Nick Hutchison helps business authors, promote their book, using a done for you, high quality video content process. Nicks team will fly to where you live, record 50 or 100 short form videos about your book content, and give you all of the files to post consistently on social media. This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. Listen to this engaging conversation and then reach out to Nick to see how he can help you Use Video to Gain Clients using your book. Learn more about Nick on his website.
Experts Speak
How Authors Use Video to Gain Clients with Nick Hutchison
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Expert Speak Podcast with Michael Dolan. Each episode features a leading expert who shares helpful insights, practical tips, and memorable stories that will inspire you, educate you, and help you enjoy more success, freedom, and purpose in your life. For the next few minutes, enjoy listening to Expert Speak with Michael Dolan. - And welcome to another episode of Expert Speak. I am Michael Dolan. Today I'm talking with Nick Hutchinson. Nick, thanks for being my guest today, buddy. - I'm excited to be here, and ready to bring the energy and some value. - Awesome, that is great. So Nick and I met at a strategic coach meeting earlier this year and we kind of passed in the hallways and he heard what I did, he's like, "We need to talk." And so we had the meeting and we talked, I'm like, "I'm glad we talked." So Nick runs a company called Book Thinkers and they do a lot of things, but one of the things I'm really excited about Nick and what I really want to talk about today is how authors use video to gain clients and you've got a whole process around that. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Tell me, Nick, how in the world did you get doing what you're doing today? - Well, Michael, what usually surprises people, especially given my background, I've got about a thousand books behind me is that I was not much of a reader growing up. I was more of the athlete stereotype, not really much of the academic. I mean, you couldn't pay me to do my homework when I was in high school. And that behavior continued through most of my college experience as well, but my life really changed when I was introduced to personal development podcasts at an internship going into my senior year of college. And so my boss at the time, I think he recognized what I now call unfulfilled potential, right? I was a little rough around the edges. He said, "Nick, there are so many amazing people "that have shared so much wisdom in these podcasts "and you're commuting about an hour each way to work, "every day." And he said, "Listening to the same song or playlist "for the 300th time probably won't change your life, "but the right podcast might show just like this." And so I started listening to podcasts where successful people shared the secrets to life. And I realized that these people are readers. And so I started to read books as well and apply them to my role. And I started to read as a way to solve problems and build skills and expand my consciousness and all the good things. And I fell in love with books. Now, to make a long story short, I started sharing the books I was reading on social media as a way to document my favorite takeaways from each one. And also as a way to connect with like-minded people. And before you know it, I built a following of readers. As that following grew, I had authors knocking on my door, asking if I could help promote and market their books. And so that's how I came to start book thinkers, which now is a much larger company. It's matured a little bit. And as you highlighted, we help authors promote and market their books. Especially through short form video content, which I believe is the fastest way to build a relationship with somebody online. - Absolutely. 100% agree. I just, I've been talking to some of my clients about the use of video. And I use a lot of video in email and all kinds of things because I think you're right. It brings such a personal nature to it. And it increases anticipation and it decreases anxiety because I get to know who you are. So I want to kind of be quiet and give you a platform here to say, all right, let's talk about authors, people who have books, whether they're my clients, somebody else doesn't matter. If you're a business owner, you've got a book. Let's talk, Nick, about how they, why they should be using video and how you can help them get it, get some great videos recorded, but also promoted. - Yeah, a little bit of additional background context. I grew my own social media platform from zero to hundreds of thousands of followers, organically leveraging video. And so authors used to pay me to rent space on my feed. If you wanted me to talk about your book, it was thousands of dollars and you could get in front of my audience that I spent years and years and years building. And then authors started to ask me, "Nick, it's cool that I can get in front of your audience, but how do I build my own?" And I knew that it was through video content that I built mine. And I knew that it would have to be through video content if they wanted to build their own audience. Now, selling into your own audience is difficult. Some authors have an audience, but they don't know how to tap into it and others don't have an audience and they don't know how to go about getting there. And so what my team does is we fly out to the authors with the cameras, the lighting, the microphones. And before we even show up, we go through their book line by line. We pull out every piece of standalone value, whether it's educational or entertaining, that deserves to be turned into a video when we map it out. And then when we show up, we feed them that content in the right structure, in the right formula. We help them work through that process of filming the content, then we fly back home, we edit it, we've got our own internal team and everything like that, we give it to them for posting. And so what we recommend is that authors, whether we build the video content or not, they start distributing that video before the book launch so that they can warm up their audience, by the time the book comes out, they can throw a right hook, that call to action and get somebody to buy the book. And so when I think about properly structured video content, in that little short form video, less than 60 seconds, you wanna fit three things in there. The first is a hook. That's typically eight words or less and it draws your ideal client into the video. An example for you, Michael, might be, here are three reasons you should write a book and the third one might surprise you. Now what does that do? That draws your ideal customer into the video. And it also anchors something later in the video that they should stick around for. So you retain that viewer because that