The benefits of writing a business book with Tina Tower

CLARE:

Writing a book has been quite a challenging process for me, and it seems I’m not alone. In the Meet the Author series, I’ve been chatting to some of my business friends, who are also authors, about their experience writing their own business books. In today’s episode, I am chatting to the fabulous Tina Tower about her experience writing two books. We dive into the ups, the downs, and why you should write your own business book.

Hello, and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast. This is your weekly dose of all things money to help you intentionally create a profitable business and a life you love. I have the difficult conversations about money so you can make more money with ease. Each week I share how you can use mindset and the practical foundations of finance to elevate your earnings without sacrificing the things that are important to you, because you can and should be making more money.

If you haven’t already grabbed your copy of Intentional Profit, make sure you jump into the link in the show notes for today’s episode and place your order. Intentional Profit is money management meets money mindset, and it is your guide to building a wildly wealthy business. If you would like to meet me in person and network with some amazing entrepreneurs, make sure you also check out my book tour for Intentional Profit. Again, the link to join and all the details are in the show notes for today’s episode. Now let’s dive in to today’s episode with Tina Tower.

Welcome back to the podcast, Tina Tower. You are one of my favorite people to follow online. Tina is such an amazing business leader and always producing so much fun content and she is the queen of, well, all things business, but in particular launching. And one of the reasons I wanted to invite you on the podcast was to talk about launching books because I’ve recently launched my book and I thought it would be a great opportunity. She’s got a copy in her hands as we speak, it weirdly arrived 10 minutes before our podcast recording started. So I thought that today we could dive in and have a bit of a chat about what it’s like launching a book. But before we do that, let’s let you do your own intro to the listeners, for anyone who doesn’t know who Tina Tower is.

TINA:

Sure. Hi friends, I’m stoked to be here and congratulations on the book. It’s beautiful, it’s wonderful. It’s always so good when you see something that has taken so much work and time and effort, actually come to fruition. A lot of people have inside them the dream to write a book and you did it. It’s there.

CLARE:

I did it.

TINA:

Yeah, so congratulations. So who am I? Who am I? So I have been in business, this is my 19th year in business, so I’m getting old. I used to get called an overnight success and that was 10 years in. So it took me a while to kind of find my feet. I have built and sold four different businesses. I’ve ran educational toy stores, tutoring centers, franchises, I’ve done licensing, and tripped and fell into this wonderful world of online courses in 2017. So not that long ago. I mean, what is it now? Six years. I did my first proper course launch late 2018. And I did the week live launch thing that Amy Porterfield taught, and followed that and made $11,000 in the week. And that was the moment for me that I was like, up until that point I had been so cause and effect in business.

The only way to grow was to either add to my team or work more hours, neither of which I wanted to do anymore. So when that happened I was like, this is incredible. This is a million-dollar business, this is amazing. This is going to be huge. And totally fell in love with all things online business and then wanted to tell everyone about it and wanted everyone to do it. And I feel like everything that I’ve done in my adult life has prepared me for what I do now. It’s taken me this long to really find the groove. I started Her Empire Builder, which is my membership for female course creators, in 2020, and it’s my life’s work. It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done. So that’s me. I have three dogs. I’m a crazy dog lady. I have two man children, which spins me out every day because they’re like hairy and have deep voices and they’re so much taller than me. And yeah, I live on a farm.

CLARE:

It seems like you have more than three dogs. Is it just because they’re massive or so many dogs?

TINA:

I did not, it’s like when people have three kids and they’re like two kids are so under control and the third kind of breaks the back. It’s kind of like that with the dogs, I was like, I’m going to have four dogs, maybe six dogs. I love dogs. I got the third dog and I’m like, that’s enough dogs.

CLARE:

That was me with children, my second child. And of course, you forgot to mention that you’re an author. Would you like to share a little bit about your two book babies?

TINA:

Oh yeah, because we’re talking about books, so I should put that in there. Isn’t it funny, there’s so many different facets to what we do and what we end up doing, we go, yes, I have also done that. Interestingly, so at the moment, we touched on this before we hit record, I’m a DIYer and I’ve always done all my own copy and done all of that sort of thing and I’ve got people doing that for me at the moment, redoing my website and my funnels and all of that sort of stuff. And interestingly, they’re reading my about page and then we have our deep dives where they suck the content out of you and all your different stories.

And they’re like, Tina, none of your credibility and authority comes across anywhere near what it should be. And I’m thinking, what? I feel like I own my awesome pretty well. But then you look at some American about pages and you’re like, wow, now that is impressive. And we don’t, as Australian women, it’s not even an embellishment, it’s like owning of all of the things that we have done and all of the different credibility. So yes, I also have a podcast, The Female Course Creator Show, and I’ve written two bestselling books. One Life: How to Have the Life of Your Dreams, and Million Dollar Micro Business.

