The Art of Building Authority through Books with Anna David, Author & Founder of Legacy Launch Pad Publishing

Transcript:

Alan Olsen

I’m Alan Olsen and welcome to American Dreams. My guest today is Anna David. Anna, welcome to today’s show.

Anna David

Thank you so much for having me, Alan.

Alan Olsen

So Anna you came is a recommendation of Joe Polish. And I think both of us have that common connection. And so I really look forward to today’s segment. We we spoke last time about a book that you co authored with him called Miracle Morning. Yeah, yeah, of course, addiction recovery. And anyways, that’s how this meeting came about. And I’m really looking forward to hear about your background, how you got to where you are today, what you’re currently working on. And let’s let’s go from there. So for the listeners, Anna, tell, tell me your story.

Anna David

My story. In a nutshell, um, I am the most relevant thing today, I’m 53 years old and having my first child in two weeks by a surrogate. So I’m officially a very late bloomer. I didn’t figure out how to support myself till I was 30 years old. And I didn’t figure out how to run a successful business until I was 47. And I met the aforementioned Joe Polish, who really has transformed my life in ways I can’t even describe. And so in in those years, so I celebrated 23 years of sobriety last November 19.

And in that time, I’ve published eight books, I’ve been able to be three TEDx stages, been lucky enough to be on the Today Show, Good Morning, America, the talk hundreds of times, and, and I’ve I’ve had several missions. I am a big fan of the reinvention. I started off my career working for people in Premiere and US Weekly, and I was a celebrity expert. That’s how I started going on TV. Then I started writing for Playboy and I became a dating and relationship expert. And then once I was sober, I became a recovery expert.

And now I would say I’m an expert in, in book publishing, the secret being write a book about something and you become an expert in it.

Alan Olsen

I love it. So legacy Launchpad is is your current business that you founded?

Anna David

Yes, yes. That was the only successful business I’ve ever found it. Well,

Alan Olsen

you, it legacy, you you talk about you having authority and building books, I like the I like the approach you take about being authoritative and give me a little bit of a sense of understanding of how this really came about.

Anna David

Well, I published I wrote a New York Times best selling book. And the secret about that is that once you do that, everybody starts coming to you and asking you to write their books. And I had already written a book for somebody and I didn’t enjoy the experience. And so when people asked me, I always said no. And I’ve actually continued to say no, one person in this was in 2016 was very insistent. His name’s Darren prince, and he’s a very successful sports agent. And he wanted to get into recovery, addiction, recovery, advocacy and speaking.

And he said to me, I’d like you to write my book. I said, No, he was very insistent. So I hired somebody I knew a writer who told me she was looking for work. And she wrote the book, I edited it, I published it, and I watched Darren, launch a speaking career get spokesperson jobs, get on Jay Shetty, his podcasts, get on Lois houses, podcast, get on all these TV shows, and launch a nonprofit and do all of these things and become a leading expert in the recovery movement.

And I and then one client after another came has come to us and listen since that in the past five years, we’ve published over 50 books and, and established authorities and watched our clients get on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and get on the Today Show and add, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars to their bottom line. And so my clients are the ones who have taught me what a book can do for your career.

Alan Olsen

And it was it take you know, to to get a book written you work with individuals. And I’m sure a lot of people say hey, and it just just write a book about me just to try to about when I’m thinking I mean what what is your process there?

Anna David

Well, our process what about half the books we publish are our Written by the client. And the only reason I put that, in quotes is someone who doesn’t have experience writing a book. writing professionally is not going to do the best book, that’s just a reality. No matter how many people tell them, they’re an amazing author know how no matter how talented they are, in the same way, I don’t run into a hospital and try to perform surgery on somebody because I have no training.

So So books that come to us complete often need a lot of reworking, which is not what the client wants to hear. Often, they have spent a lot of money on people who, who claimed to be experienced editors who didn’t do very much to them. So our best books, I would say, are people who come to us and say, I am a successful X. And it really can be anything. And I want to share my story. And I want to attract more clients.

And I partner them with someone on my team, who is you know, we have writers who write for the New York Times, and all sorts of leading publications, they partner, they spend two hours a week for three months speaking, the one of my writers is constantly giving them their the work back. Yes, it’s called ghost writing. But we look at it more as we’re documenting your greatness. Usually it takes about six months. And, you know, we put it through I come from traditional publishing, I was published by HarperCollins, and Simon and Schuster.

So I know. And I’ve taught my team how to publish a book independently that’s indistinguishable from a New York Times best selling book, traditionally published book. So that’s what we do. And we do all sorts of things. We do audiobooks, we do hard covers, we have a system to get you Amazon reviews. And to get your book to number one bestseller spot. We have partners who who help you get on the Wall Street journalists so so we can really do whatever you want in the publishing world.

