Episode 61 // From Brand Anthem to Writing Your Own Book

Mike Jones:
Why would you not have a book? Experts publish their thoughts. They say, I think about what I do beyond just doing it, and I actually put that out into the world for others to know and learn and grow from those things.

Introduction VO:
You are listening to The Remarkabrand podcast, where authentic brands win. With your hosts, Mike Jones and David Cosand.

Mike Jones:
Sweet. We’re all back. Sam, we’re here.

Sam Pagel:
But no David.

Mike Jones:
That’s okay. We can handle that.

Sam Pagel:
Maybe I should just be David from now on.

Mike Jones:
You should just be David. I like that plan.

Sam Pagel:
And then David can be me when he comes back.

Mike Jones:
There we go. I think we’ve solved that problem.

Sam Pagel:
I think that would just be easier for everyone.

Mike Jones:
Then we don’t have to redo the intro.

Sam Pagel:
Perfect.

Mike Jones:
All right, everybody, we’re excited to be back for another episode of The Remarkabrand Podcast. I’m Mike Jones, and across from me is.

Sam Pagel:
Sam Pagel.

Mike Jones:
Sam, excited you’re here, as always. Excited to be here.

Sam Pagel:
Thank you.

Mike Jones:
We’re going to be talking about brand anthem to book, how to take your brand anthem and turn it into something publishable, that really gives you some real power in thought leadership within your industry for your firm. And there’s all sorts of great ramifications that are going to come out of that, but we’ll get to that. That’s our big topic for today. But before we do that, we should do name 10 things.

Sam Pagel:
Yep. Today is February 14th, or also known as Valentine’s Day.

Mike Jones:
Valentines.

Sam Pagel:
So in honor of St. Valentine, we’re going to name 10 Valentine’s Day ad campaign slogans, Mike.

Mike Jones:
All right.

Sam Pagel:
Why don’t you get us started?

Mike Jones:
Love To See You, by Visine.

Sam Pagel:
I like that. Love Those Loops. It’s a Fruit Loops commercial. Heart shaped, probably.

Mike Jones:
Let Me Get Some More. I don’t know who makes that one, but I like it.

Sam Pagel:
That’s a mystery ad right there.

Mike Jones:
You name it. Insert brand here.

Sam Pagel:
That’s good. I kind of want to know what that… I don’t think I want to know what that one is actually. That sounds like scalloped potatoes or something, like boxed potatoes, right?

Mike Jones:
Oh yeah, definitely.

Sam Pagel:
Rice-A-Roni.

Mike Jones:
With a cloud of hearts on the box.

Sam Pagel:
Heart-shaped Rice-A-Roni somehow.

Mike Jones:
That don’t color match at all with their brand colors.

Sam Pagel:
Pink, exclamation point.

Mike Jones:
Crayola probably.

Sam Pagel:
It’s all pink. It’s a box of all pink colors.

Mike Jones:
All pink box.

Sam Pagel:
My daughter would love it.

Mike Jones:
So would mine. See you there, some event app.

Sam Pagel:
Yup.

Mike Jones:
It’s C-U. The letters, C-U.

Sam Pagel:
Like on those-

Mike Jones:
Little candy hearts. Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah. Maybe tonight, question mark. That would be a Maybelline, but it’s something you sleep with on your face.

Mike Jones:
It’s a face-mask.

Sam Pagel:
Maybe tonight.

Mike Jones:
Maybe tonight. It’s Maybelline.

Sam Pagel:
I feel if you’re listening to this, Maybelline, feel free to use that. I feel it’s pretty good. I think that was six.

Mike Jones:
I don’t even know where we’re at. Both physically and metaphysically, I have no idea where I’m at. You Light Up my World. Solar Power Company.

Sam Pagel:
That’s good. That’s really good, Mike. Wow. That’s seven. I love. I love. I love love. That was it.

Mike Jones:
That was it. Okay, sweet.

Sam Pagel:
I love love. Was that eight? Yep. That was number eight. We got two more. Okay, let’s get this over with

Mike Jones:
You boost my day. T-Mobile.

Sam Pagel:
Boost Mobile. Come on, Boost Mobile.

Mike Jones:
No, there’s a copyright infringement going on. It’s great. There’s a whole thing.

Sam Pagel:
They stole it.

Mike Jones:
They stole it.

Sam Pagel:
All right.

Mike Jones:
They bought it out from under them. They sold it. Boost sold it to T-Mobile. They sold their rights to use the word boost.

Sam Pagel:
All right.

Mike Jones:
They licensed it.

Sam Pagel:
Then I’m going to end with boost Your T, mobile. That’s a Boost Mobile.

Introduction VO:
Find your frequency.

