Susan Friedmann 00:00:12

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.

Today, my special guest is Matt McWilliams. Matt is a living proof that you can pursue your passion in life and do so while also making a profit. He's been through the startup phase multiple times and in the past two decades has built a following from scratch. He's worked with some of the top companies and entrepreneurs on the planet, such as Shark Tanks, Kevin Harrington, Tony Robbins, Michael Hyatt, Brian Tracy, Jeff Walker, and many, many more. He's the author of the best-selling book Turn Your Passions Into Profits the Proven Path for Building a Rewarding online business. And he's also the host of the Affiliate Guide podcast. Today he lives out his passion for helping others find their purpose, passion, message, and path to profitability. 

Matt, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week's guest, expert and mentor.

Matt McWilliams 00:01:13

While Susan, thanks so much for having me.

Susan Friedmann 00:01:16

So many of our authors write their book because they're passionate about some area. Maybe they've overcome something or they've got a fantastic solution. But their biggest challenge comes when they need to unlock that passion and turn it into some kind of profitability, a profitable business. Mixing the two. How can they do that? Where would they even go about starting this process?

Matt McWilliams 00:01:46

If you look at the title of the book, Right Turn Your Passions Into Profits, it starts with the passion side, and then it goes to the profit side, and it's a step by step process for that. And this whole thing came about because I realized that most entrepreneurs that I know, including me, were on one of those two extremes. They were either where I was I've been on both the extremes, actually, where I had a business that I loved, but I wasn't making any money. I was passionate about it, I was changing lives. I was getting these emails saying, Matt, thank you so much. You've impacted me so much. And I learned very quickly. Both my kids play high level soccer, or football, as you guys call it, and it costs a lot of money. And for some reason, the soccer team, they wouldn't accept payment by me forwarding really complimentary emails to them. They didn't accept all these blog comments saying nice things about me as form of payment. The mortgage company didn't take those emails as form of payment. They required money. That's where we see a lot of entrepreneurs, like, they love what they're doing, they're just not making any money. And then on the flip side, they're profitable, they're making good money, but they hate what they're doing. And I've been on both of those. And this whole idea was, how do we marry both of them. How do we we get the best of both worlds. And so, especially for a lot of authors, they're subject Matter experts. Maybe they don't see themselves as that. They still have that imposter syndrome that says, well, gosh, who am I to write a book? I don't have letters behind my name. I'm not the world's leading expert on this subject. Who am I to do this? But they are a subject Matter expert. The whole premise of the book hinges on the belief that the world needs your message. We are out there. There are people out there. There are tens of thousands of people out there, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people that are waiting on your message. But we're not going to wait passively or patiently for it. We are going to move on without that message. So the question is, are you going to actually get your message out into the world? And so for me, that's what the whole book is about. We can talk about some specifics in there. Of course, I know your audience is out there, so I never want to be this little tip. I never want to be one of those people who comes on a podcast and says, well, in the book I talk about that and then doesn't actually answer the question. I hate that. I'm like, no, just answer the question. I'll get the book, but give me the answer right now. That's a process that we can go through. Yeah.

Susan Friedmann 00:04:04

No, I love that. And you're right. I'm not going to let you get away with that. You know, that's a personal pet peeve.

Matt McWilliams 00:04:11

I hate that.

Susan Friedmann 00:04:12

Good. I mean, just in what you said right now, the idea that they don't necessarily believe that they are subject Matter experts and that fear and that doubt, that creep in that imposter syndrome. And I've had it many times, and it was early on in my career that I found a book on the imposter syndrome. And I like, oh my goodness, it's not only me, which made me feel a thousand times better, but also our book isn't for everyone. Our message isn't for everyone. Yes, it might be a universal message, but you know as well as I, you can't sell to everyone. When you think about that, you think about your passion. You think about the fact that it's bound up in this book. How do we unlock that and say, hey, I need to turn this into a business? What would I even think of starting to do with that?

