Phil Jones entered the world of business at the tender age of 14. With nothing more than a bucket and sponge, he went from single-handedly washing cars on weekends to hiring a fleet of friends working on his behalf, resulting in him earning more than his teachers by the time he was 15.
Soon after, at just 18, Phil was offered the role of Sales Manager at fashion retailer Debenhams – making him the youngest Sales Manager in the company’s history.
His early career went from strength to strength, as he worked with a host of Premier League football clubs to help them agree sponsorships and licensing agreements, to then being a key part of growing a £240m property business.
But in 2008, after several years of being one of the most in-demand young sales leaders in the UK, Phil decided it was time to dedicate his future to helping others succeed.
He took everything he had learnt about leadership, sales and business growth from his previous roles, and created a sales methodology that was introduced to thousands of independent business owners across the UK.
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Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Phil Jones about the secrets to selling a million books.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- How writing with an intention elicits that response from your audience and drive sales.
- How continuously producing content keeps it alive, fresh, and sought after.
- Why caring about the impact of your words creates success when writing a book.
- How embodying empathy, curiosity, and courage leads to finding common ground with those around you.
- How writing a book is a passport to grander stages and a wider audience.
Connect with Phil:
Links Mentioned:
philmjones.com
Guest Contact Info:
bonnie@philmjones.com
Instagram
@philmjonesuk
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/philmjones
Rob Kosberg:
All right. Hey, welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here with another episode of the Publish. Promote. Profit. Podcast. So excited to be with you today with a great guest, somebody who has made a massive, massive impact in the world because of the books that he’s written, Mr. Phil Jones. Phil has written what I might call, The Exactly Series, Exactly How to Sell, Exactly Where to Start, Exactly What to Say. In fact, eight bestselling books, two original programs for Audible, delivered over 2,500 presentations in 57 countries, a million or thereabouts books sold, 2 million people impacted. Holy cow. Are you done Phil or are you just getting started?
Phil Jones:
I’m just warming up.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Well, thank you. Thanks for being here today. Really excited to talk to you. Excited to learn a little bit about what makes you tick and also the impact that your books have had. I guess the beginning of this, you may have heard many of these questions a hundred times, but I like to try to throw in something that might be a little bit different. You’ve written some amazing books. Probably, Exactly What to Say, may be the biggest. I’m not sure.
Phil Jones:
Without question. Probably ten times anything else I’ve written lies in, Exactly What to Say. I think, Exactly What to Say, to me, is like what Gangnam Style is to Psy’s repertoire of hits.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. So why do you think that caught on the way it did? I’d like to talk just a little bit about it because I love it. I bought it. I own it. I love the ability, the ease of use of it. Why do you think it caught on the way it did?
Phil Jones:
I really appreciate that question, Rob, because I think more people are asking, “How did you do it? How do you produce a book that sells a million copies?” You’ve asked a better question, which is why I think that this really caught on. I have given a lot of thought to this. I’ve probably got a fairly detailed answer. There were a few factors. One is the counter-intuitiveness of the title, “This can’t tell me exactly what to say. There’s no way that this could tell me exactly what to say, but I’d like to know exactly what to say. Well, this can’t, so I should probably read this thing.”
Rob Kosberg:
I love that.