Mike Jones:
All right. brand anthem to book. We got to talk about this. So Sam, I don’t know if we’ve figured out a process, but we’ve got this really interesting idea that we keep coming back to with a lot of our clients, and we’ve done it for ourselves, and we’re starting to do it with some of our clients as well. But this idea of taking your brand anthem, which we talked about a couple episodes ago, which is essentially this kind of package version of your brand’s story, the story of your brand, the hero, the guide, the problem, the solution kind of covered all that. I’d recommend going back and checking that episode. If you’re listening in and you’re not sure what we mean by brand anthem, that’s basically what we mean. It’s like the story of your brand, but in kind of a package format. And we talked about a lot of ways that you can start to put that out in the world.
We talked about video, we talked about published content, even how you apply that on your website. But one thing that I think really gets a lot of people excited, especially in professional services, is this idea of taking your brand anthem and turning that into this high-powered piece of thought leadership, which probably is going to end up being a book in terms of its format. But the challenge is always like, how do you get there? How do you do that? How do you get your brand anthem into an actual book? It seems like, oh, that’s really hard, and maybe we’re not writers and maybe it’s difficult. You’ve got partners who you… Probably their names need to be on it, right? Who’s going to write it? What are you going to write about beyond just the basics of your brand anthem? So let’s talk a little bit about what should be in that brand anthem, that starting point, right? So what are some of those pieces?

Sam Pagel:
Yeah, again, I think, was it episode 59, Mike? I think it was.

Mike Jones:
I think so.

Sam Pagel:
So, go back and listen to that, that that’ll give you a really good starting point for what a brand anthem is and why you should have one. But the basic parts of a good brand anthem are the hero, the guide, and then the outcome. And mixed in there is going to be all the things that make your brand anthem unique. So it’s going to contain your values. It’s going to have some of your traits sprinkled in there, not overtly, but you’re going to craft that in. So that really, your brand anthem should never be the same as anyone else’s.
It should be very uniquely you. So for instance, if you’re an accounting firm, you’re going to probably talk about some form of accounting, and you’re going to mention the hero of your story, which of course is not you, as the brand. That’s going to be your target market or your ideal client. You are the guide. And then of course, the way that you do accounting is going to, hopefully… You’re going to figure out how you do that uniquely from every other accounting firm. And that’s going to be kind of your focal point.

Mike Jones:
And there’s that beautiful, happy ending that outcome for your clients. And that’s really what I think you’re leading with almost in your brand anthem, lead with the end, right? Start with the end and then back that up with who you help, how you help them. And I think it is important that it is unique. It has to be something that differentiates you. So if you’re finding like, oh, we’re crafting this brand anthem and just, yeah, I guess anyone really could have this same one, or, this sounds really familiar. It sounds really similar to a lot of other firms. It might be an opportunity to take some more time and develop that out a little bit further. Because really what you’re doing is you’re carving out your position in the marketplace with that brand anthem.
That’s your unique kind of stamp on this is how we do accounting, and we do it different from everyone else. And here’s our approach. Whether that’s a process that’s unique, whether that’s a philosophy that’s unique, whether that’s a particular segment of the market that’s being underserved, that you really specifically help. Or maybe it’s a way that you package your services together in a unique way, a unique kind of model of doing business, whatever that is, whatever combination of those things are, that needs to be the center point of your brand anthem, that you can get to this outcome that only you can get to because of your unique way of doing business or your unique approach, your position in the market.

Sam Pagel:
The more focused it is, the more potent it is. So if you’re an accounting firm that really specializes in auto dealers, we’ve talked about that example before, are you brave enough to really focus on that as your main thing? We are the auto dealer accounting firm, but we also service these other people and these other industries. Yeah, you can, but what are you going to communicate to people? Are you going to be the accounting firm for everyone? Maybe there’s massive accounting firms out there that service everyone from single person businesses to families, to giant corporations. There’s also small to medium-sized accounting firms that are really focused because they’ve gotten into this niche and they’ve found out that they’re really good at it, and they really understand those auto dealer owners. So how focused are you going to be? How brave are you going to be with that really tailored brand story to a very specific market?

Mike Jones:
And again, there’s freedom in that play around with those different categories. Think again, is it our process? Is it our philosophy? Is it particular kind of market that we service, particular set of services? Or maybe it’s really only one service in your kind of typical set of accounting services that you really focus on and really is your bread and butter and your kind of main point of differentiation or location. That can be another key way to position yourself. Those are all different things. And just consider, how are you going to do that? Maybe it’s even a way of just doing business. Maybe it’s something about your culture or the way that you’ve built your business. Maybe you’re a fully remote accounting firm, maybe you don’t have any office anywhere. Maybe that’s unique to you, and there’s a way to leverage that for a particular market that’s helpful to them.
Again, it has to be something of value to your client. If it’s just like, well, we do it different because we do it different, but it doesn’t actually translate to any additional value, then it’s not really a positioning thing. And you need to make that link, right? Oh, here’s how it delivers additional value, whether that’s better service, in quality of product, whether that’s a lower cost. There’s other things you can look at, but those are the big three. Which one or two of those is really how you deliver more value? Maybe it’s a particular problem set that your particular audience that you’re focused on, a particular industry or particular types of businesses, types of clients that you service, maybe there’s a particular problem that is common to all of them. They’re all trying to overcome, or a particular success or goal that they’re aiming at that you have uniquely figured out how to solve for them.
Okay, let’s say you’ve got all that. You’ve got this brand anthem. It’s well messaged. It’s succinct. Maybe you even have a slogan or a tagline to go with it. You’ve started to develop it and put it out. Maybe it’s on the website, on the homepage, you’ve maybe put out some blog posts about it. That might be a good next step. But if we have this end in mind of like, man, this is such a great anthem that we really want, we want to make it not only accessible to a lot of people, but we wanted to really mean something and have depth to it. Maybe there’s a lot more we could write about it than just two or three sentences. We want to get to that book.

