The Power of the Published: How a Book Builds Authority and Opens Doors

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Hello and welcome to the Daring to Succeed podcast. I’m your host, Julianna Yau Yorgan, and today I’m joined by Everett O’Keefe, a Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY and international #1 best-selling author.
The Power of Publish is his most recent solo work. He has also helped create and launch more than 200 best-selling books for his clients. He is the founder of Ignite Press, a hybrid publishing company that specializes in helping entrepreneurs as well as business and medical professionals ignite their business by.
Becoming bestselling authors. Welcome to the podcast, Everett.

Everett O’Keefe: Hey there, Juliana, thank you for having me here. This is so cool.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, I’m so excited to dive into this because and I I didn’t want to give this away when we were chatting beforehand, but I actually aspired to be a published author when I was younger and.

Everett O’Keefe: Fantastic, man. And have you done that yet?

Julianna Yau Yorgan: I actually did. I think even before I got into university, I got published into a poetry anthology and a I contributed an article to like a reference book.

Everett O’Keefe: Awesome.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: But it yeah, and it I think the thing for me though was that that initial like rush of seeing my name in print was a lot of fun, but then that vanished pretty quickly.

Everett O’Keefe: Oh, fantastic.
Yeah.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: And it it really.

Everett O’Keefe: Well it is it it is one of those things that you it you have to follow up like it you know we we joke around with our our clients that were allergic to secret agent authors and the you know and because a lot of times what an author will do is they’ll work so hard on their book and then.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Mhm.

Everett O’Keefe: To get it out. But we’re such shiny object people that we then go on to the next thing instead of putting that book in front of everybody we know. And it should be part of our e-mail signatures and our our BIOS and it should be, you know, front and center on the website and and all of those things.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Mhm.

Everett O’Keefe: So, but you’re not alone in, you know, if if if you didn’t leverage that. But it’s cool that you did also the academic thing, cause that’s that’s a whole nother animal. That’s great.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, it it was a fun experience and it it really makes me think about like why that shiny object kind of lost its luster so quickly. And I think it’s to something that you were talking about in the power of published about how you start.

Everett O’Keefe: Oh.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Your process with clients with the end in mind and I I don’t think I had that.

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah.
Yeah, fair enough. And and that’s that’s super, super common, right? Because people just get an idea, this would make a good book or this would make a good story or whatever, and they just start, which is great. Like a lot of really great stuff has begun that way.
But when it comes to a non-fiction book that you’re writing for the purpose of your brand, for your business, in order to help succeed, having that end in mind is important. How will you use this? What action do you want the reader to take after they read it?
What kind of reader do you want to have? You know, those are all important decisions that you know that are going to really impact the result and your satisfaction with, you know, with that result.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, absolutely. And I I really liked how you talked about the different ways that you could put together a book and especially like a non-fiction business book with that end in mind and.

Everett O’Keefe: Mhm.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: How do I wanna say this? Like the the different methods that you use were really interesting, like the FAQ one I thought was really cool and like pulling together experts. It’s just I love how there was so much variety that you could choose from.
That I never even thought of. I I’ve just been pitched a lot in the last year or so of these like collaborative books where you go out and market them together. But the few people I know who’ve done that seem to have mixed results with.

Everett O’Keefe: Mhm.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Like when they actually get the book published out there.

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah.
Yeah, no, that’s interesting too, because that’s another method that you’re describing. And so for the benefit of listeners, the we run really quickly through some of those things. There’s so many different ways to create a book for your business or brand. And the first, the first point to recognize is that a lot of people get hung up thinking that they need to.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: 3.

Everett O’Keefe: Create a masterpiece that is like their life legacy and so they will get hung up because that’s just too much pressure when really what they probably need is an A is a really effective marketing tool for their business. In fact, what will probably be the most effective.
Marketing tool for their business or brand. And so we I talked about sometimes you what you really want to write is a book, not the book, if that makes any sense. And that takes a lot of pressure off of people and once they realize that they go, OK.
If I’m going to write an effective marketing piece for my business, how will I do that? And that FAQ model you described is a great one. You know, for the for the listeners that is simply write down, take 5 minutes, write down the frequently asked questions about your business. What are the questions you are being?

