TRN Podcast|

Tax Rep Network - Eric Green | Authority Marketing

 

So you think you want to write a book to show your authority and draw in clients? Know where to begin? Joining Eric Green on this week’s podcast is Paul McManus, author of the Million Dollar Producer and The Short Book Formula to explain the process, the benefits of using authorship to take your practice to the next level, and how to begin, even if you don’t like to write!

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Authority Marketing With Paul McManus By Tax Rep Network

I’m very excited to have this episode’s guest on because we do talk about marketing. In terms of people building their IRS rep practice, inevitably, it comes down to finding clients and building your reputation. I get asked a lot about, “Should I write a book? How do I write a book? Where do I even begin? Maybe I don’t like writing.” I decided I might as well go get the expert on writing a book to create authority. Joining me is Paul McManus.

Helping Financial Professionals Grow Their Expertise

Paul has got a number of books out. The one that is out now is The Short Book, which is about how to write a book and prove your expertise, creating that credibility. He also does a lot with helping people utilize that on social media, like LinkedIn. I know you’ve got another book you’re working on that’s going to come out shortly on that. For those of you who don’t know Paul, he has a podcast. He’s everywhere.

Paul has worked with over 500 financial advisors, CPAs, life insurance providers, and business advisors since 2015. He’s the author of Million Dollar Producer: The Secret Playbook For Financial Professionals To Land High-Value Clients Using LinkedIn. He lives in San Diego with his wife at Succo and two Boston Terriers, Moo and Potato Chips, which is awesome. Knowledge lives in this space, but you help a lot of these financial professionals to learn to do this.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. I’m excited to share some of the insights I’ve learned over the past number of years, especially as it comes to not just thinking about one day, I would like to write a book. I think that’s on many people’s bucket lists of things to do, but as you can imagine, for many people, there are a number of obstacles. Hopefully, during this conversation, we can help people get past those obstacles because they’re much easier to navigate than people imagine.

I’ll throw out one of them for you, which is in the book subtitle, we talk about how to write and publish a book in as little as six weeks. That’s important because what we’re trying to help people write is an impactful, meaningful book that they’re proud of and that can have a shelf life of 3 to 5 years, doing marketing for them. We also want to make it achievable for your average accountant, CPA, or financial professional, who is very busy, has a busy schedule, may not see themselves as a writer, and may not be a writer, but what they do have is doing business, interest in growing their practice, credibility, and stories.

It’s now simply a way, at least in my mind, of how you package that in such a way that you can build this megaphone that you are sending out to the world. I smiled to myself a little bit earlier when you were introducing me, and you used the phrase I’m everywhere. What’s ironic is that I barely leave my apartment. I’m everywhere, and yet I don’t go outside except to walk my dogs. It’s amazing how you can create that for yourself in any business. I think a book is one of those key pieces of marketing collateral that opens up so many more doors to you.

A book is one of those key pieces of marketing collateral that opens up so many more doors to you.

What happens is people get your name as a professional, and they Google you. For instance, a website won’t get you clients, but your clients are going to go check out your website. It’s critical. Your social media. I’ll be honest, I hate social media. I’ve asked my team, “Can I get off of all this nonsense?” They’d be like, “No, because it’s credibility.” People want to know that they’re going to the right place. I find writing cathartic. Most people don’t. When do you get started?

How Paul McManus Got Into The Financial Space

In my book, the most recent one, How to Build a Million Dollar Tax Representation Practice, I am urging them, “You start now. You start today.” Why put it off until tomorrow? Is it because it’s on the bucket list? No. This is the kind of thing I would urge them to do now. Six weeks is quick. I’ve done it. I know it can be done. Before we get into that, how did you get started doing this? What led you into this space?

In 2015, I quit my then-career. I was meant to take over a 3 or 4-generation office supplies and furniture business that my grandpa had started in 1920, and I saw the writing on the wall around 2013 or 2014, which was it’s hard to compete with Amazon, especially as a small business, and it’s not rewarding because you’re essentially selling commodities. At that time, I started going online. I got involved in a group called Book Yourself Solid by a gentleman named Michael Port, who wrote a New York Times bestselling book called Book Yourself Solid. It was a paradigm shift for me.