Phil Jones:
There’s another factor to it. It is short. We live in a world where people have told us for a long period of time that a business book needs to be 35,000 words plus. It needs to sit on a shelf. You want to make sure that you get some spine depth. It needs to be released in hardcover first because that’s what all of the lists are interested in. I was refused by every major publisher because I said I want to go straight to paperback. I’ve written a book and it’s fourteen and a half thousand words. It doesn’t follow the format of any normal book. In fact, it doesn’t even have a list of chapters. There is no index or appendices. My output was to be able to design and craft the book where form follows function. I wanted this to be something that people would carry around with them, something they’d throw in their bag and read on a flight, or a train, or that listen to in one journey on an Audible recording. It wasn’t something meant to be read once. It was something that was meant to be read again and again. I’ve learned through this period that there was only one thing that sells books, one thing, and one thing alone, and it’s somebody else reading a book and saying, “I read this, you should read it too.” That’s it. Past any launch period of time, of people supporting friends or getting involved in bonuses; the thing that makes a book evergreen is a perpetual cycle of somebody saying, “I read this, you should read it too.” Because my book is so short, and it’s useful, and its counter-intuitive but huge common sense, people read it and they go, “Dang, somebody else should read this too.” There’s another thing to this also. Most people write a book for too few people. I’m a speaker before I’m an author, and a giant part of my strategy was that this is a genuine revenue stream within my speaking business. What do you? Do you write a book for the three people at the back of the room that booked you, or do you write a book for the thousand people in the audience? Those numbers are really true. The majority of high-level thinking leadership books are for everybody else, whereas I want to be able to create a book for every person. That viewpoint has meant that I’ve had the ability to have a strike rate of seven out of 10 for every event that I am booked to speak at; for them to buy a book for all attendees. Then what happens is somebody is at the conference and they see the guy that spoke, and they all got a copy of the book. In turn, some of them “Hey, I read this book. You should read it too.” The ripple is real. I give tons of books away and I can because there’s a paperback. It doesn’t cost me a ton of money. It puts more books out into the world for people to then say, “I read this book and you should read it too.” When somebody asks me for a copy to be able to help out a friend, I send them one. I don’t charge them for it. They say, “What do I owe you?” I say, “You owe me nothing, but buy another copy for somebody else you care about.” That becomes another conversation of, “I read this book, you should read it too.” That’s how you keep a book alive. My goal with this book was not to hit a list. I am one of the only people that I know that have sold over a million copies of a book and not been on a single list. That’s the space I want to be. I don’t want to be number one for a week. I think that when people go into the idea of writing a book, or producing a book, or publishing a book, too many people take a short-term view. This is a legacy piece. This is a calling card that’s going to live with me for my entire professional life and past it. If I keep doing this right, my kids are going to benefit too. I enjoy this. I’m always in launch mode. I’m here on this podcast with you because I’m still in launch mode.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, I’m going to promote the hell out of this because I love what you’re saying. Two weeks ago, I had a guy wire me a large sum of money, a mid-five-figure sum of money. We went to make an agreement about writing his book. We tell our clients to shoot for about 37,000 words. That’s the max. That’s the sweet spot because statistically, and they’ve done plenty of research on this, anything more than that and consumption falls way off. This guy said, “Look, you should have told me that before. I want a book that’s going to be 400 pages.” He’s actually in a similar area as you but speaks directly to people in the real estate space. I know you have a book in real estate as well. Long story short, we sent his money back. We wired his money back because he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that a book needs to be shorter, not longer, that the longer it is, the less people are actually going to read it and use it. I love what you’re saying here.
Phil Jones:
Well, there were two types of books that need to be written. There’s the book you need to write for yourself and the book you need to write for everybody else. The big book is typically the one you need to write for everybody else. I know some of you can see this on video here right now. It’s my first book. It’s a book called, Toolbox. It’s terrible. It’s not really terrible, but it was me saying, “How can I cram as many different ideas, thoughts and strategies as I possibly can into a single book to prove that I know something about the world of sales and salesmanship?” I was proud of it. What success meant to me is that one person, other than me, bought a copy. That was my measure of success. We sold 20,000 copies and it was well received and I was proud of it. I look at it nearly a decade on and think, “What the heck was I doing? Sometimes if you’ve got a big book that you need to write just do it; write it, self-publish it, produce it, and then get that one under your belt quick and get moving on. People make the mistake of thinking that they’re only going to write one book. If you write one big book and then you put your weight behind it and it flops, you just ruined your chance of being an author.
Rob Kosberg:
Creating content needs to be a way of life. I think there are multiple ways to do that. I’d love to hear a little bit about your way because many of my clients are not daily writers, and in fact, I am not. We actually created an entire system around capturing voice and creating content through the spoken word rather than the written word. How do you do it? What’s your methodology? You’re clearly a regular content creator.
