Why Your Book Is Just a Doorstop Without This One Thing | Melanie Herschorn

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Welcome everyone to doing business with a servant's heart podcast. Doing business and life with a purpose, serving others, and yes, achieving success. I'm your host, Steve Ramona. We created this show for you because you want everyone to be motivated, inspired, and educated to make an impact in your world. You can see I didn't say world in your world. You have to start there, and then the whole bigger world will change. This guest is going to blow your mind. My mind's already blown. We haven't even started the show yet, or just started. Yeah, she's great. She's got great graphics and great sound effects, or whatever you call those. But I want you to think about as you listen to her today, how are you going to serve today and what impact you're going to create today? I don't want you to think about tomorrow, yesterday. Don't think about tomorrow. What can you do today? Let's move that ball moving moving for servant hearts. I want to thank my sponsor, pitchdb.com. Be a guest on over 3 million podcasts, speak at over 11,000 conferences and much, much more. Build your thought leader platform with an incredible opportunity to show who you are. And I talk about impact, I talk about thought leader, and my guest said it before the show. That's what she does. Build your thought leader expertise with books. That is, I'm so excited to learn from her. Melanie, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. And we had some fun with her last name. It's Melanie Hershorn. I got her name right. So I wanted to throw it out there. Give me our own self a high five that I got the last name correctly. So let me let me ask you a lot of book authors, you know, authors out there, and it seems like every time I run into somebody, somebody's got a book. How important is having a book and what's the value of it?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

I love that you're running into people with books because there are so many people that don't have a book, but you only travel in the book circles. So that's fantastic. Here's what a book can do for you. But I'm gonna, there's a caveat to it. The magic equation is publishing plus promotion, because a book in and of itself is a really great doorstop. If you don't let people know about the book, then it's not gonna serve you. And that is why I do what I do, is because it's it's the marriage of publishing and promotion. So why have a book? Because it takes your expertise and it solidifies it in something that is the most incredible credibility-building tool that you could possibly ever have. I mean, when somebody says you're an author, all of a sudden you jump up on a pedestal in front of them. And not only are you an expert, but guess what? You wrote the book on it too.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah. So it's interesting. Um you don't really care if you sell them that book. It's that what you just did, that scenario of, oh, Steve, you're an author. Your expertise value, credibility, jumps. Oh, that's powerful. I never thought of it that way. So an author, what is their first step to write a book?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Well, there has to be a mission behind it. And why? Why are you going to write this book? Writing a book for the sake of a book is is nice. It's a nice to have, but it can be expensive to write a book. So, in terms of money, in terms of time, in terms of effort. So, so really have a reason to do it. And you know, for a lot of the the authors that I work with, it's a business growth tool. So let's say you are, I don't know, give me a profession. What's a profession that you lawyer?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Let's talk about when we talk about lawyers.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Okay, so let's say, let's say you're a lawyer and you are in family law and you see this one thing happening all the time, or you find yourself explaining the same thing over and over to every client. What if you were to write a book about it and then offer it to potential clients? All of a sudden, that is a client acquisition tool because they're gonna keep this book on their nightstand and go, and that's that repetitive touch point piece of it, too. That's that marketing piece of it. They're gonna read the book, they're gonna go, oh, this person makes a whole lot of sense. And when they're ready to pull out their credit card, they're gonna pull it out for you because you've shown them something very interesting, you've likely distilled complex information into something easy and digestible. And they're gonna say, Well, you're an expert and I want you to help me.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Interesting. Well, I came up with a great question as you were talking because you're so smart. So I'm excited to have her on. So if somebody writes a book about their story, like I had a guest on that was 17 years old, convicted of murder, he never did, spent 32 years in prison, five years in solitaire. If he had a business or was an entrepreneur, which I don't think he does, you know, he's still trying to recover from it. But uh would is that a good book for my business to talk about this uh story I have, or is it really more expertise?

