Hello, everyone.
Welcome to this scaling expertise podcast.
You may know me from the hourly to exit podcast.
This is the first interview under the new rebrand, but we're still talking to
experts about decoupling their income from their time, using their expertise
to create assets that can scale.
And so I'm very happy to have my first guest today, Jen T. Grace, and
I need to ask you about that tea.
Is that because there's so many Jen Graces?
I will say that on LinkedIn, I call myself I'm so cool.
Aaron Austin, because I've been on LinkedIn so long, but now there are so
many Aaron back in the day, there was like the only air and Austin on the internet.
And now there's lots and lots of us, but it's wild.
It's all branding, right?
Going to figure it out.
Exactly.
Well, welcome Jen.
So tell us who you are and who you help.
I am an author and I'm also a publisher.
So I am the author of seven books, which include my memoir, House on
Fire, and my nonfiction book, which is called Publisher Purpose, which is
also my company name, How to Write, Publish, and Grow Your Big Idea.
So my way that I show up in the world, at least in this current iteration
of myself for the last ten years, is helping aspiring authors either figure
out how to write their story, or to actually publish their book for them.
And it just kind of depends on a number of different variables,
kind of where people are.
But, the publishing landscape is pretty big and pretty complex.
And so I really spent a lot of time educating first time authors on all
the nuances about how to actually get their book out into the world.
Tell us, what exactly is a hybrid publisher?
and distinguish it from traditional and self publishing.
Yeah, I'll give you the abridged version I have.
Lord knows I got plenty of information on my website if anyone wants more.
But it is basically if we look at how publishing has always been, we
think of traditional publishing, we think of Simon and Schuster, we think
of Penguin Random House, like the big New York City publishing houses.
That is traditional publishing.
And with traditional and They only serve a very small percentage of
authors because of how their business model works and how, they're looking
for authors that have big platforms and, can really sell a lot of books.
Then, we have the other side, which is self publishing, which is wonderful
and there's a lot of people who do it really well, but there's a lot
of people who don't do it well.
And self publishing can be overwhelming, it's time consuming, it can be
expensive, so there's all kind of that.
Hybrid publishing sits directly in the middle of both of those extremes,
where you get the quality, the service, the expertise of what you'd expect
from a New York City house, but also have that control and ownership and
the IP of being able to own all of that as if you were self publishing.
And do you help people source like all of the vendors that are required
to publish and distribute a book?
Yes, since we are a publisher ourselves, we are the source of all of that.
So that's kind of one of those benefits of a hybrid.
So if you're self publishing, you need to start to kind of figure out, all right,
how am I going to find a cover designer?
How am I going to find an editor?
All of those kind of big, I don't know what I'm doing when
you're working with a hybrid.
All of those exist under one roof.
Got it.
Awesome.
And so how long have you been doing it?
And how'd you get into it?
Well, I, I wrote my first book in 2012, published it in 2013, published another
one in 2014, and another one in 2015.
So I had three books in three years that all came out.
And everyone in my network was like, how did you know how to write a book?
well, I don't know, I just figured it out.
And they're like, well, how did you know how to publish a book?
I'm like, I don't know.
I just figured it out.
Were those books great?
No, they were not.
They are, especially now having been doing this for as long as I have,
those first few books were the typical self published books that were not
ideal, but I had a lot of people in my network who were enthusiastic about
wanting to write their own books.
And I was doing consulting at the time and I had my own business.
So I was able to kind of like start to dabble in All right What does
it look like if I were to help?
Writers figure out how to either write or publish their books.
And so I started a program in february of 2015 So it's almost 10 years exact
on the writing side Where the first group of people went through my program
in the beginning of february and I was like I over 14 weeks to show you how To
get your book published and I did that a couple of times in 2015 and I had
a couple of students say Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I love that.
you're helping show me how to do it, but I just want to pay you to do it for me And
I was like what i'm like, what is this?
