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Business coach Nina Hershberger tells you about creating lead-generation books to position yourself as an expert in the your field.

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Sean Corbett:
Hello everybody. Welcome back again, Sean Corbett here, websites.ca marketing. This one’s topic is about positioning yourself, both online and offline, as an expert so you can get more leads and obviously make more profit. I’m joined by business coach Nina Hershberger, to talk about creating lead generation books.

Nina Hershberger:
Well, thank you, Sean. It is my pleasure. I always like to talk to business owners, so the fact that I’m imagining all those business owners out there. I’m giving y’all a high five because it’s a lonely place to be as a business owner. So anyway, thank you. And one warning though, Sean, I have two dogs in my office right now, so if you hear barking, if you hear whining, just know it’s one of them.

Sean Corbett:
Perfect. Yeah. So what we’ll do, I mean, before we actually get into specifics, Nina, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you originally came to help so many small and medium sized business owners establish themselves as market experts?

Nina Hershberger:
Yeah, that’s a fun question because I don’t remember this, but my parents tell me that when I was little, I wanted to go door to door selling rusty bobby pins. Now, as you can imagine, they said no. But from very early on I did go door to door. I started, and it was before we’d have social media, but I would sell Christmas card boxes door to door. I sold Avon door to door. I was the very first paper route girl in my community, and I did that seven days a week. So from very early on, I kind of had the entrepreneurial bent, but I did go to college. I did get a marketing degree, but what I will say to you is I really did not learn and understand marketing until I met a guy by the name of Dan Kennedy. And so that’s a little bit of my background.

Sean Corbett:
Nice. So after you learned the Kennedy system, you hit on this concept of doing sort of expert positioning books for small business owners. Did you start with one for yourself and then realize how powerful it was? Or was that the thrust from the beginning?

Nina Hershberger:
That’s a good question. No, I did not start there. So I met Dan in 1996. At the time, I was a director of a direct mail operation where we printed and mailed 30 million pieces a month. And I did not, even though I understood some kind of marketing, I did not understand there was two kinds of marketing. And when I met Dan, and that’s a totally different story, but when I met him, my eyes were opened. And so there is direct response marketing and there is institutional marketing, institutional marketing, and so sorry about the barking.

Sean Corbett:
It’s okay.

Nina Hershberger:
Institutional marketing is the kind of marketing that the big companies do. You and I, and the listeners, when we spend a dollar of marketing, it needs to have a measurable return on that dollar. So in 1996, I never thought about a book. I simply thought about, okay, this is a whole new world. Where do I learn this? And I ended up with a client and I was doing some direct mail for them. I was still working in corporate America, but I was doing some direct mail for them. And Dan, if anybody in the listening audience and knows who Dan is, years ago, he brought to market a thing called magnetic marketing. And it talks about this whole thing, and he gave examples. So I used those concepts to write a direct mail piece for a client. And at the back of the book or the front of the book, I don’t even remember now, he had some coupons in there and it was to evaluate what it was you did.
So I exercised one of those. It wasn’t Dan I got to talk to, it was a guy by the name of Rodney Tolson. And I said, so Rodney, what do you think? I mean, is this good? And he said, Nina, I don’t know, but I will tell you that if you don’t do anything, nothing will work. And that was a very important lesson, but it wasn’t until 2010. So that’s 12 years ago, and I had heard Dan say over and over and over, you need to be a published author. You need to be a published author.
So finally in 2010, I wrote my first book. If you go onto Amazon, I should have counted before we got on here. I think I’ve got nine books up there now, and I’ve done hundreds of books. If we were on video, you would see my walls in my office plastered with the book covers of books I’ve done for clients. And he said, over and over and over, becoming a published author gives you that authority and that credibility that nobody else will have. And Sean, it doesn’t matter if you’re a painter, it doesn’t matter if you fix cars, it doesn’t matter if you’re a florist. I don’t care what industry you are in. Writing a book is incredibly important for your authority status.

