Proven Podcast - Create A Killer Lead Magnet - Morgan Gist MacDonald

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

In this episode, Charles sits down with Morgan Gist MacDonald of Paper Raven Books, a seasoned publishing expert who has turned her passion for helping authors into a thriving seven-figure business. Morgan shares her proven 8-step process for writing, publishing, and marketing a book that not only establishes your authority but also serves as a powerful lead generation tool for your business. Discover how to identify your target reader and curate the stories and information that will resonate with them most. Morgan emphasizes the importance of writing fast and revising later, ensuring that you maintain momentum throughout the book creation process. Throughout the episode, Charles and Morgan dive deep into the art of crafting compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) within your book. Morgan reveals her favorite CTA strategies, all designed to convert readers into loyal email subscribers. Gain valuable insights into optimizing your book's presence on Amazon, the world's largest online bookstore. Morgan breaks down the key elements of a high-converting Amazon book page, from crafting attention-grabbing titles and subtitles to leveraging keywords and categories to boost your book's discoverability. Whether you're a first-time author or looking to level up your publishing game, this episode is packed with actionable advice and insider tips for creating a book that not only showcases your expertise but also serves as a powerful tool for growing your business. Tune in to discover how Morgan's 8-step process can help you unlock the full potential of your book and achieve the success you deserve. Key Takeaways: Uncover a surprising lead generation tool that can take your business to new heights Learn the the most effective calls-to-action (CTAs) that turn casual readers into devoted fans and loyal customers Discover the essential components that make your book stand out in a crowded marketplace and attract a flood of interested buyers Head over to https://provenpodcast.com/ to download your exclusive companion guide, designed to guide you step-by-step in implementing the strategies revealed in this episode. Key Points: 1:46 Leveraging Social Proof 5:21 Implementing Calls to Action 6:58 Book Launch Strategies 13:27 Targeting Specific Audience 15:33 Narrowing Down Audience 20:02 Brainstorming Content 27:16 Giving away physical copies 30:19 Different types of CTAs 33:38 Recommended lead capture methods 35:37 Essential business tools 39:27 Effective call to actions 41:28 Quick start guide importance 44:03 Importance of optimizing Amazon 47:03 Key elements for Amazon optimization 48:49 Update categories for optimization

Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. People say books don't make money. They're wrong. Today's guest, Morgan, built a seven-figure business providing books are the ultimately generation tool. The show starts now. Today we have Morgan with us. Morgan, thank you so very much for coming on the show. Charles, I'm so excited for our conversation.

It's going to be awesome. It's going to be a lot of fun. We've been trying to do this for a while now. And one of the reasons was what you do and what I've done and how I've gotten my success and how I've scaled the business is the idea that you need social proof. And one of the best ways to do social proof is having a book. And the example that I use all the time is before what I would go on stage, like Charles Schwartz, you know, retired 36, millionaire at 37.

There's a whole long thing where I talked about. I wouldn't do that anymore. I come on that like, Wall Street Journal best stuff. And I literally have to walk out on stage and be like, my name is Charles Schwartz. I actually introduce myself because it has so much social proof that comes with it. And what I love is, yeah, it gives me that social proof. But you found a way to use it as a scaling method to also a lot of

on a huge level, help people finish the books and then use it as a scaling method, not just like, oh, look, I've got this dream of writing a book, which is great, and we love that, and we support that legacy. But there's also a way to do it specifically, and we're going to kind of go into it. So thanks for willing to come and Cheryl. Yes, I mean, you're so right about the social proof, and there are ways that we can get even more social proof with reviews. We're going to talk about that strategy and how to actually get in touch with your readers and not just hope that people are reading your book, but no people are reading your book and be able to reach out to them and actually grow a business off the back of it. So yeah, we're going to die and beat. It's going to

great. We're going to get into it. They'll take out notes. What I love about it is the idea of hope versus reality. You know, people are like, oh, I'm going to start a company. I'm not a starter. I'm scaler. There's a completely different narrative here. We're not talking about hope. We're talking about things that actually work. Now, I know you and your team have broken it down into eight steps, which is phenomenal. So can kind of, if you get just run through those eight steps for me, if you're going to do this and you're going to implement something where you're actually going to get in touch with your readers, where you're going to leverage reviews where you're going to use the call of the actions and you're going to have

this wonderful gift that is this book that is really going to be your resume and your funnel that you get to have physically in someone's hand. It's got to be done in a specific way. And I know you've mastered that. So what are the kind of the eight ways that you would do that? I'm going to jump in and body all the time. I'm like, how do you do that? What do you? Yeah. So I run a publishing company. This is what we do all day every day, right? Is we help people write and publish and market books. And so we've kind of distilled all of our best practices into eight steps. Now we're not going to be able to go through all of them in depth, but to give you the high level first, step one is decide what type of reader do I think will be

most drawn to this type of book. And a book of the product, right? Like any other products we're going to bring to market, it's not for everyone. It will get traction most quickly if it's or someone. So we can dive into that if you'd like. Step two is to curate. What are my stories and information that I want to share in this book because it's not going to be everything, right? You're going to select and strategically select a few stories and really it ends up being something like 10, 15, 20 stories total, like max and whatever lessons, frameworks, principles. We're talking specifically about nonfiction here, right? We're growing a business. It's going to be sort of pragmatic, practical, how to, maybe some memoir in there as well, like personal stories or case study stories.

So that's kind of the blending that we're doing. We're bringing stories with frameworks and you're going to have to pick. You know, they can't all go in the same book. So that's step two. Step three, write fast, revise later. So when we're working with an author and we're like, okay, let's get this first draft pumped out. We're looking to hit the first draft within about 40 to 80 hours total writing time. So if you do the step one, step two, and you get an outline a structure together, you can get through a first draft in something like 40 to 80 hours. Yeah, you're going to revise. But you go fast through the draft and then you come back and do a few passes of revisions before it's ready to move into publication. Step four,

craft your books, title, subtitle, and description. And so the book these both the and a subtitle. The subtitle attracts the type of person like, oh, that's where I'm going to get out of this book. And the description is going to be on the Amazon sales page as well as the back of the book, although they don't have to be the same description. But you really want to give people a deep look into, again, what are they going to get out of this book? What types of stories are you telling? What types of lessons, frameworks, principles? What are the results they're going to get? You know, everyone's thinking, what's in it from me? You need to answer that question very firmly

in the description. Step five, include a call to action inside the book. And Charles, I know we're going into deep on this one. Absolutely. I want you to get off the look without getting that one. We're getting that. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is the linchpin.

