Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / Episode 249 Become an Author and Recognized Authority with Melanie Herschorn

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Episode 249 Become an Author and Recognized Authority with Melanie Herschorn · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:00
  Melanie: So my experience was I've been invited on podcasts. I've been speaking on stages about my book, and I get to sell my book, and people I don't know will reach out to me and say, Hey, I read your book. And I'll you know, it's it's kind of unnerving. It's it's almost like a mini celebrity status because it's like, oh, you know something about me, and I don't know you.
• 0:24
  Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more? Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the life lifestyle of your dreams.
• 1:10
  Now here's Davina.
• 1:13
  Davina: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Davina Frederick, and my guest today is Melanie Herschorn. Melanie wants to help you step into your spotlight as an authority. As a publisher and book marketing expert for attorneys, consultants, and business owners, she's on a mission to empower authors to share their message with the world. With her comprehensive background with more than twenty years experience as a celebrity publicist, an award winning journalist in radio, print, and TV, as well as a clothing designer and entrepreneur, Melody is uniquely positioned to support authors to step into thought leadership and make a big impact with your book.
• 1:53
  Her new book, make a big impact with your book, author marketing strategies for long long term success is available now. So look for that link in the show notes, and help me welcome Melanie to the show. Hi, Melanie. Welcome. We're so happy you're here.
• 2:08
  Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Good. So I'm excited to have someone to talk with us about writing books and positioning ourselves as authorities. I've had someone on in the past, but it has been a couple of years now.
• 2:23
  And I think we need to know what's going on currently in in the world of book publishing and for business owners. So we have lots of questions. I'm happy you're here. Awesome. I'm happy to be here, and
• 2:34
  Melanie: I have lots of answers, hopefully.
• 2:36
  Davina: Okay. Good. Good. So why don't you start out telling us, you have quite an impressive background. So why don't you sort of tell us where your career how your career has taken you to doing what you're doing today?
• 2:48
  Melanie: Absolutely. So it's totally nonlinear. And I started out in celebrity PR in Hollywood, and a famous comedian told me off on my birthday twice. Oh my gosh. And I said, that's it.
• 3:04
  I'm done. And I went and I got a master's in journalism. And when I graduated, I had to move from LA to the middle of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My husband was there doing some training, and I was fortunate enough to get a job at an NPR affiliate. So I was an afternoon news anchor and reporter on the radio.
• 3:29
  You know, I used to joke, well, at least I have a face for radio. And now here we are always on video these days. So I decided to have a baby. I had turned 30, and I went, oh, I have this desire to become a mom. So I waited until a non election year so as not to upset all the men in the newsroom.
• 3:53
  Oh, wow. I know I planned planned to have a baby as much as you can plan. And when I was five months pregnant, I got laid off. Oh, wow. Oh, no.
• 4:03
  And I went, oh my gosh. I am unemployed and unemployable. What do I do now? I was fortunate enough to get a phone call from the local newspaper's managing editor. And she said to me, I'll never forget this.
• 4:20
  She said, we want you to come and freelance for us. And I said, but I'm five months pregnant. And she said, I don't care. And it was like, oh, okay. Wow.
• 4:33
  I can still do something of value. And so I did that for another year. And then we moved to Phoenix, which is where we are now. And I realized that I could I pay a nanny or a babysitter or daycare center more money than I'd be making as a journalist. Or I could do this thing that I had really wanted to do, which was to design and manufacture breastfeeding clothing.
• 4:57
  Oh wow. Not again, nonlinear. And so I didn't know what I was doing, but I figured it out using Google and logic and managed to sell my clothes on nordstrom.com and on Amazon and in boutiques in The US and Canada. But then year seven, I hired somebody to help me with my marketing and it was a very toxic situation. Wow.
• 5:26
  She belittled me at every turn. And she would say, you know, I don't know how you have a master's degree. You can't you're you're so boring when you write. And, you know, I wow. Yeah.
• 5:38
  I'm fully insult. That was just the tip of the iceberg too. So anyway, I I couldn't even go into my home office anymore. I was so upset and unhappy. Oh, Traumatized.
