BOOK MARKETING: How to Become a Recognized Expert Using YouTube Interview with Darren LaCroix Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today my special guest is Darren LaCroix, a world champion of public speaking. He's passionate about showing people that if you have the right mentors and you're a sponge, anything is possible. In less than 9 years, Darren LaCroix went from being a comedy club failure to beating 25,000 contestants from 14 countries to become the world champion of public speaking. Since his victory, Darren has traveled the world demystifying the process of creating a powerful presentation. Through his live workshops and online programs, Darren works with presenters eager to learn what it takes to connect deeply with their audience. He's the founder of StageTimeUniversity.com, the ultimate online programs for presenters. Darren is currently the only speaker in the world who's achieved the National Speaker's Association in Certified Speaking Professional designation, the Toastmaster's accredited speaker designation and he's a world champion speaker. A fellow National Speaker Association friend and colleague, Darren, what a true pleasure it is to welcome you to the show as this week's guest expert and mentor. Hey. Thanks Susan. Glad to be here and glad to help people. This is always a challenge and we've always got to dive in and be a sponge. We certainly do. Darren, I'm probably one of those people who's seen you go from failure to victory. I've got to say that you are a true testament to perseverance. Talk to us about what it takes to have that perseverance, to get up and keep going when life just doesn't quite go the way you want it to. Page 1
Yeah. There's definitely times in business and life where you just, "It's not supposed to be this hard. What happened," but I think it's one of those challenges that almost God or the universe is like, "Okay. How serious are you?" To go to your question, back in the 1990's, I used to own a Subway sandwich shop that failed, which is not easy to do. I took a $60,000 debt in just six short months. I doubled that, turned Subway sandwich into a non-profit organization. I was so upset and I was so mad at everyone else. I was mad about the landlord who told me they were going to put in a stop light right in front. I didn't like the location. I was mad at Subway. I was just mad at the world for my failure. I remember hearing a story from Jim Rohn, a great speaker, actually Tony, if you don't know him, Tony Robbin's mentor, and he said, he was telling this great story. He said that his mentor asked him to write out a list of why he wasn't successful, and so he wrote out this long list of all the reasons he wasn't successful. He brought it back, handed it to his mentor, and his mentor said, "Jim, there's one problem with this list. Your name ain't on it." I remember it was a big ah-ha because then I realized I chose the franchise, I chose the location, I chose to ignore my lawyer's advice about what I was getting into. When I took responsibility, I started realizing, "Okay. It's my fault. I'm 100% responsible." When things don't work out, when things don't sell, when you're book's not selling, guess what? It's your fault. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It just means the way you approached it didn't work, but there's another way. There's thousands of ways, and what we have to do is take responsibility and then dive in and find a new way. That's why truly going to mentors, people who are the best of the best, think differently. Marketing is changing so quickly in this world as technology changes, so the new strategies, things I did a few years ago aren't working anymore so I've got to find a new way. Why? Because I'm responsible. I think when we look at it that way, there's more than one way and sometimes we bring our whole background to a new method. When we're trying a new strategy, we bring our whole life experience to that, so sometimes we might make a few tweaks. Susan, I remember in my old days at Subway, they sent you to Subway University. At Subway University, now they have a method that works and you're buying into a system. They taught us the difference between a farmer versus an MBA, and they said that farmers are people who came and bought this system, this success system, and they understood the ethics of hard work, but they knew that they didn't know when they bought a Subway franchise, they actually became the most successful franchisees. Page 2
People who were former MBA's had this big degrees and all these big accreditation and beautiful pieces of paper and letters after their name, when they came into the Subway system, they tried to change it and do it their way immediately and it's too bad because they could've been more successful if they were willing to open up and be a sponge and learn the system that works. Honestly, that's where I was. I was, even though I didn't have a big MBA, I had a business degree and I thought I knew better than the system, so it was a great lesson to learn early on that you've got to find the mentors, find the people who are where you want to go. I love what you're doing, Susan, with this podcast because just looking at some of the other programs about using technology as an unfair advantage and I love, love, love the title of, "Be more authentic to market your book." I just think that's becoming so popular and so important this day in age that whether you're marketing on YouTube or writing blogs or getting out there, promoting, and doing interviews, be real, be authentic. You're going to connect with more people, which will end result in more sales for you. Long answer, Susan. So many important messages in just that short little story that you gave us, the fact that knowledge can often be a dangerous thing. I know that I suffer from that sometimes too, is I go into something and I want to change it because I think I know better. I'm totally with you with the Subway. Yep. I think the