The Power of Storytelling: Turning Your Book into a Business Asset with Matt Briel

Have you ever thought about writing a book but felt overwhelmed by the process? You’re not alone! Many entrepreneurs hesitate to take the leap, but in today’s digital landscape, publishing a book is one of the most powerful ways to establish authority, attract new opportunities, and grow your business.

In this episode, I sit down with Matt Briel of Lulu and Tilt Publishing to talk about why now is the perfect time to write a book and how self-publishing can give you more control over your brand, revenue, and audience engagement.

Join us in CEX this August 24-26, 2025

https://cex.events/

Visit Matt Briel's social media pages:

Lulu Press Website:http://www.lulu.com

Tilt Publishing Website:https://www.thetilt.com/publishing

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-briel/

  📍 Writing a book can seem daunting, even with AI over there to kind of help be that crutch for you. Writing a book can seem really, really scary. And okay, do I have to reach out to publishers? Should I self publish? How do I even get on Amazon? And I have to say that as somebody that really was afraid of writing a book, I have to say it was one of the best things I've done for my business.

Well, other than starting this podcast, but writing a book changed. The game for me and my business. And I've, I've noticed that a lot of people might have that on their bucket list of something that you want to do, but I want to talk today about why you should do it. This is the year 2025 is the year to put the pen to paper.

And I have somebody that is going to be the perfect partner for you and answer all the questions that you might have about writing a book. And if it's something that you should do for your business.

  Welcome to Rocky Mountain Marketing. I'm your host, Katie Brinkley. Join us as we dive deep with the world's leading digital marketing experts every single Tuesday. It's all about giving you the strategies that are working right now, directly from those who are making an impact. With my 20 years of experience, I'm here to help you navigate the world of digital marketing.

Whether you're looking to sharpen your skills or transform your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started on today's journey to success.

  📍 📍 📍 So today's guest is none other than Matt Briel. And he is, you know, I was going to say, I was going to use your, your intro that you gave in the podcast booking form.

Well, no, it's, it's not that it's too long, but I just have to say like. You're one of the nicest people that I've ever met. You're, you're so soft spoken and every single time that we talk, I'm like, man, that is so Like, I can tell the intentionality behind everything that comes out of your mouth. Um, and I'm sure that that's probably not the, the, the Oh, well, I have to listen to this episode because Matt's really nice.

But he's been doing this book publishing thing. For over 18 years. And he's, he actually is the vice president of marketing and communications for lulu. com and Tilt Publishing.  And if you, for those of you listening, they're like, wait, did you just say Tilt Publishing? I did. They're, they're the company that published the social shift.

And Matt and I were able to work together for publishing the social shift.  And we've actually worked together for some of our clients, some of the clients at Next Step Social who have published books.  A number of my friends have gone through Tilt Publishing and.   Every single time that someone says, Oh, I, I've kind of wanted to write a book, I always send them to Matt because Matt, you have the answers and I don't.

So, thank you so much for joining me on Rocky Mountain Marketing today.

  📍 📍 Thank you. That was very nice of you. And I would say that by now, you probably should have all the answers to as much as you've actually talked about it or or gone through the process with us or The sheer volume of people that I think you come into contact with and have become an evangelist for publishing just like us So, but thank you.

  📍 📍 It's, well, yeah, and I mean, well, let's start at exactly what it is that, The tilt and Lulu does because before I dive into the questions, because I, I think that, well, in my opinion, what the tilt, what tilt publishing has done has made it. A seamless way for people who maybe have always wanted to write a book, make it happen and make it look amazing in the process.

But what would you say Tilt Publishing does?

  📍 📍 Well, I like your version better than what I'm about to say, but I'll go ahead and give you our version too. Uh, but you're right. I think, um, when Lulu acquired the Tilt brand a few years ago, um, we did that partly because we had already been trying to serve the creator audience and solopreneurs and small business owners.

And we were, we were continuing to see a lot of the struggles they were having with not only other things, but things like. You know, publishing a book, it takes time. You've done it. It's not, it's not like no matter what we say or what marketing has been, we put on it. There's no easy button for it. So some of the things that people struggle with are those things like editing so they can put out a really good quality book and cover design and things like that.