• 5:50
  I was traumatized, but I still have some moments where I get triggered, but this was already five years ago. So anyway, I closed the business, sold off my stock, and I said, alright, I'm gonna start fresh. What can I do? And realized that the through line of my career was helping amplify people's voices. And, you know, when I worked in radio, I was the one who pushed my news director so that I could cover stories about children who were stuck in the foster care system.
• 6:22
  I pushed for doing a whole feature about the wives of the senatorial candidates because they're important too. And so and these are people who are not getting airtime. So I've realized that. And even with, you know, women who are new moms, you know, they don't feel so good about themselves. And my mission was really to help them feel better about themselves.
• 6:44
  So I thought, you know, I could help entrepreneurs with their marketing. And then it evolved into authors calling me and saying, hey, can you help me with my marketing? And I went, oh, there's a niche that I like. And and then I realized, you know, I can help even more people or or at least I can help people in a better way if we're starting from the beginning of the writing process. Because so often people will write a book, publish a book, and then have no plan for how to market it, and then nothing happens.
• 7:19
  But for attorneys, when you write and you publish and you promote your book, I mean, that is how you get client acquisition, client retention, step into thought leadership. So but all that won't happen if you just have a book and no plan for promoting it.
• 7:37
  Davina: Right. Right. Absolutely. So it's so interesting to hear your journey because I think so many, women law firm owners, lawyers, we graduate from law school, we think, well, we're but that's it. We have to be a lawyer for the rest of our But over the last five years as I've been entering interviewing so many women law firm owners, what's fascinating to me is all the different, steps in their journey and how different they are and how many people take breaks and how many people try a different business venture.
• 8:08
  And so it's always very inspiring to hear somebody who has, you know, started down a path and and then does something unconventional and gone in a completely different direction that nobody thought about before. You know? So that I love hearing your story. I appreciate you sharing it. So let's dig into book writing for professionals to help position themselves with authority and credibility.
• 8:33
  What is it you think that a book does for us that maybe other media does not do for us?
• 8:42
  Melanie: Oh my gosh. How much time do we have? Okay. I'll try to narrow it down. So a book is a tool that nobody can ever take away from you.
• 8:51
  It is a tangible piece of goodness that shows your credibility, your authority, your expertise, and shares about YouTube because every every book has stories in it. You don't have to bury your soul if that's not your kind of thing, but it's got stories in there. And so what makes it so special is that once you have this book, you can say, hey, I'm an expert in such and such, and I wrote the book on it. Right. And that phrase alone changes things for you.
• 9:34
  It it really elevates you. It opens up doors that not having a book I'm gonna mix myself up here. That that will be closed if you don't have a book. Right. You know, stages where you can speak on because you have a book.
• 9:52
  You will be invited to talk places. What was your experience like after you wrote
• 9:58
  Davina: your your book, your first book? It
• 10:03
  Melanie: was amazing. I mean, I was on the news a few weeks ago talking about my book. It's it's a launching pad. It's something to talk about. So my experience is I've been invited on podcasts.
• 10:16
  I've been speaking on stages about my book, and and I get to sell my book. And people I don't know will reach out to me and say, hey. I read your book. And I'll you know, it's it's kind of unnerving. It's it's almost like a mini celebrity status because it's like, oh, you know something about me, and I
• 10:35
  Davina: don't know you. Exactly. Exactly. I think writing a book from my from my own experience is also it's a great way it's a great way for people to get to know you so they know, like, and trust you because they've read what you're before they ever meet you. And that's a great tool.
• 10:53
  But it also it helps you get your ideas out into the world, and your point of view out into the world so you attract people who, who like what you're saying and like what your message is out there. But the main thing is is, like, you know, people throw away business cards, but they keep books. And, if you could see all the bookshelves in my office, you would see and on my Kindle and everything. People keep books, and they may keep your they may not read your whole book, but they'll keep it. And when they have that need, they go, I'm just gonna call her to help me with this because I yeah.
• 11:31
  The book was interesting, but I'm not gonna sit down and do all this. They realize all that is involved in the thing that they're trying to do. And so nine times out of 10, they go, well, I'm just gonna call this person who wrote this book because they're the expert, and they're gonna help me.
