2456 - Growing Your Business Through the Power of a Non-Fiction Book with Solopreneur Solution's Donna Amos

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, it is Donna Amos. Donna, you are the founder of Inspired Press Publisher. You're actually a book publisher, and your website is inspiredpresspublisher.com. And you are also the founder of Solopreneur Solutions, found on the web at solopreneursllc.com. We have those links all linked up. You are also the author of the book, brand new. I love this. Congratulations. Or just updated. It's called Best Damn Marketing Tool Ever. Write a nonfiction book to grow your business. We'll be talking about all of the above.

1:32Donna, it's great to have you. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Yes. Before we do, I always love hearing what high-level leaders do for fun when they're not at work. And I think you and I share a similar interest. What do you do when you're not at work? What's your happy place? I go to my garden. That's my happy place. Anywhere in my yard that there's dirt and plants in it. And you're in the Midwest. What are you growing? Yeah. So tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, arugula, zucchini, cilantro. Wow. I think that's about it. Oh, my gosh. You got a good harvest there. Yeah. for someone who has not gardened um number one let me just ask you a very tactical question what what are the easiest things that you think someone could buff listen you just stick in the ground and even if you have you don't even have to you don't have to have a green thumb you can have a completely black thumb or whatever right it's uh you're probably gonna do okay anything come to mind?

2:44Tomatoes and cucumbers. As long as you water them. Yeah. That's the only thing they need. Wow. Yep. Those are easy ones. I'm a big fan of herb gardens. I think herb gardening can be released. So I'm in Orlando. So, you know, we get some really, really hot sun and, you know, but my herb gardens tend to be pretty resilient. That's good. I planned a event once and it just about took over so it just went crazy so I don't did you do mint oh yeah no you can't let that get in your yard yeah I've heard that it was crazy yeah I do um you know with with that um you know raised beds or pots uh I do pots um so that way you don't have to worry about where it's creeping off to But yeah, no, I've heard mint can get pretty aggressive.

3:41Yeah. What do you get emotionally out of gardening? Oh, so a couple of weeks ago, I had a very stressful Saturday. I just about had a meltdown. And on Sunday, I decided, okay, I don't like feeling this way. I'm going to let go of it. So I went outside. I planted. I dug in the dirt. And when I was done, I felt so much better. It just released the stress that life gives us all the time. Yeah, it really does. I wonder, I mean, someone might say, yeah, but Donna, it's more work, isn't it? It was, but it was relaxing work. Yeah. Not the same. It's not the same as sitting in front of the computer. Oh, I agree.

4:37Or cleaning the house or, you know, any other kind of work. It is therapeutic. Yeah. The physical, tactical, you know, wearing some gloves and getting, I was going to say, I wear gloves. I don't want to get my, you know, getting hands dirty is optional. but, but it is, it is just, it's peaceful. I feel accomplished. And, you know, I think a lot of our work is just information-based. A lot of us, especially as business founders, you know, we're not, you know, it's not like we're swinging a sledgehammer or anything like that. So, you know, it's not necessarily that physical, I think for a lot of us, information workers and founders.

5:21So Thank you so much, Donna, for gardening talk. Now let's talk about publishing and the work that you do with solopreneurs. All right. Awesome. So I truly believe that writing a book is one of the best business assets that an owner, a coach, any solo business owner can create. It is a marketing tool. It's not, you're not going to make a bunch of money selling your books, but you're going to use that book to make money. It's going to give you podcast interviews. It's going to help you get on stages. But even more than that, it's like the business card that sells you before you ever show up. So that's what we encourage clients to do is write that authority book and then use it as their marketing tool.

6:16It becomes your social media content, your blog content. I mean, it really does help service your whole business. And so I like that you're mentioning an authority book. Do you mind explaining what an authority book is? Yeah. So most of our clients have some kind of framework or process that they use with their clients. And one of the ways to stand out, and it's hard today to stand out because there's so much noise out there, but one of the ways to stand out is to use that book to share that framework. And it helps to put you, you know, people trust authors. So it helps you to become the expert, the authority in your personal niche.

7:13Hmm. How are how are folks consuming books today? You know, someone might say, well, Donna, I'm not convinced that anybody would ever read my book. that's often what i hear um so obviously you need to have the audio so you know get on audible as well because especially if you're working with business owners a lot of them use their you know they're listening to their books they're not necessarily sitting down and reading but even if they're reading a paperback you're not going to write war and peace you're going to write a 120 page book which will be an easy read for most people and so whether they put it on you know they have a paperback or they use their kindle or it still becomes a good tool that you can use to grow your business.

8:13And the fact that you can pull all of your social media content from it. You know, train your AI on it. Exactly. My AI had my book before the public, before we published it, you know, so we pulled content from it to put out there in social and, um, and to create blog content. So it's like a big, great, big marketing tool that most people don't realize they can have. Yeah. You know, certainly, you know, if you are looking for recommendations from from AI. So if you want folks, AI tool to recommend you, if you put, you know, you plant a flag in the sand and like, this is me, this is my thought leadership.