Sam Pagel:
You want to put it to work. You don’t want to just have this thing that you have somewhere on a Word document that’s cool, and it’s like, well, we worked hard on that, but we got to get back to doing taxes for everybody.

Mike Jones:
So you do have to do that too. But carve out some time for this too.

Sam Pagel:
So the starting point is the brand anthem. Now number two is the simple process, and if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the alliteration there. So the simple process, and really this is not like a how do we write a book process? This is kind of just a content strategy that happens to end in a book being published, a physical book that is published. So there’s a couple steps to this process, this content strategy. We typically say, carve out 12 months. You could do that faster, you could do it slower, but 12 months seems like a pretty standard attainable goal.
You might be sitting there thinking like, oh, we could do this in three months. But it’s not just you. Typically, it’s not just you doing this. It’s probably going to involve the partners of your firm, the owner of your company, whatever that looks like, the hierarchy there. So 12 months, we’ll say, we’ll just start out with a 12-month content strategy that does involve kind of the key brain power behind your brand. And again, that could be the partners. Maybe you have 30 partners, okay, it’s probably not going to involve all 30.

Mike Jones:
I would hope not.

Sam Pagel:
You got to figure out-

Mike Jones:
Imagine trying to fit all 30 partners names on the front of the book cover.

Sam Pagel:
That would just have to be the title of the book.

Mike Jones:
It’s the entire cover.

Sam Pagel:
It’s the entire cover. So you have to kind of figure out, okay, who’s going to spearhead this as maybe one, two or three of the authors? And then how do you get them to dump out all of that knowledge and experience that they have?

Mike Jones:
And that’s, I think, the key to this process, that it has to be simple to get even one partner on board and consistently generating content for 12 months that can be turned into a book is not going to be easy. So the process to get there has got to be really simple. It’s got to be something that they can commit to. If you’re thinking there’s no way I’d ever get a partner to write a book, the reality is, yeah, you’re not. You’re not going to get them to write the book, but what you’re going to do in this process that we’ve developed is you’re actually going to get them to talk about the things that need to go in the book.

Sam Pagel:
You’re essentially tricking them into writing their own book.

Mike Jones:
They’re going to talk their book. Because the reality is, and this is what we found is more likely than not, the partners that you’re going to involved in this, who are going to be the authors on this book are probably pretty verbal. They’re used to talking to clients all day. They’re used to having to sell and pitch the business with their mouths, with talking and speech and communication, through a verbal medium. And so getting them in front of a microphone and just having them talk with some thought and some planning, what they’re going to talk about is actually going to be one of the best ways to get the content out of their heads and eventually onto a piece of paper or onto the digital page.
So we recommend take 12 months and then build a content calendar of questions, almost like an outline for your book. Maybe think about it as each month is a different chapter of your book. So you’re going to have to do some thinking, and there might be some work ahead of time before you actually start to get to generate the content with your partners. But build that outline for the book and then go back to your brand anthem. Take all the pieces from your brand anthem, and already right there, if you just did a chapter on your hero, a chapter on your hero’s problem, you did a chapter on your guide, a chapter on your unique solution, and then a chapter on the outcome.
Let’s just say that’s how you built the chapters. That’s five chapters right there that you’ve already got at least a starting point for. You have a theme for each one. I don’t know if that’s the right way to go about writing this, but you could start with that and maybe rehash that. Mix it up a little bit. Mix and remix until you get… Basically try to shoot for a 12 chapter book. Because that gives you essentially 12 themes for your partner or partners to talk about as a record a podcast each month. We’re going to do one episode a month each one on the next chapter in the book.

Sam Pagel:
And involve that key person or key people in that outline creation process. Unblank the page for them maybe, but involve them in that so that you are, you’re getting buy-in from them right from the beginning. So after that, once you have that outline in place, you’ve got essentially a 12 month, a one-year content strategy that really is just going to take the effort of getting that person or people in front of some kind of microphone. And it doesn’t have to be a nice microphone.

Mike Jones:
It could be your iPhone.

Sam Pagel:
It could be your iPhone. It could just be over a Zoom call that you record. That’s pretty common. We see that a lot where, hey, everybody’s remote or everybody’s busy. Hey, let’s just jump on a Zoom call for an hour. We’ll record it and we’ll see what happens. But as long as you’re able to get their voices recorded, you’ve got a ton of content to start utilizing. And just to get into the technical weeds of how you do that, so you record, let’s say, a 30 to 60 minute podcast, quote podcast, which you could use in the marketing.

Mike Jones:
You could publish it as a podcast if you want to.

Sam Pagel:
You could start a podcast from that. Even if the audio isn’t super-duper clean, you’re still putting out content. Now, you could also just keep that internal and you could save that for a rainy day or just never have it see the light of day. But you should definitely transcribe that. So you’re transcribing 30 to 60 minutes of really rich content that then become words on a piece of paper or words on a screen that you can then start to manipulate and edit and craft down into that actual chapter. Now, we preach, use every part of the cat or the cow or-

Mike Jones:
The buffalo.