I went from being this small-town businessperson with a small-town focus to suddenly seeing the world online as, “What do I want to do? What am I inspired by?” That led me to essentially open up my own marketing agency in 2015 called More Clients, More Fun. Since then, we’ve been primarily helping financial professionals, and that includes advisors, CPAs, and accountants, tap into LinkedIn to build their practice and essentially create that messaging and attract their ideal clients to them.

In 2018 or 2019, I started working with a client named Matt Zagula. He wrote a Forbes book called Smart Retirement. He had a very unique model, which was new to me at the time. He’s a very successful financial advisor and works with a lot of other financial advisors and life insurance agents, but he almost had a book club. They would join his community, and in exchange, they would get so many copies of his book, plus further education.

Essentially, the advisor would tap into his work, his credibility, all those things, and use that as a key piece of marketing collateral to go out to the market, build their business, engage their clients, get referrals, and do other marketing. To me, that was completely eye-opening. I learned something completely new in that process. I worked with them pretty closely for about two years. What I saw there was the value of a book as that key piece of marketing collateral.

Prior to that, in the LinkedIn activity I was helping advisors with, I want to say that LinkedIn is fundamentally a communications tool. I liken it to the modern-day phone book. Back in the day, you could pick up a phone book and start calling people and get a certain number of responses. LinkedIn, to a degree, could do something similar. There are tools and automation where you can say, “I want to work with X type of people.” They have different tools and automation that you can use.

It acts in a similar way. What I found the biggest challenge was trust, how do you get it? Maybe you can solve people’s problems. Maybe you have the answer to their needs. The problem is they don’t know who you are. When you’re dealing with what I would call high-trust purchases, which is, I think, what you do in taxes, IRS representation, and any type of financial advice or tax planning, at the end of the day, what do you want? You want your problem solved, but you also want to work with someone you simply trust, believe knows what they’re doing, has your best interests at heart, and will take care of it.

How do you communicate that one-to-many in a way that is manageable? I found through that experience with Matt Zagula that a book was incredible because, assuming the other person had an interest, a problem, or a need, they were very receptive to saying, “Send me a copy of your book,” or whatever that next step was. You have an interested prospect, but you also have a basis for building trust.

You don’t have to talk about yourself so much or your background. It’s simply shifting the conversation to the ideas in the book. If the book is well done, it acts as what I would call your salesperson in print. It does the work for you so that when you show up on the phone call, the Zoom call, or in person, you’re not trying to sell yourself or prove yourself. You’re simply now having a high-level conversation, “How can I help you? What are your needs?” It radically shrinks the amount of time it takes most people to build trust. That’s why I totally love a book as the basis for marketing.

A book can radically shrink the amount of time it takes most people to build trust.

I agree with all of it. In particular, when they have the book, it’s like having a salesperson because I got one name, I got another name, and the way people are now, give it a week, and you’re out of sight, out of mind. The book isn’t out of sight, it’s sitting there. I found that when people would get a copy of one of my books, like The Insider’s Guide to IRS Collection, no matter how many other names they had, my book was still calling to them because it was there. They could read it and think, “This makes sense. This guy makes sense. He knows what he’s doing.”

The Motivation Behind Writing The Short Book Formula

That’s why I wanted to do this program, I couldn’t agree more. I think for a lot of folks, “Where to begin? How do you get started?” Your book now, The Short Book Formula, what made you decide to write that? Your book years ago, the Million Dollar Producer, when this came, I get why, but can you explain what drove you to do it, to put the current book out?

It was part of my experience. Going back to the example of working with the gentleman who wrote the book, and his advisors would distribute it, I ended up working very closely with all of them, or many of them, on helping them market it through LinkedIn. I got to know them very well, or a number of them very well. The consistent thing that I heard back from them was that no one was reading the book. You’ve invested, in this case, it’s probably $10 to $15, to give someone a copy of the book. You give them the book and they say, “I’m interested,” but it’s not doing its job, at least from my perspective.

A book has a couple of different purposes that, when well done, is doing. One, it’s a lead magnet. It’s something that people who are starting to think about a certain area can say yes to something. It’s a low-threshold offer that you can enter your space without being threatened. It can be done online, and you’re not even aware that it’s going on. The second part of it, though, is what I call a sales conversion tool. We’ve already talked a little bit about the credibility that it helps lend to you. We can go more into that if you want.