SPEAKER_02 6:22

So that's a really great question. What is his brand? His brand is he experienced this horrific hardship, and now he wants to share his his mission and his experience with the world so that he can make it a better place, and so that other people won't have to go through what he went through. So likely his path is going to be speaking.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

So that is still a business. It's not, you know, uh an e-commerce website, but that's still a business. So that absolutely counts. And so his having that book, it in it opens doors because there are a lot of stages that won't let you step foot on them unless you have published a book.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Yeah, yeah. I've seen that and I've I've been told that, which okay, it's you know, it's their their speaking gig and they can they could decide their requirements. So here's a great question I love asking is who should write a book? Not everybody.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

No, I would think. No, that's right, not everybody. And I there, I'm just gonna be very honest because there's only that's the only way I know how to be, Steve.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

There is a lot of predatory behavior in the publishing industry. I have been preyed upon, I actually fell for it too, but then I extricated myself before it was too late. Um, but because of that, a lot of people will fall prey to whatever the big shiny things, like, oh, have my name on a book and I'm gonna be an author. And you know, there are a lot of places where people will publish whatever you want, and there are typos, and it's embarrassing. Um, I mean, there's a great uh article I read once about a man who published a picture of his foot and made it a best-selling book on Amazon, and it didn't take very long for him to do that, so yeah, his foot. Wow, I should find that article and send it to you.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

It's really I would love to see it. Yeah, that that is interesting. I'll say it to the audience, reach out to me and I'll get it to you as well. That's it's amazing how the world works, especially in this book industry.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

It does. And I I am very much a person who is, you know, what you see is what you get. And so I'm gonna be honest. Should everybody write a book? No, but if there is a purpose and a mission behind it, and you think that having this book as a really great tool can help you grow your business, grow your brand, make your life better in some way, then that's the reason to do it. Because it's not easy. No, it's it's it's not like when you decide, okay, I'm gonna get a tattoo. Not that I have any tattoos, it's too permanent. I couldn't, I could not name my it's I couldn't name my stuffed animals as a child because that was too permanent. But you know, you say, okay, I'm gonna get a tattoo, I'm gonna sit there for however many hours, and then it's done. And then you have this beautiful thing to show for it forevermore. That's much shorter than how long it takes to write a book because you're not gonna go and revise the tattoo over and over again. That would be painful, but you have to keep editing a book until it is as close to perfection as possible.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

The other question I have, I see a lot Amazon bestseller, New York bestseller. I know there, I know the answers to this, and I I wasn't gonna go there, but I want to because I mean, is it really good? Because it's like, hey, I got this Amazon bestseller, here's my book, or is it just good to go here, here's my book, and it still builds my expert thought leader platform?

SPEAKER_02 10:09

So both, but also okay, so we as a society we love accolades, right? Like if if somebody walked, I was walking down the street and somebody handed me an award and said, Here you go for walking down the street, I'd be like, I'm an award-winning pedestrian. I'm so excited. Are you an award-winning pedestrian? No, I am. So having an Amazon best seller is a nice thing to have because it makes you feel good, it makes you able to say best-selling book, etc., etc. But it's not a marketing campaign. It's a it's again a nice to have. The New York Times bestseller, that's a big one. There are a lot of politics, I understand, involved, and it's it's not really straightforward um in how somebody gets awarded that title, but it's pretty simple to become an Amazon bestseller. Um, but I don't focus so much on that because it's it doesn't really move the needle in any direction.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Love you. That's exactly where I wanted you to go. Thank you. And I'm gonna take it because that's where I wanted to go. I I think people push that agenda too much. That when I write a book, you write my book, we get there, we get there. I'd rather affect all those people I'm speaking to, that podcast guest that I have on that's making a difference, than accolades. Well, you that's that story is so well well put. What you know, it's interesting. You just don't look like a but well, I told you when you came on, I was like, she doesn't look like a publisher. I don't know. I it's kind of a weird thing we do as humans, but what draw you to books? Drew you to books, excuse me.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

So I hated to read um as a kid. I had a lot of trouble. I don't know about you, most people don't remember life before being able to read. I do. I had so so I shunned books. And and then I found this book in fourth grade by Judy Bloom called Just As Long As We're Together. And I picked it up and I started reading it, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And I literally read pieces of that book over and over for the next three years, and I decided I wanted to be an author one day because I thought it was so cool to have a book. And of course, you know, and this is how I feel about this. Other people might not, but I do feel like school, at least where I was growing up, where I went, school beat the creativity out of me with a stick. So it was really hard for me to find creativity again as an adult, which is why I always go to nonfiction. I'm like the nonfiction books, um, because those I really could get behind. But um, but that said, the the the book, you know, why books? Because I love knowledge and I love learning and I love helping other people understand complex things. So when I was working um in radio and I was a radio news anchor and reporter, my my news director said, Okay, you have to do the business minute. I said, I don't know the first thing about business. What are you talking about? I studied history and journalism, I don't know business. And after a couple tries, I was the business minute person. And he complimented me and he said, You know, you are you really have an ability of taking really complex things and distilling them down into simple terms. And I went, huh? I have a skill, and that is the skill that I rely on the most, I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

But this and it's a powerful story is that you didn't like reading as a kid, but things change in your life. So, what you might not have liked as a kid, you may love now for completely different reasons. Authors, speakers, podcast hosts, TV show, they're all tied together. How does an author use a podcast to benefit them?

