Unleashing the Power of Transformation: A Conversation with Christine Kloser Ep. 118

Christine Kloser: 00:00:00

So a lot of what we do once someone is working with us is reassuring them, guiding them, helping them really just find their flow and ease with that. It is kind of a, it's a journey.

Natasha Miller: 00:00:13

Welcome to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. How do people end up becoming an entrepreneur? How do they scale and grow their businesses? How do they plan for profit? Are they in it for life? Are they building to exit? These and a myriad of other topics will be discussed to pull back the veil on the wizardry of successful and FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. My book, RELENTLESS is now available everywhere books can be bought online, including Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com, try your local indie bookstore too. And if they don't have it, they can order it. Just ask them. The reviews are streaming in and I'm so thankful for the positive feedback as well as hearing from people that my memoir has impacted them positively. It is not enough to be resilient. You have to be relentless. You can go to TheRelentlessBook.com for more information. Thank you so much. Christine Kloser is a bestselling author and founder, CEO of Get Your Book Done, a publishing company focused on the work of women writing transformational books. We talk about marketing strategies, the challenges writers face, and how she helps them bridge the gap between where they are. To publishing their book. Now, let's get right into it.

Christine Kloser: 00:01:40

I had started writing a book, I would say probably in the mid nineties myself, but it's still to this day is not published, believe it or not. But in 2002, the year after my husband and I were married, we were at a seminar and he was listening to all those different speakers and in the process of listening to one of the speakers, he had this like download, there's no other way that I can describe it other than a download. And he had this download that he was gonna write a book. And I'm like, that's great honey. What's it about? And he was convinced that he was gonna go interview Major League baseball players from all of the Major League teams, cuz he's a big baseball guy. And he was gonna really get to understand their mindset. Like how do, how do you succeed in a game of failure? And I was like, that's terrific. Except he didn't know a single major league baseball player. He didn't know anyone who knew any major league baseball players. And so when I told him, great, you figure that out and I'll figure out how to publish it. Even though we were relative newlyweds, I didn't have a whole lot of confidence that he was gonna be able to get all these interviews, and then 300 plus interviews later with players from all 30 major league teams. He had his interviews, he had his book, and I had to figure out how to publish it. So I did. And at the same time that he was working on his and I was learning to publish his, I thought, as long as I know how to do this, I've got something to say too. Why don't I get a bunch of women from my women's networking group that I used to write in Los Angeles and we'll all each write a chapter and we'll put it in a book ala Chicken Soup for the Soul style and then I'll get published too and I can check that off my list. So in 2004, my husband's book, stepping Up to the Plate, came out just two weeks before my first book, inspiration to Realization. And as I say, the rest is history. Amazing.

Natasha Miller: 00:03:29

Wow. And okay, is he still authoring books?

Christine Kloser: 00:03:34

He did that one and then he did an updated edition of it. But he is still speaking on that same book that came out in 2004, 19 years later. He still goes out and speak. He still coaches, players around mindset, um, will authors, actors, and athletes all around mindset. But yeah, he still goes out and talks about that book almost 20 years later. They didn't need to write another one.

Natasha Miller: 00:03:59

Yeah. Maybe stop while you're ahead. In 2004, self-publishing wasn't as prominent as it is now, so how difficult was it for you to break that barrier and be one of the pioneers? I don't know if. If you can,

Christine Kloser: 00:04:13

Yeah, I mean, I dunno that I consider myself necessarily a pioneer, but I certainly got started in this business before the Kindle like even existed. So that tells you what I've seen in terms of the whole publishing industry and how it's evolved and how it's shifted and what it looked like back then for both of us was ordering. Thousands of books at a time. I still remember the day I was pregnant. Our daughter was born February 13th, 2005 and like in November of 2004, so I was significantly pregnant when books were being delivered. And we literally rented like a lift back truck. We drove up to the print house outside of Los Angeles, cause I lived in LA at the time and we like, somehow my husband figured how to get that truck backed up. And we had these pallets of books and. All the women who contributed to my book all met at my house at the same time and we just kind of unloaded the book and you know, the boxes of books and each woman got their share of books and that's how we did it back then. But I think I had to order, I probably ordered cuz we gave 40 women each a hundred books. So we ordered about 4,000 copies.