The other part is the sales conversion. I don’t just want someone to get a copy of the book, I want and expect them, as part of the sales process, to read the book. To make that a reasonable step, the book can’t be too long. Again, this draws back from that experience. I think his book is probably 40,000 words. It’s too long. People are resistant to doing it. Through trial and error and exploring online what other people are doing, I found that, to me, the optimal size of a book should be 60 to 90 minutes. What that means is that a person can reasonably read it from cover to cover, or, if there’s an audio version, they can listen to it, in a time span of 60 to 90 minutes.

I don’t want to go shorter than that because I do want to pack in enough substance and enough material. Think about this, back to the idea of a salesperson in print, this is your best salesperson having an hour of one-on-one time with your prospect, giving them all the reasons, stories, credibility, the thoughts to think, provoking thoughts, so that after an hour, ideally, they’re like, “I need this.” You don’t want to shorten it too much. That’s where that hour comes in.

On the flip side, you don’t want it to be too long because then it becomes, “I’ll do it someday,” and it becomes a barrier to what you want. I’ve found in my sales process, and what I coach my clients to do, it’s typically one of two variations. I’ll use myself as an example. Either someone hears about me on a show like this and schedules a call, maybe they got the book, maybe they didn’t, but they’ve heard me talking about it. They schedule a call, and that’ll be a fifteen-minute call.

The first thing that I’m looking to ascertain is whether they are a good fit, potentially. Next, how much do they know about me? I’ll ask them, “Do you have a copy of my book? Have you read my book?” If the answer is yes, it makes it much easier to move on to the next phase. Whereas if they say, “No, I haven’t got your book,” I’ll say, “Great, let’s do this. Assuming that you’re interested, I’m going to send you a copy of my book, and we’ll schedule a call for next week, 30 or 45 minutes on Zoom. What I ask is that you take the time to read or listen to the book between now and then. Is that something you’re willing to do? Yes or no?”

It’s amazing because I find 80% of people will say yes. Maybe 20% will say no, which is fine because they’ve demonstrated to me that they’re not serious enough, at least at this time. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It doesn’t mean anything like that. It means that at this point in time, it’s not a big enough problem for them to put in the work to get to the next stage. I say, “Great, when the timing is right for you, you have my book, or you can get my book. I’m happy to send it to you. Circle back, and we’ll talk then,” but I don’t schedule the next call.

For the people who do say yes, it’s interesting, I talk about this in my book, sometimes they’ll say yes but then not follow through. At that point, in the second call, the first thing I say is, “How’d you like the book? What did you learn?” If someone says, “I didn’t have a chance to read it,” I say, “Great, that’s not a problem, but let’s do this. It’s an important part of our process that you understand what we do at a deep level. If you’re open to it, we can schedule another call, give you a chance to read it and go that way. If you’re opposed to it, then that’s fine as well, maybe we won’t go forward.” It’s amazing, the response is usually, “I’m sorry. I’ll read the book. Let’s schedule, etc.”

The whole key to all of that is that in that second call, which is again 30 to 60 minutes, I close around 80% of the time. It’s not through any selling that I’m doing on the call, per se, the selling has all happened in advance. It happened through the marketing I did to create awareness. It happens when the person reads the book and comes to their own conclusion that I know what I’m doing and that I’m the right person to help them. My total time investment on a one-on-one basis is that first fifteen-minute call and then, say 30 to 60 minutes in a second call, with an 80% close rate.

This is with complete strangers. These are people who, two days ago or two weeks ago, didn’t know who I was, but they heard me on a show like this or saw me on LinkedIn. They have a problem, and they’re looking for an answer, and they come through this process. To me, it’s a magical way to attract the right people in a very time-efficient way. It is because it goes back to the question about the biggest obstacle someone has, or the biggest mental obstacle someone has, about writing a book, “I don’t have the time.” Imagine all the time you’re going to save in the future.

The biggest obstacle someone has about writing a book is the mindset that they don’t have the time.

Your future self is going to thank you enormously for all the time you saved them, the time they would have spent either going through long, drawn-out sales processes that don’t close very well or take a lot of time, or, conversely, being stuck working with what I’d call B and C-level clients who aren’t the right clients for you.

