#322 Behind the Scenes of the Desired Brand Effect Book

7:55AM Oct 20, 2021

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

book

business

jewelry

brand

launch

people

pre order

create

cover

sales

helping

desired

share

november

methodology

called

effect

scaling

flourish

desire

But the reason why I shared a lot of the vulnerabilities and stuff that I share inside our community and insider programs in that book is because I wanted people to understand that building a business is not always the upside that we see on social media, there's a lot of ups and downs. Failure is a part of business. And if you think it's not, then you're going to be setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment, because at times, things aren't gonna go right, you're gonna launch a collection that doesn't succeed, you might make some bad decisions over time, because you're getting distracted or frustrated, or you're you're rushing to make a decision, or something might just happen, like 2008 happened to me.

Welcome to Thrive by Design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this.

Welcome to the Thrive by Design podcast, Episode 322. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, Chief Visionary Officer of Flourish and Thrive Academy and the host of the Thrive By Besign podcast, and the author of the Desired Brand Effect. I can't believe I'm an author now, and I am pumped beyond belief. Anyway, I am so excited to be here today to talk about the behind the scenes of the Desired Brand Effect book. Actually, the making of the book, it has been, wow, I, you know, you think writing a book based on your methodology, you teach it every day. You think it would be easy, right? Well, it's not that easy. And it's taken almost three years to get this thing to market. And I'm beyond thrilled. It is it's been a journey. And I'm gonna share that journey with you here. So for those of you who don't know, the book officially is released on November 9, I'm self publishing this book on amazon.com. And I have a pre sale going on right now for the Kindle version for $3.99. If you join us in the pre sale event, and purchase the book before November 9.

And if you want to grab that I would be so grateful for it to you. And the reason why is that we really want to make this book launch a big splash. Part of the reason that I wrote the book more than anything is, you know, my industry writing a book isn't necessarily like a big, you know, moneymaker. And like I don't normally don't talk about money and stuff on the podcast. But I have people reaching out to me all the time saying they want to take our programs, but the investment is a lot. And so I wanted to create something for all those people out there who are on a budget who really want to get their business off the ground, and just want a couple of tips that are going to help them move forward. And then eventually, I hope that you implement what you learn in the book, so that you can maybe grow your business and reach your goals. And join us for some of our programs later if that makes sense for you and your brand.

And if not, you know, I just want to put the value out there because the Desired Brand Effect has been something that we've been using at Flourish and Thrive Academy for the last nine years. And it's something that I've been using in my business for almost 20 years, I just didn't have a name for it so much. So it was a thing that I really leaned into after my first business failed in 2008. And it was also the strategy that I use or the model that I used to grow my business, my second jewelry business really really quickly and start bringing home within a matter of 18 months $30,000 in take home pay which was huge for me at that time. In particular because I had you know a couple years before just recovered from filing for bankruptcy and I had not a lot of money in the bank. I was hustling, a lot of different gigs, trying to get my new business off the ground, teaching yoga, freelancing for a $400 million jewelry company designing collections for them and just trying to get as many customers as I could for my custom jewelry business.

But it worked and it worked fast because I think 18 months is not a very long time to get your business off the ground and actually reaching your sales and profit margin goals. I was beyond thrilled. And so that was sort of once I kind of hit that marker that was the beginning of me kind of wanting to teach this methodology to others. And that's why I launched flourish and thrive Academy in 2012, with my co founder, Robin Kramer. So this has been a long time coming. So I would love to share this gift. And I think it's a gift because honestly, like the people that I've read that I've sent the book to you who've read it, they've all told me they love the book, and that it's been super helpful for them. Some of them aren't even jewelry designers, one of the people who interviewed me about the book said, you know, I'm a service business owner. And this is, like, incredible, I've already had so many takeaways.

So I think if you sell or make any sort of physical product, and you're listening to this, I think you'll get a ton of value. If you sell or make jewelry, you're gonna get insane value. So that's why I'm doing this pre order. For those of you who don't know who haven't written a book, before, the pre order sales are really important to getting the book out there. And all the pre orders are released on the first day, and it helps you get on the bestseller list. And we're trying to get on the bestseller list for a couple of the Amazon categories for jewelry. And I'd be honored, if you would help me get there, it'd be awesome. So that's why I'm in the preorder. We're releasing the Kindle version for $3.99, you can go over to desirebrandeffect.com, there's information on how you can find it right there. Or you can just head on over to Amazon type in The Sesired Brand Effect by Tracy Matthews, and it should pop up in your search button.