MBA's could've been more successful if they took the time to learn the system and then six months or a year down the road then add their own expertise. I'm guilty of this, too, so I hear exactly what you're saying, and I'm guilty that we try to add our own brains too soon, and our own methodology too soon, before we really give the system a chance. Then, and only then, adjust it. Susan, whether it's in the marketing world, marketing your book, or in the speaking world, which is where I come from, I think the two biggest problems, number on at the beginning, self-doubt, doubting that you actually can do this, and number two, after you get some success, then the bigger problem becomes ego. Then we think we know more. Ego is the biggest problem for adult learners. We just want to prove that we know it all. We don't really need your method, but we bought your method or we dove in and took your class because we thought it would help us, but then we don't listen to everything when we listen to experts. Page 3
Yeah. Ego, it's a big problem, as we know in this world. Let's focus on one of the strategies that you use, and you've become such an expert in that Darren. There are so many marketing strategies I know that we could chat about, but YouTube is one that you've taken to a whole different level, so what is it about this platform that you like and why did you decide to choose it to concentrate your marketing efforts? We all need to choose what's that one method that we're going to go all in on. There's so many marketing methods and everyone has a strategy. There's a billion experts, but what you've got to do is choose the one that you like, choose the one that you can get behind that you're willing to study and learn more about. Choose one and go all in, whatever that is. I chose YouTube because I just love video. As a speaker, I'm comfortable being in front of the camera, so it's easy for me but I realized I had to full-on commit to one. It was funny because when I hired a marketing mentor, one of the first things he told me was, "You've got to get on YouTube." I'm like, "YouTube? What is... " I didn't even know what it is. This was back when YouTube was starting, and so he just got on my case, got on my case, and I finally put up like two videos. I said, "Okay. I'm on YouTube. I'm done," and he said, "No! That's not right." In learning from experience, I now have like 2.8 million views. I have 1300 videos, and what I look at, Susan, is I have 1300 little soldiers out there telling people where to go, telling people, "This guy's an authority. You've got to learn more," literally channeling them to my sale's pages. I've sold... One of my bigger products is called Get Paid to Speak by Next Week. I've had people buy that because of YouTube videos. Now, I'm not going to say you just put up one or two videos and boom, you're done. No, there's got to be some thought behind it. Let me give you a quick example. One of the ideas is not just having videos on YouTube, and Susan you know one of our mentors, someone we look up to is Alan Weiss. He says, "It doesn't matter if your video is seen by 2 million people. It matters if your video is seen by the right 500 people." That's such an important aspect. To give you an example, one of my programs or products is called Create Your Keynote by Next Week. Now, in the speaking world, people create keynote speeches. Outside, it's a presentation, not a keynote. Most people aren't searching, when they jump on YouTube they're not searching for Create a Keynote Speech. They're actually searching for How to Write a Speech, which is very different search terms. Now think Page 4
about the reason YouTube exists. What's YouTube's job? YouTube's job is to take the person who's searching and connect them directly to the right video. See, the better YouTube can do that, the more time you're going to spend on YouTube, the more advertising dollars they're going to make, so it's in their best interest to make sure those connections are good. Here's the problem. People, number one, put up videos to promote something but they're all self-centered. They're thinking of what their putting up rather than what the searcher is searching for. The cool thing is YouTube actually tells you what people are looking for. If you go to YouTube and you start putting in one or two keywords about your category, you'll start to see the top searches that come up, so if I'm trying to sell my Create Your Keynote by Next Week, I can't put that in as the video title because no one's searching for that so I have to almost reverse engineer, "What are people looking for?" Now consider, what's your book about? What's the problem your book solves? Then ask yourself, come up with a list, I take a spreadsheet and I come up with questions that people who want to buy my book or want to solve that problem, what are they looking for and how do they search? When I type in, "How to write a speech," YouTube gives me a drop down of the top five searches. One of those searches is "How to write a speech introduction." I thought, "Huh. I didn't realize people would search for that, but yeah. It makes sense," so then I create two videos, so for each search term, I create two videos specifically targeted to that search phrase so the title of it is How to Write a Speech Introduction. Then in the description, when I upload it, I put "Are you looking to know how to write a speech introduction? Speech introductions can be good or bad, but how do you write a good speech introduction?" I keyword phrase it but type out a paragraph or two about that video and then I tag it, "How to write a speech introduction," so how to write a speech is highly competitive, hard to get on that page but the longer the search phrase and the better your keyword phrase matches what people are searching, the more likely you are to come up on that first page. Other drop downs came up, "How to write a speech about yourself." I would've never dreamed in a million years people search how to write a speech about yourself, but we, as the experts, as the authors, need to give people what they want. Another one came up, "How to write a speech for student council." Okay, that's not my market. I'm not going Page 5