• 11:44
  Melanie: Has that been your experience? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, think about a book. You take it home and you put it on your nightstand.
• 11:52
  You may not read it, but it's gonna sit there for nine months. There is no better you couldn't have a billboard big enough to do the best kind of marketing that that is doing for you.
• 12:04
  Davina: Right. Absolutely. So tell us what is different about writing a nonfiction book for business purposes as opposed to a hobby and interest or writing a book a fiction book or whatever. What is it that makes a business book unique?
• 12:23
  Melanie: Well, it usually contains your proven framework. However you work with your clients, you can then lay that out. Or maybe you have a whole bunch of questions that clients regularly ask you, and you have said the same answer over and over again. Well, what if you put that in a chapter form and you made it an interesting book where it's like, oh, they can just flip to page 26 and there is the answer. So while you will weave in stories, it's not a narrative necessarily, unless you're writing, a nonfiction, which is a memoir.
• 13:08
  But that's not really a business book so much. So if we're speak we're speaking about strictly business books, what makes it different from fiction is that it's more about a how to. It's more how to. It's more credibility building and less fantastical story.
• 13:28
  Davina: Right. Right. The how to piece, I know that so in my first two books that I wrote, I probably went into a little too much detail because lawyer that I am, even though I have a journalism background as well, lawyer that I am, I wanna go into all the details. So they need to know this, but they need to know this. They need to know this.
• 13:49
  So I probably could have used a better editor, but I give a lot of how to information. Do you ever find that people say to you, well, the issue is if I tell them how to do it, they'll they'll use my $20 book, and they'll go do it instead of hiring me. And what do you say to people who say that to you?
• 14:10
  Melanie: That's a twofold answer here. So, yes, people do say that. They do worry about sharing too much information. So you can give a how to without giving away all the answers. You can say, this is how you would do it, but you're not gonna be able to speak to their exact situation.
• 14:33
  So you can give broad brush strokes, but you're not gonna be able to you know, nobody can take a book and then go, you know, do their own divorce or or take a book and then go figure out how to do their own IP law. Doesn't work like that. So all the training that you have and all the expertise that you have collected along the way doing what you do that will come across in your book, but it's not gonna replace you. If anything, it's going to be a great lead magnet for somebody to then hire you because they're gonna see all this information and go, oh goodness. There's no way I can do this myself.
• 15:17
  I need
• 15:18
  Davina: to hire you. Right. Right. And I also think people forget that you can't you can't put ten year five years, ten years, thirty years, twenty years of knowledge in a book in one book. Now in series, maybe you could put if you've got long enough series.
• 15:33
  Right? But the usually, when we're putting out a business book that is helping people, it scrapes the surface of, it it takes something that they're wanting to do, and we're giving them the the why they wanna do it and the and the what. And then, you know, maybe a little bit of the how so that they then are saying, okay. I need to know more. This is not nearly enough.
• 16:01
  Tell me how you started working with attorneys.
• 16:05
  Melanie: Well, it was really a natural fit because I started to think about who benefits from reading nonfiction books. And so I kind of went a little bit backwards. And I realized that there are so many people in the world who don't understand concepts with that the law. And so when I started thinking, well, what if I were to help attorneys publish books so that more people could understand what it is they're getting into? I have an attorney who's helped me with business related things.
• 16:40
  I have a family member who went through a pretty messy divorce. And so there were so many concepts that are not intuitive to me. And I would imagine that they're not intuitive to other people. So I kind of put two and two together and realized that I could be that bridge. I could help somebody, you know, take an attorney and and help them make their message more attainable to get more clients in a way that people would understand.
• 17:14
  That's one of the things that I've always loved from my journalism days was taking complex information and distilling it down into something simple. So that always attracts me to a mop to a flame where that's concerned.
• 17:29
  Davina: Yeah. I think that we are we are talking about so one of the big things they teach us as lawyers is access to justice. I mean, we are encouraged all through law school. We're taught we need to give back, give back, give back. Yes.