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Mm.

Everett O’Keefe: Asked for all the time because these are the things that a people want to know and B you can rattle them off at the top, the top of your head and write down a list of 10 or 20 of those. Grab your phone, go to the voice recording app.
And just record the answers to those. Just record them for five or 10 minutes each one. You already have that information in your head by you have that transcribed or do it into an auto dictation thing where it, you know, transcribes already.
And boom, you have the core content for your book. And my first book, honestly, my first best seller, I I’m ashamed to say, but I dictated it in two hours. And that wasn’t all the work that had to be done by any means, but.
You can very quickly create that FAQ. And then of course also there’s these books. You know, most people already have the content for their book on their hard drive somewhere. It’s it. It may be a collection of blogs that you’ve already posted. It could be a keynote that you’ve delivered. It could be training videos.
That you’ve done. You all probably already have a book. It just needs to be repurposed from your existing content. And you know, and those those that’s just a couple quick ways to write a book. Of course, the more organic way also works.
But I just want everyone to know they don’t have to sequester themselves for six months on Walden Pond in order to write a manuscript. No, no business person has the time to do that. It can be done. It can be done effectively, quickly and in chunks.
And become the most powerful tool you’ve ever created.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, and I I actually think it’s kind of cool that you wrote your the first draft of your book just dictating it in two hours because it it’s a good example of your ideas in practice and taking that.
That pressure off of someone who really wants to put a book out there and is is worried that they’re going to have to sequester themselves for half a year just to get something out there. Cause that that’s sort of the the romantic view a lot of us have about writing a book.

Everett O’Keefe: Right.
Yeah, that’s that’s right. And and you know, it’s played out in some movies like you’ve got to rent this, you know, this beautiful apartment or villa looking over the coast, whether it’s the Pacific or the Mediterranean.
And you know, but none of us have time to do that. My second book, the The Power of the Published, you know, I wrote that in the evenings and I wrote it in, you know, one and two hour chunks and you know, and you can do that quickly over a space of a few months without it being.
Really a huge interference in your life. And and the impact. I mean, the impact is just off the scale because books are special. Books impart authority. They impart expert status, unlike just about anything.
And they outlive you. It’s the it’s the it’s the one thing you might create for your business that’s going to actually outlive you or the business. And when you when someone gets a book from you, whether you give it to them or they buy it.
They never throw it away. It hangs out. It it is, it’s there. It is there as a constant reminder of your expertise. And when they need that expertise, they they know where to go because they’ve been staring at your book on their.
For six months or six years and it’s it’s it really, it really is incredible what it can do.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, and Speaking of that, there was a quote from the Power of the Publish that I really wanna read out for our listeners, because when I read it, it it really, uh, solidified for me why there is such longevity with the book.

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: What you said was old guard marketers will say that a person must have 5 to 12 encounters with a product before they will buy and that their ads provide the these repeated encounters. And when I think back to when I was reading your book, you probably spent at least.
Three lunches with me and an entire afternoon.

Everett O’Keefe: That is, boy, that was a I I’ve never had anyone put it that way, Juliana. Yeah, you, you know, many people will remember the study that was done out of Harvard Business School or whatever that had said that came up with that 5 to 12 exposures if people need 5 to 12 exposures with a.
Product before they’ll be ready to buy. And the book is every one of those, right? Because yeah, it’s the book is such an unusual thing because through a book you get to spend hours with your prospect or your client.
Time you would never get to spend with them one-on-one elsewhere. You know they don’t have time. You don’t have time, but they will take you to bed with them. You know, metaphorically speaking, they will take you to on vacations with them on airplanes. They might take you to the bathroom with them, you know.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Mm-hmm.

Everett O’Keefe: You know, toilet. But but they’re going to read your book and they’re going to hear from you and hear your wisdom in their most vulnerable moments, the times when they’re.
Defenses are not down, you know, and that that you know and they’re they’re not distracted by other advertisements. They’re it’s and and you’re whispering into their head right as you read in the book like the the book is the silent whisper while they’re reading it is continually.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Mhm.