And many of the people that we came into contact with, they have a little more time on their hands these days. I'm sorry, money than they do time. Um, so really what tilt publishing is, is, um, it's a publishing services company, uh, similar to a hybrid publisher, but we focus specifically on nonfiction books, and we try to focus solely on the creator and solopreneur business audiences.

And so. For what I think is probably one of the lowest priced sets of packages in the business, we basically will take your manuscript in whatever form you have it in, preferably not on the backs of napkins, but we'll take Word docs, whatever that might be, and we do everything else for you to get you out to market.

So we'll do the editing, we do the cover design, um, we do a lot of the formatting, we do the, the Uh, ebook, excuse me, print copies, if you want paperback, hardcover, we set all that up for you. But the real differentiator, I think, and, and to follow our mantra is that we'll help you set up to sell it directly from your website, um, which I think is, uh, a very critical piece in publishing these days, especially for, uh, Creators and entrepreneurs like you and the others who have used Tilt Publishing to keep all those profits, keep that customer data, and really maintain that audience you've worked so hard to build.

So we're a publishing services company and we focus on creators, non fiction content, and you know, small business owners.

  📍 📍 Well, I want to talk about the direct to consumer sales, uh, aspect that, that you guys help with. But before we get to that, I do just want to start, if everyone's sitting here and saying like, well, why should I write a book?

I don't know if I can write a book that's long enough. Like I don't like, I don't know what writing a book is going to do for me and my business. What would you say is the biggest. selling point or the biggest reason why someone a business owner like me, uh, maybe like a coach, a consultant, a, an attorney, a, you know, a real estate investor, whoever, why should they write a book?

  📍 📍 Uh, the simplest answer is because most of the other people in your space that you might deem competitors or just other white noise won't. And so it's the ultimate differentiator. And then you could Deep dive into that and say, well, as a differentiator, what do you mean? Well, it's going to help you establish authority.

If you don't have any yet, if you're early stage startup, if you're just a, you know, uh, uh, a fledgling, you know, solopreneur, you're just starting out, whatever that might be. Um, you need to establish a little bit of authority and credibility. There's no better way than a book first and foremost. Um, but you can also use it for a lot of other things.

And what I tell people. Mostly, and you'll probably be able to vouch for this, is that, to me, a book, having a, having published a book, is like one of the ultimate marketing assets. And so, if you go into writing a book thinking, oh, I'm just going to try to use it to make money, wrong. Don't just stop. You can make money with books, um, and if that's your goal, you're going to go a different route.

But if you're using it like you did and many others, um, again, for all those reasons, to establish authority, it's a lead magnet. Uh, it's all these other things that help you better position yourself in the marketplace, especially against others that might be operating in the same space as you. It's the ul it's the ultimate differentiator

  📍 📍 Yeah. I noticed that when I wrote my book, well, and I don't know if you're aware of this, but the whole reason why I wrote my book  is because of our mutual friend, uh, Joe Polizzi.  And, uh, I saw him at a conference and I want, I didn't know if he really remembered me because we'd met numerous times and he meets lots of people.

Um, and so I was like, well, I'm just, I'm just Katie Brinkley, like whatever. So I was talking to him and I was like, yeah, I don't know if you remember me, blah, blah, blah. This is what I do. And he was like, yeah, of course I remember you. And, um, as I was talking to him, I was like, yeah, well, I want to write a book.

And this is kind of what I'm going to write it about. And as the words were coming out of my mouth, it was. It was formulating the idea. I had not really ever planned on writing a book, um, but here I was saying it to Joe. A conversation intro then. Yeah, it is. And then he came up, he responded, well, Katie, you know, if you write the book, I'd be happy to read it for you.

And if it, if it's any good, I'd be happy to write the foreword. I was like, huh.

And I have to say, it's one of the best things that I've done for my business. You know, so in the social media, it's so hard because a lot of it's a, the books a year old now. And I'm like, well, it's about time for me to write a new one because so much has changed. But. I think that the biggest hurdle was just the fact of, of writing it and I, me not knowing what to say, and I know that a lot of people, I mean, it feels like there's more books coming out than ever before, just because of AI and anyone can write a book now, it seems, but you and I were talking before I hit record here and you said, uh, you know, Justin Moore, who wrote Sponsor Magnet, a lead judge, whose book is coming out, uh, Alicia Barr, who's Black Sheep Sales Method.

