How to become an opinion leader in your industry with teacher, author, keynote speaker and media darling Sharon Witt | #406

Sharon

Well that’s a big question. I have been an educator for the last 25 years and I am very passionate about especially equipping young people for the journey of life. I guess that will probably be the best way to sum it up. Yeah just really passionate about helping equip them, inspire them.

Tim

Where does that come from?

Sharon

Well if you want a particular moment in time that kind of change the course of my life, it would have to be when I was 20. I lost my best friend who was 19 at the time to suicide. So he was a teenager obviously, lost him. And I think something within me at that point I was already studying teaching but something in me went that’s not okay. And I think in the back of my mind for the last 25 years, I have had just this deep desire to make a difference. I think that’s in a nutshell, making a difference to the young people in, yeah. The young people in our lives but also to help equip parents in helping raise their young children to be resilient.

Tim

So for the majority of your growing life you’ve done that via teaching year then 10 years ago you go and write a book. Why did you write a book and how in your own words it changed everything?

Sharon

Wow that’s a loaded question. I always felt for a number of years in my early years of teaching that it became apparent to me very early on that our young people were struggling with lots of issues from bullying to their self-esteem to getting organized and these are things that started to become apparent in probably about my fifth or sixth year of teaching. And I had this idea in my mind that one day I’d probably write a racehorse and maybe write a book. And I sat on it for about 10 years because in the back of my mind I thought, well I don’t know how to write a book. I wouldn’t know how to get a publisher. All those sorts of things but apparently, I did say to my students at different times I’d like to write a book one day. So I sat on that idea for 10 years and it wasn’t until 10 years ago now that I just wanted to write a resource for originally for my class for my group of teenagers that I was working with. I thought I’m going to write a guidebook to helping them I guess navigate many of the issues that were coming up for them self-esteem, bullying, dealing with parents, stress, anxiety, getting organised setting goals, being motivated and I just yeah, I launched into that not knowing a single thing about book publishing at all

Tim

Beautiful. I’m going to tell you right now there are a bucket load of small business owners listening who are pretty much nodding their head going yeah that’s me. Yeah, I’ve got a book in me, you know I’m a specialist in what I do. Just not going to take action. So what triggered you take action?

Sharon

Yes. Am I allowed to mention names? So it’s a funny story I’ll try to make it very quick but in a nutshell, I decided in about the October of I think it was 2016 it finally hit me and I went, It’s now or never. This is it. I’m doing it. And the funny thing was I watched this program and someone had given me this DVD and it was called The Secret. Have you heard of that? Okay someone gave it to me he said watch this. I watched it. And I watched it about three times and something within me just went, you know what, if you’ve got something in you and you’ve always gone what if or you know you’ve got this idea just do it. I mean, I didn’t want to die not ever doing it and something within me just went, you know what stop the excuses. You know I didn’t have any money. I was a mother of young children at the time I worked full time. I had all the excuse in the world. I don’t know how to write a book. I don’t know how to get it published. Every excuse in the book and I just went stuff and stuff the excuses just do it. So I made that decision and I wrote the book over only a number of days and I think I had it all stored up inside me and there’s a whole there’s a way of actually you know in many ways you can actually write a book for me. I just grabbed a whole lot of sticky notes and wrote down every topic that I wanted to talk to teenagers about and had them spread out. And then day by day over about three or four days, I wrote and wrote and wrote. And my husband at the time took the kids away for four days and I literally wrote about 17,000 words in those four days. I Just wrote you know all hours. Then I had to I guess find some way of getting that book out there and however called the universe however it’s supposed to happen. I came across a book called Secrets Exposed of women entrepreneurs and I thought gee I could be an entrepreneur one day read this book at the back of it,” it had an ad for it basically said “Do you want to have your own book published?” And there became my connection with a guy called Dale Beaumont who is an author, past sponsor of the show. Well this guy wasn’t good to know what hit him because I saw that I Googled him. You know basically stalked him, found out everything I could about him. And as legend has it I called his company called up asked to speak to him and got through to him and said I am just this person from Melbourne. He said where are you from, what company. I said no just Sharon Witt from Melbourne, if I can get up to where you are can I take you out for lunch and pick your brains about this book I want to write and he said yes. So I contacted him when I got up to that stage it took him out for lunch and picked his brain and the first thing he said to me was, as I had this whole idea I had the book in me and I said it’s about this, this, this, this, and this and he said

Tim

Have you written the book at this point in time?

Sharon

I’d written the manuscript and he said one bit of advice don’t think book, think book series. And I said, Oh don’t put everything into this one book I want you to think about it being a series. How could you break it up into this series, plan the series out? And that single piece of advice meant that I’d planned out a whole series. By the time my very first book came out I had four covers inside the flap that said you know more coming in this series and it gave me leverage so that when I decided to self-publish which was my decision, I could have taken it to mainstream publishers but I actually wanted to do it myself. I wanted to learn. I’m the sort of person that is not afraid of learning and trying and failing. So I gave it a go and Dale basically mentored me in the first book.  Well I didn’t know who he was at the time I just thought okay I’ll ask this guy he seems to know about book publishing and I had no idea that he’d actually run a course about it’s could get published secrets I think at the time. And he had a DVD series and I watched that about four times. Each DVD took notes and I basically learnt how to do things and he guided me along the way and because I’d had a series when I approached probably the best distributor in the country at the time

Tim

Publisher?

