The 4-Step Client Attraction System Every Author Needs

Just being an expert, a best-selling author, a specialist, isn’t enough to consistently attract clients. This is all about how some experts are able to do it, but they’re able to do it because they’re not staying invisible and because they’re following the steps to the client attraction staircase. Unfortunately, a lot of people, or at least some people actually think that, hey, if I’m really good at what I do, then, you know, clients are going to find me. And you know, maybe occasionally somebody will find you because you’re really good at what you do, but the truth is they don’t. They don’t find you unless you follow these steps. There are thousands of really talented people that you and I know that are experts and they struggle to find clients on a month-to-month basis. And I don’t want that for you. I don’t want that for myself. And so, there are steps to take to ensure that that doesn’t happen. And if we’re consistent at these things, there’s no reason why we can’t grow and scale our businesses very considerably. Okay, so let’s talk through this. Let’s talk through these four things. I’ll give you the four and then we’ll talk through the various steps in each one of these four things and I’ll try to write it large enough so you guys can see it. Well, number one is visibility. Visibility. It all starts with visibility. It doesn’t end with visibility, but it begins there. Okay, without visibility, none of the other things matter. Number two is authority. Of course, the root word of authority is author. So, authors have authority as long as they’re visible. And number three, consistent. Consistent. Visibility. Authority. Consistency. Last but not least is clarity or really clarity of offer. Let’s call that having a clear offer. More important than you think. And believe it or not, a lot of people really mess it up right there at that point. Okay. Visibility. These are the stair steps. Visibility, authority, consistency, and then clarity or clear offer. If you do these things, they will produce predictable results, predictable clients, predictable opportunities to get new clients. Okay, clients don’t just appear because you’re talented, because you’re smart, because you’re handsome, because you’re beautiful. You’re all of those things. You know, I love you, and I think the world of you. But they don’t just appear because you’ve written a book, and because you have the expertise. They appear because they see you, they trust you, they remember you, and then when their challenges come, they know how to hire you. All right, so let’s go through each one of these four. All right, visibility number one. We talk about this a lot and I’ll give you some examples of it, but you can’t be chosen for your expertise if you’re not seen. Everything starts with visibility. If nobody knows that you exist, then nothing else matters. Visibility can come from your book, speaking engagements. It can come from podcast. It can come from PR, can come from LinkedIn, YouTube, social media, referrals, networking, your relationships. It can come from your sphere of influence. It can come from email. The goal is not fame, especially when it comes to things like social media. But the goal is to be visible to enough people that the right ones, okay, the ones that you can serve, the ones that you can help, that they notice you. All right? Now, not to discourage you in any way, but statistically, if you post something on Facebook or Instagram or social media, about one to five% of your followers will ever see that post. Okay? So when it comes to visibility, we have lots of opportunities. I shared many of those. If we’re talking about social media or any of the ones I mentioned, the first thing you have to understand is far less people than you ever expect actually see you. One to 5%. Far less. Now, what does this mean? Many people get afraid if they have an email list, for example, of sending one email a day to their email list. Oh, I’ll bother them. That’s too much. If you have, understand this, if you have a really active email list, at most, you’re only going to get 30 to 40, and that is a super engaged email list. 30 to 40% of the people are going to even open that email. That doesn’t mean they read it and it certainly doesn’t mean they click the link. If [snorts] they’re very engaged, probably 3 to 5% are going to open the email and then click the link to whatever the thing is that you sent them and want them to see. So, the idea of you sending one email a day is not too much. In fact, you could probably send two or three emails a day as long as it wasn’t just, you know, spammy, click this link, do this thing, but real content, you could send two or three emails a day to your list and still not reach everybody that opted into your list. The same thing is true for social media. The same thing is true for Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, etc. So, understand, it’s not about being famous. It’s about getting in front of the right people and being visible to the right people. And to do that, you’re going to have to get in front of significant numbers of people because only a small percentage of the people that you are trying to reach out to are ever seeing it. Now, I created something