Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
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 Peter Murphy Lewis. Peter is the founder of strategicpete.com and a fractional chief marketing officer renowned for turning overwhelming marketing data into clear, actionable growth strategies. From software to travel and media, Peter uncovers surprising parallels to drive innovation and results. As a TV host, documentary producer, he merges creativity with data driven solutions. CEOs rely on Peter to align efforts, inspire teams, and turn confusion into measurable growth, reflecting his vibrant approach to both life and business. Peter, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:01:10]:
So excited, Susan.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:11]:
We were talking earlier before we went on the air. You said something that really just sparked just a sort of a light that's I said, Oh my goodness. This is something our listeners need to know more about. And that is that you said that before you wrote your book, you created a brief. Now talk to us more about that.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:01:41]:
Yes. A creative brief, I believe, is a marketing jargon word for just saying a blueprint or a road map with some metrics. When I'm training either my clients or my team on a creative brief, the way that I translate it to everyone is it helps freelancers make sure that their employer does not move the goalposts on them. If the person who assigns the project agrees to a creative brief, it means that when you bring something back to them finished in 2 weeks, they can't say do this, this, and this if it's not aligned with the creative brief. That's the easiest way that people make sense of everyone. For me, a creative brief is I translate out loud what success looks like, why I wanna do it, how I'm gonna get there, what's unique about it, who's my audience, and then any extra details that I need to be able to pass this off to someone else. At my agency, I have a whole bunch of people who will help me move with this project. The design, every one of my chapters has something actionable that you can download.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:02:49]:
Everyone has a video. There's so much more to this book that I'm about to publish beyond the part that I'm doing, and that's the creative brief. And it's the kind of the foundation before I even started clunking away at my keyboard.
Susan Friedmann [00:03:02]:
You also said that you treated it as a company, that your book is a company, and you've got a mission statement and all the different aspects of what a company would need. Talk to us more about that.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:03:22]:
Yeah. I think that this comes from a unique process that I learned about 4 or 5 years ago. I hired a high end, amazing, 1 on 1 kind of professional coach, and this professional coach had to help me get over some mindset issues. And one of the ways to get me through it was a process called the life clarity map. And in that life clarity map, I just started to write out a mission statement as if Peter Murphy Lewis were a business. What are the things that Peter Murphy Lewis needs to do to be successful as a husband and a father? What do I need to be successful as my own temple, my own body? What I need to be successful financially? What I need to be successful socially outside of my son and my wife? And then started writing up, key performance indicators, KPIs, which is what any CEO, you know, of a medium sized company or a little bit more mature company does. That process started to help me to approach everything as if it were a little bit of a silo. And I always say this kind of over the top statement that is, if I were hit by a bus today, who can pick up this current company and continue on without me or whoever else is in charge.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:04:43]:
And that treating each project as its own company kind of sets the team up for success, whether I'm here or you're here or the person in charge of x, y, and z company is today.
Susan Friedmann [00:04:56]:
Now I know that you've done that with your book. How is this actually playing out? Because you created this clarity map, this creative brief prior to writing the book. Is that correct?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:05:10]:
It is. I'm looking at it right now on my screen. It says, you know, why I'm doing this. It has a title for the book before I got started, and, obviously, the title evolves over time. It has 3 strong objectives. It has unique selling propositions, so the USP of each one of them and how that's different as who my target audience is. It is a 9 page document. And anytime I'm working on this project that I feel like I'm making an adjustment, I go back and check it, my creative brief.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:05:40]:
And if I agree that I do need to make an adjustment, my word of truth, my Bible, my Quran, my constitution is this. And I change this, and it keeps me going straight.