• 17:42
  You're gonna go out and go in a lucrative profession, but, really, you're also there to serve and give back and bring justice access to justice to people who might not otherwise have it, have access to it. And so one of the ways that we can help people is by, teaching. And one of the great tools for that is a book because that lives on and on and on beyond a presentation or beyond, you know, a reel or a webinar or whatever. A book can live on and have a long shelf life. And we could talk about things without, there's no way that we could take our full law school education plus our years of experience and distill it to one book.
• 18:22
  But we can take a very powerful message and concept that the vast majority people need to know and write about that topic. And you use, I I think it's interesting because a number of my clients have written books, as part of our marketing strategy. And it's always interesting sort of the thought process that goes in because I think a lot of lawyers think to themselves, yeah. But what book would I write? What would I do I write?
• 18:50
  And they think of their audience. Do I write a book for other lawyers? Because that may be where they get a lot of referrals. Or do I write a book for laypeople? And it's interesting because I've had different clients choose different audiences in different areas of law.
• 19:06
  How do you, you had that experience with your clients, and how do you sort of guide them on who their audience is?
• 19:15
  Melanie: Well, it's first of I agree with with that completely. You have to figure out who your intended reader is before you wanna before you start writing because you don't wanna have to start again. So where does the business come from? If you are getting the majority from other attorneys, then, yeah, you wanna write something that you can send to them so they are reminded all the time, oh, I need to send a referral to to you. Whereas if you get, you know, maybe maybe Google Ads have been something that you've been working on, and it's it's, you know, click per know?
• 19:54
  Pay per click. Yeah. Pay per click. It's kinda it's it's okay, but it's not really doing much for you. You can take those same dollars and put it into a book.
• 20:04
  Send out books into your community, different, you know, people wherever people are networking or gathering, and you're gonna get a bigger return because people are gonna have this tangible thing, and they're gonna read it, they're gonna remember you. But I agree with you back to the beginning of this, which is if you don't need to reach out to your ideal clients because you're getting referrals, then I would recommend writing a book for the people who are gonna refer business to you. But that's not to say you can't do both. You absolutely can, but it's gonna read differently.
• 20:44
  Davina: What are your thoughts on so this is a discussion I've had with a colleague who also, publishes helps people publish books. And one of the things that we talked about is, he was saying to me, you know, I really think that the way people so many people are self publishing these days that you almost have to have more than one. You need multiple books to really position yourself as somebody who stands out from the crowd. What do you think about that?
• 21:11
  Melanie: I don't know if I agree with that because I think that one book marketed effectively can be so much better than 10 books that nobody knows about.
• 21:23
  Davina: So talk to me about effective marketing. What are some things that work for so I also think there's a difference between book sales and the sales you get from people who have your book who've now hired you. Right? Book sales, I think a lot of people think, well, I'm gonna write a book. I'm gonna make money writing a book.
• 21:43
  Well, I'm here to tell you there's not big money in writing a book. No. Don't get rich. It's always a book sales. Right?
• 21:49
  As a matter fact, you wind up probably giving away a lot of them. But your from the standpoint of marketing and getting your book out there in the hands of a lot of people, what are some things that you think we need to be thinking about? Well, it's gonna be
• 22:07
  Melanie: a little bit meta, but I love leveraging other people's audiences. So for example, here I am sitting and having a podcast conversation with you, and we're talking about my book. So and what's really wonderful is that podcast hosts already have a built in audience of the people that you want to reach. So leveraging other people's podcast audiences, doing collaborations with people. Maybe it's a Instagram live or maybe it's a giveaway with other people and, you know, whatever your network is.
• 22:47
  Networking and pitching yourself to speak on stages and, also pitching the media. You know, when you have a book, you get bumped up much higher as a choice for a a regular expert than if you don't have a book. So those are some of the strategies that that we help our clients employ when it comes to how they get the book out there. And then there's also the part that I didn't talk about, which is the the marketing foundation piece. So if somebody goes to your LinkedIn and there's no photo or your bio reads like something that somebody else wrote for you twenty years ago, that's not going to serve you because we as humans, you know, we're watching somebody on TV and we're also on our phone at the same time checking.