Natasha Miller: 00:05:23

And so that was offset printing?

Christine Kloser: 00:05:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was full on major print one at a print house. There was no print on demand back then. Really.

Natasha Miller: 00:05:33

That's a whole skillset that you had to learn. And you don't have to today learn no. That deep of a skillset unless you wanna do an offset printing run. Yeah, which some people do. Good for you. Okay, so what type of authors are attracted to your company? And second of all, which may be a different answer, who is your ideal client?

Christine Kloser: 00:05:55

They're actually kind of one and the same, really who was attracted to us and who our ideal client is. Our ideal client really is like a woman, usually 40 plus, who has lived some life, who has had some experience, and who feels like she's at that point in her life where there is something more. Where she knows she's here to bring more light to the world, to bring more of her gifts to the world, to be an influence on the people that she is meant to impact and influence in whatever way, shape, or form that looks like. And she doesn't want to just be a number in some factor, like book publishing factory. She's a woman who appreciates and values, true client care, nurturing, handholding, guidance, feeling assured at every single step of the process. Not like having to try to figure out, well, Where is my book now and what's going on with it? And God, that editor was really not very nice with how they said, how they said, and why can't I do it this way when I wanna do it that way? It's someone who just appreciates being really well taken care of and nurtured through what we believe me and my entire team believe is an absolutely life-changing, transformational process of writing that book and putting your stake in the ground and being willing and ready at the point in your life where you're saying. Okay world. This is who I am. This is me. That's really our ideal client, and that's who's attracted us. We just had a couple dozen people on one of our masterminds yesterday, and I mean, we were celebrating two new authors that just launched, and three more authors who just submitted their manuscripts to start the editing process. And it was like a love fest. Just everyone supporting everyone, and so grateful for the support they receive from the team and from the upliftment that they get from each other. And for the feeling that no matter what they're going through, we will take them by the hand and walk them through it in a way that feels safe, in a way that feels certain in, you know, today's not necessarily super safe feeling kind of world. So that's who we serve.

Natasha Miller: 00:08:10

Yeah.

Christine Kloser: 00:08:11

Our new tagline actually is we're just updating our website as we speak. Our new tagline is writing a book can feel scary and we make it feel safe. And that's what we've been doing for almost 20 years.

Natasha Miller: 00:08:23

You're a safe house for authors.

Christine Kloser: 00:08:25

We are a safe house.

Natasha Miller: 00:08:26

How much time, and maybe you don't have this measurement, but on average, how much time does your team spend with an author and I'd say one-on-one, cuz I know you're doing the Coaching and Masterminds, which is group, which is incredibly powerful and shouldn't be, in my opinion, separated in importance to one-on-one. Cause I think they're both so important. So one-on-one about how much is earmarked on average.

Christine Kloser: 00:08:53

As much as it takes depending upon how someone comes in to work with us. If we're helping them write the book, you know, and they're being guided through some one-on-one coaching and writing the book, we usually coach over the course of six months to help someone through their writing process. And then in publishing, it's like they're not necessarily being coached in the publishing because it's done for your service. We're doing everything for them. But it's as much one-on-one time is needed with the team in order to have that book be what that client wants it to be. So if that author is like, you know, needs a little bit of extra time on the cover, or they're needing a little bit of extra work with developmental editing or whatever it is, we will do what we need to do so that each and every one of our clients is really happy with their final product.

Natasha Miller: 00:09:43

Is that a weekly cadence for when you're writing with them?

Christine Kloser: 00:09:47

When we're riding with them, the coaching is usually every other week, so they have time to make progress in between enough to come back with, "Okay, here's what I did." "Here's what I didn't do." "Here's what I have questions about." We find that if we go every week, it's like it doesn't really give them enough to dig in enough and have enough to come back with us so we can keep moving them forward and forward and forward in the process. We find that that cadence kind of works best.

Natasha Miller: 00:10:12

I love the idea of just how much whatever it takes, but I'm wondering on the business side, How you budget for that, because there's some high maintenance people that need a lot more and Yeah. PS I might be one of them. So I'm not like trying to jab anybody just being self-aware. And then there are people that are like, "Yeah, I'm good. How do you manage that on your P and L?