Once you buy the book, I am offering some incredible bonuses for all of you who participate in this pre order. Plus, there's a ton of resources inside the book, we have a whole resources page, where you can download extra trainings and go in depth on some of the topics that I talked about. So when you join us in the pre order, I have a special release day pricing for waitlist members of a video training of the Desired Brand Effect in action. So this is how you can use it to grow your business. I am doing a complimentary training called your vision of success. This is inevitably one of the best. Or one of my favorite things I should say about the bonuses because this was how I actually designed my new business around the kind of lifestyle that I wanted to create. And for those of you who have been in business for a while you know that sometimes it you know you you've created this business, that's the business of your dreams, but you've created a job for yourself. And it's not really what you thought it was going to be.

And so I want to help you create something that's going to be sustainable, that's going to light you up all the time, and also pay you very well and give you the freedom that you desire as an entrepreneur instead of creating something that is going to be a trap for you. So this training is epic. And then I'm also going to be doing an inside look in December inside a seven figure jewelry company. And we're going to be doing whole case study. So if you're someone who wants to have a seven figure jewelry company, or you're someone who just is fascinated by that, or you want to learn what it really takes to just remove yourself from your business, you'll find a lot of value in this. Even if you don't want a million dollar company, you are going to love this training. So that's just the bonus for buying the book in the pre order. Then if you want to join our launch team and share the book after the fact after the book goes live, then we'd encourage you to also purchase the paperback copy. And with that you're going to get an advanced access to the first chapter complimentary access to our virtual book launch party and an exclusive group hotseat session where I'm going to be coaching you with me and my friends, and helping you get unstuck with your business, stickiness, stickiness, whatever it might be. And yeah, it's gonna be awesome. So if you want to learn more about that you can head on over to desiredbrandeffect.com/launchteam and check it out.

Alright, so today's episode is really all about sharing the behind the scenes of the book. And the process of baking the book, I'm going to give you a sneak peek of what's inside and then I'm going to share a little bit more about the Desired Brand Effect book in next week's episode. So this has been as I mentioned, a long time in the making. I started conceptualizing the book about three years ago, everyone had been telling me for a long time you should write a book, it will be helpful for your audience. And it's a way to get your methodology into the hands of more people at a really awesome investment because books don't cost that much. And you know, our courses aren't investment because they work and they go much more in depth than what's in the book. And coaching obviously, is a much bigger expense because you know, we're working with you one on one. So I wanted to be able to help as many people as possible with this book. So we started the process about three years ago and the idea was that we're going to take the core messaging of our program And turn that in to a book.

I can't even remember what the first name of the book was. And then we named right around this time around three years ago, I named our methodology. I've been teaching it for a long time. But I was trying to figure... at first it was called the online sales loop. And then it was called something else. I was trying to get all clever with it. And I was like, You know what, in 2015, we did a huge rebrand on all of our programs, and started talking about creating desire, sharing desire, and scaling desire. And I was like, duh, your methodology is called the Desired Brand Effect. Because that's what you create, when you create desire for your brand, when you're able to get people sharing what you make with other people, and you're really leveraging your sales and marketing acumen. And the scaling, desire is all about removing yourself from the day to day of your business, so that you can have a bigger impact, you create more financial security for yourself, you are reaching more people, and you're doing the parts of the business that you absolutely love instead of the parts of the business that actually drain you. Because it's systematize and automated, and you have the right support. And you're following a strategic plan. And you are mapping out goals and working towards achieving those. So that was sort of the the naming convention, I was like, Oh my gosh, you've been teaching this for so long, and you haven't created a name for it. So at the beginning of 2020, I think I hosted the first Desired Brand Effect named that way masterclass. And it was a big hit.

