John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall and welcome to The Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today my guest is Christa Terry, founder and CMO of Hello Mamas. Christa is an author, editor, and blogging consultant. Her popular blog Manolo for the Brides blossomed into a book, I Do, published by Simon & Schuster. Welcome, Christa.

Christa Terry: Thank you very much, I’m glad to be here.

How To Get Started Blogging

John: Awesome, so how did you get started blogging?

Christa: Well, in the early 2000s I was writing a personal blog and I just happened to get picked out of the crowd by an established fashion blogger who saw my work writing about weddings, and from there he asked me if I wanted a paid position blogging. I never actually set out to become a professional blogger but I felt like, at the time, it was a great deal. I could work from home. So I took it on and I was, according to some of the early blog marketing sites, one of the first paid employee bloggers.

John: Oh, really?  Nice, that’s a great start. That turned into a book deal even, right? Later? How did that come about?

Christa: My boss, that established fashion blogger, he was working with an agent to put together a book proposal and suggested that I take some of the content that I already had and segue that into a book proposal that he would share with his agent. The agent liked what I was doing and agreed to represent me. I was lucky because I had that platform. So because I had a readership of 80,000 a month at the time, which – I don’t know how that translates to now – but at the time those were big numbers. So when we put together the book proposal, we were able to say, “Hey, we have this already established audience and they’re the ones who are going to be buying the book.”

John: Yes, having a platform is absolutely key. It’s interesting though; you didn’t set out and say, “I need to write a book. I’m going to be the best blogger.” A lot of that was organic.

Christa: Absolutely, absolutely-

John: That’s awesome.

Christa: – it was a surprise to be invited to blog professionally, and then it was absolutely a surprise to have an agent say, “I’d like to represent you.” And the continuing success there always felt a little — it was just great because I was doing something that I really enjoyed, which was writing, and I was getting all kinds of benefits from that.

Picking a Niche to Blog About

John: For the people that don’t have that awesome experience of it just sprouted out of the ground organically like that, how important is it to pick a niche? When people are trying to stand out from the crowd — and now blogging is so established and competitive — how important is that to really narrow down your focus, or not?

Christa: Well, at that time I think it was less important. If you had asked me I would have said, “Well, I’m a wedding blogger.” That’s –

John: As narrow as you went.

Christa: Yes, that’s as narrow as I went. Whereas now the blogging world is so saturated that you really need to differentiate yourself, need to drill down to set your content apart because now everybody’s a wedding blogger, everybody’s a parenting blogger, everybody’s a lifestyle blogger, a fashion blogger — If you look at the most successful blogs at first glance you might say, “That’s a parenting blog.” But if you then read over, and over, and over, you read that content, what you’re going to find out is there is absolutely going to be a narrower focus in what they’re writing about. They’re not just blogging about their life, but it’s something in addition to that that’s sort of what’s surrounding it, but they have a passion, or a hobby, or – otherwise – a focus that is driving all of that content and making it more original than just some sort of higher-level subject matter.

John: You’d say basically now it’s so competitive that’s more important than ever even though again, you might not be able to tell that right off the bat, people are all niching-down to some degree.

Christa: Yes, you absolutely need an angle to get attention, even if that angle is not immediately apparent. I think that holds true whether you’re talking about your personal blog, or you’re talking about your company blog, or some other blog that’s associated with a project, you definitely need to have a nice, tight focus to be successful.

John: But the flipside of that potentially is that if you go so narrow — left-handed albino gerbils –

[laughter]

John: – alright, that’s not a real thing — that golf on only certain kinds of courses — you go too far and you have an audience potential of a hundred people, do you think about that at all in terms of drilling your niche down? But if you are in a big space like weddings, brides, etc., you are at least connected to a larger audience somehow.

Christa: Yes, and I think that that’s going to happen organically because if your focus is let’s say you’re a retailer of wedding jewelry, wedding planning is part of that whole thing. Buying wedding jewelry is part of your wedding planning to-do list. You’re grabbing people in that way but to try and back around if you have the tightest focus in the world and there’s only a hundred and fifty people interested in the thing that you are writing about. If you are the only one writing about it, you have a captive audience –

John: Really engaged small crowd.

Christa: – who are super engaged. Maybe you are not going to get a book deal signed or something to choose through out of that but you may attract the attention of brand partners if that’s something that you’re interested in or other people in your industry that you can partner with. So there’s something worthwhile to have a smaller but incredibly engaged audience.

John: There’s a blogger, have you heard of Jeff Goins?

Christa: Yes.

John: Jeff has a saying, “small is the new big” And he talks about getting your first hundred, then your first thousand people on your email list, and yes very similar to what you’re saying there. You can start there and branch out.

Christa: Yes.

Biggest Blogging Mistakes

John: What’s the biggest mistake you see people make in starting a blog?

Christa: For starting a blog it’s absolutely not having a roadmap or a strategy. I think that people come into it saying, especially in the business like those thing, “oh I am into this social media thing, so obviously I am going to have a blog” They look at their team, they pick someone on their team whether it’s on a social side or some expert person in their team and they say, “you write the blog” And then they start writing it, they’re putting posts out there but there’s no cohesiveness to it. They don’t do any research. The first thing that I think people should do is you go and you look and see what’s already out there to identify that niche.

They are not creating an editorial calendar, they’re not working ahead. Basically they’re not doing the proper work necessary that I believe is necessary to have a successful blog. The other issue is — in that same idea of not doing the prep work — is not making it look good. I think that right now people — because it’s so easy to make a blog look good, and it’s so easy to do graphics now — people really expect if they’re going go and look at your blog that it’s going to look like Good Housekeeping or Time Magazine or The New York Times.

John: Right, no matter what level you are at because some people with themes, one person or companies have them, that look awesome like that.

Christa: I think this is a lot easier to make your blog look professional from the get go with what is to me a minimal amount of effort. But when people aren’t putting the effort in and they just start throwing the content out there, you’re going to get maybe a search engine results from there and people coming in but as soon as they get there and they see what’s there or they see that there’s a big lack of content because you’re just starting out because you haven’t done any posts ahead, it really looks unprofessional and they’re just like, “goodbye” because they expect something better.

Blogging and Editorial Calendars

John: You started very organically yet it’s interesting because you’re saying you really need to be organized as a blogger. Thinking that you just come at it like–people shouldn’t mistake the idea that you can just organically sprout up as a blogger with the level of details you’ve put into it that may seem like, “oh she just started blogging and it just all happened” you’d said actually it doesn’t totally happen that way when you’re especially in the more competitive days, you need some level of editorial calendar, really planning things out, and is that what you’re doing on a regular basis?

Christa: Yes now, because back then you didn’t really have to do it because very few people were doing that, especially at the hobby level, but now you have even people with their personal blogs. Maybe they are making a little money off of it, maybe not. And they still have an editorial calendar. So when we founded Hello Mamas and we knew that there was going to be a blogging component and I was going to be in control of that, I said “We really need to make this organized”, we need to get a nice design, so it has to look good. We need to plan to really cover our bases, in terms of the kind of content. So we would want some lifestyle content, some fun content, some serious how-to parenting topics. And we put a lot of thought into it. The web app launched before the blog did, because we really wanted to do it right from the get go.

John: Okay. Yes. Any tools for that, like editorial calendar plug-ins, or anything like that, that you like? 

Christa: No. Actually, I don’t know if I’m old school. 

John : Good old-fashioned lists. 

Christa: Yes, exactly. We just use Google Drive and have a spread sheet on it, which because we’re a team of four people and two of us handle the blogging side of it, we need to be able to collaborate in a way that is centralized with all of our other data that we have in the backend. So, Drive works for us. 

John: And you have a pretty good following, right? You have a certain amount of unique visitors and subscribers. 

Christa: Yes. We don’t do as much tracking of that as we really ought to, because our main concern is always user acquisition for Hello Mamas. So everything we do, blogging, it’s driving user acquisition. We’re less interested in how many people we get reading any one post than we are in how many people are being driven to the sign up page via that post.

John:Right. Yes. Back to your original answer is be organized, be organized in what your goals are and in what you’re trying to drive people to do. 

Christa: Yes. 

Coming Up With Ideas for Blog Posts

John: How do you come up with ideas for writing posts?

Christa: I read a lot. I think that reading a lot within your industry — you take your niche and go and see what else people are doing with that — is really, really important. Because in all honesty, unless you are on the forefront of technology, chances are everything you want to write about, somebody has written about previously. And while I’m not suggesting cribbing other people’s ideas, you also don’t want to re-invent the wheel. So if you see posts that other people have done, that have been successful and you can put your own spin on it, I think that it’s a great way to find ideas, it’s a great way to find inspiration. Just read a lot, within your industry. Outside of your industry. See what people are saying, what’s controversial. You find a blog post that has 900 comments on it. How can you write about that same thing and get 900 comments yourself?

John: Absolutely. I read the other day in research for a post I’m writing. One is “How long does it take to write a blog post? And how often do writers write?” and I read that Seth Godin reads and researches about 16 hours a day.

Christa: I bet. 

John: And when he goes to write, it just blobs out and in 15 minutes he can whip off a post. Of course his posts are famously short, but they’re short and good because of exactly of what you’ve just said. He’s researching almost 16 hours a day. What else do you do? Although, he said he doesn’t watch TV. He doesn’t go to meetings and yet he has a company and people too. I think he actually authored a book called Read Before the Next Meeting or something. [Editor: Seth Godin’s Domino Project published the book by Al Pittampalli called Read This Before Out Next Meeting] I have to look that up, but [he’s] not a fan of wasting time. So, more time to research like you said. Do you use Feedly or some kind of access reader to keep track of all the blogs that you follow and read?