Everett O’Keefe: Whispering in their head about your expertise and your wisdom, and I just don’t know any other medium that accomplishes that.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, and like it says it like you say, sorry, it outlives you too. And and I really love that, especially for entrepreneurs who are doing things so low or with really, really small teams. It’s such a unique way to duplicate yourself that.
Has I think, again a a bit of a romantic feel compared to even our podcast or a blog post or something. There’s just something else there, whether it’s like the tactilness of lugging around the book or even I read all of mine on like.
In digital e-reader, but I still have that thing that I’m like grasping onto for the hours that I’m spending with that book.

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah, really, really amazing. And the I’ve had clients that another benefit is, is books tend. Books will pre-educate your clients to make them better clients. You’re you’re they’re spending this time with you. They’re learning about your philosophies.
And so when you come to recommend something, they’re already predisposed to it. I’ve had people go, oh, yeah, Oh yeah, I read that in your book. Yeah, I totally want to do that, you know? And and what’s funny, the downside of that, though, is if you have told stories in your book and they’re your favorite stories to tell clients, well.
They already heard it ’cause they’ve read it in the book. So you you gotta come up with more stories, you know?

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, but I I think that is one of the elements of, um, having your own business book as a marketing tool that so many of us aren’t really aware of. I certainly was until I read it in your book that.
There is a a level of preconditioning your potential clients. You know you could you could have whispered to them for hours three years before they even reach out to you and without having to do anything extra because you’ve you’ve already put the book out there.

Everett O’Keefe: Mhm.
Right. It’s out there working, you know, and and people are always looking for how do you go from one to many, right? You how do you take your communications from one to many? And of course a podcast is a fantastic way to do that. But a book is another way to multiply yourself so you can be in multiple places at one time.
You could be talking to multiple prospects at the same time. You can be educating your clients and it it is a it is a fantastic benefit. And then of course, I mean a lot of our clients come because it’s the authority. They they know that if they publish a book, they will be regarded as an expert and that will help them get on stage.
For speaking opportunities, give them access to higher level clients, get them into the conversation instead of being held outside of the conversation. I had this client, we call her Cindy because we names have been changed to protect the innocent.
But Cindy came to me and she said, hey, I’m going to be speaking at this medical tourism conference in Dubai in like 2 months and I’ve been writing this book. Can you help me publish it? So she just wanted to take like 5 books with her and we managed to work it out and she got on the.
Airplane with five books. And when she got to the conference, she found the people that she wanted to have that book. She gave them copies. That night she was watching, was walking around and she saw in the lobby was one of these people and sure enough, they’re sitting there reading her book.
And she’s like, oh, that’s really cool. Like, yeah, it’s a great experience as an author, right? When you see someone reading your book, even if you gave it to him, it’s still a great experience. The anyhow, the next day one of those people came up to her and said, yeah, I read your book last night in the hotel room. I want to talk about.
Hiring you and now keep in mind, she went to this conference as an attendee and she left the conference with three clients as a result, she says as a result of the book.
And one of those clients invited her to write in an academic, in an academic textbook on the topic, which placed her now in the realm of intelligentsia in her field, which is huge.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Um.

Everett O’Keefe: And then another client sponsored her to come back and speak at that very same conference the following year. And so she really went from, you know, she really got onto the international stage.
As a result of that book and and that’s what that’s what books can do. I mean, I’ve got countless stories like that and and and that’s why we do this, right? Because I I love doing it cause I get to help share people’s messages out to the world.
You know, and help them carry them in a way where traditional publishing just wouldn’t. And and that benefits a lot of people, helps them get their wisdom out, their message out and build their business at the same time.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, that that’s such an amazing story and it it kind of makes me think of back when people would exchange business cards all the time and then they get crumpled up and lost and forgotten. But that that book has, as we’ve said a couple times here today already, it’s got that lasting power and and that.
Ability. And it must have been really amazing for her to see how those five copies did so much for her at one conference.

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah, I just incredible. And I think maybe it’s just harder to crumple up a book. You know, they don’t crumple. They don’t crumple easily.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yes.
So for our listeners who might be super excited about the the potential that they can get with business growth and exposure with a book, maybe could you talk a little bit about the different Um?
Ways you can get published like through the traditional route, self-publishing and and I know Ignite is more of a hybrid publishing model. Could you talk to us a little bit about how that all works?

