10 Minute Marketing
In this podcast, we're peeking behind the curtains of several businesses to learn more about these entrepreneurs and how they've approached marketing to grow or scale their businesses!
10 Minute Marketing
Writing Your Path to Success with Denise Renee
Can writing a book be the key to skyrocketing your brand?
This week on the 10 Minute Marketing podcast, Sonja Crystal Williams sits down with Denise Renee, expert book writing coach and CEO, to demystify the process of writing a book tailored for entrepreneurial success. Denise shares invaluable insights on crafting a book that not only communicates your skills but also resonates with your target audience. She lays out the different types of books that help establish your thought leadership and how their unique roles can build your brand.
Sonja and Denise also break down the crucial elements that create bestsellers, including the marketing power of pre-sale campaigns and leveraging major publishers, the importance of keywords and SEO in making your book more discoverable on top platforms and sustain sales momentum, and more.
There is so much to learn from Denise's entrepreneurial journey and her role in helping businesspeople become authors. Plus, after listening to the episode, you're also invited to book a free Virtual Book Writing Coaching Session with Denise here!
About Denise Renee
Denise Renee likes to joke that she’s been writing ever since she could hold a crayon!
A professional writer since 1999, she has worked as an entertainment journalist, a marketing copywriter, a magazine editor, and a business book ghostwriter, to name a few of her experiences.
Today, through www.WritingWithDeniseRenee.com, she helps professionals, entrepreneurs, and content creators write books that connect them to their ideal audience, clients, collaborators, and other brand-building opportunities!
Of Caribbean descent, Denise Renee grew up in New York City and has lived in the Metro Atlanta area since 2008. Fun fact: Denise Renee is a double first name.
Follow Denise on LinkedIn and YouTube.
Hi everyone. Welcome to today's episode of the 10Minute Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Sonja Krista Williams. Well, with me I've got a special guest today. I want to welcome Denise Renee. She is a book writing coach, she is an editor, she is a content writer. Thank you so much for being here today, Denise.
Denise Renee:Thank you so much for having me, Sonja.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Absolutely. So let's just jump right into it. I want to talk about one of the things you do really well. I peeked at your testimonials reel and saw all the amazing things some of your clients had to say about you when it comes specifically to your help with book writing. So first let me say, the idea of writing a book can sound scary to a lot of people. How do you, honestly, how do you make it less scary? What's the starting point?
Denise Renee:I don't know. I know that's a bad answer.
Sonja Crystal Williams:It comes naturally, probably. That's why.
Denise Renee:It does, right. I have been writing -- I like to joke around and say that I've been writing ever since I can hold a crayon, but it's almost literally true and I've just fell into a love of reading and a love of writing at a very early age and I've just been working on the craft of writing for about 40 years and I'm 25.
Sonja Crystal Williams:There you go.
Denise Renee:So there's a facility for me when it comes to writing. So when I'm working with people, I'm just like come to me, what's your idea? The number one prerequisite that I need from people is to be clear about what they want to communicate. You don't have to have all the details, you don't have to have an outline. We'll definitely, you know, work together and make that happen, but what is it that you want to communicate, who is it that you're looking to communicate with, and what is the value that you offer? If you're clear on those three things, we can write 159,000 books.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Okay, honestly, wow. So they need to come with a vision, in a sense.
Denise Renee:Have clarity on what you want to communicate and I can work with you from there.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Ok, got it. In the idea of writing or in the idea of authorship for entrepreneurs. I've talked to many people like in your type of position and what I'm curious about is in that process, what kind of book do they end up writing? Is it branding? Is it a biography? Like, what could it look like in terms of the realms of possibilities?
Denise Renee:So there are about. It depends on what type of book you're looking to write. So I immediately want to split you up into two categories. Either you want to share that book that shares your expertise and share your knowledge, and if so, you want to write one of three really popular styles of book. You're either going to write a how-to book, you're going to write what I call a methodology book, or you're going to write some type of success storybook, whether it's your own successes or the successes that you've created for your clients, or maybe a little bit of a hybrid, where you created a success for yourself and now you've started helping other people have that same type of success. So you're either going to write those three types of books or you're looking to tell your story, and there are three types of story archetypes that I recommend people write their story in.