Matt McWilliams 00:05:07

I think a lot of it starts and this is part of any author's journey. I came at it from a very different perspective because I had a successful business. A lot of the people that have interviewed me have said, why in the heck did you write a book? One client will pay us in a fraction of the time that it takes me to write a book. Why would you write a book I'm like? Well, because I can only help a couple of dozen clients a year. I can only impact 25, maybe 35 people in a given year. We've already sold over 5000 books. What is the math on that? 200 times more people? No, 2000 times more people. I don't know what the math is. It's a lot more yeah. 200 times in a few weeks, let alone long term. For me, I came out of it from that perspective of already having the business side down. What you have to do if you don't have that, if you're coming into this, you're writing a book and this is kind of your first foray into business and you want to turn it into long term profits, is a lot of it starts with the mindset, Susan, of, okay, number one, books don't make that much money. News flash. I hate to break it to you, but even if you self publish and get, what, 50% of the sale price, it's $10. You're making $10 a book. I work with a major publisher. I don't even know the numbers. But I'll tell you this. It's less than $6 a book. I think we make pretty good amount on the audiobook, but we don't make a ton of money on the book. So you have to think about it, okay, how do I leverage this book into the ability to make money long term? What are the things that I can do in the book? So I'll give you a few examples. Like, number one, mentioning products and services that you offer in the book itself. Do not not put your products and services in the book. Don't forget to sprinkle them throughout the book. What I'll do is I'll tell a story. I'll give you a great example. And this is like a little preview of it in step four of the book. It's about converting visitors into subscribers. And I talk about how to create a lead magnet and why you need an email list. And we can dive into those things. What makes the best lead magnet, how to name your lead magnet, how to get your first thousand subscribers. That's what I cover in step four. Now, unless this book were 1000 pages long, what I can't cover is, okay, how do you go from 1000 to 10,000 subscribers? 10,000 to 10,0000. We have a course for that, though. And we have stuff that has more detail. So you read the book. Here's what you can do. With 1000 subscribers, you can make $1000 to $2,000 a month. The book can make you $1000 to $2,000 a month. For some people, it can make you even more. But for most people, that's about the limit of the book. That's great. Most businesses will never make $1000 to $2,000 a month. So I got you to that level. You want to up level, then you need to go learn more stuff and that's understandable because, again, I can't write 1000 page book. My publisher wouldn't let me. I tried to write a 500 page book, but they cut it down to 300. That's one example. Number two, are there affiliate opportunities in the book? What are the things that you could promote, like your recommended tools in your book? Can you point them to when you mention a tool for the nonfiction authors and you're saying, hey, currently, as of right now, the best tools that I recommend are at and then you have such and such your domain name tools or something like that. I recommend not mentioning the tools in your book because they change so much. Software has changed, things like that. Things like extended study. So one example in the book, I talk about one of my mentors who became a client, Jeff Walker, and I say, hey, I've learned a lot from him. If you want to get his full lessons, here's the link to go to. And I mentioned the link, things like that. Even in your bibliography or suggested reading, I don't put the books in the back of the book. I say, for my list of recommended books, you go to Matt McWilliams Books. I can update that in real time. So at any point in time, I can add books, remove books, et cetera, et cetera. So affiliate marketing is a great thing that takes you from making, say, four or $5 a book to six or seven or $8 a book because you get them to purchase additional things through your affiliate link.

Susan Friedmann 00:09:24

People like recommendations. I think that's a really good point, is that the fact that you're using them and it's almost like you're endorsing a product without mentioning the product, that you're saying, hey, you need this tool, and then they go to that link. Or that QR code do you put in QR codes? Have used QR codes.