called um the book revenue calculator. I think I did I post it in our Facebook group. I don’t remember if I did, but write this down or I’ll write it down up here. It’s bookrevcalc.com. bookrev.com. I built that for you guys. I built that to show you that you really can’t do too much when it comes to having ways to be visible. So on the book Rev Calc, there’s six questions that you’re going to answer. And one of those questions is in essence a visibility question. In what ways are you going to be visible with your book and with your offer to your marketplace? And you can choose one or more of the following. And I give a multiple of different uh examples. I talk about uh and they’re not all paid. In fact, only one of them is paid advertising. The other five or the other few are not. There’s networking, referrals, sphere of influence, there’s strategic partnerships, there’s speaking engagements, there’s content creation, etc. Now, in one sense, it’s too vague because somebody can click on content creation and post one post on Facebook a week and think they’re actually creating content. You’re not. Okay? So when you click on something like content creation or when you commit to something like networking or referrals or sphere of influence or strategic partners, it means that you’re actually going to work that as a method of visibility in your business and not something that you just just do once, but something that you have to continue with and work with. Take a look at the at the bookrevcalc.com though because I think it’ll motivate and inspire you a little bit because if you’re willing to add to your methods of visibility then you’re going to add to your revenue. You’re going to add to your income. If you’re not that’s fine too, right? Just understand that you’ll be capped at what you’re willing to do and what you’re not willing to do when it comes to being visible in your marketplace. So it all starts with visibility. You have to be visible. So, pick one. Pick more than one. Take a look at it. Just understand that whatever it is that you’re going to choose on that calculator, do it right. Like, be committed to it and actually doing it. Okay? If you have a book, you don’t have an expertise problem. You’re experts, you’re authorities, but you may have an exposure problem. And that’s what you have to solve in one or more of those methods. The only method that I didn’t put on there is one that I personally don’t really uh I I do all of the others, but the one that I personally don’t, and that’s outbound, cold outbound. So, things like cold calling or direct messaging or things like that. That’s another one I may add down the road because that’s certainly something that you can do to get visibility with the right people. I actually did just hire a cold email uh company that’s doing some marketing for us. So, I guess I do do that as well. All right. Well, we’ll see if it works out with them. Uh, then I’ll tell you what the results are and how things are going. We’re already generating leads. Uh, but those leads haven’t turned in into anything uh just yet. Remember, all your opportunity to expose your authority to the world, it begins with visibility. It all starts with visibility. Okay, that’s number one. Number two, authority. All right. Once they find you, they ask a question. What’s the question? Why should I trust you? Right? It’s so easy not to trust. They have in many cases your potential clients, someone that you can help and you’re an expert and you’re an authority and you’re a good person, but maybe the two or three people that they ran into to solve their problem before they ran into you, maybe they weren’t so trustworthy. Maybe that person got burned. Maybe they got hurt. Maybe they tried three or four different solutions to whatever problem it is that you can fix and guess what? Those solutions failed for them. Maybe they failed because of their own lack of effort or willingness. But they failed. It doesn’t matter why. It only matters that there’s a scar there. And because there’s a scar, they now feel this this fear, right? This this self-p protection. And so they want to know if they can trust you. It’s a really important question that you have to answer. And guess what? They’re not asking you directly, right? It’s not something that’s happening on a telephone call or Zoom call. It’s something that’s just happening organically based on your book, your content, and whatever it is that you’re doing to get in front of them. So you have to answer that question. Visibility gets the attention. Great. Authority earns the trust and that’s what we want to do. So, how do you do that? Well, there’s three I think and maybe more than three, but I’ll give you the three what I think are the most powerful ways to show your authority. Number one is your personal story and experience. And I’m talking about the hero’s journey. That’s helpful. But I’m talking about more than that, right? People want to know that you do have experience and that you are active in doing the thing, whatever that thing is that you can actually help them to do. The last person that I want to get real estate investing advice from is somebody who was real estate investing 10 or 20 years ago and now they coach or teach or have a mastermind. Come on. One of