You know, all these books behind me have a lot of tilt publishing books. They all were some of the, the best well written and I want to say like thought after, um, like the care that was put into them was so much more than I think. What you've, you've seen in the past and I, I almost think it's because of AI is that people are going above and beyond with their writing.

Nowadays. I don't know. Let's, let's talk about that a little bit.

  📍 📍

part of that's definitely true. I think some of that, you know, we won't know for sure until we're gathering more data, a couple more years worth of doing this. But I can tell you from the people we've worked directly with, like many you just named, as well as many others that aren't on your bookshelf or that aren't through Tilt Publishing, but maybe run through Lulu or other, Other publishing outlets.

Absolutely. That's a big factor. And it's also part of the reason why brands like to publishing can exist. Um, the technology, not just a I, but print on demand technology and a lot of the other innovations that have happened just in the last five years, by the way, like, you know, People say it all the time, but we're, we're a massive example of the fact that, um, you know, as terrible as COVID was, it was the catalyst for everything we're seeing right now in the creator economy, or, you know, however you want to put this.

But 2020 was, was really a catalyst moment for, for a lot of things, and this being one of them. So absolutely, AI is playing a big factor in not only the amount of books coming out, good or bad, But it's also playing a big factor in the quality of books coming out, good or bad. And so, you probably talk about this a lot.

I do. I know Joe Polizzi does, and so do many others out there, but using AI for the way that it was intended, I think, um, and with good common sense, and genuine, like you said, uh, genuine intentions, you can create very quality and thorough content, um, You can also use it to create a lot of crap, which is out there, but yeah, I think, I think even for me, somebody who has always been involved in writing or publishing or literature or things like that, I always had a hard time getting started, and like you said, writing it is the hardest part, but for me, even just getting started was the hardest part, and even in college, I would sit until the last night before something was due, Just struggling to get the outline done.

If I could get the outline of something done, then I could crank out the rest, no problem. But getting an outline done, for me, was like, pushing my car up a hill in the snow. Like, it just, I don't know what it was. I used, you know, ChatGPT, Claw, all of them. You can crank out an outline in seconds, and yeah, you might have to change a few things on that outline.

But it's done, and you're off to the races. And so for somebody like me, that's a huge game changer. And go beyond the outline. For some people, an outline's not a problem. Okay, you do the outline, but you might have trouble getting started on Chapter 3, right? Crank out Chapter 3 and one of these AI tools, and then go back through and fix it, of course.

Make it your own. Double check all the resources and the citations. But, yeah, I mean AI is for productivity. Using it for anything else is ridiculous. And, and when you apply that to something like publishing and then compound it with other technologies like print on demand or some of these other things that are out there in the market, there's absolutely no real reason or real barrier to entry for people like you and Justin Moore and Alicia Barr and all these other really smart people to create super cool books to further their business or their brands.

  📍 📍 Yeah. Yeah. And I love that you, you keep mentioning about print on demand.

  📍 📍 because that was one of the things that I was afraid of as I was like, man, I, I have my office, but I mean, I don't have storage here really. My office isn't gigantic. Um, I mean, I do have a, a nice little hutch over there, but at the same time, like, yeah, yeah.

I mean, like, but at the same time, like, I don't have a. Spot the store a ton of books. So let's just talk about how Lulu and the Tilt are a little bit different with the pull print on demand sort of model.

  📍 📍 Yeah, that actually stems from the ethos of our company. We're a b corp Certified b corporation. So, you know, we're held to a higher standard than than a lot of just You know, regular businesses out there on purpose, you know, we wanted to be a B Corp.

  📍 📍 📍 and so we put a lot of emphasis around sustainability and things like that.

When you're in the publishing industry, especially, then you should probably pay attention to paper and trees and stuff like that. When you're in the automotive industry, you should pay attention to some of those things that you utilize that, that deplete the, the, the environment of its resources and things.

