Working with the founder or executive team, Royce creates a business model that is scalable and sustainable, determines a marketing strategy, and crafts a message that tells your story and attracts your ideal client, helping you generate more leads, close sales faster, and not negotiate on price. Over 200 startups have worked with Royce to get lasting results.
Your story is important, and when shared effectively, leads turn into clients. Royce helps brands position themselves as an influencer within their industry to eliminate the concern of the competition.
Royce is a Certified Direct Response Copywriter and an SBDC Certified Consultant. Brands in her portfolio include Calvin Klein, DoubleTree, Keller Williams, and early stage startups.
She is the author of 6 books, and co-author of several more.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up writing a book?
After working with 200 startups and owning 12 of my own businesses, the number one challenge I found that most entrepreneurs faced was marketing. Having built my businesses with limited marketing budgets, I knew how to get results without spending 10-20% of your revenue on marketing. Partly due to my love of research, I also kept abreast of the trends as marketing went online and continued to change as new platforms and algorithms came out. This prompted me to put some basic education into an affordable format, a book, that was accessible to all entrepreneurs. Thus, Scale Up Your Profits: The Secrets of Online Marketing, was published. And, I was able to get multiple celebrity endorsements, including my mentor, Kevin Harrington.
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
Entrepreneurs try to wear too many hats and perform tasks that are out of the scope of their expertise. My hope is that they will get educated about online marketing tactics and stop falling for all of the people who show unrealistic results with paid Facebook ads. I hope they learn that guerilla marketing and understanding the importance of good content can generate results for their business.
What are the top three tools you are currently using to write, publish, and promote your books?
The top tool I use to write my book is always in-depth research. It’s important that I am giving relevant information that is worthwhile to the reader.
The top tool I’ve found important to publishing is another editor. Although I write and edit content weekly for others, it’s difficult to edit your own work, and I’ve taken some of my books out of print due to the poor quality of the finished product. As an entrepreneur, I continue to learn from my mistakes.
The top tools I use to promote my book are social media platforms. Leveraging my tribe, I am able to promote my books through social media.
What were the top mistakes you made writing/publishing your book?
As mentioned earlier, I’ve found it’s important to hire someone else to edit for you. Do what you do best, and outsource things that are not in your area of expertise. I have hundreds of copies of out of print books in my storage that have editing and formatting mistakes in them.
When will you consider your book a success?
I consider Scale Up Your Profits: The Secrets of Online Marketing a success. Although it hasn’t sold millions of copies, I have hundreds of entrepreneurs who have emailed me, thanking me for the valuable information I’ve shared. If that information keeps our small businesses and startups open, that’s a success to me! We have an 85% failure rate of all businesses under 2 years old; they need this information.
There are 27 topics covered, and the chapters are a quick read. This book is intentionally set up to allow the busy, frustrated entrepreneur to go straight to the subject he’s struggling with and get some basic insight. From social media to SEO to content creation to negative online reviews, it’s all there.
What advice do you have for new authors who want to write and self-publish their first book? Get help. Seek advice from others who have written books. You may be gifted in writing, but publishing is a learned art. After six books, I can tell you I’m challenged during the process every time.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before publishing your first book?
Self-publish. While it’s not for everyone, I had a publisher for my first book. It was #1 best seller in 3 countries within 48 hours, and then got caught up in litigation and can’t be of value to others.
Absolutely! There are 10 in-depth marketing tips I teach on; however, I’ll share a couple of nuggets here. First, a press release can be a vital tool. Although some see it as “old school” or out-dated, I’ve found them to be extremely effective.
Second, leverage your tribe. I do this by asking friends who have the audience my book is aimed at to read the manuscript and provide an endorsement. Then when I’m ready to release the book I use their endorsements and tag them on my social media platforms. This gets the word out quickly to an expanded audience.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
Narrow down my niche quicker. Trying to be all things to all people is exhausting and only devalues your services.
Rather than reading books about how to become an author, I recommend reading books in the genre you want to write in and glean what you like and don’t like, then implement that into your book.
If you only had $1000 dollars to promote a new book, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
Write 2 press releases, pay a good editor, and send free copies of your book to bloggers or podcasters who will feature you.
What is your favorite quote?
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
-Maya Angelou
How can we get in touch with you?
Royce@yourstartup.coach or YourStartup.Coach or www.RoyceKingAuthor.com
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