Maybe you’re getting paid at a lower rate than you want to. I think this whole process helps shrink that sales cycle, but also helps elevate what you can charge and how much you get paid per hour. To me, once you get that, once those things click in and you see it, you want to do this all day long. You probably do it your own way, but I’m going to guess that you would agree with most of that, given that I think you’ve written, at least from what I saw on your website, like eight books or something.

There’s a lot to unpack there. First of all, for the folks tuning in, writing a book doesn’t mean you’re writing an educational book to teach them how to do it. There’s a big difference between my guides, which are 250 to 300 pages, they meant to be technical, versus How to Build a Practice, which is an hour-and-a-half read. The purpose is not to teach people the nitty-gritty of every single thing. It is meant to create credibility and give good information as an overview.

The First Step In Writing Your Own Book

If you’re a CPA or an EA, your book is not meant to teach taxpayers to do their own tax planning. That’s not what you’re doing. Trust me, you don’t want to write those books, you don’t make very much. Although I get asked all the time to update a treatise on something, I’m like, “I’ll spend a few thousand hours, and they’ll give me $500.” They’re not going to sell much. This is about credibility. Paul, what’s the first thing they should be thinking of? What’s the first thing they should know? If they’re like, “I like this idea,” what’s the first thing? Where do they start?

I’m going to share as much as I can during this show with you, but I know we have some time constraints. I’m going to also encourage people at the same time, if they want to go a little bit deeper, to get a free copy of my audiobook on my website, which is TheShortBookFormula.com. To answer your question, I think it’s mindset. The primary case that I’m making throughout the thesis of The Short Book Formula is that you want to write a book that’s roughly 12,000 words.

Twelve thousand words mean that a person can read or listen to it in 60 to 90 minutes. I think clarity around that is important because too often, people think that they have to write this 40,000-word book, and that’s what scares them and gets them bogged down. Clarity of that is important. Second, I think it behooves people, especially if they haven’t written a book, to get help. That help could be me, or it could be other people. If you’re not an expert at doing this and you’re creating your first book, you want to follow a roadmap of what works.

You can get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. To your point earlier, my point will give a lot of the what and the why, and it’ll give basic principles of what to include and what not to include. At the end of the day, it’s a little bit generic in terms of what to do. That’s why I fundamentally encourage people to reach out and get help in writing it. I want to let people know that it’s possible to accomplish this at a very high level, with very high quality, again, something that has a shelf life of 3 to 5 years, in as little as six weeks.

To give you a little sense of the process that we take people through, it consists of about 2 to 3 hours, a one-hour Zoom meeting once a week. In this case, we’re simply, I don’t want to say extracting, but that’s a good word. We’re getting the information from the author, we’re asking them questions, and we have them come prepared so that they know what they’re doing. They’re talking about their book, things based on their experience, their stories, all those things that they naturally do and probably don’t even think about.

We’re capturing that through Zoom calls once a week over six weeks. At the same time, in between that, we’re asking them to spend maybe 1 to 2 hours in preparation. The higher quality information they give us, the better quality the book is. We do want them to take it seriously and go through what I call the author’s journey. You start with an idea, and ideas start percolating, but the more time you have to let those ideas percolate, the more different things are going to come to mind, and you’re going to end up with a bigger book. We do that over a six-week process.

From a writing standpoint, and feel free to jump in if you want, we don’t expect them to write. We expect them to know what they’re doing to get that information. We capture it, and we write out the first draft for them. It’s essentially a collaborative editing process. At the end of the day, we want them to have a book that they’re proud of, and that serves their purpose of writing the book in the first place, which is to grow and build their credibility and grow their practice. That’s where I think the perfection or the fine-tuning happens. It’s not just one and done, but typically, there are about 2 to 4 drafts that go back and forth until we’re both 100% satisfied. This is the book. We’re now ready to talk about publishing it.

Onboarding New Clients For Book Writing

For the folks who are interested, how do you onboard a new client? I’ll put the link down so anyone reading who wants to get a hold of Paul certainly can. I highly recommend it because unless you’re like me and you like to write, and by the way, it’s a lot of work. Before 4:00 in the morning, I find it cathartic to data dump out of my head. Most people don’t feel that way. If you’re one of those people who don’t feel that way but do want to do this, I will again put the contact information. Paul, I reach out to you. I love that. I heard you. I love this idea. How do we get started? How would you onboard somebody new, getting started with the Zooms? What does that process look like?

