Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:
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 Linda Cohen, also known as the Kindness catalyst. Linda has been a professional speaker and consultant for more than a decade. She works with businesses and associations on the ROI of kindness. Her second book, the Economy of How Kindness Transforms Your Bottom Line, was actually published by Aviva Publishing. Yay. Linda is a member of the National Speakers Association and has served as the president of the Oregon chapter.
Susan Friedmann [00:01:19]:
Originally from New England, she lives in Oregon with her husband of 30 years. They have two spirited young children or young adult children and have raised three Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. Linda enjoys yoga, meditation and a good cup of Earl Grey tea. Linda, it's always a thrill and an honor to interview one of my Aviva publishing authors. And not only are you Aviva Publishing author, but you're a colleague, you're a friend. It's like a triple whammy to have you here. Thank you so much for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
Linda Cohen [00:02:04]:
Thanks you so much, Susan. I'm really happy to be here with you.
Susan Friedmann [00:02:07]:
Belinda, you are a two time author, which to me means that you've had several years of experience marketing your book. Let's kick this off and just talk a little bit about some of those through your years of experience marketing. Now, what has been a couple of effective book marketing strategies that you've used to promote your book?
Linda Cohen [00:02:35]:
Thanks, Susan. So to answer your question, I would say that with my first book, 1000 Mitzvahs, that one was published by a Bay Area publisher and I worked with a marketing gal for the first six months of that book. So I learned some of the things that she did. I watched what she did to get me interviews in different cities that I was traveling to. I did interviews in New York City and Detroit and California and Oregon. One of the things we did was tie in my topic with something that was sort of seasonal. My book came out in November, so definitely was on shows around December talking about kindness and gratitude. As the book continued, I began to realize that if I tied it into Mother's Day or Father's Day or some other opportunity, that was a way for me to be able to get on tv or get even in magazines.
Linda Cohen [00:03:25]:
I know it was in a couple of parenting magazines in those days. I was a younger parent. I feel like there are ways to tie in your topic. It always has to be important for anywhere you're trying to market it, you know, why is their audience going to care about your book? I learned a little bit about how to make it relevant to the audience, which was a good thing, because that's the biggest piece of marketing, I think, is why is this going to be relevant to a reader or to the audience or to the media person who's going to maybe bring you on?
Susan Friedmann [00:03:54]:
Very much so. And I feel that you had a little bit more of a challenge, because the whole topic of kindness, which I know both your books have been about, when you first started, I think it must have been a little bit of more of a challenge to even get people to react to the fact that you're writing a book on kindness.
Linda Cohen [00:04:14]:
Yeah, my first book came out in 2011, and I would say things were definitely different there. My second book came out in 2021. Ten years later, the landscape had definitely changed. And, you know, when my first book came out in 2011, it was very relevant to schools. Schools were really interested in my topic because kindness is something that is always important to children in schools. Houses of worship seemed fairly interested in my work. My first paid speaking opportunity was with Girl Scouts of America. I got invited to a luncheon.
Linda Cohen [00:04:45]:
I remember doing a lot of things for nonprofits, too. I think there was a tea I did early on in my business for a mother daughter kind of nonprofit that served the community. So when it dovetailed with a nonprofit and their mission, then it was an easy sort of opportunity to talk about kindness. But you're right, I felt a bit like a lone wolf in the early days, because I did feel like I was talking about something that people said, oh, kindness is a weakness, and we don't want to talk about that. And I even got questioned in the early years in the National Speakers association who might be interested in hiring me to talk about this. And in the early days, I didn't know. I just was so passionate about how I'd gotten into this work that I figured I was going to keep at it until it worked. And in 2014, when I started working more with corporate America, and now it's corporate international, because I've worked all over the globe at this point, I really felt like businesses and leaders were much more willing in 2014 to talk about kindness and why kindness mattered in the workplace, and that felt a little bit easier to talk about.
Linda Cohen [00:05:50]:
And then now 2024, I have to tell you that literally every week on LinkedIn or in some other channel, somebody introduces me to somebody else who's a talking, writing, speaking, working in this topic of kindness, or somebody will just find me randomly because I'm, you know, I'm very active with my topic and the clients that I serve. So I think that that is definitely a shift, and I think that's showing. While people are saying we're more divided, I think there's more people who don't want that to be the situation. They want to do what they can to help elevate kindness in the world globally. So that is reassuring to me as someone who's in this work. But I do think it has been interesting that the pendulum has swung more in the global world. People don't think they feel like as much kindness there. And then, personally, I can say, yeah, but there's a lot more people who want to be talking about this.