I didn't even know hybrid publishing was a thing at the time and I was like,
well, Let me look into that and then when the time the person said that to
the time that I was like I need to do this It was four days where I like really
sat with it and I was like Ooh, I think this is the thing that is scalable that
will allow me to have a team to kind of do the things rather than being a
solo kind of independent consultant and also kind of feed that brain of mine
that is incredibly curious and wants to know everything about everything.
it kind of satisfies the personal needs and professional needs.
And so at that point I'm like, well, I guess I'm going all in on this.
So I closed my consulting business down in 2017 and I've
been doing it full time since.
That is amazing.
Well, you use the magic word scalable.
And so lots of this audience will be solo consultants who haven't quite
cracked not selling their time.
And so when you were looking at like what could be scalable what things were you
thinking about and how did you get there.
Well, the funny part is what I was thinking and then what ended up happening
or not the same, but why was thinking.
Because I was the solo independent consultant and I had a really
successful like mid six figure business that did everything I needed to do.
I had a lot less stress than I currently have and I was doing
a lot of keynote speaking.
So I was tired of getting on a stage and saying the same thing
and people not taking the action to actually see the results.
So I was kind of getting fatigued by having those conversations.
So when I started that group writing program and group publishing program, I
was like, This is my ticket to scaling.
I'm now not just me, I'm bringing in groups of people, and then I
can bring in a facilitator who can then run the groups of people.
And in that program still exists.
It's called getting started for authors.
It's a six month writing intensive and 10 years later exists in its phenomenal
and it is completely self contained.
We have facilitators.
It's incredible, but my goal was like just that, like at the time,
like 10 years ago, my goal was like, how do I just do with this?
Because that's going to be the thing that I can scale.
And then the reality is that I ended up starting a very labor intensive
staff, heavy business and stuff.
but obviously there's scaling in that, but I was thinking more of just
kind of scaling my time is really what my, Objective was back in 2015.
Yeah.
I people forget employees are absolutely scaling.
You know, it's like, as the founder owner, you are the most
expensive resource in your business.
And anytime you can carve off part of what you do to another resource that can
still provide the value to your clients, that is successful scaling right there.
And so it's not just about, Courses and things like that, that people who hear
about, but also just however you are able to, more efficiently deliver value
to your clients, which is fantastic.
And so we're going to talk first about because you mentioned AI and
how it's working and publishing.
Let's talk about AI.
You know, I love to talk about that.
But then I do want to circle back around to.
you know, the fact that you're B Corp and some of the other
good works that you do as well.
But let's talk about AI and publishing.
I love talking about AI and publishing.
And I think AI, it's honestly the thing that I think every
business has to pay attention to.
And I also think is, A little piece of a secret for scaling, because I
remember just a couple of years ago where we were paying 20, 000 plus a
year for copywriters to do a whole bunch of things now AI is doing for us.
And it's obviously taken a long time to like really make sure that AI has a lot
of inputs from uh, Our content and because I'm on podcast, I have my own podcast.
I've written books.
It's very easy for it to capture my voice because it has
a lot of inputs to work with.
Whereas I think folks that might not have that might be a little bit
harder, but it's not impossible.
And so I think from a scaling standpoint and just growth standpoint from a content
alone, not even publishing specific, which is content in general, think that's
like the easiest, easiest way to do it because we could take this recording,
throw it into AI and say, Hey, create a blog post about this or create a
linkedin article about this conversation I had with this really awesome person
Aaron and it will do that for us.
And so I think from that standpoint, it's fantastic From a book specific standpoint.
There's a lot of a lot of trickiness happening right now because there's
intellectual property problems There's copyright problems.
And so what we want to be mindful and intentional of is In my case,
we have a very flat policy that is we will not accept a manuscript
that has been generated by AI.
It is just an absolute no because there's too many unknowns, and
I'm not getting sued because someone was taking a shortcut.
Can a book be assisted?
So there's AI generated and there's AI assisted.
Assisted, sure, because if you're like, hey, I'm trying to write a
book, and I'm trying to figure out, Here's all the things I talk about
like, is there a way that you can help me figure out a table of contents?