Denise Renee:Number one, if you already have a very wild rags- to- riches type story, you know you were started from the bottom, now I'm here" type of deal, people love that type of story. If you have a very wild roller coaster of a life where you know you've had tremendous highs and really low lows, that's an amazing and engaging story archetype that people like. But maybe you're like me and you've had just kind of like just a mundane life. You grew up, you went to college, you did everything that you were supposed to do, but maybe there's something that you've learned or that you do really exceptionally well and people want to hear that from you and they want to hear well, how were you able to do this thing so that you zero in on that particular story and just you know, framing the story around it and sharing lessons learned? So I've got frameworks. Whatever you want to do, you got to tell me what you want.
Sonja Crystal Williams:I got it. I love that. No, I think you put that really. You articulated on it in such a good way. I've never heard it broken down that way, because it does to me -- like I'm one of those people, like the idea of writing a book to me right now is a little scary and I've inched like maybe, maybe, maybe. But putting it into those boxes makes it feel like, okay, I can see where this is going.
Denise Renee:Now can I interject and say this. I would say that for most people we're largely unknown, like nobody knows us from a can of paint right.
Denise Renee:And sometimes people want to tell their story for cathartic reasons and I don't think that that's necessarily a bad idea, but that may not be the best way unless you really have a lockdown on those. You know that dramatic story or that rags- to- riches story. It doesn't matter who you are, people love those types of stories, period. You're a coach, you're a consultant, you're a professional medical professional, lawyer, whatever and you're looking to just build your personal brand, you should really write what my friend Carol J Dunlop calls the money book, because it should be that thing that really helps propel you as a professional or as a business owner and your products and your services. Once you put that type of a book out there and you start using that book to get more clients, get more opportunities, grow your brand, you will grow an audience of people who are going to now want to know a little bit more about you. And I would say write that personal story when people want it.
Denise Renee:There's a reason why celebrities get big old book deals because they already have an audience of people who are interested in them. Michelle Obama can rewrite "Mary had a Little Lamb and that thing is going to sell out. Why? Because she is Michelle. Right, britney Spears can come out with her book and I'm like she was not my audience. I wasn't a Britney fan, but I felt like I lived through everything Britney. I saw it all in the tap list. But you know what? Britney has a core audience of people who want to hear from her. She's been locked away for years in this conservatorship so, boom, she has an audience of people who want that book.
Denise Renee:The book was a bestseller. I didn't buy it, but you know she had people who bought it and that's all she needed to know. And that's the thing it's about really knowing the audience, for whom wants your stuff, and if you have an audience, give it to them. If you don't, you're gonna be -- I'm not saying don't do it or don't write that book, but you could be really pushing the rock up the hill to try to get people to come around to your story. Right, because they just don't know you. But if you give people the value that you are already giving in the marketplace, they're going to love you and eventually they are going to want the story.
Sonja Crystal Williams:So yeah, no, that's where I put my marketing hat on and I'm like build your audience first, and that's true of anything. Any business owner or brand is going to launch Like you.
Sonja Crystal Williams:you need that audience so you could be building and building and building, and then, when you're ready to launch it, you have a group of captive, captive people who are interested in what you want to share. So that's such a good point. Let me ask you about something else, cause you bring up a good point like one using the book as a tool. Especially if you're a consultant or a coach or anything like that, it's a great opportunity as a tool. I also, for me personally, like when I'm working with clients I've come across many... I don't want to call them authors. They become authors, but I come across business owners who become authors, but some of them I meet, they come, and this is not neither good or bad, but I just want to ask you to spit it out the person who comes to you and says I want to be a bestseller.
Sonja Crystal Williams:What breakdown bestsellers? What does that mean really?
Denise Renee:Sure, so I'm gonna start by saying what it is not. Best- seller does not equal best written. Your book could be written in Crayola, but if you have a dope marketing plan and if you are just hitting it hard and sell that book, then it becomes a best seller. There are definitely tips, tricks, hacks to becoming a bestseller, and then it depends on what does bestseller mean to you? If you just want the accolades and you're trying to go after New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report --although some of them, I think, have like puzzles list, because they can be gamified and they're gamified by how. First of all you have to be published by a major publisher, so if you're self-published you ain't getting on them lists.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Not the New York Times bestseller list. You're not getting on them.
