Link to 24:44 minute video interview https://youtu.be/MA-5YFGLerU
I used Descript to produce the transcript of Author Spotlight on Cedric Crumbley.
Judy: Well, the author spotlight is an opportunity where you would share about your book and how it’s working in your business.
And it’s an interview. I just finished doing one. Oops, sorry. I just finished doing one with another author and.
Usually, they are 30 minutes or less. And I ask you some specific, you know, I asked you about you. I ask you to share how you came to write the book. Okay. Who the book is for? If there, if there are, you know, as you were doing the book, did you research, did you find out, well, my book is like this one, but this is what I did different in mine.
And then sharing. Cool a cool story or two about you because
Cedric: and getting back on track, especially when I’m sleepy. Just say, Hey, Cedric, I come back.
When did you publish?
Judy: I, I totally get it. Look. How, how are you doing now? You’ve published your book. Yes.
Cedric: Back in 2014.
Judy: Okay. And how, how has it been doing.
Cedric: Awesome. I may, I never expected anything. I honestly, I never thought any about what bought a book.
Right? It was Ted Prodromou who put me up to it. He, he had told them about my story and he was like, “dude, you need to put that in a book.” And I’m like, nobody wants to read a book about an army guy. Right. He’s like, they want to read your story, you know?
And once that thing was published, I mean, I got an interview by newspapers. I was in the army at the time they had this thing called the “Army Recruiter Journal” they put me on that. I mean, it was like the whole world opened up. I mean, I got brought up to speak. I got a client that read the book.
Basically, I was doing a lot of these interviews kind of things. And ended up getting a client. One of my longest clients ever had for I think it was 18 months was paying me for. As a retainer and I didn’t ask for it. She, she, she reached out to me. Cause at the time everybody, everybody comes out of the woodwork.
If your book is good and it’s useful – the secret to getting clients
If your book is good and it’s useful, everybody comes out the woodwork and they want to pick your brain. And I kinda got burned. I’m like, dude, I’m not helping nobody else for free. And she was like, Say it again. I know you’re tired of having people who want it for free, right. If you, like, I set aside $1,500 a month to pay you and I’m like, I call you in five minutes, so
Judy: wow.
But how, okay, so typically, you know, over a million books are published every year, new books. So how, how, so this was an existing client?
Cedric: No, she wasn’t, it was just somebody, she read my book. And as you, it was a family friend. And she, she loved my book. She read it several times then I guess, cause she she’s in a different city and she reached out to me and she she’s like a financial genius, very successful.
And so she put me on a retainer after reading my book several times, but she’s . She kept talking about book. And I was like, okay, that’s cool. And then I never knew she wanted to pay me to consult her. So I’ve consulted her. I’m a business.
Judy: Yeah. Oh my God. That is, that is wild. And so did you do any active marketing of your book?
Word of Mouth Works
Cedric: Honestly? No. It was more word of mouth. People will read it and they would tell people like, man, you need to read this book. It kind of, it grew on its own. I mean, cause during this. It is on you. That’s what I’m saying. Life is a very unusual book. Ted would go and speak and he would tell people y’all need to get this book.
And so people would go and get it, and then they would tell people. Kinda like you ever heard of, there’s a book called, it reminds me of the Alchemist. It’s not as popular as that, but people, people talk about the acronym. They read this book and they tell people, you need to read this book, but it was kind of, how this book was like, but it wasn’t planned that way.
It’s not how I just wrote it because I was told to write and I’m asleep when I wrote it, I was like, okay, if I’m going to write this book, I was like, I’m gonna write it from me. And so there’s a lot of things I learned about sales that I didn’t want to lose. And I put it on his book after I put my heart and soul into a book.
Cause I’m like, I want to be able to pick it up and read it and apply it. And so that’s how I
Author Spotlight on Cedric Crumbley
Judy: wrote it. I love it. And I may just use our interview today as an Author Spotlight because you’re really answering the question. So I’m going to keep, I’m going to keep on you on this when. When you put this down and it’s a, it’s a short book, right?
