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Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.
Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand your business, visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design.
Hi there. Thanks so much for joining us today on the Marketing a Practice podcast. Today, we have Julie Broad with us. Julie is the founder of self-publishing services firm Book Launchers and is an Amazon Overall #1 Best Selling Author. She knows what it takes to be a successful self-published author. Her previous titles include More than Cashflow and The New Brand You. Through Book Launchers and her popular YouTube channel, BookLaunchers.TV, she helps subject matter experts write, publish, and promote nonfiction books. A native of Canada, Julie currently resides in Los Angeles with her family.
[SAM]: Hi Julie, thanks so much for joining us today.
[JULIE BROAD]: Hi, thank you for having me.
[SAM]: So, Julie, can you tell us a bit about your story and how you ended up founding Book Launchers?
[JULIE]: Yes, this is always a fun one because if people find out that my background is actually in real estate and they go, “Well, what are you doing in publishing?” But, as a little girl, I actually thought I would be a writer. And I had a lot of stories published by the time I was 10 years old. So I loved writing, but somebody along the way told me writers didn’t make money, so I went to business school. I did an under undergrad in business and a post-grad in business. So yes, so I have a lot of business which led me to real estate, which thankfully eventually led me to publishing. After investing in real estate for about 10 years, I had a lot of stories of really what not to do and I thought they would make a great book.
And I was approached, I had started in 2008, actually, I started a real estate training and education company to go along with my real estate investments, which I had started in 2001. And I started to build a platform and an audience in Canada and a couple of publishers kind of went, “Hey, have you ever thought of writing a book?” And as I got talking with Wiley, which is one of the major publishers, they said, “Oh, we’d love to work with you.” And so I said, “Great, I have this book idea. I’ve been thinking about it.” And they said, “No, no. That idea won’t sell. It’s been done.” They said, “But we have an idea for you.” So they gave me a book idea and we went back and forth for three months creating this proposal. And I figured they gave me the idea, they approached me, I was getting a book deal. What I ended up getting was an email from them saying that I didn’t have a strong enough platform to sell books. And so, I was ultimately, they rejected my idea and then after three months of courtship, they then rejected me.
So, it was pretty harsh, but what it did actually, I now look at it as probably one of the greatest things that ever happened to me because it forced me to kind of look at what I was doing and I realized I still wanted to publish that book. I wanted to share the stories which I believe were the real risks and potential rewards of self-publishing and it kind of forced me into the self-publishing world. I decided I wasn’t just going to self-publish. I was going to self publish and do it better than if Wiley had given me a book deal. And that really, that fire that they lit under my backside really generated a lot of momentum for me to dive really deep and learn everything there was to know about self-publishing and, and take my book from this author, they didn’t think could sell books with the topic they didn’t think would sell.
And I took it to number one on Amazon. I was ahead of Dan Brown, I was ahead of Game of Thrones. I sold thousands and thousands of copies in a week. I was in the top 100 books for 45 days. And still, that was 2013, and you know, I’m still getting emails and contact on Instagram from people saying, “Your book is my go-to resource for my clients and realtors and mortgage brokers and things like that to read.” So, it was really phenomenal and it opened my eyes up to the gaps in the marketplace, the challenges for people who do want to self-publish, but they aren’t getting the support they want to create a book that will be marketable, which is something we’ll definitely talk about shortly, but yes, so that ultimately led me to creating Book Launchers in a roundabout way.
[SAM]: That’s amazing. That’s a really incredible story, and I think as you said is roundabout, but it almost seems like everything that happened led to where you are now and your success.
[JULIE]: That’s exactly what I tell people: is I feel like everything that I did leading up to Book Launchers, just positioned me to run the business of my dreams, really working with the most amazing people, surrounded in writing all day long. So yes, I really think everything I did to this point brought me to where I’m supposed to be.
[SAM]: Yes, that’s amazing. So can you tell us a bit about how, obviously our audience is predominantly private practice owners. So how can they go about innovating their brand through writing a book?