So this book has been a long time coming. And initially I hired a, I guess I would call this person a ghost writer. She was the sister of someone who worked for me for a while, and I had her I'm like, Okay, take all this content, and turn it into something. And so it was all stuff that I'd written. But it felt a little bit more like a hodgepodge. It wasn't really pulled together, and we were trying to get it off the ground. Like, I started thinking about it in 2018. And then I was like, too busy, too busy, too busy. Then around the summer of 2019. I was like, Alright, we're gonna do the book. So I am one of those people who builds the plane while it's flying, we picked a launch date, we got, we started doing the research on what needed to happen, and did all the things right, got the ghostwriter to help organize the content. And then it was so much work. They're like, okay, you need to look at this. And I was reading it all. And I was just like, this is not what I want to put out there. I feel like we're rushing this, which I was so proud of myself, because I don't usually do that. I'm like, let's just put it out there and get some feedback. And then we'll change it later.

But I really wanted this to be awesome. So what ended up happening is as the date got closer, I'm like, let's scrap this, we are not going to launch the book, I'd spent 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars hiring this person to help us organize the book content and get it all together and contractors to come help us with the formatting and all the things. And then we decided not to do it. So it was like kind of in the beginning a huge money pit. But I don't regret doing that. Because it was the right choice at the time. So my plan at that point is like, oh, we're gonna launch it in the spring of 2020. And we went through our January boot camp and launch and then guess what happened COVID hit and march and I was like, I can't do this right now. I got to help my students they are some of them are freaking out. They're panicking about their business. They're like, how do I keep this going?

And you know, that's when I showed up and I was just like, you know what, we gotta serve here. This is not the right time I can't divert my attention from my students success are leaning in to do whatever I can for my community. And let them just be dangling, worried about what to do. So immediately, starting early March, we were leaning right in, I mean, no one knew what was gonna happen at that point with the pandemic. So, you know, right away, I was doing extra classes, we were showing up on social media doing free trainings. And then George Floyd died, we were bringing in diversity trainers and all these people into our community, and continued to grow. And before I knew it, with everything that was happening in the world, like the year was over, and I was like, What happened to my book, and so I got to a place where I had, I'm just like, Okay, this is that we're going to start it again.

And my initial initial launch date, this the third launch date, or second launch date, because of the second launch date was in June of 2021. So I reached out to this other editor that I'd been introduced to because the other person was too busy to continue helping and actually I just wanted some fresh eyes on the book. So I give All the content I share with her my vision, we get started on it and then I kept busy again things get sidetracked and we couldn't get it done by June because I, I the project got a little bit derailed because of me. And then the the editor who was helping me organize the content, got busy with some family issues and was traveling she had to go take care of her parents, so is like, once again, feels too rushed, I'm not gonna force it, I'm just gonna put on the backburner and keep it going. So we decided to postpone it again. And eventually pick a date of November 10, originally, and then I found out books get launched on a Tuesday, not a Wednesday, my astrologer was like, release it on a cheese, really release it on November 10. That's the best day for you. And I was like, we can't because apparently books get released on Tuesdays.

So I decided to move the date to November 9. And here we are, it's just a couple weeks out. And I can't believe it. I actually finished the book in Costa Rica. It was the final revision. So when you're making when you're creating a book, it's not just like writing the book, there are so many revisions that happen, this book was revised probably about five or six times. And when I started reading the final copy, giving my final edits and notes, I was in tears, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is the reason why I waited so long to get this out there. I like literally was brought to tears because being so vulnerable. Like in the book, I'm really vulnerable and share a bunch of my personal stories. And it's hard sometimes because this is going to be in print forever. And anyone who picks it up is going to be like, all right, this girl might be a little bit of a hot mess at times. But you know, we'll see. But the reason why I shared a lot of the vulnerabilities and stuff that I share inside our community and insider programs in that book is because I wanted people to understand that building a business is not always the upside that we see on social media, there's a lot of ups and downs.