• 23:45
  You know, we don't just sit and watch television anymore. So we we're always checking people out, you know, going to their website, going to their
• 23:53
  Davina: You're looking to see, is
• 23:53
  Melanie: that actor married to this actor? Exactly. While you're watching the movie. Exactly. You're like, who is he is he dead now or whatever?
• 24:01
  Yeah. Right. So so that is something that often doesn't get mentioned, but that's something that we focus on as well is making sure that your online platform is saying the right things, and it has the right look and the right feel and the right brand voice to it. Because if some you know, I had a client who got on the Kelly Clarkson show, which has something like 2,000,000 viewers a day, like per episode, and his Instagram shot up. It doubled overnight.
• 24:34
  Davina: Wow.
• 24:35
  Melanie: Because we had it all laid out ahead of time. But I also once met an author who'd hired a PR firm right out of the gate after she published. She'd worked with them for a year, and she'd been on, I think it was the Today show or another national morning show, and she'd only sold a 100 books. Oh, wow. Over the course of a year.
• 24:57
  And I I said, you know, she wasn't an attorney, but I said to her, you know, let's figure this out. I'd like to know what's going on here. And I went to her site, didn't know what she did. Went to her Facebook. There were pictures of her cooking with somebody.
• 25:13
  I was like, people got confused and they left.
• 25:16
  Davina: Yeah. Confused mind. A confused mind doesn't buy. Right?
• 25:19
  Melanie: Right. Exactly. So so that's why the the foundational pieces and then the leveraging other people's audiences piece, those go hand in hand in order to make a book have an impact for the writer. I wanna talk about Amazon. But before I do, I wanna I want to discuss getting a publisher versus self publishing and what your thoughts are on that.
• 25:46
  Very well. I'm very biased. So I'm going to just say that because I am an independent publisher. So I and and I independently published my book because I didn't want to wait. I've had clients who were so adamant that they had to publish traditionally.
• 26:05
  And what happened was they waited and they waited. The cover had to be changed. The title wasn't right. Fourteen months later, the book is finally published, and they still don't have marketing help.
• 26:21
  Davina: So Right. Right. So I have a yeah. My thoughts on self publishing is I I heard this from somebody else. I was like, oh, this is this is great.
• 26:30
  If you ever decide to, you know, submit a book proposal and eventually get if you've already self published, you will already have an audience built up around that, And publishers are going to love that you already have an audience or a following. So I don't think it's harmful for you to self publish. And I don't think people look at self publishing or independent publishing the way that they used to look at it. It used to be, you know, we we paid for this book, and we put it out, and it was a whole different there were companies that did that, and it had a different feel to it. But these days, with the online models that we have to publish and get our work out there, I think it's a I I think it's a no brainer to do that instead of, you know, pitching a big publishing because unless you're somebody who is somebody.
• 27:20
  Right? If you are somebody and you've got connections in New York with publishers, you know, but it's a small audience. Right? They they go through thousands and thousands of manuscripts a year, especially for things like biz business books. So if we're looking at it to promote our business and let people know, get our message out into the world, I think it's a wonderful tool to be able to do that.
• 27:42
  So that said, how do you feel about self publishing and collecting that lead yourself versus Amazon or Barnes and Noble? Or should it or should our books be everywhere? Multiple ways that people can buy our books.
• 28:01
  Melanie: Well, when we self pub well, I mean, independently publish our authors, we help them self publish. We're putting them up on Amazon and also using IngramSpark, which then puts their books out everywhere books are sold just in the online space. So, you know, my book, for example, you can buy it on Barnes and Noble dot com. You could get it at target.com, or you could go to Amazon. So you're not getting shut off from any of the online avenues when you self publish.
• 28:31
  And the other thing I just wanna say, just give a little plug to independent publishing is then you don't have royalties to pay anybody else. You get all the royalties. And you also have full creative control. Nobody's telling you what they think it should be. You get to decide.
• 28:49
  And it gets huge. And in a world where people are always telling us what to do, it's nice
• 28:54
  Davina: to have autonomy sometimes. Yeah. For sure. So how long generally does it take for your authors to write a book? Because I know that's something that holds a lot of people back is this idea.