So for us, you know, that's a big thing. And print on demand, um, not only is it smart for. You know, I think today's entrepreneurs and publishers and things like that because of just how quickly you can get information to market, but there is that sustainability piece where a book is not actually printed until somebody orders it and whether they ordered off your website, you know, off Lulu's website or any other form, if it's print on demand, it's not getting shipped until somebody pays for it.

The alternative to that is, uh, and it's funny cause my cohost and I just did a podcast on this literally this morning is. If you were going to, um, let's say you, you were confident you were going to sell 5, 000 copies of the Social Shift in the first, you know, six months, which would be great, right? Um, so your, your alternative there is you're going to go to what's called an offset printer, um, which is not a digital print on demand printer.

It's, it's, you know, what you would think of, right? Traditional printing. Um, and that means they can't just print one book at a time or five at a time. They have to do thousands at a time. You would have to place that order for 5, 000 books. You'd have to pay for them all up front. So you'd get a little bit of a price break, but you're fronting all that cash.

Um, and then more than likely, it's printed at an offset printer, typically in China or somewhere overseas. Then it has to be shipped over here on a container ship. Uh, and then it goes from a warehouse to you, where you have to store them all either in your garage, or you can pay for a fulfillment warehouse or whatever, things like that.

So the alternatives to print on demand The, they're just not keeping up with the times and for, you know, again, the audiences that we primarily serve, it's not very convenient either. Like you said, you, you don't want to rent a fulfillment warehouse and pay people to store your books and fulfill your orders.

Um, you don't want to put them in your garage. But if you don't sell through on those books either, by the way, then you're the one sitting on them. And so they either become tray liners for your birdcage or something like that, which is also terrible. So it really is the most cost effective way to do it.

It's also much better for the environment. Um, and quite frankly, it's just easier on you. And You know, 15, 20 years ago, well, maybe even 10 years ago, actually, if I'm being honest, print on demand technology wasn't at its peak, and there was definitely a lot of bad examples of books that were printed using print on demand technology.

Not that you can't still find them, but right now, it's, it's at its peak, I think, or getting close to it. Like, the books that come out of print on demand facilities, I would dare you to put them next to anything in any other bookstore and spot the differences, in many cases. Again, there's some Printers who are not so great, but for the most part, yeah, I mean, so again, when you're looking at little to no cost up front, no barriers to entry, really trying to get your message and your content to market as quickly as possible, as flexibly as possible.

And by the way, you retaining full ownership across that spectrum, there's really no other choice. It's kind of a no brainer there. Yeah,

  And now for just a quick break, you've heard me talk about some of my favorite social media tools on the show. And one of them is a tool called Metra cool. Metra cool allows you to plan, analyze, and grow your digital presence all in one place from websites to LinkedIn to YouTube. You can track everything that you're doing online.

See just what's working and what isn't check out metrical today at Katie Brinkley dot live slash cool. Just a note. If you use the links I provide, I may receive compensation. If you're up for exclusive tips, juicy details, and some inspiring quotes to brighten your day, just sign up for the free email newsletter.

All you have to do is head over to Katie Brinkley. com slash podcast newsletter, or find the link in the show notes. All right, let's get back to the show. All right, let's get back to today's show

  📍 📍 Well, and you also, at the beginning of the episode today talked about selling direct to consumers, like, so print on demand, selling direct to consumers, someone might say like, well, wait, what does that mean? Does that mean I have to like, take it, take it, like order a box and take it with me everywhere I go?

Like, how does this work? If I want somebody to buy my book from my website, don't I want to be on Amazon or all these other places? Let's talk about why selling direct to consumers. With a print on demand publisher is such a, well, I'm going to say no brainer. I'm obviously biased, but it's such a no brainer for someone that might be listening.

  📍 📍

that's probably one of the questions we get asked the absolute most, um, for the most part. Uh, so, I'll just, I'll caveat this or I'll say, I'm known for being an anti Amazon person. Um, now that being said, Is it smart for you to try to put your book everywhere? In some cases, yes. And so what you're referring to is what we call distribution.

And so you could absolutely, even if you use Tilt Publishing, by the way, what, basically what you end up with is we'll give you the files to your book that we just made for you and you can put your book anywhere you want. There's nothing stopping you. You have full ownership of that. Not, not anybody else, not Tilt Publishing.