It starts with a fifteen-minute phone call. This is a chance for us to get to know each other a little bit, to make sure it’s a good fit. We put a lot of energy and time into what we do. We want to make sure that we’re bringing on people that we feel are a good fit. That boils down to nice people who have a message and have some level of experience that they can talk about. I think the most difficult thing is that if someone says, “I want to write a book, but I don’t know what to talk about,” that’s probably not the best fit.

Someone who has some level of experience, I want to add to that, though. There’s also this thing, and I’d love to maybe get your take on this if you’re familiar with this term, which is imposter syndrome. Sometimes we think, “I have to have 20 degrees and have to be recognized by twenty different things before I’m eligible to write a book.” Can I throw that back to you and have you address that?

I’ll tell everyone a quick story. Let me address the first thing. If you’re sitting there thinking, “I don’t know what I want to write about,” first of all, what do you want to get out of this? I want more high-end clients. Why would somebody want to come? In other words, I’m a big fan of deciding where we want to get to and then engineering backward to build the path to get there. For instance, for Tax Rep, in my book, I mentioned that if you don’t want to do innocent spouse cases, don’t market for innocent spouse cases. If you only want to do criminal tax cases, write a book about criminal tax, blog about criminal tax, and be the person in that area.

Give some thought to what you will talk about, what clientele do you want? What facet? Estate planning, insurance, or whatever. I think you’re going to find that you will start to narrow down what you should be talking about. In terms of imposter syndrome, when I first got approached by accountants to train them in IRS rep, I built a training course. We started selling it on the internet. At some point, I realized I would never sell enough if I didn’t partner with one of the big players. It was Drake, Intuit, CCH, the NAEA, whatever. None of them were interested except for CCH.

Ultimately, they licensed the product from me. I was going to go out there to record it. I suddenly got cold feet. Who am I to do this? Be on video for CCH? They’re going to be selling it, and I can name ten people who are probably better than me at this time around the country. I’m going to look like a jerk. I’m talking myself out of it. I ended up speaking to one of my mentors about it. He said, “First of all, those experienced top-tier criminal tax lawyers around the country? They’re not buying the product. They have no interest in it. The idea that they’re going to be watching this, picking it apart? No offense, but they have better things to do.” Number one.

Number two, more than 95% of your audience knows that that’s your credibility, that you have the skills. He put it very bluntly for me, everything you’ve done, creating the course, selling it, pitching to all these companies, has led you to this moment. It’s either go or go home. At some point, I was like, “Darn it, I’m going to do this. Whatever it is, it is.” As usual, all of the major folks, the players in my field, not only did they never buy it or any of that, but what’s funny is that with the success of Tax Rep, I’ve had them now approach me at the ABA meeting saying, “How did you do this?” What I viewed as retail, they’re all like, “I hate practice.”

What I think is if you’re a CPA or you’re in insurance, you’ve got the knowledge. You’ve got more knowledge than 95% of your audience who’s going to read this. Other financial advisors aren’t going to go buy your book, they don’t need your book. First of all, you know more than you think. By the way, if you’re that concerned, on weekends, roll up your sleeves and reacquaint yourself, dive into it, mostly to convince yourself, “I do know what I’m talking about.”

I know you give yourself the pat on the back or the comfort level that I’m not a fake, I’m reviewing this, I do know what I’m doing, I do right by my clients, and I can advise them properly. That’s all you need to do. That is something, unfortunately, you’ve got to get over, or admit you’re going to be in your small practice. That’s what it’s going to be because you’re unwilling to put yourself out there. Put yourself out there.

I agree with everything you said, especially, I love the “begin with the end in mind,” and that’s where it starts. It’s not this War and Peace, “This is my story, I was born in this year,” that’s not why we’re writing the book. There’s an end result, which is that I want to sell, I want to attract more of this type of person, and I want to sell more of this type of service. From there, what is the story arc? What’s the journey that we’re going to take the ideal reader, prospect, or client on, from where they are in their mind with the problem? What’s the problem? How do we take them seamlessly to the answer, which should be you and your services?

I love everything that you said about imposter syndrome because I wanted to throw that in there. While we say we want people to have experience and a point of view, don’t overthink that. I think the best way to get past imposter syndrome is to do it. Writing a book, it’s amazing. At least in my experience, you start with imposter syndrome quite often, you publish your book, and suddenly it flips, because you start seeing people treating you with more status and respect.