Sam Pagel:
The buffalo.

Mike Jones:
That’s the [inaudible 00:19:42] throws around.

Sam Pagel:
The cauliflower, I guess you could, whatever.

Mike Jones:
Every part of the… No, don’t do that. Some parts of the cauliflower are gross. No, don’t do that.

Sam Pagel:
Let me just throw it into a blender or something. Use that as many times as you can. You could even video record some of this stuff and put it on YouTube, but utilize this if you’re able to, if you feel comfortable, you’ve got the podcast. Now you’ve got this long form blog, this article that you can put on your website, and you’re kind of sharing your book ahead of time, but who cares? You’re using that, and that’s like working double or triple times the amount of just having it kind of sit there until a year from now, your book’s done. So use that stuff.

Mike Jones:
I want to jump ahead just a little bit. I want to peek behind the curtain of the future here. This book that you’re producing, the intention of the book is not that you sell thousands of copies of it. So if you’re thinking like, oh, man, if we pre-published all these chapters on our blog, on our website, oh, are we just giving the book away for free? Yeah. Because that’s what you’re going to do with the book anyway, right? Some people will buy it, and there’s a strategy there to kind of recoup some of the costs maybe, or just make sure it has a value by publishing it and putting it out there with a price on it.
But the purpose of the book is not as its own product. The purpose of the book is to establish your firm, and particularly these individuals who are authoring it as the foremost leaders on this way of approaching the business, that you have a unique view, you have a unique philosophy, you have a unique process, you have a unique way of serving clients, and you need to publish that to make sure that it is clear that you do have that. To say a go around and say, we have a unique process. We have a unique process, or we have a unique way of doing things, or we have a unique market. We have a unique position in the marketplace. That means absolutely nothing.
That means nothing to anyone who hears that. What can start to mean something is when you say, we have that, by the way, we’ve thought a lot about it and we wrote an entire book on it. That has some meaning now. That has some power. People are like, oh, when you say that, you don’t just say that as a marketing gimmick. You say that as truly people who have thought about it and have taken the time to develop the thinking into something that is consumable, that’s readable, that I can engage with. Going back to this process, the simple process, I love what you said, Sam, that there’s opportunity here to basically market while you build the book.
And I love it. I think this is one of the most kind of untapped things that’s happening right now in podcasting, is that everyone is using a podcast as a standalone medium, another channel to create more original content for, and instead of like, yeah, it can be that, and then this process specifically, I think it’s great for originating this content, but then don’t stop there. Turn that into other pieces. So everything from, like you said, right? You have the podcast episode. If you video it, now you’ve got regular videos once a month, at least once a month, you have a video going out on YouTube. Wrap that up into a newsletter or send that out to your email list in some way, shape, or form. And now they have three different types of media to engage with. They can choose to listen to it, they can choose to watch it, or they can choose to read it.
And then take all the snippets, all these great quotes, these one-liners, two liners, or even just like you have a little section. That was an interesting section that came out of that that you wrote up into the chapter, that now is social media fodder, right? And all of this is going to start filtering out into the marketplace before you ever have the book. So that 12 months from now, if you start this process now, 12 months from now, you have all of your existing clients, your potential clients who are interacting with this content. And when you release the book, they go, of course you did. You’ve been talking about this stuff for 12 months. I haven’t gotten it in one single package like I would with a book, but I’ve been getting it in the blog post. I’ve been getting it in these videos and these podcast episodes, and now it’s going to make total sense when you put the book in front of them and say, now you have it. Now you have it in one single form. And you can… We’ll get to this. I’m jumping ahead. We’re jumping ahead.

Sam Pagel:
So yeah, we’ve talked about utilizing that initial content of getting the right people onto a microphone or a camera or whatever it is, and getting that content recorded. So now maybe you’re a marketing director with a writing background and you’re thinking, oh, I could totally take that and edit it, and I would feel totally comfortable with that. Not everybody’s going to be comfortable doing that.

Mike Jones:
Or have time to do that.

Sam Pagel:
Or have time. That’s a big time commitment. So there might be some outside help that you have to go and get. You might have to find a writer, somebody who maybe is familiar with your industry or is just really smart, who can take all that content and just craft it into a book. Because you can’t just take the transcription and say, okay, chapter one. That’s going to be a mess.

Mike Jones:
I mean, you can, but don’t do that.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah, don’t do that.

Mike Jones:
Don’t do that.

Sam Pagel:
That’s not going to work. So find somebody who’s excited to do that. That might be you. That might be somebody else.