Phil Jones:
My methodology is chaotic. I do think in terms of content. I’m always looking at, “How do I repurpose? How do I bring that back to life? How do I create a new angle on that?” When you stop viewing a book as a book and you view a book as a business, you stop marketing the book and you start creating content around the ideas, you start caring about the problem that is sold by your book, even if the solutions are the thing that you aren’t looking to solve isn’t actually in the book, but it still links towards the book in some way. You’ve got to get passionate about the problem. I had a conversation yesterday with a brand-new author who launched his book yesterday. He sold out his first 6,000 copies in inventory, and I’ve been a mentor to him through the early stages of his book. He said, “Well, how do you keep it alive? How do you keep it alive four years after launch?” I said, “Stop promoting the book.” He said, “That can’t be true.” I said, “No, no, no. Stop promoting the book. What you have to do is you have to create something newsworthy every day or every week that in some way shows you still care about the stuff you wrote about.” You’re doing an example of this right now. I see the book in your background. I see the title. I very clearly understand what it is that you’re about. You’re also running an organization that helps people do exactly the same. You’re here on a podcast, capturing information from other authors that is going to add to your experience and your intelligence around this subject matter. The result of which is more people will find a window toward your book. This is what you should do with your content; care about the problem. We’re in a period of time right now, we’re recording this in April of 2021, and the question I keep getting asked on podcasts and in interviews that I’m doing is, “What’s changed for you in your business over the pandemic 12 months and everything that you’ve experienced the last 12 months?” I said, “Not much.” They said, “Yeah, but you’re not on planes. You’re not on trains. You’ve had to reinvent and pivot everything.” I said, “No, I’ve done what I’ve always done.” They said, “Well, what’s that?” Well, I’ve said, “I’ve made sure that I’ve provided for my family and I help businesses navigate change.” That’s it. I have to do it in different ways, but I’m doing what I’ve always done. I think this is what us as authors, or experts, or subject matter experts need to wrap our heads around. We’re not what we did, we’re what we do. What we do is in the modalities, the medium. People say that they’re a speaker. You can’t be a speaker. You can speak but you can’t be a speaker. You’re a something that speaks. You’re a something that writes. Be the something, and then keep writing, keep speaking, keep creating content, and keep bringing yourself to first world problems that are existing right in front of your nose, and you shouldn’t run out of ideas. My issue with content creation is I have more ideas than I have time to fulfill. I wake up in the middle of the night, sending myself an email. In my inbox right now, I’ve got 580 emails in my inbox. Some of them require action. Some of them are done. 111 of them are from me.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding. Well, those are the most important I bet.
Phil Jones:
Yeah. And most of them, they’re just a content idea, a content idea of something that I know I tripped up upon. Many of them I haven’t done anything with. I’ll give you an example of which, I talk about words, the power of words, the impact of word choices. I wrote a book called, Magic Words; wrote a book called, Exactly What to Say, and, Magic Words for Influence and Impact. Words are my thing. Amanda Gorman wrote a wonderful poem that was ridiculously well received. I wrote an email to myself that day saying, “Complete a piece based on the Words That Matter, from that speech.” Now, I didn’t do it. I should have done it but that’s the point. That’s why I’m saying it’s in chaos is that I’m saying, “I care about the impact of words.” Content is crafted through caring about the impact of words. When I see words create impact, I feel like it’s my job to provide commentary around that and provide some expertise from my angle, from my lens. It doesn’t mean that I’m right. I just have to be able to bring my voice towards that and share my opinion. Apparently more than a million people care about it; they bought the books.
Rob Kosberg:
Sticking with, Exactly What to Say, you have really specific chapters. I love it. I’ve used those things a number of times. They are magic words. It really is exactly what to say. Do you have a favorite? I have three kids and you should never claim to have a favorite kid, but you might. Do you have a favorite among those or one that you see yourself using on a regular basis in your field?
Phil Jones:
I distilled this book down to all of my favorites. This is a greatest hits from a repertoire of sales language. That’s come from training more than two million sales professionals. This is a greatest hits. There’s plenty more that aren’t in the book. The one I find myself using more often than not, and that people reach back out to me is the use of the words open-minded, particularly in the form of a question. The reason behind that, and for anybody listening in who isn’t familiar with the book, is a simple challenge that many people face, is they know that their success is in direct correlation to the quantity of quality asks that they make in their life, yet still they won’t ask typically through fear of rejection. So, what I write towards is the creation of rejection free opening formulas, sequences of words that allow you to ask for the things you want in life where rejection is not an option. The open-minded formula is an example of that. If I asked a room of a thousand people, “Who in this room would see themselves as open-minded,” I get almost every hand hitting the ceiling. We take the fact that the whole world likes to see themselves as open-minded as the base psychology that we found this on. We add it to the principal, the person asking the questions is in control of the conversation. We form a question that is, “How open minded would you be to…” as an inviting form. Look at how it changes things. Instead of saying, “Hey, do you want Chinese food tonight, honey,” versus, “Hey, how open-minded would you be to Chinese food tonight, Honey?” One feels like it’s pushy and leading and the other feels like it’s pulling and it’s creating a more enticing approach. It’s playing in the gray space of the conversation that is allowing the other person to flex. It makes it fun. It makes it feel like a dance as opposed to a fight. The use of the, “How open-minded,” question is the one that I think I get the most applause for out of all of them in the book.