CLARE:

Yes. So exciting. It’s funny that you said that because I updated my slide, my intro to me slide for a webinar I’m doing tonight, and I added author, and that’s all I said, just author. I didn’t write bestselling author, which I am. I wrote author, and I went, oh, that feels a bit showy-offy. And I thought, isn’t it funny how deep these things are programmed into us? Don’t show off. Don’t be too big for your boots. And how, through us having these conversations and opening up, we’re empowering people to say, hey, step into your awesome, own it and get it out there. Speak it loud and proud.

TINA:

Yeah, it’s one of the main reasons I go to America so often is I always think that I am owning it and in that, and then I go there and I’m like, oh no, that’s what it means to shine right there. It’s very different culture.

CLARE:

Very different culture, yeah. And congratulations, obviously, on your two amazing books. We are here today to chat about the process because you probably don’t even realize how much of a role you played in my journey in becoming an author because I, when you launched One Life and you came on my podcast, shared the story, and I was obsessed with your content about the process, about the costs involved, about self-publishing, about all of the things, and I was just consuming this content and thinking what? Don’t you just write a book and then just get someone to print it? And now that I’m so glad that you had such honest and open conversations about it then, sharing about the costs involved. If you want to do it a certain way, and we can of course talk about the other end of the spectrum as well, but that for me was, firstly, really eyeopening but also really inspiring and probably one of the main reasons that I went on this journey.

TINA:

Yay, I love that.

CLARE:

And created my book. And I’m sure you’re doing the same for many other female entrepreneurs as well, empowering them to get out there and share their story and also their course with the world, which is another thing I know you say all the time, everyone has an amazing course inside them. But keep me on track because I’m going to keep going at the top.

TINA:

I love the tangents, I love them. I’m so here for them.

CLARE:

But look, one of the main things that I wanted to chat to you about today is the truth about writing a book because I used to think when someone was an author, I’m like, oh yeah, sit down, punch out a couple of chapters, you can load it up on Amazon, maybe you can pay someone to print it. What’s the big deal? And as someone who has just embarked on the entire journey, it has been one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. Definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done in business.

TINA: 

Yes, I would a hundred percent stand by that. I think writing a book is, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, yeah.

CLARE: 

So let’s maybe talk a little bit, let’s start with the actual, maybe we start back at the idea of coming up with a concept for the book. So did you just come up with an idea and then that was it and you ran with it, or did it kind of chop and change and move all over the place for each of the books?

TINA: 

Ah, good question. So my two books were from a very different place of my heart. So One Life was my first book and that book came after I’d just done a year of around the world travel. So I was very like eat, pray, love. I’m totally zen. This is how I’m going to be for the rest of my life. I actually read my own book in September last year because I was getting into that overworky sort of stage again, and I read it and I’m like, some solid advice in here, Tina, there’s some solid advice. Let’s stand by that. So One Life was kind of no commercial goal. It had no commercial ecosystem behind it. It was literally the book that I felt like was in me that I wanted to contribute to the world because I love books so much and I wanted to do that. And I’m glad I did.

It’s the story. It’s more my entrepreneurial journey and how I did that and everything behind it. So it’s very story based, whereas Million Dollar Micro Business is very intentional in it was written purely as part of my ascension model, part of expanding that profile and getting that authority in the course-related space. So it’s not as feely as the first book. It’s really practical guide to going, if you’re looking at starting an online course, here’s all the things that you need to be aware of. There’s story in there and there’s different things, but it was written from a very different place. And the reason I chose Million Dollar Micro Business was because it was the very beginning of pulling people into that funnel and giving them something that they could start with there.

And then the third book that I’ve got in my head percolating, which I won’t write for a while because on your note of it’s the hardest thing, one of the things I did when I finished my second book was I think where you’re at right now is you’re in the thick of it and in a month, if you’re doing all the things, you’re going to be hammered, absolutely hammered. The amount of hangover you have from the effort and from the highs and all of the different, you’re hammered. It took me a good few months to get over it after the marketing finished. I was on so many podcasts, and so I gave it everything that I had in terms of the marketing of it. And so I recorded a video to myself to go, all right, Tina, if you’re thinking of writing a third book, watch this first.

And I’m really having a go in it in going, all right, I know you’ve got an optimism bias now, but this is how you’ll feel, this is what you need to be prepared of, this is what you’re going to go through. I know you think you won’t do it on a third time, but you will. So I like giving myself that talking too, so I go in with eyes wide open because a hallmark of a lot of us entrepreneurs are we’re super optimistic and we always think things are way easier than what they are. We’re like, how hard can it be? Turn it out, do this. No problem. On paper it all looks very easy and achievable, but when you’re in the thick of it, there’s a lot of things going on and a lot of things to do and a lot of outward energy. So when it comes to the third book, I mean, there’s no way I’m going to not write it, but it’ll be a while.

CLARE: 

I have to admit, I have already thought of the title for my next book.