Sean Corbett:
Well, I think, and that leads perfectly into my first big question, so we can address the elephant in the room for all the listeners. I always ask our guests, Nina, what is the biggest misconception about your service? And I’m just guessing, in your case, being a writer myself, I’m guessing that a lot of your clients are going to say something like they can’t write or maybe that no one reads anymore or whatever. But what would you say is the biggest misconception about creating this book?

Nina Hershberger:
Let me start with the, they don’t read anymore, and there is really truth to that. I will say though, sitting in my monitor right here, I just, yesterday, worked on a sales piece for a client that is a multimillion dollar sales piece. It’s five pages. People will read if what they are reading is not boring and it’s interesting to them. But I will say, and you’ve got firsthand knowledge of this, Sean, in the last number of years I’ve created very small books, which I call pocket books. There are four inch by seven inch, maybe about four or five thousand words. Really easy to do. But you’re right, most people say, I can’t write.
So here’s my suggestion to that. Get out your phone that has a tape recorder on, or buy a little tape recorder on Amazon, figure out what your topic is going to be. So you just make it simple. One topic. Let me give you an example here. In front of me I’m looking at one of the books that I [inaudible] a chiropractor. And his book title was, Yes, You Can Live a Pain-Free Life. So whatever your subject is, come up with about 10 chapter titles. And then when you’re out walking or sitting in your backyard or whatever, take one of those chapters and write copy, I’m sorry, speak on your recorder and just talk. Then get that transcribed, give it to an editor if you want, or edit yourself. And you’d be surprised how quickly you really can produce a book.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, I mean, I think going back to my days working in brick and mortar and stuff, every business owner, if you get them in isolation, they’ll tell you either I don’t know what to say, or it’s all the same, or my work applies to everybody, or whatever. But if you’ve watched them deal with clients, even if it’s a mechanic who doesn’t even think he’s doing a sales process, they all seem to have a wrap, a story, a close, an ask, but they do it subconsciously. And it’s just about realizing, oh, all that stuff would actually make for very… It might be not interesting to you because you’ve done it a million times, the business owner, right? But it actually turns out in your experience, you found it’s very interesting to their clients.

Nina Hershberger:
Now, that’s a very, very wise comment, Sean, because stick that tape recorder in your pocket or record that telephone conversation because when you are on, when you know you’re in the zone, that’s the best content possible, and so just capture it. Yeah. That’s a perfect way to begin the book. I had one client who was a lawyer to women only. He was a divorce lawyer from women only in his state, and he did a presentation. They recorded the presentation, got it transcribed, and guess what it became? Their book.

Sean Corbett:
Okay. That’s perfect. So now we have a pocket book, and like you said, it’s totally fine. We give the audience permission to use a transcription. You don’t have to write the next great novel. It just has to be applicable information. So we’ve got this book now, and maybe you can use some stories from some of your clients. How do business owners take this book and use it to get leads, use it to have people come to them, be seen as their industry expert?

Nina Hershberger:
Yeah, no, great question. So give me an example of somebody who might be listening. Let’s go to a real example. Give me an industry, Sean.

Sean Corbett:
Let’s take a house painter.

Nina Hershberger:
House painter. If somebody needs their house painted, what happens? They call three different painters. They have them come out and they get an estimate, right? And if you don’t have anything else to compare, what do you probably do? You pick the lowest. But what if a painter showed up? And first of all, it’s all about the experience and being memorable. So what if they showed up and said, by the way, I just wrote a book on choosing the right paint or the colors for 2023, or whatever it is. Do you think he would say, or she, would at least stand out from the crowd because, oh my goodness, this guy know what he is talking about.
Let me give you a real live example. Several years ago we had a house and we were getting our kitchen cupboards painted. And so I hired a painter just like that. I had no other way. I don’t know, I don’t even remember how I found it. I think I went to the main store and picked out business cards or something. Anyway, so I went and bought paint. I think I went to a Lowe’s or a Menards or someplace down here in the United States, and I got paint, and I gave him the paint. It was awful paint, but he never told me that I should get X, Y, Z kind of paint for getting the best results. So having a book, part of it was just being able to educate your people. Here’s the 10 questions you need to ask before hiring a painter.