Susan Friedmann [00:06:43]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm sure with COVID as well, that was an added element to the whole topic. I can see how the whole topic, I see it so much more than I've ever seen it before. You're making a stand there, and you've made your imprint there in the marketplace. So that's wonderful. Let's talk about how you incorporate that theme from the book, obviously the theme of kindness into your speaking engagements, because I know that speaking is a major part of what you do. How do you use the book?
Linda Cohen [00:07:21]:
I feel like there were two little questions there. My speaking work took off in 2014, and I knew I wanted to have a second book. I knew that it took a lot of effort to write a first book. And I think, Susan, I even called you, and you talked me off the ledge, and you said, listen, there are a lot of ways you can write a book. And one of the things I remember you suggested was that I could record my stories and my chapters, and you said, if you can't sit in front of a blank piece of paper, go ahead and talk it out. But for me, I was already speaking, and I knew that my thousand mitzvahs book was no longer relevant to the corporate audiences I was serving. And I knew I wanted a second book. That would be this opportunity for me to share the stories and the techniques and the tips and the tools and the resources that I was gleaning from my own work and from working with a wide variety of clients and in a lot of different industries.
Linda Cohen [00:08:10]:
And so I wanted something that was a resource. That was my goal for the second book, was to be able to create that. And in all truth, I think your reassurance helped me. But the second book was easier to write for me because I did feel like I had something really valuable I wanted to put out and share. So I use the book as a secondary resource. I'm often in an audience for 45 minutes or maybe an hour, although I have a couple of programs now that are doing much more deep dive work into culture of kindness in a workplace. And I'm launching a brand new leadership training cohort as well this fall that will be opportunities for emerging or new leaders to be part of a cohort. I've done it with a couple of clients, and it was so, so successful that I wanted to kind of create it on my own outside of a single organization.
Linda Cohen [00:08:56]:
But I love using the book as a tool. And the book, I say, you know, I'm going to get to talk to you for five minutes or ten minutes about recognition. Read the chapter on recognition because there's other stories. And I feel like anytime you read a story about somebody else doing something, it might inspire you to do that same thing. Oh, I didn't even think about that. Oh, that's a great idea. Oh, we don't do that at our company. And I love being able to have those light bulbs go off both in my audience and through the words that I've shared in the book.
Susan Friedmann [00:09:23]:
Beautiful. Linda, I know that you've done a lot of work, especially, as you said, with your first book with the media. What kinds of things did you do and how did it help you?
Linda Cohen [00:09:34]:
I can tell you one thing I didn't do well that could help somebody else. One of the things that we did was we definitely marketed the book in various different states. As I mentioned, I only really did one national interview, but I did a lot of local interviews in a variety of states and a variety of markets. One thing I did not do, and I didn't really get told this until later on, is I didn't personally save the recordings anywhere that I had access to, download them onto my own platform on my computer, or put them on a thumb drive or something. When you are interviewed on television, it stays on their website for maybe a couple of years, but at some point they're gone. My website began to have links that no longer were valid, and I didn't realize how sad that was going to be and also how hard it was going to be to ever have those kind of interviews replicated because we did a bunch of interviews that were fantastic in television. I don't have any of those recordings from the early days, which is pretty upsetting when you realize that you've lost all that. I would encourage someone else who is a newer author and wants to get media, make sure you save your interviews somewhere that you have control over them.
Susan Friedmann [00:10:45]:
One of the things that you said was that you did a lot of local media versus national. That is something that is so key because many people always look to the grass is greener on the other side, that there's the national, you've got to have national. But local media, they're so much more interested in you because they don't have access necessarily to what national are looking for. And I think the emphasis on saying, yeah, milk local media as much as you can. And people often forget that.
Linda Cohen [00:11:25]:
Two things I learned about that. Number one, those local medias were often tied to me doing a book signing event in their city when I knew I was going to be in Detroit, Michigan, and I knew I was going to be doing a book signing there. At that point, I had seen what my marketing gal did, and I basically did what she did. I contacted the local ABC or NBC, and I said, I'm going to be in for a book signing, and is there a chance I can get on the morning show with the morning talk show host? And I was able to do that. And in Portland, I think I was on every station in Portland over the several years after my first book came out. But one of those local shows, Fox television out here in Portland, put me in touch with the Fox television in New York City that had a better tv show. I think that's what it was called, a national show, syndicated. And I got to get flown to New York by my publisher at that time to do that interview.
