Is your business card still doing the heavy lifting? Discover the Tiny Book that communicates your value and closes the deals for you.
In this episode, Samantha chats with lawyer and entrepreneur Lin Eleoff about how Tiny Books are transforming how coaches and business owners attract clients. Lin shares her strategy for crafting business cards on steroids that makes readers say, “I need to work with this person.”
Listen in as Lin explains why writing the right book is critical, how to distil your expertise into something digestible, and why a book just might be the missing piece in your business.
Tiny Books don’t just tell stories, they build connections, credibility, and start conversions. Lin’s approach proves that big ideas can fit in small packages while delivering big results.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Empowering women through entrepreneurship (00:54)
- AFGO — Lin’s acronym for navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship (02:38)
- What makes you “trademarkable”? (04:24)
- What’s a Tiny Book? (05:48)
- Why less is more when it comes to your Tiny Book (08:53)
- Leveraging your genius zone (15:04)
- How your Tiny Book can guide clients right to your door (16:40)
- Getting in touch with Lin (18:32)
RESOURCES
QUOTES
“Is it possible for a woman to have it all? I think so, when she has her own business, and the business doesn’t have her, when she’s in charge and making money in a way that makes her feel fulfilled and happy.” – Lin Eleoff
“When we don’t have the awareness of what’s happening in our mind, then we are at the mercy of what we’re thinking and what the underlying thoughts are that drive it.” – Lin Eleoff
“Self awareness is the number one thing that we need in order to break through and push through the blocks that keep us from doing what we love to do, and not having our minds run us and talk us out of.” – Lin Eleoff
“All of us find it so easy to do that thing in our genius zone, and we don’t know how to explain what we do. That is our true genius zone.” – Samantha Riley
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WHERE TO FIND LIN ELEOFF
- Website: https://www.booktobusiness.com/
- Website: https://www.lineleoff.com/
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:00
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I’m your host, Samantha Riley, and today I’m here with Lin Eleoff. We’re going to talk about tiny books and how you can use a tiny book to turn it into paying clients. She’s going to really blow our minds. I love her purpose. So Lin, welcome to the show.
Lin Eleoff 0:22
Samantha, thank you so much for having me. It really means a lot to me to come on to podcasts like this and support other women and find all the ways that we do things that are in common and maybe new ideas. So yeah, thank you.
Samantha Riley 0:36
I love that, and we were having a little bit of a chat before you started. You’re super passionate about helping women to start businesses. Can you share a little bit about what you shared with me? Because I think that that is the most perfect context before we get into our main topic.
Lin Eleoff 0:54
Absolutely. My underlying drive is rooted in a belief I have that when a woman owns a business, she owns her life, she owns the money she makes. She gets to decide how to spend it. She owns how much time she spends at work, at play, doing whatever, how much energy she expends. I mean, she really has decision-making power that I can’t think of another instance that she could have it all. So in the sense that, is it possible for a woman to have it all? I think so when she has her own business, and the business doesn’t have her, when she’s in charge and making money in a way that makes her feel fulfilled and happy, then, and if I can help a woman do that, oh my gosh, I just that lights me up.
Samantha Riley 1:54
Yeah, I have a very, my purpose is the same, obviously, with my own spin on it. And I think there’s that, people need to understand there’s so many little pieces of what you just brought to the table then, like, we need to run our business with our rules, not someone else’s. Like, there’s so many pieces to what that looks like, making sure that you’re super in love with your business so that it’s not running you, making sure that you’re in charge of your calendar so your calendar doesn’t run you and when you get all of those pieces together, is the most empowering thing. Doesn’t mean that every day is going to be simple and easy. Actually, simple wasn’t the right word. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy, but overall, it’s super fulfilling.
Lin Eleoff 2:38
Yeah, I think you’re, I think you’re right, not easy, neither should we expect it to be, because I always say that starting your own business, growing your business, is an AFGO of epic proportions, an AFGO. That’s an acronym for another freaking growth opportunity. There’s nothing like your business or writing a book, in my view, that can test you to the core. It brings up all your stuff, all the self doubt, all the reasons why you shouldn’t do it, can’t do it, all the things they called, all the names they called you in third grade, right? It all comes back up. And I think that’s a good thing, and I, so I think the real challenge is, how do we manage our mind so that we can keep moving forward and growing while we are growing personally as we grow our businesses?
