Noob School - Episode 23: Selling in Writing with Joshua Lisec

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

Joshua Lisec is among the world's best ghostwriters. His journey to that summit is fascinating to hear—but what does that have to do with sales? Well, guess what Noobs: in practically every single job in the world, you're going to have to sell yourself at some time. Could even be in an interview! For Joshua, he had to sell his skills to his first few clients. You'll love listening to this one! Follow John on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/johnsterling_ Facebook: facebook.com/johnsterlingsales Twitter: twitter.com/johnsterling_ TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnsterling_

Hey, welcome back to Noob School. Today we've got the fantastic Joshua Lysic. Joshua was my good friend. Joshua, among other things, helped me write this book, Sales for Noobes. At one time, one of the number one sellers on Amazon in our category. So I met Joshua as my ghostwriter, but we've become friends as well. And I want to talk today about his path to becoming literally the number one ghostwriter in the world. and also a little bit about sales.

I think he's a very good salesperson and hypnosis. And if we have time, kind of how you write a book, how he'd recommend you take it on or how you'd work with him. So we'll see. It's going to be about 15 minutes today. We'll see how far we get. But first of all, welcome, Joshua. Thanks for being here.

Thank you, John. It's an honor. I appreciate the invitation. Yeah, man. Yeah. This seems like old times we had, as my ghostwriter, We had many, I guess, every Thursday for what, 10 months, we would spend an hour together like this on the Zoom. That sounds about right, yes.

That was so much fun. So much fun. Well, tell us real quickly, as a ghostwriter, tell us a little bit about your path to get there and kind of where you are now. Yes, yes. And one of the things about my path, John, that it becomes advice for other people. So I will spend it from story to advice so that everyone gets their time's worth from, from listening to this. Yeah.

So I did not intend to become a ghostwriter. I intended to become a novelist when I was a young man. I was homeschooled and when you're homeschooled, you get to be a high school senior at 15 years of age there thereabouts. And one of my hobbies, because we homeschoolers didn't have much socialization or friendships, I read a lot, great quite a bit. I read the entire encyclopedia Americana A through Z, like a total nerd.

My dorkery then extended to fiction. I read quite a bit of fiction. I thought, you know, this is fun. This is fun. I can't really get out into the world, but I can get out into the world through my imagination. I'm going to write these books just like this one day. And one day came a lot sooner than I expected.

By the time I was 20 years old, I had a two book publishing deal for two novels that I had written. As I'm going about marketing those novels and signing copies and taking selfies and appearing on first time and debut young author panels, meanwhile. Meanwhile, I had thought, you know, it was a lot of would be nice if I could actually make some money at this writing thing in addition to authorship. I'm going to call myself a freelance writer. See what happens. I got a couple of inquiries.

Inquiries that became clients. Freedance writing clients. Mostly writing sales coffee and broad descriptions and campaign materials, nothing particularly exciting or as novel as novels. Then something interesting happened. Those two paths converged. Those two paths converged. You know what happened, John? You may know this story? You probably do. Tell me. A couple of my freelance writing clients. Heard about my novels. Read them.

Said, wow, these are good. Can you write my life story? Like it's a novel. Like it's this good. I said, okay, fine, sure, I'll do that for you. And I've been saying, okay, fine, sure ever since. I'm now working on my 63rd, 64th, and 65th books, ghostwritten, full-length books. Kind of like yours, John.

Yeah. Now, where does this become advice? Here's where this becomes advice. So many professional services providers, when they're just getting started, selling their own services, or they work for someone that's selling services, they look for proof of concept. What the prospects do, that leads do, the potential clients do, the potential customers do? How do you know that you can do what you say you can do?

I never had that problem, John, because from the very beginning, I had proved I was capable of not writing just one book, but two books, and I was 20 years old. So I get that advice to everyone who, whether they want to become a ghostwriter or they want to come a sales copywriter. The best way to become a successful ghost writer is to write your own books and publish them under your own name and then have them be good. The best way to become a copywriter is to create your own materials and write sales letters that sell them very well. And people will say, I want to be like that. Can you just do it for me? So you want to strategically cultivate envy, jealousy even, for your success. And that is a great way to get hired. And that

