Joshua Lisec:

If you want cash money, you want influence. If you want influence, you want attention. If you want attention, you want to be so good they call you a fake.

Chris Dreyer:

That’s what we’re all trying to do, is be our authentic self and show how we are the choice and not a choice, and stand out among a very saturated crowd. Particularly in the legal vertical, there’s just a sea of competitors.

Joshua Lisec:

In order to cultivate desire to work with your law firm and only your law firm, you have some beliefs that you need to not just implant, but also alter.

Chris Dreyer:

Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the elite legal marketing agency. Each week, you get insights and wisdom from some of the best in the industry. On these special Toolkit Tuesdays, we dive deep into conversations with the leading vendors in the legal sphere, the masterminds behind the technologies, services and strategies that help law firms not just survive, but thrive in today’s competitive landscape. Now, this isn’t about selling you the latest software or getting kickbacks from affiliate links. It’s about bringing you the best so you can be the best for your firm, for your staff, for your clients, and for you. This is Toolkit Tuesday on PIM, your weekly guide is staying sharp in the legal world. Let’s get started.

You may be an expert, but are you an authority? What I mean is, do people know you’re the expert? When they have a problem that relates to your firm, are you the first one they think of? Are you the only one they think of? Writing a book that delivers exceptional value is a great way to earn authority. Generic advice pieces with titles like Personal Injury 101 won’t make you an automatic top of mind choice. In the book writing game, the MVP is the authority book. This special kind of book teaches the reader everything they need to know to help themselves.

Joshua Lisec:

But the key is, with unGoogleable, and nowadays, unChatGPTable information, and that part is key, and it gives the book inherent functional value to readers who can become clients.

Chris Dreyer:

The trick is to write a book so compelling that halfway through the reader wants to work with you and only you. My guest today can help you do just that. Joshua Lisec has ghostwritten nearly 85 books across multiple industries with extensive experience helping attorneys. What makes Joshua different is his calculated approach to crafting the perfect book for your business goals. It’s not just a series of interview questions with what you say is what you get manuscript. Today, Joshua breaks down his three phase system that consistently builds authority, and will help you make your firm the first choice and the only choice. Here’s Joshua Lisec on how he got into ghost writing.

Joshua Lisec:

It began completely by accident, Chris. My lifelong ambition… Of course, when I say lifelong, I refer to myself as a teenager at that time. As a youngster, my lifelong ambition was to write novels professionally for a living, and wouldn’t you know it. But being homeschooled, there’s a certain set of expectations for homeschoolers. And so the fact that I had a two book independent publishing deal for two novels at age 20 was meeting expectations, you might say. But that’s when something interesting happened.

So Chris, I’m out signing my novels. I’m taking selfies with fans on flip phones, back when you had to turn the phone around and it would come all blurry and smudge because you couldn’t actually, what you see is what you get selfies in those days. Something interesting happened. Two of my readers, who also happened to be freelance writing clients I had, little freelance side hustle at that time, two of my readers and clients reached out to me, and they both said the same thing. “Joshua, I’ve wanted to write a book longer than you’ve even been alive. Can you help me out here?” And I said, “Okay. Fine. Sure, I’ll help you with your book.” And I’ve been saying, “Okay. Fine. Sure” ever since. And I’m currently finishing up my 81st, 82nd, 83rd ghostwritten, full length nonfiction, general trade books.

Chris Dreyer:

That’s amazing. And I think there’s so much value in it. I’ve got a book. You have your bestselling book. Why should business owners consider writing a book?

Joshua Lisec:

So I’ve ghostwritten books for personal injury attorneys, but also those who are in contract law, intellectual, property law, marriage and family law, and those also who have done legal services marketing. And I’ll tell you what they tell me. So the reason that they want to write books, or rather the reason they want to have written books is for the following. And then they say some version of this. They say, “Joshua, I may be an expert, but I’m not an authority if I don’t have a book. I may be an expert, but I’m not an authority if I don’t have a book.” And the context of that is the stiff competition that they’re going up against. Often, they do not have the oldest law firm, they do not have the most billboards in their area.