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah, absolutely. Traditional publishing is great. It it serves a purpose, but it’s incredibly difficult to crack into. You need to have 25,000 plus followers to get in because they just don’t want to take any chances. So you know they’re they they don’t want to roll the dice on you.
It’s very hard to get in, but even if you do get in, you may not want to get in because first the the day of big advances has gone. Many authors get little or no advance. And then what’s happening is you’re selling your intellectual property to that publisher.
And you’ll be limited as to how you use that intellectual property going forward. Plus, you get paid too little when your book sells. You pay too much to buy your own book. And then speed of market is so tough. I’ve been hearing over and over.
That anywhere from 18 months to three years is common for the time to go from the publisher accepting it to the publisher launching it. And in the for the business people, right, like Giuliana, that’s an eternity, right? You’re like.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Well.
Well.
Mhm.

Everett O’Keefe: You’re like, how could you, how could you wait three years to for your best business tool to actually come to life? You know, just brutal. So now self-publishing. I’m a huge fan of self-publishing because.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah.

Everett O’Keefe: You have complete creative control. You own your IP, your you get your books at cost, all royalties flow to you, et cetera. But you also have to do everything and or learn and learn how to do everything. And if you do any one thing wrong, then the whole project can be a.
Disappointment. You know, whether that’s a poorly laid out book or a poorly written book or a poorly edited book or a bad cover or poorly placed in the market, you know, whatever, it can be a real disappointment. Now hybrid publishing sits in between, and I like to think of hybrid publishing as the best of both worlds.
And there are different types of hybrid publishers. So there are some that are really more similar to traditional and we are closer to self-publishing because what we do is we provide the copy editing, professional copy editing, project management.
Layout, cover design, the publication. So the books on all the major, you know, it’s on Amazon and Barnes and noble.com, et cetera, et cetera. But the author doesn’t have to, you know, learn how to do all those things.
We are doing those things on a very professional level and then we publish the book and do an Amazon bestseller launch. We we’ve created now over 200 Amazon best-selling authors, #1 best-selling authors and.
And that’s so we love to do that for our clients so that they can leverage that their book and that accomplishment going forward. That’s what gets said on their when they’re introduced on stage, it’s part of their bio, their LinkedIn profile, you know.
Et cetera. And so there’s those three different methods of publishing, and they each have a place. For many people in the business world, the hybrid model is really attractive because they get.
Top notch services. They get a top notch product that holds its own with any other any traditional book, but they own the intellectual property and they have control of how it’s used instead of trying to.
Move forward with the book with handcuffs on and so that’s why we do hybrid.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah. And I I think that that point about the intellectual property is such a key one, especially because we are speaking to a business audience here where like as I listen to you describing the three avenues, it’s like.
Having having that book as a business asset.
Wouldn’t make sense for you to go with a traditional publisher because it it becomes their asset, not yours.

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah, it it does. And and like when when you publish the way we do, you may be able to get author copies of your book for like $3. That same book if you were doing traditionally published would probably be 9 or 10.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Hmm.

Everett O’Keefe: You know, for author copies and when the book sells in traditional, you’re lucky to get a dollar and in and in this model you may get eight or nine. So there are lots of different incentives in there and then just the freedom to get those author copies and do what you want with them.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Right.

Everett O’Keefe: You know, put one on every seat when you’re speaking, or bundle it into a speaking gig to increase the speaking fee and your reach at the same time. So many great things that can be done with that when you have that kind of freedom and control.
D A

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, and I mean I can see why self-publishing would be attractive to some people as well. But even I mean having started my own podcast and I’m I’m still at the point where I’m doing all of the work myself and and.

Everett O’Keefe: Mhm.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Looking forward to a time when I can offload some work to to someone else, it it seems like the hybrid.

Everett O’Keefe: Well, OK, Juliana, I want to, I want to interrupt you for just a second so that your listeners understand what you’ve accomplished because a lot of people listen and don’t a they don’t understand the work that’s involved. But as I understand it, you’re knocking on the door of 70 episodes.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah.