Christa: I was, but then I found that I was getting kind of trapped in what I was reading. Because I’m writing in a parenting space and that can be this incredible echo chamber or you’re only finding the things that are in agreement with what you think or are similar to the style of content you’re already putting out there. And so I found it more valuable to be looking a lot at what was going popular on Facebook, going popular just across social media, even if it didn’t fit in with what I felt like we should be writing about because I wanted to be exposed to new ideas, so I could bring those new ideas to my audience in a way that I felt that it should be put out there.

John: As opposed to when you list, “okay, these are the hundred blogs in my space that I’m reading”. You’re kind of speaking in a –

Christa: Right. And their recycling their content. So if you have your hundred blogs, eventually they’re really writing about these same things, writing in the same way. And I try and get out of that as much as possible. And I also want to write professionally, so I find that looking at things like Washington Post on parenting, New York Times, and really going to a higher level than other blogs, and seem that I can take that content and put it on my blog as just one step above of what’s out there.

John: The quality level of the research they put into it.

Christa: Right.

John: Or how they write because they’ve been around so long and really organized.

Christa: Yes.

John: That’s good advice. That’s a little contrary to a lot of people so focused on getting that exact list and keeping in touch with them. That’s a great thought to.

Christa: I get bored too, so you know what, that’s something maybe I should mention that it’s super easy to get burnt out on blogging, especially if you’re like, “This is my niche and I’m blogging these topics.” Sometimes you kind of lose your way and you get stuck in the cycle of topics going around. But if you go outside of that, you’re going to seem more interested and your posts are going to seem more interesting.

John: Yes. Keep yourself inspired as opposed to digging into a rut and feeling like it’s work. It doesn’t help your vibe of your posts.

Christa: Yes.

SEO Keyword Research for Blogs

John: Do you do SEO keyword research for each post or is SEO more of an ancillary secondary thought?

Christa: I don’t do it for every single post because I do not want to fall into a trap of relying exclusively on keywords to drive all of the writing. I mean.

John: Yes, or the headlines maybe, right? And be careful.

Christa: Yes. One that I think that we’ve all come across at this point in the blog posts where you’re reading it and they’ve been key-worded to death. And you’re seeing these kind of awkward phrases that have clearly been like a square peg into a round hole into the post. And the results are incredibly awkward, and I know for me I’ll immediately stop reading, because I know, as somebody who’s done that in the past, I can sense it right away and I’m like, “Okay, this was written maybe by an author that I like, or it’s about a subject that I’m interested”, but I’m out, because I know that that, I guess I can sense that the person had ulterior motives when they were writing, and then, “That wasn’t to inform me. It was to grab Google’s attention.” So I think that if you are crafting solid blog posts on a regular basis and they’re informative and they’re appealing to readers, you’re naturally going to hit a lot of keywords. And I think if you’re doing it that way, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do keyword research because I’ll get to that in a second. But if you’re doing it that way, you’re going to hit it. You’re going to hit your main keywords but you’re also going to be organically be hitting long keywords without even trying, right.

John: And ironically, that’s where Google’s really looking at that. Are you writing more in-depth content that fully covers the topic?

Christa: Yes.

John: Not just jamming the keywords in there.

Christa: But that said, I always have my most recent keyword research handy so I can pull it up, because I’m not going to miss an opportunity to place the keyword in a headline or place it in text or — especially since we’re dealing with user acquisition — to be able to link them to a sign-up page, using a really juicy keyword. And when I think as a writer if you’re really hurting for ideas, going back and doing a new round of keyword research can really clue you in into what people want to read right in that moment. And so just doing a couple of searches can give you some really solid ideas about things to write about that might have never occurred to you so it’s really in that way doing that research. Maybe not every single time you’re doing a post together, but once a week or when you’re making your editorial calendar, do it then and see if it can drive ideas or if there’s keywords that are really good for what you’ve already thought about writing.

John: So you definitely have a process with SEO but you don’t let it drive every single post and every headline, so that the chances of that being overly dominant are too good. So you’re aware of it, you do the research. You’re targeting keywords when it’s appropriate. But you’re also backing off when it would it just hack things up.

Christa: Yes, I’m not a slave to Google.

Blog Promotion Strategies

John: Not a slave to it, right. And so that really leads into the next question which is about promotion. What are your favorite blog posts promotion strategies?

Christa: Well right now, I am a big fan of some of these contributor networks, that on one hand they’re going to take you off your blog briefly. Today, like the Today Show, their website has these contributor teams.  There is The Mix which is Hearst Publications’ contributor network.  They’re putting out topics and if you want to write about topics you can.  In terms of the Today contributor network, you can just do it, anybody can sign up.  For The Mix, you have to apply, but that puts select content outside of your network and outside of your industry but it puts up there along with a bio that I think looks really good where you can link back to your blog and typically you can link back to your blog or your website in anything that you’re writing for these contributor networks.

John: And were calls-to-action to a subscriber which might be useful to them.

Christa: Yes.  Right.  You wouldn’t want to say, “okay, I’m moving all of my writing energy over to these places”, but if it’s appropriate to do it once a month or there is someone on your team who can focus on that it’s a really great way to drive more people to your main project whether it’s a blogging project or you want to drive people to your company and I personally have had some good luck on contributor networks like that and other than that it’s really just a share.  I think people are afraid to toot their own horns even when they have done something they’re really proud of they’ve written a blog post they’re really proud of where they have a blog post that’s like gotten a huge amounts of attention but they share it with their network on Facebook once, they share it with their network on Twitter once.  You will drive some people off by over sharing on social but you’re also going to have more people see it than otherwise would have.  I use — I can’t remember the name – it’s a Twitter tool that – it’s one of the many Twitter tools that lets you schedule a post.

John: So multiple, you don’t just – every post that goes out that just doesn’t automatically feed just one time, or it’s just for Twitter.

Christa: Right.  Yes.

John: You have a scheduler, like when it first goes live maybe the next day, a week later, a month later.

Christa: Yes.  Any evergreen content that you have you should schedule to share – if it’s on Twitter it can be more frequent, if it’s on Facebook it should be less frequent.  Any network that you can share it on a revolving schedule of re-sharing, do it, because there are some people who are going to see it but what are the chances that you will remember a duplicate tweet that you saw a month ago.

John: Right.

Christa: You’re not, and more people are going to see it as a result, so I think it’s very valuable to put your evergreen content out there as much as you can, on any channel you can, as often as you reasonably can. 

John: Yes, and the contributor networks of the Today Show and The Mix, that’s original content only or you’re taking a blog post you’ve already posted on your site and then you can cut and paste it in there, how do those work because there is LinkedIn Pulse and different…Medium and things.

Christa: Yes, they all have different rules.  I know that Medium allows syndication, the Today Show contributor network allows syndication.  The Mix has to be original because they’re putting it on places like Good Housekeeping and that’s a very woman focused one.  It’s going up on the websites for the women’s magazines so they absolutely want original content but you’re getting a lot of exposure through it.

John: Okay, and with blog post promotion did you spend a lot of time guest blogging in any of the blogs you’ve started and grown?

Christa: Yes, we did that quite a bit for Hello Mamas because we really at the beginning wanted those links coming back and I would say that that has been very valuable for us but at the same time we needed to focus on putting content on our own site as well so we probably had – it’s probably 90% on our site and then we devoted 10% of our time to guest blogging.

John: But you did some of that every month –

Christa: Yes.

John:  – you are featured on other sites at least monthly.

Christa: Yes.

Favorite Blogging Tools

John: Yes.  Okay.  We just discussed how often you share your posts on social media.  What about favorite blogging tools?

Christa: I would say that the Google Keyword Tool is still one of my favorites – it always comes back to that for me.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Christa: And I recommend it to people all the time. You would be shocked at how many people say, “What is that?”

John: Right.

Christa: It’s this free thing and you can find out exactly what’s going on behind the scenes at Google. That’s good. My second favorite right now is actually more of a design tool than a blogging tool, but there’s this site called Canva — C-A-N-V-A — that makes it incredibly easy to do things like infographics to design a header for your blog, to make nice shareable graphics for every blog post. Or if you’re concerned with people putting yourself on Pinterest you can make these graphics that make it exactly clear what people are looking at when they share it on Pinterest or anywhere else. That has been invaluable to us. I would say we use it every single week for just about every graphic that we do. If you don’t have a graphic designer in-house, which we do not, it is just an amazing tool.

John: You do some of those yourself when you’re writing a post? Are you thinking, “What image would go in there?” and then you actually go into Canva yourself, as well?

Christa: Yeah, absolutely. I think that there’s not particularly a learning curve for Canva, which is great. I wouldn’t consider myself a designer, but I feel like I get really good graphics out of it. Because it’s so accessible it’s right there. You know I’m not going outside to say, “Does anybody have an image for this?” I’m able to just really do it all in harmony at one time. I think I get better images out of that when I’m doing — it’s not just “copy” it’s the content for the entire post.

John: And you find them on creative commons, images that then you import into Canva to add the flavor to it?

Christa: Yes. We are very careful. After the one time we had a guest blogger — always vet your guest bloggers —

John: Right.

Christa: – we had a guest blogger who pulled an image from who-knows-where and literally three years later we had a cease and desist letter that said, “You’re using this copyrighted image that belongs to this photographer.” And we’re all looking at each other and going, “Where did this even come from?” And so we go back and we see what post it was on and it was a guest. It wasn’t one of us. It was a guest blogger. But you never know when that’s going to come back and bite you in the butt.

John: – Yes, you have to protect yourself.

Christa: And there’s so many free — I mean there are creative commons license images. Canva has its own bank of free to use images. If you’re blogging, like I’m doing parent blogging and I have children, and I have pictures of just things that have happened in my life. I use a lot of my own pictures. If you’re blogging for a company or an industry, chances are you probably have your own pictures, as well. So why aren’t you using your own content that already exists?