Susan Friedmann [00:05:52]:
Now, well, you and I also talked about the fact that marketing is such an important aspect when it comes to the book. Obviously, writing it is essential, but many authors think their job is done once they say the end. However, I believe that's just the beginning of the journey. Talk to us about what you're doing with marketing prior to the book even coming out.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:06:18]:
You're digging up all of my self help books and TED Talks and inspirational mentors that I've never met in life. This is kind of it's not a vetting process a 100% to know if the book is headed in the right direction. It is part of that, but it's also a fear conquering process. So there's a really, really successful TED Talk from about 10 years ago called Fear Setting by Tim Ferris. And in that TED Talk, Tim Ferris taught me that anytime I'm terrified of doing something, there is some process that I can go through in my mind that will help me overcome that fear and then make the decision that I wanna make not based off fear. And one of that first process is you need to define what would happen if you actually failed at what you wanna do. And then secondly is what can you do that if you do fail, you'll still have some type of partial success, so you'll still learn something from it. And then the 3rd step is, what will happen if you take no action? So if you let this fear overcome you so much that you don't do anything, and then you map out what it feels like in 3 months to have the same feeling, what tolls it gonna have on you a year later on your mind, your body, your soul, your stomach, your family, and then do it at 3 years.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:07:41]:
And that process really helped me start to overcome my fears, and I went through this process when I prepared the book. One of the items for the fear of failing with the book, no one reads it. It has horrible reviews, and I waste a lot of money. So those are probably my 3 biggest fears. So then the second step is, what can I do if part of those fears come true to make sure that this was still worth my effort? And that's where your question comes into play, which is start marketing things beforehand and start learning from the process along the way. Almost every single chapter that I'm writing in this book, I test iterations of it, in short, 2 to 3 to 4 paragraph posts on LinkedIn to get reactions from my target audience to share with my team and share with my family and see what they think without telling them exactly what I'm going for. But it also helps me get over that fear of what happens when this book is published and everyone thinks it's bad. I mean, if I've already published pieces of every chapter on LinkedIn and so far, everybody in my network, no one's reached out and said, Peter, this is crap.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:08:54]:
Quit posting these things or horrible idea, Peter. No one should follow this advice. Then it's a lot easier for when it's time for me to publish the book. And on along the way, I start to perfect the craft. Right? I do get some positive and negative feedback to help me prepare for overcoming that fear.
Susan Friedmann [00:09:09]:
I love that. That's so exciting that, yeah, people have already sort of given you the okay before you even move on. Or if they suggest that you may want to consider other things, other aspects, then you're able to incorporate that right now and not think at the end, oh, I should have done that. So there's almost like no regrets by the time you've finished your manuscript. Is that correct?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:09:40]:
It is.
Susan Friedmann [00:09:40]:
Yeah. That's wonderful. Now talk to us more about some of these things you're doing. You mentioned the LinkedIn posts, and I believe you're also doing some other things, some other creative things that I think our listeners would be very interested in.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:09:57]:
Well, along the lines with LinkedIn, this specific channel is in line with my own kind of professional and business interests. Right? So all of my clients as a fractional chief marketing officer are on LinkedIn. And in the last 2 months since I've started to post pieces of this book on LinkedIn, I've realized the amount of the uptick in client calls that I have have grown. And I promise you, Susan, that every single prospect call that I've had in the last month has mentioned that they really liked my LinkedIn content, and they like that I have a strong opinion, and then I'm trying to offer value instead of just talking about myself and professional fluff. I'm already getting feedback about pieces of the book that work best. And I'm getting metrics that tell me that I might not get those metrics. You know, if I publish on Kindle or with a traditional publisher, I may not get until it's too late, till I get reviews, or sometimes people don't ever take the time to give review. But LinkedIn tells me which is the post that has the longest read time, that has the most engagement, that has the most shares.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:11:08]:
There's so many metrics outside of LinkedIn beyond just the comments. And then the second thing that I'm coupling that with is I am recording at least one YouTube video around each chapter of my book, because my book is aimed to help CEOs scale their remote teams with the younger generation. I try to translate what traditionally would be written in the written word. I try to move it over to a video that's 2 to 6 minutes long. So they hear my voice, they hear my passion, they know that this isn't just some ghostwriter who's trying to help position me because I think this is the book I should write about. They'll hear my voice that I'm passionate about it. And there's people who wanna compliment the book with the person behind it as well. And going back to fear setting, in theory, both of these steps should help me overcome total failure.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:11:58]:
This book could still fail. Likelihood that's gonna fail a 100% in line with my debilitating fears that I had, paralysis that I had from last year before I got started, it's a lot less. There's probably a 50% chance failure, and that 50% chance of failure helps me sleep a little bit better at night when I'm battling with insomnia.