the things that I’ve always loved about Russell Brunson, and you know that I was in his inner circle group from 2014 till 2024 for a long time and spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars with him. But something that I always loved about Russell is that Russell is a practitioner. Like he has a mastermind like so many other people do and it is not inexpensive. The lowest level is 50 grand a year. But you can be sure of one thing. whatever Russell is talking about is working right now because he is using the same funnels, the same live events, the same stuff. That’s why one of the things that I talk about the most are things like our book funnels, the ways that I use my book, the ways I get books in front of people. I just told David and Elaine both today, we have a large number of just really great potential clients and many of them in um in fields like the medical field, the legal field that create such a busy schedule that oftent times it’s hard just to get them on a call even when they schedule one. So, I I’m I have to remind Dave and Elaine, I’m like, “Look, number one thing you need to do, get their address and mail them a copy of my book. Send it to them with a cover letter. If you can’t get their address, then email them a PDF of my book. I want my book and my story in front of them building the authority of the company and showing them that the very thing that they want to do, I am doing. Here’s an example of it.” Does that make sense? So your personal story, your personal experience really, really important in building the authority journey. So story number two, building authority, showing them that you can help them by your client case studies, by your testimonials, by like the real life examples of other people that you helped. So you’ve shared your story. Now you also want to share your client stories. Your story, your client stories. There’s nothing more po powerful than people seeing, wow, not only is he working in this field right now and is active in it, but wow, look at all the people that she has helped that are in a very similar situation as to myself. builds great authority and trust that you actually can do what you’re promising to do. You can actually solve their problem. Third, and finally, and there are potentially other ways to build authority, and we’re going to come back to like the way that you encapsulate all of this, but third and finally, is you should have like some proprietary framework like a box for what it is you do. call it your unique selling mechanism, right? Todd Brown kind of coined that phrase, right? Your unique mechanism. What is a unique mechanism? It is it is enhanced ghost writing. Uh for those that need ghostwriting help, uh our unique mechanism is part of it my story. When I knew that that writing a book was in my future and I had been given advice by two mentors to write a book, the first thing I thought was, I’m really not going to sit down and write this book myself. I don’t know how to do it. I need help. And so, the only other thing I thought to do is hire a ghostriter. I spent more money really than I could afford at the time to hire a ghostriter. And then, as you know, certainly if you’ve read my book or have heard my story, it went very poorly. It went very poorly for a number of reasons. One, it took way too long. Number two, it sounded like it was written like by anybody. It was not in my voice. Uh didn’t have like the unique characteristic of of, you know, kind of the way I am and the way that I communicate. And I didn’t like that. I didn’t like how generic it was. I threw the whole thing away. It was 180 something pages. And I started over from scratch. And I wrote the book myself. And start to finish, it probably took me 18 months longer than it should have. And because of that, I struggled and the business struggled because it really exploded right after I wrote that book. So I I have my own personal story and experience, but I also have that I’ve created a unique mechanism we call enhanced ghostriting. And it is a methodology that we use that’s akin to a TED talk and it has the the right pieces to it that make for compelling content. By the way, if you’re like me, I I’m an avid reader. I’m always reading multiple books at a time at different times of the day. And I’m reading I don’t know if you know who Tim Grover is. I’m actually I’ve actually thought about posting this, but I’m like I’m going to get so much hate. Tim Grover was like the superstar coach to Michael Jordan. Uh one of the big coaches of Kobe Bryant, not mindset coach, but like physical and mindset. He wrote a he’s written several books, New York Times bestsellers, and he wrote a book called Relentless. And I’m reading that. It’s terrible. I mean, it’s so poorly written. It’s shocking to me. And as I’m reading it, I’m like, “Oh, if you only knew the enhanced ghostriting meth it clearly is ghostritten, but it’s ghostritten from like you can tell that the ghostriter literally sat down with this guy and it was a stream of consciousness that came out of his mouth. And so every chapter, and it [clears throat] isn’t chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. It’s chapter 1, one, one, one, one.” Because, you know, everything is the most important thing. Anyway, that’s not