Linda Cohen [00:12:16]:
The local interviews do expose you, and it's possible that the local interviews will help you get to the bigger media. And I will say one other kind of very, very cool story, which was, there's the whole flow of books, you might ask me this anyway, but the flow of books into bookstores and just the opportunities of being able to get into the bookstores. And I know sometimes it's not always as easy to get the distribution as you want. And so I learned a little bit about that, too, which was kind of fascinating.
Susan Friedmann [00:12:48]:
Let's go down that avenue, because, you know, as I said to you, I springboard off of what you say. These are valuable tips because authors often say to me, how do I get into the bookstores?
Linda Cohen [00:13:00]:
Right. Well, I live in Portland, Oregon. Powell's bookstore is a world renowned bookstore. You know, it's a city block wide. And my first book was published by a Bay Area publisher, and I don't think that she had much access to powells. But here I am, a local person. I live in the town. I've been shopping at Powell's for decades, you know, and when my new book comes out, I basically decide going to reach out to the, whoever it is.
Linda Cohen [00:13:28]:
And, you know, you have to figure out who you need to talk to and tell your story and tell them who you are and why you wrote the book, and you've done all that work to create the book. So I did end up getting a Powell's author night to be able to go down. I actually didn't do it downtown. There's two locations, and I got to do the one that was closer to my house in the suburbs. But it was so much fun, and it was so gratifying for me as a first time author to be able to be at Powell's, you know, and that feels like a little bit of an accomplishment, especially when you have not ever written a book before. Have a little bit of, what's a good yiddish word we can use, you know, have a little bit of willingness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. To step out of your comfort zone if you really want to get your book into places that are a bigger bookstore.
Linda Cohen [00:14:15]:
I would say that about both the bookstore and about getting on media. You know, a bookstore needs books and media needs stories. Don't be afraid to pitch your story or yourself. And I feel like that was a good lesson for me in those early years of that first book coming out.
Susan Friedmann [00:14:29]:
I really love that. The fact is, don't be afraid to pitch yourself. And I think that is often a stumbling block for people. It's like then the imposter syndrome starts sort of rearing its ugly head. Oh, how do I do that? But the fact that if you don't do it, who's going to do it for you?
Linda Cohen [00:14:49]:
Exactly. I mean, we all have imposter syndrome. Susan, when my first book came out, I had been a full time stay at home mom for about nine years. I did not think of myself. In fact, I have a story. Early on, I had started a mastermind group because I was a full time stay at home mom. And I knew that I had taken on this project to honor my dad to do a thousand mitzvahs or acts of kindness. And I knew that I was considering writing a book about this.
Linda Cohen [00:15:15]:
And I had a mastermind group because I said, I need support. I felt like an imposter. Even though I'm educated, I had taken time out of the workplace, and I really didn't feel particularly confident. I had this wonderful group of five other women, and we had a mastermind group, and one of them hosted a conference. And I remember I'm at the conference, and some other stranger walks up to me in front of my mastermind colleague, and she introduces herself, oh, Linda, what do you do? And I literally say, I'm just a mom. And my colleague just, you know, she elbowed me so hard, and she was like, Linda just got a contract for her first book, and it will be coming out in October. And, oh, by the way, you know, when she starts sort of telling her who I am, and sometimes we need somebody else to see in us what is possible because we don't feel or see it in ourselves. And so I love to tell people, now, here I am 1214 years later, looking back at that Linda in 2011.
Linda Cohen [00:16:09]:
And I'm glad that I kind of stepped through so many times when it felt so uncomfortable, because I think that's how I got to where I am now. But I also love helping someone else to not be afraid. Like I said, they need stories and they need books, and why not you? And if you can't see it yourself, get somebody else to be your mirror so that you can see the bigger picture. And I think that's one of the things you and I probably both love about our association. You know, the National Speakers association, certainly for me, when I joined as a brand new speaker and a brand new author, knowing people who were much further along in the journey always helped me learn and get better and buoyed my confidence.
Susan Friedmann [00:16:50]:
That's where you and I met.
Linda Cohen [00:16:51]:
Yes, it is.
Susan Friedmann [00:16:52]:
Teen years ago. I can't remember when that was. But the fact is that, yes, you were a first timer at the event, and we got talking. One thing led to another. I've been around for many more years, and I was able to introduce you to people. And, yes, that is the beauty of National Speakers association, that people are willing to just go out of their way to help you. You don't necessarily get work. People get the wrong impression.
