#130: Win-Win: My Book Publishing Journey
Have you always wanted to write a book or have been walking around with a couple different book titles in you?
I know that was me for many years.
I wanted to share my story and be able to help other people. But for many of us, the idea of trying to get a book out the door, and published is very overwhelming, seemingly expensive and time consuming-it never really feels like the time is right.
So, I'm going to be starting a four part series on how I went about creating my book, the steps that I took, the decision making process and what the book will be about.
For a limited time, if you preorder the book, you will receive a relationship marketing toolkit free of cost (valued at $1,200). Head to createyourwinwin.com and click on the preorder button. Then, go back to the website, put in your order number and look for your free training in your inbox.
Listen to the Show:
Laura 00:00
Have you heard I wrote a book, it's coming out on December 6. And this podcast is part of a series that I have recorded in anticipation of the book release. The book is called Win. And it's all about how to grow your business leveraging the power of relationships. And if you would like to preorder the book, I have a special gift for you. And is a relationship marketing toolkit that is completely free when you preorder Win. In order to be able to enjoy this free gift go to create your wind wind.com. That's create your wind dot com, go ahead and click on the preorder button. And then go back to the website, put in your order number and we will be providing you this training. And we will provide you with immediate access a $1,200 value just for pre ordering the book.
Laura 00:52
Welcome to the Next Level Leap podcast. I'm your host, Laura Meyer top growth strategist to some of the country's fastest growing brands, and mentor to consultants. My signature leap methodology has changed the way 1000s of companies look at growth strategy, and this podcast shares, best practices and inspirational interviews to help you make that next level leap in your business. Stick around and join me as I share the journey of how we as founders can multiply our income impact and influence by landing on the other side of our next big leap. Let's go!
Laura 01:33
Maybe you've always wanted to write a book, or you've been walking around with a couple book titles inside of you. I know that was me for many years, I wanted to share my story and experiences and be able to help other people. And if you're anything like me, I'm a pretty big book nerd. I love reading. And I typically go through a book on average a week or even every other week or so. If you're an entrepreneur, you're the kind of person that invests in lifelong growth, you're probably built the same way, and you want to create a book yourself. But for many of us, the idea of trying to get a book out the door, and published is very overwhelming. It's seemingly expensive and time consuming. And it never really feels like the time is right. And that was very much the case with me. So I'm going to be starting with this episode, a four part series on how I went about creating my book, the steps that I took to make the decisions around the book and what the book would be about. And some of the excerpts from the book, which we'll release on December 6 of this year, is something that I want to share with you because I'm so excited to reveal what the book is about and the concepts.
Laura 02:43
So in creating this first book, when I set out to write it was because I found myself repeating myself again and again and again around the same principles and ideas when I was coaching in my communities and answering questions. And every time I would say something over again. And the people that I was speaking with would say, oh my gosh, I never thought of it
that way. Or what a great concept that I've really never heard of it from that perspective. Do you have anything I could read or reference on that topic? So when it comes to choosing your first book, and the titles and contents, there's probably a lot of different things we could write about. Do you want it to be a fiction or a nonfiction book? Do we want to just tell stories or share experiences that we had? Is it more of a personal development journey? Where are we teaching people some of the principles and philosophies that we lean on when it comes to business growth? For me, those were some of the tough decisions, because I've had so many different experiences as an entrepreneur, some better than others. And I just felt like all of those experiences collectively, would be able to contribute to the journey of others, maybe help them go about something in a way, who take them less time or flatten their learning curve, who just overall help them become better faster. And I think for so many of us entrepreneurs, we love to help and we love to give and we love to contribute and we love to create value. And a book is a fantastic way to do that. And when I realized I was starting and stopping books over the last five years, and maybe you have the same archive of notes, or that Google doc folder that says Book in it, and like six rough drafts, I know I did that from a lot of different directions.
Laura 04:27
And when I was trying to figure out what direction to take the book in, I first thought about what are the topics that I can help people with the most that are spoken about the least. And when I started to kind of think about my own personal development journey, a lot of it had to do with relationships. And so I really wanted to share my expertise and my experience when it comes to growing businesses through relationship building. And what are some of the questions I get around that topic again, and again, I think for me Many of us, sometimes we want to write a book to share our experiences. And I've certainly had many different experiences in life and business. But what I realized is I wasn't really ready to go deep on all of those experiences that I thought about, because I didn't necessarily think that it would be coming from a place of expertise. So maybe I'll write that book a different time when those ideas are more fully developed. But what I did decide to do is write a book on relationship marketing. And the reason why I decided to write a book on relationship marketing is because when I look back at 20 years of entrepreneurship, the thing that has helped me get to where I am today, the methodologies, the philosophies, the principles that have allowed me to outlast many of the people who started when I did an entrepreneurship are many of the people that gave up when I didn't, is relationships.