TINA: 

And that’s the thing, you think of the title, you’ve got to get all the domain names and all of the different things and just park them there until you’re really ready.

CLARE: 

Yeah. But there’s some sort of… I feel exactly the same. I come to the team and I’m always like, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. And they look at me with these gritted teeth. And I’m like, honestly, it’s no big deal. We’re not going to do it, it’s not going to be a big fast. It’ll just be couple of posts like this, and then suddenly we’re back in the thick of another launch or another massive big project. But in my head, when I go into these things, I’m always like, it’s really not that big a deal.

For example, with my book, I actually had a ghost writer who helped me, essentially, pull it together. And some people might think, oh, of course, so someone else writes your book for you. And I’m like, that could not be further from the truth. I was so heavily involved. It meant hours and hours, so much time us interviewing each other because she had to nail my tone of voice. It’s all my words. And even then, I wanted total creative control. She did say that she has some clients who just let her write a book and then send it to a publisher. And I’m like, I would never do that. It’s my brand, it’s my business. So I had very tight control over the content every step of the way too. But yeah, it’s a massive undertaking.

TINA: 

Yeah, it is. Naivety is a really beautiful gift. I had a session with my psychologist the other day and he’s like, you’ve got to watch for informed pessimism, which I hadn’t heard of before. And I was like, oh, because I go, whenever you do personality tests and things like that, I go optimism off the charts. I’m really high on risk-taking ability and really high on optimism bias. But lately, I’ve felt like I go to do things and I’ve got some of that informed pessimism in going, well, I know if I do that, that’s going to happen and if I do that, that’s going to happen. And so I really miss the days of the beautiful naivety and the bliss that comes with thinking we could do everything.

CLARE:

I still think you’re there.

TINA: 

I’m sure I am compared to some people.

CLARE: 

I feel like maybe there’s like 5% on the end.

TINA: 

Yeah.

CLARE: 

Yeah, I can relate. I can definitely relate. So let’s talk a little bit, because this is something that you did when you wrote One Life, was that you went away, you went to Fiji for, was it a week?

TINA: 

Yeah, I was there for eight days.

CLARE: 

And you wrote a whole book in eight days?

TINA: 

Yes.

CLARE:

Cool.

TINA:

Loved that. Would definitely, if I do another one, that’s the way I would do it.

CLARE: 

So for Million Dollar Micro Business, was it the same or what was the experience?

TINA: 

No, we were in the pandemic, so I couldn’t do it. So I’m big on the energy and the juju of a place, which I know for some people, I’m very influenced by the environment around me, and I am very obsessive also. So I like to go all in on something. It’s why I love launching so much. It’s why I love destination launching so much. When I’m in a mode, I’m so there. So for me, when I started, one of the first courses that I did on writing a business book was Valerie Khoo has the Australian Writers’ Centre, and I did a write a business book course as you do. It’s fabulous. All of her courses are absolutely fabulous. And a lot of the advice is to make it achievable, just at the start of every day before you get into your day write a thousand words, not a chance in hell that was going to work for me because it’s dipping in, dipping out.

I just couldn’t get the flow of it. It just seemed so abstract. It’s the same as I’ve had girlfriends that write great books by piecing together all past podcasts and blog posts and using that. Again, I couldn’t, it just seemed too incohesive to me. So I wanted to go all into it, and I would’ve looked like a psycho to the people in Fiji. I got there and had all of my A4 sheets of paper that I blue-tacked all over the walls and then sat down on the floor with my legs crossed and then put up all my chapter names and then different ideas under each one and then stories under each one and just put it all like that. And then I broke it down to going, all right, there’s this many hours in a day, I know I can write this many words in an hour, so these are my targets that I’m going to go by.

I’m going to fit a massage in there. I’m going to fit a swim in there. I’m going to fit food in there and go. And that was it. I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t do anything other than eat, sleep, massage, write, repeat, which was beautiful. And I was, because of the type of book it was too, it was quite personal. And so there were different parts that I was sitting there on the front with my laptop just as I’m writing, the poor people that were walking past would’ve been like, what is this chick’s deal? But it got it done and I loved it. Whereas with Million Dollar Micro Business, I was like, I’m going to take myself away again. But because we had the pandemic, we were locked into New South Wales, so I rented this little place on Airbnb in Orange, in the middle of the state, and I got there and I was there for a down, just like wasn’t vibing it.

I’m like, this is not, no, this is not right. So I turned around and came home. And then the kids were here and different things, and so it took a lot longer. So it took me about three months to write Million Dollar Micro Business, which frustrated the crap out of me by the end because I’m like, I was so focused on it, but it was too long a project for my level of focus. So I wouldn’t do that to myself again. I would cancel everything, turn everything off, and just devote and go all in.

CLARE: 

I love it. How long do you think it would take you again? Do you think you could do it in eight days again?

TINA: 

Yeah.

CLARE:

 Wow, that is so impressive.

