How To Leverage What You Already Know To Build Your Business & Career

Becoming an author and having your own book has become a proven way to establish yourself as the expert, increase your credibility and help you to stand out from your competition. It’s also a great way to attract speaking engagements, generate residual income and provide a starting point for additional products. In this interview, Michelle will share exactly how you can leverage your author status to boost your personal and professional life.

Meet Michelle Prince

Michelle Prince is a successful businesswoman, best-selling author, sought-after motivational speaker, publishing expert, leadership coach, and CEO/Founder of Performance Publishing Group, a “partner” publishing company dedicated to making a difference… one story at a time. She is known as America’s Productivity Coach, is a certified Human Behavior Consultant, and dedicates herself to helping women impact the world, using the strengths and talents already within them, to create an extraordinary life. She’s helped thousands tell their stories and become published authors through her consulting, courses, seminars, and publishing services, and founded the “Book Bound Workshop”. She has also published many successful books, including her best-selling Winning in Life Now and latest, The Power of Authority.

She is a Ziglar Legacy Certified speaker/ trainer and named the Ziglar Brand Ambassador – representing the values and legacy of the late Zig Ziglar. She was the co-host of The Ziglar Show podcast, with 40 million downloads and host of her own podcast, The Power of Authority. She has been a featured speaker for many corporations, associations, and events to inspire, transform, and support leaders.

Show Notes

How did you get to be the expert you are right now with leveraging your authority and how you want to be an author to do that, and how we are leveraging kind of our story in our wisdom to make a bigger impact in the world.

My career started when I worked for Zig Ziglar. And that had a huge impact on me, because I was just out of college. And I just loved everything that he stood for and values. I knew some way, somehow, I’d be doing more of that as I as I grew into my own, if you will. But I didn’t know how to do it. I always had a goal to write a book, but I didn’t dare tell anybody about it. I remember sitting in a conference actually and thinking, well, why not me? Why not? Why don’t I just write a book. And so I’m going to write a book. And I’m just going to share it with my kids. And that’ll be that. And I did write a book. And it was my first book was called Winning In Life Now. And Zig wrote the foreword, and it was a big deal in my little world.

That book opened up this opportunity to get out there and speak and do things. I’d meet all these incredible people, and they have great stories, but they didn’t know, they didn’t have a platform. They didn’t know how to leverage it. And so I started just getting passionate about helping people figure out their story. It just kind of evolved into not just helping people find their story, but to publish them and a publishing company and everything that goes along with that. It’s been an incredible journey.

Tell us a little bit about what Book Bound is.

Book Bound is a conference I’ve been doing since 2010. Pre COVID we were doing it live, in person a couple times a year, but it’s three days and it’s designed for new authors who are trying to get clarity. What is my story? What is it? If I did want to grow my business or leverage what I’m doing, how would I do that? Yes, the publishing part comes into it, but it’s focused on getting clarity on who you are, what do you have to offer. And then how do you go through that process? How do you market a book, all of those things? And so we’ve been doing that for all those years. It’s been great. It’s amazing to see how many people have taken that information and just kind of run with it and either created their own book or their own brand.

We both share the love of helping people to tell their stories. And there is a place for that, right. And you don’t have to want to build a business to tell your story, but those that do and people that are business owners, professionals, people that are trying to differentiate from their competition, they have to look at their story, if you will, as it’s just their ability to get more visibility, more authority, how to get more revenue, respect and results all by authoring in a book. It goes through this framework and yes, you can use this framework for anything, you don’t have to write a book.

Key Takeaways

This  framework follows a seven-step process to building your authority.

•  #1 – Clarity. This goes for anything in life. We you can’t really accomplish anything unless you really have that clarity.
• #2 – Uncovering what’s holding you back. There’s so many things that get in the way of getting things done. It could be procrastination, it could be fear, it could be negative beliefs. But there’s something going on. It’s usually some mind chatter. And that’s what holds us back.
• #3 – How can I position my story to get more authority. People want to know your backstory. Why do you do what you do? How did you get into this?
• #4 – Documenting your story. You could document it in a blog, in a journal, you can do whatever, but you have to document your story, just because you know, the clarity on it doesn’t mean it’s going to benefit anyone else or benefit your brand. You have to find a way to get it out there and document it, and then publish it.
• #5 – Publishing. Yes, you can publish a book, but you can also publish a podcast, you can publish a YouTube channel. It’s your story. It’s really not about a book, it’s more about a medium that you get to share that story at a bigger level.
• #6 – Platform. When somebody thinks of you and your brand, it’s not just one thing, it’s a course, it’s a podcast, it’s a speaking event, it’s a retreat, it’s your platform. That authority comes when somebody clearly sees your platform.
• #7 – Inspiring others. It’s amazing what happens when you when you step into your greatness or you just recognize that you’ve been through a couple things in you business, or I’ve been through some things personally, that I learned a couple things here and there that I could share with other people, and it could help them. And what happens is, you don’t even know it’s happening, but you’re inspiring other people to find their clarity and to find their story and to build their platform. And it’s this cycle.

Mentioned in This Episode

Digital download to Michelle’s latest book: “The Power of Authority, How to Get the Revenue, Respect & Results You Deserve by Authoring a Book”

FREE GIFT LINK: www.thepowerofauthority.com/freebook

Website: www.michelleprince.com

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