Failure is a part of business. And if you think it's not, then you're going to be setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment, because at times things are going to go right, you're going to launch a collection that doesn't succeed, you might make some bad decisions over time because you're getting distracted or frustrated, or you're you're rushing to make a decision, or something might just happened like 2008 happened to me. And sure there were things I could have done better before the economy crashed in 2009. However, like a lot of the things I couldn't control, like I couldn't control, the fact that the stock markets crashed, I couldn't control that all banquets went out, I couldn't control that the commodity markets had skyrocketed, and I was shipping orders at a loss at times. And I also couldn't control that five or 10 key accounts of mine that had tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. When you compile them, worth of jewelry, they never got paid for you know, it's like, I couldn't control any of that. Sure, could I have maybe not bought so so much inventory and had a bunch of stuff, collecting dust on my shelves. Sure. That's something that's a huge lesson I learned. And it's something I talked about in the book, too.

But there are a lot of things that I couldn't control. But that opportunity for me that failure for me was an opportunity. And I call it an opportunity on purpose. because it allowed me to basically recover so much stronger and better. It allowed me to create this community over here at Flourish and Thrive Academy of jewelry designers, makers, handmade artisans, and all sorts of product business owners who are really crushing their goals. It allowed me to be really transparent. Because I think that that's missing, and especially in my industry people don't. Or in this industry, I should say, people don't share those failures at all. In fact, you'll see a lot of coaches out there who pretend like everything's great, and nothing bad has ever happened to them. And maybe that's true. But I bet you that they've had some hardship, but they just don't want to share it because they see it as weakness. And I really wanted people to understand what it really takes to be an entrepreneur and to grow a business is not easy. But it is so worth it is not easy, but it's so worth it. And my mission is to help you spend more time on the parts of your business that you actually love. And remove yourself from the parts of your business that drain your creative spark or your creative energy. And so that's the point of getting this book out there.

So the process of writing the book, like we did about five revisions, we went through it the final stage is having the book editor which is different than the person Chris Emery. Shout out to you, Chris, who helped me curate all the content inside the book and actually rewrite it. So it made sense and strung together instead of it being kind of disjointed in to the specific areas of the book. So that was that was really incredible. The editor goes in and makes sure that there's consistency, they keep track of all the anything that, you know, if you're saying dream customer versus dream client, they take, they take a look at like, is there consistency with case in the book? Are you using the same terminology? Are you like, one of the things that was caught was that in certain chapters, I use more than one case study and the examples. And they're like, we're only using one case study, for example, because that's what we've done consistently. I'm like, we can't use two here, but they're both good. They're like, no, pick one. So I was like, ah, they also track like, all the resources and everything that's in the book, so that we make sure that we don't miss anything and get it done. And so there's a lot that goes into editing.

And so that's, that's a part of the contents of the book. Now, the book cover that was another journey that happened. So on the book cover, we have the book is called The Desired Brand Effect; Stand Out in a Saturated Market with a Timeless Brand. And the original book cover was from an artist named Lacey Alexandra. She had the most amazing pictures on her social media feed, and I just kept liking them. And so I reached out to her and I said, Would you and the photographer be willing to provide some pictures from your photoshoot. And we can use that for the cover of the book that a really beautiful model. That was that was on the cover she was wearing. Lacy Alexandra's beautiful rings, her hands were crossed over her knee. And I love the picture. And we did a final like review of all the options of the book covers because we had several, I think we went through probably 35 different options for the cover, which was a lot.

And at the end of the day, someone on my team, Jess Gebaur, who you might remember from our diamond insiders community, and she was heading up our SOS program what before we called it momentum, said, Tracy, you know, your book is called The Desired Brand Effect; Stand Out in a Saturated Market with a Timeless Brand. ripped jeans aren't very timeless, because that was the one thing it's like that the model was wearing ripped jeans. And I'm like, you're right. So I reached out to that photographer and Lacey and I was like, I'll pay for it. But can you guys do another shoot. And, you know, let's get the same model. You could do the same vibe on the beach, we can replicate this luck. So we're all in the process of getting it all done. And then all of a sudden, the photographer, she did this photography as a side gig. She ended up getting really busy at her other job and couldn't do it. So then I was at a conference and my friend Jennifer Dawes was like, showing me these amazing photoshoots that she had just done with a photographer named Crystal Long from Shutter Goes Click.