Mike Jones:
Maybe I’m a writer on your team. But there are outside resources. I think there is some value in bringing in someone who’s done this before, who has helped others write a book, even if they’re just doing heavy edits. But I mean, there’s going to be some writing involved. You’re going to have to unpack it. And I think there can also be a lot of value in someone coming into that process who can just gut check your ideas and be like, well, hey, let me take that to an extreme. Let me see how far I can pull that string until the sweater just falls apart. We had that with our book. We had an editor that we brought in who specifically we tasked with saying, “Hey, take these concepts and tell us where they start to break.”
And so she was commenting in every single line almost in the book that we had already manuscript. We had already written out a manuscript from the transcription, and it was really helpful. There were things where she was like, well, what about this? This is kind of breaks your logic here. What about if I take this idea this far, does that still resonate? And then we can decide what do we want to do with that? Do we want to build in an argument for that? Do we need to shore up an idea, or do we just kind of go, yeah, that’s fine. We’re just not going to address that in this book. And that was super helpful. I think that’ll also help to kind of identify where maybe there’s a flow issue.
Hey, this chapter really should go actually before this chapter, even though you maybe produced it in the podcast format, in that order from the original outline. Stuff to move around for the book. And in fact, I think there’s value in the book being more polished, a better flow. So if someone happens to have listened to every podcast episode or read every article that you put out, that is each one of these chapters, when they get the book, they’re going to go, oh, there’s more value even in having the book. Plus it’s just going to make it a better product.

Sam Pagel:
Yep. Yeah. All right. So we’ve talked about the starting point, your brand anthem. We’ve talked about the simple process, which is really your content strategy that happens to end in a book. Now we’re going to talk about number three, the sales power, behind having a book.

Mike Jones:
Mike, said the S word, sales.

Sam Pagel:
I talked about sales.

Mike Jones:
Business development.

Sam Pagel:
Yes. What’s another good title? The Chief Relationship Officer.

Mike Jones:
I like that. I like that.

Sam Pagel:
So the sales power. So Mike mentioned it a little while ago that this is not a product that you’re going to expect to get on the New York Times Bestseller List. Hey, maybe Right, but probably not. And you shouldn’t be writing it promising that to your partners or expecting that to happen. That might happen with book number three, four or five down the road, but this one probably not. And that’s totally okay, because that’s not why you are writing a book. You are writing a book to use as a very powerful sales tool, not just Mike, not just to potential clients, or even existing clients, but to your own people too, that work for your firm. And you, Mike, have benefited from having a book. So maybe you should talk about the power behind having a physical copy of a book that you have your name on, that you wrote in the sales process.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, you mentioned it. There’s just so many layers of value that come from having that packaged piece of thought leadership. I think first and foremost is it just establishes you as a potential thought leader for anyone who is talking to you or considering the firm in the sales process, in the marketing process. If you’re going and giving talks anywhere, and you can say, I have a book, you’re much more likely to get booked for that. It can also be a tool that you can use to actually put in people’s hands in that process. So let me back up a little bit. So yeah, when we wrote our book, my other two partners, David, Jeff and I, we wrote a book and Sam was instrumental in getting it published. I wish we could have gotten your name on there, but we got this book and we produced it.
We got it published, I think end of 2001, I believe. 2021. But it took us three years to go through this process. And I think you know what we’ve outlined, I think you can do in a year, maybe a little bit longer if you’re doing some editing and stuff, but if you can do the editing along the way, you can get it done in a year. It took us three years. But I think one of the first things I noticed when we actually had it was just the level of reputation that it provides to you as an individual who is attempting to work relationships and hopefully work with people that you’re making connections with. And also for the firm. It makes you published and it makes the firm published. You now have thoughts about what you do that are packaged in something that people respect.
People still respect books. They look at books and go, that took effort, that took time, that took thinking. And when you got it and you got it up and out on Amazon or however you’re going to decide to publish it, that means something to them. And I think it’s a fantastic tool to also refine your own thinking. There are so many times now when I’m talking to a prospect on the phone, or if I am on a podcast episode, recording a podcast… Someone else’s podcast, I’m being interviewed or I’m giving a talk, that the thinking that I had to do to get that book done got so refined that now it’s just, I know exactly what I’m going to say on these different topics, that are from the book because I’ve done the work and I’ve talked through them and they’ve been written, and we went through that.
We wrote it together, we edited together, we read it over and over and over. And so it starts to really tighten up all your sales messaging. And if you can then give that to every person in your firm. Now, they won’t all parrot it, but it starts to formalize this is the language by which we do what we do. And we all, now, I like to say, sing from the same hymn book. We have the same culture, but we don’t always use the same language in within our culture. And the book starts to formalize that language and say, this is what we call thing different things. This is what we call our process, or this is what we call our philosophy, or here’s how we think about who we serve and the ways that we approach our market and the services we provide.
It starts to really formalize those things and make it so that everyone in your firm has basically a bible for your firm. This is how we do things. This is how we talk about things. A brand handbook does some of that. It gives people a language both visually and verbally for how to communicate about the brand. But what it doesn’t get to is all these little details of how do we deliver on the services we provide? How do we deliver into this industry? How do we think about problems in this industry? How do we think about the potential clients that we want? Maybe there’s a target, maybe there’s a specific target that we’re aiming at. It starts to really focus everyone on that. And obviously the more focused your brand anthem is, the more focused your book’s going to be and the more focused that kind of everyone’s singing from the same hymn book is going to be.
And I think that’s a huge underrated value that came from writing and publishing a book. I don’t think we totally realized… I remember we got through the first iteration of the manuscript, and that was the moment I realized as we got done, and I was rereading it, that yes, this is going to be really helpful for people outside our firm, but if nothing else, I want every single person in our firm to read and have a copy of this book if we just never even released it on Amazon, if it just never made the light of day anywhere else, although that would be foolish. It needs to be in every single person’s hand because it ended up basically being our handbook for how we do business and how we think about branding.
It’s our philosophy of branding packaged in 12 chapters. So I just think there’s so much internal value, and I don’t know if we’ve even scratched the surface yet of what we can do with ours. But yeah, I think every firm would benefit from that process alone in doing that. But then externally, this becomes a validator, right? You say you’re an expert, you say you’re an expert. How do you prove that? Okay, you’ve got the initials, you’ve got the certifications, you’ve got the licensing. Okay. Okay. But what’s special about yours? I can go to any accounting firm and I’m going to get CPAs accredited, right? Certified. Why you? Why your firm? What’s your unique take on the world? And then prove it to me. Prove me that it is actually different and exceptional. Oh, you wrote a book about it. You wrote 12 chapters on it. Okay. I might actually start believing you. At the very least, no one else does.