[JULIE]: A book is the best marketing that you actually make money from. So, books are incredible. And like I said, to this day, I’m still getting contacted by people. If I was still doing real estate coaching, I would have a very thriving business and from a book I wrote eight years ago. So the beautiful thing about a book is that it’s not a brochure or a pamphlet that people throw in the garbage. They typically, at worst, they’ll donate it to the local bookstore or book charity and somebody else will pick it up and read it. So your marketing has a really, really long shelf life. And so if you position that book in a way that you’re delivering massive value to your ideal client, then you’re in a really good position to attract people to your practice and to grow your business, grow your brand, and over time become the go-to place for whatever problem it is that you solve in a unique way. And that’s really what your book does; is position you as the person that solves a problem in a very specific way.
[SAM]: That’s amazing. I think yes, I mean, I’ve never necessarily thought of a book that way. And I think that’s what peaked my interest when I came across your subject matter of that a book can elevate your brand. So would you say though that, like what would you say to somebody who doesn’t necessarily consider themselves an author or even able to write a book?
[JULIE]: That’s why Book Launchers exists. So, we have kind of two tracks that people come on and both tracks start with a story expert. And the story expert’s job is to figure out the hook of your book and what makes you unique because there’s probably already a book out on the subject you want to write about. Maybe there’s even a hundred. So we want to find that little golden thread that makes you stand out in the market. And so that’s where you start. So it doesn’t matter if you have book experience. We’re going to make sure you’ve got a strong backbone for your book and then we’re going to pair you either with a writer to assist you with the writing, or we’re going to pair you with a writing coach who’s going to coach you through the writing of the book. So, I mean, there’s very few of our authors who are actually people that would call themselves writers. I don’t even call myself a writer. I’m an author, but I don’t consider myself a writer per se. So it’s really, we set up to help professionals and subject matter experts write a great book.
[SAM]: That’s awesome. So you kind of, it’s like handholding through the entire process?
[JULIE]: Exactly. Because it’s a huge project, which is what I realized when I did it. Like I said, I had the fire under my butt, which made me, I think push harder than a lot of people, but most people think that writing the book is the hard part. That’s the first hard part. The second hard part is really marketing it. And if you don’t have support in the middle to know which editors to hire when, you can really set yourself up for a lot of pain. One of the most common things that happens is we get people who come to us and they actually hired an editor for their book and they’re beside themselves because they’ve had people read it and they go, “I had an editor, but the editor didn’t make my book better. They just made it grammatically correct.” And so there’s three different kinds of editors and a lot of people don’t even realize that. And if you hire the wrong editor in the wrong order, you’ve just wasted money because you weren’t ready for that particular editor. So the middle part is hard too, if you don’t know what you’re doing. So yes, I think it’s really important for you to be the expert in your business and hire the experts for the stuff you’re not an expert in.
[SAM]: Absolutely. And I mean, I always say that I think private practice owners are uniquely positioned in kind of their wealth of knowledge on their clients. Obviously they’re in a space where they are super vulnerable with them and said actually they of all people should have a lot of subject matter to write about.
[JULIE]: Yes, absolutely. And then it’s just a matter of finding that little unique spin. So a couple of questions that might help if you’re kind of wondering what do I do that’s unique or what’s my perspective that’s different is if you’ve been in your industry for a few years, you may look at it and go, “Okay, what’s something that most people believe that just isn’t true?” That’s a really good starting point. If there’s commonly held beliefs in your space that again you have a different perspective or a different solution to, those two things are really great. Your entire book doesn’t have to be different. It’s just that golden thread that ties everything together that we call the hook that has to be different. There has to be a slightly unique spin. So asking yourself some of those questions can kind of help you figure out what’s unique and what your perspective is that that will be different than what’s already out there.
[SAM]: That’s great advice. So can you tell us a bit about your latest book titled Self-Publish & Succeed?
[JULIE]: Yes, absolutely. So it’s Self-Publish & Succeed was written to really share what we call our no-boring books process, because we don’t want to just help you write a book. We want to help you write a book that people will read. And through working with hundreds of authors and my own kind of lens on the whole thing we developed this process to write an engaging book and I put everything that we work with our clients on into the book to help anybody really write a great book because ultimately I think the saddest thing is to write a book and have nobody read it. So we want to make sure that your book stands out and that once people actually pick it up, they read it and can’t stop.