This is the mechanism that must be inside your book so that when people read your book, they are able to easily and excitedly join your email list. Now you can reach back out to them for back-end products and services. So we'll talk about some of those best practices and examples. Step six, optimize for the Amazon bookstore. Amazon bookstore is just like Google. We got keywords that have search and competition, and we got optimized for that.

And there are categories that Amazon uses for visibility. We want to hit number ones, not because hitting number one in the category is like the most amazing thing. That's not the point. The point is actually to trigger the Amazon algorithm for further visibility and you do that through categories. Step 7, launch prep. We're going to set a launch date. We're going to get a book launch team. We're going to offer them, you know, an advanced review copy in exchange for their email address. If you have a platform

already and you're wondering, am I going to do pre-orders or am I going to do something else, I've got a suggestion for you. It will depend on whether you're going with traditional publishing and bookstore sales or whether you're going self-publishing or even hybrid publishing in some instances and you're, you know, have a different strategy. There's some bestseller list tactics that work for New York Times or Wall Street Journal like we're talking about. We used to say USA Today, but their bestseller list died. The guy who ran that bestseller list, were tired and they shut it down. So now I got New York Times. The World Street Journal. No one USA Today. But there's different strategies. do I do pre-order? Do I do something else? We can talk through that. Step 8 is the launch itself.

I've got some suggestions on e-book promotions that help bring folks in a launch style. And then I would say there's kind of a bonus step nine, which is relaunching the book every quarter. A lot of folks feel like, oh, I launched the book once, and that's it. You know, that's all I got. I got one shot. But really, as with any product, we're going to have promotions and we're going to keep bringing it out to market. getting more reviews on the book, more sales, and really becoming that best-selling author that we want to be. So that's the high level, Charles. Where do you want to go? Let's, we're going to jump into a lot of it. I think, you know, the most important is you start at the beginning. And you talked about in the very beginning here is deciding what type of reader

will be most drawn to this book. And this is a mistake a lot of people made. Um, with everything, and all type of product launch you, they're all type of scaling and everything they're doing. They're like, hey, my grandmother made these really great raising cookies and it's a greatest recipe. and I'm going to make it special. And since I love it, everyone's going to love it. No, that's not what you do. You identify your market,

you identify what the pain they're in, and then you become the ad, you become the painkiller for that. So as much as your book is about you because your name's on it, that's about as much as your book's going to be. It has to be about your audience. It has to be about the pain they're in

and the value they get out of it. You talk about them in the subtitle. The subtitle, again, don't use my book in an example. Yes, I wrote my book in nine days, and we became bestseller in 16 days they ever publishing. do not use mine as an example.

We're going to give you other examples that actually are effective. But what you're doing yours, it's really important to understand who your audience is. Because if your audience wants sushi and your entire book is about ice cream, you're going to fail.

It is not going to work. I've told people about this million times when they talk about books and this is why it's important to work with someone who's done this already is sitting down and going, okay, I'm going through here, I've got my book, I see what's going on,

my book is a funnel. That's all it is. It is your, it is a brochure in a funnel that's driving your audience. But if you have to make sure you identify your niche, we're talking about this, niches as riches, go inch wide, mile deep, know who they are, what pain they in

and what they're going through. So when you help people through this, if they're going to go through kind of step by step on, okay, how do I really identify who this book is for, what pain they're in, what need I'm fulfilling? How do you walk someone through that? What are the steps that they need to understand, now that we understand the concept of what we're doing it?

We obviously understand the sound. Yeah, I really like to start with their business, model. Usually folks either have an existing business model or they have a business model that they are pivoting into. Like for instance, they've been a consultant inside a company and now they want to do their own consulting. And so they're going to change who they want to talk to just a little bit. But you want to put yourself out like three to five years in the future and say, do you still want to be talking about this topic? And who are you talking to? Like who is going to be most drawn to your type of message? You know, if you're talking about productivity, you could say, well,

everyone wants to be more productive. Or you could say, I, you know, I've worked a lot with, I don't know, professional moms, but actually I think I want to go more towards, you know, entrepreneurs who are, you know, working from home or traveling or nomadic lifestyle. Right. Those are both productivity, but you might be able to at this point choose who do I want to be talking to in three to five years. And the big warning that I give people at this stage of the game is you probably have expertise from the past. you don't have to keep talking about that if you don't want to. Right? Just because people have always asked you to speak on, you know, who knows, project management

or whatever it was doesn't mean that you have to keep talking about that. The book that you choose to write can be your new line in the sand and say, you know what? Now, when I'm looking at my future self and what I want to be doing in the future, I want it to be, you know, this topic and speaking to these people. and you just get to make that choice, you know? And so I really like to empower people and be like, if, you know, if you knew this book was going to be wildly successful, what do you hope the book makes possible for you?

What business do you have? Who are you serving? Is it coaching? Is it consulting? Is it group programs? Is it memberships? Let's, you know, doodle that out a little bit and write the book that breeze those people in. I love that.

I think the idea is that what got you here won't get you there. It's the Tarzan narrative that if you're sweet. that if you're swinging on vines, you got to let go at one vine in order to get to the next one. Or not news, I get locked and you can get stuck there. A lot of small businesses will look at books going, well, I'm not a coach, I'm not a speaker, I'm not, that's not who I am. Why should I write a book? And I have someone that I'm working with right now. This is an NCS or is a newer hair specialist.

