2: 10s How to set yourself apart from your competitors
3: 20s The secrets to getting the most out of your book
3. 49s How to extend your network thanks to being an author
5: 42s What happens to Andrew Griffiths on airplanes
To listen to the radio interview with Andrew, click here: https://www.basicbananas.com/andrew-griffiths
Do YOU have a book? If so, please let us know about it below the video, share your link! Or are you thinking about writing one? Tell us about it so we can cheer you on!
Christo Hall: Hey guys. Today I have a very special guest sitting next to me. Who is this guy, you might be wondering. If you‘re in the business world you might recognize him… If not, he is Australia‘s number one business author with all the books in 50 countries?
Andrew Griffiths: 50, plus… Close to 60 now. Scary, isn‘t it.
Christo Hall: Amazing. So I thought who better to share a tip with us about a book and why. Create a book for your business; everybody‘s got a book in them. So why should we create a book and how can we use it to leverage our business?
Andrew Griffiths: Hi folks, nice to be here. Thank you Christo. I think a book has just become such a wonderful leveraging tool that we can have and I think today more than ever. For me, that‘s what I‘ve used my books for. They‘ve been amazing tools to be able to help me build a really successful global business where I do work in so many different countries around the world. All of it based on the credibility of maybe a person that‘s written a book about marketing or customer service or my books all around small business entrepreneurialism. And I think it really sets you apart from everyone else.
I mean if you‘re the one that writes the book and your competitors haven‘t got a book, well straightaway you‘ve got this exceptional competitive advantage; look at your book. I mean, Bananas About Marketing straightaway it sets you apart from other marketing companies. You share your ideas, your views, what you do. And I think that‘s a really big point for everyone that is listening or watching is that how you do what you do is really important for other people. Because the people want that information.
We live in an era of incredible demand for knowledge. And we all do things quite differently and I think that that‘s a game with the information you‘re sharing in your book. You‘re writing about stuff you‘re doing every day and how you do what you do. And for me, I think as a leveraging tool, as a sharing of information of a great, it sets yourself apart from others. You‘ve got to write a book. So that‘s just nonnegotiable. Why do you want to write a book? Stop. Right now. Just stop everything and write a book. Finished book and not before. Okay? I‘m watching. I‘m watching.
Christo Hall: Is such a powerful tool. We were just saying before we started recording this. Books like Business Cards on Steroids. On steroids or on steroids it‘s like the most powerful business card you ever had.
Andrew Griffiths: Absolutely.
Christo Hall: So how do they get…? What do they actually do with it… We‘re at the point, okay, we‘ve got a book. We‘ve heard in the past we just did an amazing podcast. You have to check this out. What they do, they‘ve created the book, listen to the podcast and now put it together. You‘ve got to hit the ground running, what do they do?
Andrew Griffiths: Right. We truly got to leverage. You go do this. You go do that. You put it on the internet saying it‘s so easy. How do you actually do it? And it‘s really a great question because I think the key is leveraging. We were laughing off air when Christo and I were doing the interview. I said I‘m actually not a very good writer but I‘m a very good leverager. And I‘ve learned to leverage what I do really, really well.
So for me, I leverage my books in all different ways. For starters, I send them out to people in the media… I send them to key people of influence; I send them to potential partners. So every day I‘m sending some books out for free to people and extending my network. Every single book that I have is like a seed. That‘s my little corny metaphor that I use. So the seed is, you know, if I send it to someone, you never know how that‘s coming to come back to you. Just a gift…. “Hey, Simon, you‘re going through what I‘ve written here. Please enjoy my book.”
Over the years now when my first book came out 13 years ago and the amount of work that my books have generated for me all around the planet has been extraordinary. Simply from just doing something like that, just by sending it to people randomly. I was telling Christo I just got a gig in New York to be the only extreme columnist to write for inc.com, a website that gets 80 million people a month. How? Because I sent a guy a book ten years ago basically; you know this whole thing kind of put me in contact with someone else, etc.
So that‘s one of the aspects of leveraging that I think you‘ve got to do; you‘ve got to work at it. The hard work starts once you‘ve got your book. And I use the line where I say, “You‘ve got to be marketing and leveraging your book every day of every week of every month of every year.” People think you‘ve got your book and then we joke the Ferrari will arrive. It‘s what you do with your book, that’s the difference.
You‘ve got to promote it on your website, you‘ve got to give it to your clients, you‘ve got to put it in your language that you write about yourself. Your biography shows that you‘re an author, that you‘ve written this book. If you‘re doing a picture or submission or a tender, you give them a copy of your book. When you‘re doing training programs you just make sure that you tell everyone you‘ve got a book… you make sure you give everyone a book and again, plenty of people buy and all the rest about what each book‘s going to do for you. Think of it as a seed, a $24.95 seed that can generate and has done for me on many occasions. One book generated hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the credibility of usability.
You‘re sitting down next to someone, on an aeroplane this happens to me all time. You know that kind of nondescript sitting next to each other on a plane, and you don‘t necessarily want to be too chatty because you don‘t want someone going crazy in your ear. As soon as you mention the fact, “Okay, what do you do?” “I‘m an author.” The conversation changes completely. Everyone is really quite interested and fascinated about what makes an author. What is this whole concept of an author? And it sets you apart from other people.
So just getting the book is a big milestone but when it comes to leveraging it is really going to give you an enormous competitive advantage. And whatever you do, people want to know about it. That‘s the key.
Christo Hall: The thing is people often say to me, “Who am I to write a book? Who am I? Like what have I got to say and really… Why do this?”
The thing is, the real key, and we really talk about this quite a lot on the podcast is that it‘s your experiences, it‘s how you do what you do; you know? The guy that‘s here, Christo, Bananas About Marketing, write a book on marketing. There‘s a few marketing books out there, their book is about how they market, their philosophies, their way of doing business. That‘s what makes it interesting. That‘s what makes it different. That‘s what puts it in demand, same with whatever it is that you do. Whatever your area of expertise is, you write about that. How you do what you do, because we‘re all kind of fascinated. How does everyone else do what they‘re doing… what‘s going to be that competitive advantage for you. So hopefully by now you‘ve written your book in the period that we‘ve actually taken to do this interview.
Christo Hall: Exactly. This is pure gold. Thank you so much for sharing.
Andrew Griffiths: You‘re welcome my friend.
Christo Hall: And we‘ve just done a full podcast where we‘ve gone into details on how to put it together. Andrew‘s put together 11 books, and so he knows better than anyone how to put them together, how to leverage them, how to get them published, whether we go to digital. All of this is on the podcast so you don‘t want to miss it. Just click on over to podcast or jump on iTunes and search for Basic Bananas and you‘ll find that there. Thank you my friend.
Andrew Griffiths: Pleasure. Thanks very much. Thanks folks.
Christo Hall: Thank you.