Sharon

It was a distributor a book distributor because you can’t just.

Tim

What’s the difference?

Sharon

A book publisher is the person that the company that does a lot. They take your manuscript get it edited, they design the covers, they liaise with you but basically, they pay for it all to be published and printed and you just get very little. You might get 10 percent of the book retail price.

Tim

I never understood that.

Sharon

No it’s a bit like a pie. So if you can imagine a pie, 50 percent of you imagine a book is 20 dollars retail, the seller so the book shop gets 50 percent generally. So there goes half of it. Ten dollars for the bookshop. So the people making the most money out of a book is generally the book the shop. Roughly 10 percent goes to the author, about 15 percent goes to the publisher and this is going to be really shoot my math in the middle right now. The other percentage goes to the distributor. So if you are your own publisher you get effectively about 25 percent or 20 percent and 10 percent you might get 30 35 percent and the distributor gets about 15 percent.

Tim

So you got yourself published. You found a distributor. They’ve got you good distribution.

Sharon

They loved it they said because they said to me because this is a series we can see that this has legs and if it had been a single book they read they apparently reject about 96 percent of self published books but the guy at the time said to me I think it’s got legs. We can see that you’ve got a series in mind which was great because I did go down the track of later doing another series called Girl wise and I did the same model I had planned a whole series out the covers designed and that gave me traction in the market.

Tim

I’m talking to educator motivator of teenagers. We need more of those Sharon Witt. Listeners, longtime listeners of the show will realize that this is the episode where I’ve said the least. And I think it will continue that way, Shaz. I love it. So you get this book out in the marketplace and in your own words it changed everything.

Sharon

Absolutely.

Tim

What happened?

Sharon

Well I saw the first book came out. I remember thinking It’s quite funny thinking back now that if Kmart picked it up if I saw my book in Kmart I’d know I’d made it. Isn’t it funny how you just think that. They were the first people to pick up a thousand, they ordered a thousand for my distributor.

Tim

That’s the secret at work. You put it out there.

Sharon

And I remember when I did I said you know if I got 1000, sorry if I got Kmart and I saw it there I’d know I’d made it, and they were the first people. Then I remember writing this down and I’m a big person that sets goals and puts dates on it and I think that’s a whole another shows in itself but writing your goals down and giving it a date puts it out there. And I remember putting the date down I’m going to be on the Keri Anne show by the 27th of November.

Tim

Overseas listeners, big talk show in Australia at the time.

Sharon

And so I sent my book off with a little bit of a media blurb and behold the very first television episode I did was on Keri Anne Show and

Tim

Just hold with the little media blurb, what does that look like? Because that media blurb, in my experience is what’s going to get you or not get you on a show. You remember what it said?

Sharon

Look I can’t remember at the time it was something about. It was something to do with helping our teenagers, our teenagers are at risk or something like that.

Tim

Tell me about the moment you get a phone call from the producer of Keri Anne.

Sharon

Oh it’s beside myself and I remember being in Sydney at a hotel overnight and I woke up that morning and the Today show which was another show on before that. I remember sitting on the bed looking at it going, I’m going on national television. I’ve never done that before and I thought I’m going to vomit on the whole, Keri Anne had beautiful shoes back then and I thought I’m going to vomit. What am I doing. And I remember getting there and I was extremely nervous and she was wonderful and I think the episode went well but actually leaving the show in the taxi I got a call from another national program that had seen me and said, can you come up on Monday and do another segment for us? But what I learned very quickly was and I’ve done a lot of media now is that the media need content. However, you have to drive it and you have to do a lot of hard work. But what they need is what’s called a hook. So they need something that they cannot so much sensationalise although sometimes they do but they need an angle from which they’re going to be able to get some great dialogue.

Tim

Can I just pause you on that because, where you’re going is very interesting but as you know I guess I’m part of that media. And I put out a show every week, and I’m always looking for great content, and I get a lot of emails from people wanting to come on as a guest. And it is that hook and when I did the pre-interview with you and when I do previews with other guests, like I say to them, you know what’s the headline for this episode going to be? You know we’re going to talk about self-publishing, are we going to talk about social influencers, we’re going to talk about I don’t know. There’s the hook for me. So being clear, if someone like you trying to get media coverage, being clear on why I should interview you or why should Keri Anne want you on the show is pretty much mission critical.

Sharon

It is. And I’ve done a lot of media over the last five years and I know that the media are hungry for content but you’ve got to give it to them and you’ve got to give them the angle and they’re more likely to pick you up if you, for example if you just say there’s been ah. Oh look. Just so there’s been an issue with photographs being shared amongst teenagers’ social media. And there’s been you know something quite sensational happened. You can get the hook and say why our teenagers are in crisis with social media, why something needs to happen or why social media is ruining our teens lives. Something really strong like that as long as you can back it up and you can actually have some great dialogue about that. They need that. So you know I often will just, if there’s something that I see in the news and I think boy let me talk about this. I’ll contact the media and say here’s my hook. It could be something to do with a school uniform for example, you know I remember once there was some digital photo shopping that had happened to school photographs and you know students were getting their photos back and they’d been digitally altered you know their braces are taken out or their pimples are taken off and I thought well let me get that one and so you can just you know you send a few e-mails out to the producers.