Denise Renee:You have to go through a major publisher. That's what counts. But those authors and those publishing houses, they're going through a lot of pre-sale campaigns and this is what makes you get on the list. It is your pre-sales marketing game plan that on launch day, on the official day, so they are collecting sales and sales and sales, but they don't count until the day it's released. So all of the buzz that you have created on release day, you have all these sales.
Denise Renee:Meanwhile, it's not that everybody ran to Barnes and Nobles or ran to Amazon to get it. It's that for weeks and weeks and weeks, people have been slowly but surely buying the book and pre-ordering the book. I think a great example, because Black women are my examples for everything, Kerry Washington, steph's kids, right. So she released her book last year. Homegirl was everywhere, all right, promoting the heck out of that book. Now I am her audience and I was going to buy it any old way. But I saw her everywhere. Okay, she was literally on a world tour. She took pictures in London. She was looking like a whole snack, looking like Olivia Pope.
Sonja Crystal Williams:I was like wait, I do remember that I do. Did Scandal come back, like what?
Denise Renee:But she was everywhere promoting this damn book. So she has a platform, she has an audience of people and she had a really compelling story to tell and share and she sold the heck out of that book, right? So you have to do all of those things, even if you are a named celebrity. That's why you see them when they have a book. They're on all the night shows, they're on all the daytime shows. So we are not you and I. We're not, you know, big old celebrities, right. Right, we're business owners. We are, you know whatever, but we have our own communities.
Denise Renee:So what a lot of people would like to go for is maybe that Amazon bestseller. The same thing applies. You have to have, you have to work in it, you have to have everything up and in place and have a pre-sale campaign. So you really have to get into your grassroots tactics, get into your collaboration tactics, get into your podcast bag and go everywhere that you can to generate the buzz for the presale so that on launch day or in that first week, you hit the top of that Amazon category. Also, it also goes with having your keywords in your titles, in your description, all of that good SEO stuff to help be discoverable. So what happens is people think that they can just put their book on Amazon and Amazon's going to sell you lipsticks, jewelry, fiber laxatives, gummy bears, no longer just a bookstore.
Denise Renee:They will sell you anything that you think they think you want to buy. I got an email the other day, Amazon. The subject line said hey, we found some things that you would like. I opened the email. I'm like y'all, that was what I was just browsing two days ago. Those times you found it.
Sonja Crystal Williams:You, just you've been spying on me, yeah, right.
Denise Renee:But Amazon does not care what they sell. So what you have to do is, kind of, you know, nudge the algorithm to your advantage. You hit all your pre-sales. So once your book starts having some traction, Amazon's like oh, you got something going on over there. Okay, well, we may have some customers over here for you and in that little you might also like this, because you bought this book before. You might like this. That's when you start getting recommended, but you, the author, have to drive that attention. So I think one of the biggest misconceptions that people may have about writing and selling a book, or writing and self-publishing they really want to sit down on the marketing piece and it's like if you don't sell it, it's not gonna get sold yeah, okay.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Okay, I love it. Good, good, good.
Denise Renee:Thank you, I can talk and I can talk.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Now, I think, the Amazon and self-publishing, I think, can be a very realistic path for your average small business owner? I definitely have seen many of them hit that bestsellers list. Um, but it's exactly how you said there was a pregame plan in place and then, once the book started selling, even then just had things in place so that there was continuity.
Denise Renee:You got to keep marketing your book.
Sonja Crystal Williams:That's like you have to keep marketing your business.
Sonja Crystal Williams:It doesn't stop. No, so bridging from writing books. So the perspective of a small business owner, coach, a consultant, writing a book to the content side, just day to day content that gets created when you're working with clients does someone in your role or you specifically, if you all want to hire Denise Renee does someone in your role actually do the writing like a ghost writer? Or does that consultant or coach need to come to the table with writing knowledge and expertise or have something together as far as being able to write?
