Transcript

Bryan Hyde
Welcome to the Janine Bolon show, where we share tips from around the globe. As we guide practical people with their finances using money tips, increase their incomes through side businesses, and maintain their sanity by staying in their creative zone.

Janine Bolon
Hello, Janine Bolon here, and welcome to today’s show that is loaded with quality content on transformation and business savvy. The Janine Bolon show is syndicated program of four podcast programs that were combined in October of 2021. Up to that point, my team and I have been running four separate podcast called the Three Minute Money Tips, the Thriving Solopreneur, the Writers Hour Creative Conversations, and the Practical Mystic Show. If you’re one of our listeners that has followed us through the syndication process, we just want to give a shout out to you today and say, thank you, thank you, thank you. We appreciate it when you subscribe to us, especially when you subscribe to The Janine Bolon show. We know you’ve been following us and we just want to say we appreciate you. Now today we are highlighting an incredible author that encapsulates what it means to be a servant leader. As you know, I’m interviewing 99 authors this year to receive their guidance and perspective on how you can get your message, your story, or your memoir out into the world. But today’s upcoming guest served in the Marine Corps, developed a love for the world. He’s visited over thirty countries, was a keynote speaker in a dozen of them including Cuba, Kenya, Uganda, and Bosnia and Indonesia just to name a few. Now, after twenty years in the ministry, he felt called upon to help people with business development and growth. Not only that, he loves being a grandparent, traveling for Broncos Stock Car Racing, and he serves as a chaplain to his local race community. Welcome to the show, Robert Peterson.

Robert Peterson
Wow, Janine, you made me sound amazing.

Janine Bolon
Of course you are. Of course, you’re amazing. People don’t come on this show unless they’re doing incredible things, and you definitely are the epitome of the servant leader, you and your wife both, it’s incredible what you guys do. Tell us the name of your book, I forgot to add that.

Robert Peterson
The Entrepreneur Mindset Shift: Growth Characteristics of Success.

Janine Bolon
Yeah, growth characteristics of success, and you definitely have nailed that the two of you. So, talk to me a little bit about when you first started becoming an author, okay, so it’s one thing to be running around the world, giving out keynote addresses and all that, and then you go to start writing what you know, into a format like that. So, what was that writing process like for you?

Robert Peterson
So, actually, for me, it was fairly quick, I made the decision on Christmas weekend that I didn’t have any appointments on my calendar, I had two, one hour spots between Christmas, and New Year’s taken on the calendar. And so I said, well, I guess it’s time to write my book, and so I committed to writing six-thousand words a day, each day that week, and we pushed a little into the New Year’s weekend, because it was a three day weekend, of course, with New Year’s and Christmas falling on the weekends. And we push through that weekend, and on January 5th, I was speaking to a publisher.

Janine Bolon
Fabulous. And that’s one of the things I like to tell writers, is sometimes people think that it takes years, and years for you to write a book. And sometimes it’s just like, you know it’s time to write, get your butt in the chair, start writing, because it needs to happen. So, well done. So, did you decide to write under a pen name? Or did you write under your legal name?

Robert Peterson
I wrote under my legal name, with my middle initial, because I own the domain.

Janine Bolon
That’s always helpful. Well, every author, you have that opportunity, right, you have that moment where you’re like, do I use my name? Do I use a pseudonym? There’s that moment. And then a lot of times nonfiction authors are like, nope, I need people to find me, and they use their regular name. I find that fictional authors, are the ones that are like, maybe I can hide, because that way, if the book really stinks, people won’t find me. So, it’s kind of cute how that happens. So, did you have a marketing background before you started writing your book? I mean, did you get into marketing somehow?

Robert Peterson
Not really. I mean, I’ve obviously been marketing my business. I’ve been a solopreneur, now since 2018, so, last four years. So, I had been developing some knowledge in marketing, and I think the book is just adding to that.

Janine Bolon
Right. So, what was the biggest surprise to you about having to market your book, the process of marketing, the process of publishing, what was one of the big surprises?

