Authorship Leads to Authority with Kathy Mason

Rob Kosberg:

Hey, welcome, everybody. Rob Kosberg here with the Publish. Promote. Profit. Podcast. And as usual, I have somebody that is a prolific author and someone that’s done some amazing things with her books. Kathy Mason is an Amazon best-selling author. Number of different books that Kathy has written. Currently writing her book on Mindful Marketing Magnetism. And that is to go I guess, hand in hand with the show that you do weekly, called the Conscious Business Zone, which I love. And we’re going to talk a little bit about that.

You’re an online sales specialist who works with conscious companies to help them grow. And very, very exciting to have you here. I think people are going to learn quite a bit from both angles. We like to talk about the content of your book and what’s exciting to you right now. And that probably is more along the Mindful Marketing Magnetism stuff. But also, how you’ve used your books, because this is a show for people that are interested in writing books, or maybe have already written books. How you’ve used your books to grow your platform, grow your fame. Make a difference in people’s lives. And make an income for yourself at the same time. So, Kathy, welcome. Great to have you on the Publish. Promote. Profit. Podcast.

Kathy Mason:

Thank you. Thank you, Rob. So this is a wonderful opportunity for me to encourage any one of your listeners that are on the fence about writing a book and using it to get their message out in the world, to get off the fence and get on the computer and do something about it. Because in my experience, it’s more important to be a published author than it is to be a PhD. And the badge of courage the people the consumer assumes you have to create a book is bigger than a doctorate. So-

Rob Kosberg:

Wow. I’ve never heard anybody say that before. That’s a writer downer right there. I completely agree. I’ve obviously written many books. My books have led to millions of dollars in revenue for me and for my company. And they’ve impacted hundreds of thousands. And maybe, in some cases, millions of people. And you can’t do that with a PhD. Right? Not necessarily.

Kathy Mason:

Well, the thing is if you’re passionate about your subject matter, if you really think you’re on a mission and you found your life purpose, you really need to get on stages, on podcasts on radio, on TV. And if there’s a competitive edge, that really makes a difference in your press kit, it’s that you’re a published author.

Rob Kosberg:

Very true.

Kathy Mason:

And even if you’re not an Amazon best-selling published author, the fact that you’ve done that work really establishes you as an authority. And I think that is the key to everything right now. Especially during the times that we’re in right now is it’s really important to create relationships with your audience. And by having a book that creates this different kind of relationship, it usually means you’re way ahead of your audience on the path, whatever it is of what you’re offering to do. Whether it’s a coach or yoga. It could be just about anything. We publish books as well, for card clients and it’s amazing to see what happens in their launch trajectory when they have a book.

Rob Kosberg:

Right. Let’s talk for a moment about that. So, you’ve written books on number of different subjects from Facebook marketing to now something more along the Conscious Business idea. Right?

Kathy Mason:

Uh-huh.

Rob Kosberg:

Mindful Marketing Magnetism. How have you used your books, Kathy? Give me some examples and some stories. What have you done specifically with your books that has gotten you on a larger stage? Both, I guess, metaphorically and literally.

Kathy Mason:

And of course, the biggest stage used to be television. And now of course we’re on Zoom, which is like mini television.

Rob Kosberg:

Right.

Kathy Mason:

And so, I’ve been on early morning news with my books. Back then I was talking about Facebook and how to use it for nonprofit fundraising.

Rob Kosberg:

Nice.

Kathy Mason:

I was very interested in charities and how to utilize cause marketing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that term.

Rob Kosberg:

No, sure. Yeah. We have a number of clients that have raised millions of dollars for their nonprofits with their books. I love that.

Kathy Mason:

Right. So that was one of my first times I was on television. I’ve been on many stages, where in some cases I gave the book away. I have three books that that are more expensive business cards than they are best-selling books. My next one will be more a big seller. But a lot of times, my clients use their books and I’ve my book as a way to create credibility and to open up the sale of either consulting or other bigger projects.

Rob Kosberg:

Right.

Kathy Mason:

It definitely changes how the client looks at you. The audience looks at you.