It’s about a hundred, it’s a hundred and some pages. Now you’ve mentioned that you got a client and you started working with her right away. Could you talk a little bit more about that? How, how you were using the information and how that supported you in your business and how it supported the client, you were consulting.
Cedric: Well, she, she just liked the book because they knew me as, as they read books, they saw me. Cause I talk about being depressed, suicidal. They knew me when I was down and I didn’t know that I could get back up and they saw me go from a guy that was down. Couldn’t sail to being a top, you know, and doing pretty well in sales.
So they stay and then they got to read the book. And so. What I consulted her on. It was a couple of things. Cause she, she runs a business and she really, I found out and I, I noticed something about different business owners, business owners, they know how to do their thing, whatever that thing is. Right.
It’s greatest state financial knowledge. They know that, but they’re not in it’s there’s no put down on. They’re not very good at marketing themselves. They’re not very good at the sales technique. Right. So that’s what I was brought in. And so I would just ask you a question and it’s like is in the it’s in their head.
So basically my job was, I brought it out of her and I would ask her questions like, will you ever considered this? And I will ask, tell me about your business. And she would tell him about her business. Okay. Hey, you ever thought about this? And she would be like, no city and like, whoa, what if you did that?
As you could go and do it and it would bring man, she made a lot of money. Right. She made a lot of money.
Depression to Self-Development
Judy: Wow. Wow. Well, this is interesting because you know, when you’re talking about yeah, you went through depression and you felt suicidal. I never seriously felt suicidal, entered my mind once or twice, but I really suffered from depression all up until probably my mid thirties, very severe.
And I didn’t even realize it. And then I, I started, I got some help with that. And then I learned about exercise, which was also a way. You know, beat the beat that, what do you think was your turning point? How did you go from feeling despair? Because as you know what that is, to being able to turn that into a way that you can, you know, be the top salesperson and to share that information.
Cedric: So for us, it’s about coming out of depression and suicide. It was actually a friend who today is. She wouldn’t give up on me. So one thing about people, and this has been years ago, one thing about people contemplating suicide or harming themselves, they still are pushing people away. And so I pushed all my friends away and she was the last one to push away and she would just not, she wouldn’t go, she would talk to me in the morning, cause I was thought.
At, I think, seven or something in the morning. So she would call me at six in the morning and I would tell her I don’t want to talk. And she was like, well, you don’t have to talk. I’ll do the talking. So she would talk to me from my apartment all the way to my job. And I never, I didn’t tell her at the time, rather than her talking, by the time I got to my job, I was happy.
Journaling and 30-days
I mean, I was mad just hearing old stories. I was on top of the world, but she kept doing it. Every single day and it, it, she helped me get through it. And, you know, and I started journaling about my day and I did a challenge to myself. This is when things changed and it helped me get up your slump.
And I think anybody can do this. So I put myself on a 30 day challenge. I wanted to see what would happen if I. I actually prayed an hour in the morning and I said, well, I don’t know what’s going to happen if I pray an hour a day for 30 days straight. Right. And I’m a generalist thing. Right. I don’t know if it was just endorphins.
You could say it was God. I believe it was God. If you’re not religious, you can say what you want. I did this for 30 days and I journal I’m done. I documented it. Day one, nothing happened day two, day three, but by the 15th day I was meeting my numbers and I was the guy in shorts. By the 30th day, I was running a recruiting station in Houston, kind of storefront.
By the 30th day, we became the Tufts small station in the city of Houston and I won the award for. No, it was really cool. Right?
Gratitude Shifts Your Attitude
Judy: W you know, it’s really nuts for me too. I think it was it’s now it’s been over a year. I heard on one of the podcasts that I listened to you and I not even sure which one I heard about the gratitude diaries and that book.