And they were stunning. Oh my gosh, these women in these photographs looked like angels. And Jennifer, if you know her, her jewelry is incredible. She has a case study in the block. And she also gave me a little blur about the Desired Brand Effect and how it helped her business, which is awesome. And we were going to use one of those for the covers, but they were so focused on the face of the model as opposed to the jewelry in a lot of ways that we couldn't find one that worked right on the front end so we decided to put one of the images on the back so shout out to Krista for letting me use your image. I'm super stoked. And then we're back to the drawing board for the front cover. So I was like alright, my girl Racquel Lauren. She's been photographing jewelry for me for probably 15 or 20 years, actually 20 probably 22 years. I met her in San Francisco, she moved to New York. I moved to New York found her again in New York. She has been shooting jewelry for me forever. She lives in Michigan and she shot a beautiful image for the cover that included Jeanna and Jared Rushton's jewelry of the Fox and the Stone and I'm so thrilled because it kind of runs the gamut so on the back cover, we have a shatter goes click photo with Jennifer does jewelry.

On the front cover. We have the Fox and Stone jewelry with Jeanna and Jared Rushton and it has been awesome I'm super stoked because I and I'm bummed that we didn't get to feature you Lacey, if you're listening to this, but at the same time, it was an opportunity also to get it done in a way that actually like the name naming kind of matches the vibe of what we're doing. So it was pretty awesome. And a fun experience, I'm still probably like, thinking like, oh, maybe we could just tweak it a little bit, a little bit more. Anyway, I'm thrilled, it's awesome. And I'm super pumped that we are where we're at with all of this. So that was a process of getting the cover designed now. And we talked a little bit about editing. Now the next part of it is really about, like what it took to get this launch off the ground. I mean, we've been promoting the pre orders and the pre sales for what actually the the waitlist I should say, not the pre orders and the pre sales, we're just launching the presale right now. So we've been building this waitlist for a while, and a book launch team. And so if you want to be part of either of those things, I would love to invite you there. And I'll share with you a little parameters at the end of what the launch team looks like.

But it's been you would think that it would just like, oh, you just like upload the book on Amazon, and then you, you know, put it in the category you want and all that stuff. No, that's not what happens. You did pick out all the keywords, you had to figure out which categories, then you have to suggest other categories, then you have to go back and forth and make sure the formatting is right and have a book format or format the book in the right way so that it works inside of a paper book, and the Kindle version, and a hardcover version if you're going to do that, whatever it might be. And so thank goodness for my good friend Margaret, who is the COO of Hay House, she was like so helpful in helping me figure out what to do she so she sent me like a sample of like a grid that they use for their authors to map out the keywords and all the the launch bonuses and all that stuff. So the cool part about it is throughout the book, there are tons of references to resources that we give you when you purchase the book. So I wanted to make this like as robust for you as possible. So there's tons of resources sprinkled throughout the book that you can go and opt in and download them for free as just for the cost of the blog, which is super amazing.

And, yeah, it was a journey. That's what I'm going to say. So just want to give you just a sneak peek of what is included inside the book. So I talk a lot about in the book, obviously the Desired Brand Effect methodology, which I've talked about before on this podcast, which consists of three core pillars, as we'll say, the creating desire pillar, this is all about building your audience and attracting those perfect customers to your brand sharing desire, which is all about getting people to buy from you once and then multiple times after that, but what you do in the middle, and by scaling desire, this is all about removing yourself from the day to day and optimizing your business for growth so that you don't become the bottleneck in your business. And this whole thing was developed to solve problems in a business. So when we look at problems that people are having in their business, they might have, let's say, you know, someone starting out, they might have a problem trying to get consistent sales. So when you look at the Desired Brand Effect that we can identify, okay, so if you're not getting consistent sales, here are some things that you need to do. In order to get those consistent sales, you need to get really clear on your messaging and your brand. And you need to make sure your your collection and your brand assets are tightened right, you need to make sure that you're attracting the right kinds of people.