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Okay, so now is the author the guest or the host of Sentinel?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Excuse me, the guest. And thank you for clarifying. Oh, very important.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Okay, I need a lot of clarifying.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

Remember, no, I'm oh yeah, you're so old. Yeah, so like 26 years old. Um 26 and a half. Um, so leveraging other people's audiences is the greatest thing that you can do. And when a podcast host such as yourself has built up a wonderful audience of my ideal readers or my ideal clients, then I get, I as the author get to come on your show, talk about how great I am, talk about my book. And then you, as the host, who have all this credibility and all this expertise, are then vouching for me. And you're saying, Yeah, Melanie's an expert. This is so meta. I love this. And so that's what's so cool. It's because the podcast host has built um a group of people who really want to hear from you as the author. So you're not having to start from scratch building your own audience. You get to take your tool of your book and and leverage that to be part of other people's audiences.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

That's awesome. Speak now, speaking gigs. How does it work there?

SPEAKER_02 15:42

It's very similar. I mean it it's similar in in that to get the speaking gig, you know, the you have to pitch yourself, and having that book will also help because it sets you apart. Same with media opportunities. They're gonna pick the person with the book if it's between you and somebody else who doesn't have a book, but you have similar credentials. They're gonna pick the author because that's a tangible, that's something that they can show on screen. Um, for speaking gigs, you can sell your book at the back of the room. And those things just help. They just they're helpers.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah. So at the speaking gigs, let's delve in a little bit more. Should people sell their books? Because you know, as a podcast host, I get I just got a book yesterday. You know, guests are sending me books. It's kind of a cool gig. I mean, I got a whole shelf here of books that I get to read and enjoy my guests. I've always wondered this what's the best way to sell a book or give them away, or is it per speaking gig that you make that decision?

SPEAKER_02 16:45

I think it's per person. So if said author, let's this particular author, they decide that the best course of action for them is to sell books because they're not gonna, they don't have a program or they don't have a bigger way to make any money. So so remember the gentleman that we talked about who um who had the book of the horrible experiences and now he has a book. So selling books is probably gonna be the best route for him because he doesn't have a group program that people can join.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

But if you are a you know an attorney or a wealth advisor and you have clients, and when clients hire you, you're gonna make boatloads of money versus the ten doll you'd make from the book sale, then then you know, giving the book away so that you get a bigger return on your investment is a better way to go.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, and I've heard this phrase anywhere speaking podcast that your book is like your business card. Is that a uh you know a right phrase to say?

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Um, I mean, if you don't throw business cards in the recycling bin as soon as you get home.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

That's true. Okay, which I think does happen. I mean, I don't know if books get thrown away, but I mean, people get a book and they never, I mean, I've got books I've never read. They sit up there, and that's the chance you take as an author when you're doing the giveaway. Um, but then the flip side sits on the table, somebody comes over and goes, Hey, what's that book? Oh, it's you know, I was at the speaking, you know, speaking gig and this guy spoke and he's really good, type of thing. Yes. Um, well, let's talk about books. Let's talk. We gotta talk about your book before we get we got some time here. Yeah, so tell me name of your book if you want to show it. I'd love to see it.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

If you haven't oh, I love show and tell.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Oh, see, you might give you a copy too. So oh my god, see, look at that.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

So this is it's called Make a Big Impact with Your Book, Author Marketing Strategies for Long Term Success. And let me tell you a story, okay? It's not a happy story, but um, this person reached out to me and they said, I want to do a review of your book. And I said, Oh, how nice of you! I didn't, I don't know you, and you want to review my book. So I started feeling really special, right? Well, the person then wrote this scathing review and insulted me a lot, and their biggest takeaway was this book is just so that this author can get more business. And I went, Yes, it is. That's what my book is about. It's about helping me grow my business, and so that actually wasn't an insult at all. The other things were kind of insulting, yeah. But but a book can, you know, when you write about yourself and your where you've been and how you help people, sometimes that can be triggering. And I'm pretty sure I triggered that person. And after I cried in my car, I got over it and and realized that I can still share this book with the world because it is going to do some good.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

