057: Action is The Solution to Just About Everything with Dr Angela Lauria Founder of The Author Incubator

What are you the best in the world at? What is the mountain you could stand on top of and really say ‘I am the best at this?’ And sometimes what that means is re-defining a territory or defining it really tightly.

#00:00:50-3# Neil : Hello its Neil Ball here thank you so much for joining me here today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneurs journey, the vision, the mind-set, the commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Dr. Angela Lauria, but before I introduce you to her, I have a quote for you, Segata Mitra said, ‘learning is the new skill, imagination, creation and asking new questions are at its core. The entrepreneur way asks the questions so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Angela welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:41-5# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Ok I’m ready, let’s do this.

#00:01:42-9# Neil : Yeh thank you for coming on the show Angela.

#00:01:47-6# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I am super excited to be here, thanks for having me.

#00:01:47-6# Neil : Doctor Angela Lauria is the founder of The author incubator and creator of the difference process, for writing a book that matters. She is the host of the popular book journeys radio and page up podcasts, helping people free their inner author since 1994. Angela has created almost 200 best-selling authors in the last two years. She is the author of the best-selling book, ‘The Difference, ten steps to writing a book that matters’ and The Incubator author – 10 steps to start a movement with your message. Her clients have been seen everywhere from vanity fair to O Magazine, to the Today Show. She lives at the Author Castle in Maclean Virginia, with her husband Paul, Her son Jesse and their ebony and ivory coloured castle cats. Angela, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life, to allow us to get to know more about what you do and who you are?

#00:02:53-0# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Yeh I mean I think my story is in some ways like a lot of entrepreneurs, I have always been passionate about books, and I remember being nine years old, and spending a weekend locked in the house reading every ‘choose your own adventure’ book in the series, and it was always my passion reading but not just reading, I would almost get inside books. But | think the thing that is different about my story is my dad was an entrepreneur, and he actually started a business when he was 16. So when he was 12 years old, he started shining shoes on the church steps in New Haven, and he made money from shining shoes and then he brought his first car, which he took apart and put back together and sold it to somebody for more money than he brought it from when he was 16. And so, I grew up thinking that everyone sometime between the age of 12 and 16 finds what they are most passionate about in the world and then goes and does that thing they are passionate about and makes lots of money. And I literally thought that was what everybody did, so I was passionate about books, and I majored in journalism, and then when I was a senior in university, one of my professors recommended me to one of the world’s most famous authors to be a research assistant, which seemed obvious to me. And I have just always made this living helping people bring their books to life, but until I was 26 I thought that’s what everybody was doing.

#00:04:41-8# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : So I thought everyone sometime between the age of 12 and 16 found what they were passionate about, and then got lots of organic opportunities, to make lots of money doing the thing they were meant to do. So I had no idea that was not how it worked for everyone else.

#00:04:56-5# Neil : And Angela, can you just tell us a little bit more how you actually make money from what you do?

#00:05:03-0# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Yeh so I mean when it started I would just always get referred to authors to help them write a book and after about 20 years of just organically building a business without really being an entrepreneur, I was just like a lucky freelancer. About 6 years ago I started a business which we call The author incubator, that takes authors from the idea from a book, to having a best-seller in their hands. So we call it incubation, but we do everything from the book strategy, the concepts, the marketing plans, the actual design, the publishing, the editing, every single thing that happens for an author, we are sort of like an agent, a publisher and a book coach all in one. And so we really have had tremendous success, people who come through the programme, they pay for the programme, but most of our clients are seeing a 5-10 x return on their investment. And what’s more, their books are making a difference and helping people, we do exclusively non-fiction. So how to business books, self-help books, personal growth, spiritual books, and we have just seen such a tremendous impact from the books that we publish because the authors are really allowed to be passionate about what they are passionate about, and brilliant at what they are brilliant at. And we handle all of the things in the publishing world. Publishing and marketing and distributions, so they do not have to become and expert in that.