to create videos based on that. My whole strategy is one video a day. Now that might seem intimidating, it might seem overwhelming, but could you sit down for maybe an hour or two and create five videos, which is easier than you think, especially if you do like a interview format. If you do an interview format, it's very simple. I look at each video as one video, one point of content, answering their question, and one next step. The next step is to send them to, whether it's Amazon if you're selling your book there, or your direct sale's page. Don't over complicate this. It's simple. I think one of the things that you said earlier was that you're very comfortable with video, but I know that there are a lot of people listening who don't feel the same way about videos, so have you got some tips on how to feel more comfortable going in and using this strategy? It sounds so simple the way you put it but then it's like, "Ah, that camera." Well, a couple things. I used to do acting, so that helped me but when I was first uncomfortable with a camera, Susan, in speaking I teach Stage Time, Stage Time, Stage Time. Well, in this situation, it's camera time, camera time, camera time. Hey, I still make flubs but that's the cool thing when you're shooting your own videos, you can, "Okay, do another take. Do another take," until you're comfortable with how it comes out. One of the tips that I got early on was to put a camera up, not turned on or anything, but just even a regular camera or a video camera, put it up in the corner of your office or someplace you see it a lot, and just say hi to it every time you walk in the room. "How you doing? How you doing?" Get comfortable having a conversation with that lens. Think about it. Our books are designed to help people, people who have challenges. You're going to build so much more trust with people if they can trust you, see you, see your authenticity, and get to know the real you. The cool thing is, now I do this so much, Susan, I can do it all myself where I can set up a tripod in my office. I have the camera angled at me, but I look off to the side to a chair, like someone is interviewing me. This would be for somebody who's just getting started. Have one of your friends come over. Have a glass of wine if that's going to make you comfortable, and have a conversation. Page 6
Have your friend ask you the question that you determined people are searching for on YouTube. "How do I get more comfortable in front of a camera?" What I will do is I will have the person say, which I did at the beginning, now I just have a list of paper there, but I used to have my assistant sit in the chair and say, "So Darren, how do you get more comfortable in front of a camera?" I would almost pause for a second and say, "Huh. Well, that's a great question." Early on in my acting career, I needed to do the exact same thing, and I would answer the question. The people want good answers, they want good content, they want to get to know you in the process and your personality, and another idea, Susan, if people aren't comfortable in front of the camera, well you could have an animated video created. If you go to Fiverr.com or something like that, find a place where you could have an animated video created, or you could just show slides. Create a video based on using images rather than you, or as it's called, B-roll of voiceover, where it could be pictures of people on the street or doing something that you help them with, the problem, we relate to the problem, and your book is the cure. Think about that. They have a challenge, your book is the cure, so your video should be based on that and showing a situation that people could emotionally relate to. You don't even have to be on camera. Now that's going to be a little bit more effort than sitting down and just doing interview question after question after question after question, so that would take more time to generate but I wanted to give some people ideas who aren't comfortable or don't want anything to do with being on camera. You could still do YouTube videos. I think one of the things that you highlight here is relating to the problem. So many of the authors want to market their book, and they think everything is the book, and they push the book in front of themselves, and they think it's the book that is going to relate to people rather than them, the author. Yes, I think you make a really, really good point about that. Let's talk about some mistakes that you see people make when they are using YouTube. I love to focus on mistakes, and we learn so much from what other people do incorrectly. Great. Perfect. Number one is they don't think the way the searching thinks, so they're not understanding they need to create a video that answers the question. Well, what are the questions? Well, jump on YouTube, put in some words that are related to your subject, and see Page 7