John: And then you spice it up with Canva and that enables you to get more social shares, right? Because that image now can be shared. Do you take the image itself that’s in the main picture for the blog post and share that also individually? Or do you make other images to go with posts?

Christa: Typically we have so much else that’s going on, we want to make it easy. So typically the picture that’s in the post is also the one we’re going to share. Anything we make we do try to make it so it’s appropriately sized for this and that and the other social network, and that it’s going to make sense to share it on Instagram. We want text on the image so it makes sense to share it on Instagram. It’s pointing back to whatever the content is or it’s pointing back to Hello Mama’s. We’re all about re-use and making it simple because if you have a giant marketing team I’m sure you could really optimize the process across people. But if you’re dealing with a small team or it’s just you, you need to optimize it for one person using DIY strategies and make it easy for yourself or you’re going to get burned out.

John: So with the Google tool, a spreadsheet, and Canva, you’re good to go.

Christa: Yes, we’re kicking it old school. [laughs]

John: Yes. That’s good. Yes. A lot of people should be inspired by that. You know you’ve built blogs with very large amounts of traffic and people signing up. Really great work. Thanks for speaking to me today. Tell us how people can get in touch with you.

Christa: Sure, you can check me out at http://hellomamas.com/, or if you want to send me an email it’s christa @ hellomamas.com.

John: All right. Great. I hope you enjoyed today’s discussion. Check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on authority marketing and subscribe and review our podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. I’m John McDougall. See you next time on the authority marketing roadmap.

John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall and welcome to the Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today, my guest is Adam Witty, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Advantage Media Group – the Business Growth Publisher. Advantage, which began in the spare bedroom of Witty’s home, holds a roster of 750 authors from 40 US States and 13 countries. Adam is the author of Lead the Field: How to Become the Authority and Dominate your Competition. 

Welcome, Adam.

Adam Witty: John, thank you so much for having me.

Industries that Benefit Most from Publishing a Book

John: Absolutely. So, what industries and/or people benefit the most from thought leadership marketing such as writing a book?

Adam: Yes, great question. My opinion, John, is that it’s very rare that I can find someone who cannot benefit from being seen as the authority, a leader, an expert in their field. But, there are some industries where – it’s the lower hanging fruit, if that makes any sense. And the industries that are the lowest hanging fruit I found, are what I call professional services industries. So, financial advisors, accountants, insurance brokers, stock brokers, health care and medicine, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, orthodontists, lawyers and attorneys in the legal field. The reason why those are the lowest hanging fruit is because you are hiring them for their expertise. If you want to go to the dentist and you live in – let’s just say, Boston, Massachusetts. You could open up the phone book and there would be hundreds of dentists in the greater Boston, Massachusetts area. So, how do you pick the best one for you, for your children, and for your family? Typically, you’re going to make a decision based on a referral or a recommendation. You’re going to base the decision on somebody that you’ve heard of before, maybe he’s gotten high marks, maybe it’s the dentist that you’ve seen on TV, or you’ve heard them on the radio or maybe you’ve seen an interview with them in a newspaper or magazine. The same would be true with any industry in the professional services realm. So a financial advisor or an attorney – you are looking for the person, arguably that knows the most and is most qualified.

And when it comes to being seen as an authority – when it comes to being seen as a ‘thought leader,’ there is nothing better that can cement your place as an expert than being the author of a published book. That’s a long answer to a short question John, but the truth is, there are most, if not all industries where a book can make sense. We’ve done a book for an undertaker as an example.

John: Wow, that’s a good one.

Adam: But, there’s no doubt that professional services are probably the lowest hanging fruit, if not the most obvious.

Being Qualified to Write a Book

John: Yes. I would agree with that. Should every thought leader write a book or an eBook, or is that level of writing beyond some of the people in those areas?

Adam: It’s a great question. There’s a lot of people that say, “Well, I’m not qualified to write a book.” And the truth is, that’s a self-limiting belief. If you don’t know enough about your topic to create enough content for a book, well that’s a different story. For most people, they know a lot about their topic, they’re just not gifted at writing. The idea of sitting down in front of a computer and typing out 40,000 words – they can’t do that.

At Advantage, we created a program many years ago John, called ‘Talk Your Book.’ And the concept of it was really simple. Most people that know a lot about something — entrepreneurs, CEOs or professional service providers like we just talked about. If I ask them to start talking about their ‘thing’, their business, their industry, their expertise, they could talk for days. And what we did is that – “Okay, if we can get you to talk for days about it, let’s leverage that strength of yours and turn it into a book.” With our ‘Talk Your Book’ program, instead of you sitting down to write, you talk, we record, and then we ghost write those telephone recordings — which is essentially [turning] an interview into a 150-page business book.

Challenges of Creating Content from Interviews

John: Yes, that’s a great way to do it. We’ve had so  many experts  that we want to get content initially for SEO over the years – over 20 years of doing SEO, trying to get content from people. It’s always a challenge and once we opened up podcasting, it gushed out of people. It takes a little bit though to get people even to do that. Do you find that sometimes people say, “You’re going to interview me?” or, “You’re going to podcast? What the heck is that?” Do you have some of that reaction too even though from our perspective [it’s going to be easy]. They don’t have to sit down and write. But do you even have resistance to that?

Adam: People are their own worst enemies. And it’s amazing how people think that they can’t do something and we have to motivate and coach and cheerlead them to get it done. But to answer your question, what we’ve tried to do John, is make a real simple interview. They help us direct what those questions are going to be; so [it’s the] questions that they know a lot about, the questions that they have good answers to. And when we structure that way, the results have been really, really positive. For some people, it’s just the inertia of getting them to do it. They don’t have time and making time or finding the time to get it done is hard. But for most people, it’s just a matter of, “Let’s just talk about this.” Once we get them talking, it’s sometimes hard to shut them down.

First Time Book Mistakes

John: Nice. That’s good. What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when writing their first book?

Adam: There’s a lot. It depends what category we’re talking about. I’ll give you just some examples. The first mistake that some people make is they say, “I’m going to write an eBook and not a print book.” And I’ll tell you why I think that’s a mistake. The hard work in creating a book is writing the book or creating the content, even if you don’t write it yourself. That’s the hardest part that there really is. I always tell people, “If you’re going to do all the hard work,” which is writing a 20-30-40,000-word book; “Why would you not go the extra effort and turn that into a real book?” Have a cover design, design the interior, print it so it’s beautiful and you can literally hand it out to your friends, your colleagues, and your prospects.

When somebody hands you a book, [or] when they slide a book across the table and they open up that front cover and autograph it for you; the transference of power is great. Meaning, people straighten themselves up in their chair and they look at you as though you are a special being, as if you are a king or a queen. Their perception of you just completely changes. If you email somebody your eBook, it’s not nearly as impressive as FedEx-ing an autographed copy of your book to them. So I always tell people, “If you’re going to go through the effort of actually creating a book, publish a real book; because the return on investment, the ‘wow factor’ that you get from it is a whole lot higher.” The other mistake that I would tell you most people make is they write a book that they want to write. Meaning, they write a book to suit the fishermen, not the fish. Okay?

John: Yes.

Adam: If you’re out fishing and you like to eat Oreo cookies, if you put an Oreo cookie on the hook and cast it out in the water, I’m having a hard time thinking you’re going to get trout, snapper or catfish – whatever it is that you’re looking for.

John: It’d be impressive though if you could get a trout with an Oreo.

Adam: It wouldn’t be bad, right? That would certainly make the news. 

John: Not likely.

Adam: But most people, when they write a book, they make that mistake. They write the book that they want to write. They don’t write the book that their target customer wants to read. And so the business that we’re in John, is helping business people productively use a book as a marketing tool to grow their business. And if you really want to productively use a book, what that means is that you’ve got to create a book that your ideal target prospect can’t wait to get their hands on.

John: Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard the joke over the WIIFM radio — What’s in it for me? You have to give the reader the [answer]. [Find out] what’s keeping them up at night and really give them the answers to their questions. I think your point is, don’t give them the big bragging point or all the stuff that you want to write to make yourself look good or, something like that.

Adam: Yes, that’s exactly right. You’ve got to write the book that people will actually care about and that they’ll want to consume. The whole point of having a book that people will consume is to have an opportunity to educate and ultimately, to persuade them. And the persuasion that you’re hoping to do is to persuade them to want to pick up the phone and call you or call your office and possibly hire you or engage your company in helping them. And so if you don’t write a book that just hits them right in the face like a two by four in between the eyes, you’re missing that opportunity.

I’ll give you one more mistake and there’s a lot of them. I think we could spend hours on the podcast.

John: I’ve made quite a few so I can relate to that.

Adam: The other big mistake that people make is that they expect that they’re going to write this book, they’re going to push it off the cliff and into the world and the world is going to be a path to their door to buy the book. I can’t tell you how many authors we have worked with that just expect their book is going to fly off the shelves. And nothing could be further from the truth. The average book, John, in its lifetime, sells less than 2,000 copies and those 2,000 copies usually [from] selling your book to your friends, to your family, and to your colleagues. People aren’t going to be running into Barnes and Noble to find your book.

And so the reason that’s so important is that you need to know what your goals are, and you need to have goals that are aligned with reality. I’m not saying that you can’t be a New York Times best seller, but if you set that out as your end goal, 99 out of a hundred times you’re going to be really disappointed. So use the book as a means of generating leads. Use the book as a means of getting invited to give speeches. Use the book as a means to get invited on television, on radio, or to be the expert author on a podcast.

Use the book to build your authority, your credibility, your expertise, and make sure that the goals you have are in alignment with reality and have ways to make money off your book that don’t involve selling copies.

John: You could sell 200 copies and land a $10 million dollar project or $10 million worth of projects and you wouldn’t be considered the best seller, but you make a huge amount of service fees.

Adam: That’s exactly right. You could sell 200 copies of your book and make more money than the guy that sells 20,000 copies of his book.

