Alinka Rutkowska With Leaders Press

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for high velocity radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Alinka Rutkowska and she is with leaders press. Welcome.

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:00:25] Thank you, Lee. Excited to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about leaders press. How are you serving, folks?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:00:32] Mm hmm. What we do is we help entrepreneurs get their books done, so we basically interview them, go write the book and launch it to the best seller list and get it into bookstores.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] So what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this kind of work?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:00:48] Well, I think that was my dream since I was a little girl because when I was in primary school, I created a school newspaper. So that was the editorial part, and I would also distribute it and sell it. So that was the business part. And now this is what I’m doing only, you know, real real life situation. So there was a school thing, then I did work at the at multinational company, so I had a corporate background, but I didn’t find that particular particularly fulfilling at a certain point. So I took a leap of faith left and created leaders press.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:27] So now the folks that you’re helping, are they primarily business folks that are trying to get a book out or do you do fiction as well?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:01:37] Primarily business folks. But we also are able to help with fiction that would be the launch. If we want to help an entrepreneur or a business person write the book or ghostwrite it for them, then that would be have that would have to be in the business area.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:53] So now for folks out there who are business folks that are, you know, maybe in the back of their mind, they’re like, you know, I always wanted to write a book. You know, I feel like I could help more people if they knew more about what I knew and what I went through. Is that something you think that every entrepreneur is that a must have at this point where you have to be able to have a book that kind of gives you that credibility and authority?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:02:20] Hmm. You know, it’s almost as if if you don’t have the book, you’re disadvantaged because let’s imagine a potential client considering working with two suppliers or consultants. And one of them is an author or a best selling author, and the other one doesn’t have a book. So if all the other factors are equal, they will. I’m pretty sure they will choose the author because of the authority that it brings. And there’s just so many other ways that a book is useful. It’s a it’s an enhanced business card, so imagine you’re talking to somebody that you’d like to do business with, and you can either leave them your business card or you can give them your book. Like how much more powerful will your introduction and presentation be when you’re able to give them your book 100 percent?

Lee Kantor: [00:03:12] Yeah, I’m a big fan of this strategy, and I agree with you 100 percent that this is something that if you’re serious about your business and growing your business, it becomes more of a must have than a nice to have. Hmm. Now let’s talk a little bit about the mechanics of this. You know, we’ve established that, OK, you’re a business person and you should have a book. So now how do you kind of know what is the right thing I should be writing about? What is the message that I should be trying to get across because of the goal of this is to give me authority and credibility. I can’t just write anything. I have to write something that is aligned with my values. It has to kind of align with my skill set and kind of bring out my superpower so that people understand why I’m different and why they should choose me.