Tim

So there’s two types of hook, one is there’s the time sensitive hook which is all look at the headline on the newspaper today, I’ve got an opinion on that, quickly get something out to the media. Then there’s the longer-term hook which is, I’m Sharon Witt. I’m an educator of young people. I have strong opinions around it.

Sharon

And now be contacted generally I’ll be contacted now by the media who will say that you know they have their people that they know are experts in an area are known to contact me and say listen, this is just come up in the news, can we chat to you about it today. Which is great when you’ve got runs on the board but you’ve got to do the work. You know it’s not easy but it is really worth it. And all of that came from writing a book.

Tim

One book. So you’ve written the book, you’ve got a distributor, you’re a thousand copies in Kmart, Keri Anne calls you, now the show cause you having seen you on Keri Anne, this is okay so far we’ve got a little bit of media coverage, the ego is going okay, right?

Sharon

Although I’ve always kept it pretty humble.  I still kick myself today that a teacher and a you know a mum from the suburbs can be doing this sort of thing.

Tim

So how well what then happened. Because right now, from a small business point of view you’re not making a coin in terms of where we’re at with the story. So what else developed?

Sharon

So I started doing media I started getting asked to do articles, I suppose quite a bit of radio, articles generally, I have done a lot of them for free but I get publicity through it. And you’re developing your brand. So I started to develop a brand, a name. Well I started to become known as someone who was an expert in my field and that built over time. Originally it’s interesting because originally I was trying to brand myself around my first book which is the teen talk series and interestingly enough I remember trying to about two years into it thinking I should trademark the name now the trademark had actually been picked up by someone else who was doing puberty talks in some very small space and you could google the name and it would be, probably it was like looking going through a rabbit warren to actually find any connection to her but yet there were pages and pages and pages of reference to me. However, I could have gone down the road of trying to get the trademark or whatever but I didn’t and then someone said to me it’s actually more about your name, trademarking your name around not so much the teen talk series. And I’m so glad that I did because I had no idea going on to do so many other books and different series that actually would have limited me. But I would say early on if you do have a brand you start to develop this idea of who you are and your business trade market as early as you can because you just don’t know where it’s going to go. And I had no idea that I would go on to write 12 books and I’m still going and start to develop a brand for myself.

Tim

And still teaching

Sharon

And still teaching. Just going down to two days a week. I was trying to balance it all and teaching four days a week. But yeah, I started getting asked to speak in schools at conferences

Tim

And this is exactly what’s happened to me with my podcast is that whilst I have a revenue stream through sponsorship of this show, I also you know speaking has become you know significant. For you, what are you selling? Because at this point having all this media coverage is just fantastic yeah it sounds to me if you were to quantify it over the years you’ve had hundreds and thousands are absolutely no coverage, column centimeters, seconds on TV, radio.

Sharon

Yeah. And when you have a host holding a book up on national television and saying this is great. You know it’s awesome.

Tim

So but back then all you’ve got to sell is a book. When did that change and all of a sudden, you’re going, well you know you can book me for coffee or what. What are you selling?

Sharon

It’s a funny story because I actually got contacted by the head of a youth organisation and he had and this is once again some of those ideas, those things that happen and he walked into Kmart. He happened to see the brightness of my book appealed to him and he grabbed it. He read it and he said, oh we’ve got this big youth event coming up I might have said we can book her for this five-day speaking event. And I remember he contacted me and said look I’m not sure where in Australia you are but we’re running this big event would you be interested in being our keynote. Could you do you know five keynotes over this.  We’ll pay for your flights and get you there. Do you do that? No I hadn’t been doing those things. I said yes, I do. Absolutely, I’d love to do that. And I remember getting on the plane and I’d done my preparation but thinking seriously you know fake it till you make it.

Tim

Well you’re a teacher, you’re standing in front of people all the time.

Sharon

Yeah, I can speak in front of teenagers but that was like a real baptism of fire. Five days of running sessions for teenagers and specky keynote speaking and it was awesome. And I continue to work for them to this day I still do their events. But yeah after that it just got word got around and I started to get bookings and would come and speak here and would speak there and that is where the book becomes a tool that you can then sell at events. Yes, I was getting online sales and I still do and I still do through bookshops through the distribution. However, when I’m out speaking an event now because I have 12 books and numerous resources and curriculum and I now have a huge resource stand and that’s where a lot of my income comes from. From selling because you ‘ re not actually, there is no middle man there. So it’s all profit margin.  So I’ve actually been doing very well through. When I speak I get paid to speak but also through the selling at the end of the night. If I’ve got 200 parents in a room and they all just you know they’re hungry for resources for themselves and for their children.

