Turn Your Book Into Brand Authority | Michele DeFilippo

Welcome to Wickedly Branded: Marketing, Magic, and The Messy Middle, the podcast where real conversations meet real strategies. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic, attract the right people, and build businesses that light them up.

What if the book you’re writing is already shaping your brand before anyone reads a single page?

In this episode of Marketing, Magic and the Messy Middle: Wickedly Branded®, Beverly Cornell sits down with Michele DeFilippo, owner of 1106 Design, to talk about what most entrepreneurs misunderstand about self-publishing, authority, and protecting their creative work.

Michele brings decades of publishing experience to the conversation, from her early days in typesetting to building a full-service book design and publishing firm that has helped produce more than 4,000 books. Together, Beverly and Michele unpack why professional editing, thoughtful book design, and strategic production matter so much, especially for business owners who want their book to build trust, credibility, and long-term authority.

They also explore the messy middle of publishing today, including how authors can avoid low-quality shortcuts, protect their rights and revenue, and create a book that feels aligned with their larger brand. For entrepreneurs, consultants, coaches, speakers, and thought leaders, this conversation is a reminder that a book is more than a project. It is part of your brand ecosystem, your reputation, and the legacy you are building.

Key Marketing Topics

1. Your Book Is a Brand Authority Asset

A book can do more than share your ideas. When created with strategy, quality, and intention, it can build trust, strengthen your positioning, and help potential clients understand your expertise before they ever work with you.

2. Professional Publishing Builds Credibility

Readers make fast judgments about a book based on the cover, interior design, editing, and overall presentation. Michele explains why a professionally produced book should never look amateur, especially when it is connected to your business, thought leadership, or legacy.

3. Strategic Content Can Become a Bigger Body of Work

Beverly and Michele discuss how blogs, thought leadership, and core content pillars can eventually become a book. When entrepreneurs create content with consistency and intention, they build a library of ideas that can support SEO, visibility, authority, and future publishing opportunities.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Did you know that more than two million books are self-published every single year? Yet most authors still don't understand the publishing business well enough to protect their work, their rights, or their revenue. Welcome to the Wickedly Branded Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell. I'm the founder and fairy godmother here at Wickedly Branded. And today's guest is Michelle Flippo. She's the owner of 1106 Design, a Phoenix-based book design and publishing services firm that has produced well over 4,000 books for indie authors, publishers, and thought leaders. With a career spanning since 1980, Michelle has navigated massive shifts in the publishing industry and emerged as a trusted advocate for authors, helping them publish professionally while retaining full ownership and revenue from their work. Michelle, I am so excited to have you here. Welcome to Wicked the Branded Podcast. Thank you for having me, Bethany. 1980, I only say it that way because I feel like the marketing industry has changed so much because what I learned and what we do now is entirely different. I can imagine clipshift for you. But talking a little bit about how you got started and how 1106 designs came to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Nobody knows what that is anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

But how did you go from typesetting then to 1106 designs? Because that's a big difference in technology and what's available now versus that, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

The tighting business was what you would call an old-fashioned business. It was computerized typesetting, but we had dedicated typesetting workstations, machines that cost$35,000 each. We used to just set these big long strips of paper that then sent to an art director who would paint it up manually with rubber cement and razor blank and stuff in order to create brochures or even books, labor-intensive process. So that lasted 13 years until the early 90s when Steve Jobs put me out of business in the Macintosh.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

And so then what was your next iteration then after that?

SPEAKER_00 2:21

So after that, I went back to freelancing. And then around 2001 is when I started 1106 design because self-publishing started to take off, and I knew I had the skills to do it. And it was just much more fun than working on brochures and things of that nature, ads.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

So I never see another car advertisement.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

I really used to work on car ads then, and it was an education, right? Because they would always put the car on sale that was a really terrible car, and they would put that on sale for a low price. So the whole thing was a bait and switch operation to just get people into the dealership.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Then have the car salesman sell them whatever they wanted to sell them, right? Some things never change. Was there has there been a defining moment with 1106 design like that has helped you be clearer or more more? I don't know what the word I want to use is more like this business is more stable in a way because of this defining moment, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

At first, 1106 was just me, but then working for authors, it started to grow. I couldn't handle it all myself. People would start asking me, what do you offer editing as well as design? And so rather than say no, I brought on a freelance editor. Just step by step it started to grow that way. And so now we're a team of about 20 people, and we help a lot of authors every year. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

