Julie Broad is the Founder and President of Book Launchers, a company that helps entrepreneurs write, publish, and launch books. She is an author, speaker, and former real estate investor and trainer. Julie was inspired to start Book Launchers from her personal experience of struggling to publish a book. After self-publishing it in 2013, she began helping others get their books — and messages — out into the world. She has helped entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and industry experts build audiences and accelerate their career growth.
In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran sits down to interview Julie Broad, the Founder and President of Book Launchers. Julie explains why she self-published her book, how she helps clients create audiobooks and online courses, and her tips for successfully launching and marketing books.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- Julie Broad’s struggles writing a book and how she self-published it
- How the success of Julie’s book impacted her career
- Are print books still relevant?
- Julie talks about starting Book Launchers, her ideal clients, and how she supports authors
- How to turn print books into audiobooks and online courses
- Julie’s advice on launching a book and achieving best-seller status
- The peers Julie acknowledges for their support
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
- Julie Broad on LinkedIn
- Book Launchers
- Book Launchers on YouTube
- Self-Publish & Succeed: The No Boring Books Way to Writing a Non-Fiction Book that Sells by Julie Broad
- Marijuana Hater’s Guide to Making a Billion Dollars from Hemp: The Next Disruptive Industry by Matthew Harmon
- Blow the Lid Off: Reclaim Your Stolen Creativity, Increase Your Income, and Let Your Light Shine! by Robert Belle
- Dr. Jeremy Weisz on LinkedIn
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- Chris Krimitsos on LinkedIn
- “Chris Krimitsos | Founding Podfest Expo and Setting a Guinness World Record”
Sponsor: Rise25
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:14
Welcome to the revolution, the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneurs to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now now, your host for the revolution. John Corcoran.
John Corcoran 0:40
All right, welcome everyone. John Corcoran here, I’m the host of this show. And for those of you who have not checked out my program before, go check out the archives of whatever podcasting app you’d like to listen to. You can find some great interviews with smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs, and companies and organizations ranging from Netflix to Kinkos, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, recently, we had Quicken, we had Grub Hub, we had Redfin and got some good guests recently. So check out those archives. I’m also the Co-founder of Rise25 where we help connect b2b business owners to their ideal prospects. And my guest here today is Julie Broad. She is the president of Book Launchers. It’s a company that helps others to publish and launch a book and she’s an author and speaker, former real estate investor and trainer. That’s how she got into writing books. And she got into helping others to write books because of her own personal experience. She self published your own book in 2013, because she had been rejected by traditional publishers who kind of gave her the whole rigmarole. We’ll talk about that and in a second. And she realized that she didn’t need to be quote, unquote, blessed from the traditional publishers, and now helps others to get their books and their message out into the world and get good results from it. So we’re going to talk about kind of unpack how that works.
Of course, this episode brought to you by Rise25, my company, where we help b2b businesses, get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done for you podcasts and content marketing, you can go to our website at rise25.com to learn all about what we do. All right, Julie, pleasure to have you here. And tell us about this story. So you were in real estate, investing in training, you helped others in the real estate world. And you had an idea for a book, and you went around, you have heard this story before, you know, you go to the traditional publisher, traditional publishers, but you actually had one that like took you down a whole different road. They’re like, Okay, we have this other idea for you. These were three months developing that idea. And then they were like, now we changed our mind. That’s awful. So tell us about how that happened.
Julie Broad 2:34
Yeah, it was it was I was actually introduced to a couple of publishers, so I wasn’t even necessarily pursuing it. But I of course, had a book idea when they would they said, Hey, like, you know, you ever thought of writing a book suggest that I told them my idea. And both publishers mind it, no, like, that’s been done before. Or they said, Oh, that’s a general real estate idea. But Wiley was interested in doing a deal with me. And they said, well look like we’re not interested in that idea. But we’re interested in you. Here’s a book idea. We need a proposal, and they even walked me through and kind of went back and forth creating the proposal. I hired people to edit it. And then after they got it, I thought the book contract was the next thing coming. But it was a rejection thing. The marketing department doesn’t think you’ll sell enough books to give you a deal. So good luck, man.
John Corcoran 3:21
Got like psych, like, here, here. We handed it to you, you develop it, and then nothing.