Sam Pagel:
That’s hard to copy.

Mike Jones:
That’s hard to copy.

Sam Pagel:
Somebody could take your tagline. Somebody could take your colors, whatever it is. They’re not going to steal your book and rip it off and republish it.

Mike Jones:
No, not least because then you could sue them. And honestly, there’s a legal aspect to this too, right? The more formal and original your book is, where you’re not a adopting ideas, there’s going to be time and place for some of the ideas in your book might be borrowed or adopted from somewhere else. Make sure you reference that, cite those sources if you need to. But the more yours is original to you and your firm, the more you’re building IP for your firm. This is intellectual property that your firm owns and no one else can have. And it’s now defensible as intellectual IP because you’ve published it. It’s actually copyrighted.
And that gives you some opportunity to think about things that even… For instance, for ours, our book became the genesis for a system, a framework of branding that we call Remarkabrand, which is now trademarkable, right? That’s something that we can put our stamp on and say, we own this process, and it’s defined. It is a defined process in our book, and we can point to that and say, that’s actually in the court of law something that we can defend. Versus if we just said, oh, yeah, we have this process. Okay, show it to me. Well, if you sign up for a workshop, I can take you through it, but it’s not documented anywhere. Yeah, that’s a lot harder for someone to defend that. So there’s a lot of opportunity there.

Sam Pagel:
Again, if you’re a marketing director, if you’re in a marketing role, you probably know how difficult it is to extract expertise, ideas, knowledge from the people that are running your firm or are really good at what they do, really smart. They’re busy, they’re doing what they do, they’re helping clients, they’re making sales, they’re doing all these things. It’s really hard. And especially… Mike, what you said, our book was written by three people. Wasn’t just one person. So getting these ideas out of three different people who have full-time jobs, they have families, they have everything else going on is really hard. But if you can go to a partner or two or three or four and say, you can write a book, and you never have to write a single word. You just have to talk. You just have to answer questions. There’s a ton of power in that.
And it’s so powerful for a brand because you’re taking all of that expertise that is really kind of a team effort, most likely. Sometimes it might be just one person, and that’s totally fine. But even then, you’re taking all this expertise and you’re taking it outside of that person or that group of people. You’re crafting it in a way that they probably couldn’t do on their own, most likely couldn’t do on their own. And like Mike said, he goes back to that book to know how to talk about what we do and why we do it, because it’s a team effort. It’s like we’ve taken all of these ideas from Mike, from David, from Jeff, somebody else has edited them, crafted them down, and made it flow into a really nice book that we published. So there’s just a ton of power in this, and it’s not easy. We’re not saying this is a really easy process.

Mike Jones:
No, it’s not.

Sam Pagel:
It takes work. It takes time, but it’s possible. It’s very possible.

Mike Jones:
It’s worth it. It’s very much worth it. I think even just some more tactical benefits that come out of it. I remember talking to a marketing director at a firm that was considering working with us, and we had a initial kind of qualifying phone call, just make sure, hey, are we a good fit for them? Are they a good fit for us? And at the end of the call, I just said, “Hey, I’d love to just thank you for the call. I don’t know if this is going to go any further, but I’ll send you my book.” And she replied back after… I don’t even know, I think I did say that in the call.
And she just responded. And she’s like, yeah, absolutely. And when I sent it to her, she replied back via email and just said, “I had a boss who once told me that writing a book, having a book is the best business card you could ever have.” And so she was like, this is a great business card, because it established us as experts at what we say we do. That we say we’re experts, well, yeah, we actually are. We’ve published something about it. We’ve really written and thought hard about it.
I think that right there in your sales process, if you have a potential client who’s considering you and you say, get you a proposal, I’ve given you all the information you need to have. We’ll have the case study for you. We’ve got all the validation, here’s who’s going to be working on your account. Here’s the certifications we have. Here’s the awards we want. List out all of your qualifications. There’s probably another firm out there who has a lot of those same qualifications, who probably does a good job, probably is a similar price. And when you say, by the way, can I send you my book? That’s a business card that probably your competition doesn’t have. And it’s a serious business card. It’s not just a business card.