So 4,000 books. That's a lot of books. Tell me a little bit about the types of books that you work with, the authors that you work with.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Oh, we've worked on every type of book you can imagine, and a few that you can't. But yeah, no, we do everything fiction, nonfiction. We've done we a couple of years ago, we did an 850-page biography of Winston Churchill. But then more the typical books, business books, fiction, children's books, everything. We we've done it all. What's your favorite? I love nonfiction books. Why nonfiction? Why do you like them? But uh fiction nonfiction books are all different. There's tables, they have charts, there's diagrams to draw. And making that all work together and designing the interior so that it's a navigable product for the end for the reader is there's a challenge to that. It's not just something that happens. So I like those the best.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

So there's different intentions for a fiction and nonfiction book. And I feel as a business person, me writing the nonfiction book has a lot of reasons behind it. Obviously, I care about what I'm writing about, and I want as many people to be exposed to it as possible, but I also want it to build authority. I want it to help build my business. I want it to hopefully maybe get them enough information to like when they do call, they're like almost ready to buy. There's a lot of things that you want a nonfiction book to do if you are doing it intentionally and with strategy and all those things. And most of my clients are business owners who might possibly write a nonfiction book at some point. So talk a little bit about that process.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Do you have any best practices or advice for that? You should work with a good editor from the very beginning, right? Because the editor is objective in a way that you can't be when you're writing your own material. And it's more than just the editor catching errors that you missed, it's the editor's just overarching perspective about the publishing industry and what similar books are like and what the major publishers are doing at that time. So it's all kinds of information that you really need to have that outside perspective, which is really valuable. Now, as far as the there's a lot of misunderstanding, too, about what the interior design involves, particularly for a nonfiction book, because people make a judgment about your book, whether it's credible based on the interior layout. Now, the word you'll hear today is formatting. Authors go out and find a formatter. Book interior design is much more complicated than that. It's very, it has to be thoughtful. It's very detailed, and it's very easy for it to go wrong if it's not done carefully. And that makes you look bad if you don't work with a qualified interior book designer.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

So I never even heard of that rule before.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

If you go to a bookstore, go to a bookstore and look at the interiors of different books, you'll see they're all different. It doesn't just happen that somebody had to think about that and do that.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

I feel like so. For me, self-publishing is the only option or working like an independent like this, because I am a designer, like I'm a marketer. So I want full control design of my book, and I want it to feel magical when you open it. And I want it to have a layer of depth and like part of my brand when you do if I can make every single page like shiny and glittery, I would, but that would be very expensive. So I can't do that. But I I can infuse it with some of that. So I actually have illustrations, like custom illustrations I put in the book with it. Like I have taken the extra time because I understand how important design is in overall from a branding perspective.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

It's very detailed that you use Adobe in design. And working with a designer doesn't mean you give up what you wanted. And if we were working for you, for example, we would have that discussion about how do you want the interior of your book to look? Do you want those customs illustrations included? It's a custom, it's a collaboration back and forth. So then you get what you want, we apply the skills, good typography, and all of the rest so that the final product looks like it was done by a major publisher.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

The next point I was going to talk about is writing the book is one thing. Once you have the manuscript, there's so much more you have to think about. And as much as I would like to wave my magic wand and have it published immediately, it doesn't always happen that way. So what is it after I write my book? What do I have to think about? What are all the things afterwards that are that need to be considered?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Well, the very first step is to work with a qualified editor, like we just talked about. That the next step is to work with a book designer, cover designer, interior designer. And after that, we go to typesetting. Once an interior design is developed and approved, then we go on to the actual typesetting of the full book because we're not just going to launch into a typesetting hundreds of pages before you've approved the design. So that collaboration has to happen first. And then at our shop, the next step after that is proofreading. Somebody reads every word of your book to make sure that you and the editor didn't miss something along the way. And we find a surprising number of things at that stage. You'd be amazed. So then we go through the rounds of corrections after that. And then the ebook is produced, and then the files are uploaded at our shop to your print-on-demand accounts so that you have complete control of your publishing business and you're not losing control to a hybrid publisher who's and I think if it's for someone like me who actually owns our own business and does design some of that stuff, and I have proofreaders on tap on my team and things like that that are specifically doing that.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