Rob Kosberg:
Beautiful. It’s interesting. You’re talking a lot about human psychology. We’re at a time in the world right now, at least in the United States, and I know you have a home here in Florida, as well as overseas in the UK, where there is so much confusion. There’s so much anger. There seems to be this constant conflict.
Phil Jones:
It’s who are you fighting with today.
Rob Kosberg:
It is. I stay away from the mainstream news, but of course you can’t stay away from the news. You can’t stay away from the biggest things that are happening, nor probably should you. I’m just wondering, do you ever think about the implications of some of your training to greater society? Exactly What to Say, works in every interaction. It works in dating. You gave an example of a husband and wife communicating about what they’re going to have for dinner. What about the big stuff, the big rocks, politics, and dealing with people of different minds?
Phil Jones:
I know that we are in podcast format right now, but I also understand that you’re going to utilize some of this for video. There’s a framework that I’ve been sharing a lot with people recently. I pull this framework from my Audible original that I did for Audible for Business, which happened long before this pandemic piece, which was where they asked me to record a training workshop on critical ingredients to navigate complex conversations. It’s funny that I did this in 2019, then they were never thinking 2020 would happen, and then all the conflict with the politics and everything happened, and people have been asking me to talk about this. I talked towards the fact that to navigate any critical conversation, we just need three ingredients. Only three ingredients are required in this exact order. The three ingredients are, firstly, to start a conversation from a position of curiosity. From curiosity, dance towards a position of empathy, and then once you’ve reached a position of empathy, now what we’re looking for is the ingredient called courage. These are the three ingredients that need to be utilized in that precise order. Why those three ingredients and why that precise order? Let’s take the curiosity piece. First, everyone listening in right now, is have you ever had, maybe somebody show up into a conversation with you where this so certain of their point of view, I mean, so ridiculously certain that they are projecting their knowledge, their wisdom, their thoughts on you. So, the more certain they are of their point of view, the more uncertain you become in them. It almost rubs you up the wrong way when somebody knows so much, they are so certain you become uncertain. I find it crazily ironic that certainty creates uncertainty. Instead, if you show up with curiosity, you’ve got more chance of reaching certainty. Why? Because you understand context. The most important thing to understand is that content without context is merely noise, and the world is noisy enough. See, people show up forcing content on people, yet they haven’t earned their context first. One of the most interesting examples of this is my best friend, the best man at my wedding who lives in Bowling Green Kentucky and has grown up with guns his entire life. His thought process around guns, in my mind, is ridiculous. We can laugh and joke about this over a Bourbon, but we are like from chalk and cheese. Here’s the thing, when I show up with curiosity to my conversation with my buddy about what he thinks about guns, we realize that our strong beliefs around guns and gun culture are based on the exact same belief. He believes what he believes about guns because he wants to keep his family safe. I believe what I believe about guns because I want to keep my family safe. Isn’t that interesting? Now we find something that we can agree upon, which is what dances us towards this position of empathy. Empathy is just caring about what the people you care about care about. The mistake most people make is the only person they care about is themselves. What they want to be able to prove in a conversation is “I’m right,” as opposed to, “That’s right.” They want to prove, “I’m right,” as opposed to, “That’s right.” What they want to be able to say is, “I beat you. I’m right. You’re wrong.” People should look to be able to say, “It’s me and you versus the problem, not me versus you.” Empathy gets you towards relate-ability. Relate-ability wins you trust. These are the two steps that everybody misses. They just think that they’re down here at the courage piece saying that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. So, my job is to ask, it’s to be bullish, it’s to go out and try and rally the troops, it’s out there to be able to change people’s minds, et cetera. If you just start off with the courage to ask people for things, you’re rude, you’re pushy, you’re obnoxious, self-centered, you’re a manipulator. Instead, if you dance those first two steps by showing up to every complex conversation from a position of curiosity first, learning the context of the other person’s unique circumstances before you judge, and then you have the empathy to truly see it through their eyes first, detracting yourself from it, and then gain a position of trust. You then have the ability to ask for the change you want in the world. Watch how it changes your results everywhere. The trouble is, it’s work. People don’t want to do the work.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. That takes time, energy, humility.
