Using a Book and National Media Coverage to Become THE Leader in Your Industry with Lauren Cobello

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Hustle Daily. Today, we'll be breaking down how to unlock the power using a book and national media coverage to become the leader in your industry. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Lauren Cabello into EO Fire Studios. Lauren is the founder and CEO of Leverage with Media PP, an online entrepreneur, 3X author, and lifestyle TV personality. She's been a regular on the Today Show, GMA, Dr.

0:36Oz, and Rachael Ray for over a decade. Her agency helps entrepreneurs write the right books for their businesses, get them on TV, and helps them scale their businesses to the next level. In Today Foundation, we'll talk about you having a book, why it's important, using national media coverage to become a leader in your industry. We'll also talk about dollar bills, y 'all, how to make more money with all of this, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Lauren and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

1:11Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is The 5 Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.

1:50Lauren, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, I'm so excited to be here. And I think that the biggest thing that most people would probably disagree with is that in order to be successful, you have to like to fail. And I think that that's something that a lot of people are like really uncomfortable with. I love that because one thing that I did really enjoy doing early on was failing fast. I hated failing after a long time, but I was like, you know what? I'm going to really just commit to failing fast so that I can figure things out, learn out where I went wrong, adjust, pivot, move, and then hopefully come back a little stronger and better the next time.

2:34And Fire Nation, we're talking about unlocking the power, using a book and national media coverage to become not the second or the third, but the leader in your industry. And Lauren, you believe very strongly that every business owner should have a book. Why? Why? Tell us why. We're going to be talking about media today. And I think that really when you have a book, it's easier to get booked on television. It's easier to get booked on podcasts, obviously. And it's easier to get in national press, but then also speaking engagement. So it's a whole process that I've done in my career to help me make myself the leader.

3:16And I think other people should really follow this strategy. Now, you actually created a method to combine this book that everybody's going to have soon with media coverage to leverage our business. So let's talk about this process now. You know, I've been an online entrepreneur for 18 years now. You know, I'm like an OG like you. We've been around a long time. Know a lot of the same people. And, you know, I've been around a long time. And very early on, I kind of watched and saw what are people doing that are making it big? You know, what are the people doing that are going on TV and becoming bestsellers and becoming, you know, the who's who in the industries?

3:59And, you know, one of the biggest things that I saw was writing books, right? And getting, you know, on national television and getting in Forbes and getting an entrepreneur and, you know, all the big places, you know, that you want to be seen as an entrepreneur. And I saw that the stepping stone to those bigger things was writing a book. And so I said, OK, I'm going to write a book. So I wrote three. And so I always think that people need to write a book because it helps them become the authority in their arena, you know, in their niche so that the press will even pay attention to them. And it kind of is like the first step in kind of leveling you up.

4:43One thing that I love is going through specific examples so that Fire Nation can kind of see this working in real life. So maybe let's talk about you as one example and how this maybe did lead to some of the cool things that I bragged about you on in the introduction. And then maybe one of your clients or just somebody that you know also. So like maybe two different examples in that arena. Before I started my PR agency, I was a personal finance expert and I wanted to be known as somebody who could help people get out of debt. So I branded myself. My last book was called The Recovering Spender in the personal finance niche.

5:20And I wanted to kind of help people, you know, learn how to do that. And so I looking at my area of expertise, I really took what I was doing, wrote the book about it and then made a documentary about the book and then used the book and the documentary and the family that was in the documentary to then pitch myself out to national media and was able to get even more national media coverage than I was. After that, I was able to continue to go on national media. I've been on the Today Show over 50 times. But on a side note, that also gave me spokesperson deals, very, very lucrative spokesperson deals with companies like PayPal and eBay and some money-saving apps.

6:07It also gave me some really great speaking engagements that paid me$10 ,000,$15 ,000,$20 ,000 for a speaking engagement. I was able to work for banks. I was able to work for Fortune 500 companies coming in and speaking to their clients. And so you look at like, okay, yeah, maybe people say TV is dead or whatever. not true, but that's a rumor going around out there. So I've heard. And so if you just look at kind of my perspective is the book was the way to get into the media, which got me into the speaking engagements, which got me into the spokesperson work and these major brand deals. So that's my perspective.

6:52I'm going to speak to one of my clients. His name is Marcus Collins. he came to us he has a book called for the culture and he came to us as a professor of marketing he's Dr. Marcus Collins and he had a book coming out from Hachette which is actually the same publisher the second biggest publisher in the country that published my last book and And he had this desire, you know, he felt like he had so much to say. He had this desire to, you know, speak out. He felt like he had this great message. But, you know, so many other people were getting the media attention. And through working with our agency and through using his book, you know, he's now speaking next week on the same stage as, you know, some of the biggest people out there, the World Domination Summit.