That's basically, I will guarantee that Joe Baby will sleep in X amount of weeks. That's basically it. My way of doing that is just duct tape or you put them under water to the bubble stop. Guarantees they fall asleep. You have problems after? that, but it doesn't work for me. This is an individual who's been doing it for a very, very long time and hates it. Doesn't want to do it anymore. She's one of the best in the world of doing it. She doesn't want to do it anymore. So what she's done instead is she's pivoted her small

business into what she wants in the future, just like you were saying, which is about placing New World Care Specialist or placing these high-end nannies. So her entire book and her entire narrative is about, hey, yeah, this is how you make your baby fall asleep and these are the things, but more importantly, this is the child, this is what's going to be in her wife. This nanny, this new word care specialist, this is changing the path of the way. This is changing the path of your family. So I'm going to write a book about what you need to be looking for when you're hiring that person. Well, that establishes her as an expert in the field. That she's not to go about talking about this, but it's going to establish her business. This is elite. This is a resource.

And if someone's come in as the best supporting actor in a book where they can physically touch it, because they're going to go to bed with it. Just understand that. They're physically going to be in bed with their spouse, with their reading whatever you've written. It's an intimate conversation. You've now established yourself in this intimate session where you're an expert. And she's building the book for the business she wants in the future. And I think that's an important narrative. And when she first came to me, she's like, I just want to help out all moms. So I'm like, oh, God, no, no. You do not. And I was like, how much is it cost to place? She's like, $120, $150,000 a year. I'm like, okay, you're talking a very specific group of people. You're not talking about people who go to Chipotle,

or very rarely go to Chipotle. These are people who shop at different places. You need to know your audience because it changes the language. It changes her calls to action. It changes. does all of those things. So getting very, very specific with who you want to serve, while you're using this as a tool, because you're going to hand this out all the time. Now whenever she places a nanny, we're literally just going to put the book in there and she's going to sign it and send it. It's a calling card that most people bypass. And if you're not working with someone who has done this before, you don't understand that this is a huge tool when it comes to Skelly. I'm curious with your experience. I don't even doing this for a really

long time. Is there one top of example you're like, oh my God, this person, Susie Q created this book and all of a sudden her business, and what were the secrets that she had when she did that? I know we're getting off topic here. We'll get back to the list, but you know me, I can't stay on target. Yeah, well, I'll have to give our author examples. And I just want to give like a little bit of just how I got into this because that's exactly what I did.

I was a writing coach. I wanted to work with nonfiction books and I was scaling my business. I was bringing more editors to work underneath me. We wanted more clients. So I wrote a book called Start Writing Your Book Today. and that was in 2015. And the subtitles around, you know, this is a step-by-step guide

to writing your nonfiction book from, you know, first draft to finish manuscript, something like that. Very clear, straightforward. Right. And that is the book that I just continue to promote

year after year after year. And that is what creates, you know, a seven-figure business. And so, you know, I do this for other people, but I just want you to know that I'm always my first guinea pig,

you know. You don't think that. like, oh, I'm just a writer. I can't make a time of mind. If you know the right scaling techniques and you know that strategy and the tactics, you're going to build a seven-fid your business. And most people look at book right, like, really? What about AI? What about all these things? It's not going to work. It's because there's very specific things you need to do that the AI just doesn't know. It's cute. It's nice. So that's not there yet. There are specific tools. So I guess the best example is yours.

You want to know if I have a writer, I don't know. I don't want to be in five years. It's not would be a seven-figure business. I can't write that many books. I dare need to form an agency that I can now go go do this and go crush it that way. And let me give you a couple of quick examples. And I can include this in some notes that I give you afterward because we sort of said, we're going to be talking to examples and case studies.

And then I'm going to send all those to you so we can package them up really nicely for everyone. But a couple of quick ones. Dr. Terry Pease wrote a book called Love, Dignity, and Parkinson's. And she is someone who helps folks with a spouse or loved one who has Parkinson's. What do you do when you receive that diagnosis? How do you start to build that caregiving around the rest of your life with this person? And so that's an example of a pretty specific, you know, niche. And so she travels around the world speaking to hospitals and nonprofits

and helping people to develop that caregiving system for Parkinson's. Colleen Conlon wrote a book called Cettlebell Catalyst. She is a hard style kettlebell fitness professional. That's what she knows. So she has all these client case studies, women specifically, who she uses kettlebells, not only for physical strength, but for emotional strength and resilience as well. And it's a lot of, like, people don't know if to think about that. And so her book is really around sort of like, how do you become strong as a woman in all senses of the words? So she's got a filled out practice. She runs retreats and workshops where she's based in Arizona. And then just got one more quick example. Beverly Asante Pushman wrote a book called Ace the Half, which is half marathon training. They don't all have to be fitness books, but the ones that sort of came to mind most quickly. You know, like, how do you train for your first half marathon? And she works specifically with professional women who are really busy, right?

And so how do you train? Where do you find the time to train and get over the fact that people might need you in life and just say, stop it. I'm going out the door and I'm training. You know, as a triathlet, I can tell you the best way to run a marathon. is in a car. You sit in there, you turn the music on drive. The other runners, you hit them a little bit. They got out. Well, the example is that what I love that you gave with the examples that was, it wasn't,

hey, I'm going to be a caregiver for everyone who has a need that might need to be a caregiver in might in some situation. Now, you got very specific. These are the specific someone who's got Parkinson's. The other ones you gave examples like, hey, I'm going to do kettle bells. Now I'm not going to do all weights. I'm not going to do all fitness. I'm not going to do hit training.