Julie Broad 3:29
Yeah, it was I mean, at the time, I was really devastated. I cried. And I didn’t understand because I had friends, a couple of deals, like what did they have that I didn’t have? But really, it was like, it was really, truly a gift. Because I kind of had to look myself in the eye and go, do you really care about writing a book. And I did. And I went back to the original book idea that I had. And I wrote that book, because I knew at the time, people were writing a lot of get rich in real estate type books. But nobody was really talking about the things that I’d experienced if you buy the wrong properties. If you’re not prepared for some of the challenges, you know, like with, if you have properties in a bunch of different cities like I did, you know, you’re relying on property managers, well, I paid for a roof that never got repaired. Because I didn’t know what to ask for before and after pictures. And, you know, there was a lot of things that I just nobody taught me. And everybody was teaching you how to pick properties and get rich, but nobody was saying, hey, look like some of these decisions may not fit with the life you’re trying to create. And so that was the book that I wrote. And I believe that even if there was a few people who could avoid some of the drama that I’d gone through, you know, that would make it worth it. But Wiley gave me the gift because I went and I went, Well, I’m gonna have to self publish this book. So I got to write the book I wanted to write and I decided to do it better than if Wiley had published me so I ended up taking it to number one on Amazon in print books. So I was ahead of Dan Brown ahead of Game of Thrones, and sat in the top 100 print books for 45 days, largely fueled by you know, I’m gonna do a better job Then,
John Corcoran 5:01
what were some of the things that you did that led it to? You know, in retrospect, now looking back on it, why do you think it did as well as it did?
Julie Broad 5:10
I mean, one part luck, you know, there’s there is timing that you can’t control in the world, you know, there wasn’t any other blockbuster hits coming out at the same time. But it was also, you know, I went, I had built a network of people who in this was all in Canada at the time, I’m in Vegas now. But I had a network of people who were excited to have a book that was Canadian focused. That was also going to talk about the drawbacks and the positives. And so I had a lot of mortgage brokers and a lot of real estate agents who were really excited to give copies of this book to their clients, so that they could stop, you know, if they get somebody who’s hot off, one of those get rich, quick course, is they could go hey, look like, I know, you’re excited to send out those yellow letters. But here’s a book that will walk you through all the fun you could be in for if you if you stay down this path. And so the network combined with people being excited to have a book that really was about the real risks, and the real rewards, you know, that that combination was was really powerful.
John Corcoran 6:11
So at the time, this is about almost 10 years ago, now, you had real estate investments that you’ve done, and you also had an education and training company. Why do a book? Why then what? What were you hoping to get out of it?
Julie Broad 6:27
Well, when you look, I mean, for me, I think the book was that next next step in my credibility and my expertise. And when you look on television, for example, the news shows they’re not putting, it’s a little bit different. Now you see a little bit more of the podcaster, blogger type thing, but most of the time the credentials are author, right, or they’re a PhD, you know, that kind of thing. So for me, it was that next level of I want to be seen as an expert in this. And I also believe deeply that I could help more people with a book that was $20, versus the $10,000 mastermind that I had, you know, that people could join in the training and education, I really believe that the book had a bigger impact potential.
John Corcoran 7:07
Yeah. And did you find that like, tell me a little bit about like, after you put out the book some ways in which it opened doors for you, did you get speaking gigs? Did you get people coming up to you and thanking you for the book? What was that? Like?
Julie Broad 7:21
I still get emails to this day of people reading the book and saying, Thank you for writing it. And they still say it holds true, you know, a decade later, but yeah, it was it was really eye opening. You know, the biggest thing was my training and education company, you know, it was always a bit of a grind to fill all the programs, we usually filled them, but it was a bit of a grind. And our programs were filling up. Before we were even, you know, announcing them in a lot of cases we were we were full so we were able to raise prices. But we also raised a lot of capital, like people out of nowhere, were calling us saying I have $250,000 Can I invest with you? So the book getting out there, and I want to be clear, that didn’t happen the next day. This was you know, six months to 12 months after the book came out. These things were happening, and I was on television programs all across Canada. I always got the morning program, though, and I had to be in the greenroom. Before six o’clock. I started turning the desk. That was really gross. Having to sound intelligent at 630 in the morning. Yeah, but But it was cool. You know, it didn’t sell books, being on news. But it was great for social media great for credibility, you know, being able to show your picture sitting in the studio. You know, one of the the national networks was pretty cool.
