Dr. Jeremy Sutton is the founder of Book Boss Publishing, which helps professionals, entrepreneurs, and healthcare providers write and self-publish books to increase their audience, serve their clients, and make more money. He has self-published six books and has helped many other business owners accomplish their dream of becoming a published author. He believes that most people dream of writing a book but feel that they don’t know enough or can’t put it in the right words to make it all worth the effort. Jeremy believes once you accept your authority you can change lives!
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Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Jeremy Sutton about building a physical therapy practice with a best-selling book.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- How writing a book is a life changing phenomena.
- How writing a book affords you to enrich the lives of so many people.
- Why you don’t have to believe the expectations others put on you and can achieve anything you put your mind to.
- How writing a book opens doors that might have otherwise stayed closed.
- How it’s easy to publish a book and make your dreams a reality.
Connect with Chris:
Links Mentioned:
bookbosspublishing.com/course
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@the_bookboss
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/jeremy-sutton-bookboss
Rob Kosberg:
All right. Hey, welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here. I have a great guest for another episode of the Publish, Promote, Profit Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Sutton, who has his doctorate in physical therapy, has self-published six books on Amazon, and has worked with 70 other business owners helping to accomplish their dreams of becoming a published author. He’s done a lot of really interesting things. We had a great conversation because he also has a daily podcast. It takes an enormous amount of discipline to do something like that, my podcast isn’t daily. I’m intrigued by some of the things you’re doing, Jeremy. Thanks so much for being on the podcast today.
Jeremy Sutton:
Yeah, absolutely. Rob. It’s an honor to be here and I enjoyed interviewing you last year, so I’m happy to return the favor.
Rob Kosberg:
So, let’s dive in. We were just talking offline for a moment about a book that intrigued me, that I saw you posted on your social media. You didn’t state what the title of the book was, but you could tell by the categories that it was in the medical field. I thought that this must be connected to the physical therapy business and all of that. Maybe give us some overview of that. Tell me what that book is, and some details on it, because I think that’ll really be interesting to a lot of people listening today.
Jeremy Sutton:
I’d love to. The first thing I didn’t tell you beforehand is that this book was a course, an online course, that I wanted to sell as part of my physical therapy practice. I recorded six YouTube videos. Back in 2016, when I did it, I was horrible. I couldn’t sell anything and hated sales. In PT school, they teach you how to do things, not to sell anything. I was horrible at sales and had zero confidence in it. So, I said, “This is good information. I’m going to put it into a book.” Friday afternoon, I spoke to another friend of mine who had done a book and who’s done a ton of books. His name is Dr. Mike Chua, from the Philippines, who is a physical therapist in Tennessee now. He said, “You can probably have this done by the weekend.” I did. I started on Friday at 6, and Sunday at 2, I hit publish on Amazon. I did everything by myself. It was Canva and Word. It was horrible. I didn’t even have the final digit of the phone number for my clinic in the back of the book. I was missing a number. I started giving that to patients and I started seeing just how much more authority they felt like I had. I said, “Man, I think I have something to help.” They didn’t believe it was mine until I flipped it over and showed them my beautiful bald head on the back. Anyway, I talked to a friend of mine, he’s a physical therapist, and he and I had been going back and forth about working together. Finally, he just came out and said, “Hey, would you like me to help you write another edition to this book?” We did, and it turned into, Neck Pain Solutions. It was very inexpensive. We only spent about $80 on the cover, we formatted it all ourselves, and put it on Amazon, and Kobo, and everywhere at first. Now it’s just on Amazon. It took off and went to number one that first week. Then I started reading your book and listening to Chandler Bolt and all these other people in self-publishing and just started learning all I could about it.
Rob Kosberg:
I love that. The thing that intrigued me, that caught my attention, was that basically organically, the book has done really, really well. You decided to do a promotion a year and a half after you published it. I think it is important for people to know that some people publish it and they just think that the world’s going to beat a path to their door. When they don’t, they’re discouraged but you can actually pick the mantle up a year later, two years later, and reinvigorate it. Talk a little bit about that, because it looks like it’s doing real, real well right now.