Like those are all like really good ways of using it, but actually just copying
and pasting and dropping in whatever chat GPT told you to is a very dangerous way
to get yourself in trouble very quickly.
Yeah.
I mean, there's so many things wrong with that.
one of which, I mean, like actually there's this quote of yours that I love,
which is I passionately believe The more raw and real we can be, the deeper the
connections we can experience, that is not happening with AI generated content.
But from a purely legal perspective, yeah, I mean, who knows what the sources,
and the chat GPTs of the world don't make any reps and warranties about.
The materials that are coming out of there, who knows if it's accurate,
depending on, what you're writing about where you absolutely need to have,
up to date and accurate information.
I'm losing track now, was it two years ago, I think that.
I first discovered chat GPT and it was by accident because I am avowed, Luddite.
I I'm like that.
I get this done is a miracle.
And I had to do continuing legal education and I'm like, okay, what's.
Available.
And there was this thing about chat GBT.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
I guess I'll look at it.
And so I'm kind of half listening to it, and doing some work and
they're talking about what it can do.
And I'm like, and I just kind of open up a, browser and put it in there
and start playing around with it.
I'm like, Oh my God.
I mean, I really just to me, AI was like blockchain.
Like it was that there's no need for me to ever know what this is.
I'll never know what this is.
And then I'm like, Oh my God, and it obviously changed, not
just changed my life, but changed the world, obviously, as well.
but the first thing that I tried after I got off that call, off that I had a
client agreement that I was working on where I needed to reference the law of
a different state that was like, okay, this law in this state covers this issue.
I need that.
similar law in this other state.
And I just asked it that, and it came up with this citation, everything.
Oh, great.
And I'm like, let me just check it.
And it made it up, made it up completely.
It's like, didn't even exist.
And I'm like, okay, it was a very good first lesson about the limitations of
And while I will absolutely say that the voice of AI has gotten a lot better in
those two years, the fact that it can.
hallucinate.
I mean, that's just a function of being generative.
I mean, it's not, just Google.
It is making assumptions.
That's what it does.
And so,
there's all kinds of bias coded into the programming of it, which is
also problematic in a lot of ways.
So it's an infancy, but I do think it's one of those Things that like, as
business owners, we can't ignore it.
You know what I mean?
I think it's one of those things, as much as you might want to be like,
uh, I'll come back to it later.
Your competitors are going to be using it and they're going to
be going 10 X faster than you.
And so I think that that's like the thing of trying to find that
balance for folks, especially for those who are Luddites, right.
Where it's like, Oh, this is the last thing I want to do, but like, no offense
to my aunt, I have an aunt in her sixties who is, she's basically my mother.
And she and I were chatting about AI the other day.
Because she's like, I'm using it for grant writing, I'm using it
to do fundraising emails, because she's a director of development.
And I was like, oh my god, it brings me such joy knowing, because can
barely use her phone on a good day.
And so like to see her like thriving with AI, I really think this is going
to help me extend my career well into my late 60s, which wasn't her original plan.
So it's kind of cool to see these positive sides of it.
Even if it's in its very clunky, messy early stages, it's only going
to improve from here, we hope.
Yeah, absolutely.
and speaking of, the efficiencies that you get from it, I have clients that,
their, employees are very eager to use it.
Because there's, whatever the issue is, there is an AI driven solution,
period, like whatever it is.
And so they're all like, oh, I found this thing.
But you have to balance some of the downsides.
And, you know, certainly, Is it secure?
are you disclosing confidential information when you're using it?
obviously the quality of the outputs as well.
there are, some risk management that's required.
Definitely use it, but just be mindful of its limitations and
making sure you're, Watching that.
Yeah.
So now you are a B Corp. And how does that feed into what you
do like on a day to day basis.
Yeah, I love that question because I am so passionate about the B Corp community.
And so a B Corp really this case there's benefit corporations which are
legal designations, and then there are certified B Corps, which is a voluntarily,
certification that you can go for that basically says that you as a business
meet the gold standard of sustainable business practices, environmentally
friendly practices, diverse practices.