Rob Kosberg:

Do you have an example for me? Give me an example. Blow my socks off with an example of somebody that read your book and came to you or where you used your book to…

Kathy Mason:

Okay. Well, I was lucky enough that I got to speak at events for the carpet cleaning industry. And I spoke at one in Las Vegas and one in Florida. Clearwater, Florida. And there were hundreds of people lined up at the end that wanted my book. So, what happens is that all of a sudden you have a conversation piece that, if you write your book with the right information, if you really are trying to serve, if this isn’t just fluff, if it’s really good content in it, then you know that you’ve spread your message.

Kathy Mason:

So, in that case, there were hundreds of people that came to us. We’ve done summits like that, where we’ve given away free books. And the last summit we did was for a breast cancer prevention with MDs. There were 18 MDS in it. And gave away a ton of content. Now, that was published print work as well as video. So now we’re coming into these new models that a lot of my clients when they’re doing a book, or when I do this next book, there’ll be information on my website that will be an add-on purchase, which will help me build my email list. And that’s where I could say that’s been a big difference.

As far as people making thousands and thousands of dollars. I’ve done so many things like this where people have just done incredibly well. I’ve been on the team behind Humanity’s Team. We’ve worked with Neale Donald Walsch. I’ve worked with Don Miguel Ruiz. I’ve worked with a bunch of the Hay House authors in the behind the scenes. So, I know, in Humanity’s Team’s case, they have an email list of over 70,000 people.

Rob Kosberg:

Nice.

Kathy Mason:

So, this is an opportunity. I guess my aspect is not necessarily to say $200,000 was added to my bottom line. Because the lifespan of the book that I gave away 10 years ago, is still helping me now. So, it would almost be hard to calculate how big of an impact if you went back 10 years. Because it has a life of its own. Sometimes the book will be put in somebody’s office, they hand it off to someone else. It’s quite amazing.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. And that’s just one book. You gave an example and maybe we could even unpack that for a minute. You talked about giving your book away. And I obviously know a lot of authors. And when you talk about giving your book away, there’s a tremendous resistance to that. Right? Because they think of the book as the means of exchanging dollars for what’s been written. And look that I’ve sold I don’t know, 60,000 copies of Publish. Promote. Profit. on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and various other places. And I’m happy about the little bits of royalties that I get from that. But the real money is, you gave an example of building an email list.

Rob Kosberg:

Our email list at Best Seller Publishing is 70,000. And that email list is worth millions of dollars in revenue every year. Because we share with people ways that they can learn and offer our services and all of those things. And so, do you have an example of how you’re using your book to grow your email list, for example?

Kathy Mason:

Well, almost all of the clients that I work with and myself, we usually give away some huge value content on the website that’s only visible by the link inside the book.

Rob Kosberg:

Got you.

Kathy Mason:

And so, the email list really is the lifeblood of so many businesses. A lot of the people I work with are conscious businesses or small businesses. They’re either launching a new division, or they’re launching their business from the get-go. And so, they might have an email, a free email collector on the front page of their website. But once you have a buyer’s list, which is somebody that actually bought the book and then found the link inside the book and wants to know more, that value cannot be understated. Because the free list may get you some information. May get you potential buyers.

But you know out of your 70,000 people, if it was all gotten from free, there’s a small percentage of it will convert. What I wanted to go back to something you brought up. And I haven’t had that many of the clients that I’ve worked with. This is my 21st year. Most of my clients know that the book that they’re publishing is piece of a puzzle. They don’t think it is the puzzle.

Rob Kosberg:

Good.

Kathy Mason:

Most of them understand that it’s a pathway to serve their ideal customer. And so, their speaking, everything we do is to create a marketing message and a way to connect effectively to that ideal customer that you can, that your gift will make a difference for. And that funnel starts with social media and your book at the top of the funnel. It isn’t the book at the bottom of the funnel. Because the book if you can sell for $25, what if you could sell your course for $2500?

Rob Kosberg:

Sure.

Kathy Mason:

The potential for bringing people down a funnel of four or five or six products in the year. That could be a lot of them could be evergreen and passive income for you just like the book is. And that’s what we’re building for our clients. And I want to encourage people to consider that you can’t give away too much. I know people don’t understand that because they think, “Oh, I can’t write the whole book on my blog and give it all away.” But there’s statistics, there’s lots of proof that the rule of reciprocity where you give creates this bond with your audience where they want to, they want to stick with you.