7:46it. He has been speaking at South by Southwest. He's speaking at the World Business Forum. And he used to work for Beyonce. His career has completely taken off. He's been on national television. And now he's getting paid by Pepsi, Coca-Cola. He just went and spoke to Louis Vuitton last week in Paris. And so by using his book in media, he's completely changed his life. He's now the who's who when we're talking about culture and marketing. And it's been a complete honor to watch. Now, you just gave two great examples, but I even want to dive a little bit deeper in our next topic, specifically on how we can use national media coverage to become the leader in our industry.

8:32Let's really go through the how. Let's give another couple examples about this national media coverage. I think a lot of people understand how we can use it to maybe go local and regional and get on podcasts and do these things. But we're talking national media coverage, which is a little bit of a different animal. So talk that through. I've been on national television over, I don't even know how many, I can't even count. You know, I've been a regular on the Today Show and Rachel Ray for over a decade. And I think what a lot of people think is that TV, you know, go back to this whole thing of TV is dead, right?

9:05But, you know, the way is TikTok and the way is this and that. But what people aren't realizing is that there are still, you know, these avenues through national television that, A, brand sponsors and brand partners are still eating up. They can't pay enough money to get their brand on GMA or Today Show. But if they can align themselves with you and you've been on these shows, for them, that's a really great strategy for them. You know, it's going to cost them$30 ,000 to$50 ,000 to get on one of these shows to pay for a spot. Um, so national media is a whole different ball game. You have to perfect your skill.

9:44You can't just decide that you want to be a national media and hire a publicist and then expect to be on it next month. You know, you have to work. It takes some time to perfect being on television and take some time to pitch you out to secure a national spot. But what happens when you get that national spot is, you know, with our clients, we're taking them to national, you get the media clip, We're clipping it up into TikToks and short form videos so that they can post it on their, you know, on YouTube shorts or on Facebook reels or Instagram reels so that they can use these clips to increase their credibility and authority online.

10:24But then also, you know, you go on GMA, 5 million people are seeing you, but then also they're posting that clip on their social media. So you're getting an extra boost of, you know, a couple million from their social medias. And a lot of them have podcasts that they're actually doing right on the set right now that have very large following. So I know the last time I was on the Today Show, they actually had the podcast mic going through the set. So while I'm doing the show, I'm actually doing the podcast at the same time. And then they're pushing that out as well. So you're getting the show, the podcast, and all of their social media for just that one episode.

11:01That is repurposing at its best. And people are just figuring it out. They're saying, you know what? We get this. We get the fact that some people are going to watch us live on TV. Some people are going to want to go back to the archives and listen to our podcast. Some people are going to be scrolling on Instagram, and they're going to see a clip of this, and they're going to want to go watch the whole podcast live or video live or segment live, whatever that might be. So there's a lot that comes with just this one feature. Now, it's not just like 20 years ago. It's just you show up, you have your 15 minutes, and then you're gone.

11:30And then people that are watching it, great. People that weren't, they missed it, and your time's over. That's why I probably came up with the 15 minutes of fame. 15 minutes of fame, I mean, that's kind of a thing of the past now. because what you're going to be featured in can and a lot of times will, in the case of podcasts, live forever. Like right now, there is somebody listening to an episode of Entrepreneurs on Fire that I published 11 years ago. I mean, think about that. Listen to it right now. I know it because I look at my stats. People go back and they listen to my 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 episodes all the time because a lot of the content is evergreen and a lot of it they're just interested in or they want to just hear more from that specific individual.

12:11So that's powerful stuff, Fire Nation. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Happy 2024, Fire Nation. Q1 is here, and that means new goals, more growth, and upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folks are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data, and tracking down leads, let me share a better way to win so you can get a jumpstart on your year. The new HubSpot Sales Hub is smart sales software for today's multitasking reps. It's built to help you manage every stage of your sales pipeline with ease. It's filled with easy-to-use and powerful tools that make closing deals and collaborating across departments a breeze.

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13:25Giving a TEDx talk is one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world, and Thought Leader can help you get there. Thought Leader is a speaker coaching company that has helped over 550 and counting coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, and experts land TEDxTalks. Thought Leader is not affiliated with TED or TEDx, but they're able to get these results because their founder, Taylor Conroy, is a four-time TEDx speaker himself and past EO Fire guest. You might be thinking a TEDxTalk sounds great, but where do you start? Taylor has put together a free training that is going to teach you how to land a TEDxTalk in as little as 90 days.

14:00Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for his free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. Lauren, we're back. And as I mentioned to Fire Nation, we're talking about unlocking the power using a book and national media coverage to become the leader in your industry. And Lauren, you believe that something is necessary for everyone listening today.

14:42What is that thing? I believe that everybody should have a book if you're an entrepreneur. Every single person should have a book, not an e-book, an actual book book, one that people hold in their hand. Let me cut in here for one quick second. Is this a traditionally published book going through a traditional publisher like a Harper Collins or a Penguin? Or could this be a self-published book that is just available on Amazon? I mean, a self-published book is fine. Most of our clients in our agency, I would say about 60 % of them are self-published and then the other 40 % are traditionally published.