One of the things that I think people do and they make this mistake a lot is they either overthink, or create this like fantasy avatar that's not really relatable, or they make it too much like themselves or something altogether completely different. But what your dream client avatar is, is really like an amalgamation of your best customers. If you don't know who those people are yet, then you have to make it up at the start. But you have to get really clear, like what are the things that they value? Who are these people like what is going to get them attracted to my brand at the end of the day. So someone's having the problem. This is a very common problem that a lot of people have, they end up working really hard, they build some success in their business, they start reaching their goals. And then they get to this point where they keep working hard, but nothing is growing anymore. And that's because they aren't their business isn't really optimized for growth. And so we take a look at sharing desire and the crossover was scaling desire to which I'll explain in a minute to take a look at what's going on there. Because typically, you know, once you start attracting your perfect customers and stuff and you get them into that conversion stage where they're going to buy from you because you've created that connection. You've built the trust. There's all the next steps and the the thing that I see a lot of people who aren't really getting the sales that they want or getting the traction that they want is that they have done a few things right but then they don't really lean into it.

Because the most important thing that you can do in the sharing desire phase is to get people to buy from you once and then get them to buy from you again. And that starts with all the things you're doing for sales and marketing, but more importantly, the experience they have with your brand before and after the sale, that's going to be the thing that gets people to buy from you again. In fact, I interviewed Tyra Silverberg of the clay pot many years ago, and she she's quoted in the book, and she said to me; you know that someone is going to be a partner with your store for a long time, after something wrong happens. And what she meant by that is that jewelry breaks. And the designers and makers who completely freak out and panic about it, and don't do the right thing, or whatever it is, she knows, they're not going to be a good partner, because she's the front facing person, at the company, or whatever. But if they do do the right thing, then she is more invested in that brand and wants to partner with them for the long haul. So all of those things are super important in building relationships, whether it's direct to consumer or wholesale, like however you're selling. And that experience that you create for them is one of the most important things that will make them decide if they want to buy from you again, which is really, really important.

And then the third piece of this, you know, the third problem that people typically experience is that they're doing all the things and they're working their asses off. And for some reason, their sales start declining, or they kind of get disconnected from their brand. And they mess a lot of things up. And this is when we have to take a look at what's happening in the core areas of scaling desire and creating desire in that crossover right there. So scaling, desire is really all about being really strategic properly, planning your business, setting financial goals, setting sales goals, all those things, and then creating a plan to achieve those goals. It's about systems and automation and getting things out of the manual processes of your business. So that when the time is right, you can get the right support. So that support might look like hiring a consultant, hiring a mentor, hiring team, getting into a pure group where you can not feel alone anymore and get answers to your questions. Join a community like Flourish and Thrive Academy, you have it, like all those things are really, really important to the growth of your company. So I want to make sure that when we're supporting designers using the Desired Brand Effect, that they're aware that this model is really designed to help you solve the problems in your business and to help you build a flourishing and thriving business model that continues to grow every year.

So that's the high level overview of what it took to get this book produced. It was about three years in the making, and a slight taste of that Desired Brand Effect methodology. And once again, the book comes out officially on November 9. Right now we have the Kindle available in pre order for a highly discounted rate. You can pick it up right now for $3.99. And, and when you do, you can get a video training of The Desired Brand Effect, Your Vision of Success Training and An Inside Look at a Seven Figure Jewelry Company as bonuses for participating in the pre order. Plus, you'll also get an exclusive invite if you'd like to join us to be on our launch team to help us share the book on social media. You'll get extra bonuses for this you're going to get a signed copy of the book with the E ebook or Kindle purchase during the pre launch period. advanced digital access to the first chapter to read before the book launch goes live, complimentary access to a private virtual book launch party on November 10. And an exclusive Hot Seat session where you can basically get hot seated by me and some friends this will be held in December. So totally worth $3.99 and helping us promote the book a little bit if that's something you want to do.

So there are two separate things please support us in the preorder helps us get on the Amazon bestseller list and you'll be one of the first to see the full version of the book once it goes live on November 9. So thank you so much for listening to the show today. Once again head on over to desiredbrandeffect.com and check out the book and I'm so looking forward to sharing it with you have a good one.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If It's my mission to help thousands of creative businesses inside and outside the jewelry space. use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to Thrive By Design on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are played. And we'd love to hear what you think. Please rate and review the show and if you're inspired, please share this with your friends. Cheers to seeing you flourish and thrive.