I think it's important to say because like I might, from a strategic standpoint, be thinking about the overarching like themes, and that's my job. I'm not looking for, and that's not what I see every day. I'm pretty good about editing, but I'm not my own work, ever my own work. Like I can tear apart somebody else's in a minute, but not my own. So when you're very close to something, you do need somebody to look at it from a different perspective.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

I didn't design my own logo. I was struggling like crazy, couldn't do it. Finally sent it to my designer and said, Here, you need I can't think about this for anymore.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

You get your own way when you do that. I feel like with from a business standpoint, when we work with people who are doing branding and doing marketing, sometimes you need somebody to come in from the outside who's not in the weeds with you and can see above the forest and the trees and see what your vision is and help that come to fruition because they have some vantage point that you're not seeing because you're so deeply close and connected to whatever it is. I did not design my own. I had one of our designers design it. I wouldn't touch it because I had a vision and I said, This is what I'm thinking, but I want to see what happens from your perspective. Like I needed to let the people who do it for a living do it. Even I could do it if I wanted to. My role really is from strategy and more messaging than the visual background of it. I have graphic designers, I have web developers, people who do that all day long. So I trust them implicitly and I would not, especially for something like that. We can't be good at everything. I think you're super important because I'm a designer, but they're not. And I have some resources at my disposal, but that they necessarily don't. I am not a book designer by any stretch of imagination. And I think people like you are so necessary. I do think because there's so much self-publishing and indie publishing and things happening now, people are so unsure of who to trust. Like, how do you find a trusted partner in that isn't going to be so much money that like it's a huge investment, although it is an investment. How how do you find how do you find that?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

It's more difficult than it's ever been before. And the problem is that there are a lot of companies that have gotten into the space that are not people of integrity. Just to just put it bluntly, they're in it for the money, they see the demand for self-publishing, and they don't know the first thing about publishing a book. They really don't. The product that they offer people is just dreadful. It doesn't even begin to approach traditional publishing standards. But you might, as an author, you might not recognize that. And you shouldn't have to recognize that. It's the job of the professional business person, in my view, to offer quality work. But that's publishing has become the biggest used car a lot in the world.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

And I feel like it's like there are a lot of swarmy people there for some reason. I like I think you're right. I think they see the demand and I think it's an easy opportunity. But even from a marketing perspective, there's a lot of people who say they do marketing and they don't really do marketing. So I guess probably it's in every field. And you just have to find the person that you see that has the experience, see that has the credentials, see that has done 4,000 books, see that have been around for a while, like not a flash in the night kind of situation. I mean, it's just hard to differentiate. What are some things that you should consider when you're looking for someone? What are some good questions or good things to consider if you're looking for help?

SPEAKER_00 12:21

What I always tell authors to do is to, if you're, let's say you're looking for a cover designer, you're looking at the samples on their website, or you're looking at your friend on social media's cover and so forth, and they look fine to you. But what you should do is stop, open up the websites of major publishers, the big six, and go get the covers on their website. And you will see a really big difference between what major publishers do and what's typically offered to self-publishing authors. And a lot of times, and a lot of time and effort goes into that. There's a lot of knowledge about color, typography, the hierarchy of the elements, the composition of the cover, the look and feel of it has to be appropriate to the genre. There's tons of intelligence that goes into a successful book cover. And that is not typically offered to self-published authors. There's a lot of companies and freelancers out there who will just say to the author, What do you want? And the author too. Well, we need to remind you about this and consider this. It's not really, it's just a it's a task instead of a collaboration. And that's really it's unfortunate because you can really, with little practice, you can look at the cover and you say that's self-published. You shouldn't be able to say it's self-published. There's nothing wrong with self-publishing, but your book should never look self-published. It shouldn't read like self-published. The author is the publisher. And as the publisher, you have the responsibility to put out a product that's up to market standards.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

I want somebody that has legacy, right? I don't want to just publish noise. I want to publish somebody that has legacy. So if you're going to publish something for legacy, I feel like you do need to consider all of these things so that it makes you it's a part of your brand, then, right? It's a part of the way you look and feel as an authority. And if you're not going to give that attention, then how does it make you look?