Um, so you, you could upload those files to Amazon and have them available on Amazon. It's not the worst thing in the world to do. Right? Um, discoverability is discoverability. If you can get it, take it. What we say is though, and, and you say this, and Joe says this, and everybody does at this point, or should, which is don't build your home on rented land.

It doesn't make any sense. So if you're already putting in the work to build an audience and have people come to your social media channels, or whatever that might be, your website, your email list, Why then turn around and send them to some other third party retailer to buy your book where you're not going to get to keep any of that customer data, which is so critical to remarketing.

And like you said, if you want to do another book now, you've got a small little database that you've kind of been building up of people who bought your book and you can go. That's the first group I'm going to hit. That's my first segment is people have already bought my book, right? You don't have that when you sell on third party retail sites.

You did get the discoverability there if you're lucky, and hopefully they came and found you somewhere else. But if you're selling direct, that's a game changer because you keep all of that data and you now have that remarketing ability and you get to build your own database because We all know this Amazon was never in the game to do books or shoes or toaster ovens, or those were all just a means to an end, which was building the world's largest customer database and they've succeeded.

And so you should be building your own at this point. If you want to follow the Amazon model, that's the true Amazon model is build your own customer database. And then eventually you can buy a four and a billion dollar mega yacht, like Jeff Bezos, and then fly weird looking rockets to the moon if you want to, but do your own thing, build your own database.

I'm not saying don't use other channels for discoverability, but don't send your hard earned audience off to somebody else to capture that data and that revenue, by the way. So, when we talk about selling direct, it is something like, for example, you probably have a website, we hope you do, but if you don't, that's okay.

You can use something like Shopify, and we have a plug in that would allow you to set up your Shopify website and then essentially sell your book right from your website. So every book that's ordered off your website, the transaction happens on your site. Right? Because you're using Shopify or something like that.

You're capturing all the revenue and the customer data. The order just gets transmitted to us on the back end. And we print it and ship it all white labeled with your branding or whoever you are. And then we'll just charge you whatever the manufacturing cost is. You're keeping the full difference or the profit from that.

So that's what we mean by selling direct. You can take a direct only approach. That's fine. If you've got a massive audience. Yeah, take a direct only approach. You might not need Amazon's minuscule discoverability for the effort that's involved. If you're just starting out, put it everywhere, but anybody that's coming to you, don't send them away.

Keep them. Because it's, it's hard to build an email list, right? Everybody's working hard to do that. Uh, it's, it's honestly a little bit easier to build a customer database because if you're offering a product in exchange for money, something that's tangible. Sometimes, believe it or not, that's easier than getting somebody to give you their email address.

It's, you know, and honestly, I'd rather get something in my mailbox out there than my inbox from somebody I don't really know. So we also like to joke, hit them in the mailbox, not the inbox.

  📍 📍 Yeah. I, it was really interesting to me when I saw the people start ordering my book because I could see where they lived or like, see, Oh, you know, so and so just bought my book.

Thank you so much. I could then send them a message and be like, Hey, thanks so much for your support. It's. It's just like this podcast, man. I, the, the people that tune in every week, I love you guys so much. I, I wish I knew who you were, you know? And so like, but I don't know who the people are, who are listening, just like, you don't know who the person is.

That's buying it off of Amazon. Whereas when you sell direct, you're. Customer on your website. You can see who those people are and build that relationship with them. Like I had, I think, um, like maybe four or five people buy my book that live in Buena Vista, Colorado. And for anyone that is in the Colorado area, you're probably like, Oh man, Buena Vista, that's a pretty small town.

Yeah, I know. Crazy that five people bought my book.

  📍 📍 They're like, are they doing like a book club? Is there a big entrepreneurship community out there? Like what's, what's the deal? But now I can look at that and I'm like, huh, I wonder if maybe I should go do a book signing at the, you know, Buena Vista library because I know that I have an audience there.

Which I had no idea of before. So this, this I think is, is such a secret sauce and it's, it really is a difference maker, especially when we're, we're playing on rented land with all of our marketing. So owning your list and owning that data is, is everything. And I do have to say, if you know, it's, it's great because I get more when you buy directly through my website.