TINA: 

Yeah. Well, it’s just part of our success as entrepreneurs, I think, is knowing ourselves, being aware of how we work and how we get the best out of ourselves. And that is, it’s probably very different to you than it is to me and it’s different to the woman down the road. And there’s so many people listening right now that are like, Tina, that’s not, no, that’s a lot of pressure. But I enjoy a bit of pressure. I quite like the game of it, and I like racing the clock.

And for a lot of people with deadline, it’s the same as live launching, when you launch anything, I love live launching courses. For a lot of people that pressure is debilitating and a lot of pressure. Whereas I get into it and it’s like a game. It’s like, all right, here are our numbers, here are our metrics. This is what we’ve got to do. It’s cause and effect. Here are our targets. Let’s go. So it’s working out what’s right for you. I mean, there’s a lot of people that the best thing for them is the thousand words a day that’s going to work.

CLARE: 

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I love the high of… I’m the same. Give me a deadline, and I love it. I thrive. But for me, I think the thought of being on my own for a week, we were actually talking about this just off-air, because I’m an extrovert, I’m one of those people that I would go and strike up a conversation with a receptionist, I just couldn’t be like that in my own space and energy, if that makes sense? And I know that this is, it’s something like whenever I go away, I just want to meet people and I want to chat to, and I get such FOMO. I’m like, I wonder what’s happening down at the swimming pool, maybe I should just go for a quick walk past. And I love that you’ve kind of highlighted it’s about knowing yourself and knowing what you’re like. And I’m still figuring it out. I’m seven years into business and I’m still sometimes going, that does not work for me. I need to find a different way of working with my energy and how I flow.

TINA:

 Yeah, totally. And we live unconventional lives, and I think that’s one of the best parts and also the hardest parts of running a business now is we don’t have to make our businesses look like traditional businesses and we don’t have to work in a traditional way. And so it’s letting that go, but then going, what are the alternatives? And am I okay with that? Do I want to operate like that? Yeah, I love it.

CLARE:

 Yeah, and everyone’s got to figure out their own way and flow. I know someone said to me when I went away and they’re like, how come you’re on Instagram all the time? And I’m like, I’m not even thinking, just it’s so natural for me to be…

TINA: 

Yeah, it’s 10 minutes.

CLARE: 

To be sharing and posting that I’m not even, I don’t feel like I’m working. I just feel like I’m [inaudible].

TINA: 

Yeah. I remember talking to you last year and you going, so you go away on your own by yourself? Yeah, my favorite parts are walking through a busy place, like Miami or LA or the streets of New York, all by myself and not talking to another human, but just observing and being in the environment, but just being alone in that environment. I love it.

CLARE: 

And see, this is interesting because I’ve traveled a lot as well, and I have traveled a lot on my own, but I’m never really on my own. I would go places, the first day I’d go to a hostel or a hotel and I’d meet someone and I’d be like, Hey, what are you doing? Should we hang out? And I met people I would then travel with for three weeks and be with them 24/7, a complete stranger. And I have all these friends from all around the world, and it was so rare that I ever spent even a few hours on my own. And I guess, that’s the extrovert energy is that I kind of-

TINA:

I can spend four, five days and not have a conversation with another human. Love it.

CLARE:

That’s so interesting. And even my husband’s the same. I was actually talking to my friend, Steph, about this because I said, “Oh, the only thing about this place, it’s a little bit boutiquey.” And I’m like, “We wouldn’t really meet anyone.” And she’s like, “Why would you want to meet someone?” I’m like, “My husband and I always meet people on holiday. We meet other couples and then we go out for dinner with them.” And she’s like, “On your family holiday?” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s the best part.” And she was like, “That’s my idea of hell.”

TINA: 

Yes. I’m with her.

CLARE: 

Anyway, here we are getting off track again. So the process of writing the book was very different, obviously, for you and for me, and it was very different for you in each of your books. Let’s talk about the editing process because I don’t know about you, but I got to the end of my book and I swear I spent more time editing it than I spent writing it.

TINA: 

And I think it’s hard for us because we’re creatives as well, that once you’ve done the first part, there was definitely a part for me that I was like, no, I’m done with that now. I’m done. And they send things back and I’m like, no, I’m done. And I had a great editor. I had a great editor both times, but because One Life was self-published, I had personally hired the editor, whereas Million Dollar Micro Business was through a publisher, so they had the editor. And the editor on Million Dollar Micro Business was super serious dude, lovely, but super serious dude. And he would change some sentences that I’m going, no, that’s not, those words would never come out of my mouth. I can’t have that.

He’s like, yeah, but it’s grammatically correct and it does all. So we had to push back on a lot of things in going, well, I’m okay for it not to be super perfect English but have it sound like me. So the editing process was, it was only hard because I was done with it. But also, and I was going to say not to show off, but no, we’re owning our awesome right now, aren’t we? So I got third in the state in high school English. I, very good at writing and doing all that, and I love it. So there actually wasn’t much editing, especially, in One Life. One Life was surprisingly, because I smashed it out so quick, was surprisingly pretty good.