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:04:04] Absolutely. You start by answering those questions, so you really want to make sure that your book fits in to a genre that readers are already interested and you want your book to stand out. So you want to give the reader a reason to pick your book and not the other ones on the bookshelf. That’s the way you start, and once you have that, you have your unique selling proposition. So you created that for your business. Now you need to create it for your book. And from that, from that place we can go and you can do your outline and then start writing your book or get interviewed to have it ghostwritten. But you start with imagining vividly where exactly the book will be on the bookshelf and why readers will pick yours now.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:52] You know, with the advent of online bookselling and e-books and audiobooks and things like that, ah, is it really a bookshelf that that people are going to put their book on or is it going to be, you know, in an online capacity where I got to have a cover that at least gets people to pay attention to it?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:05:11] Hmm. It’s a great question, and it depends. It depends on how you’re going to publish your book. You can go the traditional way and try to find an agent, pitch your manuscript and then the agent will try to sell the manuscript to a publisher. It’s a long, long process. There are several pros like you’ll get an advance, but there are also several cons, such as small royalties and just super slow. So if you have two years on your hands, then you can do that that will get your book into the bookstores. That’s their main advantage. Then you can also self-publish your book. You can do everything yourself. You go to CDP, which is Amazon’s dashboard, to publish any book and you put it on the virtual bookshelf. You have zero traditional distribution, but you do have that power to do it. You know, obviously, if you don’t know how to do it, it’s probably going to be a poor end result. But it’s good to know that you do have the power. And then the third option is the hybrid publishing model, which is what we do. We help entrepreneurs get the books out on Amazon and all the online platforms, and we make sure they are best sellers. And through our distribution partnership with Simon and Schuster, that is the one of the largest publishers in the U.S. We’re able to distribute books into physical bookstores, and there is some lead time because we need to respect the traditional publishing timelines. But it’s much, much shorter than what happens when you’re going through the traditional publishing process. So both.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:53] So like, what is it? If I raise my hand and say, you know what? This I want to work with leaders press. So what happens now?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:07:03] Right? So you’d probably go to our website and then you’ll end up talking to one of our team members who will see if we’re a good fit to work together because we won’t write, you know, just absolutely anything. We do have some, you know, ranges of topics and authors that we want to work with. But, you know, most probably most of the time we get serious, serious entrepreneurs and it is potentially is a good fit. Once we decide on what your goals are, what you want to achieve, you know, do you want to lead generation books to grow your business? Do you want to let us legacy book like we did for the co-founder of DHL International for DHL 50 50th Anniversary? Do you want a book to increase your authority? So depending on your goals on what type of bestseller list you want to hit? Amazon Bestseller. Wall Street Journal Bestseller. Usa Today bestseller. Whether you need help with the writing or not, how long you want your book to be, depending on all those things, we find the best solution for you. And then we get started. It starts with understanding what you want to achieve, and then it starts with that positioning that we described. So making sure your book fits and stands out. Then we do the outline, then the writing, then the editing. Then we publish it longitude bestseller. And then you can say you’re a best selling author. And use it to grow your business, to increase your authority, to give it away when you meet somebody and you want to make a really great impression and it’s now part of your toolbox.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:43] Now is it reasonable to think that the investment I make with leaders press I’m going to make back on the sales of the book? Or is it going to be more likely that I will make the money back on the sales of my service or just getting more business?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:09:02] Great question. Whenever you have a business and your book is tied to that business, the royalties will only be a fraction of the revenue that you’re going to get from the book. So it’s always the back end that will help you generate your ROI quickly. And that’s why we like to work with the entrepreneurial types because you’re, you know, it’s so tangible. You start using the book as a lead down. You put it on Amazon, so people are able to find you. We have our lead generation book called Outsource Your Book, and that’s how the co-founder of DHL International found us because it’s impossible to reach out to him. He has so many gatekeepers. So he found us through the book. Now our Legion book really works as a lead gen, and then we did the book for him. And as as a result, we were able to provide a great service for him. If you’re looking to do a Legion book, you know it’s not just Amazon that acts as a search engine, right? And people are able to find you. You can also use it on your website to get people to opt in and then have a conversation with them. It’s a great lead conversion tool as well, because imagine you have a person in front of you on a sales call and they’ve already read your book. You’re you’re already the authority in their eyes. Their only questions are about their specific situation. They won’t be asking any, you know, generic questions like, So what do you guys do? They already know they read the book and you’re the expert. So it’s much easier to convert a reader to a customer than somebody who hasn’t read the book.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:49] So now, if that is my objective, a lead generation book that’s going to help me close sales faster, are you do you have somebody on your team that with a marketing background that’s helping me strategically go through that process? Or is that on me as the author and the expert in my industry to know, OK, in order to move a person through my funnel, I got to answer these 12 questions. And so those become the chapters of the book. And then basically that that’s kind of my sales funnel is the book.

