The Entrepreneurial Author: Writing Books that Sell Your Services

[00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur with me, your host, Jim James.

[00:00:05] Now if you have thought about writing a book and you've got over the anxiety of what you'd

[00:00:10] write but then you're thinking, what's the ROI?

[00:00:13] What's the return on investment of spending all those hours and often writing down

[00:00:17] things that you charge clients for, right?

[00:00:19] So you're giving your value away.

[00:00:21] Well we all know that having a book positions you as an authority, but how do you make

[00:00:26] it profitable?

[00:00:27] My guest today is Chris Bonetti.

[00:00:30] He's based in Perth and he has a company called Smart Author and he helps business owners to

[00:00:36] write books and to make it a very profitable enterprise.

[00:00:40] Chris Bonetti, welcome to the show.

[00:00:41] Thanks for having me Jim, it's a pleasure.

[00:00:43] Well it's a pleasure to have you because it is a fundamental problem.

[00:00:48] We're all told that we should have a book and as you know I have The UnNoticed

[00:00:51] Entrepreneur on to volume three but it's a lot of work and frankly we don't make

[00:00:57] that much money per book sale.

[00:01:00] So how do you help entrepreneurs and business owners generate a revenue from being a

[00:01:07] published author?

[00:01:09] Well in my opinion the secret is actually not within the book itself, it's within

[00:01:17] the whole offer ecosystem.

[00:01:19] So the authors that I work with are primarily entrepreneur authors and that just means

[00:01:27] that they primarily have a business and their book is an asset to help them create

[00:01:36] awareness or you know get noticed on the front end for new people entering

[00:01:41] their world.

[00:01:42] And it's an asset for someone to get a lot of value from them but then also figure

[00:01:50] out how they can work with the author further.

[00:01:53] So whether they're consultants, whether they're coaches or they run masterminds

[00:01:59] or they have software you know whatever the offer is that the book leads to I

[00:02:05] really help to market the front end asset which is the book to create the

[00:02:10] back end clients which is you know the consulting gigs or the mastermind members

[00:02:16] and so on.

[00:02:18] Chris so you see the book as being if you like part of the part of the

[00:02:22] funnel for that business owner and they've maybe what enshrined some of

[00:02:27] their thinking their methodology or their frameworks into that book many

[00:02:31] many people have put a book out there put it on Amazon for example and

[00:02:36] then there's nothing.

[00:02:37] How do you help people to go from having that book on Amazon that does

[00:02:42] offer a lot of value to being as you say a back end sort of a back end system

[00:02:48] and a back end asset.

[00:02:49] How do you take the client of smart author through that process and what

[00:02:55] sort of results are you getting?

[00:02:57] Yeah sure so you know from my perspective there has to be two things.

[00:03:03] It has to be leveraged and scalable.

[00:03:06] You know someone can get a book and they can go into all the manual efforts

[00:03:10] required to market said book.

[00:03:12] They can go and do podcast tours, book signings, they can go and speak

[00:03:17] on stage and you know tell people about their book.

[00:03:20] They can go on their social media and post about it and so on or they

[00:03:25] can let the marketplaces like Amazon or the bookstores or so on be their

[00:03:31] traffic source but it is a very hope and pray strategy in my opinion to do

[00:03:37] so.

[00:03:39] From my perspective the only true way to have leverage and scale is

[00:03:45] leverage means something that I can set up today and it continues to

[00:03:49] work with me work for me without much effort required on my behalf.

[00:03:55] And so leverage and scale to me is advertising essentially.

[00:04:00] So it is less about the time investment that we do because all of those other

[00:04:05] things are time investments and they might not cost much money for you to

[00:04:10] actually do those activities but you're certainly going to spend your time to

[00:04:13] do them.

[00:04:15] With advertising you are trading your time and you're spending money

[00:04:19] instead and that is a much more beneficial scenario in my perspective

[00:04:25] because it not only allows us to turn up the dial and turn down the

[00:04:28] dial when we want to increase the amount of results that we're getting or

[00:04:32] decrease the amount of results we're getting based on what we're spending

[00:04:36] but it also means that we can ultimately always have a source of

[00:04:42] people coming to check out our book whether it's buying the book or

[00:04:45] getting the book for free.

