Turn Your Readers
Into Lasting Relationships

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.

Brad Hauck 00:14

Your book shouldn't be the end of the journey. It should be the first step in your wider expert business. In this episode, we're going to explore the expert business ladder and how to move people naturally from reader to subscriber to buyer, client, and finally advocate. We'll look at the missing rungs that may be costing you opportunities, whether your offer genuinely connects, and the simplest next step you can give someone who wants more from you. Good morning, Dixie. Good morning, Brad. How are you today? Good, thank you. So we're going to cover an interesting topic today, and also we'll pull some bits from the previous episodes as we work our way through this.

So the first thing I was looking at was where does a book sit currently in someone's wider expert model? They need to look at is it the lead-in, is it the end? Whereabouts does it sit?

Dixie Carlton 01:05

What a great question. I mean, a lot of people start thinking about a book because they want something that's going to enhance their brand or it's going to help them get their ideas into something that they can then share beyond the stage, or lead them, lead people to booking them for stage opportunities. But a lot of people don't really think of it as being this is a really major credibility tool, or how is this going to be a sales tool? Is it a legacy product project? So many people think about doing a book as part of a, I want to capture all of this information because I want to put it all into a book.

And then they get stuck on the concept of how do we do that. Maybe you need to be going back and thinking, where do you want it to sit within everything else that you've already got happening? How do you want your book to connect with your overall business? Great question.

Brad Hauck 01:56

Yeah, it's really interesting because we all come at it from different angles. We've either already got a business and someone says you should write a book, or we're sitting there thinking, I'd like to write a book, and you know, the book comes first. So we're always coming at it from different places, depending on where we are with our life and our business.

Dixie Carlton 02:14

I think the first thing that most people need to sit down and think about, therefore, is this is my business. Is there one book? Is there a series of books? Is there another book? I've already got several. How does it fit concurrently, specifically right now, into the business model that I have? And does this mean that I want to change my business model or my current keynote or workshop programs or whatever if I do this next book?

Brad Hauck 02:45

Yeah, exactly. So when we look at our book, we've got to look at what our natural ladder is when people come to us. We've got people who read our stuff, we've got subscribers who are already with us. How do we move them from reader to subscriber to buyer to client to advocate?

Dixie Carlton 03:02

Oh, I love this. This is the funnel again. So the funnel should look something like this is my book. There is a call to action and breadcrumbing throughout my book that says go to this page on my website. This is how you then become a more engaged reader because I'm inviting you to sign for something, to maybe get more engagement, download some extra free information, sign up for my newsletter, all of those kind of things are the next steps. Then I can start offering you or talking about paid offers or giving you a higher value offer.

Then we are in a relationship. We're not only separated by being or defined as being reader and author or audience member and speaker. So when you think you have the funnel all worked out, then you've got to be thinking about, but how do I lead people really effectively? How does this stack up in this case like a ladder?

Brad Hauck 04:02

Yeah, I think it's really important. And this is a much better way of looking at it sometimes rather than saying funnel, because a lot of people when they see funnels, they tend to think of the top and the bottom. So you people come in here, I've got to get them from here to here. Whereas when you break it down into a ladder and you look at it as steps as if you're climbing up. It makes you think about each step individually. And it also brings in areas where you can track your measurements and things. So you can see, for example, getting people who come in to read your content to actually fill in a form to subscribe to your newsletter or a mini course or whatever it happens to be.

You can track the numbers on that. But then when you've got the numbers, of course, you can improve. So you can actually work on that step. You can go back and look at the text that you're using, look at the sales video you're using, whatever it is, and improve on it and cross-test it against your original text. You can split test those sorts of things. And so by going in and looking at each little rung, each step separately, it makes it a lot easier because if you're looking at I need seven steps at once, it's a lot of work.

Whereas if you go, okay, I've got to get them across to being subscribers first. Okay, that's working now. Right, next step up the ladder. And you know, embrace it down into a much more manageable thing.

Dixie Carlton 05:23

And that makes it easier to identify which parts are the strongest and which rungs of the ladder are the weakest. And just for listeners, just to clarify what the rungs should be on your ladder, you've got things like visibility, reader's call to action, a lead magnet, email follow-ups, an entry-level offer, a speaking offer, a workshop offer, maybe a higher value program, some sales conversion tactics, client retention and referrals and testimonials. So when you think about what each of those lad each of those ladder rungs are, you don't need to necessarily have all of them. And if anyone missed that list, it is written on the handout worksheet that we have as part of this podcast series.

And the link for that will be at the end. But those are the rungs that you need. Which ones work really well for you now, and which ones just really need that prioritizing for extra attention so that everything is smooth as people are going up or down your ladder.

Brad Hauck 06:24

Yeah, it's really important that you break it down because it just makes it so much easier. As I said, in sales, tracking is everything. We all know that the numbers don't lie. So being able to look at it in sections, I just think mentally it's easier. And once you've started to work through your natural ladder and you've worked out all those, you know, steps, probably the first thing I'd look at is which rung of the ladder is currently missing? Is it visibility, is it trust, is it the lead capture, the follow-up or the conversion? Because generally speaking, as you said, some areas will be stronger than other areas, but often we do miss steps because we make the jump too large for people.