Matt McWilliams 00:09:46

We didn't seem to be a little clunky. We've tried them with some other stuff, and they've been a little bit clunky, servers not working and stuff like that. So it's just really easier to just use the domains and just say, you know what, go to this domain, and they're pretty easy to remember. I will share real quick just one other thing that we did with this book that's worked so amazingly well. I will be honest, I did it as an experiment. I really didn't think it was going to be nearly as effective. I mean, the book launched three days ago. Most people have only had the book for 48 hours. My mom just sent me a picture. She went to the Barnes and Noble near her and installed the book, which is like a dream come true, by the way, because it's in stores now. And so most people are just digging into the book and it's already working. Where in the book I say, hey, I basically explained the outline of something that in the original version of the book, the original manuscript, there was a section that was about 10,000 words long, Susan and my publisher, the editor, is like, that needs to be 3000. This just drags on too much. I'm like, yeah, but it's got all the details. They're like, yeah, we need to cut 30,000 words out of the manuscript to get this around 300 pages. But I really like this section. So what I did was, in order to cut that section out, as I just said, I said, here's the outline. Let me give you the first two steps. If you want the other eight steps, just text me at this number and I'll send you the other eight steps. There's no payment involved, but it sends them to a webinar, a prerecorded webinar or a replay of the webinar, an on demand version. And already here we are, three days after people even have the book in this hand. That webinar has already resulted in almost $3,000 in sales. Now, long term, we're talking adding zeros to that. That's just three days in. Because that thing is in, like, step seven of the book. Most people are probably still stuck on step one. There's something you can do as well where you can set up either a domain name we did it because we have a text platform that we use. So you text the number and it sends you to the webinar. And then in that webinar, there's an offer at the end where you can choose to purchase additional stuff so it doesn't have to be all paid stuff that you recommend. In the book itself. It can even be free stuff that leads to paid stuff.

Susan Friedmann 00:11:56

I'm pleased that you're saying that, because so often authors are frightened to give away free stuff because they're like, oh, that's my IP. That's my intellectual property. I don't necessarily want to just give that away. So you're saying, yes, give it away, because that can lead to something else. So you already need to know. I believe that if I'm understanding you correctly, that there's a path. You start off with that free stuff, but that free stuff is going to lead to something else, which could lead to something else, and so on down the chain. Okay, excellent. You talked about affiliate marketing, and that's something that I know we've mentioned in podcasts, but we haven't really gone into it in much detail. And I know this is an important part of your business. Talk to us a little bit more about that. First of all, let's start off with what exactly it is so people understand it and want to assume that they do necessarily understand what it is. So what is it and then how could our users use it?

Matt McWilliams 00:12:58

Yeah, so I listed a few ways that you can use it. I can certainly share a few more, but at its core, what affiliate marketing is very simple. I recommend a product. So I recommend your products, Susan. If a person buys, then you share some of the profits with me. It's called an affiliate commission. Now, that can also take on the form of maybe I recommend that they attend a workshop with you, a free workshop, and in that workshop, you sell them into something, and then I get credit for those people who purchased through me. The concept has been around since the Romans. I mean, there were probably ancient Romans who recommended other people's services and got a kickback, right? The concept has been around forever. We think it's a brand new thing. No, it's not. It's been around for thousands and thousands of years. We just added technology to it about 25, 30 years ago. That's all we did.

Susan Friedmann 00:13:45

We called it to affiliate marketing.

Matt McWilliams 00:13:47

Exactly. That's all that we did.

Susan Friedmann 00:13:49

We put a label on it.