Denise Renee:My experience, you know, as a content marketer, digital marketer, social media, having done that on the corporate side as well as independently for like 15 or so years, that is something that I can help people with. I try not to take on too many done- for- you services because it can be a little bit overwhelming, but I am. I really like coaching people and helping them through and honestly it really I think sometimes people get overwhelmed by content because they're just like oh my God, I got to be on all the platforms and I got to do all the things and no, you don't. I think if you have a really well thought out content plan and really it's not even about creating the content, it's about not repurposing, it's about what's the word I'm looking for?
Denise Renee:Promoting the content you really have to promote your content and really get strategic about that. You could put out one major piece of content a week. It could be an article a week, it could be a podcast a week, but how are we promoting this and getting it in front of the people that really need to be seeing this? So that's where you have to be strategic. There's where you have to decide, you know am I a writer? Am I a talker, or am I a, you know, video personality? Or are you like me? You all three, um, but I, you know, I love making content. That's just me, because I'm a creative person. I have other ways that I express my creativity, but everybody doesn't like it, and that's fine.
Denise Renee:Be strategic, and you know, and I can help people with either a coming to me with content, like, for example, one of my clients here. I try to keep a few client book examples around this particular client. He came to me, he has a lot of video content, and so he had transcribed a bunch of the videos and was like yeah, you know, just look this over, I'm about to post this. I was like pump the brakes, you know.
Sonja Crystal Williams:You can't.
Denise Renee:He just transcribed the videos and was like this is -- like he was ready to go, and I was like no, I want you to look good, okay, once you look good. And I was like, okay, the basis of this information is great, let's give it a framework, let's just and so he did, he took my advice and the book is fantastic. So, you can start with content and you know, recently, I actually also have a podcast called the Selling Your Book Podcast. You can find it on YouTube or Spotify. But I interview people who are, you know, just everyday authors they're not big celebrities or anything like that and they share their tips on what they've been doing to sell their books.
Denise Renee:What a number of them have said is that they started, they wrote their first book by repurposing existing content. So that is definitely one route to take. Or you can start 100% from scratch and be like hey, you know, I have this idea for a book. You can write the book and then you can take that book and it can become the content that you drip out. Not necessarily, you know putting out chapters as such, but the concepts. You could be talking about those concepts in your content. And then your call to action at the end is hey. If you want to get more of this, get my book.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Yeah, no, and I've seen it done and some of the, you know, kind of biggest names and thought leadership and authors will tell you could technically drip that book out on Instagram. You could drip it out on YouTube, maybe not a chapter at a time, but you could take those little snippets. You can give everyone the whole book. They will still buy the book because of the perceived value yeah, exactly, and because it's all together...
Denise Renee:Exactly, that's true, and you don't have to piece it. And they want it that. Well, at least I know I would want it that way.
Sonja Crystal Williams:All right, very cool. Denise Renee, thank you so much for sharing so many good. You dropped a lot of great pearls I want to end, well, we'll say my job. There we go. So I like to end every episode asking you a few questions. This is our lightning round. I'm going to ask you a few quick questions. Question number one what are you into right now, and this could be like a hobby or something, for me it's gardening right now, that you just can't get enough of?
Denise Renee:Nails. Oh, or is it the ring? Is it the jewelry? Which one? Which one? Well I ell don't want to go too close because I'm kind of in between and I have some makeup on one nail right here, but I do, I'm into doing my own nails nail.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Oh, you did that yourself?
Denise Renee:Yeah, don't look too closely, because I I was taking off one, uh one layer and I'm about to repaint them, so I can't well if I go too close, but yeah, I love doing my nails
Sonja Crystal Williams:Wow, okay, so nail design has become a thing for you. Very, very cool, okay. Another question, and I like to ask this question sometimes when I am doing interviews with other parents, moms, dads, everything. How do you strike the balance? Because you've been in business for yourself for a while, you've got a child. Well, maybe not a little kid anymore, but no, you've got a child. Well, maybe not not a little kid anymore, but 13 years ago, yes so, but still in the house, yeah, how do you strike the balance? Because you got, you know, sports and after-school events and drop-offs and pickups and all of that. What's been helpful to you in terms of striking the balance?
