Who are you?
In business, that is.
What do you do?
A common question.
I want to invite you to take a moment and perform an eye-opening exercise that will provide honest feedback from your best and worst critic — yourself.
Grab a blank piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, dividing the page into two columns. On the left side of the paper, jot down every trait or quality that a leader in your industry/niche should portray at a high level.
Here are some suggestions for traits/characteristics/qualities:
AWARENESS – How many know your name?
EXPERTISE – Why should anyone listen to you?
VISIBILITY – Do you show up for people who are researching your niche?
CREDIBILITY – What is your reputation and experience?
FINANCIAL STRENGTH – Your company and yours personally.
POPULARITY – Are you a well-liked person who people ask for input or help?
CREATIVITY – Who knows about your unique gifts?
On the right side, give yourself a score from 1 to 9 (with 9 being the epitome of expertise in your field).
Be very tough and honest with yourself as you continue with your inventory.
Let’s say you ranked yourself with a 3 for AUTHORITY. That may be because you have a high skill level, but you haven’t established that perception in the general public’s eyes.
You may know a lot about your industry. You might be a subject matter expert who would rank in the top 1% of professionals in your craft. However, it won’t matter if your excellence isn’t widely known.
Add as many traits and qualities as you like, rate yourself, then review the list. If more than half of the traits that you ranked are lower than you would like, you have a significant challenge. But don’t worry: every problem that appears in our lives also presents fantastic opportunities.
The core of the problem is going to show up somewhere in the space of marketing because most business challenges come down to marketing. If more than half of the areas you listed are insufficient in your eyes, then you haven’t marketed yourself well. However, that’s just a temporary problem, so let’s say that you haven’t sold yourself well YET.
You have a huge opportunity. There are time-tested and proven strategies to create the branding and awareness that you know you need. How do you establish your authority and become a thought leader?
The t-shirt brand Life Is Good was founded by Bret Jacobs. In a recent interview with Yitzi Weiner, he said, “Here are five things you should do to become a thought leader in your industry.” Those items are:
- Take the advice of our friend at the surf shop. Know who you are and act like it. If you’re going to be a thought leader, you should be writing, thinking, speaking, and teaching ideas that truly represent the person you are. If you are, the work won’t seem like work. If not, your position as a thought leader isn’t going to last.
- Identify a community that has common needs. Ideally, it’s one that lacks leadership and one that might not even consider itself a community.
- Identify your value system. For Life is Good, these are the 10 superpowers: Authenticity, creativity, courage, compassion, fun, gratitude, humor, love, simplicity, openness.
- Be very clear about what you stand for. Take a black and white stance on the issues you’re an expert on; allow no gray. Gray positions don’t attract followers.
- Don’t take yourself or your position on any issue too seriously. Everyone needs to smile and laugh and have a good time. If you can sprinkle in some entertainment as a thought leader, your stock as a thought leader will triple.
One way to command respect and create a brand is through social media marketing, which is highly effective. There are many articles, videos, training, and experts that can assist you with a robust and powerful social media plan. One excellent example: Streamline Your Social Media Efforts with Online Tools.
Bret Jacobs was asked in the interview who he believes has done a fantastic job of becoming a thought leader and he chose Gary Vaynerchuk. GaryVee, as he is affectionately known, was born in Belarus of the former Soviet Union. His parents immigrated to the United States and he grew up working in their wine store. He began marketing their store online and took their sales to over $50 million per year. Gary launched multiple other business channels, employing over 1,000 in his various companies, and has now created a net worth of over $160 million. It was all done through social media branding and marketing. His keynote address at the Imagine event in Las Vegas, The Power of Social Media Marketing in 2019, is inspiring, raw, and passionate. (warning: Gary uses strong language that’s NSFW)
As highly effective as social media can be, there’s a hack that can add fuel to the building of your social media empire. Every great thought leader employs this incredibly useful tool. It’s the one strategy that can move every ranking you made earlier to acceptable or admirable levels.
Write a Book.
Write a book? Yes. Write A Book. It may sound daunting and overwhelming, but there are ways to get it done that don’t create undue stress. You can make the process enjoyable and fun.
The secret weapon to quickly creating a book that’s geared precisely to your goals is a process called Hybrid Publishing.
What Is Hybrid Publishing?