• 29:05
  Like, so many people say, oh, I have at least one book in me or I have a book idea, and then years go by and they don't write. And I think some of it is because they don't have structure. They don't have time blocked off on their calendar. They don't have, they haven't put it at the top of their priority list. It's always a kind of I wanna, but never priorities.
• 29:24
  So how long does it generally take to write a business book? And, like, how long should they be?
• 29:32
  Melanie: Oh, shoulds. I do not like shoulding on people. But your book should be as long as you'd like it to be so that you can tell all the stories and give all the information that you would like and not pad it with fluff because nobody wants to read fluff. Fluff is not good. So and you wanna have at least a 100 pages so that you can have a spine on the book.
• 29:57
  Right. See your name. How long does it take to write? Well, it depends. So when you work with me, we're gonna help you create your outline.
• 30:06
  And once you create your outline, it's a whole lot easier to just pour out of to have the words pour out of you. Whereas if you're just sitting there and starting from scratch with with no plan. Right? You know? Planning is everything.
• 30:22
  You could have your book done in six months. You could have your book done in three months. It depends how much time you have to devote, how much you've already written. Maybe you have a whole bunch of blog posts that you can repurpose or podcast episodes that you could repurpose. So it's very likely that if you've been in business a while, you've written a whole lot of stuff on the same topic that can then be taken and put together and reworked so that you're not rewriting and reinventing the wheel.
• 30:52
  Davina: Right. So tell us how your how your program works. How do you sort of work with clients
• 31:00
  Melanie: to get their books published? Sure. And it. And promote it. Well, that's the thing.
• 31:05
  Right? So we are basically soup to nuts. We start you you say, you know, I have an idea. So we're gonna help you get that idea on paper, and you're gonna write it. If if you don't wanna write it, we have wonderful ghost writers that we can set you up with that obviously comes at a price that then beyond the price of publishing because ghost writing is somebody's writing it for you.
• 31:30
  So that said, then we have the editing taken care of, interior design, because I don't know if you've ever opened a book and looked at it and said, wow. This looks so bad. That person did not have an interior designer. And cover design. We all judge books by their cover as we should.
• 31:53
  So cover design is also part of it. And then we move into the publishing piece, the bestseller campaign, and then the promotional piece. So having a plan and implementing that, getting your book out to the media, getting you to pitch yourself to speaking events and to be on podcasts and to get genuine book reviews. Because, you know, a crowd draws a crowd when it comes to book reviews. So the more we can get, the more that elevates that elevates your book on Amazon.
• 32:26
  And, again, you know, this is a business book designed to drive business. So you're not looking to be the next JK Rowling, and that's, you know, that's fine. But there are certain standards you want to have so that your book is legitimate and is doing what you want it
• 32:45
  Intro: to do for you.
• 32:46
  Melanie: It is a tool. I know I said that already, but I'm reiterating. It's a tool that you get to leverage for success.
• 32:54
  Davina: And I would imagine with your sort of experts in the interior design and the cover that that's a key piece to look like a modern book and a and a book that is contemporary and something that people are going to want to read and something that's gonna be eye catching. And I think that's something when a lot of people try to DIY that, it doesn't come out well versus when you have professional book cover designers,
• 33:21
  Melanie: do that. And even men, I will tell you, I had somebody do my interior who was told I was told, oh, they're so great. And when I got the first the first version back, I
• 33:33
  Davina: went, this is not okay. This is not great.
• 33:37
  Melanie: This is not great at all. And it took multiple revisions for it to be what it should have been. So even when you hire, you know, so called experts, you have to be aware of what it should look like versus what it does look like. Because Right. You know, there's so much predatory behavior in the publishing industry and it's nauseating.
• 34:02
  And so I'm always trying to look out for authors and make sure that they're getting exactly what they think they're getting and that and that I am there to support them and and give them that accountability. And also to you know, if I have to get in in front
• 34:20
  Davina: of somebody and say, you know, this doesn't look okay. You need to change this interior. I'm gonna do that. You're right. Right.