Alan Olsen

You know, I love I love your very comprehensive, one stop shop, you know, we edit, we actually promote some person saying they finish the book, a lot of people want to Self Publish, and then they realize this is so hard. Yeah. How do you how do you promote books? How do you what’s the what’s the secret formula that you’ve found over the years? Best way to get the word out there about the new book that’s just come out?

Anna David

I would say the irony is that promoting doesn’t promote book sales. I have been I had a segment five minutes segment on Good Morning America, where I taught you about my book, I sold maybe like 10 or 15 copies. But I brought in hundreds of 1000s of dollars in new clients. So promotion is amazing for credibility. But the best way to get a book out there is to have somebody other people promote it. There’s something called the Tim Ferriss effect, where a writer Michael Ellsberg wrote about how he was on the New York Times, and he was on the Today Show.

And it didn’t sell many books. And then Tim Ferriss wrote a blog post about him. And you know, and the book went to number 10, on Amazon, or whatever it is. So I’m a big fan of doing what you can control. I spent six books, obsessing over book sales obsessing over why didn’t this my book do as well as someone else’s. And I now say I would rather have 100 people read my book and have their lives transformed and hire my company than 10,000, who won’t really care. I can’t sell 10,000 copies, and sell 100.

And I can if you are very intentional and very clear about who your book is for the right people will read it. And that’s what matters to me.

Alan Olsen

And recently, we had Joe Polish Sean, we discussed a book called the Miracle Morning for addiction recovery. And, you know, Joe spoke a lot about his experience. But how did this relationship between you and Joe come about to where you co author together?

Anna David

It’s such a good story. I saw a Facebook post that my friend Tommy Rosen did an interview with Joe about his addiction and recovery. I had no idea who he was, but I had this sort of premonition, I need to know this person. I don’t know why, in in that. At that time, I was very big in the addiction recovery movement. I was doing TEDx talks, I was reading books about it. I was editing websites about it. And I saw that my sister in law was friends with Joe on Facebook. I asked her to do an introduction. Um, Joe called me and he said, he’s like, I got some friends in the car.

We’re gonna be in LA. Hey, I’m doing a documentary about addiction. Recovery. Can I interview you for it? I’m staying at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, want to come over there. Now, to be clear, you should not go to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. If a person you a man you have not met, has asked you to go there. However, I knew this was a good idea. And I went there, and he interviewed me for his documentary. And then, after we were done, Tony Robbins texted him and I sort of thought, Who is this person? A

nd he invited me to go to breakfast with him and his friend, his friend was somebody named Eben Pagan, who’s one of the biggest marketers in the world. I had just sort of been introduced to the world of marketing. And I said, I’d love to stay and linger with you guys after breakfast. But I am doing my first webinar. Do you guys know what a webinar is? Again? I don’t know. I’m talking to the world’s biggest marketers. And they go, yeah. And I said, I’m very nervous. I’ve been studying this woman, Amy Porterfield. I’ve studied all everything.

She says, I’m doing this thing. And they gave me advice. I said, I have 100 people signed up, can you believe it? And they said, that’s nothing. They said, You’re not going to sell anything. And Evan said, if you want to sell anything from having 100 people signed up, instead of selling something asked to get on a call with them at the end, I get home and by the time I’m home, I get a voice note. And it’s an it’s this woman’s voice. And she says, Hey, Anna, it’s Amy Porterfield, my friend, Joe Polish told me you’re very nervous about your webinar.

Would you like me to look at your slides, this was like, this was like God coming down and offering to look at my slides. I couldn’t believe it. And I couldn’t believe he did that without even telling me. And then he texted me and said, Hey, do you want to come to dinner with me and a bunch of friends. And I went to dinner, met a whole bunch of his friends. And somebody at the end of the table picked up the tab for all of us. I’ve even spoken to that person. And I said, Who is this generous group I have encountered? That was my first day knowing Joe Polish.

Alan Olsen

That’s a great story in it and Joe speak so highly of you. If we walk through the the collaboration, and actually the book itself, moving into the Miracle Morning for addiction recovery. You know, did it Joe coming to you. And Joe was very transparent about his challenges to addiction recovery. And then it also sounds like you’ve had a journey yourself through this. So yes, when you stepped together and collaborated? What was it like? What was it like? What what message were you trying to convey to the reader about there’s hope?

Anna David

Well, I was really bottomed out on a cocaine addiction in the late 90s. And I got sober, I went to rehab, and I got sober. And I quickly realized that recovery was nothing like I expected it to be, I thought it was going to be a whole bunch of super depressed people sitting in rooms, chained smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, talking about the good old days. And I very quickly discovered, these were the most vibrant, exciting, charming, ambitious, alive, hilarious people I’d ever met.

And I thought, my God, if I could show one person, that that recovery is not what they think it is, they will not have to go as low as I did. I wanted to kill myself, literally. And so I wrote a book called party girl, which is being made into a movie, which is incredible. So that has always been my mission to sort of educate people about what what it is. And my philosophy is sort of give it to make people think you’re entertaining them, but really giving them messages that are going to save their lives. And, and so that was my experience.

