Suzanne Evans On How To Grow Your Business or Brand By Writing A Book
An Interview With Theresa Albert
If you want to sell more books, be a great speaker. Speaking and books go together and the better speaker you are, the more you will speak and more opportunity to sell books.
As a part of our series about “How You Can Grow Your Business or Brand By Writing A Book”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Suzanne Evans.
She is a mom, wife, sister, entrepreneur, and risk-taker from North Carolina. Her work blends business, strategy, lifestyle, and storytelling in a way that allows people to build businesses that shape the world to be a better place. The process of momship and business ownership and life has been a delicious mix of messy, exhilarating, devastating, and exciting moments. Along the way they have gotten some of it right, hitting the Inc 500/5000 for five straight years and landing #5 on the NY Times Bestseller List. They’ve also messed a lot of things up. It positions them perfectly to help more good people do more good work in the world.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share a story about what motivated you to become an expert in the particular area that you are writing about?
I was a secretary making $47,000 a year in New York City in the Broadway theatre industry and I knew I had something bigger to do! I came home one day and my wife said “Suzanne — have you watched this show Inyala Fix My Life? I feel like you could do this! Put women together in a house and boss them around!” And so I became a life coach! It quickly became evident as I grew my life coaching business to 6 figures in 13 months that my real skill was in business development as my life coaching clients morphed into business coaching clients. 12 years later we’ve served thousands of business owners and supported them to make millions of dollars.
Can you share a pivotal story that shaped the course of your career?
When I was 4 years old, I had been taking ballet lessons at Miss Anne Clark’s School of Dance and taking it all quite seriously! I was pretty excited about my first performance; we had been rehearsing for months for this moment but I was still pretty nervous; there were only five of us in the class so we would all be sharing the spotlight. Our routine started as typical until I saw my friend Belinda out of the corner of my eye acting strange and soon enough she hit the floor like a ton of bricks and went into a deep crying wail! I kept telling myself not to look at her and reassuring myself that I got this. So instead, I breathed and looked left, only to see trouble over there too! There was trouble on the left, disaster on the right and before I knew it, I was in the middle of a ballet recital war while parents were nervously trying not to jump from their seats to rescue us! Everyone was panicked and at that point so I realized that I better think of something quick. I took a deep breath and proceeded to break into the biggest tap dance you have ever seen! Upon exit from the stage, Miss Anne asked why I broke out into a tap dance at a ballet?
And that was the moment I knew that it took real guts to be extraordinary. Business takes guts. It requires that you be willing to be extraordinary, even when you have no clue if anyone will support you.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Are you working on any new writing projects?
Yes! We are in the final stages of my latest book, Win No Matter What, which I’m really excited about. It really takes the lessons we’ve learned in business and life over the past 18 months and how to not let anything knock the wind out of your sails. It’s possible to grow your business even when everything and everybody else around you seems to be failing — when you know how to win, no matter what.
Thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. Can you please tell us a bit about your book?
Sure, in today’s market business owners are overwhelmed with re-creating themselves so that their business can be successful but guess what? You can’t be anyone but yourself! “The Way you to Anything is the Way you Do Everything” is based upon this principal that if you have enough guts, tenacity, faith, and never quit, you can do everything exactly as you can do anything.
Can you please share a specific passage or story that illustrates the main theme of your book?
That success takes immersion. From my first chapter, “To find out what you really want for your life and business, you have to ask yourself what are you willing to sacrifice, to do, to be, and to try. How willing are you to fail? How willing are you to try something new? How willing are you to leave others behind so you can grow? How willing are you to get up again? What are you willing to start doing? What are you willing to stop doing? For the first 3 years of growing my business, I kept a handmade sign on my desk that read; THERE ARE NO CINDERELLA STORIES. And there aren’t.”