Susan Friedmann [00:12:16]:
I doubt that it's going to fail just based on what you're doing. It just sounds like there's no room or maybe a little bit, but I doubt it, just judging from what you're saying. Let's talk about, you're a numbers guy. And you mentioned, you know, key performance indicators. Talk about what numbers, let's say, you think authors really should pay attention to. What are some of the numbers, the things that they need to look at and monitor that would be effective when it comes to their book marketing?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:12:53]:
I love this question because I, kind of as a consultant fractional CMO person, I do not work with brands or clients that need millions of customers. I tend to work with a person who's a little bit more white glove, more higher ticket item. Like, I have a travel company that sells $5,000 packages, $10,000 packages. I work with a bank, which a multimillion dollar asset bank. I'm working with people who need to make an impact on a 100 people, maybe a 1000 people, maybe 10,000 people. But they don't need to sell 1,000,000 pieces of cologne to somebody. So I'm working with somebody who's pretty close to what I also wanna do with the book, which is impact the most amount of people possible and make their job easier in the same area that I'm passionate about, which is hiring with a remote team. The metrics that I pay attention to are gonna be way more qualitative than they're gonna be quantitative.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:13:57]:
I'm more interested in having, and Susan's reach out in the next year and say, Peter, chapter 3 around how to train and onboard your team in terms of using a systematic approach with tools and using public feedback, transform the way that I empower my team. And I taught everyone on the team to do it, and now we use this as an onboarding. Ten comments like that of a person who downloaded my tool, watched my video, and implemented it means that, you know, there's potentially 10,000 behind that comment who are also doing it. So getting someone to actively take action upon some of the systems that I'm giving away in the book are the metrics that I'm paying attention to. I just finished I think you shared this in my intro, my bio. I just produced and hosted my first documentary. I did a documentary in health care, and it was in a I wouldn't say it's a controversial area, but I did it in an area that has a negative reputation, negative connotation, which is nursing homes. I did a documentary around the people who work in nursing homes.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:15:04]:
Instead of America's seniors, I did it on the caregivers. And the one piece of feedback that I got, Susan, that matters more than anything else, and it tells me that what I did is gonna have an impact, was a woman that I haven't seen since I graduated high school in 1999. So 25 years ago, she wrote on Facebook. She says, Peter, I haven't seen you in 25 years. I just accidentally clicked on the documentary. I've always dreaded nursing homes and think that everything about them is horrible. If I meet any of the caregivers, like you've shown in here, I look forward to long term care. This is the most beautiful thing that I've seen this year.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:15:40]:
I binge watched it. You can't get one reaction like that without it having something similar to 10,000 people behind her. She just shared it out loud. So I pay attention to 5 or 10 pieces of feedback to let me know when I've hit a home run. You've probably heard of this. My favorite blog article that influences my approach to this is 1,000 true fans. And it's the same way that I approach my business or my life as a dad or a husband, which is I don't need to make a 1000000 people like my product. I would rather have a 1000 people love my product.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:16:18]:
I don't need 20 people in my neighborhood to love me, to feel great. I only need my wife, my son, and my parents. And with that, that's enough. I don't need public I don't need Facebook, Twitter, or anyone else. I know what is the qualitative feedback I need to pay attention to. And if I get it from my wife and those people, then everyone else is thinking it in their mind. They just might not say it to me.
Susan Friedmann [00:16:40]:
What I'm really liking about what you're saying, Peter, is that without mentioning it, you're talking about niche markets, which is, as listeners will tell you, one of my all time favorite subjects, having written Riches and Niches, How to Make It Big in a Small Market, it's looking at, as you say, more the qualitative aspect rather than the quantitative. You know, looking at who is this book really for, and then honing in into that audience and doing what you're doing, you know, whether it's the LinkedIn posts or the YouTube videos, being able to speak to audiences in that niche market and selling books in bulk to those people. That's what my message always that listeners hear over and over again, but hopefully, sometimes it'll stick. So I believe you're saying a lot of that in different words. Would you agree?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:17:46]:
I would say that you said it so much more succinctly and precisely than I ever got close to it. That's why you're the pro at this, and I'm kind of figuring my way out by trying to structure it through Excel sheets and making sure that I have as little downside as possible. So thank you for wrapping it up. But what you said is right. It's about niching down.
Susan Friedmann [00:18:06]:
It is. Because the more clarity and I think this comes back to your clarity brief, that the more clarity you have about the book, the message, who it's for. So often people think, you know, their message is for everyone, and yes, it might be. However, it's impossible to market to everyone, as you know. I mean, I can't even wrap my head around trying to do that. And I know Procter and Gamble and other multimillion-dollar companies don't even try that. Yeah.