#00:06:39-1# Neil : Mmmm, the service that you are offering then, is that quite a unique service because I think quite a few authors will get the book published and then they are sort of left on their own, aren’t they to market the book and things?

#00:06:49-5# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Exactly, so what I have seen is people do, you can get multiple people to do these things, so you can hire a book coach, you can hire an editor, you can hire a designer, you can hire a book marketing strategist. The problem is everyone pulls you in opposite directions, and its a lot of money to invest, so like you invest with the book designer and they have one concept for your book, and then you invest with the editor and they have another concept, and you do not even realise they are pulling you in separate directions. So unless you are really good at publishing, in the first place, which if you were, what like why would you be doing, like for the first time, you are probably not. So most authors defer, especially first time authors, they defer to all these experts, but they do not realise that even if the experts were good in a silo, its really the strategy that pulls everything together, that’s the problem. So even people who publish with traditional publishers, don’t really have support from the beginning to the end. So that’s really why I invented the author incubator and it just came out of the fact that for almost 20 years I actually think it was 17 year but for almost 20 years I did almost all of these jobs, and because they just fell in my lap.

#00:08:13-1# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Like, I would just be back packing in Switzerland, and I would meet an author who would give me a job to do book marketing for him. Or I was on the tube in London, and I ended up getting a job helping a fashion reporter in Manhattan who happened to happened to be visiting London to write a book, so I had done all these different sorts of projects, and I just do not think there are most people who have such a broad area of expertise in books. So usually, you can get all this stuff, but you get it separately.

#00:08:43-4# Neil : Its great that you are offering that service. So what do you enjoy most about what you do?

#00:08:49-9# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : For me its all, this is the truth, its sort of embarrassing, but this is the truth. I really just wanted someone to pay me to read like books all day, because it was the only thing that I loved in the world. And now I get paid lots of money to read books all day really, and give people my opinions, so just before we hopped on this recording, I was reading a chapter from a manuscript from one of our authors, and then I get to tell her everything I think and she actually like will listen to me and we’ll make a better book together. And her book was about de-cluttering, and like the power of clutter to kind of keep us back from our goals. And like, I don’t have a major clutter problem, but I love that I get this Ninja information, from like the world’s leading experts in topics I would not otherwise necessarily go by those books. So I feel so prepared for everything, I have probably read 200 manuscripts this year, maybe more, plus the books that I actually also read. Because I cannot stop buying books, I am looking at a pile of like 15 books I am in the middle of.

#00:10:02-1# Neil : Ha ha ha

#00:10:02-1# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : But reading all day is what I always wanted to do, and I cannot believe I get to do that, make lots of money and help people in the process.

#00:10:11-5# Neil : Wow and what is it that drives you?

#00:10:15-9# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : You know, this is a very personal question, so I hope its ok if we go a little deep here. But I mentioned my dad earlier who is just a real inspiration to me and my dad really came from nothing. His parents both had, I think his dad had a sixth grade education and his mom had an eighth grade education, they were extremely poor, and really my dad built his whole business on his passion for cars, so he built 1927-1934 Ford Replicas and he did cars for some amazing people, Van Halen, Jeff Beck, ZZ Top, like my dad had a very very celebrated career. He is in the Hot Rod Hall of Fame. But in the end, he ended his business in a way that did not continue that legacy. So the business was sold at sort of a low price to a competitor and was quickly shut down. And he basically sold the client list, and he had over a million clients.

#00:11:25-3# Neil : Mmm hmmm

#00:11:25-3# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : So I for me, I am so driven by being able to take that to the next level and create a legacy for my family that goes beyond, like we had a great life growing up. We had great vacations and we lived in a really cool house and we did you know we met celebrities and we had incredible opportunities but in the end, it just ended after 40 years and my dad has memories now, he is retired in Florida and has memories. And I really want to have a legacy that outlasts me, I want to permanently change the entire publishing industry. And I think my dad did permanently change the Hot Rod Industry for sure, but I wish he made a little bit more money on that.