Sam Pagel:
Even if they never read it.

Mike Jones:
They never even have to read it. I mean, they really don’t. It shows up in the mail and they go, oh, wow. This firm really understands what we’re doing. They understand the problem that we’re encountering. They’ve written a whole book about it. Other benefits that have come out of that. I go and give talks at different conferences. Sometimes I get paid, sometimes I don’t. Just depends on the conference and what we’re doing, but I now have a tool that I say, “Hey, can we get a copy? Can you buy a copy for everyone that’s going to hear my talk?” And most of the time the answer is yes, and we work through pricing and all that, make sure it works for them. But to know that I’m going to walk into a room, give a talk to a bunch of people I don’t know, who might be prospects, they might be potential clients, and know that at the end of it, I don’t have to go and meet everyone.
In fact, I know I’m not. Most of them are not going to want to come up and talk to me. That’s just the nature of talks and stuff. A few of them will, if they’ve got a really pressing question or they need help with something or something in the talk, really, ah, I love this part. Or they’re just outgoing. Most of them won’t. But guess what? Every single one of them got my book. That’s a really powerful takeaway. That’s probably better than any swag you could drop on somebody, any promotional item. If you want to leave a really lasting, memorable impression, I mean, just think about this. You are a professional services firm. You are leading with your expertise in professionalism, and I don’t mean professionalism in the fact that you dot your Is, cross your Ts, and are honest and kind and do the right thing.
I mean professional as in you are an expert at what you do or you say you are. Why would you not have a book experts publish their thoughts? They say, I think about what I do beyond just doing it, and I actually put that out into the world for others to know and learn and grow from those things. The objective is not necessarily to just put this out there as an ego trip. That’s not the purpose of your book. The purpose of your book is to help people. Some other benefits that have come out of it. I get asked to talk at universities because of this. When you think about talent pool challenges, if you’re having a hard time finding talent, acquiring talent, if you can really prove that you guys have a unique perspective on your industry, on your services, on the way that you approach accounting or whatever your business is, man, you’re going to have an easier time finding great talent who wants to work for you.
Yeah, I want to be a part of a firm that’s doing that kind of stuff. They’re thinking deeply about this work, and they may be even approaching it in a way that I’ve never even thought about. That’s refreshing. I want to work for an accounting firm that’s refreshing. I don’t want to work for an accounting firm that’s just doing things the same old way for the last 40 years. That’s what new talent, young talent wants out of this industry. And I think there’s a great call to any professional services firm. It’s a challenge across the board, but especially in accounting right now. There’s not enough accountants being graduated, and not enough of them want to go into public accounting. One way to start changing that trend is actually build firms that they want to work for, because you think differently about accounting than previous generations, whether it’s the way you do the work or it’s the way you actually service clients.
I heard somebody… Oh, man, I’m trying to remember who. I heard some leadership from a firm talking recently about the need to show candidates, to show people going through college that accounting is not boring. It’s not just spreadsheets all day. Yeah, okay. Maybe some of it’s a lot of spreadsheets, but that there are ways to approach it, and that serving clients, there’s this immense satisfaction that comes out of serving a client and really providing deep value for them. And what I don’t see are a lot of firms saying, yes, I want to talk about that, and I want to publish our thinking on that. Even if it was just put out some blog articles about it or something. But I mean, all that much better if you could do that through a book. There’s my rant. I’m done.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah, that’s huge. Because yeah, it’s not just about getting in front of potential clients, but if you can get into a college classroom because you have a book and it’s an accounting classroom, you’ve just got a hundred-

Mike Jones:
A captive audience.

Sam Pagel:
A hundred captive kids or students that are like, oh, wow, they’re experts. I want to work… That’s what I want to do when I grow up sort of thing. Not to throw a pun in here, but I want to book end all of this with the actual publishing process, because that can seem really daunting. You have everything written up in a Google Doc or a Word Doc, how do you then actually publish it? Do you have to go to one of the big publishing companies and spend $50,000 to get 10,000 copies printed up?

Mike Jones:
So my tactic was to call up Sam and say, “Hey, help me out.” And by call up, I mean, shout across the office and say, “We got to figure out how to self-publish this on Amazon. Do you want to spend the next two weeks banging your head against the wall?” But yeah, I mean, that’s the answer. You can do it through Amazon pretty easily.

Sam Pagel:
You can, and there’s other ways to do that, but Amazon, we’ll talk about that because I think it actually is the easiest and cheapest way to do it. So Kindle Direct Publishing, KDP is Amazon’s direct publishing. You can essentially go into their system, you can do it all in their system, so you don’t actually have to lay it out in an actual design. You can actually design it in KDP. We did it on our own system because we wanted it to look really nice and we wanted to have control over that.
But you can go in there, copy and paste everything in there, format it the way you want it, that gets you into Kindle. So you can create a Kindle version of your book, which we would recommend because a lot of people use that. You can create a paperback version, and now you can create a hard copy, a hard cover book, which that’s a really nice piece. Those are a little bit more expensive. But if you’re like, hey, we’ve got… Hey, maybe there’s 10 people out there that you really want to have your book and you want to be really impressed, you get them the hard copy. You set your pricing.