advice extrapolates to many, many professions, but mostly services, because if you're a services provider, you are first and foremost a services provider salesperson for your service. Yeah, I love it, Josh. Well, that's great. And again, one of the things we try to pass on to the noobs, you know, the people that are starting to figure it out for themselves, whether it's ghostwriting or sales, is to kind of figure out a way to get there as quick as possible and have some kind of plan. And your plan not only included two novels by the time you were 20, but you went on and got the matching education to go with it. You got two graduate degrees, including the only graduate degree available in ghost writing out in San Diego, I think. Is that where you got that

degree? San Diego. Yeah, Cal State Long Beach. It's the only post-secondary ghost writing program, at least right now, that I know of. And I thought that actually looks like a great, great experience from within the publishing industry. So it's really a publishing industry credential, and that really helps. It really helps. So I am one of these. Go ahead, John.

Well, I would just say, you know, if we flop it over to a sales analogy, if somebody really wanted to get into sales, there's nothing stopping them from getting a commission sales job or, you know, some lower level where you're just, you're getting your chops in before anyone really gives you permission. So I love that idea. Let me ask you this.

Did you get any formal sales training along the way? I did not. I did not. But however, I did meet people who were familiar with the Sandler sales model. So that would be David R. Sandler, I believe his name. What is it? You can't learn how to write a bicycle at a conference, something like that, that book, the Sandler Submarine.

Yeah, reading a book and a bicycle. it was something like that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So there's that. I read that and that made a lot of sense because it wasn't about reaching a particular conclusion. It's a process-oriented conversation. So that was one thing.

Another thing was Jay Abraham, his consultative sales model. Now, Jay didn't come up with consultative sales. But the idea there is your position as a salesperson is not make this person buy. It's asked specific questions to find. that there is a need for what you do into very simply with honesty and straightforward communication show how your product or your service meets that need. There's no manipulation required in consultative sales. Both of those resonated with me because I know that when you have a book, that makes you

the authority, that makes you credible, that proves that you were the expert on what it is. So, John, as the author of Sales for Noobs, you're the foremost expert on teaching new salespeople, new sales teams, new sales managers, how to be successful salespeople teams and sales leaders from the get-go. Shorten that learning curve. So just about the fact that you've got that book, John, that makes you the expert on it. I'm glad to hear it. That's good news. Well, here's a little bit of a twist on the selling stuff. We've talked a little bit about your hypnosis certification and training.

How does that play into what you're doing is kind of a different topic for our folks to think about? Yes, yes. So I'm on Twitter at Joshua Lysak, and I tweet often about the overlap of ghostwriting, hypnosis, and sales. So ghostwriting is you write in someone else's voice and no one can tell that that person didn't write it because it sounds like them. And if they're ideas, so they can say with honesty and integrity, yeah, that's my stuff. you know, sales is obviously how one gets ghostwriting projects. It's also how one leverages a book to sell your services. Where does hypnosis comes in?

Well, hypnosis is very simply speaking directly to the subconscious mind. That is the beginning and the end of it. And so there are hypnotists, there are hypnotherapists, there are hypnotherapists, there are hypnosis, that, and the other who help people overcome subconscious obstacles to goals that they have. So the subconscious is where our beliefs, desires, needs, wishes, habits, routines, etc., are rooted where they've taken root. And so if you try to, let's say, stop smoking or stop overeating or stop having insomnia by trying to adjust your routine or fix yourself or try this tactic or hacktic, you're only like sniffing off the leaves of the belief of the routine of the experience, even of the trauma. So if you want to remove the desire to smoke, if you want to remove the urge to overeat, speak to the

subconscious mind, uproot that belief, behavior, or habit or what have you, and it's gone. So hypnosis often both successful sessions, successful outcomes after one or two sessions. It's quite amazing. And so bringing the communication process of hypnosis into writing a book, into writing a sales letter, writing a sales page. What am I doing? I want to converse directly with my buyer's subconscious mind. If they have any beliefs that are going to prohibit them from what it is that they want to achieve, that my product can help them achieve, that my service can help them achieve, I want to write sales copy that uproots

unhelpful, unproductive, even destructive beliefs and thought patterns. So if you want to write anything that creates permanent and instant change, study hypnosis. And so that's what I've been doing because I follow my own advice. Good, good. I've got that on my list. I'll let you get your cert and you can tell me, tell me who to use. So this is probably for my benefit, as much as anybody else's, but with all those 60 plus clients and me being one of them, what are just a couple of the best practices that they're using over and over again to get new business from the book? Yes, yes. So in your case, who is your book most valuable to? I'll ask you that question and I'll pause there. Who is your book most valuable to? People who want to go into sales.