I'm going to do kettle belt. That brought you down in the fitness. You're already dropped out a level. So now I'm going to do it specifically for women. whack, now we're doing another level. You're bringing yourself and you're getting that, you're narrowing it down. We talk about it, inch wide, mild deep. You know, the same thing when you had the last one where she said there,

she's only going to work with busy moms. I've got fitness. I've got half marathon, not full marathon, not triathlons, not triathlons, not ultramararathons, just half marathons, how I do this, and you're narrowing it out. I think when, you know, the first step here is identifying your specific audience. So for me, it's two things. Who is your very, very, very specific audience? If I could add more varies in there, I would, but friends of mine who have gone to

I mean, schools will pick on me for using it this much. You're going to get in there, getting specific as you can, as granular as you can. And then after that, make sure it's not about, it's about who you want to be in the future. What is your goals in the future? And that's a different way because most people are like,

oh, again, my granny gave me this recipe for this raising cookie. No one cares. Who is the audience? What pain on the end can get very specific and then build your business around that. So I think that's the first step. The second step is, you know, what are my stories of my information that I

want to share. Now, before I let you jump in and give the answer, I'm going to try and give a guess at the information here. What stories of information do I want to share? It doesn't matter. It's what they want to hear. What's going to help them? What hang their in and having their... Because I can tell you stories about swimming with turtles, and I can tell you stories about being those, you know, diving in the Galapagos and getting seasick. No one wants to know about me getting seasick unless it has a narrative of how I worked through it and order-scale business. So when you're talking about the stories, I'm guessing it probably has something to do with Part one, which is who is their audience and how do you, sir?

Well, I mean, I'm working with writers. We have really sensitive egos. We want to share so much of our lives with people. We want them to know all the nitty-gritty details about the boat and the seasickness and the Galafghuris Islands, right? Like, we kind of want to, they're the part of us that wants to share that. And so we honor that that there are going to be stories that you want to share. But let's do a Venn diagram.

Let's figure out what do you want to share? What do they want to read? and we'll find the middle, basically, is what we're working on. So go ahead and brainstorm, you know, list out everything you want to share, and then we're actually going to curate that, you know, and select what is most relevant, what is your reader need to hear from you in order to move farther down this journey that you're going to take him on in the book. Yeah, I think it's about becoming the best supporting actor.

You know, we talk about this all the time. Don't be Luke Skywalker, be Obi-One-Conobi. don't be, don't try to be Harry Potter, be from my need, crangerey. Be the best supporting actor, and your stories are always there to support them with that. I mean, if people want to know about me throwing up on the back of a boat and 20-foot seas in Galapagos, it's just not going to help them grow their business. I think the other thing is, you know, people coming up to me all the time, like, oh my God, you're a writer.

No, I'm not. That's insulting to anyone who's ever written anything, ever. I'm an author. There's a different conversation. There are people who may turn puts words together and create symphonies. People like Aaron Sorkin, those are writers. Those are something I'm impressed with. For this, I'm using this as a tackle way.

I'm using this as part of a way to scale my business that's going to give that KLT, give you that social proof. It needs to be done in a way that you kind of separate. There are still mistakes in my book. There will always be mistakes in my book. That's okay. My sister, who I adore, I think she has two or three masters or advanced degrees in an initial church.

She refuses to read my book because I told her, said, perfection is the enemy of execution. Sorry, it's not going to be great. I apologize. It's just like, I used to read you. I went, okay, that fun. So I think it's important, you know, when you're doing that, that, that, that, that, breakdown that diagram, can you give examples of people who are like, hey, I want to include

this? And you're like, no, we got to do this. So do you have any of those that come top of mind that are like, okay, don't, these are the best ones you should include. These are the ones. Yeah, throw it up on a turtle, probably not the, but. we want to include it today. It's something you just said, Charles, about like, I'm not really a writer.

And I think that should be encouraging. That could be encouraging if we choose to listen to it that way, to hear it that way, is you can author a book even when you're not the best, quote unquote, writer, because the experience of the book is not about a turn of phrase or a beautiful sentence. The experience of the book is actually the get your reader from point A. they have some missing information, lack of understanding, they're demotivated,

they don't know how to do something, getting them from point A to point B, and you're giving them those realizations and epiphanies and new understandings. So you don't have to be an amazing writer to be helpful. And to help out your audience, because I'm sure that your people are going to hear

this as much as I can't spell. People with my mastermind, they know this. They're like, okay, we know you didn't write that post because everything's spelt correctly and you actually use commas and period. I can't spell to save my own life.

Like when I wrote my book, my assistant, Christine, I adore, she literally, after the, I wrote a chunk of it, and I sent it over, she's like, you do know that the word your has an R on it, right? Yes, and she was, and because has a cuss on her, right? I'm like, shut up. And that was the reality is I'm horrible.

I literally got put on academic suspension in college because it was so bad. So if I am the, again, not a writer, this is not about being a writer. It's about authoring a book. It's about creating something that's going to help you scale. If you happen to be someone who can spell, I automatically hate you, but I appreciate that you can do it. For those of you like me who can't spell and cannot write and think

that punctuation marks are just optional, so one run-on sentence for 17 pages is a great idea. It's something that's important. So anyway, so more of the junket share kind of example. Yeah, so I want to use Tom Ennison here as an example because he is classic business guy. He worked as a consultant inside of a company, and one of his favorite things to do was run strategic retreats for the C-level folks, right? CEO, C-O-O-O, C-E-M-O, like all those folks. He would like to take them away for a few days and help them with their annual strategic planning, and he wanted to go off on his own. This was going to be his new thing. He was going to leave his in-house company and just start doing strategic planning retreats on his own.

We first started writing the book together. he'd been, you know, working as a consultant for 25 years. He had a lot of stories, and he was a storyteller. And he also, like, was a musician and, like, a groupie for, like, these bands in the 70s and 80s and wanted to tell a lot of these, like, band stories and, you know, concerts and festivals and all these things. And I was like, Tom, how is this going to help your client with the strategic retreat? or to trust you

to pay you multiple six figures to put on a strategic retreat he was like, well, fair, they probably shouldn't hear about my drug problem when I was, you know, doing the festival stuff. I was like, so we came up. And it came in.

The fair energy, like, well, the very patient feminine energy. So, okay, let's talk. I love the feminine energy. Came in. Okay, sweetness. You're like, what? Is that what we're supposed to?

Like, yes. Don't put the fork in this. and the light and the outlander. I love that game, man. He jumped right on board. He was like, he's like, I kind of knew that you were going to say that. But I just, I love these stories. And it's like, great.

Let's find a different way to have a tribute to music. So each chapter starts with a line from, you can't use a whole lyric because there's copyright issues. But he would refer to a song or if there was like a poetic version of it. or something that was in public debate. He'd reference it. So he would do like a small snippet that would, you know, a nod to his musical background. But then, you know, the bulk of the book is really that strategic retreat.