15:16I've gone both ways. Two of my books were self-published. And my last personal finance one was traditionally published. And I'm working on my fourth book right now, which will be self-published as well. I went back to self-published. It just depends on your goals, right? There's a hybrid model as well, where you can pay a fee to write your book and they will take care of distributing it into Barnes and Nobles and Target and make sure that it looks like a traditionally published book and it'll have a traditional hybrid publishing company on the back. So there's a lot of kind of different avenues that you can take.

15:55A lot of people don't know that there's like this hybrid model in between self and traditional. Traditional is harder right now. There's a lot of things going on in the publishing world. A lot of publishing houses getting bought out by other publishing houses. You have to have pretty large social media numbers to get a traditionally published deal. A lot of really big media numbers. So I I think a lot of people think that in order to like be an author, you have to get this like really amazing book deal. Also, if you get a book deal now, sometimes it's like it's not going to print for like three years.

16:29So if you're like looking to leverage and scale now, I always suggest working with maybe a book coach to get a self-published book out there so it looks the right way. And this is key is that you have to write the right book for your business and your business goals. So oftentimes we turn people down at the PR agency because they've written the wrong book for their business and it doesn't make sense for where they wanna go. Fire Nation, it has to make sense with you, your brand, your business, your goals, the direction you're moving forward in. That's why you need to have great advice and support from the right people before you go down a path and go too far down a path that may take some time to unwind.

17:13So start off on the right foot in the right direction. And I want to end, Lauren, by talking about dollar, dollar bills, y 'all. Because at the end of the day, money makes the world go round. So how can Fire Nation use the knowledge that we've talked about today to make more money? Yeah. So the goal is, the whole strategy behind writing a book and using media is to use that media attention to create a sizzle reel, per se, and then use that to book speaking engagements. And then those speaking engagements, you know, obviously you're going to pay you and then also bring in more business and sell more books.

17:51So it's really a strategy for how do you use books to build a brand? Now, the media attention is going to help you build up the credibility, even when you're pitching yourself out to the people who are running the speaking, you know, places you're trying to speak at. So you want to make sure that you have a really great resume. So by building it up with speaking by media appearances and saying that you've been on the Today Show or Fox News or, you know, Cheddar News or, you know, Yahoo Finance or wherever Forbes, you're going to have a much better chance of having a higher speaking fee. I know that when I started getting national media attention, my speaker rate tripled from having those media appearances.

18:36So you really want to kind of do a strategy for how do I how do I leverage this? Right. How do I leverage these appearances to make more money, bring in more income and more customers, sell more books as well? And then that's really how, you know, when I look at my own business and the businesses of my clients is that's really the strategy of how people are going from kind of being a needle in a haystack to like, whoa, where did this person come from? And we get that a lot with our clients of where does that come from? And I know that that's really the best way that I've seen in my 18 years of watching entrepreneurs build and scale over the years and have stuck around the longest.

19:21And Fire Nation, it's just a reality. The fact that Lauren was in a position at one point in her life to reach out and touch Rachel Ray, that's meaningful to people. That says that, wow, she was vetted by Rachel Ray's team, by Dr. Oz's team. Obviously, she has something important to say. Obviously, she's an expert. Obviously, she's an authority figure. That validation is already there. And the fact that now she can step on stage and have that as her bio, her introduction, gives her that credibility to the audience. It also gives that company, that company that's giving the presentation, that's holding the conference credibility that they can bring somebody in who's been on these shows.

19:57That's important to think about. So, Lauren, we talked about a lot of awesome things today. Give us one key takeaway that you want to make sure Fire Nation really gets from our conversation today. People become successful not because of luck, but because of strategy. And this is a strategy that I have seen and used with all of my clients that I've used in my own personal business three times over, now working on four times over, to build a career. You know, I did it with my personal finance business. I'm doing it now with my media company and my PR agency that this is a very repeatable process that how do you use a book and a brand and media and speaking engagements to to get to where you want to be and share that message.

20:49So I think that people need to understand that a lot of work and strategy goes into being, you know, a podcaster that people are listening to for 11 years, you know, even longer than that. A lot of strategy goes into that. It's not luck. So I think that if people can stick with somebody who has that strategy, they're going to they're really going to be able to see a lot of success that they want. And remember, Fire Nation, luck is where effort meets opportunity with the correct strategy. That's the process. Lauren, give us a call to action. How can Fire Nation connect with you, learn more from you?

21:24What do they need to know? I've actually put together a free guide that if people want to know the strategy of what this looks like, I put together a free guide that people can go and download. And so to make it easy for people, I set it up so that if they text PR tips to this phone number, which is 315-201-2304, they text PR tips to that. They'll get the download sent to their phone and it'll have everything that we talked about, but a strategy of how do they build their business using the books, media, and speaking engagements step by step. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

22:06You've been hanging out with LC and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eelfire.com. Type Lauren in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up. It'll have that phone number that she mentioned and exactly what you need to text PR tips. Lauren, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Lauren for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals.

22:41That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. and we're talking step by step. Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn.

23:16Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.