a bad thing. That’s kind of unique and interesting. But I’m like, wow. You know, our methodology, the whole idea of, you know, story, open loops, content points, closing loop, all of that is powerful. The point is that is my proprietary framework. That’s our unique mechanism. You need one. You need something that is yours. Some type of framework that shows you’ve thought through this. You’ve done this thing. And because you’ve done it and thought through it, you have an actual methodology. We’ll call it a unique mechanism. Those are the three things. Now there could be more. But if you get those three things, then you are going to build authority. Now what do you do with those three things? You put them in your book. That’s your book, right? What is your book? Your book is your personal experience and story. Your book is your client case studies, testimonials, and examples. Your book is your framework, your unique methodology, right? That’s your book. So, getting your book in front of the right person, the reason the reason that it builds authority for you is because it encompasses these things. Right? Now, if your book doesn’t encompass these three things, then h it’s going to be harder. It’s going to be harder to build the authority that you need to. That’s why we talk about making sure that your book is narrow and niche specific and that it addresses the problem of your ideal client, right? It can’t be just broad. It can’t be just full of stories. It has to have pieces in it that build the trust necessary for you to take the next step on this client attraction staircase. Okay, does that make sense? Your book compresses years of your credibility. It shows your unique mechanism. It does all of those things and gives client case studies that makes people trust you. Okay. Visibility gets you noticed. Remember, authority gets you chosen. Number three. Number three. I know we’ve been going for a little bit, but I want to make sure we cover this stuff well. And I’ll open it up for questions um you know towards the towards the end. Uh number three is consistency. Consistency. Being consistent is the key. Okay? Trust is built through repetition. All right? You’ve probably seen the the Google studies that have been done, but just in case, I’ll give it to you. It’s called the 7114 rule for consumer behavior. You’ve probably heard that, right? It’s a framework. Your consumer, your buyer typically is going to need seven hours of total engagement with you and your stuff. 11 touch points. So, not just one, not just your book, although that’s a really big one. And they’re going to need probably four like distinct different locations where they find you. Your website, search engines, social media, maybe getting on your email list, maybe watching you on a workshop or a webinar, maybe seeing you do a short while they’re reading. That’s why it’s really important that you have within your book what links back to your website, links back to your videos, links back to your content. Because what you’re doing is you’re checking off the boxes. You’re letting them engage with you in the different ways. They build a consistency with you and they see the consistency of your teaching and your training. One podcast, one speech, one media placement is not going to change your business. Right now, one could be a really big one. I’ve had over the years, I don’t know, maybe maybe a dozen people in 2,000 clients, maybe a dozen people that had at one time or another like a major major opportunity. I’ve had a number of people that have been on the Howard Stern Show, the Joe Rogan podcast, um, Good Morning America, uh, had a couple of clients that were on Oprah, uh, when Oprah was on television, you know, on a regular basis. These are like, if you’re ready, these are like lifechanging opportunities. Let me tell you something. Every single one of those dozen people that had their 15 minutes of fame were still searching for some consistency, some opportunity, some way to reclaim or find that fame again. Every single one of them. None of them took advantage of it. How do you take advantage of it? Well, how did Dr. Phil take advantage of his time on on Oprah? He ended up creating his own stuff. He ended up having his own stuff. Even one amazing, one incredible, one good Morning America, one Today Show, it is not going to make your business. All it can be is a stepping stone to the rest of your content and to getting people into your world. The same is true for your book. Okay? One massive success of a book is not going to be enough in and of itself. There’s a reason that John Maxwell has written 70 books. There’s a reason he has 20 million plus books sold and commands six figure speaking engagements and earns tens of millions of dollars a year from his coaching etc. Right? Consistency. It’s about consistency. So where do you need consistency? Well, you decide that. If you’re in the content space, then you need to have content that you’re consistently creating every day. Whether that’s for social media, for your email list, whether that’s via video, whether that’s via audio like a podcast, perhaps that’s written, it doesn’t matter. You need to be consistent with it. If you want to choose the podcast route, what a great route. Then you need to be consistent in