Mike Jones:
Your partners are all going to want the hard copy.

Sam Pagel:
Absolutely. You go in there, you set your pricing, you can set where you sell it. I mean, there’s so many things you can do in there, and once you figure it out, it’s really not that hard. So yeah, once we were like, Hey, this is ready to go, I think because we didn’t have any knowledge on the system, it took us two weeks. And once we kind of figured it out, it was a little bit of trial and error. We actually published it a little bit early because [inaudible 00:48:29].
We were like, we’re ready to go and let’s see if this works. And then, oh, it worked. It’s published. Oh my goodness. But it was really, really not challenging at all. And the cool thing about that is it costs you your time and you could hire somebody to do that too or you can do it. It costs you your time, and then you really have full control after that. You don’t have a publisher saying, we have to do this and this and this. You don’t have to pre-order 10,000 copies of your book and have them sit in a warehouse somewhere. You can basically tailor everything from the price to how it looks to the number of pages, everything like that you have full control over. And then you can get copies for yourself and your partners and hand out copies, whatever really, cheap because they allow you to do author copies so you can get $2 copies of your book, order a hundred of them, and then start passing them out to whoever needs them.
So that process is really easy. Now, you could go out and find a publisher and do it that way. Totally fine. We know people who have done that and it’s worked. But hey, start out, just get it done. Get it up on Amazon and you’re published. The other thing is they kind of take care of all the, I guess you could call it legal stuff. They give you an IBN number, they put a barcode on it for you. All that stuff is kind of taken care of in that system, and it’s really, really simple. A lot easier than I thought it ever would be to actually publish a book. I remember getting that all done. They sent an email.
They said, “Hey, your book is published.” We ordered five copies just to see what it looked like, and we got them and we were like, this is incredible. We have a book. It’s a legit book. I can’t believe it. And the quality’s nice. The quality is really nice. It’s not going to be this cheap, oh wow, this was self-published. This is a piece of trash. They’re nice. So it is really… I mean, that feeling of, we’re holding our book in our hands. It took us three years to get there, but we’re holding it in our hands. You’re physically holding… It’s like you’re kind of physically holding your brand almost. This thing that contains your IP, your ideas, the essence of what you do. You’re holding it in your hand. It’s a physical copy. It’s super powerful.

Mike Jones:
And then once it’s out there, that starts to establish so much credibility. I mean, I was just thinking even something as dumb… This is super dumb and simple, but each of your partners, that’s the author on the book, you’ve got multiple, or it’s just one. Go on their LinkedIn profile and say now that they’re an author, right? There’s just some validity it provides to your leadership and to your firm. You can use it in your marketing. I think that’s a great way to establish your reputation to back up like, hey, we’re doing a webinar, we’re doing this seminar. We do these workshops. They’re all backed up by the fact that we have this book. And especially when you can put that somewhere in the marketing. You can show that this is not just like people flying by the seat of their pants, but that have actually done deep thinking, have really refined that thinking and put it into something package-able, that someone can open the cover and read it from cover to cover and really understand your firm in a much deeper way.
I do want to just, I think, end on one thought, and that is that the book sounds awesome. I think a lot of people… And I don’t think a lot of firms would balk at the idea of like, oh, we got to do a book. Nah, we don’t want to do that. I think what is challenging is to remember that it has to have the anthem first, the brand anthem, without that, your book is just going to be regurgitating classroom content, probably the stuff that your firm’s leaders have learned, or it’s going to be just a bunch of stories of case studies. Examples of the work you’ve done. And that’s not necessarily bad, but it doesn’t have a unique point of view. It doesn’t bring anything to the table that helps position your firm. And I think that’s where I would say, if you’re going to err on the side of over-investing in this process, overinvest on taking the time, finding the right help to develop just an amazing brand anthem that really cuts through and says, this is who we are, and we are unique.
We have something remarkable to tell the world. And that’s going to make your book and everything else that you produce out of this process so much more powerful. It’s going to make it actually differentiated and unique. And that really at the end of the day is the point. The point is to say, we have a unique way of doing things. And if you don’t have that going into the process of the book, you’re not going to end up with a book that magically does that for you. You have to do that work first. And so that would be my call, my caution, my encouragement to anyone out there who’s thinking about this. If you’re a marketing director and you’re thinking, oh man, this would be so awesome to get our firm leaders to go through this process, I agree, it would be awesome, but don’t skip the part where you actually create that really unique brand anthem.

Sam Pagel:
Yep. Don’t waste all that time. A quick search will show you… We’re talking about accounting a lot. There’s over 60,000 accounting books on Amazon. Don’t just do this to say, I have a book. Don’t waste all that time and effort. Do it the right way. Do it so that you are serving your brand and really broadcasting the right things to the right people.

Introduction VO:
The Remarkabrand podcast is a project of Resound and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with hosts Mike Jones and David [inaudible 00:54:45]. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and at remarkablecast.com. If you’d like more episodes, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts. To contact the show, find out more about the Remarkabrand podcast or to join our newsletter list. To make sure you never miss another episode, check out our website at remarkablecast.com. Copyright Resound Creative Media, LLC 2022.