[00:04:48] So you've talked about buying the book and getting the book for free

[00:04:51] on your website at smartauthormedia.com you've got some case studies

[00:04:56] and some results.

[00:04:57] So Chris, why don't you take us through one or two examples that you've got

[00:05:03] so that we can really understand there's a bit of an upfront investment

[00:05:06] as you say in advertising but we've spent a lot of time

[00:05:10] and the opportunity cost of writing that book and publishing

[00:05:12] that book in the first place.

[00:05:14] Can you take us through some case studies to help us to understand

[00:05:19] how that works out in real terms?

[00:05:22] Yeah absolutely.

[00:05:23] My favorite two case studies, we have Nigel Moore who has a package price profit.

[00:05:29] We've been working together for two years now at this point and so

[00:05:34] in two years we're actually giving his book away in exchange for a name

[00:05:37] and an email that's it.

[00:05:41] The cool thing with Nigel is his back end offer and a part of his book funnel is

[00:05:47] his membership that's the next thing after his book.

[00:05:49] So someone gets package price profit that is essentially a short 100 page book

[00:05:55] that is a roadmap to someone being able to package their services better,

[00:06:01] price their services better and ultimately make more profit by doing so.

[00:06:06] But that's only one small part of his niche's pain problem that they experience

[00:06:11] and his membership essentially goes into much more detail around

[00:06:16] all the other things that this niche experiences as managed service providers.

[00:06:23] So for Nigel, 18 months we have close to 5,000 books given away so that's

[00:06:29] 5,000 leads for his business and on the next step after someone downloads

[00:06:34] his book we do what's called a one-time offer and for the one-time offer we actually

[00:06:39] offer a trial to his membership where he gives everything else away

[00:06:44] and the trial is for $7 for 14 days and then it's a $47 recurring subscription after that.

[00:06:53] Now Nigel is incredible because he has so much value and goes so deep,

[00:06:59] he's very product focused so he goes into as much detail and always adds to his

[00:07:05] membership, his community, always provides amazing support and so on.

[00:07:09] So he's actually lucky enough to have retention numbers in the high 90s

[00:07:13] so when someone gets a trial 95 plus percent of people continue on to the membership

[00:07:19] and then 95 plus percent of people stay on as subscribers month after month for him

[00:07:25] and so after spending $77,000 in ad spend in 18 months we have actually generated

[00:07:32] about double the revenue back so nearly $140,000 in revenue.

[00:07:38] Now because it is a recurring offer we have built up over $16,000 in monthly recurring

[00:07:45] revenue so every single month Nigel pays me for my service and then we pay

[00:07:50] for ad spend which is about $6,000 at the moment.

[00:07:54] So $6,000 plus let's just say $3,000 is $9,000 a month and he's making $20,000

[00:08:00] a month pretty much after everything's said and done and then we're adding new subscribers

[00:08:05] every single month as well. We're adding about 10 to 12 a week at the moment.

[00:08:10] That's a wonderful, wonderful case study and in terms of cash flow timing Chris,

[00:08:14] I guess he has had to pay the ad budget in advance of getting the subscription revenue

[00:08:20] just from a timing perspective.

[00:08:22] Yeah so it took us about six months before we started seeing profitability for Nigel

[00:08:28] and that can be reduced based on what your back-end offer is and whether or not you're

[00:08:34] charging for a book. So that leads us nicely to another case study which if you scroll down

[00:08:39] a little bit is George Markoski, our Freedom Through Property.

[00:08:45] Up a little bit so the second one underneath Nigel.

[00:08:49] So after five months working with George we actually opted to sell the book but we did

[00:08:54] what was called a free plus shipping offer. So this means we're sending someone a physical

[00:08:59] book in the mail and we're giving the book away for free and then we're just charging

[00:09:04] shipping and handling costs. So typically that's like $9 or $10 to handle the fulfillment

[00:09:11] costs and the book is free. So through that process when we start charging for books we can

[00:09:19] do other things within the sales funnel called one-time offers and order bumps.