appearing on other people’s podcast as well as your own. Consistent, right? It’s not the one big episode that you land. It’s the fact that you’ve been doing this now three years in a row and you have 300 episodes of your own podcast. That’s the power. That’s the long-term power. The same is true with an email list. The same is true in building relationships. The same is true with paid advertising, right? When do we stop paid advertising? You know, when we’re going out of business, right? When you stop seeing Rob’s ads, Bestseller Publishing’s ads, that’s when you need to be concerned. That’s when you go, “Okay, something’s going on.” It’s the blood of our business, right? You guys know, and I’ve talked about it 100 times, yes, I create some content. Yes, this is content that I’ll create. Yes, I’m consistent in those things. But there is nothing from my perspective as powerful as using paid advertising. And I love paid advertising with speaking engagements. You guys know all that. I do that a lot. In fact, I’m doing a big three-day event coming up the first week of August. We’ll spend a lot of money on that. But it’s consistent consistency. Every single day, we’re spending money on paid ads. Every single day, new applications are coming in. Every single day, my book is being sold or my courses are being sold online. Every day, every day, it is happening. Consistency really, really powerful. Remember the 7-Eleven 4 rule. Last but not least, clarity or having a clear offer. Clarity or having a clear offer. If you’ve if you’ve gotten somebody to this point and they have a problem that you can solve, they want you. Okay? They want you, but you can lose them right here. When Connie and I had only been married maybe five years or so, um I was working for a large um savings alone. That’ll tell you how long ago that was. savings loans don’t exist anymore. And um and I won this big contest and uh got an opportunity to go on a sevenw week or seven week seven-day cruise, the Loveboat cruise. We were living in Florida at the time and you know, Loveboat Cruise was the Mazatlan Cabo and uh I think Port of not Port of Florida. Anyway, three big ports and um and for the first time in my life, I went like deep sea fishing, but big rig deep sea fishing. And I landed this marlin. I mean, spectacular marlin dump jumping out of the water. 45 I’m in the chair. 45 minutes. I’m exhausted. And we get the marlin right up to the boat. It’s It’s six feet. It’s a couple hundred pounds. And they go to gaff it to bring it in. and they miss and they snap the line instead and boop, the marlin is gone. I’m like, man, I worked like an hour to get that marlin in. And obviously I was on a cruise ship. I wasn’t going to take the marlin home. But they have a whole thing where, you know, they give it to kids and they sell it for charities or at least that’s what they told me and that sort of thing. It didn’t matter though, like he got off the hook right as he was being brought into the boat. And if you’re not like really clear and you don’t make people guess, but give them what they want, then you could lose you could lose the big game just before you get it into the boat. They can know you, they can trust you, uh they could be ready to get the help and invest with you, but if you’re not like really clear on what it is you do, how it is you help, and the steps of your offer, then you can lose them. Okay? Now, let me let me give you some clarity about that. Coaches make this mistake. And I know we have we have many people in the BSP community that like have an expertise and then are pivoting to coaching or pivoting to consulting or that kind of thing. And the natural inclination when you’re doing that or even if you’ve been in it for any length of time is to think that what they really want is time with me. That’s what they want. like they want to meet with me so that I can help them one on- one to overcome whatever challenge they have and and get over the hump. And let me just be really frank, I understand like that proclivity to think that way. But trust me, that is not what they want. They don’t want to spend time with you. You’re a stranger, right? You’re you’re somebody that they barely know. If if I am looking for a problem that I have and I need a solution for it, I promise you as soon as somebody starts talking to me about wanting to meet with me on a regular basis, I’m out. I I got no time for that. I’m not looking to add another appointment in my calendar. What I want is I want a solution. I want the easy pill. Your best clients want an easy pill. Now, that doesn’t mean that, you know, they want you to fix it without their involvement. I I get that. I’m I’m not saying that they don’t have to be involved, but I’m saying that you trading time for dollars is not what you want, but I promise you it’s not what they want either. They want a solution to that thing. Okay? So, ask yourself some questions when putting this together. Who do I really help? Who is my ideal number one best kind of client that I can help? and be narrow. What problem, what big problem or issue do they have that I really solve? Be specific. I understand you’re smart and you can fix a lot of things for them. I get that. But let’s let’s just narrow it down to the number one biggest most important