#00:12:14-5# Neil : Ok and so you love reading books, you read books in what you do, what do you do when you are relaxing? you are going to say reading books, aren’t you?

#00:12:24-8# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I know, right, I can think of one thing, so I read non-fiction for my job, and about once a year I will read a fiction book, its very calculated, I have to talk about it for a month beforehand and prepare for it. But I do occasionally read fiction, to relax. But really I am super lucky, we live in a, so we have this castle which is kind of a retreat facility, and we bring authors to this pretty incredible place to write their books. And when my authors are not here, we have an amazing indoor pool and a hot tub and a sauna and a gym, and so and I have a ten year old son. And so, I definitely spend a lot of time relaxing either playing plants versus zombies with my son or splashing around in the pool with him.

#00:13:21-5# Neil : And do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

#00:13:25-2# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I have for a long time been inspired by Sheryl Sanberg from Facebook, but I have actually been following her since her google days. So I ran for one of my authors, I ran one of the first-paid search campaigns, and it was back in 1998. And I worked for a start-up company called Conscious media which was an online bookstore, which was a non-fiction kind of new age spiritual book bookstore and we found all of our book buyers through google AdWords and at the time, Sheryl Sanberg was running it, so I started tracking her back in 2000 I think. 99 or 2000, I was in Grad school at the time that I was working there. So I have watched her career progression and really what I am most interested with her is leadership, and so I think so much of our success as entrepreneurs is being the person we want to be tomorrow or in five years. So I spent a lot of time talking with my friends and kind of business colleagues, about like, alright when I am at $20 million when I have 10 x this thing, how will I dress? where will I live? how will I talk? how will I act? and I have watched Sheryl do that, she is always a step or two ahead of where she is in her career in her thoughts, and in the way that she kind of manifests her opportunities.

#00:15:01-6# Neil : Ok, Angela, can we talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur? what difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your business?

#00:15:09-9# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Well I was a single mom and I was not always a single mom, I was married and when my son was about two, we got divorced. But I had the car payment and the house payment and everything set up for a two wage earner house hold. And I was definitely not prepared to have to pay all the bills myself and start a business. So the biggest thing I had to overcome was the thought, ‘it would be irresponsible to start a business right now.’ That was my predominant thought, it would be irresponsible to start a business right now, and so I kept telling myself I had to be miserable, squash my passions and desires, and I had an opportunity to do content marketing in books for a back-up windows server back-up software company. And I kept thinking the responsible thing to do is to take the full-time job writing books about window server back-up software. And that might seem like a little thing but the option between a variable amount of money and $10,000 dollars a month was huge, because I was a first time single mom, and I had more responsibility than I could handle.

#00:16:37-2# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : And so I really had to, I remember changing that thought to risky is the new safe. And I really re-programmed my brain, I’m like, ‘its so much safer for me to start my own business and learn how to control my destiny, so that I can take care of this child for the next 18 years.’ Than to take what seems like a safe job right now that I can get fired from any time and then I am completely at the will of the next employer. So I really flipped the thought from ‘it would be irresponsible to start a business as a single mom’ to ‘the most responsible thing I can do is figure out entrepreneurship right now, so I will know for sure I could take care of my kid.’