They may have solid casework that they’ve done, but they’re not exactly, in many cases, celebrity status. They’re not going on Fox or MSNBC to give their opinion on something. They’re not necessarily in all the magazines. But when they look at those who are in the magazines, who are on television, who are getting five and six figure speaking fees, what do they all have in common? They all have books. And so what they’ve realized is that in order to go from being the go-to referral partner of their network to go big, they need a book. But not just any book, they need what we now call an authority book. And the authority book is one which teaches step-by-step, with no step skipped, everything your potential clients need to know or even do in order to, let’s say, help themselves as much as possible during this, educate themselves as much as possible.

But the key is with Googleable, and nowadays, unChatGPTable information. And that part is key, and it gives the book inherent functional value to readers who can become clients.

Chris Dreyer:

So smart. I think a lot of the audience listening understands maybe some of the value and how it brings authority to themselves, but they don’t really know the exact process. It seems kind of overwhelming in many cases, and just the thought of writing a book. So where does a ghost writer fit in? How do they help facilitate this? And how does that speed up the process in terms of getting your book published?

Joshua Lisec:

So the reason people work with me as opposed to an agency or to a transcription and self-publishing service where they interview you and then they take the transcript and call it chapters, and then boom, you got yourself a book, the reason people want to work with me is because I am not what you say is what you get type of a writer.

The very first part of my process is actually market research. What are the keywords and categories that have high demand but low quality meeting that demand? And it often is very specific. I do not like these broad, basic type of simpleton books. Like Fundamentals of Personal Injury Law, terrible, terrible book idea, absolutely terrible book idea. What is much wiser is a mashup between your unique set of experiences, what has been labelled a talent stack, what else do you know and understand besides your work in, let’s say personal injury law. What have your unique experiences taught you that your clients gleaned value from? And then look at the sort of Venn diagram overlap between what the market is saying they want and what you are uniquely able to provide. And that’s the book. And so what that means is most often when authors come to me with a book idea, they end up realizing it’s the wrong book idea.

So they end up changing not just the title and subtitle, but the entire premise of the book because they realize they have a lot more to offer than they were even thinking they did. And so it was wise, rather than to just hurry up and get the book done, but to work with someone who understands the industry and does both ghost writing of books. But we also do ghost publishing, and that’s where we continue the process and turn a manuscript into the hardcover, of course, the audio book, soft cover, paperback, and ebook, and make it available from all the major retailers, even in select bookstores if they’d like, and available in over 100 countries and do the whole launch. But it’s a boutique experience rather than, let’s say an assembly line sort of an experience for most authors is a very high touch. So we don’t have the most scalable business, but I’m okay with that because you can’t scale good ghost writing, and that’s just the way it is.

Chris Dreyer:

Yeah. And you said you’re… How many books have you written?

Joshua Lisec:

It’ll soon be 83.

Chris Dreyer:

83

Joshua Lisec:

Yes.

Chris Dreyer:

So let’s kind of segue to that failed assembly line. Let’s talk about the failed assembly line, aka Scribe. So fortunately, I got my first book, it’s over my shoulder here through the finish line, and I got it published. But my second book was tied up, and who knows what happened with this article nine sale, this bankruptcy, all this debt, whatever’s going on with Scribe. And I’m sure I’m not the only one listening that had a scribe book in the works, and is this out there in limbo? So where does someone like myself or an audience member that was potentially working with them go. What can they do?

Joshua Lisec:

Yes. Yes. So the obvious choice is to just finish it yourself and do it for free, frankly. That is the easiest, most obvious choice. That’s going to be good enough for some percentage of the population. You’re going to learn the basics of self-publishing. There’s free and low cost tutorials on YouTube. But that’s not exactly who my clientele is. I had a lot of people who’ve talked to other writers, other publishers over the years, and the value that they continually find from choosing me is the shaping of the idea, is the initial analysis of what they want to write about, and maybe even a work in progress that they have, and making specific recommendations around what works to keep, what doesn’t work and change, and what is going to replace it to make it work even better for their specific objectives for their business. And usually it’s around client acquisition, customer acquisition, increasing the number of sales qualified leads, increasing the speed of acquiring sales qualified leads, and ensuring that the book has the right message for the right place in the customer journey.