Amazing. Fantastic people who’ve been telling me, oh yeah. Just write down three things that good things have happened to you during the day. And I thought, oh, this is such hogwash. I said, okay. I know. And I said, okay, so it’s hogwash, what do you have to lose? You? Like you, I said, okay, I’ll do it for a month.
I’ll see what happens. And as I’m listening, I was listening to the book and I’m, and I started my journal. And I went, oh, oh, oh. So that’s it. I’m reframing. What am I focusing on? I’m not focusing on, oh, I bumped my toe. I got a stubbed toe. I’m focusing on. Oh, the birds are singing outside. There’s sunshine.
There’s something good that happened. And so now I don’t have to look so hard for the good stuff and the bad stuff. You can stay over there. I’m not going, I’m not going into the dark forest. I’m staying over in this part of the world. Amazing.
Well, you transitioned out of, out of being in the army and then you took those skills. And then how, how did you start using (your book)?
Consulting as a Business from the Book
Cedric: So I started consulting the business business owners and people who knew me. And thankfully a lot of people online the online marketing community one gentleman sent me a client that’s actually in Canada.
And I just thought of getting clients from word of mouth, another word of mouth. They would be the remote book. Perry Marshall. He’s the Google ad-words guy. Man. He’s a really good guy. He wrote about me and his newsletters. Right. Really changed my life. So people would read his newsletters and I guess they would like, yeah, people would reach out to me and they will ask weapons.
Do you and Perry have I’m like, we don’t have any business. He might do. He wrote about, I didn’t even know, para was writing about me, your AMIA’s newsletter. And so I read it and I like, and I sent a message to. And I like, dude, thank you. He just missed me. He sent me a message back is well deserved, you know?
So he he’ll see things like that. People write about you, you know? Cause then everybody was like, well, who’s this Cedric guy
and I’m just a regular guy. I mean, there’s, I’m happening superpower. I’m just a regular guy.Superpower
Judy: Well, I think your superpower is you do tell stories and you are relatable because. You’re very down to earth. And I think a lot of people we run in you and I have both done it. We went into people who are salespeople and we’re running out the door because we don’t want it.
We don’t want to get blasted by them. We don’t want to get manipulated by them. And that is so not who you are. Yeah,
Cedric: right. Unless my company makes me do it now I work for a company now and when I’m not doing that. Yeah.
Judy: Well, you’re not manipulating people. You’re sharing information. I mean, I think that’s really where you’re coming from is coming from the heart.
Yeah. And it, and it’s good stuff.
Now, how did you meet Ted?
Because Ted and I have been friends for about 20 years. (Ted Prodromou, America’s Number 1 LinkedIn Expert).
Cedric: I want to say it was through Maybe Perry, Marshall put something out. And I went and got the book from the bookstore and I read it and I started applying it and I started getting results and I sent him a message on LinkedIn and he sent me something back.
Oh yeah, I know what I said. I said, I read your book. And I liked it and I got some results and Ted said, thanks. Hi, ever, you need to change the hidden. I know you make them. So I changed my headline and I came back to him. I asked him when he’d be my mentor and he lies. Sure. And he became my mentor. And honestly that led to this being my mentor.
Judy: And that’s, that’s definitely Ted. And for those of you who don’t know, we’re talking about Ted Prodromou, who wrote The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn. And I seriously, I have known Ted for 20 years. We served on a board together for the Bay Area Consultants Network. We you know, worked on some meetups together on video and different things.
And Ted is one of the most genuine, generous people in the universe. He’s also very smart and he has, he used to be very shy. He’s still shy, but he learned how to deliver his message with competence and power because he paid attention to how to do that. And so he’s a student, he’s still a student, but he’s also a fabulous mentor.
Brilliant guy. Absolutely. Are you thinking in terms of, you know, sharing your message and like you said, yours kind of just spread organically. If, if Pharaoh was way for us to help you connect with the people you want to be talking to, what could we, what could we do? So people who are watching this, how could they, how could they support you?