Matt McWilliams 00:13:51

Yeah, I mean, I mentioned some of the ways earlier that you can do that, you know, as an author. The other thing, like, you know, in a book, you can talk about one of the examples in the book that I use is I share a lesson on copywriting, and I say much of what I learned about copywriting came from the following sources. If you want to take a deep dive, go to this URL. And I have recommended courses on copywriting. I'm not going to be able in ten pages in the book to give you what Ray Edwards has in a 20 hours course. It's just not going to happen. I can give you a primer. I can get you started and give you some confidence and some tools. But if you read this, this is what you're looking for with your audience. If you read this and you go, oh, my gosh, this is amazing, or you apply it and you're sitting there with my book and you're on the copywriting section, you get some good value out of it and you go, man, if this is what I got out of ten pages in Matt's book, then my gosh, I better go get the course that he learned from and get the detailed lessons. That's one way. Another way is very simple. Just like a casual mention in the book. I say, one of our clients, Michael Hyatt, says in his course, five days to your best year ever. Parentheses if you want to learn more about Michael Hyatt's course, go to Matt McWilliams. Whatever, right? It's just a casual mention. Well, 5000 people read the book. What if only ten people go to that link and buy it's? Ten. I make $100 per person. That's $1,000. I just increased my revenue per book, if I'm doing my math right, by 20 or $0.25. That's not a ton, but it's a nice little add on, right? An extra thousand bucks. I mean, raise your hand if you want an extra thousand bucks. Everyone I mentioned earlier, like the suggested reading or, you know, the bibliography. One example is in the book, there are some interviews, like, I don't transcribe the interviews, but I have, like, as Yan Coke told me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I write out what he told me. They recommend some products in the natural course of them just talking about their stuff. They're not their own products, they're recommending other people's products. And I say, hey, if you want to learn more about those products, go to the URL I recommend in the book and you can learn more about that. So there's just tons of ways that you can work it into your book. And then, of course, the key is then to work it into your business, just to kind of share the brief version of that. If you think of affiliate marketing as the example I often give is like, the affiliate donut. So the affiliate donut, Susan, is if you can picture a donut, here we are, we're doing this in the middle of the afternoon, at least my time. And so now I really want a donut. If you picture a donut, that hole is your core offers. This is your flagship course, your consulting, whatever it is that you offer as a business owner, your core offers. But the glaze, the sprinkles, the bulk of the donut is all the other things that your audience needs to know, wants to learn, or needs to use in terms of tools. But you don't offer your two options become, well, screw them, I'm not going to serve them. I don't have that product, I don't have that software. I don't know the answer to that question. Or you say, here's, let me recommend so and so to you, or such and such to you. People come to me all the time, Susan, and say, how do I set up a membership site? And I go, I don't know. Well, you have one. Yeah, but I don't really I'm an expert on it. I recommend Stu McLaren. Hey, Matt, I need to learn how to you wrote a book. Do you must know everything there is to know about writing a book. No, I don't. Let me recommend a couple of people who are experts at that. People see us as experts sometimes as things that we're not necessarily experts on, and we can recommend their products to.

Susan Friedmann 00:17:31

Our audience, which makes me think about, well, who do you necessarily want to be affiliated with and how do you go about becoming an affiliate for somebody? You say, I use this software and I think it's great, let me recommend it. But again, the possibility of making a little bit of profit on that. Why not? How do you go about that whole process?