Samantha Riley 3:34
Yeah, I love that. Now you talk about helping women to stand out. And the way that we do that is being trademarkable. You say, you know, how trademarkable are you? Can you explain a little about what you mean by that?
Lin Eleoff 3:57
Oh, I use that phrase, first of all, I’m a lawyer, but I don’t use that just so that I could …
Samantha Riley 4:21
You are all good to go.
Lin Eleoff 4:24
So I think it’s really important that when it comes to messaging, that we are creating a message that is trademarkable. Now I’m a lawyer, so I mean, it may sound like, Oh, she just wants to use, like, lawyer words, but no, I’m saying that if you have a message that’s trademarkable, that means you’ve created something so unique, so different, that you could put a trademark on it. So think about what that means. That means it’s just so unusual that you could trademark it, copyright it. Right? And that’s important, because as a, and a fellow business owner, realise the importance of protecting our intellectual property. So we’re doing two things. We’re protecting what we’re creating, but at the same time, we have to work to make sure that we raise the standard to trademarkable, because if it’s that, then that means that you stand out and you’re doing something that is uniquely yours.
Samantha Riley 5:31
I love that. And then that gives us such a good frame on it to be able to say, Huh, could I trademark that? That’s really clever. I like that. Now you talk about tiny books. What is a tiny book?
Lin Eleoff 5:48
So, I teach coaches how to write, I really call it a mighty tiny book. And there’s two ways to write a book. Samantha, two different kinds of books, the right book and the wrong book. And so the right book is the kind of book that does what it’s supposed to do. And in this case, we’re writing books that will turn a reader into a paying client. That’s it. That is the book’s job, and to do that, we have to write something that’s going to hold the reader’s attention long enough to make them want to listen to what we have to say and then ultimately decide that they want to work with us, but we don’t want it to be too long, or else we lose their time. They put the book down, and we don’t know if they’re going to pick it up again, because this isn’t the kind of book where they’re going to go in the backyard and go on a hammock and spend the whole afternoon reading. No, it has to, we want them to go in and out. Because when people are in pain, they want answers. They don’t want you to throw the whole book at them. So when coaches say to me, Lin, I wrote a book and it didn’t get me any clients, and then they show me the book, and I know instantly that they wrote the wrong book. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book, but it’s not the kind of book that’s going to turn the reader into a paying client. Sure, it may have some nice stories in there and some inspirational words and some information that hopefully is not already on the internet, but it’s not doing its job, if by the end of the book, the reader isn’t saying, Oh my God, I need to, who is this person who wrote this book? I’ve never heard it this way before. I’ve never heard it explained this way before, and I’ve never heard it in a way that doesn’t make me feel so bad about myself because I can’t figure this out. So it’s a very particular kind of book, and that’s why I say it’s short, sweet, in, out, it has a job, do the job, and then get out.
Samantha Riley 7:57
I love this, and I, straight away it comes to mind, a friend of mine gave me his book at an event that we were at, and it was like, it was so thin. And the very first thing I asked him was, like, when he handed me this book, Oh, wow, that’s not got many pages. What? Just what made you decide to write a short book like this? And his answer was very similar to yours. This is specifically to get clients, and I’m talking about this framework, he said, but also it fits in a regular, standard envelope so I can send it through the mail without it costing me a fortune. And I’m like, Huh, that’s clever, but his book was exactly what you’re talking about. I picked it up. I read it in one sitting. It took me, I mean, I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure it was less than an hour, and I was like, Oh, my goodness, that was so good, because it was just specific around his topic.
How do you help people to distil everything that they know into a book like that? Because the people that I work with and a lot of the coaches I work with are like, they’re experts at what they do, and they’ve often done it for a long time. So the amount that comes out is huge. How do you get them to distil it into one little bite sized book?
