How do you elevate your brand, amplify your presence, and transform yourself into a bold confident promoter of your work? The keys to success starts with the three V’s – vision, voice and visibility.
Today, I am collaborating with Kae Wagner of the Bold Author’s network.
The foundation of an entrepreneurial vision
Kae notes that marketing and branding are hot spots in the entrepreneur universe.
Kae Wagner is the author of The CEO’s Little Black Book on Branding and the Power Principles of Marketing. These marketing books she wrote were targeted towards CEOs, VPs, the people who are putting the strategy together for a company in terms of marketing and branding.
And she went on the speaking circuit nationally to speak in front of CEO groups.
What Kae learned from speaking to these groups is that a book is a business card. It is your proven process to achieve a certain level of success, and one of the boldest keys to success is having a methodology you can share with others. And it gives you the authority and credibility to stand on a stage and say, I know what I’m doing.
Finding your voice as a bold promotor
How do you quickly amass a loyal following?
Kae became a bold promoter of her books.
She would carry books with her everywhere she would go.
And she would gift people her books, and she found that there is something about giving a person a physical book that is truly a gift.
There is something about a physical book that the perceived value of receiving a physical book is very high, especially when you get it from the author.
So, the way she was able to get loyal followers was to give out a lot of books, and she talked nonstop about the series.
She was able to get a lot of interest and a lot of reviews by being very bold in talking to everyone.
Kae wants everyone to understand that to become a bold promoter, whether it’s you’re an entrepreneur selling products or you’re an authorpreneur selling books, when you go through the mindset shift to become a bold author, you will see opportunities that you never saw before, and you will create opportunities that you never imagined before. Because suddenly, when you transform from that quiet kid in the corner to a bold, proud promoter, you are like, wow.
It’s like somebody took the veil off your eyes, and you can see all of this stuff now. It is amazing. And you no longer have that anxiety or that fear of talking about your books or products, a true sign you’re embracing the keys to success in confident self-promotion..
Mindset Shifts: An Entrepreneur’s Transformation
Our mindset is one of the biggest challenges, especially us as women, we have this fear of selling our products, whether it is books or it’s candles, and our culture often paints the word sales in a very, very negative light.
So, how do you really shift your mindset to become bolder in talking about your books?
Kae shares that she has coined this the three V’s, and that is vision, voice and visibility. And a bonus v to that is value.
The 3 keys to success: Vision
What I love about entrepreneurs is that they have a vision.
And that vision is not just about the product, but it’s often about the solution that they provide or the experience that they create or the care of the end result, the product itself.
Entrepreneurs have this love and this passion and they have a why.
So, for all of us, we have a why of, you know, providing for our families, for creating a product that’s successful, for getting a solution out into the world.
But there’s also a deeper why, a deeper vision that we have that is really important for us to connect to.
And a lot of people don’t think about it or talk about it.
And that vision has to do with the real meaning of your life.
What is it that you are most connected to, and what is it that you most value?
What are you willing to go to the absolute wall for?
And when you get really clear about that, then you have a mission.
When you have a mission, then all those fears start to fade away bit by bit because you are no longer trapped by the fear of what other people think about you.
Keys to success: Voice
Voice is not only your physical voice you’re speaking but it is how your presence is felt.
Your presence, whether you are on Zoom or in a room, can you command a room?
Can you dig in and tap into that mission and vision so that it is so present that people feel the energy that you bring.
And mission and vision increase the energy level, and so, your presence becomes bigger. Your energy becomes more profound, and it also becomes more magnetic. So, people are drawn to you. And you become not someone that you’re not, but you become an expansion of yourself.
You become a bigger person and you can feel it in your body.
You want to get to the place where you know that you can’t get knocked off of what your mission and vision is.
And so, your voice also includes your point of view.
What’s your point of view in your specific industry or in your specific situation or scenario or your audience, your tribe, your people?
What are we willing to go to the mat for? That’s really our voice.
And our voice includes all of the things, such as speaking, being on summits, on the stage, and creating opportunities.
Keys to success: visibility
There’s importance and value in the tangibility of what you’re going to give away.
A freebie still has value, however, the greater value is when you, the creator, you, the author, you, the producer, give someone something.
There is the tangible thing itself. There’s also the fact that then they have it and they see it again, creates a memory. It creates additional brand awareness.