#00:17:21-6# Neil : Mmm I think that concept of risky is the new safe, I mean I have heard that the other way round, that safe is actually risky so having a job especially these days because its rare to get a job for life, its actually riskier isn’t it? so

#00:17:36-6# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I really come into myself with that,

#00:17:40-6# Neil : I have heard that, and did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:17:48-7# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I did, I mean this is what I did. I had my foot on the clutch and the gas at the same time, so I kept thinking, so I did not really delay starting my business, but I was kind of half in. So I started my business and I got some clients, but then I kept some corporate work on the side, it was book work so I would justify it like I did a book at the beginning, that was about child identity theft. And it was not really in my sweet spot of helping entrepreneurs, but it was not that far off. It was a publicly traded company that did the book, but it was kind of an entrepreneurial division. And so I would tell myself that I was all in, but the truth is that I was not really fully committed, I was kind of trying to keep my foot a little bit on the clutch so that at any point I could go back to corporate. And just doing that kind of riding the gas and the clutch at the same time, I think what happened is I really slowed my progress. I think if I was just all in on the gas, I would have probably gotten to where I am two or three years sooner.

#00:18:59-7# Neil : And what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey? I mean I think you have eluded to that there haven’t you?

Interviewer:
#00:19:01-0# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Yeh I just felt that I was so brave, but I really was not as brave as I could have been. But I could not see that, so I don’t know if I would go back in time, I don’t know if I could convince myself ‘hey you are not all in.’ I felt terrified. Like I felt all in, but in retrospect I could see, I was hedging my bets.

#00:19:29-2# Neil : Yeh what are some of the things that you did before you started your business, that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who have not yet taken their first step on the entrepreneur way?

#00:19:38-6# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Well the thing is, I knew my stuff, so I get a lot of people who want to write books with me and they will tell me in their interview like they are going through a painful divorce, and their life is upside down, and they are living in their mom’s basement. And then I will say, ‘what’s your book about?’ and they will say, ‘recovering from divorce.’ And I will very politely not invite them to write a book with me, because I think one of the things I see that people do wrong is they have an expertise, but they get excited or they get stars in their eyes about some other idea that’s new and hot for them. And so they wanted to build a business on something they are not an expert in, so I would figure out what are you the best in the world at? What is the mountain you could stand on top of and really say, like I am the best at this, and sometimes what that means is redefining a territory or defining it really tightly. You know like, we don’t do books by entrepreneurs that have businesses that are over a million dollars a year, now we could. I could be real good at that, but I would not be the best in the world.

#00:20:55-9# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : But one of the things that we do is we focus on coaches and speakers who are currently making somewhere between $20,000 and $100,000 a year. And we get them to $200,000 to $500,000 a year within six months of bringing out their first book. So that’s what we are the best in the world at, I could do that all day long, and so people come to me all the time, and they will have a million dollar business or they will have zero dollar business, and they still want to do a book with, and because I know what we are good at, I know who to say no to, with kindness and sometimes with a referral, but I think that most people before they start their business do not define the mountain that they want to defend. And they are not honest with themselves about what they are actually qualified to do, versus what they want to do. Now you still get to do some of that other stuff that you are maybe not qualified for, but you have to find a way to hook it to what you are for sure an expert in. And if you are not an expert in anything yet, go build that expertise, and you do not build that expertise by taking classes, you build that expertise by getting clients.

#00:22:20-0# Neil : Angela, can we talk about the entrepreneurial journey a little bit now? and do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

#00:22:30-2# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : This is a very pertinent one to me right now, I think culture is invevitable from the beginning. So I think its happening whether you know it or not, and I am trying to be more conscious and intentional about that, because I think its happening one way or another.

#00:22:53-9# Neil : And how are you trying to be more intentional with that?

#00:22:59-6# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : So this is kind of my thought, is like there is a culture, and I am talking here like about like the corporate culture or the culture of our business. There is a culture, but I think its happened so organically, that I am trying to like define that, you know we have a mission statement, we have a vision statement, but are we really living it? Does it match up with what we do? And so we ask those questions, pretty regularly as a team.

#00:23:28-8# Neil : I think its one of those things this where some people feel that you should just let it happen organically. And that leads to you being more authentic and then other people think you should define it and decide exactly what you are trying to achieve and how you are trying to run your business and how you want people to perceive your business, so I take it you want to have a little bit more structure to what you are doing, is that what you are saying?