Tim

You’ve got 12 books out now she says. Was there a bit of a bell curve happening where the impact of bringing out the next book started to diminish? Well you’ve got the first book made big waves right.

Sharon

Yeah. Sorts of things happened. It basically went on momentum. I just kept going and every year I would bring out a new book. I just kept going. In fact, the second to girl talk and guy talk were both puberty books for kids 10 upwards and I was going to do the girls one and then the boys one and then I thought why. You know as soon as I put that Pink out, you know for girl’s parents are going to go is there a boy one coming out and I thought you know what, let’s just do them at the same time. That was huge. That was a massive thing to bite off my poor graphic designer was you know really passing out. He’s actually my next-door neighbor so it’s quite interesting but we put out two at once. But the great thing about this was there was a book buyer at the time and you can do pre-sales and if you’ve got some runs on the board another book comes out. I actually sent through the pre-sales information and there was a book buyer that purchased a thousand of each. Before I had even put pen to paper. I had pre-sales of a thousand of each that basically covered my printing for those second and third books. So it’s been amazing how it happens and you know I think there’s a great saying “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”. And that is what I live by. You know I get nervous and yes sometimes you make mistakes and think you know what life’s short and if you have got an idea a seedling with inside you that says you know what I’ve got a book in me if you’ve got an area of expertise or something that you can give to other people of value, do it.

Tim

I totally agree and we’ve covered this before Andrew Griffiths a prolific small business author has been on the show. We’ve gone in-depth into publishing I’ll put a link in the show notes to that interview. But I do have a wish for every single person that listens to the show. All of who are either marketers or small business owners that they have a book they don’t you know I really do and I know that’s unrealistic. Maybe one day I could make that my platform you know politics.  But it is, they are so powerful. So, we have covered a lot but I am interested what is your advice before we move on. I want to talk to you about your use of promotion. Your personal brand. But what is your advice. You said you use a sticky note concept to get your first book written. There’s lots of ways of doing it you could be talking to a recorder and have it transcribed yeah.

Sharon

I could get a book finished in a day if that was the case.

Tim

You absolutely could and that is absolutely valid then send it off to an editor .

Sharon

Absolutely. It’s funny. I know I’m a bit of a stickler for routine. I always gone buy a fresh new notebook

Tim

You’re such a teacher.

Sharon

I’m such a teacher and I get a new pen.

Tim

Oh, you’re funny. Tell me about the pens. Is it Staedtler?

Sharon

You’re going to laugh at this it’s got to be a Bic ballpoint pen.

Tim

Kilometrico?

Sharon

No, it’s Bic. Kilometrico is your basic Bic from Safeway.

Tim

Color?

Sharon

It’s blue.

Tim

You don’t actually write the book, do you?

Sharon

Get this. I write by hand. So this is me. So, I have loved always, I’m always carrying, I’ve got one in there, I’ve always in my bag. Sorry I just realised that we weren’t on television. And I’ve got a notebook and I write and sometimes I’ll sit with a packet of sticky notes and I’ll write out all the different topics and then I’ll stick them throughout the book so it looks like tabs. And then I can be on a train, I can be on holidays with my feet in a river somewhere and I can just go write. I think I want to write about social media and teenagers and I will just write and there might be six pages a day and I can just write. And now I’ve actually this is the joy of being a teacher. I’ve got lots of ex-students I can draw on who need cash. And so I just then give my notebook to one of my ex-students who lives not far away and she types up into a Word document for me and then emails back to me because I hate typing.

Tim

What’s the benefit of writing. Because the beautiful thing about typing and word processing is word processing still a thing?

Sharon

I enjoy writing just writing by hand

Tim

You move stuff around and delete junks.

Sharon

Yep so when it’s when it’s typed up sometimes I sit and type it up and when I’m typing it up I will then change things as I go. But the last book that I’ve done I just gave it to my ex-students. Can you type it. I really can’t be bothered typing. So, she does it and now I’m at the process of going through and reading it and then I’ll change it as I go. Yeah.

Tim

Just out of interest do you write on both sides of the page?

Sharon

Yes, I do.

Tim

Oh, you see I could never do that.

Sharon

I do. I just really enjoy the process of writing the book. So, it is a shame you can’t just get that photocopy done and that’s your book. But I loved the whole process of getting the book out and I’m now helping other people do it and I love it when people contact me and say well you know can you help me. And I love it. I love the process of it.

Tim

You are clearly a process driven person, very structured.

Sharon

And the process has to be there. Once I learnt the process it was in place and now you duplicate it.

Tim

What could you put a dollar figure around getting a book on your shelf?

Sharon

It’s a bit like how long’s a piece of string but from my very first book it was about 17, 000 dollars to get it done.

Tim

That seems like a lot.

Sharon

It was. You can get it done. I think I printed a thousand Dale Beaumont’s suggested I do a hundred and see how it goes and I went. I know I know you’re the expert but I get it back myself and I knew that my mum would buy one. And so, I thought I’ve go if it doesn’t sell I’ve got 999 Christmas presents for my students for a few years and I’ll be the best teacher ever. I’ll go a book but I’ve back it myself.

