've lived in China. I'm an entrepreneur. I've been an executive. I've also interviewed a lot of executives. I've been a CEO. I've interviewed CMOs. And then just like with the genius zone, I start to overlap these different factors or these different groups. And I say, okay, so I take audience one, entrepreneurs maybe, and audience two, personal branding maybe. And I start to overlap these things. And I say, “Huh, well, maybe that's my ideal audience.” Because I really know entrepreneurs and executives. And I know a lot about personal branding. And who else understands that entrepreneur, executive audience and knows as much about personal branding as I do? Not that many people. Maybe that's the audience I should focus on is entrepreneurs and executives who are looking for personal branding services. That could be the ideal audience that I focus on.
Now, if you want a shortcut for this, start with the best customer you already have, and start listing out details about them. And you can really speed up this process. Now what this gives you when you have your vision, and your genius zone, and your ideal audience is you can create a personal brand tagline. And all you have to do is fill in these blanks. I help blank to blank. The first blank is your audience. And the second blank is the result that you deliver for your audience. So I help my audience to get what or to do what? What are the results that I helped them to get?
So one of my favorite marketers out there, Amy Porterfield, her personal brand tagline is, I teach entrepreneurs, that's her audience, entrepreneurs, how to build email lists and create online courses. That's the result that she delivers. That's her personal brand tagline. So what's your personal brand tagline? Once again, put that in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube, or you're looking at the web podcast web page.
System number four is content. Content comes from a few different places. First of all, it comes from your ideas and your experiences. Or you might get it from other’s ideas and experiences. Or you might do research to find it, experiments and such. So some of the books that have been created based off of people's own experiences is Rejection Proof by Judging. So he went out and he said, “I'm going to get rejected for 100 days in a row. I'm going to enjoy 100 days of rejection and then see what I learned from it.” Well, he learned a lot. And he wrote a book about it. And it became a best seller. Or you can look at Cal Newport who wrote a book called So Good, They Can't Ignore You. That's based on a lot of other things, but largely on his own experiences. Or one of my favorite entrepreneurship books, Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which is really kind of autobiographical. But then it has all these great lessons and experiences from his life as an entrepreneur. So you've got books that are written then on other people's ideas and experiences.
So this was my own book, Chief Marketing Officers at Work when I interviewed other people, or you could look at the book Insight by Tasha Eurich. It's based on her experiences consulting other people or Different by Youngme Moon, or the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. These aren’t the author's thoughts so much as they are the things that they've learned from talking to other people gathering information from other people's experiences. It's not just coming out of their own heads.
And then finally, you've got the research that you can do. So some research-based books are like 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do by Amy Morin, or Quiet by Susan Cain, or Good to Great by Jim Collins. These are academic research-based books that have been put together. So your content is three things. It's your message. It's your channel. And it's a call to action. And this, again, is system number four of the 7 Systems of Influence. We're talking about how to create your content.
Now, when we talk about your message, which is part one, the message is not necessarily the words you say. But it is the message that you communicate. So Rachel Hollis, her message I would say is take responsibility for your life. And then you'll have a more successful, happier life. Dave Ramsey, the financial guru guy on radio, his is you can get out of debt. That's the message that he's promoting out there.
The second part of content is the channel. This is how you deliver it. So number one, it should be where your audience hangs out. Because if you're delivering it somewhere else, it's not going to connect. And it should be what you're comfortable with. Now, of course, we're talking about books here. But you can think about other channels like YouTube. Your audience might be hanging out on YouTube. But maybe you hate doing video. And so it's not what you're comfortable with. Maybe you love writing, in which case, great, because you're going to get to write a book here. And if your audience reads books, then that's perfect.
The third part of content is the call to action. What do you want your audience to do? Do you want them to tell their friends about your book? Do you want them to join your email list? Do you want them to hire you to speak? Do you want them to enroll in your course or buy what you're selling? These are all different calls to action. And that could be all sorts of things. And you could have 10 calls to action. But the point is your content should have some sort of call to action. Otherwise, people read it, and then they forget about it, and they don't do anything. You want people to do something. So system number five in the 7 Systems of Influence is action.