The best way to get past imposter syndrome is to actually do it.

It’s like, “You’re an author, that’s cool,” and then suddenly, everyone’s different. “I am pretty cool. I did do this.” As much as it’s a piece of marketing collateral, it’s also a personal journey, which is why we do it over six weeks, we don’t want to shortchange that. You go from maybe a little bit of uncertainty about the focus, but you end up with something where you’re like, “If I could get this into the hands of the right people, I could sit back and let them come to me and be able to help them at a high level.” That’s ultimately what we’re trying to accomplish with our clients.

In our case, we start with a book, and that’s six weeks. We also talk to them, if they’re interested, about how to best market the book. I think a lot of programs out there, or some, if you have a book coach, for example, they’re selling book coaching, but they’re not offering you a complete package to write your book, publish your book, and then market your book.

If you’re looking at doing this to grow your practice, I think you want to think about the whole journey so that you’re successful in it and you get a very quick ROI, and hopefully an exponential ROI. As I mentioned, the shelf life of these books is reasonably 3 to 5 years. Also, a lot of people get what I call the bug. Writing your first book is a big deal.

It’s about getting it written and published. Once you see the impact it can have on your practice, suddenly, it’s like, “That wasn’t so hard, we’re writing another book.” That’s also part of the short book formula. If each book is roughly 12,000 words, and it’s pretty specific in terms of topic and solution, maybe every year you’re coming out with a new book, coming out with a new book, coming out with a new book. That’s how you can potentially exponentially grow your authority in the field. I’d love to have you maybe share a little bit more of your view if I could turn the tables on you. It sounded like, from your story, that you went from approaching these people and them saying, “Who are you?” to now, them saying, “Tell us your secrets.”

Building A Million Dollar Practice With Book Strategies

I ended up taking one of my outlines on IRS collection and did a guide. From the guide, it was the process. People started commenting about how you resolved it. I took those chapters out, expanded that, and it became the second guide on resolving tax debts. Interestingly, what about more liens and levies? I took those paragraphs, expanded them, and that became the guide to liens and levies. In other words, it’s almost like you lay the foundation, and then you can keep building up and off of it.

The How to Build a Million Dollar Tax Representation Practice came from the questions. “Eric, how did you do this? How did you do that?” For me, I would get in webinars, and I’d get, “You’re brilliant. You’re this.” Trust me, I’m not, you hang around with me long enough, and that will become obvious. What I did when I wrote the book was to say, “If this goofball can do it, anyone can do it.” Also, it isn’t like I started this and people bought it. Everyone loved it. Everyone loved us. We’ve never had any problems.

The book is, for better or worse, about the ups and downs. What I’m hoping the message people came away with is you have a plan, you execute the plan, there are going to be highs and lows, and you keep working at it. It’s amazing that if you show up and work, how often things will work out for you. The point is, as you said, you do your first, and then what happens is, “What about this?” You can build off of the one. Pretty soon, you have the series, we have the 2024 version or whatever it is. It’s almost like gaining momentum.

You have to get started. Once you have that momentum, it’s easier to keep it going. You have now the process, this isn’t that bad. I don’t have to be panicked. A lot of the frustration, in terms of other people coming up to me later, the frustrations I have with practice, it’s amazing. They have the same frustrations. There are big firms in Manhattan or Washington, it doesn’t matter. They have the same frustrations. When they look at this, they say, “You get paid to do this? How do you do that?”

It was a little eye-opening because that’s not what I was expecting. You’re not alone. It’s doable. Paul, you help them. The truth is, I think once you help them, and they’re like, “That wasn’t that bad.” Again, you did a lot of the writing, but I get it. I can see where the wheels start to turn. That’s what happened to me, the wheels started turning, and I’d be like, “What about this? What about this?” The ideas start, that’s how you end up with eight books.

Helping Clients Share Their Stories In Books

To be super clear about that, part of our process is what we don’t want to do, and how we don’t position ourselves, is as ghostwriters. I think a lot of people have an idea. It’s like, “I go hire someone to write my book, and then I’m an author.” How much time did you invest in that? If you didn’t invest an adequate amount of time, it’s your book, it has your name on it, but you’re not proud of it. That’s important, not from an ego perspective. The way that we help our clients do it is we want to get all of their stories and their ideas. We don’t start writing anything until we’ve captured the ideas from them because we want to reflect back in the book what they said, not what we think about the matter.