Other people see it. They may give it to someone else.
The human law of nature that is reciprocity is when someone gives you something, ergo, you should give them something back. And so, you set up the give and you shall receive law of nature.
The keys to success in entrepreneurship lie in being intentional about the value you provide, the vision you uphold, and the voice you cultivate to create a lasting impact.
How to be intentional in your business
Make sure you are solving a specific problem.
The second thing that you can use nonfiction for very effectively as an entrepreneur is to tell your story, which brings in the emotion behind how you developed your solution to the problem regardless of the product, regardless of whether it’s books or candles, rugs, furniture, cars, anything. We as human consumers love stories.
We want to know that you as the entrepreneur care about us as the person who buys your product, your solution. That emotional connection is one of the keys to success in turning a buyer into a loyal advocate.
But not just that you care about us, but that you share with us. How did you come up with this, who are you, and what does this mean to you? What is success for you as an entrepreneur who went through blood, sweat, and tears, the ups and the downs that you inevitably go through as an entrepreneur or as an authorpreneur.
And so, authors who decide that one book will become part of their business or will drive a business become authorpreneurs. And in that decision, I didn’t just write a book. I wrote a book for a reason, and that reason was to help drive my entrepreneurial business.
In that knowledge and in in that decision, then you become a bolder promoter because now you have a tool to push your ideas.
You have a tool to create a wider picture perception of the value of what’s been put into it.
From Book to Brand Beyond: Expanding Perceived Value
What is this construct of perceived value in the book world?
In the book world, we have Kindle Unlimited where you get books for free. We have digital books where you’ll pay $4.99 to $9.99, maybe $14.99. We have paperback books like this one where you might pay $15.20, 25, and then they’re hardcover.
So, that’s all perceived value that we have all agreed upon is what books are worth.
Then if I take that fiction, that theme, and I create an online course.
Now what’s the perceived value of an online course?
It’s higher than a book. Could be $25.50, a hundred, a thousand dollars for a course.
Now I take that content. I repurpose, repackage it into a consulting and coaching program, and then the perceived value of that might be thousands of dollars.
How to start writing your dream book
I asked Kae what would you say to someone that has never written before, maybe someone like me that has that dream, but maybe feels like I don’t really have the time. What’s your best advice?
Kae recommends that whether you think you’re actually going to write a book or not, to start a practice of doing either daily musings or weekly musings.
So, conversations with yourself. And she recommends that you do them in dictation form.
For example, Kae would recommend that you grab your phone, open up an email, hit the microphone, and dictate into your email, and then send yourself the email.
By establishing that practice, by asking yourself, what am I feeling today about where my business is? What am I thinking about? Where was my business last year this time? And what is the growth that I’ve made, and where has that come from? Where am I going? What do I really care about? These are conversations with yourself.
But start peeling back the onion and revealing to yourself those deep yearnings, those deep feelings, those deep meanings that are in your life.
And you will start to see that the truth begins to bubble up.
Do that for maybe six months. Then you can start with a program where you can be guided into specific structure.
Because when you write a nonfiction book, you want to write to a certain structure, and so we can provide that for people as well.
And then from there, you have the option of writing a first draft and then having editors, clean everything up for you, or you can have someone write it for you.
Once you’ve gone through a lot of that work, you’re going to get pretty clear in your mind about what’s the story that I really want to share, and what’s the story that means the most to my audience.
And then from there, buckle up because you have a world of opportunities ahead of you.
The pathway to entrepreneurship success
To those who are selling differently, to remember that in whatever you’re doing as a maker, as a creator, and specifically if you become an author, is that when you move into this world of creating and becoming an entrepreneur and an authorpreneur, it’s about creating value and visibility and always being authentic.
Visibility can sometimes become vanity.
And what we really are looking for in terms of being driven by our mission and vision is to always bring authenticity to our audience.
Connect with Kae Wagner
Kae Wagner is the founder and president of North Star Marketing and the Bold Authors Network. As an entrepreneur, expert marketer, promoter, and bestselling and award-winning author, she has turned her focus to the author and publishing world to help authors promote their books and back-end programs through the Bold Authors Network. She’s helping Authorpreneurs solve the big problems the Indie Publishing world is facing – dealing with issues of falling off the Amazon Cliff to AI’s impact on the industry. Selling books does require different strategies these days, and Kae Wagner is leading the charge.