Tim

What do you get. Seventeen grands a lot.

Sharon

Now days I’m now printing offshore and you know look roughly my books are costing me two or three dollars, two dollars per copy. And if you’re selling them for 15 dollars that’s pretty good. But really the set-up costs are at the start. So having an editor having someone to design it and then sending them off to the printers. You’ve also got a print on demand nowadays. So, you can actually, I’ve got a great printer in Adelaide and I can say I just need 400 copies and they’ll do it and they can turn it over within a couple of weeks. The thing with overseas is it can be two or three-month process by the time they get out here. So there are lots of ways of doing it. It doesn’t have to be done expensively. You can do e-books now a lot of people are publishing the books in a P.D.F. selling it that way. There are so many ways that you can become an author and not having to spend a lot of money. But as a ball park these days I allow about 10,000 dollars to do a book for me now which is much more reasonable. But I can also do it as an e-book if I want to but you know if you’ve got about ten thousand dollars to invest in it the thing is it doesn’t take too long once you get it out there to have a return on your investment. And the thing is it is an investment. Writing a book is actually investment in your brand and it’s an asset.

Tim

Well maybe that’s because I do wrap it on about it on this show over the years but it’s a glorified business card. You can actually sell it so you could make money there. I mean I can’t imagine the amount of business that maybe you’ve got I’ve got other authors have got simply by sending a free book to a speaker’s bureau or to the media or whatever it is. It’s very powerful.

Sharon

And remember author is from the word authority. So, a soon as you, for some reason I remember Dale Beaumont saying this to me: as soon as you become an author you instantly get some credibility as you’re some sort of authority in that field.

Tim

Well I think again you know also the marketing world change part of that is the fact that you know all these new platforms whether it be video podcasting or self-publishing or social media to an extent they do they make it rightly or wrongly make you an authority. It’s all very well to say you’ve written a book. Is the book any good? No but it does it does create a perception amongst people that oh they must know what they’re talking about.

Sharon

But I will say this you’ve got to make sure that your book is quality because I’ve seen some pretty horrid books out there that are self-published and they’re put out and they’re done on the cheap and they look cheap. So you do have to make sure that is bookshop quality you really want it to be something you’re really proud of. So don’t rush the process but make sure also that to you do you do due diligence to make sure that the end result is a good looking book as well.

Tim

you are down to two days a week teaching absolutely you’re going to always keep. I imagine that you’d want to keep fit.

Sharon

So yeah, I think I will always. I actually love spending my days immersed in teen world I do enjoy it but because my speaking and presenting in media has become so big and running the business now is huge. That 2 days is just nice but even if I wasn’t teaching I would still be going in doing a few casual days and I’ll always continue to work with young people. That’s how you stay relevant to this industry.

Tim

Does this Sharon Witt incorporated business have a staff?

Sharon

Staff? It does now. I’m just starting to have people coming on board basically by necessity no doubt. I started running conferences for parents and educators two years ago helping them raise resilient young people and it came from one idea and it became huge and we’re now running this conference in three different states this year. And so I have to have people on board too to help so I make sure that the people that I employ the best at what they do and I think this is probably going a bit off track but it’s important that you employ people that are good at what they do because when you’re running a business I’m not great at accounts I’m not. Yes, I’m an organised person but the little details when you’re running a big conference and speaking and having to keep up all the emails with the people you’re going to present for I’m I don’t enjoy that. I’d rather just go and do the presenting so I’ve got some good people now around me that manage that.

Tim

It’s really a challenge in fact my last guest Tom Maclean from Sophie Spritz which is an alcoholic beverage His campaign strategy around why he’s been successful is finding people experts in their field really good people in branding ,  really good people in distribution even win on Shark Tank and got some right and some equity and some great advice from the sharks but he’s very big on that. And I think you got to find that balance. I mean you know we talk a lot on the show about content marketing and if it’s a small business owner all you ever did was focus on creating great content and left the editing and the spellchecking and all that other stuff to someone else is a good outcome sometimes it can be expensive and the cash flows not there but it’s where you want to get to where.

Sharon:

It is and I’m just getting to that now. I’ll be completely honest after 10 years I think last year I was exhausted at times because I’m teaching nearly full time, managing book orders, I’m managing invoices, I’m managing media, I’m trying to keep up with writing articles for magazines and newspapers and trying to keep up with it all and bookings and follow up invoicing everybody and I was exhausted. Back to back. You know, working three jobs and it wasn’t till I kind of you know had a bit of a meltdown towards end of last year and just when there’s not enough hours in the day, I was exhausted. Yeah, I had about three days where I just couldn’t move. I just thought I’ve done too much in my head just when is too much. I just thought I have to give all this away. It’s too much and I’ve heard of many people who run companies and big businesses, when you try and do it all yourself. You know you have to let go of the reins sometimes. And for me it’s been very difficult to do that because I think, well if I don’t do it it’s not going to go, it’s not going to happen properly and you know I have to have my finger on all the pulses and it wasn’t until I had someone come on board and say I’m going to manage your conferences. You know I wanted to get to the point where you just turn up for the day you book the talent and you come and do your session but we run all the rest of it. And so, I’ve got a wonderful person who is an event coordinator. She does my events now.