Lin Eleoff 9:16
So first of all, I call this book a business card on steroids. It has to be bigger than a business card, because people will just toss that away right, like there’s no, there’s almost no point, I think, as soon as you turn around, someone’s going to throw your business card in the trash. But a book? Not so fast. They’re going to at least be interested and want to flip through the pages to see what’s going on. Now, the way we write this book is, here’s the distinction that I make, nothing that goes in this book includes your paid content. So I get it. You know a lot of stuff. You know how to teach a lot of stuff, but the mistake that people make is they put their paid content in the book. I was speaking to a woman the other day. She had a $10,000 program, and she wanted to, she thought, well, I’ll just distil that down into a book. And I’m like, why would you want to do that? She said, well, so that I can, you know, help people. But okay, think about that … which one they’re going to pick, because the illusion will be in the reader’s mind that they can get everything they need just by reading this book. So it doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense that you would write a book that shoots yourself in the foot. So the book that we write is your free content, and it makes a case for someone needs your paid program.
Samantha Riley 10:46
What are some of the considerations for someone that’s listening to this, that’s thinking, okay, logically, I understand that, but how do I do that? Like, what would be the first step to understand how to distil that down without giving the how, which is essentially what we get paid for?
Lin Eleoff 11:10
Right. So here’s the thing, Samantha, and I don’t know if I’m going to answer your question in the way that you might want it to, but we, it comes into my program is that they, they work with me one on one, and I don’t, I don’t think there’s a way for me to figure out how to do this other than work one on one with everybody that comes through, because there’s something that I do that is able to, you know, this is my wheelhouse, so I know how to ask certain questions, pick out the right things. It’s like first, my first career was in television news, where I had to learn how to ask questions, get the story and then tell it in 60 seconds right. And then as a lawyer, again, learning how to ask questions to get the right answer. And so I think that skill somehow has come together for me to ask all the questions about all the ideas that you have in your head, and then I can somehow see which ones are relevant to this particular project, what we want to put in this book, and what belongs in your paid program, in a product, in somewhere else. And so I often hear, people will say to me, how did you do that, Lin, because I’ve been working on this for the past year and a half, but we just did it in 90 minutes. And I don’t always have an answer for that. Even my mom will say, Where do you come up with this stuff? And I don’t know, but I see it, and we put it together. And oftentimes, you know, like I recently had one of these one on one sessions with someone who I thought, how, oh, I don’t know how this is going to come together, but it was so compelling, her story, and the way I was, what I was asked, was bringing out stuff that she didn’t even think to say, even in the questionnaire, or anything that I asked. And by the end, we created a book. It’s called, Live Thoughtfully, Die Responsibly, and it’s about a very difficult subject, like, how do you want to plan for your death? And if you ask most people like, do you want to think about them? Go, I don’t even want to think about, I want to know, what I was able to extract, right, right? But, but then, if I asked them, if I said to you, but Samantha, what if you died, and your family, because you didn’t plan things, that you could have made decisions and you didn’t, and that left your family feuding, some relationships broken for a year or more. In this case, this woman, she was in a feud with her sister that lasted for over a year. Her father went into deep depression because they couldn’t agree, and so they couldn’t just grieve. They were fighting. And so whenever I, when we started to tell that story, Johanna was telling it, people were like, Okay, I understand. And so, yeah, so that’s my ability to somehow get to the, make the point, I guess I’ve been trained to do that. And so you don’t have to have all the answers in how to put all this together. You just have to have the information that you have in your head, your expertise, your talking points, and then we, together, create this trademarkable message that becomes an entire book on which you can build an entire business, and it dovetails into your paid program. So it all kind of comes together so you don’t have pieces of a business anymore, but the book is like the mortar that holds all the bricks or the pieces of your business together. It’s kind of cool.
Samantha Riley 15:04
I love that. I love that. And you know, when you were talking about that, I think that all of us find it so easy to do that thing in our genius zone, and we don’t know how to explain what we do. And that is our true genius zone, right? When we’re just like, Oh, it’s so easy. And so many people can get caught thinking that it’s so easy for everyone, but it’s not. When you’ve got a gift, like you’ve got, it seems easy to you, and everyone else is like, wow, how did you do that? I wish I could do that, and that’s super valuable.