SPEAKER_00 14:13

That first impression is all important. It's so different between a book and an item on the grocery store shelf. What attracts you to this box of cereal versus another, right? Good photography, a good design, something about the text on the color. Color psychology is huge. It tells you this is a trustworthy product, and I'm going to put it in my shopping cart and buy it. It's the same. So another thing to keep in mind is that professional services at the traditional publisher level are not cheap. So you should plan a budget that will get you those professional people. There's all kinds of lower level people who will ring your manuscript through Grammarly and say they edited it. And that's fine for you to do that as a self-editor, right? It's not a substitute for a qualified, thoughtful, experienced edit. The design is the same thing. Yes, you can get software. Yes, you can go to Fiverr, but you're not going to get the level of service you need unless you set a reasonable budget.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Yeah. It's interesting. So I if your goal is to make six figures off the book, you need to invest something into the book. Like you can't expect it to be six figures if you haven't put the time and thought and energy and have the experts, I think, working on that.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Retail sales are really difficult. Retail sales. I wouldn't have it from retail sales. I would have make six figures if you put out a beautiful book and you use it to generate business for you. I actually did that and it was quite by it. I didn't expect it. It's my little book here called Publish Like the Pros. And my editor said to me, Why don't we why don't we polish these up and put them into a book?

SPEAKER_01 16:53

And this is to my clients all the time. Your blog post could become a book one day if you stay within, we call them content pillars. If you stay within your content fillers and you have then you start to have a massive amount of library around these six four to six things, those become chapters, those become you can really create something of authority, not only for SEO and AEO and all those things, but also from a book publishing perspective, if you think about it from the beginning of writing it that way. I love that your editor was like that. That's the way it should be. You should be writing things that are thought leadership enough to be able to then turn them into something later of either a greater, whether it's an article in a in MSN or into a book of some sort going forward.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Blogging was new back in night in 2012. So I hadn't done that. I was just putting stuff out.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

I started my business in 2011, started on social media and in blogging. That was like the thing I was doing for all my clients then. And I've been thinking about that ever since. That's writing pieces that will not only feed the Google Beast, but also will create thought leadership where you can put them together one day as a book. So not hurt. Repurposing or remixing.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

And I'm not capable of doing that. And she did a wonderful job. I was just so shocked. I go, Oh, this is great. AI can help you slice it in different ways.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

But yes, I think everything starts and stops with that content. I think human creativity will always be important. I think now more than ever, actually. And technology has been such a big part of it that it's a little overwhelming every day at how much the algorithm changes or the trends change, or staying on top of all that it seems a little bit overwhelming at times.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

The thing that excites me the most about AI is, and I won't live to see it, but what is what's going to become the world when there are no barriers to knowledge anymore? Isn't that great? It's exciting to live in times of great change. We've split through a lot of change though.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

In our lifetimes has been far more than before. Like it's interesting how fast things have changed in our lifetime. So, what's been like the biggest challenge, do you think, for you? What's been some of the messy middle for you growing your business, marketing your business? Obviously, the book was helpful. What else has been like hard or maybe a little bit messy for you to figure out?

SPEAKER_00 19:09

When I first started my business in 1980, one of the first customers that walked in the door for my typesetting business, he needed a business card. I still remember his name, Rich's Roofing was his company. And I guess I looked like I needed advice. I was 28 years old at the time. And he started giving me business advice. And he said, listen to your customers, they will tell you everything you need to know. And that has turned out to be the best business advice I ever heard before or since it. And so if you do that in any business, I think you'll always do better than if you just try to learn everything yourself, know everything yourself, because as a as an individual, you're limited. That's one of the things we've always done and we still do today. And that kind of smooths things out most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

But if you balance that with the business, like your passion, your purpose, like how do you balance what the customer wants and the saying and who Michelle is and how you want to balance your life? Because I feel like the first 10 years of my business, I let my customers dictate my business. Where I was really overwhelmed and overworked and burnt out. And I got to the point where I was almost resenting my clients because it wasn't making me happy.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

And so, how do you balance that? It's always a challenge. It's still a challenge. But so we try to set expectations beginning, right? I will often have customers will come to us and say, I've scheduled an event and I need my book in a month. It's not going to happen. I'm sorry. I would like to help you. I'm not going to work 24-7, and I'm not going to ask my staff to work 24-7 in order to accomplish that. So you just have to set limits sometimes in what you allow customers to do. You have limits on how much you can do.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

The more intense we've been about that, the better it has been. I think that's great that you're doing that. So I have a magic wand, and I love the idea of creating our own businesses the way that we want to and how it's evolved over time. And you've seen the evolution in such a personal way. But if there was one marketing thing, if I could wave my wand today and fix it, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

That's easy. If you could wave your magic wand and tell me which marketing is actually working versus which marketing is wasting my time, I would love to know that because right now I can't get past the shotgun stage where I'm doing everything just hoping for the best.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