Now as the general Helmuth Carl Bernhard Graf von Moltke said, yes, that's a real person. He said no plan survives contact with the enemy. However, as another General Dwight Eisenhower said, plans are useless. But planning is indispensable. We need plans to get stuff done. Even if we throw the plans out the window and we do something else, there's value in doing the plan.
Now, my method that I like to use is the Big Rocks method that was popularized by Stephen R. Covey, which is that he did this object lesson where he had a jar. And he brought somebody up out of his audience when he was speaking to them. And he had a bunch of big rocks. And then he had a bunch of pebbles and sand and stuff. And he would talk about the big rocks. Now these are your big priorities. These are the most important things in your life. Maybe it's a role, like being a father, or a husband, or the CEO of your company. Or maybe it's a goal, something that you really want to get done, like traveling around the world, or writing a book or something like that. But you've got your big rocks, and then you've got all the small stuff like checking email today, or taking out the trash, or things like that, that yeah, these are important, but it's not the big stuff.
And he showed how if you put all the small stuff in first, and then you try to fit the big rocks on top., you can't do it. You can't fit everything in to this jar that he had. But if you put the big rocks in first, and then you sprinkle on the small stuff, then everything fits. So what's the lesson there? Don't wake up and check your email first thing in the morning. That's not your big rock. Work on the big rocks first. Pebbles, second.
Well, I adapted this to my planning as do many other people. There are lots of different planners out there, lots of different methods. This is just what works for me. So I have my big rocks. And I don't have a lot of these. Just a few. And for each big rock, I've got a vision. And then for that big rock, I've got an action area, and maybe I have multiple action areas. And for each action area, I have the vision. And then I have the actual actions that I do. So, for example, let's say that one of my big rocks is I'm an author, and I want to publish a book by July 17, 2021. That's my vision for my role as an author. And one of my action areas is I need to do a bunch of brainstorming because I need to figure out what I'm going to write. So my vision for that action item of brainstorming is I want to get all my ideas out in one place. That's what I want to do.
So what am I actually going to do? What's action number one? First, let's come up with a big list of chapter ideas. And action number two, find quotes to use in my book. And then maybe I have like a sub-action, like list all the books I want to reference. This is just an example. This isn't the one right way to write a book or anything. But this just shows how you take your big rock, I am an author, and my vision, publishing a book and then you break it down into smaller tasks that are easier to achieve. Simple stuff. Easy, right?
Now, you could also set this up for being a thought leader. You could say, “I want to set up my basic system by October 1 2020.” Whoops, that already passed. We better redo that date. Huh. And so I need to have a personal brand website. I want phase one up by a certain date. And action number one, I'm going to get some new photos. Action number two, I'm going to choose a platform like WordPress or Kajabi, or Squarespace. And so I need to research platforms. And then I need to talk to my friend who's a web designer and figure this stuff out. And you break this down until you get to what is the thing I'm going to do right now today to make progress towards this big rock. And every day, you look at your list of big rocks and all the little tasks and you make that decision. What can I do right now to make progress towards this big rock.
Now, if you're building your thought leadership platform, the place that you should start for most people is your email list. This is the one thing I wish I would have done 20 years ago, because, uh, man, if I did this 20 years ago, I'd have a huge email list today. But I didn't. I got started a lot later. And so my email list is not as big as it could be today. The great thing about having an email list is when you finally get your book out there, you release it, and a bunch of people buy it immediately, because you've got this email list. You don't have an email list. Yeah, friends and family, maybe you'll sell a couple of copies.
The next place, if you're an entrepreneur to start building your thought leader platform is probably going to be LinkedIn. And if you haven't been active on LinkedIn for a few years, you're probably like, wait, isn't that that place where you get a job and you kind of put your resume up and stuff? Yeah, that's what it used to be. Today, it is the number one networking place for entrepreneurs, for B2B people, but also be to C people. No matter what you're doing, this is the place to come and exercise your profession online. There are over 700 million users on LinkedIn today. It's the largest professional network in the world. And it is hoppin. There are so many people active on LinkedIn, sharing content, learning, taking courses. There's so much opportunity to make connections, to share your content, to get feedback. There's just so many reasons to be active on LinkedIn today.