#00:23:53-2# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Yeh but I am conflicted here because I think its going to be organic. I just want to be honest about it, so its sort of like, for some people it might happen organically and they might not talk about it, for some people they might say, like I will say Tony Shay from Zappos. Like we want happy employees, and happy customers and they are trying to be really organic and kind of force a culture in a certain direction. My thing is, I just do not want to lie about it, so I do not want to be saying our mission statement is this and then doing something else. I want to, like this is kind of a sunshine policy, but I want to very clearly say ‘this is our culture, this is what we are doing, this is the mission statement we are living, is everybody good with that?’ like a a team, are we good with that? because we might say, our mission statement is to get people the best books in the world, but the truth of the matter is our books are done, so we could definitely say ‘we are getting people books the fastest’ but they may not be the best in the world because craft is not our strength.

#00:25:06-8# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Like we write good books, but we write books that have a big impact, and so I think one of the things that’s happened on my team is a lot of my staff is very focused on craft. And so they will spend lots of time on craft, but my mission statement is about results and impact of your book, and they are not the same thing. So what I say is, we do not want books that are English class good. I do not want you to get a top mark on your English paper; I want your book to get into people’s hands to change their lives and for them to hire you. And so craft could be part of that, but it does not necessarily have to be, there are lots of books that are not particularly well written that have had a huge impact. And so I say our vision is one thing, I say that we have one goal but then my team is doing something else, so one of my tricks is to sort of operationalise that, and say ‘here is what we are doing and here is what we are spending time on.’ So clearly these are our values, here is what I say our values are, do you guys want me to change our values or do we want to change what we are doing because we are out of sync?

#00:26:26-0# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : And so we do kind of a quarterly check in about that, to be an intentional as possible.

#00:26:29-6# Neil : Mmm I think you have to be because otherwise you might not end up delivering what you think you are going to deliver in your business, I think that is the danger isn’t it?

#00:26:37-3# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Exactly, especially because the people delivering on my team, the editors and designers are not the same people as the sales people. So the sales people are selling one thing and then the team is delivering something else. So that’s why I like make a big effort every quarter to be like, here is what we are telling people, here is what we are doing. Where do we have opportunities to close that gap?

#00:26:58-6# Neil : Yeh. In my opinion on this is that you have to define it, but you have got to define it at a level that you can actually be true to and be authentic to and actually follow through on, rather than trying to hit something that you have no intention of then delivering on and its that honesty with yourself, that really defines it I think. Would you agree with that?

#00:27:19-3# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Yeh. And there is a living element to this, which is as much as you want to control, and this obviously depends on if you have got a team, and I have got about 15 people on my team. And you can’t make people do what you want, even the best argument, does not you can’t force someone. You can decide if they are the right people for the team, but you kind of have to be open to other alternatives, so I have definitely been surprised a lot by good and bad ideas that my team has come up with, but I try and stay open. So even though I am very fixed about what I want the culture to be, I recognise my team has stuff to add and if they are a part of that, I think they are going to be more invested than me trying to kind of shove my wishes down their throats, which has not been super effective.

#00:28:18-7# Neil : I read a book by Dave Logan called Tribal Leadership and that talked about Zappos. And I believe in Zappos because I believe they use them as an example, and they get the team to define some of those values. So they all buy into it eventually, because they then use that as a measure of making decisions and they will pull out the core values and say ‘well does this decision, does it actually tie in with our core values?’ Then if it does, then they know what they need to do, and if it does not, they know they should not be doing it, and I think that is probably the key to it.

#00:28:53-6# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Ok so listen to this sound, that is the sound of tribal leadership, leveraging natural groups to build the thriving organisation, it is in my hand right now, I was just having this conversation at an event.

#00:29:08-3# Neil : Was you really? That very book?

#00:29:09-7# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : This very book was just recommended to me, its literally what I am reading right this second.

#00:29:14-1# Neil : Its an excellent read, I really enjoyed reading that.