So of course, I would be glad to chat with anybody who has a book in limbo for any reason, or even if it’s a manuscript that they’ve started, but we’re not going to just, okay, full speed ahead and finish it because it’s possible you are working on the wrong book. It’s possible you are writing the wrong book. And by the wrong book, it’s one that maybe it has some interesting stories and anecdotes and advice, but it is not aligned with proper placement inside of your customer journey, your client journey, even your funnel, you might say. And it may not have inherent value. It might just, let’s say, have a head to torso picture of you with Personal Injury Fundamentals 101. Terrible idea. That is an ego book. I don’t like to work with particularly egotistical people who are, let’s say, unwilling to take a professional’s advice. And that’s a certain percentage of people in any given profession. And I’m okay with that because I produce 99th percentile books. I’m also a trained hypnotist, and I have some experience working professionally in that regard.

Hypnosis is the art of subconscious belief change. And in order to cultivate desire to work with your law firm and only your law firm, you have some beliefs that you need to not just implant but also alter. And so a book ought to be a long form self-hypnosis script that alters the reader’s beliefs and changes their behavior. And one of those behaviors is deciding I need to work with you and your firm rather than anybody else, even if everybody else maybe has more cases, more, let’s say a higher dollar amounts that they say that they’ve been able to recover on behalf of their clients, number of lawsuits, all the usual metrics. If you’re not number one in every single one of those but you want to have your own edge, your unique competitive advantage, you have to write the right book.

Chris Dreyer:

Amazing. Amazing. So it’s nice to have an outlet with a professional like yourself that’s really proven this. So you’ve written, like you said, 80 plus books, including an international Amazon bestseller, which just happens to be your latest book. It’s so good, they call you a fake command attention, monetize your talent stack, and become the uncontested authority in your niche. It’s right over your right shoulder, if individuals are watching this on YouTube. And this book, let’s get into that talent stack. Attorneys have a ton of knowledge about talent. And what do you mean? What are you covering as it relates to the talent stack?

Joshua Lisec:

So the turn talent stack was originally developed by the creator of the Dilbert Comic Strip, who’s a client of mine. Scott Adams is his name. And he’s a customer of the ghost publishing experience that I’ve talked about. The idea of this so good, they call you a fake business, there’s two main thrusts here. The first one is that people have been asking me to write my own nonfiction book for years now, years now. Probably write around book 40 or 50. “Dude, you should be writing your own books. You need to be the one who’s writing nonfiction books, not for every last CEO of the Inc 5,000 or Fortune 500.” And I would say, “Okay, we’ll get there. So I have a few thousand more books I need to write myself first perhaps.”

Anyway, I realized I could not write the most obvious book. The obvious book for a ghostwriter to write is the book that every ghostwriter writes. Consider the books that Scribe Media has produced for themselves. Consider the books that every self-publisher and professional book writer has released. What do they all talk about? How to write and publish your book? From my perspective, that is a bad idea. That’s a bad idea. It’s a self-serving one. So perhaps it’s useful in that regard. It does not have standalone value. It does not have a shelf life of 20 plus years. It is a free lead magnet that you’re kind of paying for. So it doesn’t have inherent value in and of itself. I prefer to produce books that are in that 99th percentile of persuasion. And so I realized I had to go further than say Joshua Lisec’s Guide to Writing Books, because that would be terrible. So I realized what is the real value that I offer authors? Well, I’ve just described it.

It’s what happens before you decide to write a book. It’s the documentation of your unique set of experiences, skills, credentials, yes, your talents that you have, that you have demonstrated you can use to help clients. I realized that the greatness of my work comes before the book itself. And it’s not just simply writing the book because anybody can write a book. It’s the right book. That’s the hard part. And then it’s also what comes after that. How do you convert readers into clients, readers into customers? How do you take that book and repurpose its content into courses, coaching, consulting? I’ll give you an example of this. We have a couple of marriage and family attorneys that we’ve ghostwritten and ghost published books for.