I think the magical part of that is that when you capture those stories, and this is where people need guidance, we all have stories that, if we’re prompted and encouraged, we’re going to go back and we’re going to get. When you capture those stories and you put them in the book strategically so they serve a purpose, you start having people read the book, especially as part of that sales process. You meet them, and they’re like, “What you did” They start telling you your stories. I love it when I meet someone, and I’ve never met them before, maybe I met with them for fifteen minutes, but I don’t know them yet, and they’re telling me my stories. That’s so awesome.

What’s critical is it has to be in your voice. It has to capture your voice. Frankly, I think the potential clients begin to realize that there’s a disconnect here. When it’s in your voice, and if nothing else, it’s consistent, your thoughts and the way you approach things comes through. It’s huge. It is a huge boost because you now have a warm lead. You have a warm audience coming to you after they’ve read the book. It is because they’ve read the book, they have now said, “I want to work with you.”

A hundred percent. I’m happy to go anywhere you want. I don’t know about how you’re doing on time.

I’m running short on time. We have another one coming out. We’ll probably do this again when the next one comes out. In terms of The Short Book Formula, I’m going to put a link below. I will also put a link below so anyone reading can get in contact with Paul. If you’ve been thinking about this, my advice is don’t put it off, get going. There’s no reason to wait. What are you waiting for? If you’re waiting for the stars to align, it isn’t going to happen. The easiest thing is to get started and take your first step. Get started. Before you know it, you will be a published author, and you will start bringing in the clients that you want to bring in.

The Power Of Podcasting To Grow Your Business

One last story. One of the things that we do, or we encourage people, and I do myself, and so everything I do, I eat my own dog food, so to speak. Meaning that I only teach people and do things for people that I do myself to grow my own practice. When I published this book, I think I published it around the beginning of this year. Immediately, I’m thinking, I need to go promote this. I have now this book, I want to get on shows like I’m doing now. This is part of that promotional strategy.

Here we are seven months later. I’m going to be on as many shows as I can over an extended period because it has a long shelf life. One of my early shows, though, was with a gentleman who I didn’t know at the time, but he’s a Barron’s Hall of Fame advisor. He manages $8 billion in assets. I don’t know if the accounting audience understands that as well. That’s not the top 1%, but the top one-tenth of 1%. Since then, he’s become a client of mine.

We’re doing a number of things together. The only reason I opened up that opportunity was through the book and then the subsequent podcasting. There are very few other mechanisms to be able to create those massive opportunities. By the same token, since I met him, he’s introduced me to people. I spoke at an event with 100 of my ideal clients. Again, you trace it back, how did I land this opportunity? It started with publishing the book. When the book was published, I needed to promote it. I did shows.

These things have this snowball effect, you can’t always predict it in advance. If you’re looking to either grow your centers of influence, grow your ability to speak or grow your awareness for your practice, whatever that specific goal is for you, this becomes one of those catalysts that can launch you in the direction that you want to go. To your point, it doesn’t do everything. You don’t publish the book and say, “I’m going to sit back, and all the money comes in.”

Your book becomes one of those catalysts that can really launch you in the direction you want to go.

There are steps, there’s work, there’s effort, there are all these things. To me, at least in my experience, it’s probably the most enjoyable way to grow my business. What do I have to do? I sit here and get to have enjoyable conversations with people like yourself. This is about the extent of my marketing now, going on shows and having fun conversations about something that I’m passionate about.

I found, too, that when each book would come out, I would get contacted, “Would you come speak to this group? I loved your book.” They’re inviting me to speak to a whole bunch of people who are potential clients. I’ll be happy to. These days, most of it’s webinars and Zooms, I don’t even have to travel anymore. It does, it opens up doors. It creates instant credibility. It’s the gift that keeps giving.

Paul, thank you for joining me. We’re going to have you back on when the next one comes out. Again, everyone, I will put the contact information in the description, and reach out to Paul. Again, if this is something you want to do, start doing it. There’s no reason to wait. Otherwise, Paul, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it.

My pleasure. Thank you. It’s an enjoyable conversation.

Thank you all for tuning in and everything. Check out the description and the links. I will see you in the next episode.

 

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