Matt McWilliams 00:17:56

Yeah, you just said step one right there. Look around at your proverbial desktop. So it could be your actual desktop. On my actual desktop. Right now, as far as tools that I would recommend, I have a ring light that I use in the studio. I have a microphone that I'm talking into and I have my planner. All of those things are on my Resources page. So on my Toolbox page, they're all on there. Look at the sites that you're logging into, the courses that you've taken, the books that you've read. Every author should have a Recommended Reading page. I only make a couple of month off my Recommended Reading page. It's not a huge profit center, but I get asked all the time, what books should I read? Matt why not set up a page and make $0.50 from Amazon every time they buy one? It's super easy. It's the easiest way just to make a few extra $100 a month. So think about what programs you can promote, what products you can promote, then apply to those programs. And I walk through the whole process. That would be like a 15 minutes segment all in and of itself. But I would walk through how to get accepted in the book, because that's a big barrier when you're starting out. So in the book, there's a bunch of templates that you can use to reach out. This is the most important one because it renders most of the other templates unnecessary, such as what to do if you get declined when you apply, and things like that. I list a template in the book, like, as soon as you apply, send this email to the affiliate program, to the affiliate manager. This email works because it shows initiative, shows you're eager to be a part of their program. You're not some sort of a scammer, all those things. So the subject line, you just say, thanks. Thanks. Excellent point. And you just write to the affiliate manager, say, hey, I just wanted to say thanks for letting me apply to your affiliate program. I'm super excited to be a part of it and get started promoting such and such product. Right. If you have any questions about my site, my audience, or anything else, feel free to ask. Can't wait to hear back and get things going. What that shows me as someone who's worked with over 300,000 affiliates in my business, what that shows me is you're legit and you're eager, and I should approve you. I should let you into our affiliate program because the scammers that we're typically worried about as affiliate managers don't do that kind of thing. That's the biggest key to getting accepted, is just make sure you apply, fill out the application, and then send an extra email. You can copy and paste it from the book. It's super easy. Take an extra 30 seconds to send that email. You'll get accepted 99.9% of the time, and then the 0.1%. I've got templates to overcome that. And then from there, Susan, you just recommend like you would to a friend. Years ago, I was speaking at this conference and I gave this whole presentation about affiliate marketing right it was my first big stage where I had more than I think I'd spoken in front of, like 200 people before, but I'd never spoken in front of a thousand people before. This was big deal to me. When I was practicing this, I practiced it for like a month. Every day. I did the whole speech. It was an hour and 15 minutes speech. And I gave the whole speech every day for like 25 days, right? Practiced it. And every time when I got to the end and I asked the question, who here thinks they can do affiliate marketing? In my mind, Susan, because it's a little warped. Every hand in the place twin up. And they all started running up on stage and like, oh, my gosh, Matt, you're the best. Let's just tell you how my brain worked. So I got up on stage and I delivered the speech, and I'm like, the audience was fired up. Like they were ready to do this. And I said, who here thinks they've can do affiliate marketing? And only like, half the hands in the place went up? And I was like, oh, crap. And I was like, oh, my gosh. I found this one lady who was sitting there looking like, there's no way I could do this. I was like, tell me why you don't think you could do it. She was like, I don't think I could sell someone else's product. I don't know how to sell someone else's stuff. I had no plan for this. Susan. I am on stage, 1000 people, 500 of whom are going basically shaking their head at me, going, I don't think this is going to work. I think you're full of it. And like, what do I do? And I kind of panic. I look on stage and they had these two chairs for the next segment that were on the stage already. So I sat down in one of them and I said, come up here. It takes her a minute to get up there, which I needed that minute. It actually took her, like two minutes, and I needed every second of it because I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do. And then it hit me. When she was about halfway up and she got up and I said, tell me about your favorite restaurant. She describes her favorite restaurant. I was like, tell me what it's like when you pull up to this restaurant. She talks about the outside. Tell me what it's like when you walk in. She talks about the ambiance, the decor, what's the service like? She's like, well, it feels like my water is always full, but the waiter is never in the way. The service is amazing. Last week, my husband and I went, the waiter was running outside to give us our doggy bag and almost got hit by a car. And I'm like, wow, that's amazing service. And when she's you describe the food, by the way, don't ever do this at 1145 in the morning at a conference, because I could see people started when she's describing the food. We're like Pavlov’s dogs. Like we're all drooling. It's like nothing short of a sensual experience. By the time she was done, I looked out to the audience, I said, who here wants to go to that restaurant this time? Every hand in the place went up. I looked at her and I said, you just did it. You just did affiliate marketing. You sold a room full of 1000 people that you don't even know on someone else's product. You don't own that restaurant. You don't even know the owner of that restaurant, and you sold this place on that restaurant. That's all affiliate marketing is. It's just recommending products that you believe in, services you believe in, like you would to a friend. That's it.

Susan Friedmann 00:23:15

That's a beautiful story. And it really hits the nail on the head because it's so easy. You picked the right thing. It's like, hey, a restaurant. We all go to restaurants. We've all got a favorite restaurant that we love going to, or we have a dish. And why do we keep ordering that same dish? Because we like it. Why do we like it? Yeah. I love that story. I think it's time that we let you tell us how our listeners can get the book. Because I'm salivating just at the idea of I want to get and really read the book in detail, which, I apologize, I have not done yet because my copy hasn't come. But when it does, I will be because there's so much great information there. So tell us how we can get a copy of that book and anything else you want to share with our listeners.