Like there's a whole litany of things that it really kind of drives.
You to have to be better and do better.
And so when you see that, be in a circle on packaging, it really means
that that company has a deep commitment to equity to, you know, and every
everyone has a little bit different.
So like in our case, like we have a strong focus on diversity.
And so we have a really, really strong, diverse supply chain because
that's something that I can control.
And it's something I was already doing before the B Corp thing.
I even knew it existed.
So there's really kind of cool things around what the B Corp
kind of that logo does for you.
And there are consumers who are.
Attuned to wanting to buy eco conscious materials and goods and things like that.
And so they see the B and they're like, I don't care what the price is.
It's a B Corp. I'm buying it.
Like I'm absolutely that person.
So even like there's alcohol brands that are B Corp.
So I'm like, is maker's mark my favorite whiskey?
No, but am I going to drink it?
Yes.
Because they're a B Corp. Right.
So it's like one of those things.
And so what I love about it is it really is a market differentiator for businesses.
So in the publishing space, it's a really busy space in general.
It's a very crowded space.
Hybrid publishing is also getting really crowded.
And so I'm able to kind of have that seal of approval that says to someone who
is more focused on eco friendly side of things to say, Oh, that means this company
is doing things differently and operating differently because the B Corp mantra
is people and planet before profits.
and it's not to say you cannot run a profitable business because
that is absolutely not the case.
It is just saying that your focus is on the stakeholders of who you're
serving over your bottom line.
so that's how I look at it from a decision making process of, can
we make a decision here that is going to put who we're serving?
and also make us money.
But if it's only going to make us money and it's not putting who we serve ahead,
then the answer is going to be no.
So it's a nice way from a day to day basis to gauge, how to make,
how to make decisions that feel aligned with what we're up to.
Yeah.
I will say there's no more timely.
Well, we need to have this conversation for a long time in the
past, but we are where we are today.
We, have very public.
Case in the news regarding profits well over people and people are
really rethinking, the role that businesses play in our lives and that.
Is there a way for them to make our lives better instead of just
extracting, extracting, extracting.
And the answer is yes.
You would think so.
And I think so.
But it is a tough one.
also I want to talk about of the organizations that
you mentioned, diversebooks.
org, who, well, you tell us about it and then we'll talk
about like how it can play into.
Yeah, so if we look at publishing broadly, it has been very exclusive.
In many, many ways for a very, very long time, and it's just
not how the world works anymore.
It does not reflect what the world looks like.
At least, you know, I'm thinking like publishing US
based publishing specifically.
And so when we look at, there's a lot of independent organizations
that are out there that are doing really strong work to say, Hey,
wait a minute, there's not enough representation In this type of book.
And so we need diverse books has been a partner of ours, if you will, for a number
of years, because instead of going back to the B Corp decision making, right,
instead of sending our authors some BS plastic thing with our name on it for
the holidays, we will make a donation in their name to this organization.
This year, we actually changed it to a different organization, but same
concept where we're The intention is if I'm going to spend 10 on some
nonsense gift, I'd rather give it to a nonprofit who's doing really good work.
And so like with, we need diverse books.
their mission is largely based on showing kids representation
within children's books.
We don't publish children's books.
We are specifically business books, leadership, self help.
That's kind of our jam, but at the same time.
Like I don't need to be giving money to another organization that's
doing the work that we're doing.
I'd rather give it to a non profit who's going to help at least kids
see themselves reflected back at work and it's reflection of all different
types of Elements of diversity.
It's not just the diversity that you can see it's a lot of different other
areas And so, you know, it's one of those things that I think we need
diverse books does a really tremendous job and they're obviously always looking
for money and now when we look at just the amount of book like book banning
has been around for forever, right?
It's just always been a thing It's just becoming more prevalent and more common
that books that were long held staples In institutions are now like suddenly
on banned lists And so there's a lot of that that's happening and it's really
I think impacting Children's ability to see themselves reflected back in
books that are being held in school.