Rob Kosberg:

Give back?

Kathy Mason:

Mm-hmm.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. I love that. And so, you talk about a funnel, which I think most people will probably understand what that term is. Why don’t you describe what that might look like for, say for you? For one of your books or for one of your clients’ books. What would the entire funnel look like?

Kathy Mason:

Okay. So, if you look at and you think of a funnel, you think of actually the types of funnels that are in your kitchen, that are big at the top and they’re like a upside down pyramid and they’ve got a pipe at the bottom. What we’re trying to do is create all different touching points at the very top, where you can connect with people and really make a difference for them. So whatever product or service that you have, you want to be able to reach them on social media. That might be one aspect of your funnel at the very top of it. You might have video like what we’re doing right now on Zoom, where you have a YouTube channel and that pulls them down.

You might have guest blog posts where you’re off of your blog site, your website and you’re available, your information’s available other places. You might have your own blog post where you would use that as your email. You have a free gift at the top of here also, which will help you build your email list. And we usually encourage our clients to email at least twice a month, if not more. And then let’s see what else. The book is one of the things of free giveaways one of the things at the top. So, there’s many anymore. But that’s just to give you an idea.

So, there’s all these touch points at the very top of the funnel. Then as you go down inside the upside-down triangle part, there’s lines in there. And there may be a sequence of courses, like 101, 201 and 301, on your subject matter, that you would, you could guide your customer to. Because if they really are your ideal customer, they’re going to want more and more and more of you. So, one book is not going to be enough. One audio conversation’s not enough. One class will not be enough. They’re going to want pieces of encouragement and guidance from you, every month of the year.

So, by having this upside-down triangle, you can guide them through. And you almost have to start thinking being in their shoes. Because you’re down at the fiber when the PhD level of your content, probably through life experience. And it’s hard to go back to that 101 viewpoints. But that’s really the key. So, you bring people through this funnel and then what you can do at where the pipe part of the funnel is, you can actually do a train the trainer model, where you train these people to be versions of you. And you spread your process out everywhere.

Rob Kosberg:

Let them earn an affiliate commission for selling your stuff, for example.

Kathy Mason:

Well, they can be certified as a lot of my clients have certification programs.

Rob Kosberg:

Got you.

Kathy Mason:

That they really are taking it to the next level. So, if you are a health care provider, one of my clients does a PTSD process. It’s called Quantum Therapeutics. And she certifies practitioners, so that they can take it out everywhere. So, all of a sudden, rather than you are being the only person, you can have a mini army, which starts with 12 people at the most, that make it all the way through. But that’s what we’re building with the book at the very top.

And then there may be other books in the funnel. Because as people get deeper into your language, they sometimes need to understand your perspective at the very top. And at the bottom, they want to know how to do it.

Rob Kosberg:

Right.

Kathy Mason:

Right? It’s it goes from nice to know, to have to know.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. You’re indoctrinating them along the way. And they may enter to the funnel at a level of need or desire that is low. Obviously, it needs to be high enough for them to put in their email address or give you their credit card for a $7 thing. But then hopefully, as they learn more, their desire grows. And they begin to see you as the provider of the whatever it is that they’re looking for. They see you as the expert, the authority in the space because of your book.

Kathy Mason:

Well, it’s a personality match. Usually it’s a high value relationship. And I really think that’s what we’re going into for business right now is relationships and creating win-win relationships. And there’s nothing more fulfilling for someone who’s a consultant or a guide or a coach for their people to want more. Want to go deeper. Want to be better. I’m finding and I’m surprised to say this, but I’ve been doing this, this is my 21st year and I’m still learning every single day.

Rob Kosberg:

Sure.

Kathy Mason:

And I in that Mindful Marketing Magnetism program, I’ve been doing a version of that the whole time. It’s upgraded and each time I find something new cool, or something that’s specific for one of my clients, we change it. But this is amazing times with technology and with people being able to reach out and learn like never before.

Rob Kosberg:

Right. What have you found? Let’s bring it home a little bit.

Kathy Mason:

Okay.

Rob Kosberg:

You talk about the times. And it is an unusual time. We’re not going to live events, although we’re hoping that that will start again, to get over this craziness, and the pandemic and whatnot. How are you finding the necessity, the importance of having a book, having more authority in the marketplace, etcetera? How are you finding that in a time such as this? More valuable? Less valuable? Why? Examples. That kind of thing.