The thing that I think probably you need to start with is just looking at what is working in a sense of like the metrics. Are you measuring anything? Are you looking at the reports every month from the tool? No, I don't know. Okay. So there's we there, we can certainly help you with that if that's somebody you need help with. But we if there's somebody on your team who is more apt to do that, looking at what where people are coming into the website, looking at if you're doing Facebook or you're doing LinkedIn or you're doing what email marketing, what are results from this? What who's clicking on what? Where are they clicking on it? What's happening? And so one thing that we do every month, this is like a really great example. So, like for LinkedIn, look at every month the top three posts. And what was like the common denominators in those? Is it the hook? Is it the image? Is it the so for whatever reason, Michelle, pictures of me on LinkedIn do really well. And I don't have a Facebook or TV, have a Facebook radio. For whatever reason, that is what does really well on our stuff. So the human personal connection of me is what does really well. It's hitting, right? I will write the best punish I think in the Hawaii world that it doesn't hit, right? But it's because I didn't maybe do the best hook. What are the hooks that are working right now? What is the thing that's working? So we always measure and look at the best things that happened last month, and then we start to track the trends that we're seeing over the month. So we have a growth scorecard that we measure. Like we have, it's called the flywheel. There's like a whole it's complicated, but I want to complicate it. We have measurements for every element of our sales proper. So when they're in the awareness phase, they're gonna enter in these channels. If they're in the activation phase, they're in these channels. And then we look at every single channel channel we have. Measurements directed towards those. And there are people who are accountable for those metrics. And we hold them accountable. So if the scorecard isn't just, oh, you got a thousand impressions, because that can mean nothing. But if those thousand impressions turned into 27 clicks, and then I got 18 people on an email newsletter list, then that was successful in some way, shape, or form. So that it really is dependent on what your goals are. But for us, like we want to grow our email list. That's something it's a huge goal for us. Because if we can get them in the circle of trust, right? Then I feel like that they can get to know me, they can get to know us. And when they're ready, they might use us. But your goal has to be different, your goal is different. So it just depends. Like for us, the podcast is really important because for me, the podcast is a way for me to open my circle, maybe get referrals. It's a different kind of generation tool for us. So it really is what your goals are and what you're trying to do and the mission you have and the vision you have in the business. So if it's solely, I want$100,000 more this year, then you look at what's closest to the money. What is getting us$100,000? What is actually converting to that money? So I think one tool, I think for you, it's LinkedIn. If I had to guess, it's LinkedIn and it would be a personal profile and a professional profile. So most people will engage with a personal profile far more than they will a business profile. And you have a newsletter there and you're you're talking, you're engaging with people who, you know, are your ideal clients. So let's say that they're for us, it's female founders. So I will go and look for female founders that are consultants, coaches, and creatives, and I will start chatting with them. I will connect with them. I'll start commenting on their stuff. I it's like very human. And that has been far more productive for me than anything else. But it depends on your business and depends on your goals of what you are looking for. The first place to start would be to measure what you've done. Because I'll throw the baby out with the bathwater. What have you done working? Where do you see some success? And then what goals do you want to have? And then create the content and the system, whatever that is for you, based on those goals. You do not have to be everywhere. You can have a presence everywhere, but you do not have to live and breathe and exist everywhere. So I say go all in on one platform where the majority of your clients will exist, go all in for even if it's just six months, Michelle. Go all in on it and then see the results. And then from there you make some adjustments and whatever. But I really believe that you don't have to be everywhere. I do believe you need an email list because social media sites, you rent you're renting their list. If for some one reason you were to be banned from that particular platform for whatever reason, because it can add them very randomly, you won't have any access to your people. So converting those followers into your email list, that way you can talk to them anytime you want is super important. So driving people to your email list so that you can cultivate people who are your fans are the most important thing that possibly happen. So writing a really good newsletter and it has a lot of value that people look forward to opening, and then going all in on a one platform that we're the majority of your people. But I will say this some people are writers, some people are visual. So if you're like really into like photography, then Instagram will probably be the best one for you. So you have to do the thing that feels the most natural to you. And for me, it's content like podcasting and LinkedIn that is my favorite. So to me, that's the place I want to stay. I want to hang out with and I understand and do more of. But we have a light presence on every single one, but it's not, we do not work those systems the way we work on LinkedIn and in podcasting. So I would say it's okay to limit. In fact, it is a lifesaver to limit, but is really helpful to really learn a tool to really start to measure, to do all that. Yeah, you don't have to be everywhere. Please don't be everywhere because then you just contribute to noise and that's not going to be helpful for anyone. But also your messaging. So the one thing that I think might be helpful if you're like just doing the shotgun kind of approach, we also believe that you want to be known for something so that if you're not in rooms, people are still recommending you because they know you do this thing, whatever that is. So for us, it's female founders who are creatives, consultants, and coaches who are in a stage of growth. They're going like from freelance to a business, right? And so they're growing, they're outgrowing their branding and they big grow branding. That is like our sweet spot. That is what we love to do because we want to build a brand that they can grow into as well. It's not going to be like good for a year and then you outgrow it again. We help them grow into a brand that can be like their hang forever. We help them find four to six topics that they can own, go a mile deep, and that they become known for even in the rooms they're not in. And that I think changes a business tremendously. Because people then know exactly who you help. They know exactly how you help. And if they're in a room and they hear something, you're gonna be like, you have to talk to Michelle. She is like her person about this thing. So it's really just becoming very almost repetitious, the point of boring. So people know exactly who you are and what you do. Great advice. Thank you. I hope it truly helps. And like I said, I'm glad to help you if that's something you're looking for. And like our listeners, I know so many of them have the same issues. So, like your situation's very common. Everybody feels like they have to do everything, they have to be everywhere, and that's exhausting. So for us, LinkedIn is definitely the place. Go all in. Like I said, I use a tool called MetroCool and it does post a cross-post for me. But what I write my content for is for LinkedIn. That is where I thought leadership, more article kind of base.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