You are a successful author and thought leader. Which three character traits do you feel were most instrumental to your success when launching your book? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Commitment, drive and hustle. You cannot be taught to be driven. You have to be driven enough that if it doesn’t work ten times, you’ll try it the eleventh. You have to be driven enough that you are not embarrassed to ask for help. You’re not embarrassed to fail, you’re not embarrassed to put yourself out there. Hitting the NYTimes Best Seller List was a lofty goal, but I was driven to make it happen and committed to all the necessary actions and strategies to see it through.
In my work, I have found that writing a book can be a great way to grow a brand. Can you share some stories or examples from your own experience about how you helped your own business or brand grow by writing a book? What was the “before and after picture?” What were things like before, and how did things change after the book?
Obviously , hitting the NYTimes bestseller list was huge for us! It was instant authority and credibility that launched us into the next level of business. The exposure it earned us has not only translated into incredible speaking and media opportunities that I’ve had, but it’s translated into real dollars and clients. One of our amazing clients, Katia, became a client of ours after randomly checking out my book from her local library!
If a friend came to you and said “I’m considering writing a book but I’m on the fence if it is worth the effort and expense” what would you answer?
I would ask them if they are an expert in the subject and about the audience that will be reading their book. I would ask if they have a strategy in place to not just write a book for the sake of writing it, but how does it weave into the greater plan for their business. How will it lead them to more speaking, more clients and more opportunity?
Can you explain how writing a book in particular, and thought leadership in general, can create lucrative opportunities and help a business or brand grow?
Writing a book establishes your place as the expert in your field and being the expert brings clients to the front door of your business! There are millions of “experts” on social media these days but are they willing to put their expertise in writing to last an eternity and be solid proof of what they are preaching about on social media? Experts publish books because we are 100% confident in our message and being able to move people with that message. When your message moves people, you’ll never have to sell again.
What are the things that you wish you knew about promoting a book before you started? What did you learn the hard way? Can you share some stories about that which other aspiring writers can learn from?
Publishers don’t care about books and concepts and ideas — they care about how many books you can sell. So, write a great book so it sustains and can be relevant for the long run, but more importantly build an audience that will buy the book. The more you build your audience who will buy the book, the more you will know what to write your book about because it’s based on what they want.
Based on your experience, which promotional elements would you recommend to an author to cover on their own and when would you recommend engaging an expert?
Self publishing or going with a small publisher to support you in self publishing is a great resource. My first 2 books were self-published! They can provide you with great structure and resources not only to make sure your book is READY to be consumed, but with some of the best outlets to help you gain traction right away with it. Sometimes starting with a “mini book” is a great time saving way to get a book complete and in your hands for promotion while you have an idea for a larger book in the works.
Wonderful. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your own experience and success, what are the “five things an author needs to know to successfully promote and market a book?”
- Your book must be entertaining. Everybody believes their content is the best ever. Maybe it is, but if it doesn’t entertain people, it will never be read. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Stephen King, “If people wanted to learn, textbooks would be bestsellers.” If you want to sell books, write one people will enjoy reading!
- Build an audience like I said before! Build an audience of people that will read and buy this book.
- Books don’t really make money, so you have your book tied into a backend offer that can earn you money through some other service.
- If you want to sell more books, be a great speaker. Speaking and books go together and the better speaker you are, the more you will speak and more opportunity to sell books.
- Understand what you gives you the right to write, market and sell this book. Do something in your business or life that gives you reason and authority to be the trusted expert in this subject area. Work to be the most studied and experienced person in your field.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)
I have a huge list for this! But a few people I follow closely and really inspire me are TD Jakes, SnoopDogg, The Kardashians, RealTalk Kim, Seth Godin.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
https://www.facebook.com/TheDrivenInc
https://twitter.com/thedriveninc
https://www.linkedin.com/company/thedriveninc/about/
https://www.youtube.com/user/helpmorepeople
https://www.instagram.com/thedriveninc/
Thank you for these excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent. We wish you continued success with your book promotion and growing your brand.