CLARE: 

There you go. Well, see, for me, I am a grammar, punctuation, spelling Nazi. And I kept reading the book, so I had it written by a ghost writer. I then had it edited by the ghost writer and then had it edited by my publisher, and I then went over it again and again and again. And I am still finding, I found a mistake in there this week and it makes me feel sick. I’m like, people are going to think that-

TINA: 

I have actually never read a book, I’m looking at the moment at my bookshelves and I have a buck a ton of books, and I’ve never read one without a mistake in it. For me, it was when I did the audiobook and I was reading the work, because you know how carefully you have to read when you do the audiobook, and I read it and I’m like, oh, fuck, you’re kidding. How did it? How many times did we read it before it went through? How many friends did I have read it? How many, and how did no one see this? But things fall through, so that’s okay. It’s okay, Clare.

CLARE: 

There’s a biggie in there. And I contacted the publisher and said, we need to send. And she’s like, but all of the original copies are going to have that in there. And I’m like, I’m mortified. I’m going to try not to put it out there too much. But yeah, she has a short name, but-

TINA: 

I would make a game out of it. Don’t tell people what it is. Have a treasure hunt, see if you can find it. Intentional grammar mistake.

CLARE: 

I love it. Here she’s giving me tips again. Well, I have been assured that it’s very normal to have this happen no matter how you. But I know, I actually reached out to you on Instagram that day where I think you might have replied to a story of mine. And I was like, I am going to sob myself to sleep, because there were just mistakes that I was finding, the edit we had a cutoff deadline. I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel and I’m like frantically crossing it out, and my husband’s driving me to school pickup and I’ve got the laptop and I’m hotspotting off my phone trying to do this last edit to hit the deadline. And it was just so incredibly stressful. I was so over it. I was the same. I was just like, I don’t care anymore, but also I still do, so.

TINA: 

Everyone I know that’s written a book has got to that stage where they’re like, I do not care. Take it away from me. I am done.

CLARE: 

Yes. And then still, when I then see something, I’m like, why didn’t I pick that up? Okay. So let’s talk about another, the challenging side of writing a book, which was cost for me. So let’s talk a little bit about, did you have a different experience because obviously you had one that was published and one that was self-published. Let’s talk about the cost side of writing a book.

TINA: 

Yeah. So when I self-published, I still remember the number was about 62,000. I have a spreadsheet somewhere, and I did a podcast episode on it that I put out all of those, but it was in 2019, so I’d have to dig it up. But yeah, it cost me about 60K to publish it. So it’s a massive investment when I did it self-published, and that was like I had a book, what do you call them? Consultant that helped me with distribution, finding a distributor, getting the cover organized, type setting, pulling it all together with her knowledge, who was absolutely fantastic. Linda Diggle, if anyone needs one, she’s grade A. And then it was the printing of the books and then supplying all the distribution and all of the marketing materials and everything else.

A lot of my cost was, I did a book tour after that, I went to eight or nine cities, and that’s obviously, I think that was about 20, 25K was the cost in that. And then the flip side though was when I published, you get paid. You don’t pay anything to do that. But if you look at just on a, if I look at the book alone, I made more money off One Life than I did off Million Dollar Micro Business just on the book alone. But because Million Dollar Micro Business led into online courses, we’ve made multiple six figures off the courses that come after. So that was why I chose publishing for Million Dollar Micro Business was for distribution, because it didn’t matter how, like I got my hustle on with One Life, but I couldn’t get it into a lot of the majors.

I couldn’t get it into airports. I couldn’t get the US to pick it up. There was a lot of different things that I just didn’t have the clout as a self-published author. Whereas with the publishing house, they just did all of that. I was like, these are the things that I need. So distribution was the goal, whereas for One Life distribution wasn’t the goal. It was just like, I just wanted a book out in the world. I just wanted to be able to do that. Whereas with the second one, it was like, I want as many people as possible to have this in their hot little hands. Don’t care if I don’t make any money. Just want the distribution.

CLARE:

Interesting. And that’s really important too, to have, what is the intention? Intentional profit. What is the intention behind this? And when I ran my ROI calculation on my book, it was never, I think it’s extremely unlikely that I will recover the cost of my investment through the book sales. However, my book has a really clear funnel into my course. And when I run the numbers of how many of my courses or how many private coaching clients I’d need to sign to make it at least a break-even point, it’s a bit of a no-brainer, so.

TINA: 

And there’s many things though, I’m just going to challenge you on that, Clare, because there’s many ways you can sell books that people don’t think of. So this Christmas already coming into the year, you should be hitting up everybody that services businesswomen to bulk buy it for Christmas presents, just that will take all of the stock out of your garage. There’s so many subscription box places. We had our books in a few different subscription box places because my goal was, one, to get it in as many hands as possible, two, to not be left with books in my wardrobe forevermore. And you get with my publishing deal, with One Life we printed 5,000 copies, with Million Dollar Micro Business I think they printed 10,000 copies, but a thousand of them I got, but I couldn’t sell any of them because they were in all the bookstores.