[SAM]: Awesome. And for those of you who are on the run while you’re listening to this we’ll definitely have links to that in the show notes. So, Julie, can you tell us just any other tips you have or any other ways that private practice owners can elevate their brands through writing a book?
[JULIE]: Yes. So I mean, the one thing to think about is that your book isn’t the end game, the book is the tool that you’ll use for your practice. So you’re going to use that book to get speaking engagements, maybe make some partnerships with people that you maybe wouldn’t have made partnerships with before. It really just gives you that opportunity to get on podcasts, even local media. One of the things that happens to a lot of our clients is they become the local media expert. So, you go on once, you do a great job and now every time there’s a question or an issue in your realm of experience, they’ll contact you because they know that you can give a great interview. But the book is one of those pieces that all of these places look at and go, “Okay, they’ve written a book. They have expertise. They’re the expert. We can trust that they’re going to be able to talk about this subject.”
So it’s really a tool. And so if you look at it that way and you kind of think about, “Okay, what can this tool do for me that will lead me to my end goal and use it that way?” Then you’ll set yourself up for massive success versus the people who put it on Amazon and think it’s going to sell. That doesn’t work at all, no matter how good your search engine optimization strategies were. You really have to have other plans. And if you go in and really looking at it as a tool and using it to get other kind of business and leads and grow your brand, then it doesn’t matter actually how many books you’re selling, but you’ll going to sell books just by doing that.
[SAM]: And so if people wanted to take part in Book Launchers, what would be the best way for them to go about doing that?
[JULIE]: Yes, absolutely. So we have, I mean, reading the book is going to be a great starting place, Self-Publish & Succeed, but also we have a guide that is Seven Steps to Writing a Book that Will Sell. And just to give you a sense of the work that goes in before you write, writing doesn’t start until step five. And so you can download that at booklaunchers.com/7steps, the number seven, I’m sure you’ll put the links for them in the show notes as well, but that’s a really, that workbook is a great place to start. And then if you want further assistance, you can either hit reply to any emails that you get or you can go to booklaunchers.com on our website and check out what we do and reach out through the website.
[SAM]: Awesome. Thanks so much for that free gift. And yes, we will have that link available in the show notes if you are on the move while listening to this. So Julie, every private practice owner in the world where they’re seeing right now, what would you want them to know?
[JULIE]: Your story matters and it could be helping somebody right now. And if you’re kind of thinking, “Oh, I don’t know if I’m ready to write a book,” just think about somebody that’s just a little bit further behind you in the journey or a client that you could have helped if they’d had your book and just get, sit down and start working on it, because there really is somebody that needs you and your book can have a powerful impact on you and your practice.
[SAM]: Awesome. So guys, thanks so much, Julie, for giving all that amazing advice. And for those listening, if you’re interested in finding out more, be sure to head over to booklaunchesr.com/7steps to download that guide. And yes, if you’re looking for help in writing a book to elevate your brand, be sure to get in touch with Julie over at Book Launchers. Julie, last thing, if people want to get in touch with you specifically, how can they go about doing that?
[JULIE]: Booklaunches.tv is our YouTube channel and it’s the one place that is all me. Everywhere else you’ll find my team, but on YouTube, if you comment on YouTube and you get a response, that response is me. So that’s the best way to connect with me.
[SAM]: Awesome. Thanks again so much for being on the Marketing a Practice podcast.
[JULIE]: Thanks for having me.
[SAM]: Once again, thank you so much to Therapy Notes for sponsoring this show. It makes notes, billing, scheduling, and tele-health a whole lot easier. And if you’re coming from another EHR, they make the transition really easy. Therapy Notes will input your client’s demographic data free of charge during your trial so you can get going right away. Use the promo code, [JOE], that’s [J O E] to get two free months to try out Therapy Notes for free.
Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon.
Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.
This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a to professional, you should find one.