How Founders Build Authority and Clients | 069

A profit doesn't happen by chance. It happens by design. Let's dig in. Today's episode is going to be something that you want to read about over and over and over. Today's guest is Karen Straus. She is amazing, and I'm so excited to have her on my podcast today. Hey, Karen.

Hello Sharon. Nice to be here.

Thank you so much. I'll tell you in a minute why I'm so excited to have Karen, but let me tell you about her officially. Karen has worked with celebrities such as President Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Stewart, Martha Stewart, George F will and ag mandino. Og mandino in 2010 Karen founded

hybrid global publishing, a firm that works with entrepreneurs, speakers and coaches to help them write, publish and promote their books in order to generate unlimited leads, get on more speaking stages, and grow their businesses by attracting more clients. Welcome Karen,

thank you,

and I'm so excited that Karen is here because actually have been published, or Karen has published my work. This is called visibility success stories from leaders making an impact from the stage volume five. And I am a featured author in this publication, so I've

actually worked with Karen and her team putting together a book as as one of the authors. It wasn't my book alone. She does a lot of really cool compilation books, and we can jump into that later if that comes up. And Karen, thank you so much for being here. I have known about you and known you for a while,

and you have a quite a lengthy resume, not just the famous people that you've worked with, but all a lot of the people that I know, a lot of the coaches and business owners that are using books to further their business, to further their reach and their influence. So talk a little bit about like, what's your favorite

kind of of author to work with?

Oh, I'm not supposed to play favorites, however.

I'm sorry, a preferred avatar my

ideal, right, my ideal client would be the kinds of people that we like to work with. Are people who understand that they've been in business a while, maybe they're making close to at least close to six figures and more, and really understand that a book can be it absolutely improves their

business, it can elevate their business, elevate their authority and credibility. So we love working with coaches and entrepreneurs and speakers. We really love working with speakers because they understand that having a book makes it easier for them to get on stages, the event planners and

people who are booking speakers, if you have a book to show them, their work is done, right? They don't have to go on social media. They don't have to go, you know, searching if to see if you've got credibility. They have this book in front of them, and so they know you're the real deal. So they speakers really

understand the necessity of having a book to show.

One of the things that I love about someone having a book is I can say, Oh, this is so and so, and they're an expert on this. They wrote the book on it, so it just, it's an authority piece. It's, it is social proof. It's all the things that you want to have behind your name when you are a

published author.

It really is. It's the most the most amazing thing to me, even after 40 years in this business, is as authors, who always tell me, you know, after I wrote this book, people come up and look at me differently. I'm standing on stage and it's like, Oh, can you sign my book? Or, you know, oh

my gosh, you're the author of and it's kind of like they gush over them like they are, so they feel like a celebrity. And it's true, and I haven't seen any other medium that really gives you that gravitas and that impact so quickly.

Yeah, I agree with that. When you say you're a podcast host, that gets you very popular, but it's but in terms of that gravitas, the authors still hold that place exclusively.

I think so. Yeah,

so whenever, why would a business owner other than authority being the person who wrote? The Book, book on it, like, what is that, that piece that the book can give them and and why will why should they look into the avenue of, I'm a published author,

so that's a great question, because there's a lot of ways that you can monetize your book. So it's not just about how many copies of the book can I sell. It's really about, how do you repurpose your content so that, for instance, we have a number of people who they write this book, then they

put together a workbook, then they put together a course, then within the course, and within this bundle, they sell it as a bundle. And then they offer five one on one coaching sessions with me, the author. I mean, the, yeah, the the author or the coach. And so it goes from a $20 product to a $2,000 product,

right? So that, you know, developing the course. And what is, you know, what is, what is the the ROI? So the ROI is really, how many new clients can I get from my book? So one of the most popular ways of doing it is you go, you go speak somewhere, and everybody has some kind of a lead magnet or a

free gift or something like that. And a lot of our authors will say, well, download this free download a chapter of my book. We're starting to get into download the audio. Download a chapter in audio of my book, because people love to listen to it as well, and I think it's a cool marketing tool. And so what

happens is they have to give you their email, possibly their phone number, and then you follow up and say, I see that you've downloaded my book. I'm wondering what you thought. Blah, blah, blah. I'd love to, you know, chat with you some more, and you invite them to a call with you. And so again, the

ROI is saying, how many new clients do I need to to bring on to to make up for what I've invested in my book? And so usually it's two clients. And I always say that if you can't, if you don't think that you can add on two clients from this book, maybe you should think about a new business, you know, because

we

all can add on one or two clients. So yeah, so the ROI is actually pretty easy if you know how to do it.

Yes, right? It's what I hearing you're saying is that that writing the book is not the last step, which is a lot of times people think that's that's it, that's the last I write the book, and then everything will happen from there. But what you're saying is, have the strategy going in

as to, what are you going to do with that book once it's written?

That's exactly right, and it's it always is amazing to me that that the writers think, that the authors think that, okay, I've written the book, the hard part's done. The hard part has just begun, because now you've got to market your book and become visible and get on podcasts like yours. Get

on a lot of them. Get on radio shows. Get on, you know, develop one or two social media platforms, get a YouTube channel, do video. I mean, video is a very big thing if you, if you're running a non fiction book, you know, develop your YouTube channel and and, and create these two minute video

tips, right? And every day, just bring out a new tip, a new tip. And so people, it's really about the consistency of people seeing you kind of everywhere. And then you've got this book that's your anchor and your, you know, your, your important you know, the the piece that makes you the authority in your niche.