Christine Kloser: 00:10:35

Yeah. What we've found that actually kind of balances out. It comes out the wash. Yeah, it comes out in the wash. And of course like the way that we work is we sort of have a set number of like a 50,000 word count that's included in our publishing package and anything above that, there are set fees for the next 5,000 words in the next 10,000 words, and it's 15,000 words. I mean, sometimes it's another hundred thousand words if we're doing 150,000 word manuscript for someone, which is kind of a beast of a book. So we make sure that we kind of account for what the extra is with what the length of the book is, but we also find that we have some clients like. The first cover we show them, bam, done. They love it, finish like it science sealed and delivered. So they kind of make up for energetically and financially the clients where we go through multiple iterations cuz you know, can we try that Fonda, can we move that word a little bit? And so we have both ends of the spectrum. So we kind of, you know, price. I'll say in the middle because we know it's gonna balance out cuz they're not all on the higher maintenance side and they're not all on the super low. Like love everything we do, like right off the bat and just okay, everything's approved immediately. Yeah. So in the middle is a nice, happy medium.

Natasha Miller: 00:11:54

Are you a published author? Have you always thought you had a book inside of you? Have other people told you you've got to write a book? If so, I highly suggest you work with us at Poignant Press. We can help you write, figure out the best publishing path, and market your book to a bestseller status. Go to poignantpress.com. That's P-O-I-G-N-A-N-T-press.com. So, It was interesting that you would be willing to talk about starting, growing, evolving, then closing and expanding your business. Can you walk me through that?

Christine Kloser: 00:12:28

Well, for me, I had never set out to start a publishing company and to work with authors, right? And here we are, having trained, literally about 90,000 authors around the world have gone through various trainings, virtual and in-person events that we've done. We've published more than 650 authors and it all just started out of love for my husband in wanting to support him and his dream. So it used to feel like it was easy to start a business and just like catch up to it as you go. But as things grew and as we had demand for me to help people write their own books, cuz it was just anthologies, you know, anthologies are easy, let's. Get a bunch of people together, have everyone write a chapter. Super easy, fun. We actually have our next one coming out this July called Turning Point Moments, featuring another 30 authors. But when people had asked me to help them write in their own books, I finally, in 2007, after a couple years of doing this, said yes to them. And in so doing, I had to create a program, write my own book, because I was not gonna teach someone how to write a book if I wasn't actually engaged in that process myself. A lot of people out there teach stuff they haven't done. I wanna teach only things that I have done, but I didn't know then what I know now, and I ended up writing the wrong book and I ended up growing. A business around that book that in the first six months I was like, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing.

Natasha Miller: 00:13:56

Okay, wait, sorry. You cannot leave. You don't have to say the book name, but why was it not right?

Christine Kloser: 00:14:03

It's a fantastic book. I will say the name. It's called The Freedom Formula, how to Put Soul in Your Business and Money In Your Bank. It came out in 2008. It has sold thousands of copies. It was a beautiful, amazing, life-changing, pioneering book around the space of bringing soul and business together. My jam in all of that was that how to put soul in your business. Like really digging into the essence of who the person is and how that essence imbues into their life's work and their business. What it attracted to me was people who wanted to put money into my bank part.

Natasha Miller: 00:14:40

Got it.

Christine Kloser: 00:14:41

And

Natasha Miller: 00:14:42

Business card books.