John: Or even better, give them away. That’s one thing that I didn’t realize at first, [that] it’s okay to give them away, because if you’re setting that goal of, “I want to get business from this,” you don’t have to worry so much about giving it away. My father at first was like, “Why are you giving all your books away?” I said, “Well, I want the contract more than I’d want the ego of how many book I sell.”

Adam: That’s exactly right. If you’re giving the book to the right person, [it’s] well worth it to give the book away versus hoping that they’ll spend $19.95 to buy it.

How Long a First Book Should Be

John: No, that’s a big mistake that in terms of the goals and the perception. So that’s a good one. How long should your first book be from your perspective?

Adam: Well, this is a great question and there’s not a black and white answer. It does depend on a lot of things, but I will give you this rule of thumb. If you’re a business person and you’re writing a nonfiction book, the book needs to be long enough where anybody that looks at it says, “Wow, you wrote a book.” That’s significant, that’s impressive. But it can’t be so big that it’s overwhelming. Some [authors] do it, [and their readers might] say, “I’m never going to have time to read that.” And what we found is that the fine line in the middle is about a 150 to a 160 pages.

Anything much more than a 150 to 160 pages, people look at it and say, “I don’t think I’ll ever have time to get to that.” If the book’s much bigger than probably 200 pages, people will look at it and say, “I’m never going to have time to get to that.” So we live in a world where everybody has an ADD attention span. The goal is to have a book that somebody could read on a plane ride. So if you’re flying from Boston to Chicago or Boston to Atlanta, if you can’t get the book read in either those plane rides, it’s probably too long.

John: It’s amazing how many books I see now that I think that is just such a great sized small book, even 90 page books that are in a small format.

Adam: Yes, to your point, John, a lot of the books are more like gift book-ish. I’ll give you an example. My most recent book, which actually comes out next week, is titled Lead The Field and the book is about a 110 pages. It’s a hard cover book with a dust jacket and it’s an unconventional size. The book is maybe 4” wide by 5.5” inches tall. And so it really could be a gift book and the purpose of the book is to get people very excited. It gives them the big idea of everything that we’re doing, but not to go into extreme detail on how to do it.

The point of the book is to explain how good the sausage tastes, not to go into detail about how the sausage is actually made.

John: The mistake with my first book [was that it was] over 400 pages, 420 pages and a very large format. It’s now a college textbook at multiple colleges and has won some awards and I’m proud of all that. But stepping back, and what I tell our clients, is even that 90-page book is so much quicker to do. You’ll have so much more time to market the book. You can spend a lot more time building a platform. So there’s just so many advantages to your first book [being shorter]. You haven’t been through the proofreading, the copy editing and proofreading, and different phases of cleaning it up. And how long that takes, boy that was the shocker for me when you’re talking 420 large format pages. I spent many – 30 something hour weekends nonstop working. So [there are] a lot of reasons to keep it a little bit on the short side and be proud of that. How did people get started writing a book? What are some of your tips there?

How to Get Started Writing a Book

Adam: The worst thing that you can do is just sit down and start writing. And that’s really because it goes back to [the fact that] you’re not writing the right book most likely. I use a little analogy, John, when I answer that question, and the analogy is that if you were going to build your dream home, you probably wouldn’t hire general contractor and simply say, “Go build something” and then six months later, come back and expect to find all that you had dreamed of. You would first start by hiring an architect, working with that architect to carefully create blueprints, and then giving those blueprints to the contractor with instructions on what to build.

Then, when you come back in six months, likely the house that you dreamed of is right before your very eyes. A book is real similar to building a house, and so we coach all of our authors that the first thing that you really want to do is to build the outline or build that strategic plan for the book. Who is the target audience for the book? What is the promise that the book is going to make? And how are we going to fulfill that promise? Meaning, what is the content that will make up the chapters [and how will we] deliver on the promise that the title of the book makes? So it’s very strategic. It’s very intentional, but the best thing that you can do if you want to write a book is not to simply start writing, but to first carefully create a blueprint of the book and to begin with the end in mind.

What to Know About Your Book Title

John: Good advice, definitely. Be strategic and map that out. What about the title of the book, is that make or break or how important is that?

Adam: The title of the book is everything and so is the cover. Your mom probably told you, John, when you were a little kid, because my mom told me that you don’t judge a book by its cover. That might be true as an analogy for people you meet. But it is not true for books that you buy. The truth is that every book is judged by its cover. The title and the cover design do more to get people excited about reading your book or buying your book than anything else, so the title’s very important. I have always believed that the title of the book really needs to make a promise and the subtitle of the book needs to say specifically who the book is for.

So [for] my newest book Lead the Field, the subtitle is “How to be the authority and dominate your competition,” so the subtitle clearly says what the book is about and what the benefit of the book is. So how to be the authority, that’s what the book is about, and the benefit is to dominate your competition. Now, on the cover of the book, John, there’s a starburst and the starburst says “For entrepreneurs and business leaders,” because the truth is, I don’t want a school teacher reading my book, simply because she’s not the target customer for our company. The people that I really want reading my book are the ones that ultimately have the capacity to take this big idea, put it into action, and if appropriate, hire advantage and engage advantage to help them get it all done. And so, if nuclear scientists and school teachers are reading my book, that’s not really the target audience. But if CEO’s and entrepreneurs and financial advisors and physicians are reading the book, well, all the better. So there’s actually a little starburst on the book that says specifically who the book is for. The big idea is that being intentional and really stating explicitly who the book is for, what the promise is, what the benefit to the reader is, it’s all very important.

Hiring an Editor or a Proofreader

John: And do you need an editor and a proofreader? How many other people are involved when people go to do this on their own?

Adam: So I tell people, John, if you’re going to do it on your own, you’ve got to promise me one thing. The promise is don’t be cheap. Don’t cut corners. Well, I’ll put it this way. If somebody says, “Your book looks self-published,” is that a compliment or is that a criticism? Well, it’s an insult. Even if you self-publish your book, you don’t want anybody to ever say, “It looks like you self-published your book.” That’s an insult. A book can build your credibility more than anything that you can ever imagine. A book can also drop your credibility more than anything you can imagine.

The reason is because if your book doesn’t look as good as any you would find on the front table of Barnes & Noble, I would tell you not to do the book at all. Just don’t spend the time. Don’t spend the money. Don’t do it half-way. Your book needs to look as good as any you’d find on the front table of Barnes & Noble, because that’s who people are going to compare you to, and you have to be on the same level or better than the top. And so, the great cover, great editing, and great writing take care of all that. The litmus test that I always say is your book has to read and look as good as those on the front table of Barnes & Noble. Until you can say “My book looks and reads as good as those on the front table of Barnes & Noble,” or until your friends tell you that, then it’s not ready to be published.

How to Publish a Book — Self-Publishing vs. Book Deals

John: And what about self-publishing versus a book deal? There are so many stages. You can do it all yourself. You can have a mid-level publishing. Wiley, you know, people at the top of the game. What type of deal should you be looking for or how should you go about that?

Adam: No size fits all. As a general rule of thumb, I would guess that [for] 99.9% of the people listening to the podcast, probably traditional publishing is not right for them. The reason it’s not right for them is they’re not going to have a big enough name, a big enough platform where a traditional publisher is going to come to them and offer them a contract, unless that traditional publisher is expecting them to open up their checkbook and pay for the privilege. So, getting a traditional book deal is very hard. They’re looking for platform. They’re looking for a track record of success. That track record of success usually comes by previously publishing and selling lots of copies of other books. The other big thing with traditional publishers is that it takes a long time. You’re going to expect it’ll probably take 18 to 24 months to get a book done and for most of the entrepreneurial authors that we work with, they want the book out in 6 months. They want to be promoting and making money off the book this year, not in 2018.

So, I would tell you that for most people listening, either self-publishing or what we call it at Advantage, hybrid publishing, is probably the [best] route. Now self-publishing, my definition is doing it all yourself. If you have the experience, if you have the talent, and if you have competent people to do the work for you, then managing it yourself is fine, as long as you can create a book that looks as good and reads as good as those on the front table of Barnes & Noble. If you can’t do that, then you don’t want to self-publish. The third option is what we call hybrid publishing. At Advantage, our publishing division is a hybrid publisher, which means that our authors are engaging and hiring us to create a beautiful book for them, to write it, to edit it, to design it, to print it, to distribute it, and to help them sell it. To create a beautiful book that looks and reads as those on the front table of Barnes & Noble, and our authors make an investment and hire us to do all that heavy lifting for them. So that’s the really quick lay of the land. Traditional publishing, if you can get somebody to pay you a lot of money, I’d say go for it. It does take a long time and the publisher owns the intellectual property and the rights to your work typically. But for most people, self-publishing or hybrid publishing is completely acceptable as long as your standards are really high and product looks really great.

John: One thing that was helpful to me [was something] that someone told me while I was debating to go after a book deal or do it on my own. My friend’s an author of many books and has great contacts at Wiley, and he said, “But John, if I connect you to the people at Wiley and you get your book with them and it doesn’t fly, you’re kind of burning yourself because if you don’t have the platform already and it doesn’t sell, next time, good luck with that. You’re going to burn yourself, and then you also have to buy those books back from them.” It might be $20 or so, if I want to give away a thousand books to potential customers, now I’ve got to spend $20 times a thousand, which is a lot of money.

Adam: Yes. That’s a really great point is that with traditional publishers, they typically allow you to buy the book back for a higher price. It’s anywhere from 30% to 50% off the cover price. I know a number of authors who have said it’s cheaper for me to buy my book directly from Amazon than it is to buy my book directly from the publisher. If you’re going to give a lot of books away, you don’t want to do that because you’ll spend a fortune buying your own book to give away. The other point that you made is really, really good too. There’s no absolute answer. It’s all situation-dependent, based upon your business, based upon your industry, and based upon how much work you want to do yourself, versus how much do you really want to outsource to others. The one thing that I will say is even with a traditional publisher, they’re going to still expect you to write the book or they’re going to expect you to hire a ghostwriter to write the book for you. So getting the book created, getting the book written is not something that you can just expect a traditional publisher to do, so be wary and be cautious of that.

