May 31, 2019
You can learn a lot about yourself from how you respond to mistakes and the kind of mistakes you find yourself making a lot. On this episode of The Story Engine Podcast I explore the complications that have arisen with the promotion of my new book and how there can be success despite complications.
What You Will Learn in This Episode
- How to respond to mistakes
- The Importance of Knowing Yourself
- Looking at the Bright Side
- What Long Tail Is….
Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Cody Burch’s Interview With Kyle
Transcription
Kyle Gray:
[bctt tweet="You can learn a lot about yourself from how you respond to mistakes and the kind of mistakes you find yourself making a lot. - Kyle Gray" username="kylethegray"] Me, I know myself pretty well these days and I'm very much a starter type of person. I get a lot of excited energy and start to create in a bit of frenzy. My intentions are always good. I'm so excited to share whatever it is I've been working on, and I just want to get the details out of the way so we can get to the fun part.
Kyle Gray:
A lot of times for me, this leads to typos. I've struggled with typos for years. I think the first person I ever hired was a proofreader or an editor to help me polish up the content I was publishing. And like I said, I know myself pretty well, so I put together teams and processes and systems to check myself so that somebody else can check my work and make sure that all the proofreading and everything's nice and polished so that my starter energy can probably go focus somewhere else and make sure that the finished product is what everybody comes to expect and hope for.
Kyle Gray:
I understood my hasty nature and its ability to somehow still trick me every once in a while to moving forward fast, not checking my work as much, and with my new book, Selling With Story, I could feel that excited, hasty energy, so as the book neared completion, I brought an editor on to help check that impulse and to make sure that there were no hasty typos inside the book. We looked at every sentence, considered every word and example, and really put together something that we could be proud of. So I was really launching with a lot of confidence in this area, being aware of my typo weakness, but sometimes you face typos that you can't change.
Kyle Gray:
A week after launching Selling With Story, I open up my laptop and check the Amazon page and I start to scroll, but I stop. Am I on the right place? My book, live on Amazon for a week, has a strange flaw on the product page. Instead of the carefully selected and thought about words that I had put together for my title, there are just two staring me back in the face, and they have nothing to do with anything. Bluetooth Headphones, that's the title of my book on the Amazon page, and it's not just Bluetooth Headphones. It's got a dot, dot, dot at the end that just gives it this tiniest flavor of insult to injury.
Kyle Gray:
So I log into my Amazon account thinking this is somehow one of the hasty moves that I made. I must have copied Bluetooth Headphones from somewhere else, some kind of shopping I was doing, and accidentally put it on the page. How did I miss this? But I look on my account, everything's fine. All of the titles that I want are in the right place. Everything is good to go.
Kyle Gray:
So I reach out to Amazon with a cry for help. What's happening with my book title? It's definitely wrong on the Amazon product page, and I can't see anything that I've done to cause this. They let me know that their technical team agrees that it is a problem and will be working on it, and hope to have it resolved within four to five business days. Four business days pass. Five business days pass. Nothing changes, and there's nothing I can do about it.
Kyle Gray:
The creator in me is outraged. I feel sabotaged, and there's this slight sense of humor and irony that the thing that I've thought about creating for a very long time and the very place where I would never, ever want a typo to happen is the most massive typo ever, and there's nothing I can do about it. I didn't do it, I didn't change it, and it's staring there back at me from a laptop screen. This is a typo you cannot fix. You must be patient. You must do something else. What can I do?
Kyle Gray:
I start getting a lot of people reaching out, "Hey, do you know your book is listed as Bluetooth Headphones?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I do. It's crazy too. I've tried everything. There's nothing I can do about it right now, but we've got to keep the launch going on. We've got to keep promoting. It can still go to the same page. The headline looks right, and if you download Bluetooth Headphones, you're going to get a book, surprisingly enough, in this situation."
Kyle Gray:
So time passes, and I'm doing a live training with a close friend of mine, Tom Marcus. We're joking at the end of the training about the misfortune of my book and are laughing about the title, Bluetooth Headphones. Jokes about attracting a brand new audience with the many people who are seeking Bluetooth Headphones on Amazon that accidentally stumble across a business book that changes their life. Huge opportunities right here. Huge keyword, Bluetooth Headphones, and I've seen stranger strategies pay off.
Kyle Gray:
So we have a good laugh at that, and Tom Brings up another concept called The Long Tail. It's a word I'm familiar with, used in search engine optimization, but I haven't considered it in this situation. [bctt tweet="The Long Tail is a long game strategy. It's knowing the niche and the market that you want to dominate and define yourself around, and slowly building up authority and trust in there over time. - Defining The Long Tail // Kyle Gray" username="kylethegray"]It's a long game strategy that's going to pay off big in the longer run. Instead of focusing on the short term wins and losses that happen in this strategy or my vision for a perfect launch, this is a long term play where, over the course of years, a few sales and a little bit of confusion in the early stages of a book being released are inconsequential. I'm aiming for bigger things, I'm wanting to make a bigger impact, so instead of raging against Amazon to try and get them to fix my book, it's best to relax. [bctt tweet="It's best to look in the long run and laugh about this small mishap along the way. - Kyle Gray" username="kylethegray"]
Kyle Gray:
One strategy that has been very successful despite the title is getting invited onto other people's podcasts. They want to hear about the book. They want to hear the ideas. They want to share it with their audience. So I'm being interviewed by a friend of mine named Cody Birch on his podcast about the Bluetooth Headphones mishap. He mentions he knows there's a great story in that. Cody often reflects and shares on his stories of his adventures being a father, being an entrepreneur, being married to another entrepreneur, and balancing their businesses together. These common real challenges, and he shares these stories with vulnerability about what's going on in his life and what he's thinking, and some of the most popular episodes for him always came from some of the darkest, biggest challenges.
Kyle Gray:
And so when he mentions this, [bctt tweet="I look at this situation with a whole new light and get a new sense of opportunity and responsibility emerged in me. I can take this situation and turn it into a win. I can turn it into a story that helps people and helps myself. - Kyle Gray" username="kylethegray"]Just like Cody does in his podcast reflecting on his challenges, I can turn this into a powerful story. This modern strategy of sharing your story and your business and what's happening, both good and bad, reminds me a lot of an old blues guitar player working through the ups and downs of his story, or hers, on the strings of their guitar in a rocking chair on the porch.
SEP Solo Episode: Lessons from
Mistakes You Can And Can't fix[/caption]
Kyle Gray:
The great blues players can take the stories, both good and bad in their life, and use them to powerfully fuel creative energy, and they can take this creative energy and turns it into something beautiful that makes sense and order out of their own stories and allows those around them to feel and make sense of their own stories.
Kyle Gray:
(singing)
Kyle Gray:
Oh, yeah, the Bluetooth blues. Amen.
Kyle Gray:
Thanks for listening to the Story Engine Podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes and resources mentioned on this episode and every other episode at thestoryengine.co. If you're looking to learn more about how to use storytelling to grow your business, then check out my new book, Selling With Story: How to Use Storytelling to Become an Authority, Boost Sales, and Win the Hearts and Minds of Your Audience. This book will equip you with actionable strategies and templates to help you share your unique value and build trust in presentations, sales, and conversations, both online and offline. Learn more at sellingwithstory.co. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.