Phil Jones:
And attention. If more people showed up to a conversation saying, “I might not be right. Let me see if I can find out how might be wrong,” they’d actually prove their points better than by showing up saying, “Let me tell you what I know that you don’t.”
Rob Kosberg:
I love that. Brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. Do you feel like that can be done in a very one-sided manner? It’s certainly possible for one person to come into a conversation with that mentality and mindset, but the likelihood of both parties having that mentality and mindset seems near impossible. What are your thoughts about that?
Phil Jones:
There’s something I learned from some deep study of work by the guy called Dale Carnegie much earlier in my career. One of the things I learned from Dale Carnegie’s work is that unreasonable cannot deal with reasonable. If you can stand strong on being reasonable without losing your cool, what happens is unreasonable realizes they’re being unreasonable at some point. Now, that some point might take some time if you can just be curious for long enough. I’ll give you an example that comes from my personal life. Somebody in my family responded to a conversation the other day by saying, “Everybody’s been saying this about us.” I say, “Everybody?” They say, “Yeah, everybody.” I say, “Are you sure?” They said, “Well, not everybody.” I said, “Well, then who?” “Well, you know, like most of the people that were at the wedding.” I said, “Most of the people? Like who?” “Well, maybe it was just one person.” “Well, who was that and what exactly did they say?” “Well, it was kind of like this.” I said, “Is that exactly what they said, or could it be possible that that’s how you interpreted what they said? Do you think they meant what you’re feeling right now?” “No, I don’t think they did mean that.” “So why are you choosing to feel it then?” You see how that becomes a, “that’s right,” moment at the end of it? You’ve got to be reasonable for long enough. If I come in with an, “I know best,” and you snap back like, “You’re being an idiot,” It can’t be everybody that was saying that. It must’ve just been one, two or three people. They probably didn’t mean it. They were probably thinking of it in another way.” They’d be like, “Well, you just never listen. You weren’t there.”
Rob Kosberg:
It takes a great deal of patience to walk through that, especially probably with a family member because of the emotion that’s attached in that relationship.
Phil Jones:
But the trick has to be to do the dance. The thing to remember when I say the metaphor of doing the dance is my experience has been that most people don’t want to get on the dance floor first, but everybody loves to dance. This requires leadership. When it comes to complex conversations, when it comes to navigating change, understand that what you are is a leader. You can’t push people as a leader for too long. You can only pull. That means that you have to understand that the person who is asking the questions is the one who’s controlling the conversations, and your job is to sell people, not tell people. You sell people by helping them see it from a completely different point of view. That can easily be explained with a metaphor too. I’m going to hold you up another copy of my crappy book and I’m going to ask you, what you see.
Rob Kosberg:
I see a book with tons of tools, Get More, Win More, 250 pictures.
Phil Jones:
What did I see?
Rob Kosberg:
You saw pen.
Phil Jones:
Who was right?
Rob Kosberg:
Both of us.
Phil Jones:
Right? I could have argued until I was blue in the face, “You’re an idiot. It’s a pen.” You could have said, “It’s not a pen. It’s a book.”
Rob Kosberg:
Different perspectives. Yeah.
Phil Jones:
If we’d have gotten up and we’d have moved and would have seen this thing side by side, we’d have been like, “It’s a book and a pen.” We’d both be able to move forward. That’s what questions allow you to be able to do. They allow you to change somebody’s perspective. You allow them to be able to look at it from a new point of view and you allow them to be able to change their own mind, to be able to save face while doing so. Now you can be us and them versus the problem because we’ve agreed upon the facts. I can now have some really powerful conversations with my good friends about gun control because we’re deep rooted with the same set of values actually in truth. We can naturally take the extremes of ridicules of beliefs around some of these things and decide that that isn’t going to enter into our conversation. We can actually shape our shades of gray in this a little and learn stuff from each other. That’s how you change world, one conversation at a time.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, we’ve come a long way from sales training, haven’t we?
Phil Jones:
Everything’s a sale, right?
Rob Kosberg:
It is. Even as those words fell from my mouth, I thought, “Nah, he’s not going to leave that.” I love it. Brilliant stuff. Thank you. Thanks for your generosity and sharing those things. Let me change gears for just a moment. You’ve done a lot for people with your books. You are just getting started. You’re creating a lot of content. Your books have done things for you, and that’s maybe a little bit different part of our podcast. I’d love to hear how your books have helped you, how your most recent book has helped you. What specifically, maybe some stories or just in general, how have your books helped you grow your authority, grow your brand?