Ensuring Your Book Has Your Voice

John: Whereas with the hybrid model like you guys do, you can go ghostwrite the book for people, but people shouldn’t fear, correct me if I’m wrong, that you’re just going to make up some stuff that doesn’t come from their voice. You use what we call talk marketing and you say, “talk your book.” Because you’re doing that, you’re extracting the voice of the expert literally through interviews, audio interviews, and you go straight from their real conversation and the knowledge that they might have built up over even 45 years or 20 years of being in business, right?

Adam: Well that’s one of the really cool things about the Talk Your Book program. A lot of people will have a ghostwriter write their book and when they get the book back, they’ll say, “The book doesn’t sound like me,” and we giggle and laugh and the reason is because, well of course it doesn’t sound like you, you didn’t write it. And with really good ghostwriters, that doesn’t happen. But for a lot of ghostwriters, especially those on the cheaper end, they’re just taking your ideas but then they’re writing it as though they were them versus writing it as though they were you.

So they’re not using your diction, they’re not using your voice. They’re not using your tone. They’re not using your language. The really cool thing about Talk Your Book is the book sounds exactly like you. It actually sounds like you’re having a conversation with that person at their dinner table, because we’re interviewing you, we’re recording you, and at the end of that, those recordings are then edited and turned into the book. So it’s really cool.

The Talk Your Book program completely eliminates the possibility of somebody ever saying, “A book doesn’t sound like me.”

John: That’s really critical. [I went to[ your awesome authority marketing summit, which really was great. I had so much fun. Dan Kennedy was talking about Donald Trump and one of his early books, and I think he was saying basically they left in his voice and that was a good thing. That’s who he is. Donald Trump is brash and bold and big, and if a ghostwriter comes in and [says], “We got to clean him up.” How would he do in the polls and how would his book do? It wouldn’t do as good. You want that “you” in it.

Adam: That is a great example. You’ve got to be you in the book, because the book is really a marketing tool to help grow your business and people are making a connection with you. The more authentic your book is, the more authentic you are, the [better] you’re going to be able to turn that book reader into a customer.

John: I mean if the book was very tied up or lip English sounding, and then they get into a meeting with you and you’re Donald Trump on steroids say, the likelihood that the book that they got in the mail or got from someone, or even bought on Amazon is going to turn into a good customer, that would be pretty awkward.

Adam: Yes, it would be incongruent.

How to Market Your Book

John: What about tips on marketing your book? What are some things that people can do, or that you do for people?

Adam: Well here is my biggest tip and takeaway. Marketing your book is a marathon, not a sprint and I want you to repeat that as a listener in your head. Marketing your book is a marathon, not a sprint and the reason that is so important is that most people make the mistake of thinking, “Okay. I got this book. It’s coming out next month and I got to tell the world about this in the next 25 days. I’ve got this finite little window where if I don’t get people interested and engaged in the book in this tiny little bit of time, then it’s all for naught.” If your only goal is to sell copies of your book in a bookstore, well then you’re probably right. If your goal of a book is to build your authority status and to become an expert and a thought leader, well then the book can be effective for the rest of your professional career. And if you want your book to last for the rest of your professional career, marketing, publicizing, promoting, and talking about the book is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. So that’s the biggest takeaway that I can give you on marketing.

Now what do you do to market a book? What do you do to market a book to market your business? Well there’s a lot of things that it involves and depending upon the outcome that you have with your book, [it will] dictate which of those things you do and [don’t do]. Some of our authors engage us to get them on television, to get them publicity, or to get them interviews. Other authors have us help them get speaking engagements and speaking opportunities as a result of their book. Still more of them will use us to build a digital footprint for them online, so taking all the content from the book, slicing and dicing it into content that can be marketed and spread to then generate leads.

Depending upon the outcome that the author has, we build a book marketing plan and what we call an authority marketing plan for each author to try to deliver and drive the goals and the outcome that they have in mind for the business through the book.

How to Publish a Book and Feel Great About It

John: Those are fantastic tips spoken from a true authority, absolutely. I have one last question and it’s more on the emotional level. How good did you feel when you published your first book and you got that copy back?

Adam: That’s a great question and the reason that’s a great question is because we spent the better part of 20 minutes on this podcast talking about all of the logical reasons that you should do a book. And there’s a lot of supporting evidence, but the one thing we haven’t talked about is the emotional reason or the emotional benefit. And I can tell you this, it will sound crazy, but becoming a published author will give you confidence that you can’t possibly imagine.

You might think, “Gee I’m already confident. I have enough confidence. I don’t need more confidence.” Well I’ve never met somebody that can’t always benefit from more confidence, and the truth is, the emotional process of going through this book, getting it done, getting it published, seeing it in the world is akin to climbing Mount Everest. It’s a lot of hard work and it does take time. And it does cost money, and you put a lot of energy and effort into it.

But when you get that first copy in your hands, when you autograph that first copy and give it to your mom or your dad or your spouse, or you give it to your business partner, that is for many a transformational process. John, I had one of our authors tell me, he said, “Adam, publishing this book was as significant to me as the birth of my grandchild.”

John: Wow.

Adam: That’s powerful.

John: Very.

Adam: And I don’t think people consider the emotional benefits. For some people, it’s very cathartic, it’s very therapeutic to go through the process of writing a book and for many, it’s a bucket list item. And certainly, if you believe in this idea of sharing what you know to help others, sharing your story, sharing your passion, and sharing your knowledge to help others, then there’s no better way that you can do that than through a book.

John: Well put. [A new book] has that crisp, almost kind of the new car smell. It’s not a bad thing when you get that first copy back.

Adam: It’s not and John, you brought it up first. I like to give a gift to any of your listeners. My new book Lead The Field comes out next week and if anybody listening would like a copy of the book, I’d like to offer them a copy of the book. We’re just getting the website and the landing pages up now, but anybody listening to the podcast that would like a copy of Lead The Field, just send me an email. My email address is awitty@advantageww.com. If they send me an email, I will reply to them and send them to the website that we’re launching for the book where they could request and get a free copy of the book for anybody that’s really serious about expanding their thought leadership, their authority profile by being an author.

John:  That’s a fantastic offer and what’s your main website address?

Adam: Advantage Media Group is online at advantagefamily.com.

John:  And is the landing page going to be on there, or do you typically build a different URL for each book?

Adam:  The landing page is going to be at leadthefieldbook.com, and that website is just getting built this week, so it’s not up as you and I are recording this live But advantagefamily.com has information about the company and leadthefieldbook.com will have the information for the book. And just to be safe, if you do send me an e-mail, I’ll make sure that we give you the right landing page where you can go online to actually get the book, just in case the main site doesn’t take you there.

John:  That’s great, thanks for the offer, can’t wait to read the book myself. That’s very appropriate for workingdemosite.com/authority and thanks for speaking with me today, Adam.

Adam: John, this has been a lot of fun and to all your listeners I say go out, get it done, become an author and remember this: authority, the first six letters in it spell author.

John:  Absolutely, thanks again, Adam. And I hope everyone enjoyed today’s topic. Check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on authority marketing and then subscribe and review our podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. I’m John McDougall, see you next time on Authority Marketing Roadmap.

John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall and welcome to the Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today, my guest is Bob Sanders, President of Sanders Consulting Group in Richmond, Virginia, a learning organization that specializes in helping agencies and design firms grow and expand. He helped pioneer the use of chemistry in new business, and today we’re talking about the secret sales techniques of personality profiling. Welcome, Bob.

Bob Sanders: Thank you and happy to be here. Hello to everyone in the podcasting world.

Relationship Building & Winning New Business

John: Sounds good. How important is relationship building to winning new business?

Bob: Oh, golly. It’s everything. Look, every study that I’ve ever seen has shown that chemistry is the number one reason why clients hire agencies, and every time I’ve ever helped an agency try to win a pitch, go into a pitch, or just try to keep a client, chemistry is the number one reason. As we often like to say, it’s the number one reason why agencies get hired, and it’s the number one reason why agencies get fired.

So, if you don’t understand chemistry, or how to use it, how to manage it, how to create it, how to build it, [and how to] enhance it, your life can be very complex and confusing. So we try to make things simple.

John: Yes. So, can give us just a little background? You’ve worked with some large agencies on some pitches for brands and things like that.

Bob: Yes. I can tell you one great, little story. One of the big agencies, a multi-national agency, recently gave me a call. They had gotten invited into a multinational [pitch], one of those big complex search consulting type pitches, and they called me up and said, “Hey, Bob, can you help us out?” and I said of course, I’d be happy to. I’ve done work with them in the past, so they knew what we could do.

And they said, “No, you don’t understand, we’re the last agency in. Another big multi-national had to stop the pitch because they had a conflict.” And I said, “Okay, fine. That’s still not a problem. You’re the last agency in, but we can still win this thing.” And they said, “No, no, no, you don’t understand, 10 years ago we fired the search consultant and he hates our guts,” and I said, “That could be a little bit more difficult.” I said, “Still, let’s go in and give it a shot.” And they said, “No, wait. You don’t understand, we only have a few weeks to get ready. Every other agency in the search has had three months.” And I said, “Okay, well, we’re not going to win on capabilities, we’re not going to win on better creative. We’re not going to win on better strategy, because once you get up to that tier, pretty much everybody is the same. So, what we’re going to win on is chemistry.”