So I was like, I didn’t want to cannibalize bookstore sales by selling them to my network myself. I needed them to buy them at bookstores to get the book ranking up. So it was, what am I going to do with all these books? So I had to get really creative in, okay, this is how we can shift them out of here. So I’ll give you a few different things on that later.

CLARE: 

I love this. Look, Tina is such a whiz at all things marketing, as I’m sure you’re gathering. And actually that was something that I wanted to mention. You’ve got this amazing course that I did, which is about how to market your book. It’s the actual marketing plan that I have used for planning out my entire book. So I will definitely, I’ll link to the podcast episode that you mentioned earlier, because I listened to that one many moons ago. And I will also link to your book marketing course and of course the books that you’ve mentioned, because it was really transformational for me. The, inverted commas, marketing plan that I was given by my publishers was not exactly the way that I would go about marketing.

TINA: 

Yes. Well, even with, my publishers are business book publishers. I used Wiley, who are really renowned, have a great reputation, and they did a fabulous job at what they were supposed to do. But you have a marketing point person of different things. And we had this meeting, which was such a moment for me because I was so excited going into it. The marketing part is my favorite part. So I had written the book, it’s all there. I’m like, oh my gosh. The first time I had to do it all myself. Now I’ve got a marketing team. This is going to be so profess and so incredible, and what are the ideas they’re going to come up with? We’re going to have collaborations, and joint ventures, it’s going to be amazing.

So I come in fully pumped, I’ve got slides ready, I’ve got all different ideas. I come in and there’s literally a board table with six people sitting around it. And I’m like, all right, what have we got? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it all. And they’re like, well, we can give you a stock of a thousand bookmarks, and we’ve got some postcards. I’m like, what else have we got? And they’re like, doing a couple of podcasts would be a good idea. I’m like, no, shit. I’m like, what? And then I got really disappointed, and they won’t mind me saying this, but I’m like, yeah, I know more about book marketing than you do. How is that even possible? But it’s because we’re so invested in the success of it. And publishing is an old industry and it is a wrap for a big shake up of different things.

But also one thing that they were really clear about earlier was they’re not a marketing house, they’re a publishing house. And so I think a really common misconception for people is if a publisher picks up your book that you’re going to be able to write it, send it to them, and just sit back and the job is done. But everyone that I know, even through big publishing houses like Penguin and Hay House and doing all of that, if you as the author, don’t push that book yourself, it’s going to die and you just won’t get any traction. So it’s very much still dependent on us as the authors in how the book performs, which I was under a little bit of a false thing in going. I still hired my own media person, I had Scott, who you’ve got as well, who’s just so amazing. And he got me into so many different, he got me on the Today Show and in all the magazines and in all the newspapers and everywhere. I was everywhere within that three week kind of period. But all of that was off my effort.

CLARE: 

Yeah, and investment as well.

TINA: 

Yeah.

CLARE: 

And I think that that’s the other thing that people maybe don’t realize is that, and I know that the first time you invested in PR and it didn’t hit the mark, and again, there’s no guarantees with this. Even with Scott, he said to me, look, there’s absolutely no guarantees that you will get any media coverage. It depends on how it resonates, how it hits the market, if people want to share the story and publish the story. So yeah, it’s another big investment. And again, something that you did that I was really such a big believer in, because halfway through writing my book, I was in a major car accident.

I was seriously physically debilitated for an extended period of time. And because that obviously had a knock on effect to my business, I’m like, do I scale this back? And I was like, no, I do not. I seriously tossed up maybe not going down the PR route, but I thought for everything that I’ve put into this book so far, I really want to give it its best possible chance of getting in as many hands as possible, like you shared and you spoke about.

TINA: 

Yes. And you’ve got such a short window for it too. Once the book is even a month old, it’s kind of like your ship sailed. You can’t call someone and go, so I had this book come out a few months ago, can I be… It’s old news now. It’s gone. So you’ve got, it’s so pressure cooker in terms of you’ve got your pre-sale period, then you’ve got launch, and then you’ve got three to four weeks, and then your 15 minutes is over. So you’ve got to milk it.

CLARE: 

Yes, got to milk it. And I think, and I’m sure you had this experience as well, I’ve been absolutely blown away by the support of my community. And even people, I had a friend of mine, she has nothing to do with business, and she’s like, I can’t wait for my copy. She wrote this on one of the posts on my personal Facebook page, and I went back and I said, did you really buy a copy? And she’s like, of course I did. I love to support. And I was like, what? Oh, that is so amazing. I’ve had friends of mine, again, who aren’t business owners, who are saying, when’s the book tour? I can’t wait to be there and support you. And everyone in the business community has just been so freaking amazing, sharing, getting it out there, and I’m only just getting started in the process and on the journey. So there’s so much to be grateful for as well.