I love that. And talk to me a little bit about the thought of somebody that might go, oh, well, that's a great idea. And and I would get, you know, I could definitely get value out of it. But I'm not an odd writer. I'm not an author. What? But, you know, I think this is a good

idea. What kind of thing do you? What would you say to someone like that?

We get that a lot, and so writing really is about people are afraid because they say they're not a writer. But we all have our story. We all have our unique story to tell. And every single book, whether it's fiction, non fiction, business books, whatever, whatever, self help,

personal development, it's about story and tell storytelling people, people pretty much never remember what you say. But. They certainly remember how they feel when you said it. So when you're telling some personal stories that only you can tell because it only happened to you, people feel close to you. People

resonate with you. And when they resonate with you, they feel a certain way, and then they're going to want to get in touch with you, so that's really the key to it. And I pretty much you don't have to be a writer, because that's what editors are for. So what we want is your authentic voice and your

authentic stories, and then we can help you piece it together so that you sound like an elevated you, right, but

yeah,

still in your language, yeah,

yeah. And that like is such a freeing thing that it's not your job necessarily to to write the things that that you carrying you and your team. You come in and support those things. You tell we we tell the story. You come back and go, Okay, you know, adjust it this way or

whatever, and really enable everyone to have a book. Because, like you said, everyone has stories, and those stories are people are waiting to hear those stories.

They're called,

yeah,

when they connect with that, they connect with you, and that means that you are increasing your influence and increasing your business

Exactly, right? That's right.

Yeah. So Karen, really quickly, I wanted to touch on the collaboration books before we run out of time. So because I did mention that, so this book that I'm in, it's not just me, it is me with a bunch of other, right, other authors. So talk a little bit about a collaboration book and what that

means.

We love doing collaboration books, so let's think of it this way. It works for both being in a collaboration book and if you want to host your own collaboration book. So let's talk about being in a collaboration book. So what's in it for you? First of all, then

you have and you experienced it, Sharon, right? You had 25 or 30 other people, and we would meet every month and do a little training around Amazon Best Sellers or social media how to monetize your book, you know, all of those things. And during that time, during the writing process and during the meetings,

part of it, you would get to know your fellow contributors, and then we would talk about a little bit about collaboration joint ventures. So you would meet up with a few other people and say, Hey, why don't we do a Facebook Live together? Why don't we do a LinkedIn live Why don't we do a podcast all

together, you know, and talk about, you know, my story and how, you know, how did it come how did it come about? But there are a lot of things we can do together, and when we promoted the books together, the power of 30 people. Let's say we only have 2000 friends amongst you. Know our social media platform,

that's 60,000 people that may not have been exposed to you and your work, that's an extraordinary you couldn't buy that amount of air time, you know. And so if we're all promoting this together and helping each other get to number one on the bestseller list, which we did on in multiple

categories, we're all helping each other, right? And that's what I love about the collaboration and how many friends you might make. And, you know, master classes maybe you get to do together, all to kind of partner together to help our businesses grow. And so that's what I love about about being in

a collaboration book. And if you're hosting a collaboration book, the revenue can be fairly extraordinary. So let's say, I mean, the book you were in, I think, was gifted to certain people, right in the mastermind, highest level mastermind. But there are a lot of people who sell their the their

collaboration books, and so they normally sell it for somewhere around 1500 $2,000 a person. Let's say I might sell, I might sell a collaboration book for you as a host for $10,000 all in, okay, you get 30 people all paying $2,000 that $60,000 of revenue, I charge you 10, that means $50,000 goes into your

pocket. So if you, if you run a mastermind, you run a Facebook group, you run, you know. Uh, if you have a following of any sort, you know, it's, it's an it's, yes, it's revenue, but it's also creating something where the brand that you have, the people, are resonating with, you know, they're resonating

with your brand, and it elevates your brand as well.

Yeah, awesome, Karen. You have a gift for our odd our listeners. Can you tell us about that?

Yes, it's called Karen's million dollar Rolodex, and it's, yes, it's my 40 years, of my people, my resources, either website designer, a business coach, a book coach, any kind of editor that you might need, a cover designer. It's a big like reference document that comes from me with

hyperlinks and so on and so forth. And it's my free gift to your people,

awesome. Well, what we're going to do with that gift, Karen is we're going to put it into our portal. It is called profit connectors dot club. That's profit connect tours. Dot c, l, u, B, and it's free to join. All you need to do is go in there and you can get access to Karen's information,

her free gift. In addition, there's all the podcasts that we've ever done in profit connections podcast, and the gifts from those folks as well. So go ahead and go to profit connectors, dot club and grab Karen's million dollar Rolodex. And thank you so much, Karen for being here. It was an absolute

delight.

Thank you, Sharon, it was an honor.

Thank you so much. And remember build with clarity and lead with purpose. Thanks for being here, and I'll see you next time

you.