Sean Corbett:
I also want to put a finer point on that too, because even if he would’ve said, maybe not to you, because you’re a little bit more aware, but I’ll bet you from most of his clients in our hypothetical, or in our example here, if he would’ve said, well, that’s not really the best paint choice and that’s not the best color choice, blah, blah, blah. A lot of the clients might have just went, whatever buddy, just please do what I asked you to do. But as soon as he puts a book in your hand as opposed to say, just a business card or nothing, the other two guys are probably going to show up with nothing like you said. But as soon as he puts a book on your hand, isn’t it true that there’s a bit of a subconscious change and now perhaps his advice might take on a little bit more gravity?

Nina Hershberger:
Absolutely. Now, the authority. I’m going to give you another example. So you don’t have to write a book. I’ve written many, many books that I’ve licensed the content too. One of them is in the real estate market. I have a book, what every person needs to know about buying a house, what every person needs to know about selling their house. So I licensed those books to a local realtor here in the United States. We got him printed. I give it to him in the Word document. So if he wants to make some changes, he can, but we format, we get it all printed, so he had his book. Custom printed cover, I mean, it was really cool. And so, by the way, this dog’s name is [inaudible] wants, but he certainly doesn’t want to listen to me talk.
So anyway, back to my story. So he had just gotten the book, just gotten the book. And if you know anything about realtors, again, just like painters, if you’re going to sell your house, you go out and you get three realtors who’s going to come through and give you an estimate of what you can sell for it, right? And that’s how it works. So he was the same thing. He comes, for the listing appointment, and at the end he said, oh, by the way, I wrote the book. He tells me the story of how he could see the guy’s face literally change. And he signed right then. He hadn’t even written the book. It was the fact that he had a book. So you talk about, well, I don’t know how to write. Well, it’s not going to be the best-selling, it’s just the fact you got one.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to talk briefly about the process and timelines and stuff like that just to give our listeners an idea. But before we move on, there’s a topic that we’re kind of flirting with, but we haven’t really examined yet in the call. And that’s, you’ve given a couple examples and you said they call three painters. They call three of this person or talk to three of that person. But what we didn’t talk about is in the online realm, how did they come to find that person’s phone number? How did they come to get the estimate from them in the first place? Probably from Googling.

Nina Hershberger:
That’s true.

Sean Corbett:
And so how does a book play into, let’s call it the online discovery process, that so many of our, for our listeners, their best customers tend to have found them through this online discovery process. So how does the expert book play into that?

Nina Hershberger:
I have a terminology that I call knit domination. So you need to be seen everywhere. And the moment you write a book and assuming it’s on Amazon. Again, if you search my name, you’re going to see me everywhere. So yes, the first thing people will do is they will probably Google you. So you want to be seen as an expert. You want to be seen in many different places. So having the book on Amazon generally will do that, on your website, because when I work with clients, I mean, I’ll give them the final pdf. I’ll even do a flip book for them. So you have a copy of the cover of your book right there, right front and center on your website, and you can have, download my new book. So again, as they’re Googling, as they’re searching, they’re saying, whoa, this painter, this realtor, this carpet cleaner, whatever. Wow, he wrote a book on that. That’s interesting. Whether they download it or not, there is still a psychological thing with that.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, it’s almost like a badge. That’s right. So getting into the process, I’m trying to imagine some of the top questions people have. And of course, you can fill in more details if I’m not asking the right questions. But I guess one of them that comes to mind is, roughly how long does this process take from start to finish to put together one of these books?