Robert Peterson
I mean, I think it just added to what we’re creating, I don’t like the word omnipresence, because of my relationship with the Lord, but the idea in marketing of being everywhere like the insurance companies, and just the brand names that you know, right. You’ll see them on billboards. You’ll hear them on the radio, you’ll see them on TV commercial, and of course, for us in our little small world of entrepreneurship, billboards, and TV commercials are not in the picture yet. And so, having that presence in all the places where people are, where our ideal clients are looking around, and trying to find information, trying to be in those places, so that they find us, right, or they see us multiple, multiple, times. Because that’s the reality in this world today, is they just need to see you, and they need to want to check you out, and they need to be able to Google, and see that your website confirms, oh, yeah, oh, look, he’s on YouTube, oh, he’s got these podcasts. Oh, he’s an author, too, let’s check out his book, and see what people are saying about his book. And so, I think all of those things add to a level of expertise, and authority that comes together to say, okay, this person is really doing something in the world, and making an impact, maybe. And I like what they’re saying, so, maybe, maybe they can help me too.

Janine Bolon
And so, what surprised you then in the process of trying to get out onto all these platforms and publishing your book? What was your biggest surprise and all that?

Robert Peterson
I mean, obviously, it’s just slower. It’s slower than you want it to be. Although, I will say I think with the podcast, and the network that the podcast has created, the authorship is just added to it. And it feels like there’s more momentum there, than there was with just the podcast alone. And so, the two in my mind together are very powerful.

Janine Bolon
It kind of has a one, two, punch to it when you have the book, and the podcast doesn’t it?

Robert Peterson
Indeed.

Janine Bolon
Yeah. So, what would you change if you started marketing your book today, knowing what you know now? I always like to ask authors this, because there is a learning curve, right? And then you kind of find your footing. So, how would you change your marketing, if you were marketing today?

Robert Peterson
Well, I don’t know that I would change anything in what I’ve done with this, just because the decision to write this book came so late, and then I found a publisher that published at the same speed that I was already working, which I appreciate because I know that success loves speed, and the momentum created by just doing it, just getting it out there, getting the book finished, not making sure it’s not perfect. There’s editorial errors that we can continue to correct as we go, but each set of printing, we’re getting a little bit better. But the fact that the product was good enough at one point to put it out there, and just keep rolling, rather than this long drawn out… standard publishing house is one to two years, to get a book out, some other hybrid publishing, six months sometimes. And of course, self publishing, you can shove it out there pretty fast if you choose to. And I found a hybrid publisher that was essentially helping me self-publish, but they’re providing some services, and we found an editor that helped us get through it, and make it better than it was. The biggest thing we did was, I sent it to first, my ten friends, first ten business associates first and said, just make sure I’m not gonna look like an idiot. So, that way I didn’t have to use a pen name.

Janine Bolon
Right? Because you weren’t worried about the quality. No, I get it. There’s always that fear factor.

Robert Peterson
Yeah, and so, but I think for the next book, I’d like to have some more lead up, right? I’d like to have more time to talk about the process, like, hey, I’m writing talking about this chapter, what should we talk about in there? And getting more of my community’s involvement, and more, just more momentum as we’re building up towards a book release.

Janine Bolon
You’ve mentioned this several times to me, not only when I’ve been on your podcast, but also on this one. Success loves speed. Where did you pick that one up?

Robert Peterson
I don’t know if I picked it up, or it just adopted me.

Janine Bolon
Right? Yeah. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. But I’ve heard it enough from you that I’m like, okay, dude, where did this come from? How did you do this because sometimes, as an entrepreneur, you also have to know when to slow your little butt down, because you’re going so fast, you’re not enjoying the journey and part of entrepreneurship is enjoying the journey. But success does love speed too.