That is what I want to part of our challenge is like you've identified a niche market that you can identify. It's really hard for us to do that because anybody and everybody is writing a book.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

But who do you really love working with? Business owners. So don't get me wrong, like I don't I help men for sure. But I would put your messaging all towards those business, those favorite people you love to work with. Typically have a budget, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

They understand budgets, they're busy, and they wouldn't deem of doing it themselves or doing it like halfway either, because they want to do it really well, and they're also organized.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

So you want to speak to those people. So all your marketing should really not it should talk to those people. And then there will be people who are in like the periphery who will come in, and then you need to decide do we want to work with them or not? Like are if they're fiction and whatever, and they have a budget and they're organized because everything else spoke to that person, then absolutely we want to work with them. So if you are speaking to the to that person that you absolutely love, those favorite clients of yours, like the ones that you just can't wait to pick up the phone and talk to, that that's who you want to talk to because that resonates with you so strongly. That's the people who love you. That's your like sweet spot. And then you get to decide if you want to work with other people in the periphery going forward. I'm not saying you don't really work with anybody else. I just say we work with, and then people say, Will you work with me? And I'm like, Yeah, because I can tell you're the kind of person you want to work with. So but you then have the discernment of that, of the best use of your time and place. Military people are also great to work with. So yeah, I mean that they know how to work as part of a team. Although my husband likes to lead the team, so I don't know how that works. Barky sometimes, yeah, it's pretty loud. Self-disciplined, they appreciate team a team environment. And being organized and being a process and structure that's right up their alley. I'm a systems gal, and that really the I couldn't imagine being married to a military man without a system. So, yes, absolutely, they require that. I think it's interesting though, but you you could do a really you could do really well with just military world. If you went all in, it just depends on if that's something that you want to do. Yeah. So I just think you need to. So one thing that we do, our brand sprick experience, which is a 90-minute we interview you essentially, and we call it brand therapy. Well, have you been? Where are you now? Where do you want to go? Where are the challenges that you're having? It's really great because it always starts off the same way. This is who we are, they're very professional. And then once we start asking all these questions, you're like, I really love this part. And it's like you start to get to the essence of what makes them light up and what drives them in a different way. And then we really try to help them use that to go forward with a lot more clarity. And this is where you need, this is your gift. This is like your sweet spot. This is we call it magic here, but it's that's what it is. And your purpose. And at the end of it, we give them a blueprint that like really recaps all of that stuff, but also says this is your next best four to six steps for you to do to get to your next level. And you can take that and do that yourself, or we can help you do that. So there's no commitment to work after that, but sometimes just having that outside perspective to help you find your way through an editor, like helping the outside perspective to help you see that this might be helpful for you to think about it this way because I you know this works better or whatever. So that there's just an outside perspective that's really helpful in that. And then somebody who's done it a lot many times. I what I feel like I do really well, Michelle, is I'm a pattern, I notice patterns. So many people tell me all the time, I use this every day. My team uses it, we use it every day because it's such clarity that it just it's very powerful on what the next best step is. Everyone's focused and organized and working towards that. That is my very little pitch, but here you know, we'd be really excited to help you with that if that's something that you want to do. So the last question I have though is what does it mean to be wickedly branded to you? How do you think you show up as wickedly branded? And then what advice would you give to our listeners who to be more wickedly branded? How what would you tell them that they needed to do?