And Joe knew that. And he wanted to collaborate with me on a writing project. And so how Elrod was a member of Genius Network, Joe’s group, and how was offering these opportunities. You could basically pay to write a Miracle Morning book in the genre you wanted to, and Joe and I collaborate well together because he’s the big idea person and I’m the executor. And so I was able to sort of take both of our philosophies take a lot of what I know Joe talks about and and put it in this book, and and since then, we’ve collaborated on many, many things.

I as a surprise for him. I collect I collected before he’d ever published any book before this before his Wall Street Journal best selling book, what’s in it for them? I took his newsletters, because there’s such gems that he has in there, and I, and I compiled them into a book. And I titled it, life gives to the giver. And I sent him 50 copies of a book he had written without knowing he had written it. So so we’re just very good collaborators,

Alan Olsen

you know, in from start to finish, how long did this take to get the book completed and out to market

Anna David

of that, that book, we weren’t in control of it, it was before I became a publisher. And so they’re, you know, when we’re, when my company’s doing it, it’s, it’s pretty efficient. You know, when you’re doing a traditionally published book, it’s usually you know, between a year and three years between contract signing and release, we do it in six months, that was slower because it was how L rods company that was managing it, and they sort of had other books in their pipeline.

But But writing that book was far easier than writing another book, any other book, because there was a format, they provide a lot of the material in the different Miracle Morning books are the same in each one. So that probably only took me a few weeks to write.

Alan Olsen

Okay, all right. So how do you approach a writing project where you have multiple individuals coming to you and wanting to write a book together? versus working with a single offer? Is Arthur, is there a particular process that you’ll go through?

Anna David

Well, I don’t do any of the writing. It’s all it’s all my team. And I, and I will say, if I give one of my team members more than two books at a time, it is too too much. We had I there was a another hybrid publisher that recently sort of went down in flames in scandal and went out of business. And I heard one of their team members talking, and it was a writer who was working on six books at once. You cannot do that you cannot hold people’s personal, that many people’s stories in your heart and soul.

You know, this is a process where you become very close to the collaborator, and it’s an intimate experience. Sometimes they’re telling you things that they’ve never told anybody before. And so I don’t know what what magic my team goes off and makes. I’m never a part of those conversations. But I hear the results. And I see the results. And they’re really, really incredible. Not always, sometimes it’s a bad fit.

We always do a vibe check, because we’ve had people who, you know, I had a team member early on, who would start working with people and they didn’t like her. So she’s not a team member anymore. But it has to be the right fit.

Alan Olsen

Yeah, and I’m going to ask you a question kind of put you on the spot. In a bit. I’ll preface this, I’m going to ask you, when it comes to the cost of writing and publishing. What should a person expect?

Anna David

It is all over the map, there is a company called self publishing school that will help you through the entire process. And I believe it’s $7,000. There’s Forbes publishing, which I believe charges $200,000. So you we are right in the middle of of that we do have a $7,000 offer. But the book has to be complete. And it’s not. It’s not published under our main legacy Launchpad banner. But we do have packages that go up to $100,000. And people, people buy them. It’s broken down into six payments. And, you know, yes, you get what you pay for.

I will say I don’t think you need to pay $200,000. But some people want that. We have people who who they just say I want your top two your package. I don’t care what it costs. But you know, it is expensive to get a great writer writing your book, and it’s not affordable for most people, which is why we have the $7,000 offer where you can get published at, you know, with the top professionals doing it for you, but you’re not going to get that hands on white glove concierge experience.

Alan Olsen

I love that, you know, and then you answer that so well. It’s comparable questions. How much is a car and like? Yeah, right, right down there. They’re all over the board. Yes. Oh, I think if you want the best, the best. There’s a market rate for that. Yeah. And it’s been a pleasure having you with us today. Any any last advice for You’d save for, you know how a person should prepare before they come to you.

Anna David

You should be able to fill in the sentence, my book is for blank so they can blank. So I can blank, you should be incredibly clear about the fact that you are not going to be the exception to the rule, probably, you are not going to make millions of dollars from book sales, you’re not going to even make 10s of 1000s of dollars from book sales. And so get really clear about what you want your reader to do. You should have a business.

If you want to do this and have it not be volunteer work, you should have a business that your book is going to lead people to and you should be really clear about who your book is for and what you want them to do.

Alan Olsen

And find out is the person find you on legacy lunch. I am

Anna David

all over the place. You can find me on social media at Anna B. David but legacy Launchpadpub.com is our hub. If you want to get that formula that I just described, you could go to book in a sentence.com and we’ll just send it to you.

Alan Olsen

And it’s been a pleasure having you with us today here on American Dreams.

Anna David

Thank you so much for having me, Alan. I really appreciate it.

 

 

Curtesy of Alan Olsen’s

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