Robert Peterson
So, I describe it as those first couple years of pushing a rock up a hill, and not a small rock, right, the big rock that requires your entire force. And, when you’re first starting out, you’re pushing that rock, and gosh, some days it just feels like that rock doesn’t go anywhere. But there’s a point right, that tipping point over the top where the rock, starts to take off and picks up some speed. And, but also there’s that point where if you’re not keeping up with the rock and you grab on, you get rolled over the top of it. Because, and that’s where you do have to know, wait, whoa, we’re going way too fast, we’ve lost a little bit of control. And so there is that momentum, I think just momentum and relationships multiply. And there’s some exponential factors that happen in there. But it takes motion, right? This is a spiritual element of business like money, that the more you’re using it, the more you’re moving it, movement is required. And so the authorship, for me was really about, I want to push this movement, and I want to push this information out as fast as I can. And, just take advantage of the fact that we can, the one thing independent publishers can do, is do it quickly.

Janine Bolon
Yes, and that is brilliant.

Robert Peterson
So, let’s take advantage of the fact that we can do it quickly, and make sure that the marketing is matching the writing, and is matching the process to multiply the speed rather than, you know, well, we’re going to stop it here, nope, we’re going to take a break here. And so, it’s been, the process has been interesting, the pieces that you don’t think of. The very first thing the publisher asked me is, have you thought about anyone to write your foreword? And of course, in my little brain, I’m like, well, my wife would love to do that for me, she’ll say really good things about me. But it won’t help my marketing very much. And so, that really, that was the first step outside of the box. And, the first person I asked, they’re too busy, that they’d love to do it, but they quit doing those years ago, because they’re just too much of a burden. And then, the second person I asked was hemming and hawing. They never said, no, so, I was like, oh, I’m on the hook. I think they’ll do it, it’d be okay. And then I woke up in the middle of the night, one night, and I said, you know, in my business, I’ve made the decision that if it’s not a hell, yes, it’s a no. And for the first time, I decided that applies to the people that I’m asking to be a part of my life too. And so I was like, well, obviously, they’re not interested, and if they’re not really interested, then they’re not going to write a very good foreword. And I moved on to somebody else that was far better matched for the book, and really wrote an incredible foreword that brought tears to my wife’s eyes. And, they finished the foreword in time for us to get it in print. And so my book went from no book existing on December 25th, to having our first 200 copies in print with a foreword on February 12th.

Janine Bolon
And that is insanely fast for anybody who cares to count the days on that. So, talk to us about what worked best for you. I mean, how did you sell the most books? What was something that was super successful in your launch?

Robert Peterson
So, we’ve done some collaborative launches. So, the first two cities that we released the book in, we did multiple, often launches, so, there were eight of us in one city, ten of us in another. And I think, obviously, you get a bigger audience, right? Instead of me sitting in a little bookstore signing, ten copies by myself. There’s a roomful of a hundred people with each author bringing ten people to sign their books, and so, now you get exposure to a hundred people instead just ten. And so, that’s been really inspiring, and creates a much better feeling than sitting behind a table, at a bookstore by yourself with no one to talk to you, right?

Janine Bolon
Waiting for people to walk through the front door, and somebody, somebody stop at my table and talk to me. Yes, I understand that process. So, tell us about what was an epic failure. See, I love to learn, you know what worked. But I also want to know what didn’t work for you? What was something that you tried, and you were like, wow, never again?

Robert Peterson
Facebook ads. At the level that I’m at, right at this point in business, it’s just not, there’s not enough, I can’t throw enough money at it to make it worthwhile. Maybe that’s the problem. I throw just enough that it makes a big hole in my business. So,

Janine Bolon
I see money coming out, but I don’t see anything coming back in with that, huh?

Robert Peterson
I know that a book funnel is certainly doable, and that a book can be a great, top level funnel. But I think to reach the right people, you really need a good digital marketing company that knows exactly how to nail your niche, nail what the book is designed, the audience the book is trying to reach. And so, I think we’ll get there, we’re just not there on our own.