Nina Hershberger:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So if you go on Amazon, you’re going to see one of my books up there is 90 day author. And there’s different ways you can become an author. You can license the content. I do those. You can write it yourself. So the time fine, well, how long is it going to take you to do it. Or you can hire a ghost writer, somebody like me, who will interview you, who will take whatever content you have and will write it for you. I say I can pretty well get a book done within one 90 days. That’s why my book is 90 day author, and that’s from start to finish. That is content that is formatted, that is custom book cover, and as long as it’s a certain physical size that’s even on Amazon.

Sean Corbett:
Nice. And then also, I assume they get some printed copies as well that, say, put in the office and hand out.

Nina Hershberger:
Yeah. You always want a printed copies. I mean, so many people thought, well, they’re going to save money and they’re going to eat… I am so sorry. I don’t know what to do about this little dog.

Sean Corbett:
I think of it like, if we were a show, we’d have an audience or a laugh track or whatever. And I really prefer the dog sounds in the background to the audience sounds.

Nina Hershberger:
No, I mean he wants out, but I can’t just let him out because he has to be on the chain and I don’t have the chain here. But anyway, so what was your question? I’m sorry.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, no, that’s okay. It was just about the process. I mean, I think that we’ve got people through the mental hurdle of that what exactly, what kind of book are we talking about, right? It’s not going to break their spirit to do it. It’s clearly that they’re a subject matter expert, so it makes sense to put their pitch or their speech or whatever they do on a daily basis into to book format. Let’s just say that no matter what you and I say, Nina, most listeners are probably not going to take the next step and do it themselves. So if they’re not going to do it themselves and they’re looking for just a little bit of help, guidance in this process, how would that go about hiring someone like yourself, getting in touch with you and getting the whole thing started?

Nina Hershberger:
The beauty about hiring somebody like me to write your book is I am a marketer. I am not just a book writer editor, because I’m always mentally thinking, how are you going to make money with this book? There has to be call to actions. There has to be… Actually, Sean, that oftentimes what I’ll do is I’ll take a snippets of the recording and I’ll put a QR code in those books. So now, not only are they reading, but they’re listening and hearing you as well. So the process, if you hire somebody like me, and if we do just those small pocket books, like I talk about, 90 days start to finish, it’s a $3,500. That’s what it costs. And that is, if you’ve ever priced any kind of book writers, they’re usually… I know one book writer that’s $150,000. But I’ve tried to keep it very affordable for local businesses to be able to get it and get it done.

Sean Corbett:
That’s awesome. And so if someone who’s listening does want to start that process with you, what’s the next best step? Do they visit your website or how do they get started?

Nina Hershberger:
Yeah, you can go to my website. It is megabucksmarketing.com. And you’re going to see on there that I do charge $25,000 to those to write bigger books. But if you email me at Nina, N.I.N.A@megabucksmarketing.com and you mention this podcast, then you’ll get that better price of $3,500 to write one of these smaller books.

Sean Corbett:
Perfect. And we’ll put those links in the show notes. Nina, last word goes to you. Anything that you wanted to sort of fill in the color on this topic?

Nina Hershberger:
Yeah, this is another gift to you. Let me see. Where is it? Oh, here it is. So one of the books, my latest book that I wrote is How to Double Your Profits Without Spending a Dime. That’s really important for any business owner, any entrepreneur, any local business who’s struggling, trying to figure out how they’re going to make that bottom line number is the most important number. So it’s my gift to you to give you a free copy of that book. If you text the word book to this phone number, you’re going to get a free copy of that book and you’re going to find that I can easily find it at least 50% increase in profits without spending a dime. And the book talks all about how that works.
So the number to text the word book to is 317-886-1088. That is not a live phone number. You’re not going to get me on the phone. You’re going to go into my email list, full disclosure, you can unsubscribe. But it’s my gift to you to be able to give you that book. It is on Amazon if you want to buy it, you can do that as well.

Sean Corbett:
Perfect. So one more time, that’s text book, B.O.O.K, to 317-886-1088. And I really appreciate your time and thanks for coming on here today.

Nina Hershberger:
Oh, my pleasure.

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