Jeremy Sutton:
As of this week, we’re 185 downloads from 5,000, just for the week. That’s just on a free Kindle promotion that I did. I said, “I just want to see what it’ll do organically.” I think I might’ve posted on Facebook Monday about it. Maybe Facebook showed it to three people that are my sister and dad and mom, maybe, but I noticed Monday afternoon, it had been downloaded about a thousand times. I said, “Wow, this is kind of crazy.” Tuesday, of course, I watched it every three minutes and it got up to 2300. Like I said, it’s 185 to 5,000. But you know, I thought about posting a press release this week, and doing some things like that. I’ve done that for my clients. You talk about that in your book, using webwire.com, but I just wanted to see what it did organically, because early on, when I started out with self-publishing, I had no idea how to do any of this. It was all just like you said, “I’m just going to put it out there, and maybe everybody that has neck pain will find it on Amazon,” which is not the case. Here we are a year and a half later and that’s my book and I’m going to keep talking about it. I’ve got an email list attached to it, and a free course, and all that kind of stuff. We’ve been able to help over 7,000 people that I’ll never meet in person. It’s just been amazing.
Rob Kosberg:
I think it would be cool for people to understand the bigger scope of the plan here. You obviously use this for your physical therapy practice. You use it for patients. You’re also writing some other books and you have kind of a bigger plan around that. Maybe share a little bit about what that looks like and how that works.
Jeremy Sutton:
Well, one thing I do is I help other healthcare providers write and self-publish books and I’ve done some ghost writing. I don’t ever want to do another ghost-writing project ever again.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s hard work, isn’t it?
Jeremy Sutton:
It’s a lot of work, and I’d like to charge about $4 million for the next one I do, which I don’t think is going to work. So, anyway, I’ve done that. It’s up to about 85 people now that we’ve helped including one of their seven-year-old sons who wrote his first book, which was just the greatest experience but I’m going to white label these books. I have a series, they’re called, The Chronic Pain series on Amazon and I’ve got the back-pain solutions and shoulder pain solutions pretty much done. I’m looking at getting an orthopedic surgeon to write a chapter on the shoulder one. And then I’m going to do hip, knee and ankle, which are most major joints of the body. Then I’m going to white label those for other PTs, chiropractors, massage therapist, whoever wants to use those, and give them a very low cost of entry point for those, and have them be able to put their own logo, and say, “This was prepared for you by Rob Kosberg Physical Therapy.” That way you can be the expert in your town and provide an amazing resource for people that may not want to come to you three or four times a week. Some people may not be able to afford to, and you can give them a $2.30 book. Then also, I have a plan to turn this all into courses. It just turns into another resource that providers can use to help people get better. The more the merrier. I’ve been able to help. We’ve had over 7,000 people get this book, which isn’t huge in the grand scheme of life, but somebody from nowhere, Louisiana who wrote a book and had it downloaded and purchased over 7,000 times; I’ll never be able to touch that many people personally in my life as a physical therapist.
Rob Kosberg:
I love that. That’s very, very cool. I don’t know where nowhere, Louisiana is.
Jeremy Sutton:
I’m in Bossier City, Louisiana.
Rob Kosberg:
I certainly understand the sentiment. I mean from Kissimmee, Florida. Being from a small town, I think my English teacher would roll over in his grave if he knew that I’ve helped over a thousand people to write and publish best sellers, and get people on TV and radio, and all that stuff. It is cool.
Jeremy Sutton:
Part of my story is, when I was 19, I was in a physical therapy clinic in Louisiana and a lady told me I sounded ignorant and nobody would ever believe anything I said because I sounded uneducated. I took that to heart as a 19-year-old. It took me a while to get over that. Now I’ve had four podcasts. My podcasts have been listened on every continent that there’s people on. It just goes to show you that you don’t have to believe what other people put on you and you can do whatever you want.