Susan Friedmann [00:17:20]:
They think, oh, I'm going to join that association and they're going to find me work. That's not necessarily the case. Now, I have been fortunate enough and I'm sure you, too, that colleagues have introduced you to people who have hired you, but you don't belong to the association to get work.
Linda Cohen [00:17:40]:
No, I mean, for me, I belong to the association to learn the business of being a speaker. And how do I get better at that? And in that way, people have been so, so, so generous. And I think you and I might have met in 2016, the very first year that I went, because I think.
Susan Friedmann [00:17:54]:
First year? You were there? Yeah, a while ago.
Linda Cohen [00:17:57]:
I know. I know. I think it's a little bit fun, though, to have some perspective. And after I served as the NSA Oregon state chapter president, I now feel like I'm the wise old person. People are coming. I didn't mean to say that, but people are coming to me for advice because now my business is at a different place than it was when I started.
Susan Friedmann [00:18:18]:
Exactly. And it's the sort of a pay it forward. You never know. But you're out there to help. Let's transition. I know that social media is something that you pay a lot of attention to. Talk to us about how you use social media, how it's helping you.
Linda Cohen [00:18:36]:
I am mostly on LinkedIn. I do have an account on Facebook, and I have an account on Instagram, and I repost there. But I spend most of my time on LinkedIn, and I use it in a couple of ways. I will reach out to people prior to a speaking engagement, if I know if there's a board of directors or if the person who hires me just to be sort of already in the company of the people that I'm going to be speaking to. Sometimes I'll use it as a way to ask a question, especially because my topic is about kindness in the workplace. I might say in my introduction, I'd love to connect with you. I'd love to find out if there's some kindness that's been happening in your company or business or association. I usually like to start with that, and then that becomes a great springboard afterwards.
Linda Cohen [00:19:20]:
And of course, we should always have our contact information. Maybe we invite people to join our newsletter and we immediately get a way to connect with them. But I have found that LinkedIn is just also a place to be authentically myself in both my speaking business. I have had a social media gal who was in her twenties. She said, do the behind the scenes of what it's like to be a speaker. Like, she always loved when I would do anything, when I'd be out doing a keynote, taking pictures behind the stage, or any other way, because I think she was always thought that would fascinate people, but also just some seasons are harder than others. And I lost my mom to suicide. And I feel like I'm going to just be fully my authentic self, both as a person and as a businesswoman on LinkedIn.
Linda Cohen [00:20:07]:
And I have found that I have connected with really amazing people, even people that I've never met in person. And maybe we've had a phone call because we've met on LinkedIn, then we have a way to have a real face to face, even though it's virtual meeting. And then there are the people that I've met in person and I keep in touch with. I actually had a client tell me recently I had spoken at a conference in 2022. They were at that conference in Nashville. They're here locally in the Portland area. And because of my social media, and they've been sort of following me and my social media for two years, they wanted to hire me to come to their organization here in my town. I feel like social media can keep you and your message and what you're trying to share with people really in front of them.
Linda Cohen [00:20:51]:
And I've always said I use my social media for good. You will never see me post a story. There's plenty of places you can get the bad news that's happening in the world. That is never going to be what I want to do. So I'm trying to share really great stories and also the stories that somebody will say, because this is like my favorite phrase, when somebody hears a good story and they want to share it because they read about somebody, you know, oh, that restores my faith in humanity.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:16]:
So it's kind of my.
Linda Cohen [00:21:19]:
Restores my faith in humanity.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:21]:
You're using it, in a sense, as a research tool, especially for an engagement that you have that, as you said, you do a little bit of research about the organization through LinkedIn. How about actually getting business? Now, you said through occasionally you'd gotten something, but is there a formal outreach, or is it just through your stories, your sharing, that people connect and think they would want to hire you?
Linda Cohen [00:21:53]:
I don't necessarily do my first outreach through LinkedIn. I might follow someone who is in an industry that I speak in the. I might connect with them and ask them to connect, but I may do an email with them to actually introduce myself and ask if any of my work might be relevant to them. You know, it varies so much. I don't probably have a system as dialed in as many people might. My system is to be authentic. If somebody posts something that really intrigues me. I might link into them or if somebody reaches out to me and hasn't written anything.
Linda Cohen [00:22:27]:
And by the way, if you're going to be on LinkedIn, send a personal message. When you link into someone, it's like, I would rather know, oh, I saw your post on whatever and it made me really want to connect to you. That's always the kind of way I like to introduce myself. So I prefer when people do that to me. So if they don't, I say, what on my profile made you want to connect? Because that's what I'd like to know from that. Definitely continuing a relationship in some capacity with other people. Now, as your amount of followers or people you're following grows, clearly it's hard to manage something that as it grows over 50, 00, 10,000, whatever. But from that you will definitely find seeds of real connections that have happened.
