Have you ever thought about writing the book? In this Expert Insight Interview, Dr. Angela Lauria discusses how to write, publish, and sell non-fiction books to enhance your business. Dr Angela Lauria is an entrepreneur, founder of The Author Incubator, published author, and podcast host.

The interview discusses:

• How to write a Non-Fiction Book
• How to embrace your voice and things you know

The Process

Common mistake with people who want to write a book is that they want to tell everything they know in it. But then, that book becomes five books in one. The important thing is to decide which outcome you want from that book. The book can be a strategy for promoting an event, promoting yourself as a speaker, promoting a product, etc. Business books usually serve as a credential that you have expertise in the topic you write about. Furthermore, people do not go to bookstores anymore to spend hours there searching for books. That is done on the Internet now, thus it is important to make the book easy to find on search engines. Once when people buy your book, the ones who did not read it are most likely to become your clients. Those are the people who do not want your help, they want you to do things instead of them. The key factor in writing a book for sale is to have a process and solution to write about it. For example, a couple came to you with marriage issues, and you were able to save their marriage. That shows that you make results with your clients. Another factor is to be coachable and to accept constructive criticism. And lastly, you must want to systemize your business by having a steady flow of new clients.

Embrace Yourself

When writing the book, you must know your audience. But the essence of the book you write is you. Every person is unique, and that book should identify your voice and represent who you are. The interesting thing is that 100 percent of all writers have that moment of self-doubt when they think that the book is absolutely terrible. That can happen any time – during the writing process after the book is finished and the only thing left is a bio, or even after the book is published and put for sale. However, what they mostly feel is not fear of failure, but rather a fear of success. There is a spiritual work that can be done to start believing that we might be really good at something. There are so many things in the world that we do not know, but there are things that we do know and that we are good at. Thus, it is time to start acknowledging and taking credit for the things we do know and we are good at. People crave authenticity instead of know-it-all types of people, so your sphere of expertise might help someone else out there.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

We can only grow our careers and our business as much as we are willing to grow personally. In this Expert Insight Interview, Barb Garrison discusses how growing personally can help you to thrive professionally. Barb Garrison is an entrepreneur, founder of the Internal Groove company, career coach, speaker, and author.

The interview discusses:

• How to change your habits
• Introspection

Change Your Habits

When problems arise, people tend to think that the reason is external such as for instance our needy boss. But, the majority of the problems come from inside, from the way we do things. So, if we change how we think and act personally, our professional path will change as well. However, we do have to reach a couple of bumps on the road in order to start looking for an internal voice and to stop blaming others. During a professional career, we develop a habitual behavior that we tend to justify as being who we are. Those habits we developed are the reason why our career is stagnating at the moment, or why we talk and act a certain way with the clients. But habits can change, and we are the only ones who have the power to make that change for the better. People’s daily thoughts are on average about 87 percent negative. Thus, it is better to work on yourself to convert negative thoughts into positive than to try to create some false positive picture for your clients. People notice when somebody is faking. In addition, nowadays when human relationships are very superficial, what people crave is authenticity. Being authentic and being the best version of you is actually the best differentiation technique you can have for sales business nowadays.

Introspection

What we should do is look deeper into ourselves to identify why are we still doing things that are not working well for us anymore? Once when we identify the reason for it, we will see that it is not impossible to change it. A very important step in between is to forgive ourselves for making a mistake. We tend to be very strict about ourselves, but there is no need to be so strict when we were only doing the best we could. So, forgiving yourself and starting fresh with a clear mind will be beneficial for your career. It is important to be honest enough to take responsibility for our actions and brave enough to make a change within ourselves. Another important aspect we must bring to ourselves is positivity. If your very best friend would go through a hard time, you would be positive and supportive of him or her. Focus on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. Thus, be your own best friend and give yourself the same positive advice you would give to them.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Have you ever thought of marketing and sales through the eyes of science? In this Expert Insight Interview, Sean Doyle discusses cognitive marketing. Sean Doyle is a Co-founder, Principal, and a Director of Strategy at FitzMartin, as well as published author and speaker.