Janine Bolon
Right? I understand that. So, tell us the story that gets the most laughs from your target audience. Every author kind of has that story that they tell to kind of warm up their audience a little bit before they get to the meat of their talk. So, what is the story you’d like to tell on yourself?

Robert Peterson
So, I talk a lot about how entrepreneurship is like learning a language, and you have to be willing to fail. And so, I tell a story about nine keys, and the idea that we left our keys somewhere in a public place. And so, we’re sure somebody’s going to break into our house, because they have our keys now. And so, call the locksmith and just insist I need nine keys. Nine Keys, I want nine keys, I’m sure I want nine keys, I’m so positive that I want nine keys, I’m going to keep telling him that I want nine keys. And the locksmith goes to work on the door, and goes to make the first key, and says, are you sure you want nine keys? Of course, being young and ambitious, yes, I want nine keys, I’m totally confident. And of course, what’s happening is that, the word nine in Spanish is also the same as the word new except the ending is one vowel off, basically. And so, the pronunciation is simply instead of nine, it would be new. And so, I was asking for new keys, I was confident that I was asking for new keys. Of course, I was really saying nine keys. This locksmith got into it though, he was kind of funny. He’s like, man, I thought you were gonna give them to your dog, and your cat, and your fish.

Janine Bolon
Ah, yep, we’ve all been there. We’ve all had that language issue.

Robert Peterson
Yeah, the truth is you have to be willing to make mistakes, or you will never, you’ll never learn a foreign language. And I think you have to be willing to make mistakes in running a business, or you’ll never grow your business much beyond where you are. And so, that willingness to just do it. And that’s kind of how the book came about was just a willingness to do it. And, now follow up with it, and keep marketing it and putting it out there. Because yeah, the book won’t sell itself, you can get a book on Amazon, actually pretty easily. Like, you know, I could write a book in a week and put it on Amazon, and you know what? Nothing happens.

Janine Bolon
But it’s there.

Robert Peterson
And for some people, I think that’s what they want, right? They want to say, I wrote a book, I put it on Amazon, for me. It was never about writing the book, the book is just, I mean, there’s some legacy, I suppose, you know say, hey, I’ve got this, this was my first book. And, but the real idea is that I want people to find this, I want people to have access to the information, and I really want it to lead people to know what I know. And then, if they want more, that’s really the way that’s going to, the books gonna help build my business, and create opportunities to connect with a much larger audience than just networking or other business, you know, LinkedIn, or anything else. Right?

Janine Bolon
I totally agree. So, tell us what was the biggest change that you’ve seen in yourself since you started marketing your book?

Robert Peterson
I get to write author on my title.

Janine Bolon
That’s the biggest change you’ve had in your….

Robert Peterson
I’m getting more speaking opportunities. As an author, I think that speaking not just at book launches, but now conferences and events, which I was, I don’t know that I was trying very hard, but because of the marketing effort now, I think it’s creating that be everywhere that your audience is opportunity, which includes conferences and so, yeah, I think it’s opening some doors that I didn’t know, I wanted open.

Janine Bolon
Right. And you’re like, wow, check this out. That’s kind of cool, right? So, I ask every author this, what are some, like what are your top five tips that you would give authors when it comes to selling their books?

Robert Peterson
When it comes to selling their books, give away a bunch. So, first one, yeah we gave away a bunch of those first two hundred, partly because we were trying to get endorsements and five star reviews. And so, I was collecting endorsements. I had a huge advantage in that space, because of the podcast. I had great, great people on my podcast that were also willing to say hey, I’ll read your book and send you an endorsement and so, I have some pretty heavy hitter endorsements on my book that most first time authors may not have that opportunity, unless they’re podcasters. And then, I recommend definitely connecting the two, right? I think that’s a great connection between the podcast and the authorship. Obviously, if there’s alignment between your show, and your writing, I assume there typically would be, I think that’s really important, but collaboration, collaborating with other authors, finding other people that are doing what you’re doing, and work together. Right? There’s not competition in my world. And so, I think we can be partners, and we can help each other, and if they sell fifty books, and I sell ten, man, fantastic, what a great opportunity to keep working together. Let’s do it again at the next store, at the next place. And so, I want to see other people’s success, and if we can be successful together, it creates great opportunities. And yeah, just, I think, love your book so much that you talk about it a bunch.