That's amazing. That he's I mean, I look at the book cover, I could tell you it's not a Star Wars character book at all. I mean, I look at that. So for him, that that person is. I mean, that's people are people, and that's it. But I love your positive energy of yes, person, that's my book. Thank you for the for the review because that's exactly what I'm doing. And you know what? You bring value, value deserves to be paid for that, and that's what transactions are. You bring value, you get paid for the value, and that's what you're doing with your book. Wow. The audience, if you're not writing notes down like I am, you guys are missing out. But I'm gonna go over that at the end here. Um, we're getting pretty close to the end. Can I ask you some personal questions?

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Of course, I'm an open book, which I always say, which is silly, but is true.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Okay, if you're gonna in oh, I love that. That's it. That's I just got that. Audience, I'm a little slow. Okay. Uh if you're able to interview anybody, historical figure, celebrity, whoever, who would it be and why?

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Oh, I don't know if I could pick just one.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Coin flippant.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Oh my gosh. Um, Aristotle.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Really?

SPEAKER_02 21:03

Yeah, because I'm so interested in the thinking, the way that they thought, and like how how they taught people and and how they memorized things and learned things, and his theories on life and the golden rule. And I think it would be really cool.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

That is so cool. I love it. I didn't expect that. Being from a little girl that couldn't read and didn't like to read. Now she's talking to Aristotle.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

You're gonna make me cry.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

That is all right, it's okay. I've learned be emotional because I'm tearing up already. That's transformational. Okay, what does Melanie do on a Friday night?

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Uh, well, my daughter reminds me that we need to light the candles, and I say, Oh, yeah, I forgot. Um, and Friday night, my husband says, Can we let's go out and get a drink? And I say, I just want to get into my jammies and watch television.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

You like to relax. You've had a busy day, busy week, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

A busy week, but Saturday night I'm out on the town.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

You know, it's interesting. I'm gonna I've never asked this on a podcast as you're my almost 400 podcast. Wow, isn't it amazing how doing brain work, like doing these meanings, these podcasts, how much energy sucking it is, then going and building a hole. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

It is exhausting, and sometimes I just have to sit in complete silence because I realized I thought I was losing my hearing, so I got my ears tested and they said, No, you hear just fine. I have an auditory processing problem because there's just so much coming at me all the time that I hear people, but I can't understand what they're saying, especially when I have like two children and a husband talking at me at the same time and the dogs barking. So, yes, it is exhausting, and I love it at the same time because I am so grateful to have this brain that does the things that it does.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Oh, what a great answer! And yeah, the life of a mom is always coming and going. You've added your business to that. You you're just absolutely incredible, Melanie. And audience, I gotta tell you, this is why you open doors and bring people into your podcast, your life. I just met her before the show 30 minutes ago, and you can see the energy. So you never know who you're gonna meet and have this great energy and a lot of fun. How can people get a hold of you? Because I know people are gonna ask questions, want to ask questions.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Okay, well, I'm all over the internet in a good way. Um, and my my um my website is is very simple. It's vipbookmarketing.com. And you can reach out to me directly there.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Perfect. Again, thank you so much. What a great show! And this show is so good. If you go through it, there are so many segments of tips she gave you. If you're thinking about writing a book or share with somebody you've talked to and says, I've always wanted to write a book. We all heard that. I've said that, I'm gonna write a book and I think I might have found my girl. But that did that live. But use the reverse and forward buttons on your podcast YouTube on the podcast platform because you know what? If you go to 15 minutes and 15 and 20 minutes segment, is is what you're looking for. Listen to it over and over. I'm not a fan of people going podcasts are too long. I'm not gonna listen. You know what happens? You might miss an opportunity to really learn something and maybe want to grow. And and this thought leader platform of a book that Melanie does might be something just for you or for somebody else as a gift. Don't forget about my TV show, Together We Serve every Friday at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern. And doing business with a servant's heart. You just heard a servant's heart for 30 minutes, a true servant's heart in business. But let's put that on your chest, on your hat, on your head with a hat, t shirt, hoodie. I want to spread this message out to the world so we all can do business better. And last but not least, me and Melanie, thank you so much for watching and listening to this episode of Doing Business with a Servant's Heart. And we'll see you all in the next episode, real soon.