Phil Jones:
They’ve been everything. Even down to what I referred to earlier as, “This crappy little book.” I don’t mean it. Is crappy in comparison to other stuff I wrote but I’d like to think that anybody’s work today is significantly better than what they did a decade ago. That was the passport that gave me permission to step onto stages I was struggling with. What you should all be working on is your future bio, your future speaker introduction. What I’ve learned about speaker introductions is, the shorter your introduction, the higher your fee. That is a higher caliber individual. The longer the bio, the lower the fee. If I’ve got to work harder to explain somebody, yet what you need in the early stages of any personal brand business is you need some pigs in a board that somebody can hang their hats on to say, “Okay, if I’m investing a chunk of change in bringing this person into my life or my business, why is this person the authority on the thing?” A book is just a trusted, relevant reason for that. It’s a very easy accepted passport for somebody to say, “Best-selling author is a valuable commodity,” particularly if it’s true. By true I mean, you want to go to bed believing your best seller, not that you were in one category for one moment and you sold 17 copies. You want to be able to own that. I think your own integrity needs that because you don’t want to tick a box for a fortnight. This lives with you forever. Its date stamped in your Wikipedia resume, even if it doesn’t exist yet. I think that long-term view has been great, and the books have done that for me. What else they’ve done is they help me crystallize thinking. When you write a thought after having trained a thought, and then you rewrite that thought, and then you share your thoughts on the thought that you wrote down, and then you rewrite the thought again after having gone through that entire process, you start to sharpen your thinking. Some of you might have been in this interview today to say, “How did Phil jump at that idea, and that model, and that thought, and that example so quickly in this short time together?” It’s because I’ve done it a number of times, because I wrote it down in books, and then was asked to workshop it, and then had the ability to be able to refine it, and then have been interviewed about this stuff multiple times. You sharpen your own critical thinking. It’s amazing how much you can progress an idea from a good idea, to a great idea, to an unforgettable idea through continuing to be able to work it. The books have done that too. What else they’ve done is they’ve provided stable revenue. My books used to be the sprinkles on top of the cupcake, once upon a time. An extra 500 bucks here, an extra 1,500 bucks there. “Dang, we sold 11 today.” That’s an extra $45. All that stuff used to be fun. Today, every single day, I make more than a healthy living wage from book royalties. Through the entire last 12 to 18 months where other people have been panicking about the feast and famine that could be coming with the speaking business revenue model, I’ve not worried about feeding my family. Books have done that. The level of comfort you have if you get that thing right and that ecosystem of content that is working for you, means you can play for a position of posture. If you have plans to build a speaking business, or a coaching business, or any form of authority, personal brand business, and you don’t have posture, you’re going to find it a lot harder because the other thing that affects your speaking things is your ability to say no. I really believe that one of the biggest things that affect somebody’s speaking fee is your ability to walk away. If you can’t walk away from a $5,000 gig, you won’t get paid more than $5,000. The reason that some of these people get paid a hundred grand a gig, 150 a gig, 200 grand a gig, is because they said no to 50. At some point they said no to 50 and someone said, “If I want that guy or that girl, I’ve got to keep going.” Books can give you some stability that gives you posture. They open doors, they introduce you to strangers. Every single day I get some stranger reaching out saying, “I read this.” Sometimes it’s work. I’ve got to have this seven DM exchange on Instagram with a stranger from Iran. Other days, it’s really cool. I’ve been introduced to some giant contracts where somebody fanboying over the book. We’re in a conversation, and now we’re talking about a giant consulting project or a big speaking opportunity that has come through the book. That is really fun because you don’t have to do that… That credibility dance often comes at the beginning of a winning business. You’re at the finish line, at the start of the conversation. This is, “What are we going to do? I hope I can afford you,” as opposed to, “Send me your pitch. Can you come and have a presentation? Can we have an argument over fees?” It repositions the sales process when done right. What else has it done for me? I mean, the list could be endless. It is a long list. We’re translated now into 27 different languages. I just sent a copy of every cover we have so far to the framers and we’re taking some stuff out on that. With international translations piece, the one thing that you often miss in this space as a personal brand is the respect of family members, loved ones, the people that knew you when you were at high school because they didn’t get it half the time. Their ability to be able to explain what you do becomes harder, but the second they can say he or she wrote a book and the book did well, they have a portable story that helps them, which then in turn helps you. You find your position back in your family unit. You’re not the black sheep anymore. You’re now like the proud little golden swan. The international piece does that best. Your loved one’s love telling, “It’s been translated in lots of different languages.” They love that piece. There are social cues from it. There are other little factors where you get Z list celebrity status. That’s useful sometimes when you want to open a door in some way, particularly within your local community. I moved to St. Pete and when I went into the local bookstore and I started up a conversation with the owners, as I got a glass of champagne, I gifted them some books and they wrote some content about the fact that an author has moved to town. That gave me a little pen in a map where I got friends here right now. Even those little social things that can happen where your book is your passport to start a conversation with instant credibility is a useful tool to have in your arsenal.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s really interesting. I hadn’t even thought of that. My wife and I love to collect art and we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars in this local art gallery. Because of that, we are treated very well, as you might imagine. When they found out I was an author and asked me to bring my book in, which I did, now I’m only introduced as an author. I’m not a collector anymore. I’m not a patron of the gallery. I’m the author. I haven’t even thought of that until you just said it. It’s amazing how Z list celebrity status goes. Thanks for your generosity and sharing. I love the way you think. I’m sure you’re working on new stuff and I can’t wait to see the new stuff. By the way, do you have something new coming out anytime soon, a new book?