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:11:23] So that’s a joint creation. The entrepreneur comes with their brain full of ideas, and our job is to get the best parts out, structure them, make sure it’s attractive for the reader to read and then to leave their email, you know, click on the call to action, either an email to start working with the author. So we work together in order to make it the best book possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:50] And then is it something that you give me assignment to go, OK? Next week, I need, you know, 2000 words for chapters one through three? Or is it something that I just talked to your expert? And they’re kind of creative. You know, they have a facilitated conversation with me and they’re, you know, either recording it and transcribing it and writing it down and then writing the book on my behalf. Like, How does that work?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:12:17] Yeah. So it’s closer to the second option. Basically, you’re going to get a message saying next week we’ll be meeting and these are the 12 questions we’d like you to think about. So then you come to the meeting, you already know what the questions are. You’ve given them some thought and then you start answering them live. You’re talking to your interviewer and the interviewer asks, you follow up questions because you know, some things are so obvious to you as the expert, but not obvious at all to the reader. And the interviewer gives you a chance to to deliver a better product because they will ask questions that readers have. And you haven’t even thought of that. And once we have that interview, that’s all recorded and transcribed that then goes to the writer and the writer will write in your voice to produce a book that will be that you will be happy with, and that will sound extremely well. And no matter what your, you know, English writing skill is.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:22] And then what, like you mentioned that if I traditionally went to get an agent and get it published, like it could take two years plus, you know, what is the timeline from me raising my hand and saying leader’s press helped me to getting a book, you know, on the bestseller list?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:13:40] Mm hmm. So if it’s a super short book that’s meant to be a Legion book and we’ll only launch it on Amazon. We’re able to get you situated within three months, you know, so the moment you come sign on, then your book comes out in three months. If it’s a big fat industry standard book and we’re looking to launch it into bookstores and on the USA Today or Wall Street Journal bestseller lists, we’re looking at about 10 months here.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:10] Wow. So let’s it. It could be a fraction of the time a traditional, traditionally published book, and there’s no guarantee. Just because you write a book or have a pitch to an agent, you may never get a publisher to even go for it, right?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:14:25] Yeah, it’s very rare that you will get admitted and accept it. And when you do, you might not even get an advance like you’re hoping for. There are traditional publishers who will publish you. They don’t give you an advance and you know you still have to go through this long process. You don’t really have too much creative control, so you might not be able to have any say on your book cover, for example, or entire chapters will have to be rewritten. So you know you really want to evaluate what you want to do for your book in terms of what the benefits will be once it’s out. You know how fast you want it out. If you have a timely topic, you probably don’t want to wait two or three years looking for an agent. You probably want it out. If you’re a business person, I’m pretty sure you want to take things, you know, take matters in your own hands, in your own hands and get it done as quickly as productively as possible, so it’s important to know your options.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:26] So now, when people work with you, is there different levels of service like, say, I don’t want the ghostwriter, I want to try to write this myself and I only want certain services. Is it kind of an all or nothing thing? It has to be a turnkey or can I just buy services as I need them?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:15:45] Well, you have a couple packages when you go to leaders press, it’s all there. We don’t do menus like I want, you know, write me one chapter, edit the other and, you know, launch half of the book. We do things that are requested. So our main thing is from idea to bestseller. But if there’s a manuscript that’s already written and the author comes in with their manuscript pretty much done, then we evaluate it. So we send it to our editors. We get an evaluation and a score of what we think we can do with it. If it meets our criteria, then we will invite the author to work with us. Alternatively, you can come in with an idea. We’ll help you with the outline and then you’ll be doing the writer, the writing and checking in at specific time points. Like you mentioned earlier, the scenario, we can do that as well. So it’s, you know, our main offer. But if you already come in with the manuscript done, then we meet you where you are to help you deliver the best possible book.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:52] And if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, is there a website that explains you mentioned the website earlier? What is the kind of the the website URL?

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:17:06] The website is leaders press dot com. And if you’d like to find out what the best type of book for your goals is, we created a really neat quiz that you can do and it takes one minute and it’s at lieders press dot com slash discover. It will tell you whether you should write a short book or a long book, or, you know, launch online or launch in bookstores, all depending on your situation.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:32] And then so it’s leaders with an espresso presseye.com. Discover Great. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Alinka Rutkowska: [00:17:45] Thank you, Lee. So excited to be here today.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:48] All right, this is Lee Kantor Wassail next time on high velocity radio.