The other thing that you need is a personal brand website. You need a website, preferably that is your name, where it's all about you and what you do professionally, that you can send people to so that you can talk about your book, and you can talk about the public speaking you do and any of the other things that you do. And that can be a pretty simple website. But if you're going to be a thought leader, you've got to have that personal brand website. No, it should not be your company website. You need a separate website for yourself.
So real quick running through these email lists, I recommend ConvertKit. You should have a lead magnet. ConvertKit, by the way, is like MailChimp or one of these email software places. But that's how you build your email list. I love ConvertKit. I've been using it for years. I've used it the other platforms. I still prefer ConvertKit.
Number two is a lead magnet. This is an incentive that you use to get people to sign up for your email list. And one of the tactics you should use is to give your best stuff away. And people often say, “Oh, but if I give my best stuff away, then people won't want to buy the book or they won't want to hire me.” Wrong. If you give your best stuff away, they assume that you have more stuff that's even better. And then they really want that other stuff. So if you want to sell whatever you're selling, if you want to get people to get interested in your book, give your best stuff away. They'll be that much more interested in getting whatever you're offering.
On LinkedIn, there are three steps to making LinkedIn work for you. First, optimizing profile. Second, connecting to high quality people. And third, posting compelling content. On your personal brand website, the important things are to clarify your vision, to express your genius zone, to really speak directly to your ideal audience. And then you need to have a theme, a focus. Something that is your formula, your system. But it's the thing that you're sharing with people. You want to have photos and video of your speaking, you speaking.
And then once you have these assets together, your thought leader outreach process looks like this. You've got your email. You've got PR. You've got LinkedIn. You've got podcasts perhaps. You've got your book. And all of these things can work together. Now you don't need to do all these things. But if you have all these things, they can all work together. And you're going to get your message out there, which is going to lead your audience to take action, which turns your vision into reality.
The system number six in the 7 Systems of Influence is collaboration, working with other people. You can do 1,000 times more if you collaborate with others versus trying to do things by yourself. The six types of collaborators that authors need are first, peers, other authors. You need a marketing partner. You need a co-author perhaps. An editor. You need your readers. And you need mentors. If you have these people helping you out, your book is going to go faster. It's going to be better. And when it's finally ready to put out there, it's going to sell better and spread further.
System number seven is love. Love is, first of all, passion. It's empathy. It's kindness. And it's goodwill. And this final point, I can't emphasize this enough. If you have goodwill, it trumps everything else. You can get the whole seven systems wrong, pretty much. And if you’ve got the goodwill, people will say, ah, he means well. And they'll still follow you. On the other hand, if you don't have goodwill, if you're just doing this, because it's all about you and what you want to get out of it, and you see everything is transactional, and just a way to make money or control people, you could do everything else right with the seven systems of influence, and people will say, “Uh, he doesn't care about me, and it will fall flat. It won't work.” As Simon Sinek says, people don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it.
So this is your overview of the 7 Systems of Influence. We're going to be talking about this more as we go through these podcast episodes. You're going to hear me make references to these things. I'm excited to go on this journey with you. I'm excited for you to listen to these episodes, because again, I've already recorded 20 of these. And they are so good. I need to go back and listen to a bunch of these, because there's so much valuable information about how to hire an editor, how to self publish your book, How to land a traditional publisher, how to work with hybrid publishers, how does it get started writing your book?
I interview authors and I ask them, did you ever get hung up? Did you ever get writer's block? How did you work through it? How did you come up with your book idea? There's so many good tips and nuggets here. Every time I interview somebody, I come away thinking, you know, I thought I knew something about the book industry and how to write a book and publish a book and edit a book and get it out there. And yet every single time I interview somebody, I learn something new, if not 10 things new.
So welcome to the Published Author Podcast. I'm your host Josh Steimle. And I hope you enjoy this journey with me.