Um, I get more than if you buy it through, through Amazon or Walmart or anything. I'm, I do enjoy getting my quarterly. You know, check from, from Lulu, um, you know, from people who have purchased it directly from, you know, those third party sites, but for the most part, I, you know, I, I, I had like getting the more money for my book.

I worked hard on it.

  📍 📍 So almost immediately, by the way, right? Yeah, it's whoever will deposit your account in like a couple of days or whoever you're using. It's yeah, I use WooCommerce. But yeah, it's it's it's super easy. So as we kind of wrap up today's episode, I want to talk about how having a book is in addition to getting https: otter.

ai Probably are not writing a book or don't have a book. You can do, you know, direct to consumer, so you're saving, saving costs there. You're not having to store things. You can build out your data, uh, your customer database. All these things are great for, for starting a book or writing a book, but I want to talk about the whole marketing side of things.

If you've written a book, how can you can use that book for your business's marketing? So let's talk about that a little bit, Matt.   📍 📍 Yeah. I love this particular topic too, because again, like I said a little earlier, writing and publishing a book is one of the best marketing assets you could get your hands on. Especially if you use it the right way and you, you do everything you can to extend the lifespan of that book and its sales cycle.

But, um, one of the best ways to get yourself booked on to some of your favorite podcasts or, you know, For some people, it's a TV show or whatever that might be. But some of the best ways to get some earned media opportunities, right? Something you don't necessarily have to pay for is by having a book coming out soon.

And you want to hit them ahead of time, by the way, right? The, the, when you start marketing a book is, is when you're about 50 percent of the way done writing it, not when it launches. If you start marketing launch, you're way behind the curve, but, um, reaching out, you know, to, to your favorite podcasts and other people, um, It's such a great way to get some earned media for you and your brand or whatever it is you're trying to do.

Additionally, to touch back on something you were mentioning earlier, which is what we call a scalability effect. When, when you have that customer data, um, from sales, whether it's a previous book or pre orders from the book that's coming out, um, you can make really cool decisions around. Places you might go events you might travel to, uh, you might get that insider information that yeah, somebody is doing an entrepreneur's book club and the book of the month.

This time is yours. And so you can use that information to make really smart marketing decisions, right? So there's a lot of. Some of the inherent effects that come along with it too, but I love to see people position their book as a way to get themselves on to podcasts and other media outlets where it's an earned opportunity, and you don't have to pay a lot of money up front for certain things.

But beyond that, using a book is also a great way to break into other areas. Out there, whether it's social media or some other things where, you know, prior to that, you might not have had what you felt was a really good foot in the door or a reason to go out there and, and talk or, or toot your own horn or however you want to phrase that.

But my favorite is the earned media opportunities you get from a book, but there are, there are quite a few others.

  📍 📍 Absolutely. Yeah. And honestly, by writing a book, it helped me solidify my core values. That my differentiator, um, the more time that I was spending on the book and right, I started noticing different key themes, honestly, that's how the four post strategy really came into fruition is because I was writing about community connection, this is how we are.

And I was looking when I was writing the book at all of the key differences between these platforms. I was looking at data and what kind of content worked. And that's when I had my light bulb moment. You'll remember Matt, like. The chapter eight, the four post strategy, that was the last minute. Like I was like, we got to put this in here.

This, this has to be in the book. And it all came because I was, as I was writing this, I learned like, Hey, this is something that's working, it's implementable, it's scalable, and it has to be in the book and now, now I know whenever I go speak at events, whenever I want to talk with potential leads or clients.

This is the core of next step social. It's, it's the four post strategy and it's showing up with intention behind every single post. And I learned that because of writing the book and now I have speeches on it and all sorts of things. I speak on, I just was on TV a couple of weeks ago talking about it.

So, I mean, it's, I think that from marketing, when you're writing a book, not, not only will you have more assets. And different ways to leverage that you are an authority in your industry, it helps you become really clear on what your differentiator is. You're forced to, right? Like you said. And I do remember that.

And to point out, that's also one of the beauties of using something like a print on demand type of approach. You, you actually have that real time ability to change information and take it to market. When you're traditionally published, a lot of people don't realize this, once you hand that manuscript over, it's not going to see market.