So sometimes it's easy, say, to give someone your email address, but when you ask for email address and first name, it cuts the number of subscribers you get. So making sure we have those little changes, look at the data on that sort of stuff, and make it as easy as possible. On the other side, funnels we call those slippery steps, slippery slides.

Dixie Carlton 07:26

Yes. I mean, you being a firefighter, you're familiar with ladders that work and ladders that maybe sometimes are too short. Getting the right ladder for the right job. How often do you think about the fact that the ladder is the most important part of your business in relation to what happens when the ladder's not working?

Brad Hauck 07:48

Oh, I think it's really important. I think the thing is, there's more than one ladder in your business. And that's the other thing you've got to remember is that you've got a ladder within your sales process where someone calls you and then you follow up and you book a meeting. And so everything can be broken down into these different ladders if you'd like to. I think we spend a lot of time on some ladders and not a lot of time on others. And so we jump steps. And I think we're so busy that a lot of people don't put enough time into this sort of thing because I know being a digital marketer, these things are really important for me.

This is what I look at when I'm looking at why people aren't making sales. I know from my first website when I was selling books to teachers that for every thousand people that came to my website, I would sell one book. I knew those numbers. To get that to two books per thousand took a lot of work. But it was worth it because it's a lot more money too. So when you're getting 20,000, 30,000 people a day. So it's well and truly worth looking at the steps and looking at the rungs of the ladder and making sure that you make it as good as possible.

Dixie Carlton 08:52

Do you use any particular tools for tracking your letters or for working with your letters and the rungs on each letter?

Brad Hauck 08:59

Yeah. So if you're using a website to do this, which most people do, let's face it, once we move someone from social media, we always try and pull them to our website where we can control the journey that people go on. Google Analytics is actually free and does this really well. You can actually go into Google Analytics and there is a section in there for you to create a funnel and you load in the different pages in that funnel. So you put the first page and then the last page, which might be a thank you page, and then you take the URL of every page in between and load them in an order, and it will track people moving step by step.

So in the case of, say, an e-commerce site, it goes for the product to adding to the cart, and then from the cart to the checkout, and from the checkout to the thank you. And you can see where you're losing people. And I know, having worked with clients over the years, with one client, and we could see that everybody was jumping out when they got to the checkout page. So we went and looked at the checkout page and we found out it was missing all the trust indicators, like the the little locks and the refund policy and all those little things that make people feel safe to take another step.

But if you didn't know they were jumping out there, you wouldn't know it was a problem.

Dixie Carlton 10:12

That's really good advice. Yes. Google Analytics, I think we tend to overlook or undervalue just how important it is to get savvy with things like Google Analytics. And also comes back to a basic management antenna. If you can measure it, you can manage it. And if we're measuring things, then we are better able to make those changes, make those tweaks. I use a program or a platform called, which I know a lot of people are familiar with, some aren't. And I find that is a really easy way of saying, right, I have all of these cards, and each card represents a ladder, and each card or each ladder has the specific rungs listed so I can work with those and go through a methodology that means that I can keep on top of each one.

But whether you're using something to track your meetings or track your analytics or manage or project manage what needs to be done, checklists or whatever. If you are thinking in terms of just randomly making a list and saying these are the things I've got to do, you're only really dealing with half of the problem. So making sure that you have some means of saying this is a much broader picture than just half a dozen things that I need to get right. This is about where does the book sit in relation to all of those things.

How do I make the book work harder for me to ensure that my ladder is as strong as it possibly could be? So using your book to point people in the right direction, using your book to capture people's imagination about what's possible and what you could do for them. Those are all part of that process as well. Identifying what you can do, how you can do it, and then taking some action to measure where you're going and what you are wanting to achieve with all of this.

Brad Hauck 12:04

Yeah. The creating the obvious next step is probably the most important thing you can do in that it's really important to decide, number one, what you want people to do after they finish a book or while they're reading your book. But also you need to find out what the most obvious next step is, too, because you can't assume that what you think they should do next is what they actually want to do next. So sometimes it's important to actually research when we send our books out to be read by people and we put some test readers into them and that.

Sometimes it's probably worth going back and interviewing people and saying, hey, look, you've read the book. What would you want to do now? Or what do you think you need help with now? Because don't assume you know what the next step is. We tend to think we do, but you know, that it's really important that you think about that in a way that gives people uh a range of options or whatever it happens to be, but find out what that obvious next step is because it will make a major difference to your conversion factors.

Dixie Carlton 13:11

And you've hit on something really important. Things need to feel like a natural progression for the reader or for the audience member, not for what feels natural to you. And remembering that you're well inside your own ecosystem. So you think the way you think about how it works from the point of view of it being a naturally flowing progression or a step-by-step, naturally one foot in front of the other. But sometimes you really need to get into the heads of the people that you're trying to influence with your content and really understand, but how do they think about it?