[00:09:27] So when someone buys George's book or gets it for free plus shipping we can actually go,

[00:09:32] hey do you want the audio book as well? And then that's a bump that we can do onto the order.

[00:09:37] So we can get them to add a $27 increase to their purchase and then on the next page in

[00:09:44] the funnel we can actually say, hey we've actually run this challenge that goes in detail

[00:09:50] for the strategies outlined in the books but you can actually get Q&A, feedback, further support

[00:09:57] and so on and it's $97. And so that actually we have about 10% of people take that offer

[00:10:03] as well. And then finally we lead people towards a strategy session to book in with

[00:10:10] someone on his sales team to get a customized plan for what they can do to implement his

[00:10:16] property portfolio building strategies. And that essentially allows them to sell someone onto a

[00:10:23] mastermind or something like a coaching program on the back end of the book.

[00:10:26] And so for George, five months we sold around 110 books per month which isn't heaps right?

[00:10:35] We spent about $16,000 in ad spend and we generated almost $70,000 in revenue and that

[00:10:42] was basically from the book buyers we had about 1% of people who bought the book

[00:10:47] wanted to work with him in his coaching program on the back end. So it's really easy to make

[00:10:52] up those numbers from there and get a tremendous return on investment.

[00:10:55] Richard Lyle Yeah, well thank you for such detailed explanation as well of the

[00:11:00] customer journey and the offers that the authors have created. And presumably then does this

[00:11:08] work for a particular kind of client for you at Smart Author Media then Chris?

[00:11:16] Or can it work for everybody? Chris Yeah, so primarily it is people who have

[00:11:22] higher price I would say. So people who have offers that are above $5,000 or more on the

[00:11:27] back end or as a core business service I should say. So if someone's a consultant and

[00:11:34] they charge $5,000 for a consulting package maybe it's hours, it might be a retainer based offer.

[00:11:43] That works well if someone has a coaching program that's a little bit higher priced

[00:11:47] on the back end it's maybe a three month coaching program or 12 months coaching program

[00:11:51] and they're charging five or 10 grand for that. That is a really epic fit.

[00:11:57] And just people like that so essentially anyone who has back end offers that are higher

[00:12:03] price or high ticket offers a book is a tremendous lead generation asset because

[00:12:10] of the level of consumption that someone's going to spend with you. So I truly believe that

[00:12:17] consumption and it's tied towards how much someone will pay you at the end of the day.

[00:12:22] So if someone's spending a lot of time reading your book, understanding your methodologies,

[00:12:26] your fundamentals they're likely going to be more invested to working with you versus

[00:12:30] someone who they haven't read a book from. And so that tremendously not only increases your

[00:12:36] authority as an author but it also increases the potential for someone to see you as a viable

[00:12:43] provider for a problem that they're having right now versus them watching a YouTube video

[00:12:49] on the same thing and then working with that person as an example.

[00:12:52] Yeah, it's really, really interesting to see the role that the book can play and how you've

[00:12:56] parlayed that as both sales and the free plus shipping which is that's a smart way of doing it.

[00:13:03] And you're based in Perth, does this translate globally then Chris? I mean are your author

[00:13:11] clients all based in Australia or is it something that you can do for example with

[00:13:17] the shipping? Do you work for example on Amazon and you can offset the cost of the

[00:13:23] shipping and so on? How does that work? Yeah, so funnily enough the two examples I

[00:13:30] gave were Australian clients but primarily 90% of my clients are US based. And so most of my

[00:13:37] marketing is done over in the States and we do have the caveat for Scott Alford

[00:13:46] which is another one down the nuclear effect. We marketed Australia, New Zealand, Canada,

[00:13:51] UK and in 30 days we sold nearly 700 books for him. So we do work internationally as a company

[00:14:00] and we can work in most, I would say the top five countries are my preferred which is Australia,

[00:14:06] New Zealand, Canada, United States and UK. And from a shipping perspective if my clients

[00:14:15] are in America I do have providers who essentially will print stock of the book and they will

[00:14:21] essentially store it in their warehouse so you don't have to hold it yourself. And then when

[00:14:26] an order comes through they will fulfill the order the same day. And so it's a very