And Tom's story is also cool because as soon as he transitioned from his corporate, you know, consult job and told folks he was going off on his own and started handing out his new book at the same time. He booked $350,000 in new gigs in like a month with his book launch. and I can't express to people how powerful a book is. And in the age of just digital garbage, in the endless pictures, in the selfies, I can't tell you how powerful it is to take the book

and add an event and say, hey, guys, I'm doing this, here we go. When I get booked to speak at events, I'll say, hey, how many people are going to show up? And they're like, we, you know, 600 people. I'm like, I'm bringing books. They're like, what? I'm going to get books away to everybody.

And I'm like, seriously? And it blows them away. And what you'll work really quickly is, it doesn't cost you $15 that buy your own books. it's significantly less than that. So when I show up, I will build that into the cost when they go to speak. But I'll set up and hey, guys, at the end of it, I'll sign all the books and we'll just just put a Sharpie that you like.

And you'll be able to sign everything and take pictures. But you're physically giving that. You're building rapport and you're building connection. Whenever I've done it for speaking and engagements and all that, it's huge. I have clients that have written books specifically that are not speakers that are not going to go out and tour, they're not going to do that. But they'll give it as a thank you game. They'll give it when people come into the office and they have meetings.

They'll give it away to say, hey, I know. you're looking to hire us for the best landscaping, whatever it is, the best landscaping company. Wait, we wrote this, here's a physical copy in the book. Or, hey, can we send you an evil? It's a great lean magnet to the gate. Beautiful way. And those stories that Tom and I and everyone else has

are phenomenal when you're going to do their speaking engagements, or you can use them in that event. You can use that. You're not getting rid of your story. You're just saving them in a repertoire for later. So for those of you guys who are authors, are aspiring authors. For those of you who are writers,

I still am a little jealous of you that you can write and use punctuation. I'm a little mad about that. So I might not talk to you as much. Go talk to Morgan. For those of you, it's just a phenomenal way. It's just talk about the ultimate icebreaker. That just works really, really, really well.

Now, I'm going to jump around a little bit. I want to talk about call down, and I want specific ones here, because this is the most important. As you're driving people through, we know that books are designed specifically as a way as a funnel, and there has to be calls to actions, and there's certain things about having calls to actions

that drive your person. And again, for those of you are listening, who don't know what a call to action is, this is what you want your audience, your very targeted audience,

to do nothing. This is what you're asking them to do. So this is your call to action. Do this. If you want them to talk to you on the phone, if you want them to book an event, whatever it is,

do this. I'm curious your thoughts on, I know we've jumped a couple steps, but I want to talk about call to action. One of the calls of action that you're like, these work really, really well and convert it.

And as many of those, you can share, and yes, we'll put in a lab report, But as you can share, I'd love it here. Yeah, I will definitely send links so you can look at these called actions yourself live and some screenshots so you can see kind of what it looks like in the book on the website, that sort of thing.

My book, my called action is the free audio book. And I actually got this from Chandler Bolt, who's a self-publishing school. And so I did his like very first round in 2015 or something like that. So I've known Chandler forever. But that was something that he was experimenting with it. I was like, that's a great idea. So that's what I put in my book is you can go right to the beginning of my book and you can see free GIF, you know, audiobook. And the crazy thing is that I still sell more on Audible than I do any other version. So maybe it, you know, maybe I'm losing a little bit

on audible there, but I'm getting a pretty good conversion rate on folks joining my email list. So that's seven figure business. I think you're doing just by. Yeah, yeah. I think it all washes out in the end. Doug Doug Bowers has a quiz at the beginning of his book. So his is sort of like a personality type driven book.

And so he has a quiz you can take right at the beginning of the book and that gives you your personality type and some additional information there. Adina Samson is a singer

songwriter. So she actually has some songs that do relate to the content. And so it's called The Road Back to Me and it's sort of like more emotional spiritual

kind of like healing sort of thing. And so This is a song that is almost like a guided meditation sort of experience. So she has some QR codes that link to that soundtrack. And when we talk about CTAs, what are some of the things? What are the type of guidelines? You show, okay, do I do a quiz? Is a quiz right for me?

Is a song right for me? Is an audiobook right for me? What are the ones that are like, hey, you know what? This converts the best. Your example, you know, and then what are some of the guidelines when you're choosing a CTA or call to action that you'd recommend? Yeah. So we wanted to complement what is in the book, right? So, and yet it has to be something that people kind of want before they even start reading the book, because what we're actually going to do is put it

in the first 10% of the book. Because when it's available on Amazon and someone clicks that look inside, they're going to be able to see the first 10%. So we want to capitalize on all that Amazon traffic and we can talk about optimizing for Amazon visibility. If you think about all those eyeballs that are coming to your page. Some percentage of them are clicking the look inside. We want to give them an easy opportunity to jump onto our list. So it's something that they will want even before they consume the content. And so fast track courses can be great. Colleen Conlin has like a kettlebell, like quick start guide on how to how to get going with kettlebells. And any sort of checklist, people love checklists, guided meditations if you're in sort of that softer or sort of spirituality kind of realm recipes.

You know, it was brownies for breakfast was one of the books that we did a couple of years ago. And there was a, you know, it was all about how to live with a diabetic, but still eat great food. and there were some recipes right there at the beginning of the book. And so, yeah, I'll give you some of those sorts of examples. But just think about anything that people, they saw your book cover, they saw your title, they're interested in this topic, but what can you give them right up front that is going to be quick results? And they'll be interested in before they even dive into the book content itself. So with that CTA, which I don't know anybody who doesn't look inside, honestly, if you're one of those weird people,

it's like people put pineapples on pizza. What are you doing? Who are you? Every book I do. I trigger a look inside. When they're doing this, do you give it to them in the black and white? Do you drive them to your website? What are you doing?

And what programs you use? And when you're trying to capture those eyeballs and those clicks, what programs do you recommend using? We drop a link to it. So it's one single page. And we always frame it as a free gift. You know, free gift. Thanks for, you know, reading this book. Now, technically they haven't bought the book, but we don't really care.