Lin Eleoff 15:39
Well, and I think that, and I recognise that in other, in my fellow business owners and coaches, I see things that they do, and when they come in and they’re working with me, I learn so much from them. So, yeah, they’re learning from me. But for me, because personal development is as important as business development, I’m like a sponge, learning from all of these women who come in with all their different expertise, and it just helps me learn and grow and get better at what I do. But it’s hard to see no matter how good you are at what you do, it’s hard to see what other people see, right? Because you’re behind your eyeballs, you’re looking out, correct? You can’t, like …
Samantha Riley 16:25
You’re in the weeds, yeah.
Lin Eleoff 16:27
You’re in it. And you’re like, I don’t know, but I can’t figure this out. Well, it’s because you’re, you’re back here, and you need somebody out here looking at you and asking you questions, that kind of thing.
Samantha Riley 16:40
Yeah. Love that. For the people that work with you, your authors, how did they use that book? What I mean is, how did they get that out to their audience, so that they get the right people in as clients?
Lin Eleoff 16:55
So the objective is to get as many people as possible to read the book. It’s not a question of, how many books can I sell? Because you’re not doing this to sell books and make, the book is $10 and you want to make $10,000 a month, you have to sell 1000 books. But if you have a $2,500 program, you just have to sell that four times and let your book be that, sit at the top of the funnel and get people in, so you what you really have to do is figure out what your funnel looks like, and then put your book to work, whether that’s in paid ads or on a podcast. And if you had a book, you would be talking about it, and you’re, that could be, that could be your own ads, right? You can run ads in your podcast about your book, and so people are going to read your book, and then the next logical step will be to reach out and inquire about working with you. So it’s like the book has a role in the, and typically, I think that it can sit right at the top and feed into your podcast, feed into your speaking opportunities, if that’s what you want to do, feed into your paid ads, your Facebook Group, whatever it is, the book is always there, so you want to get it out to people, and then once it’s in their hands, it has a job to get them into wherever you want them to go.
Samantha Riley 18:32
Love that so much. So for people that are listening, that are like, okay, you’ve got me intrigued. I want to be in your world and learn more about what you do, where can they go to find out more about you, or to stay in contact or to follow you? How do they get into your world?
Lin Eleoff 18:50
Sure, so you could go to booktobusiness.com and that will get you started in the process of, I have free training there, where it sort of explains in a little more detail how this works, why it works, and how you can decide if you want to hop on a call that to determine what it looks like if you had a book in your business, and whether it would make a difference. So, yeah, booktobusiness.com. is the easiest place to go, and it’s also easy to spell.
Samantha Riley 19:27
That is a good one. What is a final parting thought that you’d like people to take away from this that will get them thinking, or maybe to take a first step of action, whatever it is?
Lin Eleoff 19:43
So I think that the biggest roadblock that stands in front of us is ourselves. We think I don’t have a strategy, I don’t have a book, I don’t have a podcast. I can’t do what Samantha does. I can’t speak the way Samantha does, like we come up with all this stuff in our heads, and I think when we don’t have the awareness of what’s happening in our mind, then we are at the mercy of what we’re thinking and what the underlying thoughts are that drive it. So I’m all about paying attention to what’s happening in your mind, because that’s where the gold is. That’s where, when you’re hearing yourself say, I can’t do that, the very first step is to hear it and say, Look, I just said I can’t do that. Do I want to believe that? And then it starts to unravel from there. But so self awareness is, I think, the number one thing that we need in order to break through and push through the blocks that keep us from doing what we love to do, and not having our minds run us and talk us out of.
Samantha Riley 21:06
So true, absolutely. Lin, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I think that what you talked about, there’s going to be a lot of people that are listening that are like, Huh, that’s just opened up some ideas for me. So thank you so much.
Lin Eleoff 21:21
Oh, you’re so welcome. And thank you, Samantha, for having me on your show.
Samantha Riley
Such a pleasure.
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