How Writing a Book Can Catapult Your Speaking Career with John Jantsch.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. I'm Peter George, public speaking trainer, speaker, and award-winning author of The Captivating Public Speaker. My guest this week is John Jantsch. John is a veteran marketing speaker and workshop leader with over 200 successful events under his belt. Event organizers and attendees frequently comment on the practical, actionable takeaway value of his presentations. He's also the author of the best-selling book Duct Tape Marketing. John and I discuss how writing a book can launch a speaking career — or, if you already have one, catapult it to new heights. Here's my conversation with John Jantsch.

The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

Peter: Before we get into writing and speaking, tell us about the new book you're working on.

John: I've written five books on marketing over nearly 30 years. For the next one, I wanted to do something different — mining the wisdom of being an entrepreneur for many years. It's called The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, and it's set up as a daily meditation: 366 pages, one reading per day. There's no how-to, just an inspirational point of view about what it takes to be self-reliant. The title draws on Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous essay on thinking for yourself and charting your own course. Every day you'll find a reading from Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Melville, Poe — great writers of that first countercultural period in America. Then I riff on it for about 100 to 200 words, applying it to the modern entrepreneur, and close with a question that challenges you on the theme. It was hard to write, but very satisfying.

How the Book Changed His Speaking Career

Peter: Were you speaking professionally before you wrote the books, or did writing them help launch your career?

John: I was speaking before — starting at community colleges, then moving to local associations, building gradually. I saw it primarily as a lead generation opportunity for my consulting practice. Once I started writing and blogging online, I began branching out as a paid speaker outside my local community. But there's no question that when Duct Tape Marketing came out in 2006, everything changed. I'd been speaking for three or four years, but there wasn't huge demand. Once the book hit a couple of bestseller lists, people started seeking me out.

I quadrupled my speaking fees, because that's what they expected to pay a bestselling author. Now I do about 20 to 25 paid speaking gigs a year.

Writing vs. Speaking

Peter: Meeting planners often equate writing and speaking as one and the same. From your experience, do they go hand in hand or are they really different disciplines?

John: They're really entirely different disciplines. Having a good idea, being able to simplify it, and articulate it clearly is key to both. But half of speaking is what you might call the performance — the ability to get your idea across with your body, your voice, your movement, your emotions. Timing's involved. And you can't go back and delete it. That said, there is an aspect to editing in speaking. Over the years I've given a talk with a very similar feel that I'm constantly updating because something didn't work or I found a better way to say something.

The Greatest Benefit of Writing a Book

Peter: What do you see as the greatest benefit to a speaker once they've written a book?

John: Credibility and authority. The task today as a speaker is to be seen as an expert and build some level of notoriety. A book on a topic people care about can do a great deal for you — even if you're a local accountant who just wants to be the recognized expert in your community. That said, just having a book isn't enough to stand out anymore. Anyone can publish now. You have to have a very clear objective for what you're going to do with it.

Marketing the Book

Peter: It doesn't market itself.

John: That's right. One of the biggest fallacies first-time authors carry into a traditional publishing deal is thinking the publisher will sell their book for them. The publisher's customer is the bookstore. If the book doesn't sell, it gets sent back. The author has to spend a year or more building an audience, building a platform, and getting the word out. That said, if your goal is to be seen as an expert in your community and do some speaking locally, you don't have to sell thousands and thousands of copies. The book just has to be well-received and get into enough hands to serve your other objectives.

Advice for Aspiring Authors

Peter: What advice do you have for listeners who are thinking about writing a book?

John: The hardest thing for most people is getting started. Ninety percent of people who say they're going to write a book never do. You've got to simplify the process. Start with your big idea. Does the world need another book like this? What's your unique point of view? What's the promise you're making to a specific audience — what problem are you solving for them? That has to be different from what's already out there, because today every industry and every how-to angle has been covered somewhere. If you don't get that foundation right first, everything after it is harder than it needs to be.

Just Get It Down

Peter: Once they get started, what are the biggest pitfalls?

John: Overthinking it. There's a book I quote all the time called Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. The essence of it is: just get it down. Your first draft isn't going to be good. That's fine. Start writing. Start outlining. Start refining. Start talking to people about it, and it'll come around. If you never do that first step, you never get to the part where you actually make it better.

Where to Get Help

Peter: Where do you think writers should get help — editors, design?

John: A structural editor who looks at your book globally — does the big idea run through it, do the chapters hang together — is extremely valuable for someone without a lot of writing experience. It's easy to get lost over 70,000 words. But if you've only got so much to spend, spend it on a copy editor. Typos, wordiness, missing punctuation — for many readers, three mistakes like that and the book gets put down. A good copy editor can go through a book in a week. And then design. A professional cover makes a real difference when you're sitting on a shelf next to the competition. People make decisions in seconds. Don't let a self-published look undercut everything else you've built.

The First Step

Peter: What's that first step?

John: Identify the big idea. Who is your target audience? What problem do they have that you can promise to solve? If you can't answer that clearly, everything you write after it is going to be an uphill battle. I didn't set out to write a bestselling book. I wrote a book because it would help me get speaking engagements and get attention — because there were so many other objectives in writing it. Unless you've got the next great idea of the decade, your book is only going to be as good as you find ways to leverage having it.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. To learn more about John Jantsch and his work, visit ducttapemarketing.com. Are you ready to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then visit petergeorgepublicspeaking.com and let's make it happen. I'll see you next time.