#00:29:17-5# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Yeh I tried to jump ahead to like the fifth stage, I’m like I do not want to hear about all these hard stages, early stage, no I just want it done. But I know its a process, this just is it, you ask the money question for me, right now that is the thing I am most in the thick of is intentional culture building.

#00:29:39-3# Neil : And knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

#00:29:48-4# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I don’t know on that one, I mean if I had to go back, and do it again, the thing like I was a little all over the place. One of the things I teach my authors is that writing the book for a smaller audience, in fact writing the book for one person gets you a bigger audience. And so I was a little all over the map, I did authors that had all different sizes of platforms, whereas now we work with authors who have a new platform, they do not really have a big list or a big following. I had a lot of different products, so I taught social media for authors, I taught book writing, like I had a lot of different products, and how I had one product. We just sell one thing all day long, so simplify, I think that’s what I would have shortcut the learning curve, like stop inventing new products. Make something saleable and sell it.

#00:30:50-7# Neil : And how much does gut feelings influence your decisions in your business?

#00:31:01-2# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I am extremely a very linear thinker. And so I do pros and cons lists, and a cost benefit analysis. But I am so naturally that way, so I am an ENTJ on the Myers Briggs chart, I am very left brained, I am sort of borderline Asperger’s so I am extremely linear. So it looks to people like I am making gut decisions. But I think its like that Malcolm Gladwell book ‘blink’, I am just good at processing quickly the cost benefit of something that to other people it might look like I am making an impulsive or a rash decision. Like I mentioned for instance, we moved into this castle, so we live in a 16,000 foot conference facility with 8 bedrooms, a glass elevator, a pool, a ballroom, a movie theatre, a video studio, its literally one of the most incredible buildings I have ever been in, in my life. And I think it seemed like I very spontaneously made a decision to move from like my three bedroom suburban house into a castle. And the truth is though, I had very carefully and very quickly analysed what the cost of travel and hotels for events was over the course of the last year. So I said yes to this in about five minutes. Like people were like, ‘what happened? how did you move?’ it seemed like a gut reaction. But instantly, as soon as I saw it I could do the cost benefit analysis and it was a no brainer. So I think it looks like gut feeling but ultimately I can usually track down a pretty impirical piece of evidence for my decisions.

#00:32:51-5# Neil : Mmm, sounds like a fantastic place you have got there.

#00:32:56-6# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Its pretty amazing, if you ever find yourself on the East Coast, you got to come and visit.

#00:33:00-2# Neil : I will do, Angela, life is made of constant change whether we like or not and many people say the only constant in life is change. How do you try to keep up with change?

#00:33:15-4# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Yeh we have been going through a lot of that, we have grown so quickly this year, in 2015 so I guess last year at this point, and I think for me, change is something I really enjoy because I am such a deliberate manifester, that whenever I see evidence of change and I am sure this is just pattern matching but that’s fine with me. When I see evidence of change, its because life is moving into the position I want it to move into. So I think the hardest thing for change with me is my husband’s mind-set is so different, that he sees things changing so quickly and I think he just wants to like stop the train a little bit, because I do not think he kind of has his hand on the driver’s wheel in the same way on the steering wheel the same way that I do. He is kind of somebody who life happens to him and I am always pushing for it to go in a certain direction and looking for evidence that it either went that way because I wanted it to or the place it went was even better. So I think I am an optimist and a manifester and so change always feels really good to me.