And they’re limited to the states that they practice in for their legal services, but they offer coaching at 2x their hourly rate, and they get it from readers who say, “I’m located on the other side of the world, but my attorney’s kind of an idiot, or my barrister’s kind of an idiot. Maybe you could guide us through this process here a little bit, please, save us some few hundred thousand in the long run?” And they’re happy to consult on that, but it’s because they wrote the right book. So there’s multiple upsells and cross-sells. And so that’s the first gist of this book, is number one, I realized I couldn’t write the obvious book everyone else did. So what’s this business about being so good they call you a fake? Some listeners, viewers might recall a book a little over 10 years ago by Cal Newport called, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, from the Steve Martin quote, that’s well known.

We have reached a new equilibrium in the economy. Because of the democratization via social media and other technologies, anyone can make it look as though they are unignorable. Anyone can make it look like they’re good or good enough. And usually the people who can spend the most on advertising have the appearance of being the best, even if they’re not. Even if the person who charges one 10th, their price, gets ridiculously better results, because that person doesn’t know how to self-promote well, because they haven’t found a way to maximally monetize their expertise. They’re charging 10% of what their competitors are, even if their competitors get much worse results, but have had a couple of huge wins that put them in a documentary, for example.

And so I’ve realized that my own experiences as a ghostwriter and what people say to me maps well onto this book concept. So what do people say to me, I get this all the time, “Joshua, there’s no way you wrote that many books. It’s literally humanly impossible. You’re a fake.” I get that a lot. Clients of mine. I’m going to hold up… This is a cardiologist named Dr. Philip Ovadia. He’s performed over 3000 heart surgeries. He has a private telehealth clinic. He works with clients one-on-one. And when they post their testimonials or their case studies, what happens? Everyone calls him a quack. They say there’s no way that’s humanly possible to lose that much weight and improve your numbers that much.

“You guys are all on TRT,” for example, testosterone replacement therapy. “You’re on steroids. There’s no way you can do this. It’s obviously fake.” And what happens, you, as the subtitle says, command attention, because attention is influence, and influence is cash money. So if you want cash money, you want influence. If you want influence, you want attention. And if you want attention, your results must be so bombastic relative to the average, you must look insane. You must look like a fake, a fraud, a cheat and a scam. And that is how you get attention. Perhaps you might say steal attention away from incumbent competitors who are in the magazines and the documentaries and have all the billboards and they’re spending multiple seven figures a month on advertising. That’s how you win. And that is the message of so good. They call you a fake.

Well, how do you, in fact, produce predictable results with consistency for clients that are at such an elite level? And that’s what I’ve been doing for my clients for 12 years, is producing books for them that get results that are so good, the general public and perhaps your envious competitors assume they have to be fake.

Chris Dreyer:

I think that’s what we’re all trying to do, is be our authentic self and show how we are the choice and not a choice and stand out among a very saturated crowd. Particularly in the legal vertical, there’s just a sea of competitors. One of the things you said recently on your Instagram, is you said, “Becoming the number one uncontested authority isn’t about writing a book Readers can put down. It’s about writing a book they will put down in the middle of reading to hire you.”

Joshua Lisec:

Yes, I see this quite often for clients. It goes without saying that we need the entire book to be good. And I have a structure for writing an authority book that converts readers into clients that is in So Good They Call You a Fake, how to do that. But I have gotten reports going back to 2016… And by the way, I have maybe about 30 testimonials, including video testimonials, of authors who say, not only do I have a ghostwriter, which is almost taboo in the business world to announce that you had a ghostwriter, but then they name their ghostwriter and then they record a half an hour video talking about how important it’s to hire that same ghostwriter. And that’s me. I get that a lot. And one of the consistent, let’s say anecdotes that I hear is, “Joshua, I’m getting customers, new customers, new clients,” in as few as 15 minutes after their purchase of my book. I’m getting customers within five days.