Linda Cohen [00:23:10]:
And I have been introduced to work opportunities through people that I have met on LinkedIn. Whether it was a random link to me to them or them to me, or we've built a relationship because I'm commenting on something they're talking about or they're in a industry that I'm really interested in. So I'm going to continue to build relationships around our shared passion. And some of that has led to work, too. My outbound marketing is generally a little more email based, not necessarily LinkedIn based.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:42]:
You said the word random. I was like, random acts of kindness.
Linda Cohen [00:23:45]:
So it's almost like, and I like to say, intentional acts of kindness.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:51]:
Let's do intentional, intentional acts of kindness. And that's a beautiful segue, Linda, for you to tell our listeners more about how they can connect with you on LinkedIn or buy your book, or if.
Linda Cohen [00:24:06]:
People want to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm Linda M. Cohen, and please tell me that you heard us on Susan's podcast. I would love to know that that's where your interest in connecting happened. My website is Linda Cohen Consulting because I do keynoting, and I do consulting for companies around building cultures of kindness. I would love to say that if I get a LinkedIn or an email from anybody who's listened, I would love to gift you a copy of my new book. It's not so new anymore, it's been out a couple years. But the economy of kindness, how kindness transforms your bottom line.
Linda Cohen [00:24:40]:
And I'm happy to give away two or three books. If I get more than that, maybe we'll figure out a way to give more. But I'd love to be able to gift that to you. If you link into me or reach out to me in any way, that's how people can get in touch with me.
Susan Friedmann [00:24:53]:
Beautiful. Well, thank you. That's so generous. Again, those intentional acts of kindness. That's beautiful. I love it. Linda, as you know, we always end up asking guests to share golden nuggets and words of wisdom. What would you like to leave our listeners with? Linda?
Linda Cohen [00:25:12]:
That's so funny. I told Susan before we started recording that this year. In the last three or four months, I've started leaving bite-size kindness tips on my website and on LinkedIn. And this morning, I didn't sleep past 05:00 a.m., so in my head, I was already saying, okay, today's bite-size kindness for myself, which I should record about, maybe I'll write about, maybe I'll post about it, is actually how valuable a power nap is. And this is not the first time I've written about it because I have been a fairly religious power napper for decades since my kids were little. Now they're in their twenties. I had a guided 15 minutes meditation, which turns out to be yoga nidra that I got somehow years ago.
Linda Cohen [00:25:55]:
But I put on sound blocking earphones and I usually put an eye shade on, and I do about a 15 minutes reset. I've been thinking about that for people who work outside of their home or outside of a setting, or they're in a corporate. Could I still do that if I worked somewhere outside of a place where I have a bed? And I would say, absolutely. Could sit in your car. You can maybe try to find a comfortable chair. Maybe you find a patch of grass and you bring a towel if it's the nice weather. But I recently, a few months ago, I was traveling on a two day training. I had not slept well.
Linda Cohen [00:26:28]:
And the second day I was really falling apart. And I said, I need to have my power nap. And so I ended up laying down on a hard, hard, cold wooden floor with my jacket. But I did have my earphones and my eye shade, and it was just enough for me to have, you know, I don't always fall asleep, but that few minutes. And so my golden nugget is, I think our world is overwhelmed. And I think most people are probably sleep deprived. And I think that could be leading to some of the horrible things that people feel in the world about being overwhelmed and not peaceful. So I think we all need a nap.
Linda Cohen [00:27:03]:
I think that's my.
Susan Friedmann [00:27:04]:
I love that. I love it.
Linda Cohen [00:27:06]:
So you've heard it here first and I'm going to probably end up putting that on my LinkedIn soon.
Susan Friedmann [00:27:12]:
Beautiful. Yes. It's just like, inspired me. Maybe I should go and have a nap now.
Linda Cohen [00:27:17]:
You definitely should. 15 minutes can really do a world of difference, so I love it.
Susan Friedmann [00:27:23]:
Linda, thank you so much. And thank you for sharing your wisdom. And it's just wonderful to have you on the show. You're a very special person in my life. And also that you're an Aviva publishing author, that just is almost like the cherry on the top. And listeners, you know the drill. If your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected 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.
Susan Friedmann [00:27:58]:
So go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com 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.