TINA: 

Yeah. And there’s something magical about a book, I find, we put out a new course, no one’s going to put out a ticker-tape parade for us, even though I’m like some of my courses kind of deserve a ticker-tape parade. There’s some of my best work here guys. But you do a book because there’s something so traditional about a book and because a lot of people dream of writing a book, but the actual fear around putting something, because I mean, if something goes like tech gets updated or we change our mind for something in our online course, we can just go in and rerecord that module, whereas once a book is there, this is it forever, solidified. You can never change anything like it is there. And there’s something a bit scary about that that stops a lot of people from doing it.

But when it comes, it’s just I find, one, the media takes it, we could never get in the media for the release like the launch of a course, but we can for the launch of a book. So it’s such a different thing. And people coming out in full force of support of that, I think, is one of the most beautiful things. I shed so many tears over the support of people that I didn’t even, like people that came out of the woodwork, and I’m going, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And one of my favorite things was I did in the launch week, a competition for people to selfie with the book. I wanted to do a shelfie, but we were right in the middle of lockdowns, and so they locked everything down and no one could go into their local bookstore and do a shelfie competition.

So we did a selfie competition with the book, and it’s still one of my favorite things. I have it framed, over there is a collage of everybody holding up my book. And it was just, it’s such a thing that you’ve gone through to put that effort into there that I really think that only people that have written a book know how much you’ve sacrificed to go in there, but it’s so beautiful the level of support that comes out. And it is people’s support that does make or break the book. Everyone deserves a big hug and thank you.

CLARE: 

Yes, I know. I’m so incredibly grateful. And to everyone that has shared it all, like people saying to me, I bought a copy for a friend of mine or a client of mine. It’s just been absolutely beautiful. So we’ve spoken a lot about the struggles, which is funny because I think you and I are two such optimistic people, but we’re giving you a big dip into the reality that is writing a book. But the flip side of that is there’s a lot of amazing stuff that happens when you write a book and get it out there. We just spoke about one of them, which is the community, the uplifting, the celebration that happens. What’s some other things? I’m only just at the start of this, so share with me some of the amazing things. If people are listening and thinking, oh, it’s all too hard, why should they still go and write their book?

TINA: 

Well, one, I think it’s a really beautiful thing to have in the world. A book is so accessible. For 20 bucks, 30 bucks, you can have someone’s top IP that they’ve got, which I think is just lovely. And I learned so much from books when I was coming up through the business world that I wanted to put my stamp back into that what goes around comes around kind of pool. So I think that is a nice thing. But if we’re looking at it very pragmatically, the amount of doors that a book opens because your credibility shoots through the roof. So there were different things of, a practical example, so Kajabi is the software that I use, and all my tech demonstrations are all on Kajabi. So people that are running memberships around Kajabi and for Kajabi and all of that sort of thing.

There’s so many of them that how do you differentiate between different people? As soon as I wrote the book though, because it was talking about Kajabi, then into Kajabi head office, I get invited. Then I’m having different conversations with their marketing managers and their CEO and all their different people. And I’m like, this is purely because I wrote the book. And so then they got me running a training for them. And even people that I wanted to have on my podcast that never would have known who I was or said yes. But then, because a lot of the high level people that I want to have on the podcast, I get people that I know to introduce me so that we can one degree of separation around it.

And all of them, what I found interesting was the first thing all of them said was, she’s a bestselling author. So it’s like that automatically is she’s not just someone that’s just woken up one day and gone, I’m just going to have a crack at this, see if it work. I’m taking business seriously. I’m taking this whole thing seriously. And so it opens so many doors. You can now, you’ve just gone up in the credibility stakes, Clare.

CLARE: 

Oh, I hope so.

TINA: 

Yeah.

CLARE: 

Yay.

TINA: 

Not only do you talk about intentional profit, you’ve written a book about it.

CLARE: 

So it’s about credibility, it’s about connection, it’s about… I love that as well, it was honestly one of the big things for me because I remember I had someone reach out to me, because I used to have a low cost membership and someone once contacted me and said, is there a cheaper way that I can work with you? And I looked at my service offering and I was like, no. Literally, I’m sorry, but it’s my entry point is my courses, which are a couple of thousand dollars. And it sort of just goes up from there. And in some respects, I know my niche, I know my place in the market, but I also have always wanted to have something that I can say to people, hey, here’s something that you can go, go and do this and it will help you to step into your next level of growth and then we can work together in one of my programs or whatnot. So it really is an accessibility thing as well.

TINA: 

Yeah, I think so. And it really does, it solidifies your thought leadership too. To put it in a book, people can know you, they know what you’re about. They can read that and go, do I want to work with you? Yes or no, in a really easy sort of way. And so many people that I had admired had written books that I was like, if I want to be them, I got to get that book out there. I’ve got to be brave enough and bold enough to stand by what I believe in and go, this is it, and print forever more like this is it.