Susan Friedmann [00:18:39]:
Peter, talk to us more about if an author hasn't tried any of these things yet, they've already published their book, what steps would you recommend that they take if they came to you and said, Peter, what would you recommend I start with? What would you say to them?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:19:01]:
The easiest, cheapest, most actionable thing that you can do is probably find whoever your ideal customer is. In this, I'm using business language, but whoever your audience is, those ones and true fans that just need to find out about your book, is connect with them on LinkedIn and start publishing daily pieces of your book that would be helpful to them. Give them bite-sized pieces of it. I would start there. That doesn't require any tools. You don't have to pay for professional LinkedIn. You know how to search for people who should be reading it by either a keyword or their job title or their industry or their seniority level, and start there. You know, if you have a team behind you like myself or probably you as well, Susan, then I would start to entertain YouTube.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:19:53]:
I would start creating videos around it, and then I would find the closest convention center close to your hometown, and I would create speaking engagements around it if you feel comfortable speaking in public. I know that that's a big stretch. Not all authors feel comfortable speaking. But if any of those things feel comfortable, starting for one, everybody can write a book and publish on LinkedIn. That's why I started there. And and get bigger the more comfortable you feel and the more feedback you get.
Susan Friedmann [00:20:20]:
I'm all about speaking because that's the way to really reach so many people and to be able to sell books. I believe that everyone in your audience should have a copy of your book. And obviously, you do that prior to the engagement, but you're not necessarily going to get rich on a book. However, through speaking, training, coaching, I believe that's where the money lies when it comes to your own expertise. What do you think about that?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:20:48]:
I agree. I'm probably doing it in a backwards manner. Right? So I spent most of 2020 through 2023 traveling to conventions every other month, speaking on stage and running workshops, and that happened organically because of my job as a vice president of marketing for a software company. But after going through that, I realized that a lot of the things that I was teaching ended up being lost in conversations in the hallways or people get excited at a convention and then nothing happens when they go home. And these people would follow-up and say, hey, what did you teach me about this? Or what did you tell me about this? And if I would've given them something actionable, something to deal with, something to download, something to read, something to write up, the work that I did for 3 years of my life would have been more effective.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:40]:
Yes. People want to take a piece of you home with them. You know, I always say when people give a speech, let's say, it's like you can't give everything that your book is about. You're giving them snippets, some of the main things that you want them to remember. However, to being able to take a book home with them and that they take you with them and as you know, you've been in you're in travel and souvenirs. People love souvenirs from where they've been. Well, it's like they're taking a piece of your home, their souvenir of their time spent with you. This is fabulous information, Peter.
Susan Friedmann [00:22:19]:
I'd love our listeners to know more about how they can find out more about you and this kind of services that you offer.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:22:28]:
The easiest place is LinkedIn. I think I'm the only person named Peter Murphy Lewis on LinkedIn. If there's another one, let me know, and I'll call my hitman to take this person down. And if not, go over to my website, strategicpete.com.
Susan Friedmann [00:22:43]:
Beautiful. And as you know, we always like our guests to leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's yours?
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:22:54]:
Mine is a community. I think I shared at some point that I work as a consultant helping a lot of start ups or medium sized companies. I do all of this pro bono. I've done more than 200 hours of helping people grow their personal brand, their books, their Facebook ads, their company, whatever it is On this channel, and I don't get a dollar on the community, it's called growth mentor, growth mentor.com. I'm a paying mentee. I've been there since 2020. I pay to have access to really certain people, and I'm also on there as a mentor giving away my free hours. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or send me an email.
Peter Murphy Lewis [00:23:29]:
I'll give you a free invite so you can go check it out. I'm not an owner. I'm not affiliated with them, but it's my favorite golden nugget because it helped me become who I am today.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:37]:
Giving back is just so meaningful. I love to do it, and many of my guests love to do it. So you fall into that category. That's beautiful. Because, yes, we all can learn from one another. I'm learning every single day, more than once or twice a day. I know. And one of the things I've learned to do, which was a challenge in the beginning, was to ask for help.
Susan Friedmann [00:24:03]:
That wasn't always an easy thing. Asking for help and here in this environment where, you go and talk to a growth mentor. Love that. Thank you. Peter, it's been wonderful.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. By the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected it to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to Book Marketing Mentors to schedule your free call.
And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.