So the cardiologist, Dr. Philip Ovadia, he got five, let’s say in terms of price range, high-end private clients, concierge medical clients during his book launch. During the first week of his book launch, he got five. And then he realized, okay, I need to operationalize and systematize this thing, because this is going to be bigger than I ever thought. So it’s a good problem to have, working with me. Another client located in Europe, one of my favorite testimonials of his is somebody said to him, “I bought your book. I got chapter four. I’ve seen enough. We need to hire you.” And that person has become a client and a stated client for over a year. This particular client, he wanted to create a course spinoff, but his book has been so successful at creating clients for him, what’s called in marketing demand creation, which is one of the most difficult things to do, by the way. Rather than let’s say, attracting the demand that already exists, creating new demand for services, almost impossibly difficult.

But I’ve cracked the code on how to do that, and it’s through an authority book. They go, “Oh, I had no idea I needed this. I do need this. I’m aware of the problem. I feel the pain of the problem. I realize the cost of in action. I understand that you are uniquely capable of adding value. I understand when nothing else that I’ve tried has worked. You are the only one for me.” And by the way, that last 15 seconds or so there, Chris, that’s how you structure the opening chapter of your book. The opening chapter of your book is a sales letter, not just for the book and for your services as far as I’m aware, no one else talks about this. I have a background also in direct response copywriting, in addition to the ghostwriting hypnosis.

So I realized that in terms of talent stack, hypnosis is advanced persuasion, ghostwriting is let’s say the cream of the literary crop in terms of professional writing services because how difficult it is to sound like someone, and then make them sound smarter than they could have on their own. And then you’ve got direct response copywriting, which is the art of showing people a few words, and then they say, “Okay, let me write you a big check,” in a few minutes after seeing that, which is insanely difficult to do, But my book is called So Good They Call You a Fake for a reason. So there’s a certain percentage of people listening who are saying, “BS. BS. There’s no way this guy can pull this off,” and that proves the point.

Chris Dreyer:

Amazing. Amazing. In relentless pursuit of excellence, you only know you ride when you have your haters, right? They’re your most valuable marketers. So let’s talk a bit about that because your book is right for some people. Your service is right for some people, but you want it to actually push away the people that it’s not right. The tire kickers are not your ideal clients. So talk to me about your haters as your most valuable marketers.

Joshua Lisec:

So we understand in nature, that to attract, one must repel. From let’s say the basics of the natural world, biology, to physics, to understanding of the atomic and subatomic world, that principle that there must be an attraction and a repulsion, that both of those happen simultaneously. So it is in building a successful brand with longevity. Realizing that my book is going to turn away a certain number of people, I understand that I’m going to lean into that, and I’m going to, by intent, repel them from me. And so I’ve gotten negative feedback from people who are opposed to self-promotion. So good to call you fake. I don’t want to be called a fake. I already don’t get enough leads.

Okay, that person’s not my client. That person’s not my client. Something else that I’ve observed is that my one star reviews and my, let’s say negative feedback from literary critics, what do I do? I screenshot that and I share it. For example, I have a book launch event coming up the weekend of our recording of this interview, and I got a terrible one-star review. But it’s so bad. It’s a good review for a couple of CEOs in the reputation management industry. And what we learn from that industry is that customers view one-star reviews to see if the bad reviews are, in and of themselves, bad. Do they speak ill of the person writing the review? And so my very first one star review on So Good They Call You a Fake, it says “Drivel.” It says, “Pure drivel. This guy just Googled a bunch of buzzwords and put him into a book. Laughably bad.”

That is a good review. Why is it a good review? The reason it’s a good review is because there’s no commentary on the content whatsoever. There’s no commentary on the content whatsoever. And I believe that law firms ought to be excited about the one star and two star reviews that they get on their services, be it on Google business, or be it on another platform. Because number one, you want your people to see the haters and how bad they are, how bad their bad reviews are. You also get the opportunity to reply to them. So if you come across gentle respectful and correcting this hater, as the case may be, you come away looking brilliant. You come away looking like a true business professional, versus picking up your toys and running away, which is what the initial feel, is the initial vibe that a lot of people have when they see a one star review.

They don’t want to lash back out at that person. No, haters are your most valuable marketers. At this book launch event, I’m going to get a big huge sign, and I’m going to plaster that one star review on that sign. And everyone who sees my book is going to see that one star review. It is going to be hilarious. People are going to say, “Wait a second, why is it a one star review? What’s happening? I better go and meet this guy.” Understand that haters are your most valuable marketers because they will spread your name like wildfire to an extent you could not have on your own. Something else you learn in reputation management is that critics are more likely to be word of mouth marketers than are fans, even superfans. And again, if you want cash money, you want influence. If you want influence, you want attention.