third one, there's some anticipation there. Then you provide value and some credibility. Hi, I'm Michael, here's my company, here's what we do, here's how many authors I've helped, here's the first reason, the second reason, the third reason. Now you've provided value to your target customer. And then on the backend, call the action. Hey, if you're interested in learning more, click the link in my bio and let's have a conversation about your book. So you've got the hook, you provide value, which is either entertaining or educational. And then you've got that call to action that sits at the backend of that video, which is, hey, click the link in my bio. And that's what authors need to do to sell the books into their audience and also generate leads for their backend business. - Yeah, that's so good. I hope everybody got that. You can obviously rewind it and rethink it because it's so important to do that. And I love how you say it, selling the book into your audience, right? Because whether you're selling your book or whether you're following my strategy of giving your book away, it's still selling the ideas into the audience, giving them an easy next step, because most people, and they can, I assume you'll agree with me on this, on most websites, it's a big call to action. It's a sketch of a call with me today. And I keep saying, that's great, but I'm not ready for that. I'm still researching. I want a next step, which is probably, let me read your book first, get to know you, watch some of your videos. Oh, you are my kind of people. Now I'm ready to schedule a call with you, but it probably doesn't happen today. Do you find that? - Yeah, 1,000%. And just like you highlighted, the call to action could be anything. It could be join my email list. It could be let me send you a free copy of my book. It could be follow me. It could be share this video with somebody in a network that needs to hear it today. It could be anything. But the goal for social media, from my perspective, is to provide value. That's the first, second, and third priority of everything that we recommend. And Gary Vee has this great concept. He calls it jab, jab, jab, right hook. And the idea is that instead of showing up on social media and just throwing right hooks all day, like buy from me, sign up for a call, join my newsletter. Instead, you want a jab for a little while. You want to provide value. You want to get to know your audience. You want them to get to know you and build a relationship. And then every once in a while when you throw a right hook, it will land more efficiently 'cause you know your audience and there's a relationship there. You know how they might react. And that's the goal, is just provide value. Consistently, establish yourself as a subject matter expert and whatever you've written your book on, but provide value. - Yeah, let's talk about that consistency and how you and your team, you go through the entire book, which I love because that way the author, they shouldn't be scared or startled about talking about the topic because they've already written the book. You just guide them through this and talk about the process, but also the number of videos you're creating in such a short time so that they can have that consistency. - Yeah, we have two popular kind of intro packages. One is where my team stays for one day and we film 50, 50 short form thought leadership style videos, leveraging the same formula I've already mentioned. Or again, a little bit more popular as we stay for a second day and we double the video count. So over two days we can build 100 pieces of properly structured, professionally edited video that represents you, your brand, your book and everything in your ecosystem. And so that process is pretty pain free because like I've mentioned, we fly to the author so they don't need to go anywhere. We show up and set up right in their home or office space so they can change outfits and use the facilities and do whatever they need to do. So it's not that intimidating. My team is super high empathy. So we're trained on how to help the authors come across as charismatic, warm and competent. They coach on body language. And again, they're helping to feed that video structure that we mentioned before. So they'll tell the author, "Hey Michael, why don't you try this hook? Here are three reasons you should write a book and the third one might surprise you. And we'll coach you through two or three different takes of that hook until it feels natural. We'll then feed each one of those building blocks. Here's number one, here's number two, here's number three and then we'll feed that call to action. And we can build like I said, 50 videos in one day. So after we leave, my team edits the content and we deliver it five videos a week for either 10 or 20 weeks, depending on the package they've selected in today's format. And so the author just has to post the content as it comes in. And the beautiful thing is that our content is professional enough for LinkedIn, which is rolling out a dedicated short form video feed right now. But it's also casual enough for all the other platforms, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. And so that same piece of video content can be distributed across five platforms. And now there's a virtual version of you, the author, out there teaching, providing value and collecting interest for whatever your call to action is. And so that's the beauty is that you don't have to wake up today and think, why do I post on social media? Because we've already delivered that video for you. You filmed it a couple of months ago. And consistency is tough. It's tough to wake up every single day and think, how do I provide value today? Instead, we recommend batching that into one or two days and having somebody help you with it. - Yeah, without question. And that's how everybody should be doing it. And the other thing is not only are you consistently showing up, but your message is consistent with what you've written in your book. That's the cornerstone message of who you are and how you operate. So all of this content that's now dripping out week after week after week is doing nothing but reinforcing to your audience that you are the thought leader. You are the person they should be looking at. And it really does help business owners grow their business because they are consistent around one message over time. Fair? - Very fair. Sometimes people get caught up in these vanity metrics of number of followers and things like that. But a mentor of mine, Rory Vaden, he said it's not about how many followers you have, but about how much money you make per follower. Now, he's kind of saying that tongue in cheek a little bit, but you get my point. You wanna sit in a niche, you wanna provide value to your target customer, build a relationship with them over time through