But that's the frame, right? So free gift, free resources. And then we give the title and subtitle of the resource itself. So just like with any lead magnet, you want to give it a snappy name, snappy description. And then we drop a link and a QR code. You need both, is my suggestion. Links used to work just fine, but Amazon very recently disabled link clicking from inside, look inside. And so now we are also putting a QR code. And then so what's you had them there? What is your favorite, you know, lead capture and this is important for people. We haven't talked about the book about it as a novel. We talked to this state lead back. This is a funnel. This is being written in a specific way

that's driving your audience and the pain they're into a specific action. This isn't, oh my God, I grew up in St. Louis and my mom used to. No, this is okay. This is my audience. It's the pain they're in and is how we're eliminating that. And that's how it's tactical here. So what is this software that you recommend the most to your clients that they should use to capture everything? Yeah, a lot of our folks are just beginning or they don't have a significant email list yet. And so we're building out their website with either WordPress or WICs. And we're using something like Mail or Light often because it's very intuitive for kind of just getting going with building that email list. So it goes, you know, link to the WordPress or Wix website, and there's a form

on that page that you would build inside of Mail or Light. Those have been pretty easy tools. For a little bit more advanced, you might go something like ConvertKit or Go High Level is one that, especially folks who have like an application funnel or something like that, go high level is a good software for email capture. What you're saying is a Google Doc where you manually enter it is not a good idea. Is that what you're... I would not recommend manual entry. Not a good idea. I am going to cheat here.

You built something that most people can't, especially in your industry. You've established the seven-figure business and you crushed it. What are the tools in there, and we'll get back to what you do. I'm just curious now, I can't stay on target. What are the tools that you're like, wow, if I didn't have these four by tools in my business, I just could not do what I do. I know, we've spoken enough. I know how you do it.

Every time we got like all, you're always. just joyful and happy and all that. I'm like, she's got to be doing something different than most business I learned because she's found a way to scale where she doesn't want to jump off a break. So what are the tools that you're like, hey, I know we didn't talk about, but what are the things that you're like, hey, I wish I would have known about these five or six tools prior to I, so I did use convert kit for many, many years in my business. And so that, I mean, I would, I would recommend convert kit to anybody who's in that scaling, you know, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 email addresses you're going to you can do just fine on convert kit. We recently have moved into Zoho,

which is not a common tool, but I chose Zoho because it's very customizable. So we actually have some coders who go in and we, we run off a high ticket application funnel. And so we need to know every single touch point for a specific contact. We need to know, you know, what web pages did they visit? How long were they on those pages? What emails did they receive from our CRM and what emails did they receive? Maybe if they were emailing us directly back and forth, who did they talk to? When did we call them? When did they call us back? You know, store the recordings of any Zoom calls right there, SMS back and forth. So we actually can see that all on one contact record. But we really only were able to get that through custom coding of Zoho. So I think that's probably, you don't want to mess at that

until you're already at like seven figures. But if you run a Hydigo application funnel and you're really frustrated with it, Zoho is an option. The other option I might recommend, my colleagues and my masterminds or whatever, they love go high level. It's funny with Zoho.

Everyone when I was first invoicing out for a service really in business, I own an IT company, everyone wanted me to do inside of my books and they wanted me to use these things. I was like, no, we literally did it off at $12 a month, Zoho app. and this is not paid by so in origin form, and it did everything.

It reminded people, it followed up, and processed it all. Absolutely. Okay. Back to becoming authors, not writers. It could make it as easy as possible. So you're going to become writers. I hate you. But the rest of the authors who barely made it through school and can't spell to say in their

life, and thank God that we know what F7 is. Growing up, I remember my father was like, you're going to have to learn how to spell. I'm like, no, I don't. F7. It's all I need to do. It's all I need to do. And now I'm an assistant who I just, whenever I send an email out, she will spell check it. So if you're ever looking at my Instagram and you see something spelled perfectly,

I don't even, you know, if you're messed up. I'm not great at proofreading. The team is constantly frustrated with me because I will just write up a broadcast email and hit send. And then people are like, Morgan, you've got three typos in a 500 word email. How is this each possible? So we all need the proofreader. We all need someone to come in and double checker. We call it speaking charlieism.

that's how they've literally renamed they're like wow do you speak Charlie yet no man because new people will come in and they just like listen they're going to be a grammar Nazi with them he's just going to because he's not going to change he's just a he's just a stubborn old mule he's never ever going to change who it is okay so we've

gotten through we've gotten the call to actions and we've know the ones at work we know that we got to have the QR codes in there we know that we're driving these people to a specific way in a specific offering now when it comes to the calls to actions um you know a lot of people are like well which one works better?

Should I do a quiz? You know, I can quiz people on what, you know, kettlebell to use or what things to use for diabetics or, you know, which ones have you seen over years and years and years and years of doing this, building your damn seven-finger business? I love that. You know, yeah, you just sit in it. It's super. It's easy.

I love that. I love it because you just so humble. Most people are like, look at me. Love that you come humbly. Which one of the one do you like, you know what? This is the one, you know, if my life depended on it, this is the call to action that I would use. Which one are you like this conversely or easy? Which one do you love?

I love the audiobook. It has an inherent value. People feel like they are getting away like a kid in a candy store, especially when they get the audiobook without buying my book from Amazon. People, but what they don't realize is that they are on my email list and then they listen to the audio book and they're like, oh, I really like this girl, you know? And so then I'm following up like a crazy person with emails. And then I'm getting them on to webinars. and getting them into Facebook challenges, you know, and then who cares about the $10 book, you know,

I've got them in a challenge for, you know, multi-thousand-dollar product or service. So the audiobook, like, people inherently are like, she's giving that away for free. Sweet. I'm going to get it. Not funny, too. I do the same thing. I've been giving away free. And I'm going to go suck giving away the audio book now. I'm stealing this from you. But whenever they do this, they get into our funnel and then we have a drip campaign. And what I do is I recorded a bunch of videos. I did him one afternoon.