So, I went in, and we really hammered the chemistry. We drew a big wall map with all of the people on the search that were going to be involved. We profiled them all, we created little personas, and we created a little group of people within the agency who would mimic and reflect their values. And then we set up everything from the tour, to tickle their brain, the part of their brain that makes the decisions, so that they understood exactly who we are and how we operated, and that we were in sync with the way they think and operate.

We won on the way out. It wasn’t even close. The search consultant came back and said, “That was the most amazing thing I had ever seen,” and absolutely fell in love with us. So, chemistry wins, that’s all.

Researching Potential Customers

John: It works, it absolutely works. And so, do you recommend in-depth research of your potential customers before pitching them? It sounds like that’s what you did, right?

Bob: That’s exactly what we did, and yes, I do. You go to any presentation school, study, map or whatever and they say, “Know your art, know your audience.” And generally, what they’re talking about is, know the type of people, their position, their titles, what they’re interested in, and that sort of thing, and we want to take it one step further. We want to know, how does your audience make decisions? How do they think, how do they operate? What is their worldview and the model that they live in? And once you understand that, then you can present information in a way that makes the most sense to them, so they’re more likely to buy what you’re selling.

Personality Profiling Defined

John: Absolutely. So, what is personality profiling? How would you actually define that?

Bob: It is a system of patterns. That’s the easiest way to think about it. Everyone, regardless of your race, background, religion, creed, where you grew up, geography, it matters not. Everyone lives in a pattern. If you learn to identify those patterns and can quickly give them the information in the way that they want to see it, then you’re more likely to win. You’re more likely to succeed and you’re more likely to convey the nuance and the communication tactics that you’re looking for.

We all want to believe and think that everyone likes information the way that we, personally, like it. And that’s not the fact. So, by just simply being observant and paying attention to the way that these people operate, what they say, what they do, how they shop, how they walk, how they dress, how they set up their office, how they answer the phone, how they respond to voicemail, all of these things, you can just look at and quickly come up with a profile to say, “This person is like X, or Y, or Z” and then we can match.

Four Types of Personality Profiles

John: And what are the four people types?

Bob: Well, Myers Briggs has many, many layers and if you’re familiar with Myers Briggs, then you have an idea, you know a little bit about where I’m coming from. There’s another thing called The Disk, which breaks it into four groups but again, all of those things, to me, just complicate and confuse the issue. So, we like to keep it real simple, just the four basics, the four top line layers, and because we work in marketing and advertising, we named them after the parts of an ad.

The Headline Type

So, you have the Headline Type. That’s the headline of an ad, they want direct results-oriented decisions. They are assertive and task-oriented. So they’re easy to identify. They’re the type of people who don’t care what type of car they drive, as long as it gets them from A to B. They wear basic clothes, their office is very Spartan and set up for work. They have a photo on the credenza of their family — their spouse brought it in and gave it to them and they looked at them and said, “I kind of know who you are, you know, why do I need a picture to remind me?”

The Body Copy Type

Then you have the Body Copy. That [type is] detail-oriented and task-driven as well, but lower assertive, so they ask a lot of questions. They’re the who, what, where, when, and how. They’re the ones who are going to be the most cost-conscious buyers. If the headlines could make a snap decisions, the Body Copies have a hard time making any decision. So, if you want to sell to a Headline, for example, you’ve got to give them options so they can make decisions. Presenting one course or one recommendation is never a good thing to a headline. But, to a Body Copy, if you give three options, you’re going to drive them nuts. They’re going to go into analysis paralysis. They’re going to need more data, more information. Try to figure out how can we sort these three. Give them a process instead, walk them through. A, B, C = D and that is our recommendation, that’s why we’re going that way. Give them all the background information and a beautiful leave behind. You’re going to win.

The Logo Type

You move to the people side of the equation, low assertive, people-people, that’s what we call The Logo. Just like a logo on the ad, it’s the warm, smiling, happy people that brought you the ad. Logos are relationship based — they love people. They want everyone to get along, they want to communicate and build consensus. They’re very casual dressers, not paying attention to time, and they tend to run long and have lots of conversations. Headlines can’t stand them because they want to get straight to the point. But Logos want to sit and chat for 20 minutes before they even bring up work. So, you know, the mismatch there can drive chemistry right out the window.

If you’re working with a Logo, you need to recognize that they’re going to show whatever you present to everyone in their office and their friends and possibly their family as well. So, you have to up-sell the organization before you get them to make it. And it’s going to be a very safe decision. They’re not going to take risks — they don’t stick their neck out.

The Illustration Type

Now, that leaves the final quadrant, which is what we call the Illustration, or the thing that draws your eye to the ad. They’re the flashy “wow,” excitable, very high-assertive but people-oriented. [They’re the] dancing-at-the-bar-at-three-o’clock-in-the-morning type people. They’re fun and high energy, but hard to keep focused and hard to keep on track. They like to drive flashy things, they wear flashy clothes, and if you’re going to pitch to them, you’ve got to come in with something wow. Something that has never been done before, or at least, something that they hadn’t seen before and try to make it big and interesting. Then last, but most important, with Illustrations is they’re going to have 20 ideas ripping off from your idea. You do not shoot them down in the room; they hate it when people kill their ideas.

And you can bundle them all up and walk out the door and throw them in the trash on the way out, that’s fine. They don’t care, because they’ve forgotten and they moved on to the next topic but, while in the meeting, you’ve got to keep it interesting and informative and high-energy and a take-them-out-to-Starbucks-kind of thing. So, those are the four: Headline, Body Copy, Logo, and, Illustration and if you can just simply identify one of those four profiles before you going to meet somebody, your meeting is going to be much more successful if you learn some of the rules and tools and techniques that we teach.

John: Yes. That’s really fascinating. I took conversion optimization masters certification with Brian Isenberg, and he has the four personality types for conversions — the competitive, spontaneous, humanistic, and methodical. It doesn’t necessarily seem that these are exact parallels, but similar and nicely broken down into four groups that are very digestible. I can see how, as a methodology, you [can] get your head around [it] and work on it.

Bob: People don’t realize where this whole thing started from. I mean, it goes all the way back to the Egyptians, five thousand years ago. They didn’t recognize that there are four types of people. They just called them Earth, Wind, Iron, or Water, or something like that. You know, they had four different classifications of types of people that they knew existed in the world. We forgot about it during the dark ages and of course science comes on to the scene with Myers Briggs. A mother-daughter team created this big study of three million GI records in World War II and they quickly made it scientific, which means that it’s complex and hard to remember. If I am an INT-something, that doesn’t really help me understand [what to do] if I am going to go meet somebody. So, any time you can take it and make it easy and turn it into a language that you’re familiar with, hat makes it second-hand, so that as soon as you see something, [there’s a] trigger and you know. That is that type of person. You’re going to be wrong some of the time and right some of the time, but again, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re close. As long as you’re in the ball park, you’re going to be more receptive to what you’re talking about.

The Application of Personality Profiling

John: So how do you use a personality profile and to create better chemistry? What’s a practical next step?

Bob: Well, allow me [to give] one classic example of how we use it. If you’re going to meet somebody for the first time, generally, at their office, they come out, they say hello, they shake your hand, you do the little short chit-chat, but then, what’s the first question they ask as they’re walking you back to the conference room by their office? Generally, it’s, “Can I get you anything? Would you like a cup of coffee?” That little question is a chemistry checking question. How you answer that question can either help you win the account or lose the account. And it’s amazing how little people you can think about something as small as that “Can I get you anything? Would you like a cup of coffee?

I mean if you’re meeting with a headline, the answer is obviously, “No.” They want to get straight to the point. They want to get to business. If you want a cup of coffee, bring your own darn cup of coffee. You know, they don’t care. It’s not about them, it’s not about you, it’s about the work and the task at hand. If you want coffee, you should’ve brought it. You know, they’re going to ask because everyone is polite and everyone is nice and if you say, “Yes,” it’s going to irritate them and they’re going to feel like you’re not in sync with them.

With the logo, I don’t care if you drink coffee or not, you better say, “Yes.” You better go with them and get a cup of coffee and have a great conversation about coffee, over the coffee while you’re waiting to talk about business. And sit on your hands and chit-chat about the life, the universe, and everything for 25 minutes before you bring up work.

[The illustration is] going to ask, “Can I get you anything? Would you like a cup of coffee?” and if there’s a Starbuck’s nearby, that’s what you say. “Hey, there’s a Starbuck’s right around the corner. You want to go and get half caff or a decaf, with a twist?” They’re going to love you for that. That is the type of thing that we preach and teach. It’s the little, simple questions that you get all the time at these meetings, whether it’s coffee, or how fast you bring up business. How you know the body copy is ready to start talking about business, [is] they touch something on their desk, or there’s thousands of little clues that you can be aware of. They can help you build better chemistry with them.

John: That’s fascinating.  I definitely have some work to do on the answer to that question. I usually say, “Water would be great.” And that standard answer doesn’t sound like it’s going to get [a good response]. I’ve got to do my research on that question which, obviously like you said, it gets asked every time.

Bob: Every time. It’s amazing. And yet, nobody ever thinks about what is the right way to answer? And if you do just a little bit of due diligence before you go meet somebody, you can figure it out. Look at their LinkedIn, look at their Facebook, look at how they responded to your email, was it just an initial, or did they write something really long? All of these little things are clues to tell you whether they’re more task oriented or people oriented, whether they’re low assertive, or high assertive. And if you learn those two questions — are they task or people, are they low assertive or high assertive? If you can answer those two questions you can put them in a quadrant, and then as long as you work with them in that quadrant, they’re going to be more profitable with you.

How Personality Profiling Can Help You Close More Deals

John: That’s great. Good tips. And how does knowing the people type of each prospect help you close more deals?