[00:14:32] efficient system where an order comes through, they get the order and they fulfill it right

[00:14:36] away. And the benefit of that as well is you can put in little slips or pamphlets or

[00:14:41] anything like that. You can write personalized notes that are printed and put that in the book

[00:14:45] as well. And that can be a really fantastic way to continue the customer journey and to have

[00:14:51] someone check out something else that you're doing elsewhere like a strategy session or

[00:14:54] something along those lines. Yeah and that's good that you are helping people with fulfillment

[00:14:59] because otherwise you end up with a stack of books and the ROI again goes down especially

[00:15:05] if you've got hundreds as you're getting for your clients. Chris Bonetti, you're also an

[00:15:10] entrepreneur and as you know on this show I love to find out not just what you do but also

[00:15:15] how you do it. Smart Author Media, do you want to just tell us how you've managed to

[00:15:22] get noticed as a book, you know as really a book marketing specialist? Although you're in

[00:15:28] Perth which I believe is the world's most remote city isn't it in fact technically?

[00:15:36] But you're getting clients from around the world, how are you doing that Chris?

[00:15:40] Well yes it's probably one of the most remote for sure. It's especially forgotten in Australia.

[00:15:51] So I won't lie, I did have a bit of an advantage and I certainly played into my strengths where

[00:15:58] I could when I first launched this agency. Primarily before launching Smart Author Media

[00:16:06] I was a funnel development and conversion rate optimization provider so we would build sales

[00:16:13] funnels and essentially optimize those sales funnels for maximum conversions, maximum sales,

[00:16:20] maximum leads and so on. So I did have a bit of an audience built up already but

[00:16:25] whenever you start a new venture in a new niche with new offers and things like that,

[00:16:30] very hard to break the ice and get noticed. And so my primary strategies were from the

[00:16:38] perspective of how do I collaborate with as many other service providers in the same niche

[00:16:45] as me which was authors to begin with and how do I help them understand what I do and try

[00:16:55] to create win-win relationships. And from my perspective and I'm sure you've seen this too

[00:17:00] Jim, the most effective way to collaborate and be able to have FaceTime with anyone in the

[00:17:09] world that you can is through a podcast. And I'm sure you're 100% a true believer of that.

[00:17:15] Yeah it's an insanely powerful medium actually podcasting without necessarily being the host

[00:17:22] but being a guest as well is a really, really powerful way to get conversation started.

[00:17:26] Yeah so I actually went from the host perspective and I'm like cool how can I have people

[00:17:33] who are amazing authors, best-selling authors, providers, so people who are publishers,

[00:17:40] ghost writers, other book marketers and so on. How can I get those people on my show

[00:17:46] to not only talk about different strategies and tactics around selling books, marketing books,

[00:17:52] writing books and so on but then also allow for some time to talk a bit of shop. How can I

[00:17:58] talk about what I'm doing? How can I talk about what they're doing and see if there's any

[00:18:02] opportunity for alignment. And even before I started the agency I did some market research

[00:18:08] and I knew already that there was no one really doing what I'm doing in smart office

[00:18:13] media and there still isn't. And so I knew that there was a gap and I confirmed that by talking to

[00:18:19] about a dozen different publishers and having them on the show as well and essentially creating

[00:18:24] referral partnerships with each and every one of those saying cool like hey if you have someone

[00:18:29] who needs book marketing after they've been published with you, after you've done a

[00:18:33] bestseller campaign, hey I'm here and I'm here to provide and most people who work with

[00:18:39] you we've already identified are the same target market that I would benefit from working from

[00:18:45] with. And so just hit me up, you know, and that worked tremendously well for me within the space

[00:18:52] of six months or less. I was the guy that everyone would tag on Facebook when someone said

[00:18:57] hey I've just published a book who can help me market it. Okay that's very smart. So finding

[00:19:04] out who could be partners and getting a conversation with them on the podcast.

[00:19:08] Out of interest what was the topic of the podcast if you like? What was the positioning

[00:19:14] of the podcast because if you're interviewing people in the same, if you like same space,

[00:19:21] how did you define the podcast because that sometimes is a challenge for people?