CLARE: 

I love that. So if people are listening and sitting on the fence about writing a book, what would your advice be to them?

TINA: 

I think it’s a hundred percent worth it. I do think everyone’s got a book in them, and especially if you’re a course creator, it’s so good as part of that commercial ecosystem. But you do have to be ready, and I think having the strategy beforehand will make it pay off. Because even like you said, you’ve got a big investment for the book, but it will lead into the flow on for courses later and expanding that market in there. And I see too many people, same with keynote speakers, either write a book or do speeches that have nothing for people to do next. And it’s not a wasted opportunity, but it’s just not taking advantage of it as much as you can. So I would say that, I would also say it takes so much more time and energy than what we anticipate. So block out a good chunk of time like you’ve got.

So I think a good month of planning, writing. And then the hardest part, I thought when I wrote my first book, I’ve done the hard part now, the hard part for me was, the most effort came in the marketing of it and going the amount of energy output that came from that, which was all worth it because I gave that book baby its best chance of survival, and then back yourself. So one thing that I haven’t touched on yet, which if I’m going too far, let me know? But I wanted to be in the US also, so I wanted to expand the market in there. And there’s not many, most female course creators in Australia I think would’ve heard my name somewhere or other, but nobody knows who I am in America, so how can I try and change that? And a book was the easiest way to do that quickly.

And so I wanted to get picked up by the airports there. So when I was going through all of the research stage of it, I’m going like, how do you even get in there? Anyway, you buy it, which I did not know. So many different things. You want to get on bestseller lists, you want to get in different, here’s our pick of the month, our staff choice. It’s all bought. I didn’t know that. So I got my price list and I picked my spot and I went there. So then I was in 600 of US airports all at the one time. So what that did was so many people were taking photos and tagging it on Instagram and all getting shared and it just elevated so much. But if I hadn’t been willing to back myself or been prepared, because I got prepared for that investment 12 months earlier.

So I’d start budgeting for it and preparing for it, and I knew that that was my experimentation amount. I didn’t know whether it would work or not because the hard thing on books is the bookstores and everyone can take your books, but they don’t buy them when they take them. If their books don’t through sell, they return them to the publisher. So there was that of going, well, they could stock them, I’ve paid for them to be stocked, but if no one picks that book up, it’s all gone. And so I had to really back myself through that. And then also I found out that they can’t return signed books. So I went on this bookstore tour, I got the spreadsheet of all of the bookstores, and I went to as many bookstores as I could to sign the books so they couldn’t return them.

CLARE: 

Ah, that’s a good little tip.

TINA: 

Yeah. And you go into the bookstore and they’re like, oh my God, you’re the author. I’m like, I know, do you want me to sign your books? And they’re like, yeah. And then they put the books at the front of the store and then, of course, they sell and they order more. So a lot of people, I was talking to friends about it, and they’re going, Tina, you get two bucks a book, did you really care? And for me, every little thing was worth it. I did all the things. If I thought it would help the book, because I do think one thing leads to another thing which leads to another thing and just sends that message to the universe of I am willing to put in the effort and to back that. And then that’s what made it successful. And I don’t really know, was it the 72 podcast episodes that came out that month? Was it the media? Was it being in the US? Was it everything combined? I don’t know exactly. So next time I’ll just do everything again.

CLARE: 

And that’s the thing with anything in marketing, right? With launching a course or anything like that, it’s like, would it matter if you’re not on your Instagram stories all the time? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s all part of the process. And I was chatting to a business friend about that the other day because we have a friend of ours is not on Instagram. She’s like, it doesn’t make a difference. And I’m like, it makes all the difference for me, and it makes all the difference in my marketing choices as well. I feel like I build relationships with people that I follow online. So everyone’s got a different take. And again, it really is just figuring out what works best for you.

TINA: 

Yeah, I think you can, same with books, same with courses, you can buy it or you can do the personal input of it. So you don’t have to be personally on Instagram, but then what replaces that? You’ve got to buy a bucket ton of traffic. And so it’s one or the other. Pick your poison.

CLARE: 

A hundred percent. This always happens when I feel like I could talk to you for another two hours, but I’m really conscious about the time of this podcast. What I’ll do, I’ll put all of your links in the show notes for today’s episode to go back and listen to that episode of yours, to go and grab copies of your books, to go and check out you on social media and your website and all of the things. It’s been such a pleasure chatting to you again, Tina, and thank you so much for your time.

TINA: 

You too. Congratulations.

CLARE: 

Thank you so much. I hope you are feeling inspired and excited about what is possible for you when it comes to money. It takes a lot of time and energy to create a podcast. So I’d be very grateful if you could take the time to hit subscribe, write me a review, and share any of your favorite episodes with your audience on social media. The more people that we can reach, the more people we can empower to earn more in their business because you can and should be earning more money.