Rob Kosberg:
You’ve seen all the stats. 80% of adult Americans want to write a book and less than 1% ever actually accomplish that. I think it is people getting in their own way that is the biggest challenge to that. I’m sure you’ve seen it. I’m sure you felt it with yourself; all the procrastination, the fear of failure, which may be that fear that expresses itself in both procrastination and perfectionism, where people just think it’s never good enough. I’ve spoken to so many people that have had a book that was written and it’s just sitting for five years, 10 years, 15 years. You’ve done the work. Publish it for crying out loud. You obviously have an enormous amount of discipline. You don’t do a daily podcast or do the stuff that you’ve done with books, while maintaining a career as a doctor and all the other things, without a great deal of discipline. Talk about that for a minute. What are the things that you find as primary motivators that help you get over the fear of failure, the perfectionism, the procrastination, all those kinds of things?
Jeremy Sutton:
I appreciate that compliment. I have a wife and two kids. I told you before we went on, I bought a business that didn’t work out. We got sued, we filed bankruptcy, all this stuff. This was 2018. We’re only three years out. 2020 was an amazing year for me and my family even though we had the pandemic. I felt like I lived through a global pandemic in 2018. I met a young man in Clearwater, Florida at an event. He’s 23 and he said, “Jeremy, what are you going to do?” I said, “Man, what do you mean?” He’s like, “Well, you’ve been sued. You filed bankruptcy; you closed your business.” I said, “Look, I have two kids,” they were four and six at the time. I said, “I can’t just stick my head in a hole. I have to keep going. They have to see that dad is willing to work hard.” I’ve just been given this resilient spirit that is God given and have an amazing wife that supports everything I do. She lets me talk when I come home with these crazy ideas that I say, “Hey, these are good ideas,” and she says, “Yeah, but are they God ideas?” I’m like, “I don’t know, but I like it.” That’s happened a lot. Just yesterday, I told her a crazy one and she let me think about it for a few hours. It’s just not wanting to give up. I used to tell my dad when I was younger, I said, “I don’t want to just live and work a job and die. I want to make a difference and do things.” I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression and all these things but always come back to this forward focusing, “I need to keep going and keep moving forward and trying to figure out where it is in this world that my purpose fits.” I feel like I found a huge purpose in helping people write and self-publish books so they can serve more people. I really think that’s it, just knowing that we’re all here for one purpose and I can’t meet your purpose, Rob, and you can’t meet mine, so we have to do it.
Rob Kosberg:
Well said. I know what it’s like. I went through it in 2008. I think in the same way. I’ve been married a long time. I have three kids. At that time, all three kids were younger, of course, and in private school. What options are there but to keep putting one foot in front of the other? Although a lot of people quit, and a lot of people take the road more traveled and give up on their dreams, and in some ways it might be easier to do that, but if you just push through and overcome the fear, everything you want is on the other side of that. I’ve certainly experienced that, and I’m blessed to have experienced that in my life. It sounds like you have as well, which is cool.
Jeremy Sutton:
Sometimes people make fun of me because I’m still a full-time physical therapist, but I say, “Hey, my company is called Book Boss Publishing,” which I don’t know, it sounds a little brash, but I’m not really brash. I’m like, “Yeah, it’s going to be by the end of 2021,” and they’re like, “Yeah, you’re going to still be saying that in 2025.” I don’t care what they think. That’s okay. Think that. It’s fine with me. I’m going to continue to move forward. When I get there, I get there.
Rob Kosberg:
I hope it’s no one close to you that does that. It’s like, “Come on, man, take the knife out of my back for crying out loud.”
Jeremy Sutton:
I know. People who have not met their dreams, and I’m not picking on anybody, sometimes tend to not encourage you to meet your dreams. It’s sad, but it’s reality.
Rob Kosberg:
Maybe we can change gears a little bit because we started down the path of using the books and how the books, not just make an impact on others, but make an impact for you. You shared that you told your dad when you were younger, it was your dream to make a difference. You’ve had your books downloaded thousands of times and you certainly are making a difference in people’s lives. Many people that you’ve never met and may never even meet have read the stuff that you’ve written. That’s positive. Talk to me for a minute about how the books have helped you, whether it’s brought you new clients, or gotten you opportunities in speaking engagements, or raised your authority, your credibility, any stories around that for you and your books.