Bob: Well, I could go through about a million examples of how [it] can help you close more deals, but I’ll just [go into] a couple. If, for example, you’re going to pitch for a headline, and [say] they give you an hour to present your capabilities, which I hate. I never do capabilities presentation, but, we’ll get into that later. But if you go into pitch to a headline and they give you an hour, you want to be done in about 30 minutes. You want to do everything in headline mode. You want to have just bullet points, short, sweet, and to the point, like your case studies. Just focus on results. You don’t go into a whole lot of detail, you just gloss it all over, have a nice shiny leave behind, and at the end you give three options how you can start working together.

If you’re pitching to a body copy, for example, and they give you an hour, you’re going to take an hour, exactly. But timing and paying attention to the details, having more organization, more information, more background, more experience, is going to pay big dividends.

If you’re going to pitch to a logo, it’s going to be warm, friendly, and casual. Leave the PowerPoint behind. Leave any glossy thing behind. Just sit down around a little round table and have a conversation. It’s about people working with people.

And if you’re pitching to an illustration, find some way to break them all and do something different. Bring the prop, drag them outside and do it in the park. I’ve seen a thousand different ways to pitch to illustrations, and they love it. But you need to make it a show. You need to make it interesting and exciting and different. So the bottom line is you have these four different profiles, and you want to tailor your pitch to whoever the top person is, or the organization that you’re pitching to, so they are more likely to be receptive for what you’re saying. Does that make sense?

John: Yes. Absolutely. You gave us one great example. Do you have another example, maybe of type of sales technique in action?

Bob: Yes. Of course. There’s a classic example of a mid-size agency that we’re working with, that we had profiled the team that we were pitching and they were headline and body copy. Right? So half the group that we were pitching were results oriented and wanted options, [while] the other half were body copy. So they wanted more process and information in detail. So what we did in the first round, is we tailored this beautiful presentation, and we had this beautiful, thick leave behind and we just slid it across the table to the body copy and they just dug into it and we could ignore them for the rest of the meeting. And then we gave a very headline oriented presentation with three options that the headlines absolutely loved.

Of course, then what happens as we go into the next round and we were in the lead, we were out in front by far. At the last minute, a creative doctor came in with this killer idea and everyone looked at him and said, “That’s heroic. That is just amazing. That should win the account.” And I said, “No. I don’t care if it’s brilliant or not, we can’t 1) change strategy midstream because that’s going to drive the body copies crazy, and 2) we can’t present something different other than our three options because that drives headlines crazy.”

The agency ignored my advice and presented a really big idea, only to find out from the headline that their competition had launched something identical to that just that day and they lost the account. But frankly, we had it in the bag  and we had it won. All we had to do was solidify the strategy and we would’ve walked away with it.

John: That’s a great example of what not to do. That’s even better.

Bob: I can’t tell you how many times agencies fall into that trap of falling in love with your own idea and not following the profile, or not following the pattern, and that creates confusion. [Garnering] new business and winning an account revolves around trust, which means that you have to have the chemistry, because that means that they know you, they like you, they think the same way you do, and therefore they trust you. They know you’re going to do a good job. So focus on building chemistry and trust and don’t do things that harm that little perception bubble that [they] like to build around your pitch. It’s an alternate reality, so there’s this little perception world that you want to create just for that pitch moment and that’s what you want to live in and breathe in. If you pop that bubble, you’re dead.

Getting Started With Personality Profiling

John: That’s a great visual. So, how can people get started using sales psychology and personality profiling?

Bob: Well, we have a little, quick [test]. If you’re wondering who you are, the headline, body copy, logo, or illustration, then got to our website at sandersconsulting.com/test. It’s really easy and simple. You can go there, it’s about 20 questions. Just click on them and they’ll tell you right at the end exactly who you are. It gives you a little information about how to buy and sell and work with those types of people. You can also go to our blog, sandersconsulting.com/newbusinesshawk, and just take a look at it. Do a search for chemistry, because I have about 100 different posts up on different ways to look at and think [about] how to work with clients more effectively by identifying their profiles, how to keep clients longer by identifying their profiles, and how to pitch. All of that information is out there and on there.

And lastly, we offer a couple of different packages that we deliver to agencies. I mean, I’ve done it with seven in the past couple of years, seven of the top 10 agencies in the world. We go in and train their team on how to use this language, this Headline, Body Copy, Logo and Illustration. It really does become a second language for the agency where, if you’re getting ready to go meet somebody you hadn’t met before and they say, “He’s a Headline”, you know immediately how to handle that meeting. It just becomes second nature and everyone in the agency has to understand that language. Make it part of your culture, [for example, say] “It’s a pitch Body Copy, got it. All right, we’re going to do a lot more detail, let’s focus in on digging deeper,” or “It’s the Illustration, let’s start stretching our brains and come up with more creative ideas,” or “It’s a Logo, we’ve got to really network, build a better relationship and focus on digging deeper and becoming more common with them.” All of these things should be second nature or kind of a hidden language that you use for clients and prospects in order to keep them better.

Using Personality Profiling as an Entrepreneur

John: And so, this may be a twofold question. Agencies, ad and digital agencies and companies like that, we would get our various team members to take the test for themselves to understand a little bit about their own personality profile. But you can’t send your quiz to everyone you’re going to pitch. They don’t want to see that. You have to decipher it, as you said, from cues from when you meet with them, look at their clothes, look at how they write emails etc. My question is, confirming as an agency a little bit about the process of how you get started with this, and also, what about just even an individual consultant that’s not an agency that might be pitching, even if it’s a chiropractor or a dentist or a lawyer, if they are trying to win new business? Maybe [provide] a quick tip for a solo entrepreneur or [just on a] more basic level than [what] an agency would go through.

Bob: Well, I mean, that’s an easy answer in that we do no work for clients of agencies. So, if you’re on the client side, “I’m sorry, we just can’t, my board won’t let me,” it’s a real simple answer. If you are any type of marketing communication firm, then give us a call, we can even set up a little short webinar with you to give you the highlights and the background of the information. If anyone is just interested in learning more about this, I encourage you to go online an look at the Myers-Briggs website, which has details and tons of information [on it], and there is the Disk website, which also has details and tons of information about both types of learning and programs, and they apply. Again, the trick is to take it at face value, learn what you can and then skinny it up so that it becomes a simple tool instead of this complex, deep thing that you have to learn.

But, it’s all about just studying a human brain. Look, I talk to students all the time. Different universities will ask me to come in and give a little talk about the future or the past, present and future of advertising and the world of ad agencies, of what’s going on in the marketplace. And at the end, I usually say, “Look, I’m really happy that you guys have all graduated with this Advertising degree or Marketing Communications or Mass Comm, or whatever they call it nowadays, but if you really want to be great in this industry, if you truly want to be fantastic in our world, you don’t study advertising, you study people. [This] means you study sociology, psychology, folklore, religion, and acting. And, if you master those five fields, you’ll be great in our world.”

Anyone Can Use Personality Profiling in the Business World

John: Folklore, people, acting, I’m taking notes, that’s great. But in closing, even a student or somebody that’s just building their authority in business and trying to do a better job of selling, this applies, right? You don’t have to be an ad agency to use this. A student or any individual consultant is going to do better in selling a new business if they focus on relationships and understanding people.

Bob: Absolutely. I mean, we all evolved from that lizard hind-brain that sits inside of our brain and we like to rationalize our decisions in a many, many, many different ways. And so, we’re going to say, “I need a new car” and we’re going to go out and buy a new car. We might do some research, we’re going to test-drive, we’re going to do whatever it is that we do, but then, at the end of the day, we’re going to buy the car that that little lizard hind-brain really, really wants. Whatever has tickled that lizard hind-brain, it’s going to make the most sense to the rest of the brain, to your higher conscience.

So, I don’t care if you’re an engineer or you’re selling widgets or copiers, or if you’re student, if you just work hard to understand how people think and operate, what motivates them, and what causes those little triggers for those buying signals, then you’re going to be more successful. I mean, most of us, I’d say 99.9% of us live in a world where we have to work with other people and, if we want to be successful, that means we need to understand how those people think and operate so that we can better communicate, work more effectively and share in the reward together. And that’s all we teach. That’s the number one focus of what we do.

John: Well, these have been great sales and influence tips today and thanks for speaking to us today, Bob.

Bob: My pleasure and thank you for having me, and good luck with everyone out there.

John: Tell us how people can get in touch with you. You’ve mentioned your site, but remind us of that or any ways to contact you.

Bob: Of course. It’s sandersconsulting.com and if you have a question, to be fair I always get questions after this thing, so I’ll be happy to respond to any question, just shoot me an email. It’s the easiest way to get in touch with me, and it’s [bob @ sandersconsulting.com]. Very easy, simple, [just] send a question with chemistry and the header. I will get back to you, [but] it might take me a couple of days because I tend to travel and fly about the world a lot. I look forward to hearing from anybody. If you have a question about the client, a particular issue, something that’s going on that you just don’t understand, or pattern that you’re seeing that doesn’t seem to make any sense, I’m happy to help. We love helping people win.

John: That sounds great. I’m sure some people will take you up on that. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s session. Check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on Authority Marketing and subscribe and review our podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. I’m John McDougall, see you next time on the Authority Marketing Roadmap.

John McDougall:  Hi. I’m John McDougall, and welcome to the Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today, my guest is Henry Zacchini, author and professor of writing and public speaking. Today, we will be discussing tips for public speaking. Henry, welcome.

Henry Zacchini:  Welcome, John.

John:  How do you keep calm when you’re doing public speaking?

Henry:  You don’t do it like I’m doing with you right now.

John:  What do you mean?

Henry:  You’re making me very nervous, just looking at you across the room.

John:  Yeah?

Henry:  Very nervous. You’re a human being, you’re in a body and you’re asking me questions. That makes me very nervous.

John:  How do you stay calm?

Henry:  Let me take a deep breath. That’s the first thing. The second thing, the most important thing is, really it’s about you. It’s not about me. You want this interview. I’m giving you some information, which is good. So it’s really for you that I’m doing this.