So we have really cool organizations that are doing all that work.
I like to know what they're up to.
I like to support them when we can.
And I just, I love that that kind of mission exists because, if
you can see it, you can be it.
It's such a cliche statement, but it's really true.
And it starts with kids books.
speaking of banned books, it does seem that if you look at the list
of the most recently banned books.
Diverse voices seem to be really on the hit list.
Honestly, sure.
very sad.
So let's circle back to the work that you do.
So you work with, thought leaders, pretty general term, like who is your
best client and what can they expect?
Like, what is reasonable to expect from having a hybrid, published book?
Yeah.
So I would say the best.
Thought leader, if you will, is someone who's motivated to do
something bigger with their book.
Because there's a lot of very inexpensive avenues.
Doesn't mean that it's gonna look the best or be edited well or things like
this, but like, if you wanna just get a cheap book out quickly, just
to say that you wrote a book, there's plenty of paths that you can do that.
Mm-hmm . Will do.
I think it's gonna damage your brand potentially.
Yes.
But at the same time, it's an available path.
It is.
For someone who's really focused on I am.
elevating myself as a thought leader.
I have been, either a business leader or sometimes it's corporate professionals who
are kind of coming out of corporate and now they're going solo and want to be an
independent consultant, but want to have some kind of credentialing behind them.
Being an author is such a great way to make that happen.
But the authors that thrive.
With us are the ones that see the book as the in road to other opportunities,
whether it's to be a guest on someone's podcast, whether it's to go speak to an
organization to get new clients, because if someone's coming to me and says, I
need to sell a hundred thousand copies of my book the month that it comes out
and they have no mailing list, they have no platform, they have no nothing.
it's a really wildly unachievable goal, but I'll say like, hey,
what's your motivation level?
Like, what are you planning on doing to do this?
And they're like, oh, What's just gonna happen?
That is not how books sell like that's just flat out.
kind of a myth.
So it's a matter of like if someone's motivated to say, I'm gonna do
whatever it takes to make sure that my message not the book specifically,
but my message gets into the hands of as many people as possible because
it's going to transform lives.
It's going to impact people.
That's the type of person that we're looking for.
The book is really just a very, very small piece of a much, much bigger
ecosystem that where plugging into like our expertise is the book, but
we also know how the ecosystem works.
So we can provide really strategic guidance and advice to say, Hey, know,
if you want to do podcasting here, go talk to this person here, go talk to this
person for social media, whatever other things that might accompany it, is really
kind of our core focus is really that motivated person who just wants to make
a difference, but is business minded.
So then there, I want to make a difference and then has.
Like fairytale ideas of what that might look like,
yeah,
yeah, I think people are generally, surprised by how hard it is to
sell a book and to get attention.
I think whenever we look at the numbers for like the New York Times
bestseller, we think that's like a million copies, but what is it,
it's like some, it's celebrity.
Yeah, yeah.
so thank you.
That's very helpful.
Well, it has been an absolute joy to have you on the podcast, Jen.
Thank you so much for being the inaugural guest on scaling expertise.
And so please tell everyone where they can find you.
And if there's anything that you're offering right now you wanted to.
Push.
It's great.
Otherwise, just tell us where we can find you and connect with you.
Awesome.
Thanks, Erin.
I love being the first.
this is so great.
I had no idea how fun.
so the best way to find me is publish your purpose.
com.
My focus really is on empowering and educating first time authors.
So we have a lot of.
free resources that are readily available.
There's no hard sell.
It's just like, here's what to think about.
Here's what to consider.
so that's the easiest way.
If you want to connect with me personally, LinkedIn is where I like to spend my time.
I'm on all the other platforms at Gen T Grace.
However, LinkedIn is where you will absolutely, find your way
to actually connecting with me.
Fantastic.
And we will have all of those links in the show notes as well as DiverseBrooks.
org, great organization to support.
And thank you again, Jen.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks, Erin.
Appreciate it.