Kathy Mason:

Okay. So, I think it’s more valuable than ever before. It’s more out there.

Rob Kosberg:

Why do you think?

Kathy Mason:

Well, it’s because anybody can get on Facebook Live. Anybody can get on YouTube Live. Anybody can do this work. But to really have the badge of courage that a book gives you it set you out, away from everyone else. The other thing that I’m seeing is that summits are really big. I helped with the International Association for Near-Death Studies, went online with their summit in April or May this year. And I was as a moderator for part of it. And they actually did almost the same amount of entries and dollars and cents that they did from live events. I don’t know how many years they’ve been doing the live event. I’ve been to it for probably four years. It’s an international event and people from all over the world could participate in the summit.

Rob Kosberg:

So just to be clear, you’re saying their virtual summit made as much money as their live summit did in the past?

Kathy Mason:

Yeah. But to be selected as a speaker in all these summits is you almost have to have a book. I’m required at a summit in January. And almost all of the people I had in my summit were had a book.

Rob Kosberg:

Were authors.

Kathy Mason:

Yeah. I think you have to differentiate yourself. The other thing I wanted to bring up that I’m finding I’m really excited to learn what’s new and cool that’s working right now. So, I spend a lot of my time with that. And what some people are doing with their books is if when we publish a book, we publish a book for physical print on demand. We publish at Kindle. And then we also do a PDF. Well, a lot of the new way of doing a PDF is doing flip books on your website. So, they stay on your website longer. They can download the PDF.

You also can have the physical feeling, which isn’t like the digital Kindle book. With this you hear the pages going.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Kathy Mason:

So that’s working very drastically.

Rob Kosberg:

That’s interesting.

Kathy Mason:

Yeah. No. There are so many things like this. There’s a magazine that used to be out of date that were thrown out at the doctor’s office or the free magazines that people spend all this money on their ads for. Now they’re digital online. And they can last for as long as that website is up.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Interesting.

Kathy Mason:

So, there’s so many ways to get your book and your message out.

Rob Kosberg:

And the people stand…

Kathy Mason:

I want to encourage people to go for it. Go for it.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Love it.

Kathy Mason:

If you want to be seen, I don’t think you can get seen in the same way. You can’t get on all these.

Rob Kosberg:

Well, you’re an example of that, because you’ve written books on multiple different topics. I like when people put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. So that’s great. So, tell me, how can people find you? You’re writing a new book, it’s not out yet. Where can people learn a little bit more about you and what it is that you’re doing and excited about?

Kathy Mason:

Okay. Well, I’m very active on Facebook. And so, my personal profile is Kathy Mason Love. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time I do a Facebook Live show called Conscious Business Zone, with people that are great resources for conscious businesspeople that are too busy running their business to go find all these amazing people.

Rob Kosberg:

Nice.

Kathy Mason:

That’s one way. I’m also on LinkedIn. I have a big following on LinkedIn and Twitter. My website is masonworksmarketing.com.

Rob Kosberg:

Okay.

Kathy Mason:

And I’m available. We can chat with me on Messenger. And I’m always looking to learn from people and to help get word out there. Right now, one of the projects I’m working on is a collaboration with Spirituality Gone Wild, to put our shows on TV.

Rob Kosberg:

Oh, how cool.

Kathy Mason:

So, we’re working on Roku, Hulu and Sky. And the Sky is Hulu for all of England, all of the British Isles. So, we’re working on that. There’ll be 12 hours of programming on our side and 12 hours on the English side. There’s never been a chance to get your words and your visibility out for so little before. And I used to say that about Facebook. That’s part of what I was talking about with my book is, “Hey you guys, you still have to pay to do these.”  But honestly, it just keeps expanding. It just keeps expanding if you have a desire to serve and you see this time as a chance to really help others, the world is your oyster. Really.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it. Love it. Well said Kathy. Thanks for being on the Publish. Promote. Profit. Podcast. Great to have you. And lots of places for people to connect with you and learn about what you’re doing and when your newest book comes out. So, thanks again. Thank you for being on and I look forward to seeing the exciting things you’re doing in the future.

Kathy Mason:

Thank you.