Christine Kloser: 00:14:44

That was not my thing I had made. See how that happened? Yeah. Yeah. It's like they missed the how to put soul in the business and money in your bank part. The soul comes first. The money in the bank comes second, but I could not continue to pursue and keep open this business where people wanted something from me. Like I hit a point with one particular client and I thought to myself like, even if he paid me a million dollars, I wouldn't want to do what this client wants me to do, which is not what we agreed that I would be able to provide for him. And it was in that moment that I was just like, I can't do this anymore. And I ended up pulling the plug on the business and everyone around was like, you're crazy. No one launches a book like that, sells it many copies like it's Neil Donald Walsh, number one, New York Times multiple bestselling author right there. Forward, have an event like your first event selling from the stage, like breaking all the records anyone had seen from a first time person selling from the stage. Like, you can't pull the plug on this. I was like, yeah, yeah, I can actually, I can pull the plug on it cause it doesn't feel right. So I pulled the plug knowing full well that it might just mean complete financial implosion cuz I was a sole breadwinner for my family. My husband was a stay-at-home dad at the time, and author who would go out and do his speaking gigs, but he wasn't gonna be paying the mortgage on selling his books at the quantity he was selling them. So I pulled the plug, the cards fell where they fell. We ended up losing everything and I had to come on my knees for weeks, if not months, every day, literally for hours, begging for clarity and begging to be used and begging to be shown by the universe. Why did you bring me here? What am I supposed to do from this point? I had been doing transformational work since 1997 when I first started facilitating retreats. I'd been doing that longer than I've even been doing books, and I was like, where do you want me on the map? What am I supposed to be doing? I know you didn't bring me here for nothing, so show me and what I got in a moment of clarity. Was that I was supposed to merge my transformational leadership and transformational work that I've been doing since 97 and bring that into the world of authorship and create this whole movement of transformational authors. So in 2011, that is exactly what I started doing. Had a lot of people tell me I was crazy. No, like, who's gonna buy something called the transformational author? Experience Like that doesn't have any value proposition in it, but it was the only thing that I could do where I feel like I could stand in integrity while I was losing my house of foreclosure going through bankruptcy, like all the horrors of, you know, complete financial loss. I'm like, I needed to be an integrity more than anything else in that space cuz there were a lot of other people at the time. Also going through what I was going through. Who were continuing to sell people on how to, you know, make money when they themselves had this whole thing going on. I'm like, I, I can't do that. So, transformational authorship, it was, I hosted a summit in May of 2011, making a quick six figures in like 60 days, delivering that summit and, providing great value for people in a way that they had not seen done in the author space before. So flash forward here we are. Yeah. Continuing to serve transformational authors.

Natasha Miller: 00:18:21

Well, I'm glad the universe responded to your request.

Christine Kloser: 00:18:25

Yeah, it sure did. It knew what was needed and how I had been perfectly. I trained through some pretty hot fire, but I had been trained and positioned perfectly to bring those worlds together.

Natasha Miller: 00:18:40

For the authors that you're working with now, I know that you work with them on marketing. Can you share with us the top three marketing tips or strategies that you really suggest to them, it could be specific for this space or authors in general to get their work out. By the way I have an, a friend whose wife wrote this beautiful book and she's just so admin, just against marketing. She's like, people should read it, they should come to it naturally. I'm like, they're not gonna know about it. So what would you say to her?

Christine Kloser: 00:19:15

Oh, what I would say to her is to really consider the mindset shift. Marketing, like just replace the word marketing with the word sharing. Because marketing, let's face it, I mean, there is a lot of sleazy in your face. Like you're watching a video on YouTube and all of a sudden like this bulls like in your face, kind of person, comes out trying to tell you something that you don't even need and that you do not even wanna know about. And there's a lot of manipulative marketing out there, so it's understandable if someone who has a bad taste in their mouth around marketing, and many of our clients feel that way. They're like, I'm here to serve people. Like I don't wanna manipulate or sell or cajole or any of that. And we really try to get everyone to understand that marketing is sharing. And if you've written a book and you believe in what you wrote, right? We hope that you would wanna share that with people. So how you choose to share that, whether you're a social media person or you're a podcast person, you wanna go out speaking or you know you're gonna run Amazon ads, or what all the different things are that you could do to market your book. There are just some core things that I believe that every author needs, no matter which avenue they choose to pursue, and that is you need at least a simple web page for your book. You need a lead magnet that is book related. But preferably not an actual chapter from the book. Something that's a little more concise, related, complimentary, but not the chapter. And you need a mechanism through a technical mechanism through which you can capture names and email addresses in exchange for people getting that gift. So you can start to build your list so you have people that you can, you know, consistently reach out to and let know when your book comes out. And always have something free to give people to come into your world. Because if you are. Say you're gonna do a guest blog, you wanna be able to offer those people that read that blog, whatever your free thing is to come find out about you and get a taste of the book. Yeah. If you're out speaking, you wanna be able to say, okay, you know, you can text this number or go here, scan's QR code on the screen, and go get a free copy of whatever your lead magnet is. Your freebie is Anything that you really choose to do, that's essential. A lead magnet. A page to send people to, to get onto your list, and then the technical mechanism to capture names and automatically deliver that and continue to communicate with those people that opt in. Those are like the core three, but what people do is so different. We don't believe that book marketing looks like do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. Because if someone's a speaker, Then maybe they shouldn't be writing blog posts. Right? And if someone really prefers writing and they're terrified to speak, we don't wanna be getting them on podcast interviews, right? So like the way we do it is we work with our clients through, we give them like either five or six, marketing planning and accountability calls where they're kind of walked through a marketing map. They get exposure to what the options are and then whittle it down and start to put plans in and be held accountable to the couple, just the few things that they're gonna do, because anyone who tries to do more than a few things, none of it's gonna be done well, so our commitment.