If you want attention, you want to be so good they call you a fake, so good they leave you once to review, so good they say you are a fraud, so good they call you a quack, in Dr. Ovadia’s case, so good, they say your license should be suspended. These sorts of outcomes are wonderful. They’re absolutely wonderful. What they also enable you to do is to become fearless, because nothing anyone says about you is bad. Whenever someone criticizes me, and this happens quite often on social media, and even in my unbox, what do I do? I share it with the title of the book. So for example, somebody yesterday called me a hell spawn. So what did I do? I quote tweeted that person tweet. And I said, “So good they call you a hell spawn.”

Chris Dreyer:

Amazing.

Joshua Lisec:

And what do I also do, I tweet a link to the book. So this is what happens. People will buy the book because of my haters. My haters are so bad, they create book sales. And you can do the same for you and your firm. Leverage your negative attention to increase your leads, and also your sales.

Chris Dreyer:

It makes me think of, in terms of the negative PR flipping it, Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street, negative article, and he turns it into a positive, and all this attention and it garnered, at least from the movie. I haven’t read his actual book or looked into his story, but Joshua, this has been amazing and your book, So Good They Call You a Fake drop on June 15th. The link’s going to be in the show notes. What’s next for you? And how can our listeners get in touch with you to learn more?

Joshua Lisec:

Yes, so I’m very simply located at lisecghostwriting.com, L-I-S-E-C, lisecghostwriting.com. We have a rundown on the usual services that we [inaudible], particularly the ghost publishing. A lot of people are curious about that and how that works because you don’t want a Word document. You need a book that drives your business for you. And a Word document can’t do that. The fastest way to learn more about this analysis and recommendations I talked about… I know a lot of you listening, you’re on Twitter, you’re on LinkedIn. I’m there @joshualisec. You’ll find me. Reach out. Let’s touch base. Let’s talk. So because I’m a boutique concierge experience, not an assembly line, I don’t have to work with everyone. And that means I can tell them the truth about their book project. I don’t have to say, “Yes, I’ll take your money. Look at this crappy book idea. They have no idea.” I don’t have to do that. I can can be straightforwards.

Chris Dreyer:

Thanks so much to Josh Moore for sharing his insights on book writing for gaining authority and ghost writing. The authority book can be thought of in three phases. Here they are again. Phase one, market research. You got to know who you’re writing for and what their pain points are. What keywords have high demand but are really low quality? Look for opportunities there. That will help make the theme of your book super specific.

Joshua Lisec:

I do not like these broad, basic type of simpleton books. Like Fundamentals of Personal Injury Law, terrible, terrible book idea, absolutely terrible book idea. What as much wiser is a mashup between your unique set of experiences. What else do you know and understand besides your work in, let’s say personal injury.

Chris Dreyer:

Phase two, talent stack analysis. Grab the Sharpies and post-its whiteboards and journals, make a big old list of what makes you, well, you. Every credential, experience, client success story, random skill, the works. Look outside of the law too. You see where those strengths align with the in-demand topics you found? That overlap is your unique value proposition. That’s your talent stack.

Joshua Lisec:

What have your unique experiences taught you that your clients gleaned value from? And then look at the sort of Venn diagram overlap between what the market is saying they want and what you are uniquely able to provide. And that’s the book.

Chris Dreyer:

Phase three, book positioning. Take what you’ve learned in the first two steps and outline your book. Highlight that one of a kind expertise that you have. Build up the reader’s problem and cast yourself as the person to guide them through that problem. Remember, the first chapter is more than an introduction.

Joshua Lisec:

The opening chapter of your book is a sales letter, not just for the book but for your services.

Chris Dreyer:

All right everybody, I hope we’ve added a few more tools to your kit. For more about Joshua, head on over to the show notes. While you’re there, leave a five star review. I’ll be forever grateful. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. Catch you next time. I’m out.