Tim

She local?

Sharon

She’s local to me. In fact I went to high school with her and we got in contact with each other and she said Tell me about it, and I said I need someone to run this events so she books everything she manages all every detail and she’s very organised and she you know, she took my mess of my folders of all the little you know miniature detail and she put it all in folders and reset it all and did what she does best. And then I had another girl come on board who helped out at one of my conferences and said, you need some help. You know you can’t manage all this. I would like to train myself up so can I work for you for a few months for free because she said I want to learn. And then she said and then if you want to she’s now going invoice me for her time so I’ve got people who are coming on board now who are good at what they do and they’re going to release me this year too because I’m the one who comes up with ideas and wants to write and generate some amazing ideas and contents. Yeah but it’s taken 10 years to learn that I can’t do it all. I can’t. And if I’m going to have success for the next 10, 20 years, I need to be able to delegate and delegate well.

Tim

Was part of you not handing it across? Handing out all those other responsibilities across, was it being a control freak? You didn’t want to spend the money. Did you

Sharon

Control freak.

Tim

Control freak.

Sharon

Up thinking oh I need to manage it all myself.

Tim

I can go a bit of a numskulls Shaz for thinking like that.

Sharon

Yeah. I actually think I could have done,  I could have really prevented myself from suffering. Last year towards the end where I just it was almost burnout I got myself out of it pretty quickly after about four days but it happens about once a year I just have all these things I had this major conference that I’d organised or had 900 people attended. It was a huge successful day and I didn’t leave myself a buffer the following week. I had my four days of teaching I was booked to go and speak at a country town for two days and I was still speaking at events at night and I didn’t give myself a buffer to rest. Now I’ve got this person who is now in charge of my calendar and she has already put in my speaking for next year and the conference for this year she has also put in buffer’s now where I have to chill a buffer line and now you know very well that I’ve just come back from a week away by myself. So once a year.

Tim

Looking radiant by the way.

Sharon

Thank you. I do have a tiny bit of a tan but thank you. I take myself away for a week every year at the start of the year and give myself a complete break from everything and I just use it to chill out and not think about business or anything but it’s when some of my best ideas germinate.

Tim

So, you’ve just got back yesterday. Anything pop in the last week?

Sharon

Just book ideas and resource ideas and yeah if you think I’d write articles when I’m away if I feel I can write.

Tim

Yeah. So you haven’t talked about article content provision you said you provided what few magazines

Sharon

Magazines for young people for teen girls.

Tim

Is that paid or is that again profile.

Sharon

Most of them profile things. Most of it I don’t get paid for. So, I quite enjoy the process of just writing articles and they don’t take me too long if I’m in the head space. I love writing in coffee shop so I just go to coffee shops has to be noisy for me for some reason it works and I just I can bang out a thousand-word article in a short amount of time.

Tim

Do you buy stuff at the coffee shop? I see people go in coffee shops go in for hours and have one coffee and I can’t do that. How often do you have to buy something and every sort of 40 minutes? Just give us another muffin.

Sharon

Yep. In fact, I go to regular coffee shops now where they just come up and they’ll just say you ready for your next coffee. And they just look after me. I’ve written all of my books in local coffee shop.

Tim

Really?

Sharon

All of them. And in fact, I always do a shout out to them as well. But I’ll be honest I’ll go in and say listen I’m writing, I need to write for the next six hours, are you happy for me to have a table or buy lunch or buy breakfast to drop the kids off at school. It was my day off and have breakfast there right. Have coffee you know I might spend 30 bucks or whatever. But for me it’s like renting an office. Yeah sure. So, I always support the small businesses.

Tim

Have you thought about extending your reach beyond self-publishing, Blogging, writing, podcasting or video?

Sharon

I would love to yeah. I’m on fire the likes of had a week off of no talking so I’ve probably got about another 30,000 thousand words still to go to my day.

Tim

Mind is the professor of marketing at one of the universities in it’s actually proven, it’s been research that women have 7,000 words to speak a day and men have four thousand.

Sharon

How do they get their four thousand in though?

Tim

The men? We don’t really know it’s going mumbling and you know just grunting. That’s considered a word really to you. That’s like a word

Sharon

I’m really grateful you’ve given me a four-hour podcast today. That’s great. What was your question Tim?

Tim

Why have you not looked at mediums?

Sharon

I haven’t had time because someone needs to teach the students. I would love to this year explore, having a wider reach. So, I would love the idea of podcasting. I have no idea how to do it. I know that I’ve got access to studios I do a lot of radio interviews and I have a relationship with one particular radio station where the afternoon drive host. If I see something I’ll ring him and say hey I’m going to pop in let’s get a couple segments and have them in the can so that you can use them in the next week or two, loves it because I’m driving content for him.

Tim

Would you have a preference towards audio video?

Sharon

Ooh I think audio.

Tim

How come?