9:03This is what I'm known for. I mean, your book is your manifesto for that. And as I understand it, AI likes to, it prefers folks that have done a little bit of work, either as a media guest or a book. You have more authority to business leaders with the exact same experience. One has a book, the other one doesn't. generally the person with the book is going to get well more than 51 % of that business or those recommendations. Yeah. So what is the, so I guess obviously the, you know, the, the question I then get to Donna is what is the process? Like how do you work with folks? How do you make that go a lot easier?

9:56Because if I think about writing a book, I'm like, well, you know, I could probably figure it out with AI, but it's probably not going to be awesome. I probably want some humans in the loop here because, you know, just AI output is probably not what I want to be known for. Right. So I offer a one-hour session, 60 to 90-minute session, where I will help someone write their first chapter and then outline the rest of their book. You know, let's determine what that outline looks like, because now they've got kind of a roadmap to follow. And they don't. That's the piece that stands in the way. How do I get started?

10:41And, you know, how do I stay on top of it? So we offer coaching around writing the book if they need that consistent accountability, because only 3 % of the people that start a book ever finish it. So we like to help them finish it. And, you know, I want to ask you this, too, and you talked just a little bit about this earlier, you know, but how specifically, like, once I produce a book with you, how do I, what are some things that I should be doing? Obviously, you know, creating social media out of it. But how can I build my business or grow my business or grow sales or grow revenue from having a book?

11:29You know, I think most of us know that book sales is probably not going to be where you're going to make your money. But you want to have one anyway. You mind maybe addressing that a little bit? Yeah. So we actually offer a almost a complete marketing plan that a new author can take and implement. And it starts before they're actually published. So there's, you know, probably 90 days prior to being published. There's things they need to be doing. So creating their press kit and finding those podcasts that they want to be on as soon as they're published. creating their speaker sheet. Now, all of those little things that you don't think about until when your book's published, you don't want to be playing catch up.

12:23So we help them to get all those pieces in place so that when it is published, they're ready to hit the ground running.

12:32And how important is it that, you know, I think I've talked with, I interview a lot of people that have just recently published a book. You know, I tend to be on the podcast, part of the podcast circuit for a lot of authors. And launches can feel stressful. How do we not be stressed during a book launch? Well, one is preparation. That's the biggest one is preparation. And know that the launch isn't the end of the road. the launch is step one. And then you've got, you know, you have to continue to, to put that out there. I, I, on my podcast, I interviewed an author not long ago. His book comes out on the 23rd.

13:25I think he did some really interesting things. He mailed me a copy of his book. He put little posting notes on the inside, referencing our conversation. he then he had a postcard on the inside that said if you share you know use this hashtag that kind of thing so he really set it up so that the people that he had interviewed with were prepared to help him promote his book and put it out there so I did simple things like I highlighted a couple things in his book that I really liked I took some pictures of it I'm ready to, you know, actually it's already scheduled to go out in social when he's live.

14:09So it's doing, it's doing consistent things, not just for the launch, but for the long haul. Cause you don't write a book today. And then in 90 days, forget about it. You got to keep pushing it out there. That's right. You're in a new club. Now you're a published author, do something with that. Exactly. Or self-published author. Donna, you're also, you have a podcast called Breaking Solo. And of course, that's part of Solopreneur Solutions. You know, we just have a couple of minutes left. I, you know, certainly for our friend that's listening, I know you have plenty of resources here. Can you talk about all of the myriad ways that folks can engage with you?

14:52Because I know you have a lot to offer here, particularly for folks that have toyed with the idea. They know that they're overdue to have their book together. Um, bring some humans in. I mean, really, I mean, it's, that's all I can say is that, um, you know, someone with experience, someone who's done this, you know, hundreds of times, uh, definitely going to make the experience a lot easier, but can you mind maybe sharing some next steps, Donna? Yeah. So, um, they can reach out if they go to inspiredpresspublisher.com. There is a button there that says schedule your 90 minute call. Yeah. And we can get on a call and get that first chapter going or just have a conversation about what it might look like to get started.

15:36We also, we use a white level version of Go High Level and we built snapshots specifically for authors that help them to get the leads they need from their book as well as get doing outreach for a podcast. All the auto, the workflows and everything are already created to make it easy for them to do that. Yeah, you've got, also you've got a course, you've got the podcast. Of course, there's the book, Best Damn Marketing Tool Ever, which you can get. I've already downloaded my copy. So I can't wait to dig into that. And you're also a great follow on LinkedIn. Well, Donna Amos, there was so much more we could be talking about and digging into.

16:33And again, your website is inspiredpresspublisher.com and solopreneursllc.com. Donna, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for helping folks have great wisdom and knowledge in their head, helping them get it out into written form and audio form so that they can impact more people and you know truly make the world a better place thank you so much for joining us donna thanks josh it's been a pleasure thanks for listening to the thoughtful entrepreneur if your goal is to grow your business increase revenue and build authority without gimmicks this show is designed for you. Each episode gives you practical insight from leaders who have turned trust and credibility into real business results.

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