In the not too distant past, a fledgling author with no experience had almost no chance to publish a book. Platforms like Amazon didn’t exist. It’s mind-boggling how much everything has changed in the last 15 years. Back then, your only choice was traditional publishers who had all of the control and power. If you were lucky enough to make it through their grueling process and sign a contract, you weren’t able to control the distribution and usage of the book. It took months, if not years, to get the final product produced. If the company was successful at selling copies of the book, you earned a tiny royalty income. Standard publishing houses still have a share of the market, but their game mostly serves famous people and established authors.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is self-publishing. You can, with no experience at all, write and publish a book from scratch. I caution you, however, to consider the downside of pure self-publishing. Have you heard the phrase, “You don’t know what you don’t know?” That concept is applicable in the self-publishing world. There are guides, courses, coaches, checklists, videos, and more online that will step you A-Z through the self-publishing process.
However, just having a manual doesn’t make you competent or even capable. I could read a detailed manual that shows how to build a house but would never consider doing all of the work myself. I would hire the experts in each discipline — architecture, concrete, landscaping, framing, MEP, roofing, tiling, interior design, drywall, and more — and hire a general contractor to manage all of those experts. It may cost a little more than buying a standard tract home, but I would get what I wanted.
Hybrid Publishing bridges the traditional publishing house model and the self-publishing model, giving the author complete control of the process and outcomes.
Working in the traditional publishing model, you could spend hundreds or thousands of hours producing the material for a great book and never have it picked up and published. On the other hand, anyone can publish a book on Amazon or another platform as a self-published author. (Just imagine the volume of terrible books that are withering away on self-publishing platforms.)
Let’s use the home building analogy and apply that to writing and publishing a book. You’ll need:
- Interviewers
- Transcriptionists
- Writers
- Editors (three different kinds, at least)
- Book cover designers
- Formatting experts
- Platform-specific publishing experts (i.e., Amazon has many facets that have to be navigated by someone who intimately knows the world)
- Strategy specialists (which niche is best for your book?)
- eBook vs. paperback vs. hardcover vs. audiobook strategies and plans
- Marketing professionals
Each role in that list has a myriad of variables and options to coordinate. Can self-publishing be done? Yes, of course. However, if you’re aiming to use your new book as your best business card or as a credibility piece, you’ll need a professional product.
Hybrid Publishing can even potentially create unexpected outcomes such as joint venture partnerships, speaking engagements, a whole new stream of income from sales of the book itself, and a way to gather mentees or recruit stellar talent for your company.
With so much at stake, would you want to leave something as crucial as your flagship book to chance?
How to Get Started.
First, do your homework. Research and design an achievable game plan and timeline. Then you need to execute the program and create solutions to the many variables that can change during a book writing and publishing project.
Here’s a link for a free copy of one of my books, Outsource Your Book, for valued readers of Home Business. It’s one resource of many that you can find to guide your Hybrid Publishing research and planning.
Here are eight questions you should ask a hybrid publishing company before hiring them:
1) How Do You Set Pricing For Writing And Publishing My Work?
The fees for hybrid publishing can vary from a small amount to over $100,000. The primary question you should ask about this area is the list of items that they will not include in your plan.
2) What Is Your Process, And Timeline?
Some publishers use different experts to complete each stage. For example, the interview phase, transcription phase, first draft, rough edits, all potentially will be done by new people. So you will want to be informed every step of the way. Ask for a process map that shows who will be doing what at each stage of the process.
3) Do I Receive Regular Reports, And How Are Those Shared With Me?
Technology platforms like Google Docs can make life very easy for the publisher to share updates. If they’re emailing versions, it can become annoying or even impossible to keep track of all the completed steps.
4) How Do You Market My Book, And May I See Examples Of Successes?
Writing and publishing a book can be done on your own. You will invest many hours needed to learn each skill (see above checklist for DIY writing/publishing). Even if you choose to do it yourself, the biggest challenge you will face is how to market your book.
5) What Are The Platforms You Utilize To Publish, And How Do You Maximize My Book Listing?
Amazon, for example, has gone from an easy-to-maximize system to a behemoth that practically requires a Ph.D. to navigate. Your writing and publishing company should show you many examples of successful listings.
6) Do You Publish In All Versions – Hardback, Paperback, Ebook/Kindle?
Make sure the company you hire creates all versions of your book. Some do nothing but create an Ebook/Kindle version, and you would be responsible for finding companies to create the other versions.
7) How Much Participation Will You Need From Me?
Every client has a different idea of how much they want to participate in the process. Some wish to interview and then see the final product, and others may want to see every change happening while written.
8) Will You Use My Voice To Write It Or Your Own?
Some authors want their books to be in their voice. The voice is when the style of the writing mimics how the author would have written it themselves. Creating a ghostwritten book that sounds like the original author wrote it is incredibly challenging and requires years of experience.
I encourage you to write a book. Then consider writing another. Stating to anyone that you’re a published author provides immediate trust and credibility. Managing the process through hybrid publishing makes your involvement as the content provider an enjoyable experience.
If you have comments or questions, please post those below.
Get started today. Write a book!
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