Jeremy Sutton:
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I’m talking to you right now. That’s one thing. I’ve been able to get on podcasts without any trouble. Sometimes that imposter syndrome still kicks in and you’re like, “Do I really need to be on this podcast?” Yeah, you do. You have something to say. Also, I’ve been able to speak. I spoke in Ireland a couple of months ago, virtually. COVID cost me a trip to Ireland this year. I’m a little salty about it but I’ve been able to speak at about four different healthcare conferences. I spoke at someone else’s writing retreat two weekends ago. So, that’s been there. I’ve also coached over 80 people to write and self-publish books. I’ve been able to make that income with my writing business, which is something that I never thought I would do because that’s not something anybody ever taught me how to do before a couple of years ago. Like I said, COVID, 2020 was a good year for me because I had an online business that was doing well. I was able to go, where other people were panicking, and I was able to tell my wife, “Hey, we’re fine,” because I have this other income. I’m not just dependent on being a healthcare provider. If I can’t go to work, I still can make a living for our family because I had this skill set that not everybody has. I’ve been able to create online courses. That’s how I started in all of this. I created a $47 course. I kept bumping that up to add value and then charge a little bit more and then started doing one-on-one coaching. It’s been a game changer for me to the point where, as I used to tell people, I’ve been doing physical therapy since I was 19, I’ll be 40 this year. I would say, “That’s all I know how to do.” Well, that’s not the case anymore. I could just stop today if I absolutely wanted to and go into book publishing, and that’s where I’m headed. It’s been huge for me. It’s been life-changing; the people that I’ve been able to meet, and the people that I’ve been able to connect to one another. I have a local friend who has a charity for veterans with PTSD, it’s called Warrior Horse. He helps them with horses. I was able to connect him with someone in Colorado last week who’s building something for veterans in Costa Rica, and now he’s going to be involved in it. Without writing books and starting podcasts, I would have never met any of those people and they would have never met each other. It’s been amazing.
Rob Kosberg:
I love that, man. Congratulations. You spoke about the speaking engagements. I want to dive, just for a moment, into that a little bit. How have your books helped you to get those engagements? Was it that the books gave you the credibility to have that conversation? Was the book the first thing that the person in charge saw? Walk me through the specifics of that.
Jeremy Sutton:
Sure, absolutely. For sure. The one in Ireland was a global women’s health therapists conference. They had several hundred, if not thousands of people in attendance in 2019. I wrote my book and then I created a Facebook group for people who are writing books. She got in there and I started serving that group. She’s like, “Hey, Jeremy, you’ve written these books and then you’ve helped so many other people. We would love for you to teach the women at our conference how to write and publish books.” For sure, the book opened that door. The one I just did a few weekends ago was the same way. She’s like, “Hey, I want authors to come in and talk about things.” So, I got to talk to them about launching and marketing, which I love talking about because we could just talk for hours about this stuff. It’s absolutely been from the books.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s great. What have I not asked? What else would you like to share? We certainly want to give some links of where people can connect with you and learn a little bit more. I love what you’re doing. I think what you’re doing is very, very cool. I think it’s cool for you and your family, but obviously for those readers of your books that have the pain, and have the challenges that they’re facing, and also what that’s just done to promote you and your business. I think is terrific.
Jeremy Sutton:
I’ll have a book coming out at the end of September on self-publishing for healthcare providers. That’ll be coming out soon and I’ll send you a link when that’s ready. I have my course. I used to charge $1500 for it and I decided to make it free. It’s bookbosspublishing.com/course. Anybody can get that. It’s for healthcare providers, but you know how it is; regardless of what kind of book you’re publishing, it’s the same framework.
Rob Kosberg:
Awesome. So, that’s bookbosspublishing.com/course. Jeremy, great to have you on, man. Thanks for being a guest on the podcast. Thanks for sharing so authentically and honestly. It was great to have you on.
Jeremy Sutton:
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. I really appreciate it.