Natasha Miller: 00:22:36

Speaking of things to give away, you did allow for this interview a free beat to be received by anyone listening. If you wanna give that url, I'll put it in the show notes as well.

Christine Kloser: 00:22:47

Yeah, absolutely. If you just go to freegiftfromchristine.com. That's freegiftfromchristine.com. There you'll receive sort of a guide, it's called How to Map Out Your book in 15 minutes or less. And it is just a very essential guide for helping you kind of begin to put shape to your book and how it's going to impact. And once you know that, then it's like the writing becomes clear, what the chapter ideas are could become clear. So it really is a great way to sort of initially map out the essence of your book. Cause if you can get to the essence of it, you can write it in a heartbeat. So yeah, so to get that, how to map out your book guide, it's at free book or freegiftfromchristine.com.

Natasha Miller: 00:23:34

The last question I wanted to ask you is, what do you think in your experience, the biggest challenge your authors face, both before coming to you? Because that's one set of challenges. And then once they're in with the process, and is it the same challenge?

Christine Kloser: 00:23:50

Yeah. I think before they come to us, there's multiple things going on, but the big ones that we see are just confusion. Like how do I do this? What do I do? What do I do first? How, you know, a book feels like a big thing. Like, but you have to start somewhere. And they oftentimes don't know where to start. So there is some confusion and there's also some self-doubt that comes into the mix. Like, who am I to write about book? Can I really do this? A lot of them feel like, oh, my book's already been written by somebody else. Which is completely untrue cuz until you write your book, no one's written it your way. So they come in both, you know, a little confused and overwhelmed, but also riddled with some self-doubt is what we see on the front end when they come to us. They just want tell order to do it and be able to believe in themselves that they can do it. Like that's really what they're looking for. And then the challenge that they face through the process, sometimes it's helping them understand that they think it's gonna look one way, that is gonna be completely linear. But we always say that you have to trust the process of this book writing journey because as you dig into the book, Things will morph and change. You will grow and change. The first book, that book I wrote, the Freedom Formula, I had to rewrite the first half of it to catch up with the second half cuz I went through my own insights and understandings through the writing process. So a lot of what we do once someone is working with us is reassuring them, guiding them, helping them really just find their flow and ease with that. It is kind of a, it's a journey. It's a journey. It's a beautiful, magnificent, life-changing, amazing journey, but it's a journey and it's not fixed. There's steps to follow for sure. You know, we'll give you the steps every single step of the way, but it's a process within the parameters. So we just always keep our people ground. We do our best to keep them grounded and feeling safe and believing themselves to do it, and helping them get the clarity and the confidence and the courage to put what they know they're here to share onto the page. It's just so incredibly rewarding to see. How they evolve and how they transform and how they grow and who they become through the process. Yes, of course we'll help them with the challenges they face when they come in, but then as they work through it, we're here to hold them, you know, and really nurture them through the process so they end up loving their book at the end and loving us, as well. Cuz you've probably heard there's a whole lot of people after publishing their book, like don't want anything to do with their publisher. And we have one client now is coming back for us to publish her fourth book cuz she's like, I wouldn't go anywhere else like this is, this is it. This is where I tell everyone to go. No one, she's never heard of anyone have the kind of publishing experience with their publishers as she has had with us. That's what we do.

Natasha Miller: 00:26:46

For more information, go to the show notes where you're listening to this podcast. Want to know more about me, go to my website, NatashaMiller.com. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you loved the show. If you did, please subscribe. Also, if you haven't done so yet, please leave a review where you're listening to this podcast now. I'm Natasha Miller. And you've been listening to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.