thing that you would like to help them with. And then here’s the coolest thing. What result do you create for them and in what time frame? when somebody is in like um health and fitness from my perspective this is very easy right um I talked to to Fred about this when he was writing his book uh Think and Grow Thin and he’s not a weight loss expert although he lost a 100 pounds in his 60s right uh that’s pretty significant and he did it without you know GLPs or drugs or or anything like that and so he wanted to when he retired from his career he wanted to teach, help, serve that same community. I’m like, that is perfect. Men in their 60s that like are afraid they’re not going to be around to see their grandkids or to walk their daughter down the aisle. That good. Good. Let’s not broaden that. Let’s keep it narrow. Awesome. For someone like that, I I think it’s very simple. I ask a few questions. So, what is the clear offer? What is their biggest need? and what can you do in what time frame? So for somebody that needs to lose, you know, a 100 pounds, that’s not something that you can fix overnight. That may take 18 months of consistency and work. What can you do? Well, can that person lose 20 pounds in eight weeks? Usually, yes. With like commitment and accountability and the right plan. Yes. Well, then that’s an offer that you can make even with a guarantee. You can say if you follow the plan and I’m going to hold you accountable and you’re going to be part of a community, but if you follow the plan, I guarantee you’re going to lose 20 pounds over 8week period or I’m going to give you your money back. I would feel very confident making some type of guarantee like that. Now, does that mean that every single person is going to achieve that? No. Some are going to achieve far more than that. But I bet every person that actually follows the plan and does what you say is going to be able to achieve that. And the ones that don’t either A will say, “Well, it was my fault. I didn’t follow the plan or I cheated or I did these things or B, you know what, they’re probably not honest or committed and you don’t want them as clients anyway.” What is that example of that you need to go in the fitness and weight loss industry? Of course not. It’s an example that like when you’re really clear on your offer and you have like a clear time frame for your offer, like people get it. They get it. They’re like, “Okay, I mean, it’s hard for me to envision what it would be like losing a 100 pounds over a year or 18 months, but I can envision losing 20 in the next eight weeks.” And then what does that lead to? What leads to the next thing? Congratulations. You were successful. You lost 20 pounds in that 8week period. Fantastic. Where do you want to go from here? Do you want to continue? Do you want to stay on this track or do you want to just try it on your own again? What are most people going to want to do? They’re going to want to stay with you. You’ve created a result for them. You help them because you followed the steps, but then at the end, we didn’t fumble it, right? At the end, we’re like, “Okay, here’s the clear offer. Here’s the clear result. Here’s the clear time frame.” People appreciate and respect that. We don’t want them to guess. We don’t want them to try to put themselves in a box that’s too difficult for them to really wrap their their head around. We’re going to change your whole life. You’re going to double your income. You’re going to take all this time off and you’re going to do it in in the next year or two. A lot of people think they have a lead problem. And you may. If you don’t have the necessary visibility, you may have a lead problem. I get it. But just because you have the visibility and the leads doesn’t mean that they are leading to clients and opportunities, right? It’s not a lead problem. It’s a visibility problem. Solve visibility, you solve leads. Solve authority and you solve I have buyers now. solve consistency and you now have them on a regular basis coming in every day if you need them every day, every week, which is fine, too, depending on the size of your business, maybe even every month depending on how big your offer is. And then last but not least, when you’re clear, everything flows. Everything makes sense. And the right people will raise their hand and say, “I got it. I saw you here, here, here, and here. I read your book. Makes sense. you know, you’ve been doing this for a while. Okay, how can you help me? I love it. Let’s get started. Or no, okay, too, right? All we’re looking for is an answer. We’re not trying to convince any anybody of anything. All we’re trying to do is lead them, help them, and if they choose to work with us, great. If they choose not to, that’s fine, too, because the next person is coming along later today or tomorrow or next week or whenever when we check these boxes. Okay, that is it my friends. That is soup to nuts, our client attraction staircase. Hopefully, this was really helpful. You know what the four steps are. Now, it’s just a matter of doing them. Mess around with the uh the book uh revalc.com that I mentioned. Uh go try that out, you know, and be encouraged and inspired, you know, about the progress that you can make as you uh as you actually do these things. [music]