And I said, okay, here's what I was thinking about when I wrote this chapter. And here's what I was thinking about and here's the story. And here's more detailed about it. So now they're looking for those emails. And I'm not asking for anything. I was like, hey, chapter two when I was writing it, I was drinking a slurpee and I sneeze and it came from my nose or it's where it is. Don't worry.

You're having that. And it doesn't feel like a touch. Because we know that before someone buys from you, it's anywhere between. I think it's like seven touches bare minimum at this point. those touches should be when you're building a relationship. You're building that rapport. Because remember, it's KLT. People won't abide from people they know like and trust.

Those touches allow you to do it. So if it only cost me whatever it would be to give away the $10 audio book, which again, you don't make all that money. The goal is you're capturing these people. And you're using this as a tactical funnel. That's what writing a book is it's so important to do, is you're using this as a way to acquire your leads. So you can go out there and scale your business to seven figures in it.

short period. Yeah. The other thing, you may not be able to do the audiobook right away. Like, you're launching the book and maybe you're planning on to do the audiobook next. But what do I do before I have the audiobook? People love a quick start guide or a checklist. So quick start guide, if you are talking through a process or a framework, and people want to really hit the ground running and get, you know, a printable visual that they can sort of flip through three pages or something and get the gist of what your framework is. Or if you are dealing with something that is either physical or has a lot of tools, even software-based tools, a checklist of here's my, you know, for marathons or kettlebell or whatever, like, you know, here's the, all the things that

I want to make sure I have before I start a training session or software-based, you know, here's all the things I want to have in order to run my business or strategic planning retreats. Here are, you know, my top locations for strategic planning retreat. So checklists lists are, you know, they have stood the test of time in lead generations. I found also, and I wonder if you've discovered this as well or seen this, that whatever you're giving away has to give them a very quick, immediate win. So if you're like kettlebells, it's like, okay, here's, I know you're going to do kettlebell and I'm like, teach you how to do it. I'm like, here's the top three kettlebells that you go, oh, here's the best way to do it. Don't buy these, buy these.

Something that's a quick win that they're like, oh, okay, this person's already helping me. They're not trying to sell me anything. They're already being a situation where they're trying to help. For example, you want to learn how to do a triathlon. Really simple. Make sure you've got gas in the car and just drive. And you get there. That's it really simple.

So put it this little bit of a situation where you're giving them an immediate fast wind that doesn't cost them any energy, but eliminates a pain that they have. You know, when you go to work out, one of the things I've had clients that are trainers that are what should I might lead magnet be. I might just tell them, just for free, just give them the songs. Just give them, tell them, here's a lot of your list of the supplements they need to have. Yes, you've got a train. them you've got to give them this up but here's a free quick little laundry list and also like

why I've already got some that gives you that ability so that you've already been in service to them and they're going to want to be and reciprocate that so making sure that you're in your key your CTAs you're giving something that's a quick way haven't you got to be found that too yeah absolutely or like for fitness you know giving them like a here's your free workout you know snack and then here's your optimal workout's going to you know for three days a week and your alternate workout the other three days a week and then here's your post recovery meal or whatever is going to be. Like, you know, something that fits on a page that people can,

to your point, Charles, they can consume, they get it, they can wrap their head around it really quickly. People love that stuff. Absolutely. Now, well, some things that people don't love doing is optimizing their Amazon, but just get that out of the way right now. It's so important because, you know, there are people who have met, like, I've been giving away my book away for,

we published it in 2019, so I've been giving it away for, God, coming up on four years now, for free. And we track this. Who opens it? How far do they get? And the majority of the people do not open it. But see those become plain. And this is this weird kind of like,

what are it? What? And a lot of that's because the way we deliver it and the way that our Amazon pays up. So not that everyone that you, just because you have a book, doesn't mean they're going to read it, which most people will never get past chapter one. Sorry.

They're not going to do it. But some of those people who never purchase your book, never read your material are actually going to convert. And they're going to help you with this, you know, bring an income in so you can scale your company. When you're optimizing your Amazon, this is something that please don't look at mine as an example. I have not done this with Morgan at the point. Please, what are the things that when you're like, I hate, you're going to need to optimize your page. What are the things that you're like, all right, got to do this. Here are the 20 things or five things or two things.

Yeah. Yeah, there's probably about 15 things that I will usually be checking. So I'll give you kind of a little diagram that we can put in the report and sort of point to all the different things. There's what you can see on the page and then there's also what you cannot see because it's in the back end, the search engine, right? So of the things that you can see, you know, of course, you want to think about your cover, your title and your subtitle. In the Amazon bookstore, the title and the subtitle are actually the same font size and weight. They take up as much equal real estate. So the more that you strategically use your subtitled, that's just, you know, another opportunity to get people to your page.

I want to think about the name that you use as your author name. You want to think about your description, the price of your ebook, paperback, hardback if you have it, or audiobook. You want to, I mean, never launch just an ebook. I don't think I have to say that anymore. But don't ever launch just an ebook. Because people will think that, you know, it's a lesser. They already discount it. It's like, oh, well, this is. is just, quote unquote, just an e-book. And it's not that much harder to take it into a physical book, at the very least. Audio book is also fantastic. So you want to think about those price points, whether you put it in Kindle Unlimited or the prime memberships, that sort of thing, the description itself, again, the diagram will

be helpful because I'll point to all these things. You'll want your Amazon Author Central with your picture and, you know, about you, and the reviews. In fact, there's an editorial reviews section. there's an A plus content section where you can put visuals, and there's the customer reviews themselves. So those three, that's, I believe, the order in which, it may be flipped. It may be the A plus visual content is what people see first, then the editorial reviews, then the customer reviews.

But those are power-packed sections that you want to think about for your Amazon page from the front end. and then the back end keywords. I mean, mentioned it earlier. Amazon is a search engine just like Google. You want to find the keywords that have high search volume, low competition. We use a tool called publisher rocket. We've been running these searches for years.