And so interviewing people is a wonderful way to get real clarity on what's working and what's not working. And not just running it through ChatGPT and saying, is this workable? But actually going out and saying, can you go through my whole process, read my book, see if it takes you through to this point and which parts along the way? Do you need to pay someone to do that? Do you think? I don't know. Maybe maybe you need to invest in half a dozen people, buy them dinner, do whatever it takes to just get that really solid feedback.

Is this working? And where is it not working? And where is it working?

Brad Hauck 14:28

Yeah, because by the time you read a book, that's a lot of information off. And if you're like me, information comes and goes from my head really quickly. So for me, if I read a book to then say do a course might not be what I need. What I actually need is a sheet with the main points that I need to follow every day that the book's taught me. That would be more useful for me because I keep forgetting all the information I've already read. So you're going to get different feedback from people, but you may find some commonalities in it.

And that's what's really important because in the end, as I said, it's about getting people to take that next step, to work up the ladder, to go up the rungs. And so no matter what you do, you really need to know what it is people actually need, not what you think they need. So if you've got to pay to get a few people's thoughts, then it would be probably worth it long term in your cash flow to actually spend the time to make that first step right. Otherwise, everyone's just going to stop there.

Dixie Carlton 15:29

Yeah. And one of the problems that you get when you just go to your friends or your colleagues and say, Hey, I want some feedback on this, is that they will sit down and have a conversation with you, but not necessarily take what you're asking them for as a serious, I need you to really be solid about the feedback I'm asking for. And it's a mind shift. And now, the way that marketing companies over the years have always worked is that they'll do focus groups. For example, they'll get a dozen people or more in a room and go around the table and ask them to specifically give answers to specific questions.

So maybe the way to really tackle this is to instead of saying, hey buddy, let's sit down and have a chat about my book or about my handouts or whatever, actually say, look, I want to invite you and half a dozen other people that I'm going to give you some some pre-work, some homework. I'm going to make sure that you're ready for this meeting. I'm going to allow two hours, and this is going to be the things that I need to cover. Are you up for that? And tackle it as though it's a solid marketing strategy situation.

Because otherwise you're just going to get the friend feedback. And that's not what you're looking for. You want the solid business feedback that you're looking for. And you need to pre-think about what are the questions I'm going to ask to get me the right information.

Brad Hauck 16:50

Yeah, because just because your friends have read your book doesn't mean they're the target audience of the book.

Dixie Carlton 16:55

Yeah.

Brad Hauck 16:56

You've written your book for a certain target audience. So you really should be sending it to people who are the specific target audience and then getting those people's feedback because they're reading it for the reason you wrote it, not just because they know and there's a big difference in how you read content and apply it in your brain if you need the content versus you're just reading the content.

Dixie Carlton 17:19

Yes, exactly. And getting those people together can actually spark some amazing conversations as well. And whether it's on Zoom or literally invite them all to dinner or whatever, giving them an opportunity to have a conversation with each other about what they found was valuable or not, or what worked for them and why something attacking this all with more than just your own brain is going to give you much stronger feedback that you can really take and work on. And so I encourage anyone to do that.

Brad Hauck 17:51

Exactly. So here's three actions you can take this week to help you build that ladder. Number one, map your current ladder. You've got to know where you're starting. Write down every step that someone can take from you from discovering your book to becoming a paying client, and then look for those missing rungs, those dead ends and missing links, etc. Number two, choosing one missing rung to fix. Don't rebuild everything at once. As I said before, you need to look at it in steps. Get the first step right before you try and fix the second or third step.

And then number three, create the one obvious step that people take from when they get your book to the next step because that's probably the biggest point where people are going to fail to move forward up your ladder. You need to find out what that is and make it work for you.

Dixie Carlton 18:45

I love that list. And if you really want to take this further, please make a point of reaching out to either Brad or myself and have a conversation. Go to where you can get the downloadable worksheet for this. And just letting readers know, we'll be putting a full book out based on this particular series of podcasts or this season of on the experts journey. So that will be available in a few weeks. And we really want to unpack a lot more of this. And we want to know more about what you'd like to have us cover in the next season of The Experts Journey.

So please feel free to drop us a line and let us know. That was great, Dixie and Brad. Covered all of that, answered all these questions. But now I'm curious about this part of my journey. Let us know what you're thinking in that regard.

Brad Hauck 19:31

Excellent. Look, your book shouldn't be the end of the journey. It should be the beginning. Take some time to map out what happens next, identify the missing rungs, and create one clear step that moves your readers closer to working with you. Build the ladder one rung at a time. And if this episode has you thinking about writing a book, make sure you get in touch with Dixie at indiexpertspublishing.com. And if you need help becoming number one online, talk to me at bradhauck.com. We'll see you in the next episode.

Dixie Carlton 20:00

Do you soon, Brad? Thanks for the great conversation.