[00:19:26] It's certainly hard but I kind of kept it generic with a purpose. So my podcast is called Smart

[00:19:35] Author as well and essentially it was just Smart Author, you know, and it started with

[00:19:44] I want to share the best strategies that others are using, bestseller authors and

[00:19:49] and author providers are using to market and sell books. So that was like the initial direction

[00:19:58] and then it kind of went a bit more broad and I started interviewing other, you know,

[00:20:04] bestselling authors and just other providers who didn't necessarily talk about the marketing

[00:20:08] aspects of books but more so about the processes like the writing of the books,

[00:20:13] the publishing of the books, the campaigns around the books and so on. And so it still

[00:20:18] stayed within the realm of authorship generally speaking. Yeah that's really, really a smart

[00:20:25] strategy Chris that you've got there. And so is there something that you've done

[00:20:31] that hasn't quite worked out that you, you know, you've built Smart Author from Perth,

[00:20:37] you've got clients from around the world and I love how transparent you are on your website

[00:20:41] about the ROI. That's also incredible to get your clients to agree to publish that as well

[00:20:48] by the way. Is there something that hasn't gone quite as according to plan Chris?

[00:20:58] We'll be back after a quick break. Would you like to double your salary without starting

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[00:21:29] of our summit so you get free tickets. Enjoy, I'll see you there. I think every agency owner

[00:21:40] will experience this at one point but certainly for me it was expectation setting. So

[00:21:50] there's some good results on that website and some of those clients,

[00:21:57] the numbers look great and they still had the wrong expectations with campaigns.

[00:22:03] So unfortunately the sales numbers, the return on ad spend numbers are all awesome but still

[00:22:10] the client had ambiguous expectations around the campaigns and the

[00:22:18] level of problem that myself as an agency owner provider was going to solve for them.

[00:22:25] And so that actually ended in us having to cut short some of the relationships that I had with

[00:22:34] clients which was unfortunate. So for me as an example, I would have a client come on

[00:22:41] and they're like cool we want to market our book but then they didn't tell me that hey I

[00:22:46] want to make 100% of the money back on ad spend plus I want to cover your retainer

[00:22:52] all on the front end book funnel and not necessarily being disclosed or me being newer

[00:22:58] to the space and not understanding what was actually achievable because I was young and

[00:23:04] naive or whatever you want to call it. And so I wasn't able to set expectations properly.

[00:23:09] Today my business and approach is much different. I will tell clients flat out that

[00:23:15] that's not what I do or can help with and if they want to still work with me, that's cool.

[00:23:21] I can help them get a return on their investment on the back end of their book

[00:23:25] but certainly on the front end is not something I promise and haven't done for quite some time.

[00:23:30] But without that expectation being set when the client signs up and then it just leads to

[00:23:38] a lot of challenges in the working relationship.

[00:23:45] Yeah, it's really good that you pointed that out because we often don't think about

[00:23:49] the need to set client expectations. I used to have in my agency a client service

[00:23:57] protocol where we would state our kind of our standards for how quickly we'd reply,

[00:24:05] how quickly they'd have to reply, what they would expect in terms of coverage and so on.

[00:24:09] I was doing the media relations agency and having that conversation at the beginning of

[00:24:13] the relationship really cleared out a lot of misunderstandings as well about how

[00:24:20] the agency and the client can work together. So that's really, really good. Thanks for

[00:24:23] raising that, Chris. Absolutely.

[00:24:26] Chris, you've got great results for your authors. What would be your number one tip

[00:24:33] from an entrepreneur's point of view on getting noticed? I mean you've covered off about

[00:24:39] doing the podcasts which is great. Is there a number one tip that you'd give us?

[00:24:44] Well, Jim, I'm all about simplicity. I think it is all about finding what works for you and

[00:24:53] not necessarily listening to the Gary Vs or the Grant Cardones or the people that are just

[00:24:59] all in your face all the time. And certainly strategies that they promote and recommend

[00:25:05] can work for many people. But when they're over complicated and intense and it's very hard

[00:25:11] for one person who's new in the game to publish on several channels, I am all about finding one

[00:25:19] thing that works for you and doing that consistently to get the results for yourself.