So we have a whole library of search terms that we have found to work kind of over and over again. I can, Charles, I can give you a few of them. They will cover everybody's book, but it'll give you an idea of what's a good search term so that when you're doing this yourself, you can measure up, you know, how does this measure up to Morgan

search terms that she's looking for? And categories. And Amazon's recently changed this. Your e-book used to have 10 categories. Now you have three. If, hold on, public service announcement, because this happened this summer.

If you have published a book, Charles, I'm looking at you. Yep. I know where you're going. It's on Amazon. Hopefully you've already done this. change those categories. Go back into the ebook

and update the categories because Amazon reshuffled everything and even if it looks like you still have categories, we have found that you have to go back in and actually re-click for the new categories. Did you do that already? We haven't. It actually gives me an idea later that we'll probably talk about

after the podcast. I'll follow up with this that I think that could be really valuable because again, I published back in 2019 and we hit WSJ fast and I've hit Bard's Noble and I've hit Amazon and it's cute, it's nice. But we haven't touched it. So you've got something that was once successful that is now just dead.

It's just not being used in any way, shape, or form. So I have an idea that we'd be discussing after the podcast. For the rest of you guys, you have to stay tuned. We'll see if we're going to agree on something. So, I have no idea yet. You need to update the categories. We like to go very deep in the category. And then we'll run promotions and pop the book to number one in that small category

because, again, who cares about being number one in a tiny category? What you actually care about is triggering the algorithm to show you more widely in the next category up in that chain. So you can use the browsing bars and all that jazz. So keywords and categories are in sort of the back end of the metadata that are super important. No, and I love it. The problem is, you know, we've been talking for, you know, 45 minutes to an hour here. There's no way we're going to get to everything. There's walls of it.

There was little things where you stuck in here and there like, oh, by the way, you know, don't use quotes because that's strange my in trademarking for instance. And there's like, oh, wait, oh, I didn't even see that. There's so many little things because you've been doing this for so long that just, it seems more to you. Again, it's kind of like to use the grandma making cookies thing. She's like, I just put a pinch. I'm like, well, how much is a pinch? Well, how much is a pinch?

And you have this argument. Like, we could be doing it for X amount of years. I hate you. It's probably what it is. There's so many of those little things. If someone's sitting down and they're like, listen, there's a ton of information, there's so much more than you know, I didn't even know about this. I don't know what the publisher rocket was.

I don't use it. How does someone sit down? if they're going to go out, is there a resource they can go to? Is the rate that they can get access to you? What is the best way for them to kind of say, all right, I get it. The best way for me to have social proof is still a block. Sorry, it is what it is. For me, it comes out to two categories.

Well, three, there's, if Oprah Winfrey's next to me going, you're something, you win. That's inherited trust. That trumps everybody. This is what it is. And the other two that are kind of competing with each other right now is books and podcasts, right? If you have a top-ranked podcast and you have a top-ranked book

and they marry together, all of a sudden, might not be able to get Oprah up, but it's going to get you in the step of getting Oprah. And, you know, when we work with people in the way where you do things, and we're talking about scaling, it's not just one thing. You don't just plant a seed in a garden, but like, crow, you're like, did you add water to it? No, okay, did you add manure? No, did you fertilize? No, but I have a seat.

He's like, can I eat the seed? Because that's all that's going to happen. I think coming into it and that there's all these different things and people get scared when they're going to write a book, they're like, oh my God. I need to be a professional writer. I can barely spell. So get that out of the way right now. Author versus writer, two completely different narratives,

two completely different things. But the biggest mistake I think we talked about on here was, why don't write a book that you want to write about. Don't write a book that you're like, oh, this is going to be fun because I went and I hung out with, you know, guns and roses in the 80s. Like, no one cares, pumped in. What is your audience?

What either are they going to get very, very specific. Don't write a book about fitness. Write a book for moms that are using kettlebells. You get very, very, very specific. And where you put your call to action, the type of call to action, all change based on what you're doing. And, you know, so if someone's like, holy crap, there's so much here,

then we only got head-tied off time to do three of the eight. What's how do they get? What are the next steps? Are there books they can read? Do they just go to your house? Do you want to give out your personal address and your personal phone number? What? I'm sure that the husband will love that very much.

Oh, Mia, just call you three o'clock in the morning. She loves those phone call. What is the best way that she can move for? Someone can move on. Yeah. So I do some of these workshops occasionally where I'll take people in a deep dive. through a lot of the topics that we're talking about, but I'm able to share my screen and kind of walk us through, you know, everything from the call to actions, the keywords and categories, you know,

how we're bringing people through to back-end products and services. So you can see when I'm doing that next, if you go to Paper Ravenbooks.com slash workshop. Paper Ravenbooks.com slash workshop. I'll get you the link, Charles, so you can share it. And if you just want to check out our company, Paper Ravenbooks.com, you can get all the info over there. There's a quiz, if you like quizzes, about which publishing path is right for your book. And I talk about self-publishing, traditional publishing, hybrid publishing. We didn't even get into that, but there's a whole can of worms that you can open for different publishing options. But, yeah, I would encourage, if you've loved this conversation, I would say go to paperavenbooks.com slash workshop.

And that way I can take you a deeper dive in that free workshop. So that was my next question, because my last name is Schwartz. So I have to ask the question. it is a free workshop. So you jump in the idea that, okay, this is a free workshop where you rip it apart, and we kind of go from there. And again, we're going to add all this stuff. One of the things that Morgan's great about is she gives laundry lists,

even before we jumped on this podcast. She's like, hey, did you have a chance to look at that? And I was like, maybe. We just didn't see it. And I'm looking at it. And it's over two pages long, just from the notes for this. So we're going to add everything in the lap report and given as much details as we possibly care.

I really appreciate it. Again, how do people find you? Is it just Paper Raven or where else do they go? Is there social work? Where can they get older? You can find me on most social platforms as Morgan G. Mac or Morgan Gist McDonald, if that one was taken. So yeah, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, wherever, and I'd love to chat with you. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for coming out to the lap. Thank you, Charles. All right, that's it. Another episode's in the book. Remember, authority cuts through noise, but it's only when it's proven. Stop guessing. Start leveraging what work. Thanks.