The interview discusses:

• Point of View
• Commitment

Point of View

Marketing should support sales. Transtheoretical science of behavioral change teaches us how people change their actions based on their points of view. And this science is important in this case because it can be applied to customer decision journeys. It can motivate customers to make their decisions. It is easy to create awareness, however, awareness does not help sales in the long run. What does helping sales, in the long run, is convincing customers to emotionally participate in changing their behavior. In B2B industry, that can be changing the way how a company does some of its processes for instance.

Commitment

When people decide to make a commitment to something they feel strongly about it, the first reaction is a relief, but the long-term outcome depends on the will power. With the help of behavioral science, salespeople and marketers can help people to make tough decisions. There are two parts of commitment, private and public. First comes private which leads to the public. In B2B world, when you try to sell something to the other business, you firstly must lower the risk and create a feeling of safe and private commitment with the person you talk to, so that person has the reason to take out the commitment publicly. For example, if you are trying to sell CRM software, you should convince prospective buyers that CRM purchases would, besides other advantages, enhance his career as well. That way, the prospective buyer will have an emotional and rational need to publicly share that idea with his coworkers and executives. The same way you can look to see in which stage your prospective deal is. If the person you talked to at first still did not make the public commitment about it, then your deal requires more work to reach the next stage. Sales understand these cycles, but many marketing agencies do not know all the stages of sale. Every marketing agency can talk about beginning stages but not many can talk of end stages. And the ones who do not know end stages are simply insufficient resources for supporting the sales. However, the marketing department has the potential for improvement, and the only thing needed for that is time invested to join sales meetings and activities to learn from them.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Have you ever been inspired by someone’s speech? In this Expert Insight Interview, Joe Yazbeck discusses leadership quality communication. Joe Yazbeck is an internationally respected author, speaker, and leaders’ communication trainer. He is also a founder, president, and CEO of Prestige Leadership Advisors.

The interview discusses:

• How to practice public speaking
• Virtual Public Speaking

No Drill, No Skill

True leaders have a different level of communication than the rest of the people. No matter if they speak in the private room or on the stage with an enormous audience, they speak to inspire and to own the situation. Leaders such as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are naturally very extroverted and expressive, so their speeches go against all the norms. However, public speaking is a skill that can be learned and even, perfected. Consistency in exercising speaking skills can make anyone more comfortable and a better public speaker. The more practice you have the more naturally speaking will come and once frightening situations such as someone asking a hard question will become less scary. There is a satisfaction in perfecting something you were bad at once. Many people use the excuse that they are introverts, but the truth is nobody was born as an introvert. People choose to become introverts, and in the same way people can choose to go out and spend more time around others. When we become comfortable around people, speaking around people will become easier as well.

Virtual Speaking

Nowadays, there is a need for excelling in online speaking. Many people are reluctant to speak through lap-tops because they suddenly become very self-aware on the camera. When you have a Zoom meeting, for example, it is important to unmute your video and audio to enhance your presence and to engage with the audience. One big IT company for instance makes a podcast type interview in which it’s business development director and IT chief answer questions from the employee audience. This is a great example of making the audience engaged and active. The key to quality communication is not to over talk but to ask the right questions to make the audiences intrigued and then to give them enough time to process the thought and get interested to hear more. The more you think of it as a regular conversation between you and the audience the more naturality and connection you will produce from it. And the connection you create between you and the audience will create a sense of authenticity with the topic you discuss.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

You have a personal brand because everyone around you knows you and feels a certain way about you. In this Expert Insight interview hosted by John Golden, Bobby Umar discusses personal branding. Bobby Umar is one of the Top 100 leadership speakers by the Inc Magazine, five times TEDx speaker, influencer, and internationally published book writer.