#00:34:37-2# Neil : And what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:34:48-5# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Yeh I mean I guess for me the most powerful book that has changed my life is a book by Martha Beck. Called finding your own North Star, and I would say this would be for people at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey, so I took this book with me to India and spent about three weeks doing every exercise in the book. I journaled, I did work sheets, I did art therapy, and I really tried to answer the question ‘what do you lose track of time doing?’ and I made this stupid list, that I still have, I keep the book on my desk. It says, so one of the work sheets was, ‘what do you lose track of time doing?’ and I wrote, ‘talking to Jenny’, who was my best friend, ‘playing cards and reading self-help books’ and the idea was from this book you were supposed to figure out like what you were supposed to do with your life. But I had been organically working in books for 20 years and I was passionate about it, but I felt like I had never gone out and found a job. I was like at some point I should get a job, I have been doing this for like 17 years now. And I thought that I should be a personal injury attorney, so I bought that book to confirm my suspicion that I should go to law school, get a real job and be a personal injury lawyer like an ambulance chaser?

#00:36:15-2# Neil : Mmmm

#00:36:18-0# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I thought I would be awesome at that. So that was my big plan, and instead every exercise that I did in this book would come back to books. And I was like ‘no, no, no, books is not my real job, that is the job I have been accidentally doing for the last 20 years.’ I am trying to get the real job now, and so that really helped me identify even though I remember writing like ‘what do you lose track of time doing? reading self-help books.’ I’m like, that’s a job. Because at that point, all the books I had done were more business books and political books. And so when I realised like, that’s actually a job, it was three or four years later, or maybe it was more. Oh my god it was like seven years later, so I spent 7 years trying to like figure out what I was going to do, with my life once I grew up and stopped this book stuff. And of course it was under my nose all the time, so if you are having trouble identifying your passion or your mission or the mountain that you want to stand on top of and defend, I highly recommend Martha Beck’s finding your own North Star.

#00:37:29-1# Neil : Thank you for that. Everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when you may be doing other things. Such as driving or when you are at the gym, we have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book, go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up then you will qualify. Angela,

#00:37:55-9# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : I want a free audio book, that’s fantastic. Freeaudiobook.com.

#00:38:01-8# Neil : Yeh.

#00:38:01-8# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : We got to get our books up there, that’s fantastic.

#00:38:03-4# Neil : Freeaudiobookoffer.com.

#00:38:07-1# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Love it. Go and get Marth Beck’s book, go and see what else is up there or get the what do we also talk about? Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan. See if they have those, go buy those books. Or get one free.

#00:38:16-9# Neil : I think you can get that free on the Zappo site actually. Maybe the audio version of it. Angela we are now at the part of the show where I would like to speculate about the future a little bit with you, so what one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

#00:38:28-4# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : So I am ready to start making investments, in purchasing some companies to put on to our, actually perhaps freeaudiobook.com would be the kind of company I would like to buy. So we want to do some mergers and acquisitions with like an audio book company, a distribution site, a review site so books that are in the publishing industry, but we want to bolt on some high level partners, but we could get financing for that, and we have got a lot of things lined up that would make it work, but if it failed it would blow stuff up that is working, so you know I have got a business that is throwing off some nice evido, like we have got great revenue numbers and taking a risk like purchasing a company right now, could be the most brilliant thing I have ever done or the stupidest, so if I knew for sure I would not fail, there are two companies I would go buy right now.

#00:39:37-0# Neil : Ok and what skill if you were excellent at it, would help you the most to double your business?

#00:39:44-5# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Managing people. I am medium at that, that is not, I am not awesome at that, I would love to be awesome at that. And that’s where I am spending all my time and attention and my learning, my educational budget, the mentors that I have brought into my life right now, how to build an excellent team. My instinct is to lead by bullying I think, I am like, ‘but here is the right way to do it, don’t be stupid.’ And that it turns out does not really motivate people, and so I am up levelling that and that is my full personal commitment. I spend night and day thinking about how to be an amazing leader.

#00:40:33-4# Neil : And in five years from now, if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business, after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#00:40:45-8# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : So we are going to be in fast company, I know that because I am looking at it on my vision board, and its going to say, ‘the world’s 50 most innovative companies’ and we are going to be on that list of 50. And our customers and suppliers and partners are going to talk about how we have revolutionised the publishing industry by making it possible for publishers to make more money, for authors to make more money, and most importantly for readers to get real substantive change and results from non-fiction books.