Janine Bolon
That is really it, isn’t it? It’s letting people know that you even are an author, that you have books. Yeah.

Robert Peterson
Yeah, so I give away one at every networking event. I give away books every chance that I get, just so that they keep getting out there. And, it’s never conditional. Although, if you enjoyed the book, write a five star review. If you can’t write a five star review, let’s have a conversation why, so I can learn and be a better author.

Janine Bolon
Yeah, that’s true. People really do want us to improve, and be successful for the most part. I mean, it’s been that way with myself. And that leads us perfectly to the next question, which is, what is the one thing you most misunderstood about being an author? Like, did you have a preconceived notion going in that you’re like, wow, this is not at all what I thought.

Robert Peterson
I don’t know, that I had a notion of, I had been a part of a compilation book in 2006, and that book wasn’t marketed at all. And so, you know, I think each author bought, you know, ten or twenty copies and made sure their mom got one, and their dad got one, because it was about it, was stories about fathers. But I know that, so the marketing, I recognized when I talked to three different publishers I recognized, okay, marketing is very different from one publisher to the next. And I really hired a publisher who’s a marketer, not a publisher, he’s a marketer, social proof creator, that happens to print books. And so, it was a little different. But I found that out before I even went, and made a choice. And so I, that difference, I think is, I mean, it’s really big, because a publisher can print you books, they’ll send you two hundred of them, they’ll make you pay for two hundred of them, and once you have two hundred books sitting in the trunk of your car, you’re like, how the heck do I get rid of these things? Right? And if you’re committed to just selling them, and trying to make a buck on each one, I guess for me, the book has never been about making money with the book. It’s not about making money as an author. The book is a tool, it’s I think it’s a great business card. It’s a business card that says, hey, I can learn about you, I can learn about what you’re doing. And so, I think maybe that’s the biggest misconception, is the idea that you could make money as an author, a first time author in the nonfiction space. I don’t know, maybe you can. That’s not my expectation, or experience at this point.

Janine Bolon
Right? That’s not an area that we were in. So, what was the primary thing that was like your biggest reward about being an author, maybe something you weren’t expecting?

Robert Peterson
So, I wrote a story that’s actually in a different book that came out at the same time and so, just yesterday, at our launch, my dad read that story, and started crying, and just wanted to hug me and say, I didn’t know, I didn’t know. And I wrote about being bullied up until the eighth grade. and the transformation that I made in ninth grade, including changing my name, I was called Bobby up until the eighth grade, through the eighth grade, and then our family made some transitions and I said, no, my name is Robert, my birth name was Robert, and I’ve gone by Robert ever since. And my dad always assumed it was because they nicknamed the car Bobby at the same time, similar time, and I told him over, and over, it had nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with me, and transforming who I was choosing to be in the world. And in that transformation, people stopped bullying me, and my life was completely different. Ninth grade was the best year. I did not miss a single day of school in ninth grade, participated in the football team, was lead, had the lead role in the school play. And, good, great performance in all my classes that people were wanting to copy off of my work. Ninth grade was just, it was a completely new, new life, even though our family had taken a huge step backwards from our dream house, to a mobile home. And so, it was a huge, it was a huge transition. But I learned that I could control who I get to be in the world, and it made a huge difference.

Janine Bolon
Really does when you capture that at that stage of your life. So, do you have any parting advice, or any last words for our audience?

Robert Peterson
If you want to write a book, just do it.

Janine Bolon
Just do it.