• 34:28
  Let's talk about AI for a minute because I know this is huge in the writing industry and certainly in the copywriting industry. I have a lot of copywriting colleagues from my copywriting days. And in book writing and book covers and graphic design and all these things, I imagine AI is sort of we're seeing a lot of attempts at people to sort of use these tools, maybe not with great results. What's been your experience? Have you had that have you had a client come to you and said, hey.
• 34:59
  I want AI to write my book?
• 35:01
  Melanie: Well, I would say don't do that. I mean, just just don't do it. And look, I love AI. I I I pay for Chad GPT because I wanna have all the all the GPTs at my disposal. And I love it for for content writing.
• 35:18
  But for a book, you're gonna your book's gonna get flagged that it's not original content. So just don't do it. And in terms of the, the cover, I'm laughing because of the, you know, there are a lot of people that
• 35:32
  Davina: they end
• 35:33
  Melanie: up with six fingers and like weird wonky hands when when you when you try to do an image with AI. Use a human. Use a human who's trained in this because it's gonna be a better result. Even though we think it's gonna be faster, easier, cheaper, when you get faster, easier, cheaper, you end up paying more in the end anyway.
• 35:57
  Davina: Yeah. One of my frustrations with graphic designers, I used to work for an agency, and I worked with some amazing graphic designers, like truly talented artistic people. And I've through the years as I've done various projects, I've hired graphic designers. And I am not an I have an artistic eye, meaning I can identify. I know certain rules because I was trained in journalism school.
• 36:24
  But it's, you know, it's not my expertise. And I'm amazed at how many people there are out there who they know how to use the software. They're not really graphic designers, and laypeople don't really understand that. They don't really understand their rules to good quality graphic design just like there are rules to good quality writing. And just because somebody knows how to use a software doesn't mean that they are a designer.
• 36:51
  And and I've certainly encountered those. I'm sure you have along the way as well. Yeah. So you you vet that and have a a sort of team that you go to. Right?
• 37:00
  Melanie: Absolutely. And I know what you're talking about in journalism school. One of the things that will always stand out of me, is when there's a photo on a website and the person in the picture is looking away from the words. I'm like, nope. Flip that picture because the person has to look before the words.
• 37:17
  So we
• 37:18
  Davina: so many rules we learned in journalism school that are
• 37:20
  Melanie: still good today even though Absolutely. Print media isn't what it used
• 37:23
  Davina: to be in terms of newspapers and writing and stuff like that. Any anything any last thoughts you wanna leave us with if you if you're a woman law firm owner and you're thinking about writing a book, what would you say to her?
• 37:36
  Melanie: I would say if you're worried about not having the time and you're thinking, well, what would I have to say that would benefit? I guarantee you can find the time and that your stories and your expertise matter because you are a unique human who has a vast knowledge and a history and experience, and the world deserves to hear that.
• 38:04
  Davina: That's wonderful advice. I agree. I agree that we need to get all kinds of different stories out there and certainly a lot more women's voices out there telling their stories. In the legal world, we are we're becoming, we're we're overtaking the men. And a lot of times, you know, we still see the traditional law firms are sort of led by what I call the white men 50 club or now that I'm 50, the white men over 60 club.
• 38:31
  And and I'm my purpose is to help more and more women create those law firms that are multimillion dollar law firms. And one of a great way to do that is to establish yourself as an authority, so that you were sought after for your point of view. So a book could really help you do that. Melanie, I appreciate you being here and talking with us about this subject. Tell us how we can connect with you and where we can buy we know we can buy your book anywhere.
• 38:56
  Right? It's it's available, but I would also love to have a conversation.
• 39:01
  Melanie: You know? I love to get to know people and really, you know, find out more about you and what inspires you and what you wanna talk about. So, everything is on my website. I am on my website. It is vipbookmarketing.com.
• 39:15
  Davina: Great. Thank you. We'll also have that link in the show notes for everybody to access that easily. Melanie, I appreciate you being here and sharing with us today. Thank you so much.
• 39:24
  Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at Wealthy Woman Lawyer dot com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.