SPEAKER_00 33:07

It's funny. I think I started out being in book publishing for so long, it was always just understood that you were going to put out a quality book. That was the foundation of everything you did when that started to change with the devolution of self-publishing. All of a sudden I found myself in a place where just doing what I would ordinarily do was the exception rather than the rule. So, which is still blows my mind. Is like, why is everybody surprised that there's quality out there? So we're known for the quality for the Our slogan is traditional publisher quality for independent authors. And I stick to that religiously because it's what I know how to do and what I know is necessary. But sometimes it's an uphill battle. I have to convince people that no, everything else you're hearing is not the right advice, which is frustrating sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yeah. So you're wickedly branded because you stick to quality. And to me, that doesn't seem like it ought to be a feature. I think when you're wickedly branded, that you do hold yourself to a higher standard. You do want better for your clients. You want to help prevent them from making those mistakes. Absolutely. That is all part of that. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Publishing is risky, right? So the only thing that's under your control is whether or not you put out a quality book. The fact that so many people are shooting themselves in the foot and putting out an amateurish book just makes everything even that much more difficult.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

I agree with you completely. I feel if you want it to help build your legacy and your authority, you need to give it some love and attention and it needs to have the right process and system. I'm a systems gal, so I'm gonna love a good system. There's no question in the process. And I think that is gonna help people also realize that I'm in good hands when you have a good system.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

I I wouldn't want to be an author right now who goes is going out and trying to find and qualify a designer or an editor. If you don't have any experience in the field, where would you begin? How would you recognize that good editor or designer without working with a team as that vetted team in place is a benefit, I think.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

And they don't have to find individual people now. They have one one-stop shop. It's not like do all that.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

For authors, I would just say you have to put out that quality book, right? And then you can be at peace no matter what happens after that, because you put your best foot forward. Every other thing you do to brand yourself or market yourself doesn't matter if you put out an amateur book.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Oh, I think it all matters. The ecosystem, every single touch point should be working together to build your authority and your visibility, right? All that matters. Don't think of it that it doesn't matter. Like it's outside of you, all part of the ecosystem.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

And many authors tell me I have to work with a lower production budget, a lower design and editing budget, so that I have money for marketing. And it's no, that's backwards. You have to create a good product first, then market it, then those two things together will lead to success.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

It's an investment, there's no question. And I think people who think they're self-publishing don't think there's an investment. That's the thing is that there's an investment of time and there's an investment of resources, and there's an investment of money to have it to turn out uh to be a really good book, really good advice. So, Michelle, where can people find you? Where do you hang out the most? You send LinkedIn as the place, and then you have a book, obviously. So let's talk about that a little bit too.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Like I said, my little book is published like the pros, and I give it away for free on my website at 1106design.com. And you can go there and schedule a consultation free. We do not engage in aggressive marketing tactics, right? We're not going to start sending five emails an hour to your inbox if you make content. We'll schedule a nice friendly conversation with you. We'll learn about you and your book and your goals, floor the book, and hopefully we're a good fit.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Thank you so much, Michelle, for spending time with me today. Thank you, Beverly. I hope that there's been some little nugget of information of how to approach being an author for you and your business and some tips and tricks for doing it the right way, right? Don't get stuck in the traps that are out there for you because what I know for sure is that you do have a message that matters and your work matters, and the world does need to hear what you have to say. And I don't believe that marketing is just about visibility, it's about the impact you can make. And a really well-written book can be very impactful to people. So it's also about connecting those ideas and the right people in a way that feels really true to you. So I want you to keep showing up, keep sharing your brilliance, and keep making magic in the world. And if you ever feel stuck, there are people like Michelle and myself who can help you, you don't have to do it alone. And we can help you turn your work into a wildfire. But until next time, I want to dare you to be wicked rebranded.