Sharon

I couldn’t be bothered doing my hair. I’d like to do audio but the other thing I would love to do. I’ve considered this is doing a little TV show so I guess it’s a YouTube show. I was asked to go and do some, a person that I know who does a lot of parenting. He’s developed some courses and he asked me last year to go and be part of the course and he interviewed me as part of his course and a guy who had a television studio set up in his home so he was a retired gentleman and is now just doing a few corporate things at his home like a large home and I said to him I wouldn’t mind interviewing people and doing my own TV show. He said absolutely I’ll do that for you so I’ve got lots of ideas yeah but until now I’ve because I’ve been teaching four days a week I’m like what do I do that.

Tim

Will it be kids or parents?

Sharon

Parents.

Tim

Because your books are for kids.

Sharon

They’re for kids. I’ve got one for parents. The rest are all for the kids. Often the parents are reading my books with their kids. Yes, they’re working through them. They’re all nonfiction books so.

Tim

Well you’ve tapped into something you’re not the only one but you’re doing very well. Market that is not going to disappear.

Sharon

I know. Good thinking, hey.

Tim

Right thinking by default. I don’t know who it was but

Sharon

It was by default. But people are always going to children

Tim

Always going to have children. I think there is a there is there’s not enough information and not enough good information out there. I think that the problems are only going to get worse as a parent. You know my listeners have heard me rant on about social media and even today I heard something which was really interesting coming in in the cars listening to an interview with someone and they talked about you know back in our day it was all about being outside and it is all about being inside. It just makes me feel sick even think about how computers and video games and phones and tablets

Sharon

Our kids are so connected it’s scary it’s scary. They don’t get let up, they don’t have any break.

Tim

That’s your podcast

Sharon

That’s my podcast. So, can I ask you a question if I wanted to start podcasting. Where do you start?

Tim

Do you mean from a TV point of view? Well okay let me know. Don’t worry about technology because it’s easy. Relatively easy.

Sharon

You find someone who is that’s their expertise.

Tim

Where you start and I talk about this in my book the boomerang effect which is get clear on your editorial mission and the simple three questions: What have you got to offer, to who, and what outcome can they expect. So, the editorial mission for this show is marketing tips and tricks. That’s what we have to offer for small service-based businesses. They’re my love. But it applies to really any business and what outcome can they expect more inquiry. So, everything I create on this show, everything in my book, Everything I blog about, everything I speak from stage plays into that editorial mission. It would be very easy for you to identify your editorial mission and then go and create and then go and write, once you know what you’re clear on it go and write the first five or 10 headlines or topics for your show and then agree on a format. It could be you on your soapbox just ranting it could be a cohost it could be interviews it could be you answering parents’ questions. There’s lots of different formats. So once you agree on that

Sharon

And you can vary it up a bit too. Or is it best to stick to the same formula?

Tim

I look there isn’t going to be subjective here, I like to stick to relatively the same formula because like if you turn on the nightly news on TV, you know they’re going to lead with the big stories and they’re going to break, they’re going to come back with the smaller stories. They’re going to have a weather update. They’re going to go to sport they’re going to finish with the weather and a fun story. Yeah that’s the structure of the news. And if that changes then well it doesn’t. But if it did it like what happened. You know I’m used to the other structure I think as humans we like a bit of structure and know what to expect. But that said you know the format of this show is always an interview. There’s a segment and sometimes answer a listener question. Sometimes I share an opinion but you know very odd around it. But 80 percent of the show is set in concrete.

Sharon

And then how do you get people to listen?

Tim

Well I don’t know because I’ve got no one listening

Sharon

Those three people. How do you get it out there?

Tim

Okay so. Well they’re all good questions. My first response is to just create ice content, doesn’t create really good content because the best marketing is a great product. I mean that’s just how it works. So, create great content. Be consistent. I see too many people head off on you know writing three blog posts and then doing nothing or doing four episodes of a podcast and then doing nothing like commit to it six months once a week don’t look at the scoreboard head down just do it right. But then strike partnerships I mean the partnership. Well what happened with this show is it did when we struck a nerve early I had a co-host for the first 80 episode struck a nerve early. We found that intersection between education and entertainment. And I can educate bites by myself and I can’t entertain by myself but I can combine the two. And so that worked really well and we hit a nerve with that. But I think in partnerships you know like getting this show on Virgin Airlines internationally and domestically all of a sudden opened up a bigger audience. Now I have the small business association of Australia and the small business mentoring Institute share my content each week. So just so finding those partnerships where you can get a context somewhere but they can leverage it out to them. Yeah absolutely very powerful. You know being on iTunes being on stature being on Spotify these are all ways but. And then from a technology point of view it’s pretty easy you know like we have the luxury you and I sitting here with very nice radio studio. You don’t need that. I mean I’ve done shows out of the back of my car. Yeah. I’ve done shows under burner in a hotel room right acoustic.

Sharon

I actually had someone coming to see me recently for a podcast that she does and we said on my lounge room floor on the carpet. She had it all set up on the floor and we just sat there and had a cup of tea in hand and we did a fantastic show.