John Corcoran 8:33
Yeah. In our business, we did something similar, where we did small group format, masterminds, charging people a lot of money to come fly out, get on a plane, fly somewhere, and those are hard to fill. So anything that can help with that is definitely appreciated. I wanted to ask you now. So it’s been 9 10 years since you published the book. You know, you mentioned that a moment ago. We got podcasts now we got YouTube, we got TikTok via social media, get all this kind of stuff that’s out there now. I guess I’ll just ask a broad question. So are books still relevant in that world with all these different marketing channels out there?
Julie Broad 9:12
Yeah, I believe they are because it’s part of the whole ecosystem. And a book has a really long shelf life like literally and figuratively, like it’s one of those things where people rarely will throw a book out, but they’ll pass it they’ll give it to a friend though, you know, that physical book. And by the way, physical books still are selling in the nonfiction categories 60 70% of most of our authors are selling in print, and then the rest of its made up between audio and ebook. So print books still are the preferred format for the vast majority of nonfiction readers, I think, because it’s like a resource or that thing that they’re going to touch and pass around. And I don’t know if the physical tactical thing of it tactile thing. But yeah, so I do think it’s an important piece and then it also, the thought process of creating a book gets clarity around your mind. Message and the content in a way that very few other formats do. And I’m really big into YouTube and I take my YouTube scripts and put them into a book format. And then I look at what’s missing, and I shoot more videos to fill in the gaps. But then, you know, there’s a whole editing process that creates massive clarity and refines my content and my message to a level that it wasn’t before that that’s that stage, I think that then goes out into your marketing, that creates more content that goes out into the world, and opens the door to speaking because nobody on a speaking sheet goes, you know, what podcasts Do you have? They go, what books have you written, you know, on those speaker forums to get speaking events? So yeah, I think I think it’s powerful. But I also think it’s not the only thing that you should be doing.
John Corcoran 10:46
Yeah. So you start the company, book launchers around the time that you were, it’s actually kind of an interesting story, you decided you wanted to move to the states. And you could have purchased the business in order to open that door, but you decided to start a business instead? Why did you decide to help others with starting a book?
Julie Broad 11:06
Yeah, I mean, there’s lots of factors to it, you know, I looked at it looked at a few businesses, and I just kept thinking, you know, every business has problems, but I really thought I might as well be the creator of my problems, rather than go in and fix somebody else’s. And so that was part one, this after looking at a bunch of businesses, nothing got me excited. And part two of it was that there was kind of this nagging feeling behind, you know, in the back of my head going, you can help people with self publishing, because I had coached some people in the real estate space on their books. And I had done a lot of research in order to go into this. But there was also that impostor syndrome, like self doubt, if you’re a real estate investor with an MBA in finance, what do you know about book publishing. So I finally had to kick that imposter to the curb and create I created the company, I would have wanted to hire and address kind of the pieces in between, but it was a, it was about a year and a half journey of research and applying for the visa that deciding not to buy a business and go into it. But it was good. I’m glad I did this.
John Corcoran 12:09
Yeah, so talk about who it’s a fit for. Because you know, writing a book is such a big project. Such a massive undertaking, even if you were to outsource as much as possible, you still have to have, you know, I’m sure your clients are still, you know, active participants in many different pieces of it. So how do you sort out who’s the right fit? To actually even do the book? And what do you need from them? You know, these days?
Julie Broad 12:41
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think for us, the person who’s a great fit, is writing the book with a bigger picture goal in mind. And their singular goal isn’t to sell books, because it’s a hard world to just try to make income off of selling a book and not having it be a part of an ecosystem. So our ideal person has a business or they’re exiting a business and starting a new one, you know, that kind of thing. And they’re doing this because they do want to get on stages or, you know, improve their consulting leads, or they’re using it as a tool to generate leads to sell their product or their service or their software. And so those are our ideal client, it is still your right arm, though, it’s still an effort. And the one thing I always tell our clients is, if you’re not gonna be able to dedicate, you know, two to five hours most weeks for at least a year to this project, you’re not going to have a book at the end of it that you’re really happy with, you can still get a book, but it’s going to be missing something, whether that something is you or the quality or something else. Because it is, you know, even with us trying to do as much of it for them as possible, it really is still a big project that you have to be committed to.