John:  It take the focus off of…

Henry:  Yourself.

John:  …the ego really, right?

Henry:  The ego, yeah. Remember to breathe. You’ve got to breathe. More important than that, I know you fairly well as we’ll admit to the audience. Obviously, I’ve known you a number of years, so it’s a little more comfortable, this setting.

When you go before an audience, it’s always important ‑‑ and whoever you’re talking to, whether it’s a business, presentations — know something about who you are talking to. Know your audience. It’ll make you feel more comfortable because you know what they sort of expect, what you’re coming there to do. That’s the important thing.

That’s one of the most important things, is to make it about them by preparing for them, and making sure you breathe. When you come into the room and you address them, always look at them. Do not look at your notes. Look at them. And smile before you say anything. Make that connection.

One of the oddest things I heard on the radio this morning, I’ll bring it up. This is a little odd, but let’s talk about it anyway. Speaking of Adolph Hitler, as we haven’t been.

John:  Public speaking tips, uh‑oh.

Henry:  He published a public speaking text. No, not really. He was one of the greatest public speakers that ever lived. He was one of the most demonic, horrible people to ever live, too. The scary thing about that is, even someone that crazy was able to be an incredibly powerful public speaker.

The one tool he used always that made him so convincing, he always played off the audience. He always watched how the audience was responding to him, and addressed that. It’s so critical to watch your audience. If they’re not paying attention, that’s a good thing. If they’re looking away, if they’re dozing, that’s a good thing. You must watch the audience.

John:  Respond and be in tune with them, basically I think you’re saying.

Henry:  If you get applause, exactly. If you get applause, respond to it. He was the master at that. He’d go on for four or five hours sometimes, because people would listen to him. Mainly he wanted to know what they wanted to hear. He had an idea, but then he tried these ideas out.

Some politicians do this a lot when they go before a group. They’ll try ideas out just to float them, see who responds. Then, the next time, they know exactly how to play an audience that looks like them. It sounds like you’re manipulating the audience, but you’re not. You’re giving them the respect that’s due to them. You’re listening to them, as well as speaking to them.

John:  Oddly I heard, I think it was Dr. Cialdini, the author of Influence, speak a little bit about the concept of authority and how even someone like Hitler, where these real negative, bad people, got a lot of respect and authority. They used certain tactics.

So, it can be used for good or evil, but the bottom line is, you have to prepare. And hopefully, it’s good people preparing and using these tips.

Henry:  So, if you’re a bad person, don’t listen to this. If you’re a good person, you need to pay attention. Please don’t hear this. No, it is really very effective. It really is the most effective tool of all I think, making that audience the number one thing. It’s about them, not you.

John:  Yeah, that really helped me. It still helps. I remember early in my speaking career getting nervous. I still do sometimes. Whenever I do, I always bring that tip up. If I’m nervous, and there’s butterflies, that’s OK. It might mean that I’m thinking about myself. If I’m thinking about the audience and I’m there to serve, that does help me to calm down. I can relate to that.

Henry:  It’s just human nature. We spend most of our time thinking about ourselves. In the situation when you’re in front of other people, you have to make an effort to put them first. It makes it easier for you by doing that.

John:  What are some tips to connect more with the audience?

Henry:  The best way to connect to the audience, and I think everyone knows this, is like anything else, it’s when you can relate to them by telling them a story or an idea that they can relate to from your own personal life, whatever it might be. I’m sure you tried this in front of audiences.

It seems a little personal, like you’re exposing yourself a bit, but an audience loves that. They will much more listen to a personal story than they will to any lecture at all. If you ever go to any of these high performance pitches from pitchmen, they’ll always tell their personal story. How they struggled. How they overcame this. How they did this or didn’t do that. It’s beautiful.

Right away, people identify. “Oh, you’re just like me. You overcame everything. Isn’t this great?” These are kind of the negative ways that public speaking is used, but they’re powerful ways. We can learn a lot from this. We can learn a lot from pitchmen. We can learn a lot from televangelists, whatever you like to believe in like that, because they give you that personal echo of yourself.

John:  Right, but if you launch in ‑‑ and I know, again, I probably still do some of this ‑‑ I can definitely remember times where I would just launch right into, “SEOs, or the top 19 things, it’s this, it’s this, it’s that.” People are just sitting there. Some people are just glazed over.

You’d say some more warm story of how, like you said, maybe you failed. Tell some failure stories or some self‑effacing humor, things like that. The great speakers…

Henry:  Failure always works. Fail a lot, yeah.

John:  And share it.

Henry:  Share it. Oh yeah, it’s a good thing. Failure’s a good thing, especially when you’re giving a public speech. That’s really the most important thing is to keep the audience attached. You said it, and it’s the truth, that the audience is probably going to forget almost everything you say, so you’ve got to keep them coming back, and maybe you bring up another personal story. You look at Martin Luther King and some great speakers like that, who were able to really share their own personal experience with other people, and continue to bring it back to that.

John:  How do you offer clear takeaways your audience can use right away, and/or a call to action at the end?

Henry:  The call to action is something you’ve been developing throughout the entire speech, whatever you’re delivering. It’s always got to be embedded in there, especially embedded with an image, a concept, an idea, a simple thought. I have a dream, whatever that might be. Tear that wall down. All these great speakers, look at what they do.

The best way to learn is like the best way to learn to write is to read. The best way to learn to give public speeches is to look at people who do it well. They always have a theme, an idea, which is an image. Not so much a concrete idea, like SEO helps everyone 100 percent of the time, whatever that is.

It’s what it does as an image. Keep repeating that. At the end of it, always come back to that image. Leave them with an image ‑‑ not so much an idea, but an image.

John:  An image and some kind of a clear…

Henry:  Some kind of a clear…

John:  Like what this talk is about.

Henry:  Tear this wall down. I have a dream. It won’t be that heroic or great, but it still should echo that kind of approach. That kind of approach…an image. “You can succeed, too.” If you’ve ever heard pitchmen doing that kind of thing, they’ll always say, “Now I want you to join me on this road.”

John:  Right.

Henry:  “You can fill your pockets, too.”

John:  A little more inspirational and pep‑talk, almost.

Henry:  Absolutely. Don’t be afraid of that because the audience wants that. They want to be left with something, so “what am I taking away from this? Can I be successful? Can this work for me?” Yes, and here’s how in a nutshell, in an image, yeah.

John:  What are some other tips in your years of public speaking at colleges and teaching writing? Are there common trends that you see? Maybe students making mistakes?

Henry:  Yeah. The common trends are based on what we just talked about. The overall thing is that…and it seems odd, but we talked about it earlier and it came up and you wanted to use it. What does that have to do with public speaking? And we talked about listening.

Practice listening, before you do anything. Practice listening. Not just a group, get with a friend and see how long it takes you before you interrupt them. And try to understand…

John:  I might have to work on that one.

Henry:  You and everyone else. We all do the same thing. In fact, I was talking to a group of students one time, and we were on this subject. The person began asking a question, and I interrupted them immediately…immediately. I said, “There’s the perfect example of what you shouldn’t be doing.”

Really, public speaking is listening…listening to an audience, being aware of human interaction. So much more in conveyed by a look, by a gesture. That goes for you, too. When you’re up in front of people, remember that they are not listening to your voice so much. They are watching you.

They’re saying, “Can I trust this person?” It’s the way you move, the way you look at them, the way you gesture. From your end it’s important. Also for you to learn, and me to learn, because I need to learn ‑‑ I interrupt all the time ‑‑ is that when you listen to someone, listen to everything they have to say, and then rephrase it for them.

It sounds like you’re saying that if I take this sort of product, it will work for me. If I do these things, is that correct? “That’s correct. You’ve heard me correctly.” It’s a communication thing which only is extended when the audience and the speaker is taking place. But it makes you pay attention to the audience.

John:  You don’t just mean listen to what the audience is saying when they’re giving you feedback. You mean that potentially, but in general, mastered the art of listening.

Henry:  Master the art of listening and watching another person, seeing what they look like when they’re telling you something. Because you can use those tools when you’re talking to someone else, but you can also use them to help yourself in all sorts of conversations.

Public speaking is simply another form of talking back and forth to a person. That’s all it is. The more you can look at your audience and treat them like real people, and have some idea, because you’ve studied it beforehand, and you know who they are, where they came from — you can develop that kind of communication with them a lot more easily, and make yourself more relaxed.

John:  Are there homework assignments that you give to your students that are anything to do with listening?

Henry:  The homework assignment I give them all the time is to go out this day and see how many times you will not interrupt someone when they’re speaking.

John:  Really? This is in the public speaking class?

Henry:  Just go out and sit with someone. When they start talking to you, do not interrupt them. Listen to them. You can’t be falling asleep, I don’t tell them to do that, but you have to nod.

John:  Your homework’s to fall asleep when John McDougall’s talking.

Henry:  The audience now needs to wake up. No, no. Let them talk. You just listen as much as you can. Listen as much as you can, and don’t want to interrupt, because you will want to interrupt. That’s the way their brains are working, too. They’re going to want to interrupt.

The communication has to be felt. And if you develop that in an interpersonal relationship, one on one, and then restate what they’re saying, it will help you in your public speaking immensely. It sounds like it won’t. Believe me, it will.

John:  Those are great tips, Henry, excellent. Where can people get in contact with you?

Henry:  They can see me on LinkedIn, at Henry Zacchini.

John:  How do you spell your last name?

Henry:  It’s spelled, unlike the squash, it’s just like that, but with an A instead of a U. Z‑A‑C‑C‑H‑I‑N‑I. It’s easy to remember, because it’s like the squash. Henry Zacchini.

John:  Absolutely. Connect with Henry on LinkedIn. Check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on Authority Marketing. I’m John McDougall. See you next time on the Authority Marketing Roadmap.