This is true. This is true. Are there people who have new salespeople who work for them? Yes. Are there people who have a lot of young salespeople who work for them? That if those young salespeople succeeded, that person would get significantly wealthier. Yes. That's who the book is for. That's who the book is for. Okay.

So here's my thinking. Sales managers, small business owners with a sales force, that's who the book is for. my objective would be something like there is this fellow. I'm going to do a call out here. There is this fellow, I believe, on Twitter. His name is, I'm going to look him up real quick, cold email wizard. I think that's his thing here.

Let's see if I can look him up real quick here. Yeah, I think it's cold email wizard. His expert, and I have his course, by the way, it's legit. So what I would do is I would probably reach out to his agency. or just follow the process that he would. Where find small businesses, not micro-businesses where it's like two people and one of them is the son or the daughter

or the spouse of the owner, I would find businesses that you know probably really need your book, meaning maybe they're manufacturing companies. Maybe they're in specific industries or specific verticals and there are of a certain size with a certain number of employees so that you can predict

if you pick 100 companies in that industry and of that size, you're probably going to be targeting companies who have salespeople who suck. Okay. That's just the way it goes. That's the way it goes. Sales is hard until you learn how to do it right and then you realize I can't believe it could be this easy.

And yes, it is. So that is what I would do. I would go out on the road. I would hit the road. I'd become a roadie, John, and reach out to these companies and offer them a free chapter of the book. just mentioned that you've got this book

because the point of the book is not that they read it and say, okay, thanks, John, we're all done now. It is, wow, I want this guy to help me train my seven salespeople and we can get our closing rate up. So I know that he's got a really low price, of course, on putting together a year sales campaign, your cold email outreach campaign, how to find those people.

But we're at me in that situation, that's what I would do. Now, do you need to go on the road? road. Maybe not necessarily. If you're part of any organizations or industry associations, it might be easier than you think to get the contact information. But that's what I would do, because that's what a lot of companies, founders, even consultants that I've go through before, that's what they do, is they simply reach out to the founder of the company. Now, you want to go one step further, John. You could 10 copies of your book, 20 copies of your book, and mail your book to the company and offer a complimentary.

consultation to see if you can help them increase their sales closing up a 25% or something like that because that's what you've done in the past. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it could be cold email or targeted direct mail of literally your book to them. That's what I would do because it's small business owners with sales teams that stand to benefit the most from sales for nubs. Okay. Well, Joshua, that's fantastic.

Again, thanks for this. I can't believe. My pleasure. I can remember when we were just talking about. about it and what a good job you did is a salesperson making me comfortable that we were going to actually do this, you know, so that's pretty cool. Last question before we got to go, what's your favorite, all that you've read and all the encyclopedias you've read, what's your favorite word? I think my favorite word has to be, you know, it's funny because I saw him, oh, duh, I just

wrote it a few minutes ago, leverage. Leverage. Leverage. Yes. And the reason why, is because I use it so often to replace that word I just used. Use. You know, I'm going to use this tool. I'm going to use this person. Like, it just like I sounds a little gross. But you don't want to say utilize, because then you sound a little hoity tooty. Yeah.

You know, I'm going to use this probably. I'm going to use this person for help. That doesn't have a great association. But leverage. Ooh. So it is a, it is a word that. that elevates your own self-confidence simply by using it. And that's why I like that word so much.

And then leverage itself is the thing that you want with assets, with people, with any business opportunity. And of course, having information asset, aka a book, gives you incredible leverage to generate more leads and close more deals. Good. Well, Joshua, that's a great word. And thank you for spending time with our folks today. We really appreciate it.

And I appreciate your friendship. and I'm so glad the things are going well for you. I encourage everyone, whether you want to write a book or not, follow Joshua on Twitter. You'll learn a lot and you'll laugh a lot. So he's got a good Twitter game. So thank you, Josh. Thank you, John. I appreciate the invitation.

Thank you so much. Take care. Hey, is John here? Thanks for listening today. Please check out noobeschool.org. That's my website. That's where we have other videos and content that can help you get. started in sales.