The interview discusses:

• Finding and Creating a Brand
• Online Branding

Finding and Creating a Brand

Personal branding is an idea of understanding how you are perceived in the world. Your personal brand must align with what you are doing and what you are trying to accomplish. For example, if you are a realtor you do not want to be seen as a shoe seller because that will influence your career and your business negatively. There is usually a disconnect in how you see yourself and how other people see you. There are online assessments that you can do, but also your friends, family, coworkers, etc. can do too to help you gain knowledge of how you are perceived by them. These assessments can help you to learn if you are pursuing the right career. For example, the engineer who has people skills might be better off in sales rather than next to the computer. The important thing is to invest time in yourself to get to know your brand, and once when you know it, then you should focus on its design and delivery. When designing your brand, you should look at what your objective is, your target audience, and your assets. A real estate agent targeting women over 50 will find a connection between his target audience and his objective – and from there he will design his social media strategy. Your personal brand should be authentic instead of an imaginary persona because in business and particularly in sales building trust and creating personal relationships between the parties is essential. Sometimes people are afraid to put and sell their brand out there, but the good way to think is that you are just trying to create value for the people you serve. Creating value for the customers will lead from the conversation to the sale, and then it will naturally build your brand.

Online Branding

Nowadays your digital brand is incredibly important. The more interaction will be online; thus, people have to think about how to enhance their presence on networks such as Zoom and LinkedIn. There are many people who are full of confidence in person but lack that same confidence when they have to talk in front of the camera. Many studies show that voice messages on LinkedIn or using video messages or calls have a greater chance of reliability. Even if the whole call is not on video, at least make sure that the first couple of minutes you have the camera on because it helps to make a better connection. The first minutes of videos replaced the firm handshake in person when it comes to the first impression. Building a brand online takes different sets of skills and practices, but it is necessary for today’s world.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Do you follow “fake it till you make it” rule moneywise? In this Expert Insight Interview, Tatiana Tsoir discusses numbers, money, and taxes for small business owners. Tatiana Tsoir is an accounting expert and writer of the book “Dream Bold, Start Smart” which will be released next year. She is also a CEO and founder of Linza Advisors Inc.

The interview discusses:

• Starting with simple things
• Starting the right way

Start Simple

People who have a small business, in general, have an aversion towards the handling of money and taxes. Their lack of knowledge usually makes them afraid that they will go to jail if something is not done right. However, there are things people can do to make themselves more comfortable with money. The first thing to do is to separate business and personal. No matter how big your business is, you should always have a business credit card and business checking account to avoid headaches when filling up for taxes later. Another thing is to learn what goes into business expenses. The rule for that is to think whether a credible business owner would consider that expense as a legitimate business expense. If the answer is yes, then it is deductible. Furthermore, a very important thing is to keep track of your records. Nowadays people usually keep their records online through QuickBooks or through Excel. QuickBooks is easy because it has the option for you to attach all the receipts and it is automatically stored. For Excel, on the other hand, it is recommended to make separate folders for each year of expenses. That way if the business gets audited, it will be easy to just pull out the needed year. Weekly or monthly updates of records will save you of a nightmare at the end of the year. It is easier to remember expenses that happened this month than 12 months ago, thus, be sure to update your records regularly.

Start the Right Way

When starting a business, it is important to start it right from the beginning. Many business owners have their books not managed properly which causes expensive remakes. In addition, many owners start their businesses as LLC, but having a Limited Liability Company will make your taxes go higher than having it registered as some other legal entity. Being your own boss is not hard if you start your business right from the beginning. The key is to plan today for the future. Having a vision of how you want your business to look in a couple of years will help you to start working on those things today. For example, if you want to sell your business in five years you will choose a different legal entity than if you want to expand your business into partnership in five years. There are so many things to consider how you want to run your business, but the important thing is that everything can be learned. Thus, people should feel empowered to follow their dreams and open their own business because there are secrets on how to manage their finances and taxes right.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

How can websites help you to grow professionally? In this Expert Insight Interview, Brandi Bernoskie, a business strategist and an entrepreneur, Alchemist and Owner of her company, Alchemy+Aim, talks about the importance of websites, creating value, and growing your business.