For at least a year to a year and a half, if you're lucky. And so if there are change, if you write on something like, like you do, like social media, marketing technology, these areas where things change daily, sometimes hourly, right? Especially now with AI in the mix, there are many occasions where you might need to change something, one thing in the interior file, like.

You know, Twitter is now called X. And if you're one of those people who wanted to be, you know, uh, uh, PC about it and go change your interior files, which we've had people do that, you can do that. And from that point on, every new file, every new book ordered will have the updated interior file. Um, that's a great point, though, of being forced to take a holistic look at what you're doing and, and like you said, you may find there are other niches that you didn't think about where you can go a little bit deeper and differentiate yourself because you were doing that work and doing that discovery, so it can be extremely helpful to that and and and You know, you, you mentioned a few other ways to market yourself.

And I love, again, the earned opportunities, but, uh, we were talking earlier too, uh, before we hit record about, uh, CEX, the event that we run, there's a lot of people, um, who really want to get into the speaking circuit, like getting on stage and talking about the things that they're passionate about or their business or their brand or whatever that might be.

Uh, many of these events, including ours, you're not probably going to be considered unless you've written a book. Um, there are some that will take you or let you get on stage, but for the most part, if you don't have any examples of you speaking, or you don't have a book or some other way to establish that you're a subject matter expert or an authority on something, um, you're probably not going to be able to catch that break that you're looking for.

And what I will say there too, is that the flip side of that is most of these events or organizers or podcasts or whatever that might be, they're also not going to go. Uh, yeah, she's got a book, but it looks like maybe it was partially self published or something. So, no, you have a book. You did the work.

It's clear. You know what I mean? Like you, you have some expertise here. Let's talk to this person. So again, it's, it's a wonderful marketing asset, asset, excuse me. Um, and it's best leveraged, I think that we've seen so far for earned media opportunities and anything else that you can potentially leverage, uh, to get your brand front and center.

  📍 📍 I love it. Well, Matt, you know, I'm a big advocate for the Tilt Publishing. I'm a huge advocate, like you said, for CEX. It's one of my favorite events, uh, every year. And it's actually in August of 2025 this year. Normally, it's in the spring, but it's moved to August this year. So I'm super pumped on that. For people that are interested in it.

Learning more about CEX and maybe attending that event. Um, or if people are interested in learning about maybe publishing their first book or publishing another book using Lulu or the tilt as a partner, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you and learn more information about these events.

  📍 📍 Yeah, uh, and I think, uh, Katie's being a little bit humble, but Katie's also speaking at CEX this year, so if you don't care about any of the other stuff, or you don't want to hear me rambling on anymore about books, come see Katie speak at CEX, and I guarantee you'll have a fun time. But, you can find more information about CEX at cex.

events. Um, Lulu, which is just straight up self publishing, so slightly different than Tilt Publishing, but nonetheless, um, Lulu is a print on demand self publishing company, um, and we're the best. Uh, lulu. com, super easy, right? Best URL on the planet. Um, made my job very easy as a marketer, uh, That's a joke by the way, because we constantly had to fight with, um, uh, space from Lululemon and others on Google.

It was, it's terrible. Um, and then, you know, Tilt Publishing, you can find it at, uh, the tilt. com. Yeah. So everything you need should be in those three, uh, URLs, but feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn as well or anywhere else, and I'm always happy to answer questions and nerd out on books and marketing.

  📍 📍 Yes. And if anybody honestly has questions about working with the tilt, I'm always happy to talk about how my experience was.

Um, it was the first book I wrote and it was 📍 such a good experience. I want to do it again. So, I mean, there's that. So,   📍 📍 well, Matt, thank you so much for joining us on Rocky mountain marketing today. This has been a great conversation.   📍 📍 Thanks, Katie.. Awesome.

 Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. I hope you're leaving with valuable insights and the inspiration to lead your market. If you've enjoyed our time together and found today's podcast episode useful, I have a small favor to ask of you. Please hit that subscribe button to stay updated with the latest episodes.

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com to connect, to find more resources, or just to share your journey. And be sure to pick up your copy of my new book, the social shift at Katie Brinkley. com slash book. Thanks again for tuning in. I'm Katie Brinkley, and I can't wait to dive into more strategies and stories with you on the next episode of Rocky mountain marketing.

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