consistent content so that by the time they're ready to make a decision, you're the first person that comes to mind. And that's the way you do it. You do it through short form video content delivered over a long period of time. And just like you've already highlighted a couple of times, video is not intimidating. It's something that we can work through at your own pace with your own content. You can be real and authentic. You don't have to be salesy. You just serve, which is what we're all trying to do. We're trying to serve. - That's right. And the thing I really appreciate about Nick you and what you've put together is it's done for you. You're flying there. I just restate that aspect. When somebody works with you, the simplicity, because so much marketing as the business owners involved at some level, and you just come and you just take all of it away to get these videos created for them. Talk about just the simplicity. When somebody calls and says, yes, all right, let's do this. What happens? - Michael, is it appropriate to share pricing during the-- - 100%, if you'd like to, absolutely. - Okay, fantastic. I think one of the big differentiators for us, outside of the fact that we work specifically with authorpreneurs, right? Business owners who have written books, and that we love books. Like we genuinely believe that the right book at the right time can permanently change a reader's life and get them to fall in love with you as a person that provides value. But all of that aside, one of the other differentiators is that our pricing is all inclusive. So for $10,000, two members of my team will fly anywhere in North America and spend one full day with you building 50 thought leadership style professional short form videos. Or, like I said more popularly, for an additional 5,000. So a total of $15,000. Two members of my team will fly anywhere in North America and spend two full days with you building 100 videos. So the price per video is pretty nominal, especially if you have some type of higher ticket complimentary product or service behind the seat. Coaching, consulting, speaking, some type of back end service business. That's our bread and butter. My team does everything from preparing the content, to flying out, to setting up the cameras in lighting and evaluating your space and deciding where to film, to even feeding you the content that you just have to reiterate. Now, we're not trying to control every single word. We're not scripting and using teleprompters, but we'll feed you, hey, here's a fun hook idea. Here's some content from your own material. By the way, as a bonus, we also went through 25 podcast interviews. We watched your TEDx speech. We also went through your business website to really good a good understanding for what you do. We feed it to them and then we do all the editing. After we leave. And so it really is as done for you. I mean, we can't sit in the seat and pretend to be you. But other than that, we do as much of the process as we can. 'Cause we know that our ideal client, these business owners who have written books, they're busy. They don't wanna think about all of the content that they wanna create. They just want somebody to do it for them. And we really try to be as efficient in that process as possible. - Yeah, that's great. Thanks for sharing that because that gives people an idea to go, "Wow, really?" And these are high quality videos. They're going to represent you well. You've heard Nick talk about the platforms you can post them on. All the social media platforms, your website, YouTube, you name it, you've got this warehouse now of content to continually position yourself. Because having a book is great. Knowing how to use that book in your marketing to impact your audience and to engage with them, that's where the money's made. It really is. And Nick and his team have this amazing process where it's done for you. They come to you. Oh my goodness. And I mean, you look at the value of a one client. Most of our clients, Nick, one client pays for this. And you've got this content now that's going to be evergreen because it's content coming from your book which came from your heart and your mind. It's amazing. So Nick, I mean, I'm a fan. You know that we could talk about this a lot because we're both marketers and we understand the value of communicating, of connecting. Where can somebody go? If they're listening to this and go on, oh, okay, this is like too good to be true. Seriously, what's the next step? How do they find out more information, connect with you, your team? - Well, Michael, I'll provide you a custom link that you can use in the show description so that anybody that signs up for a call with me to learn a little bit more about the process, maybe tell me about their book and their business. I'll know they came from you, so I could say, thank you. That's the best next step. Now, if you want to jump right to our website to learn more, there's plenty of great information there as well. Book thinkers spelled just like it sounds bookthinkers.com. And if you want to get a sense for who I am in a little bit more detail, check us out on Instagram @bookthinkers. You'll see a vibrant community. We've got hundreds of thousands of readers over there interacting with our content. We try to share a new book every day. So you can see some of the people that we support and help over there too. - That's awesome. Okay, I'm going to grab all that. We're going to have that in the show notes so that you can, after you go back and re-listen to this podcast, because there is so much value that he talked about, not just in his service, but in the three items that you need to be in your video and how to do that, go back and re-listen to this and then reach out to Nick, schedule that call and see how he can help you as an author use video to more fully engage your audience to grow your business and to really position yourself as the expert in their mind. Nick, man, thank you for what you do. Thanks for being my guest today. - You are amazing. And if anybody's listening to this show and they haven't reached out to Michael, just reach out, shoot him a message, shoot him an email, rate this podcast, give him a thanks. It takes a lot of work to produce content like this. And I just know how professional he is behind the scenes. He puts in a lot of effort into producing this. So give him a thumbs up, give him a five star rating. It goes a long way. - Thanks, Nick. I appreciate that. Thanks for listening to Experts Speak. We'll talk to you next week with another great episode. God bless. (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to Experts Speak with Michael DeLong. If what you've heard today was helpful to you, reach out to our expert guest and see how they can serve you to bring you more success, freedom and purpose in your life. (upbeat music)