The interview discusses:

• Creating Value
• Call to Action
• Next-Generation Websites

Create Value

Website is considered an online business card. But the website offers more than that. Website offers to create a deeper relationship between you and your clients. The only thing you have to do is to use the right strategy when creating the website. Firstly, think about who your website will serve and what are their values. People’s values constantly change based on the circumstances. For example, people value different things than what they valued before the quarantine. So, you must stay accurate with offerings depending on what people value today. There is no finished product when it is about a website. Website requires constant content updating, sometimes as little as an extra page for example.

Call to Action

Customer’s journey on the website under no circumstances should come to a dead end. Posting blogs to the website and hoping that customers would come back is a no way to go. The key is to strategically map your website so that the focus is on building a relationship with the customer rather than on sale. Therefore, make sure that your website has a call to action. That could be to sign up for a newspaper, or to sign up for an offer, anything that will broaden your current relationship. And even when the sales happen, there are still follow up things to be done such as confirmation email for example. Nurturing the relationship with the customer can only lead to more sales in the future.

Next-Generation Websites

Nowadays businesspeople started to look at the bigger picture of how they can use all these different technologies that are offered. Thus, websites are starting to get more integrated with other systems such as for instance redirecting from the company’s website directly to social media pages. One thing that websites currently lack in comparison to social media pages is up-to-minute informing. However, considering that now almost all companies offer both website and social media pages, they should try to keep them all in sync with the information.

Furthermore, websites play a crucial role in the digitalization of the business processes in companies, caused by the pandemic. Many companies that did not invest much in online services before pandemic are pioneering the digitalization of their services now. A great example is a gym offering online classes to its members.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Do you consider yourself a risk-averse or risk taker? In this Expert Insight Interview, Steve Anderson discusses principles of how to grow your business by taking risks. Steve Anderson expertise in business growth and strategic risk, and he also wrote an international bestseller The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles How To Grow Your Business Like Amazon.

The interview discusses:

• Risk
• Customer Focus
• Simplicity
• Experimental Flexibility
• Promoting Ownership

Embrace the Risk

The most fundamental principle is to encourage success or failure. Failure should be seen as a positive thing because failure is a path to success. Companies should be risk-takers because experimenting leads to invention and invention leads to innovation. Amazon suffered great failure when it introduced Fire Phone in 2014. That failure cost Amazon $178 million in Development and Inventory expenses. However, only four months later Amazon introduced a prototype of Echo and Alexa. Amazon team translated knowledge from previous Fire Phone failure and invented the Echo and Alexa which turned out to be one of Amazon’s greatest successes. Alexa was installed on 100 million devices in 2019 while Echo has a leading 28.3% market share among smart speakers.

Customer Focus

Most of the companies have an R&D department in which they innovate and experiment. But what if the whole company is used to experiment? Amazon’s goal was to become the most customer-oriented company in the world and every employee was encouraged to experiment in order to reach that goal. It became the company’s culture to literally obsess over the customer which brought the customer service industry to a higher level.

Simplicity

Another principle is to make things simple for the end-users. No matter the complexity in the technology used to create a product or service, the things need to be oversimplified for the customers. That is another thing that Amazon excels in it. One example is Kindle e-Reader. Amazon basically revolutionized book reading by making books available online. Now customers can easily read books online, take notes, link to websites, and read from any device. All that required incredible technological complexity, but it appears so simple to the end-users.

Experimental Flexibility

Common mistake companies make is that they “marry” their projects, thus it is hard to let the project go if turned out to be unsuccessful. Amazon is so flexible with projects. They feel comfortable to quit the experiment if unsuccessful at that moment and bring it back later for some other idea.

Promoting Ownership

If the company wants the employees to think and act like owners, then it must treat them like owners as well. Besides the salary, Amazon pays its employees in stock options as well. That way employees are more dedicated to the company’s well-being. Think simply, a tenant would nail a Christmas tree to the wood floor, but an owner would never act that careless

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.