#00:41:19-7# Neil : We are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, Angela what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:41:30-0# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : So I know you probably meant like quote from an expert, and I will give you one of those two, but my personal quote that I say all the time to people is the more you do, the more you do. So I just find that action is the solution to just about everything. And then I will give you a quote that I have been spending a lot of time with lately, its from a guy named Jesse Elder, who is a mastermind leader and mentor in Austin, Texas, and a friend of mine, and he says, be the lighthouse, not the tug boat.

#00:42:07-2# Neil : I like that.

#00:42:07-2# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : And that is you know, we have talked about managing teams, we have talked about working with clients, I have really taken that to heart. And we even have internally in our organisation, the term tug-boating and so we will say, are you tug-boating there? or are you light-housing? And so we have really sort of built that in to our culture, is that we are the lighthouses not the tug-boats, because that gets better results, and that is really the reason we do it.

#00:42:38-8# Neil : And do you have any favourite online resources that you can share with us?

#00:42:38-8# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Certainly if anyone is interested in writing a book, check out the author incubator because there is a free offer to get my book, The difference – which is the 10 steps to writing a book that matters. And then, this is not exactly an online resource, but this has been huge for my clients and my team. Everybody who I work with, does the fascination advantage, by Sally Hogshead and if you have not done that test, it has definitely changed everything about the way that we write and market our books. And how our team interacts, so that is one of my favourite online resources right now, Sally Hogshead Fascination Advantage.

#00:43:31-3# Neil : What is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:43:31-3# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : My best advice to other entrepreneurs is to go all in, and to really question your beliefs and areas where you are not fully committed to your mission. I think so many people that I see, kind of think of entrepreneurship as a nice to have, but they tell people they are all in, but they have really got back-up plans, and ways of wriggling themselves out of it, that they spend more time working on. Than really living into that space of leadership, where there is no world in which this is not what you are doing. So yeh, go all in.

#00:44:21-3# Neil : Everyone, if you did not manage to get a note of Angela’s favourite resource or her favourite book, then you can find the links on Angela’s show notes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com. And search for Angela or Angela Lauria in the search box. Angela is there anything else you would like to add about your business?

#00:44:42-8# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : No, just if you have thought about writing a book and you wondered if it would change your business, the thing I want to say is 90% of books make no impact to your business. Because most people know how to write, but they do not know how to write a book that makes a difference. So make sure that you focus on the strategy and not the tactics. Getting 30-60,000 words on to paper takes somewhere between 15 and 40 hours. Its basically a week of work, I was a ghost writer for years. It would take me a week to write a book, that is not the hard part. The hard part is really knowing your strategy and your play, and if you do not have a team behind you to support you, you are better of skipping it. Because for most people, a book just launches them in the opposite direction, and sucks up energy that could have gone to getting clients. So unless you are a 100% sure that you are going to get a 10 x return on your investment, do not do it. I guess that’s counter intuitive advice from a publisher. But I just see so many people wasting their time and energy when as an entrepreneur you do not have time and energy to waste. So there is a way to do it well, but most people do not find that way.

#00:46:10-7# Neil : Thank you, Angela at the beginning of this conversation, you talked about, you liked to get inside books and during I feel like we have really inside your head and got to understand your business thinking and your philosophy behind business which has just been fantastic, so thank you very much for coming on the show, you have really given us a lot of insight, and passed us on quite a lot of experience on so thank you.

#00:46:33-7# Dr Angela Lauria Founder & Owner of The Author Incubator : Thank you so much for having me, this was a lot of fun and if people, if anybody wants to reach out to me, its Angela at The Author Incubator, you can put that in the show notes, I am happy to talk to listeners if they have any follow-up questions.

#00:46:4Neil : Thank you Angela, you are welcome. Thank you.