Denise Renee:First of all, I'm going to say something a little controversial. Okay, I don't believe in balance, because I don't think that, to me, the term balance assumes that everything has an equal weight. And I don't think that everything has an equal weight and I don't think that everything has an equal weight all at the same time. I think things are important, but I think in this moment, this is a priority. In this moment, that is a priority. So I really say, okay, you know what? What's important this week? What's important today? What do I need to focus on now? So for me, it's more like juggling and it's like just making sure, you know, the balls stay in the air. Sometimes I drop the ball. Yeah, maybe only one or two balls get dropped, I don't know. But so I look at it more like juggling. I'll say this, I'm no longer together with my former partner, my son's father.
Denise Renee:So we actually are in -- I don't know, and you know he has his days, I have my days. You know we split our son in the middle, but no like... And even if it's like, if it's his day, then he's like hey, I got something going on, can you pick up the slack? Or vice versa. So, number one, I have a parenting partner. So, yes, you know, there's that. Number two, I have days when my son's not here, so it gives me an opportunity to focus on different things. When he's here, my priorities are a little bit different. When he's not here, I'm like, no, I'm not. You little bit different. When he's not here, I'm like, no, I'm not, um, I'm just worried. You're like, oh, he's not here, wait, I can see him later. They're getting more stuff done, um, but uh, but yeah. So really just having parents, uh, having partnership in parenting, having a little tiny village.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Thank you for sharing. One more final question, and this is kind of on the business tip what have you enjoyed most about being an entrepreneur?
Denise Renee:That's a good question, or it could be a couple of things. So I feel like I'm you know, I'm a brand new entrepreneur because I literally relaunched. I launched a completely different brand last year, but I feel like I have experience in that I will have experience.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Right.
Denise Renee:I've got content. But I also I'm like okay, you know, I have the experience of saying, okay, this is what worked well, this was what didn't work well, this is what I want to do differently, this is how I want to move forward. So, like I said earlier, I don't really want to get too involved in like done- for- you projects, which is how I kind of ran my business before. So now I'm like I'm the coaching girl, I will help you, let me come alongside of you while you do the right. And for those kind of high- touch services, I had to re-price and be like okay, if I'm going to do this for you, if you want to hire me to do this for you, it's just not going to be cheap and that's fine. If I don't get those clients, I'm totally fine, because I've got other things to do and I also had to create margin for myself and I'm like you know what? What I'm missing is my own creativity, because I also write short stories and I haven't published anything. So, being able to create margin to not only take care of other people but take care of me in the process, and my creative. What I want to get done. Yeah, so important to me. So I think the beauty about that was the long circuit to the answer.
Denise Renee:I think the beauty of being an entrepreneur is that you get to shape what you want to shape. You get to pivot. When you want to pivot, you get to say you know what, I don't want to do this anymore, I want to do something completely different. Who knows, in a year or two I might be like, you know what I'm going to be a nail content creator from now on.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Who knows?
Denise Renee:But I think that is the beauty of entrepreneurship, it does not have to look one way. It does not have to look like somebody else's journey. Take your time, look one way. Do what you got to do, but do it because you love it.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Yeah, love it. Thank you so much for being here, Denise Renee. So we're going to post Denise's information. You can find that available in our description. If you'd like to follow her, get in touch and, Denise, you have a freebie for listeners right?
Denise Renee:Yes, I do so. If you are that coach, that consultant, that medical professional, that content creator, that educator who is looking to take your expertise, you want to put it into a book. You know that you want to get more speaking engagements and more opportunities and you know that that book is that hurdle that you just got to get over. But just like, how do I get started? Where do I get started? What do I do and what were those three book types that we talked about?
Denise Renee:I have put together something that, I don't know, I've never really seen anybody do like. I have the typical freebie where you just go, you drop your name, you download the PDF and then it sits there and collects digital dust. I don't want that for you. I actually want to help you think through what you need to think through and get started writing your book. So I have what I call my Virtual Book Writing Coaching Session. It is credit card free, you don't need a credit card but it will require your time and your attention and if you do the work, you will be able to start writing. You'll come out of it knowing what to do to get started writing your book.
Denise Renee:So you can get more info about that at writingwithdeniserenee. com/ free coaching. Real help, no BS, just getting you started writing your book, no credit card required.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Perfect. Thank you for being here. Thank you everyone for listening. Until next time we'll see you then.
Denise Renee:Thank you for having me.