[00:25:24] For me personally, I am a Facebook user. I have a lot of engagement with my Facebook posts.

[00:25:31] I find that I've pretty much gotten most of my clients from Facebook and referrals

[00:25:37] pretty much through Facebook. And so just based on that,

[00:25:42] Facebook is where I go. Sure, I could probably start creating a following on YouTube or LinkedIn

[00:25:49] or Instagram and so on. But it is for the most part more of a distraction

[00:25:57] for where I'm at at the moment. And whether the investment of time and energy on those other

[00:26:03] platforms is going to pay off is, again, ambiguous. So I would rather just double down on what I know

[00:26:10] works for me at the moment and when I have more capacity available to then further explore other

[00:26:16] options. Okay, that's wonderful, Chris. And is that a Facebook group or a Facebook page that

[00:26:21] you're generating most leads from? It's primarily my personal profile,

[00:26:28] to be honest. They're very, very interesting. Okay, wonderful. So if you want to find out,

[00:26:32] oh, Chris, I'm going to ask you how we can get hold of you in a moment. But you've got a bit

[00:26:36] of an offer for us as well. But before that, let's find out from you your favorite book

[00:26:43] that you'd recommend. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, man, I should

[00:26:48] probably write a book and market it so that I can get these clients on the back end,

[00:26:55] a good friend of mine, Mike Kaputze has a book called The 100 Page Book. And that's a fantastic

[00:27:02] way to write what he calls a shook, which is a short helpful book that is geared towards

[00:27:08] being a really useful asset to market on the front end of your business. Then I highly

[00:27:14] recommend you check out that book. It is literally a hundred page book itself. And so

[00:27:19] it's a really actionable book for you to get a shortcut to writing your own book for your

[00:27:23] business. Good. I've never heard that expression of shook. That's fantastic. Thank you for that,

[00:27:29] Chris. Introducing a whole new term. Wonderful. Chris, if you want to get hold of you, they can

[00:27:35] look for you on Facebook, I guess. Would you want to just share as well about the best

[00:27:40] places to contact you? Yeah. So smartauthormedia.com forward slash chat, or if you just go to the main

[00:27:47] website URL, there's a green button that says book a book marketing chat with me.

[00:27:51] And essentially that's a free 30 minute consulting session with me. I charge $2,000 an hour for

[00:27:58] consulting. So it's basically a thousand dollars an hour that you'll get for free.

[00:28:03] And if you've got a book and you're marketing it, we can review what you're doing.

[00:28:08] And I can give you some recommendations to do it better. Or if you don't have a book and

[00:28:13] you've done, sorry, if you do have a book and you haven't done any marketing, then we

[00:28:16] can put a plan in place for you to go out and do some actionable things. And if you want our

[00:28:22] help to implement any of that stuff, then we can discuss that on the call as well.

[00:28:27] Chris, thank you so much. What an inspiration. I think you've really cleared up as well for me

[00:28:33] how a book can be part of a broader strategy. And also through your explanation with the

[00:28:37] case studies, how the numbers work, which really, really makes sense. You've really

[00:28:43] demonstrated with clarity how a bit of an investment upfront can lead to recurring income

[00:28:50] based on a book. So thank you, Chris Bonetti for joining me today.

[00:28:53] Yeah. Thanks for having me, Jim. It's been a pleasure.

[00:28:55] It's been wonderful to go all the way to Perth to hear Chris Bonetti who's got clients

[00:28:59] from around the world. So I encourage you to smartauthormedia.com if you'd like to find out

[00:29:04] more about him and do take him up on his offer of a half an hour session because you're

[00:29:10] going to get so much value. If you can just imagine, we've had 25 minutes with Chris

[00:29:15] talking back and forwards. Imagine 30 minutes of your own questions back and

[00:29:19] forwards with Chris Bonetti. So you've been with me, Jim James, on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur

[00:29:24] podcast. As always, I hope you've found this valuable. If you have, please do leave a review

[00:29:29] and forward it to a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. We don't want anyone to go

[00:29:34] unnoticed. Until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.