Phil Jones:
I’ve got two things. One is, and this is a hard thing to get right, so I don’t know if I’ve done it yet and we’re still working on it, but I’m doing a second edition of, Exactly What to Say. My second edition is going to be a desktop edition, which is going to be the hard cover. We’re going back to front where the hardcover comes second and expand it. This is one that we expect people to keep hold of for a period of time, to be in their library, to be on their desks. We are going to try all that. Towing the line between how much new you bring into it and how much do you keep it true to its original, that’s a puzzle I’m playing with right now. We’re doing dozens of custom additions into niches.
Rob Kosberg:
I saw that. I saw the one for real estate, which was interesting.
Phil Jones:
Yep. That was the first pilot we did. For your info, where at nearly 50,000 units on the real estate edition. Those are big numbers for a business book in niches. It’s really interesting. We’re going to try out some other niches and see how that works out. The one I’m most excited about is I’ve written a children’s book. We’ve taken the principles from, Exactly What to Say, and before the year is out, we will be publishing a book that is meant to be read by parents to children, to help educate them about the power of words, and move them away from just please and thank-yous, and help them become a little more considerate about how words have feelings attached to them and how those feelings can impact how other people think and behave.
Rob Kosberg:
I love that. I think of a mutual friend of ours, Todd Herman, and what he’s done with Alter Ego. He just told me the day before yesterday that he got another order of 10,000 for his children’s book. He’s making a great impact.
Phil Jones:
It’s a lot of fun as well. I think there’s so much in our work life right now, that it’s not as much fun as it used to be, to make choices to do things that insert some more fun. We certainly need some juice in the tank, and keep us creative, and keeps us thinking about fun stuff.
Rob Kosberg:
Beautiful. Well, congratulations on that. We’ll look forward to that coming out and certainly let our audience know about that when it does come out and the hardcover edition. So, I guess last thing, just where can people get more information? Where do you want to send them, best places for that?
Phil Jones:
You bet. My website is philmjones.com. From there, you can link out to any of the social channels, you can read some blogs, you can find the book, you can do all of those things. If you’ve got a favorite place to be able to go to bookstores, come stop by there. Similarly, on the social channels, Instagram or LinkedIn are probably the two that I show up on most, personally. If there’s something you’ve taken from this interview or you’ve got a question that you want to join in on, then ping me there. I’ll stick it up on screen right now. My Instagram is @PhilMJonesUK, and love to hear something that you’ve taken from this interview that’s made it a useful lesson from your point of view. DM me there and tell me what your takeaways are.
Rob Kosberg:
People have already heard that you do respond to your DMS on Instagram, so expect to get some. I think that’s going to be interesting. I’m certainly going to friend you on Instagram and say, “Okay, this is a place I can talk to Phil a little bit more. It’s great.”
Phil Jones:
There you go. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, Rob. It’s been a pleasure to chat and it’s been nice to chat about the book as a business as opposed to the contents of the book. So that’s been a lot of fun. I much appreciate it.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Thank you. Again, thanks for sharing and your vulnerability and generosity. Really, really great stuff. And look forward to hearing more, my friend. Thank you.
Phil Jones:
Pleasure, pleasure.