Laura 05:53
I'm not talking about just friendly chit chat, being able to have coffee with somebody and engage in small talk, which I think is an important skill to have. And many people are able to develop that competency regardless of whether or not they're pursuing entrepreneurship. But for me personally, it was about being able to leverage relationships that turned into business growth. And many times those relationships came back to me when I needed it the most
unexpected at the least. So when I look back on all of those pivotal moments of where it'd be so easy to give up, or it would have been really, really difficult for me to do it any other way. I can look at my history of creating relationships, developing impactful meaningful connections that catapulted the growth of my business. So in this book called Win, I decided to unpack that. And it's really not an easy thing to unpack. Because for many of us, we have relationships, but we're not sure how to leverage them in the right way. Many of us have been on the receiving end of those terrible LinkedIn inbox messages or Instagram direct messages. And we unfortunately think that's what relationship marketing is. It's just, you know, cold outreach, that feels terrible. But that's not what it is. Relationship marketing, is a balance of deep care and concern and empathy for the people around you, coupled with the right moves in the right order that helps grow your business. And one of the reasons why I chose this topic is because you can be at any stage in business and benefit from these strategies. These are strategies that would be fantastic to start with, as you're beginning your business, or are there strategies that I would also recommend to multimillion dollar operations that are looking to engage in joint partnerships. So the first part of the book really starts out with more of the mindset, which how I think about relationship building, and relationship marketing. And then it gets into the tactics of collaborations, joint partnerships, joint ventures, so that you can strategically do the right things in the right order to grow your business. And if you've been thinking, Gosh, I've got this book in me, and it'd be great to write one just like what Laura described in my area of specialty, or the thing that I think has been so pivotal in my own business growth. But I don't really know if I have the time for it, or what the process is like, that's what I'm going to be sharing with you next.
Laura 08:23
So for me, the process was very daunting at first, once I realized I wanted to write a book on relationship marketing, not only because it’s my strength. But it's also something that isn't really discussed widely. In the plethora of business books available. You look at growth strategies when it comes to strategic planning with very popular books like Eos, or scaling up. When it comes to marketing anything from Dan Kennedy or Dan Sullivan, and strategic coach. There's lots of amazing business strategies when it comes to overall growth. But there wasn't much available when it came specifically to relationship marketing, or how to grow your business by leaning into relationships. So I wanted to be able to address that gap. One of the first things I did is I took a look at all of my interviews, my podcasts and all of the free teachings and trainings that I've provided to the marketplace over the years and had them transcribed wasn't terribly expensive to have the machine transcribed. And I put them into a Google document in the order in which I thought they made sense. So that was the first step. And it was really messy to look at. I just looked at patterns. And when I started to write this book, I realized there was three primary ways in which I recommend that business owners engage in relationship marketing, that together creates this flywheel effect in your business that creates more referrals, more relationships, more collaborations, and more visibility.
Laura 09:48
And when you bring those components together, it's this fundamental aspect of what I think is behind relationship marketing. So as I started to look at the work I saw patterns emerging, I see ways in which I think there would be a sequential order to the book. And the first time I looked at those machine transcriptions, I was like, wow, this is really bad. This is not a good book, what would resemble the beginnings of a good book, but I trusted the process. And from there, I engaged in a self-publishing company. And the self-publishing company looked at what Brene Brown would call a, you know what first draft just in case you have any kids listening. And I listened to it, and I looked at it, and I looked at the big, hairy, ugly beginnings of something beautiful. And every single week, my publisher, and I would meet and talk about it. And we would start to refine the work. And the questions that she would ask me would be designed to fill in the gaps between those transcriptions. And over time, my responses start to round out the book and started to round out the concepts. And over time, as the editing was taking place, it stopped looking like a terrible collection of machine transcriptions of my own audios, and more into structured content.
Laura 11:07
And there, I saw the beginning of the book, and it's starting to look pretty good. And so from there, I brought in an editor and the editor did a beautiful job of correcting all the grammar, making sure there was clarity on the concepts, looking up any types of citations or references within the content, to make sure it was written correctly. And that was a really rewarding part of the process, seeing an editor bring my words to life. And then more recently, around the time I'm recording this podcast, we are starting to add in stories, I didn't expect that this would be my favorite part of writing the book. Because without stories, the book is just a series of concepts that are theoretical, very much conceptual, in terms of how I look at relationship marketing, and adding and supporting examples from my colleagues and my own experiences from my work and my clients work. And this was so fun. I started asking them questions and interviewing them and pressing them a little bit more on what it made that particular collaboration or relationship successful. Or if I provided advice to them around relationship marketing, why it worked out so well. And adding in these stories was such a delightful experience, because I knew that I was able to now extend the visibility of my book to some of the people I really care about and respect, and I want to see successful as well. So that was actually the most fun part about writing this book. It was a two week period, where I was adding in the stories and thinking, oh my gosh, that's right, I need to put in that particular example. And as the examples were added in, I watched this very simple book filled with ideas and theories blow up, and watch it come to life through all of the storytelling.
Laura 12:59
Today, I'm looking at the book, and I'm so excited to share it with you. Now we're starting to pull together the marketing of the book and publicity plans and social media plans. And in the next few episodes, I'll be sharing with you some details about what's inside of the book. And as part of the book launch team bonus, I'll be going over exactly how we marketed the book some of the strategies we're using, that you can use to market your own book if this is a journey you're on as well. And we can continue to explore together the idea of book writing and book authoring and getting your first book out the door. I'm so excited to share this series with you. In the next few episodes, I'll be sharing with you excerpts from the book and the ways in which you can get on the pre-launch list. And if this is something you want to learn more about, go ahead and visit createyourwinwin.com The name of the book is Win Win and when you go to createyourwinwin.com You can let me know if you'd like to be part of the book launch team. This gets you a complimentary copy prior to the book being published. And to learn more about what the book is about and to get reference documents when you read the book. All of that is available right there on the website. You can see what it looks like for your own inspiration. So go to createyourwinwin.com and I will see you in the next episode. As we dive deeper into relationship marketing.
Laura 14:26
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