what comes up, so a little bit of creativity along with brainstorming to almost reverse engineer the questions, but you probably know the basis of the problem you help people with. Number two, I would say, go and sit in front of your own bookshelf right now, look at all the books you've bought, and ask yourself, "Why did I buy those books? What was going on in my life? What was the challenge? What was the problem? Was it recommended from by a friend?" Was it you went to a seminar and the person was speaking so you bought it in the back of the room? I just think no matter what method you use, that would be helpful. I look at marketing as Krispy Kreme doughnuts. If you've ever been to a Krispy Kreme, you walk in, Susan, and what do you see? You see doughnuts. Then what's the next thing that happens? You smell... Doughnuts. Yes. Then the evil employee, Susan, hands you a warm doughnut, and you bite into it and oh my gosh, it's euphoric. Susan, for most people, what does that make them do? You like something, you want to buy it. You buy more. If we can look at each video or each article that you write as your doughnut, if it's stale, if it's you trying to be too salesy or too pushy, nobody's going to buy your doughnut, but if you give them good nuggets, if you help them, if you give them a new perspective, they're more likely to do it. Getting back to one of your biggest mistakes on YouTube is no one's ever been inspired, no one's ever been helped by an idea or a video that's sitting on your hard drive. The biggest mistake is that people are so worried about being perfect or how they look that they're missing the point and they don't get the videos out there, so nobody watches them. We have to get over ourselves. I know Ed Tate says this, "Say to yourself, 'I look like that, I sound like that. Get over it.'" When we can put our audience in front, helping our audience in front of how we look, we'll do so much better in marketing. Now, I'm not saying look unprofessional, look unkempt. I'm not saying just put up your first take, but I am saying help people, and put helping them above looking perfect. You know what? It's so endearing when you see somebody stumble on the word. You're like, "Oh, that's the real person." When we Page 8
see people who are too slick and too perfect, we almost disconnect and don't like them. We hate them. People want to see, going back to how to be more authentic marketing your book, well being more authentic in your videos are going to help people to connect with you. If you wrote the book, you have all these ideas. You can take some of your chapters or even some of the ideas from your chapter. Example, so Susan, if I was sitting here doing a video right now and I was talking about my program, Secrets of Storytelling, Susan, I get asked this all the time, "How do you make a story memorable?" When I was creating Secrets of Storytelling, it was so enlightening for me to learn the [VAX 00:22:08] method. When we set a scene, we need to give people a visual, an auditory, a kinesthetic, and a smell. When we do that, the audience is more likely to picture the story from the beginning. Now they're in it, and that will also make the story more memory. When we were coaching people, it was just so enlightening when they took this very simple VAKS method and actually put it to work. They came up with better ideas than I would've thought of. The end of the video, you say, "You want to learn more about Secrets of Storytelling, go to secretsofgreatstorytelling.com." At the end of each video, you've got to give people that next step. Something that you said, too, that is so important and I remember hearing it from some of our National Speaker's Association colleagues is the fact that when you're so worried about yourself, you're you focused rather than you're audience focused, customer focused, and when you get and relate to them and it's all about them, you don't really care about what you look like. That's an important message to keep in mind, so thank you. How can our listeners contact you if they want to learn more about your services? Very simple, just DarrenLaCroix.com. If they're interested in being a better speaker on stage, even if they're just getting started, or the business of speaking, they can check out StageTimeUniversity.com. So much great wisdom. Listeners, do check out Darren's information. Go to his YouTube channel, watch his videos, and just see how he does it because it looks so simple, and based on what you're saying, Darren, it really is simple. I just need to put that into practice myself, so that's my next step. If you were to leave our listeners with a golden nugget, what would that be Darren? Page 9
There are many poor perfectionists in this industry. Get your videos up there, keyword them, spend a little time. This is simple but it takes a little bit of time, but once you get into a groove, like anything else you do, it becomes easier and faster, and you'll be able to crank out more videos. Make this your goal. Think of, when people search your subject area, that on the first page you dominate. It's called your social media footprint. That makes you an expert whether you sell a million books or not. By being seen as an authority means you have several videos that when we search your subject, we see you. That helps position you, sell your book, get you speeches if you're interested in that, but most importantly, if I could leave you with nothing else, some methods aren't going to work, some methods are going to require a tweak like the first time you do it, it's not going to work. Okay, so make an adjustment. Make an adjustment. When I was doing stand up comedy, they would tell us that you need to test new material in front of three different audiences on three different nights before you give up on it. I think that's a great rule of thumb for us, that one method you might have to adjust it two or three different ways before you find the way that works. I'm telling you, you're going to have days that you say, "What the heck am I doing?" Remember this. My comedy mentor, Vinnie [inaudible 00:25:45], after a year and a half in the stand up comedy world, I got maybe two or three or four laughs in five minutes. I watched this guy go up on his very first night and he killed it. I'd been doing it a year and a half, working my butt off, and he killed it. The audience is dying. I turned to him, I said, "Vinnie, how do you know who's going to make it?" He turned to me and said, "That's easy, Darren. Whoever keeps going." What wise words. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that wisdom with us, and thank you all for taking time out of your day to listen to this interview. I sincerely hope that it sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Here's wishing you much book marketing success. Page 10