Matt McWilliams 00:24:08

The whole book, it walks you through step by step. There are ten steps in the book. I would tell everybody, no Matter where you think you're at, you flip to the table of contents, you're like, oh, I've got step one and step two figured out. Go through them anyway. I've had so many people, six and seven figure entrepreneurs say, Matt, I did step one. I honestly didn't think I should. I thought it was kind of a waste of my time, but I did it. I did the exercises at the end of each chapter, and I got clear on who I serve or learned how to be a leader to my audience. I had one the other day. He read step Four, all about creating a lead magnet. And he was like, Matt, one of the rules we have in there is it cannot take you more than 3 hours to create a lead magnet. And I tell a story about my dad in that where I have to talk about how my dad had the best lead magnet of anybody on the face of the earth. My dad never got on the Internet a day. In his life before he passed away 17 years ago. He was like, I read that. I went to my team. This guy's doing $2.4 million Erie. He said, I went to my team. Team. I said, we need to re engineer all of our lead magnets. And we had four lead magnets. So we had 8 hours. Four. That's 2 hours. We didn't even have 3 hours. Matt we improved overnight. We improved our opting rate by 40%. They're going to make 40% more money this year on a chapter. He didn't think he was supposed to read it. I didn't write the chapter for him. I wrote it for beginners. Right. But even he's getting value out of it. So it walks you through step by step on how to do that. You can get it anywhere. Amazon, it's in stores, at least in the US. We got a nationwide deal with Barnes and Noble. I just found that out yesterday. I actually got a text from my mom a little bit ago. It's in about half the stores in the US. It will be in the other half by next week. And she sent me a picture. It's like, front and center when you walk in Barnes and Noble, and it's surrounded by some of my favorite books as an author. That text from my mom, I sat there and just stared at it for like, five minutes. I was blown away. So you can get it pretty much anywhere. Target, you name. It online. But the best place to get it, guys, is Passionsintoprofitsbook.com  That's the special link for your listeners. Susan and when they go there and they purchase the book, there's some extra bonuses. So some of that stuff that we couldn't get into in the book itself, we give away those extras. There's, like $500 in extra bonuses when you go through that specific link to get the book.

Susan Friedmann 00:26:19

Excellent. Thank you.

Matt McWilliams 00:26:20

You won't pay more for the book or anything like that. The book is normal price wherever you get it. And then you just enter your information, enter your order number, and then we'll give you all the bonuses.

Susan Friedmann 00:26:29

Excellent. And I'll put that link in the show notes, Matt, so that if people are driving or mowing the lawn or exercising, doing something fun, that they can find out what that is. And, Matt, as you know, we always end off our episode with a golden nugget from our guests. So what would you like to leave our listeners with?

Matt McWilliams 00:26:54

There's two quotes in the book that they were probably two favorite quotes in the whole book, and they're from other people. And I think for authors and for entrepreneurs and for really anybody who struggles with comparisons, we see all these best selling authors. Like, my book will never look that good because you're self publishing. Okay, that's fine. So the two quotes, the first one is from John Akuf, and he says, Never compare your beginning to someone else's middle. That's really easy to do. I'm not as polished as so and so. Of course not. He's been in business for 17 years. I've been in business for eight. My website doesn't look as good. Of course not. You did it yourself. And somebody else spent $55,000 on theirs. So never compare your beginning to someone else's middle. And the other one is from Steven Furdick. He said, the reason we struggle with Insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else's highlight reel. So all the times behind the scenes where you're beating your head against a keyboard, all the times where you're staring at the blank page, all the times when something happens and you forget what you're writing or you have a busy day and you don't have time to write that day, that's your behind the scenes. Stop comparing that to everyone else's highlight reel, because we've all been there, we've all done that, and we've all been through the struggles.

Susan Friedmann 00:28:04

Yeah. It's so easy to compare yourself with other people. I mean, I know when I was starting out in the speaking business, there was one woman that I absolutely adored and the National Speakers Association. I said, when I grow up, I want to be like you. And she said, no, just be like you, not me. I was like, oh, yeah, so true.

Matt McWilliams 00:28:25

I mean, I always equate it to, like, parenting. Nobody posts on Instagram when their kids throw in a fit. Every parent's been told by their child, I hate you. Probably every kid has hit their parent or done something mean to their parent. We don't post about that on social media. We're comparing that version of our child to the perfect version of their child on social media. Their child's winning a trophy and ours is sitting on a time out. Their child must be so much better than our no, that's my behind the scenes and that's their highlight reel. They're not the same thing. You can't compare them.

Susan Friedmann 00:28:58

Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you, Matt. This has been amazing. I know we could speak for another hour and more on what you have to offer. Thank you. And yes, everybody, get a copy of this book. Turn your passions into profits. We'll put the link on the show notes. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

And by the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let you and I jump on a call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. And I know you've heard from Matt. There are lots of ways to do that. You've invested a whole lot of time, money, energy, and you want to get a return, go to BrainstormwithSusan.com to schedule a free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, is wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Click here to book your 20-minute brainstorming session with Susan