Robert Peterson
Do it, you get to decide how long it takes you, you get to decide. But, I’ve just even recently heard too many stories, read to me stories about people who they’re writing their book, oh, they’re gonna write their book, oh, I’m gonna write this book when I retire. I’m gonna write this book when I finish this, or when I do that. And you know what? Tomorrow is not promised. You need to write your book right now, and just do it. And you don’t have to do it in seven days like I did, and write six thousand words a day. But what if you wrote six hundred words a day? What if you wrote six words a day? Getting words down on paper creates momentum, creates motion, and you’re gonna wake up in the middle of the night with ideas, and things are going to start happening in your brain that you’re going to say, I need to include that, oh, you know what, I wrote this seven days, but then I added two chapters because my brain wouldn’t quit. And so, you just do it, and make a decision when you want to have it finished, and figure out how many words a day you need to do to make that happen. But a hundred words, you can speak a hundred words in a minute. And so guess what, you can write a book pretty fast at a hundred words a minute.

Janine Bolon
Definitely, with all the voice to transcription software we have nowadays and everything, there really isn’t any excuses not to write your book. So, you alluded to it a little bit. Tell us about your current project. It was the book that you just recently launched, I was gonna let you read the title of that.

Robert Peterson
So, the Entrepreneur Mindset, the Stories of Success and Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Creating Abundance. So, yeah, we’re bringing together thirty entrepreneurs to share their story in a format that allows them to just write fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred words instead of thirty or forty thousand words.

Janine Bolon
And that makes it a lot easier let me tell you when you become a part of a project like that. So, when can we expect that book to come out?

Robert Peterson
I hope it’s July 2022.

Janine Bolon
July of this year. Wonderful. Okay. Anything else you want to share with this before we close up today?

Robert Peterson
Oh, I just had a thought, but it fluttered away. I just think I want to encourage people to really enjoy the process, right? Enjoy the journey and make writing part of your journey in some way. Even if you never share it with the world. I think writing and putting stories down. My mom is in a memory care facility, and her stories are locked up in her head, and they’ll never come out, and I’ve captured some, I sat down with her and I recorded some of those, and now I’ve made the choice that I will write that book about my mom and her story. Because now dad is still here to help me, and so, I need to take advantage of that and just do that. And so, that commitment happened this weekend in talking with my sister, and these other authors and so I am committed to getting mom’s story out, because I think stories matter.

Janine Bolon
They really do, they really help people connect in a way that, the only thing I know that is better than stories is song, music. I’ve seen music move people together but stories are basically just the words of songs, so let’s go people.

Robert Peterson
And for me, that’s really what the mindset shift is in entrepreneurs is to help them change the stories they tell themselves, change the stories of their understanding of the world, change the stories of their past, and not changing the events of the past but changing the way they tell themselves the story of the past. And so much of that can be so powerful for your mind, and using your mind in ways that most people don’t tap into. I want to get my brain out of survival mode, and start putting it into success, and abundance mode where it was meant to be.

Janine Bolon
Right, where we are meant to live. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for your time today as we had you as our spotlighted author Robert, it was a pleasure.

Robert Peterson
Oh, thank you so much, Janine. It was really fun conversation.

Janine Bolon
And if you are an author, or you know of an author that you would like us to spotlight, please visit our website, www.authorpodcasting.com, where you will find the 99 author project listed. We talk to all authors, from all walks of life as we build out book number 12, which is advice from authors to authors that will be published in 2023. And this is Janine Bolon, signing off with you today and all of us here at The 8 Gates that produces the Janine Bolon show. We wish you a wonderful week, and we encourage you to get your message, your story or your knowledge out into the world and make it a better place just like these authors that we’re interviewing this year. We’ll see you again next week, and until then, keep sharing what you know with others, keep shining that light that is you, and don’t forget to go out today and just do something for yourself, that’s just plain fun. We’ll see you next week.

Bryan Hyde
Thank you for listening to the Janine Bolon show. Be sure to subscribe to our show notes by going to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, where you’ll find additional resources as well as the opportunity to sign up to receive our program in your email each week. Be sure to visit our sponsor at www.the8gates.com.