Tim

And I you know I think it is becoming more competitive these days, I said I would say years ago, hey listen your iPhone’s got an audio recorder on and open it up and start talking. Yes, do that. But very quickly start to pay attention to production values because there are so many people self-publishing, there are so many people podcasting. There are so many YouTube channels. So as quick as you can start to refine the quality of your audio, where you’re doing it and because that again will be a point of difference. There’s a lot of podcasts doing it in echoey rooms with poor equipment with traffic in the background. Hey better than not doing it. So I reckon you be great at it ,  Shaz and I would be fully supportive of it. You picked my brain.

Sharon

Lovely, I think I will give it a go.

Tim

Yeah well, you’re not short of a word. We’re finished. No we haven’t I know I said it was going to be a four hour chat but that was just to get in.

Sharon

Do you talk about social media?

Tim

What have you got to say, oh well let’s finish on social media because

Sharon

It’s been important for me.

Tim

It’s been really important and why.

Sharon

Well for me it’s been really important to have a social media presence because a lot of my market, the parents are on social media. You’ve got a lot of mums on social media. So, whenever I

Tim

What an irony given you’re telling the kids to get off it.

Sharon

Exactly. But whenever I’m doing an interview whether I’m writing an article because I contribute a lot to news media they’ll contact me for my comments and my expertise and so I’ll share that. So, I’m all I’m all about giving content and giving assistance rather than just here’s my book, buy my book. I don’t do that because I will just share content and share ideas and when I see something. For example, my kids are going back to school. What ‘ s your advice for helping you know what five tips are to help your child prepare for starting school next week or whenever it is. So, I’ll give some tips and advice. Here’s a link to an article I’ve just contributed to. They can read that.

Tim

Is it a Facebook post?

Sharon

Yeah, Facebook post. I’ve also got an Instagram author page now that

Tim

What’s the difference between a post and obviously Instagram’s a lot more visual. Facebook also best is

Sharon

I always make sure my Facebook has a visual as well.

Tim

How does a Facebook post and Instagram post differ from you?

Sharon

They’re quite similar. I haven’t got my head all around Instagram yet I’ve mainly used that for personal use but I’ve got a girl once again. She is an expert. She lives in another state and she manage my social media. She just doing that for fun at the moment which is awesome and she’s very, very good at it and she’s actually doing it at the moment for some a few well-known people. So she doesn’t advertise it but she’s managing some pretty great content at the moment and she’s very good at it. She’s only a young person about 27 years old and she’s gone at it. Yes, she does “I’m not great with that” but she does it well. I’m pretty good with managing my Facebook and if I am going to do a bit of a book deal or I might say you know have you got a young person who’s struggling with anxiety. You know a child is struggling with anxiety. You might find it helpful to have a look at this book and I’ll give them a bit of content but then I’ll put a link to the particular book I have. That is about social anxiety or friendships. Friendships is always a huge one.

Tim

Your social media strategy is very much from the Gary Vaynerchuck, jab, jab, jab, right hook. So Gary is probably a leading commentator in the world and social media.

Sharon

I’ve just fumbled along as I’ve gone.

Tim

Well in a lot of this stuff is common sense. His book is philosophy in the book of the same name. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. A jab is give, so advice, help. No sell, and then for every well he says for every three jabs you can then come home with the right hook which is book me, buy from me, and I would argue that you probably need more jabs than three five to get the right hook.

Sharon

So, look I don’t sell very often. I don’t you know every now and then I’ll pop up one of my books and say but I’ll put it more along the lines of just received a great order for this book. If you’re thinking of you know if you’re wanting to you know, for example my book Surviving High School, I’ll say a lot of parents are finding this really helpful at the moment. If you want to grab your copy, I’m throwing a free postage at the moment or something for the next 24 hours. You feel free to order.

Tim

Finishing on social media Shaz, you’ve got this lady in the state managing it. How do you maintain your voice?

Sharon

It’s interesting because she’s only managing my Instagram and so far, she actually knows me quite well so she’s using it as a bit of trial and error. But I’ve watched the last few posts and she has picked up my voice. It’s really obvious that it sounds like me and that’s a skill but she also knows me very well. So I’ve known her for a few years she knows me. So, it is very important that if you do hand the reins over to anyone, they know your voice and that they know you. And to keep up with that and its trial and error. You know if she posts something and I think it’s not really me. I’ll just let her know not to say yeah not sure about that one yeah perhaps leave that.

Tim

Love it. You do a lot of things right, Shaz. Love your work.

Sharon

Thank you for having me.

Tim

Sharon Witt dot com dot au where you can find all the help you need for your troublesome teens or just copy her business model really.

Sharon

That’s right. Is another thing the trial and error of my website be it took three guys before I got something that actually reflected me.

Tim

I’m doing my website at the moment with the help of a fellow David Jenyns from Melbourne SEO services and we are absolutely kind of ripping things apart. Well that didn’t work. If I had that faith get rid of it, try this you know.

Sharon

That’s the thing you’ve got to be not afraid to try something. What if that fails. That’s fine. You just pivot and change and do something different. But just keep trying.

Tim

Sharon no more talking really. I am sorry. Thank you for coming in.

Sharon

Thanks for having me.