Everett O’Keefe: Right now and maybe more that I don’t know about, but 70 episodes is a huge accomplishment and you’re getting thousands of downloads and you’ve got thousands of followers and that does not happen without hard work. And so I just want before you finish your.
Thought I want to congratulate. I want to congratulate you and hold you up, you know, because you’re you’re really a great interviewer and clearly someone super friendly and kind and that comes across in what you’re doing.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Well, thank you. I mean, it it might not come as too much of a surprise to anyone who’s been listening to the podcast or or has now discovered that I wanted to become an author, but being a journalist was also something that I was toying with when I was younger. So this is almost just me coming full circle with that.

Everett O’Keefe: I I love that. That is fantastic.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah, but but to your point, yes, it’s definitely a lot of work. It’s it’s been very worthwhile for me, but similar to publishing a book, the learning curve is a lot, or at least I imagine like having to learn all the ins and outs of.
Putting your own book out there and and beyond that, just the marketing of it to get it as a number one best seller is not an easy feat and unlike a podcast, you can’t just record a couple every every couple of weeks and get them out there that that book is.
Um, a dedication of your time, even if it is 2 hours speaking into your phone.

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah, if you choose to go that way. And by the way, my first book that I wrote that way, I describe it as a pretty crappy book, honestly, in the sense that I look back at it now and go, wow, you know, I could have done so much better. But that book, in its imperfect execution, did everything I wanted it to do. It became.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Mhm.

Everett O’Keefe: It became a number one best seller. Yet I was sitting there outselling Malcolm Gladwell and John Maxwell and other people in the leadership space. And it brought me my first 5 digit clients and it like it did everything it needed to do, even though it was imperfect.
And there’s a lesson there too, right? That imperfect execution often can have excellent results, and perfect execution never happens. So, you know, but anyway, that that that was an exciting time. And and This is why we love doing what we do. We love helping people get their books out.
No.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Yeah. Oh, so amazing. So today we’ve talked about the impact of a really good book can have on your business and different ways to write it and and different ways to publish it as well. As we’re wrapping up, Everett, do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?

Everett O’Keefe: Yeah, I just that you know the the worst book is the is the book that’s sitting on a hard drive somewhere and or that’s left in someone’s mind. A lot of people get worried about am I an expert? Who am I to tell people what to do or how to think?

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Hmm.

Everett O’Keefe: But I know that the analogy I have that comes to mind is, you know, there’s like those Penguin rookeries in Antarctica where there’s like 1,000,000 Penguins and stuff. And somehow the mother and the child hear each other’s voices and find each other in that millions of people, millions of Penguins.
And there are readers out there whose ears are attuned to you as the author, and if you don’t say it, they may not hear it. So when people are worried about who am I?
To share this message, I would question maybe who are you to withhold it? Cause if you don’t share it, they may not get it. So I really encourage people to get their message out out to the world.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: What a beautiful way to wrap up the podcast. So if people want to connect with you, learn more, or find the power of the published and get a copy for themselves, where can they do that?

Everett O’Keefe: OK.
Thank you. So if if you’re if you’ve just got an idea for a book and you or you already have a manuscript in process or maybe even already have a book on Amazon, we can we’ve got ways to help you there too. You can reach out to us at Ignitepress dot US, Ignitepress dot US and there you’ll see a link.
To schedule a Consultation directly with me. So that would be one way. Another way to go is if you want to get a free copy of the Power of the Published, which I highly recommend, you can go to mypodcastperk.com. That’s PERK mypodcastperk.com.
And you can down. There’s a free download version of the book as well as the link if you want to get the paper back or the Kindle version on Amazon.
On.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Amazing. And I’ll be sure to have all those links in the show notes so people can find you, connect with you, and grab a free copy of the book as well.

Everett O’Keefe: Awesome. Hey, Julianna, thank you so much for having me. You you do your you do your listeners such a great service.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: Well, thank you. It’s been a delight to have you on the show today.

Everett O’Keefe: Thank you.

Julianna Yau Yorgan: All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening and until next time, we will talk to you soon.