Good question. So I’ve had so many. Industries, contact me and use my stuff. But currently I’m making cold calls and lately I’ve helped the gentleman. He he, he paid me to teach him how to do cold calls. And so I’ve gotten rid of good, well, I’m a I’m I’m okay with outreach, cold outreach. So anybody that has sales team, that’s where my heart is at really helping sales teams.
I’m okay, too. But so anybody that has sales teams that want to know you know, how, how, because it’s more to it than just pick up the phone or sending an email. There was some internal stuff that goes on with salespeople that I don’t think a lot of people understand. You gotta be to come to them from that standpoint.
Well, maybe you give an example. I mean, because I’ll tell you, I don’t like doing, I don’t like doing cold calls. I mean, yeah. Most people don’t,
No One enjoys Making Cold Calls
Cedric: I actually don’t like making cool calls either. However, because it’s a very uncomfortable situation doing cold outreach sales people have a tendency to get beat down.
If so you, because that’s how you’re getting your revenue. That’s why you have this team doing outreach to bring in revenue. You gotta be able to understand, Hey, every now and then you need to pick that person up, ask them, Hey, how you doing? They just want to notice somebody cares about them. Are they going to dig on a waiver?
And they’re not going to, I mean, there’s studies that show. And in most industries, salespeople work, I think is 35% of the time. So there are companies out paying sales people going and getting 35% of the workout of them. And they don’t even know, but if they paid attention that they’ll study that show that
Judy: Well, it sounds a little bit like your now wife, you know, showing people that they’re being seen and heard is one of the best ways to connect with other people. And that applies if you’re having a conversation, if you’re looking to create a relationship, if you want to have better sales, if you called on me and I feel like you really care about me, I’m more likely to want to do business with you.
Okay. Well, that, that makes sense.
Inspiration
Cedric: The problem I have is I consult with other businesses and I do all kinds of stuff. I don’t know that, honestly, Judy, the problem that I have is I read so many books, right? Like I read David Oglivy.
And so the people who know me. They’ll contact me. I mean, I have the guy that launched a, a trucking company just different, crazy businesses. A gentleman came to me now he’s in I think loan loan make doing home loans. And so the thing is most businesses at their core are really marketing businesses.
So when you understand that you can really help any, any business. Okay.
Cedric’s Tip for Authors
Judy: If there was one thing you would tell a business owner who is an author about a successful thing they could do or something they could do that would enhance their book sales and their business sales. Because to me they’re related. What would you, what would you tell them to do?
Cedric: Before the book is written written or after?
Judy: It can be either one. How about after the, after? Because a lot of times people think, oh, it’s this big launch. woo woo. And I try to tell people, yeah, that’s a day in the life of your book, but your book is going to live a lot longer than that publication date.
Cedric: You have a different by four before boy, if you’ve already written a book, I would just do what I do now for my company.
I would write stories and provide a link to that book. People love stories. They’re crazy about stories. I write a story, a true story, and relate it somehow to the book and people will go and read like, okay, I like the story. Let me read whatever else his person put as the author.
Judy: And where are you publishing most of your stories?
Are you ?
Cedric: On LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the Place to Publish Your Stories
Judy: Okay. And because my primary audience, like yours, is nonfiction business owners pay attention you all we’re telling you. Use LinkedIn. It is a fabulous way to connect with your audience. And now you can create a newsletter on LinkedIn, which is nuts. Plus Cedric, you also pointed out. You started getting picked up because Ted talked about you, Perry Marshall talked about you and that happened not because you went, oh, help me. Help me. Help me. You said thank you for sharing this information with me. So you were generous if, I mean, it was a true expression. You said, this is what I got from what you shared and then they got back with you because you were, you were being a real person. You weren’t saying, oh, I’m a, you know, I’m this lonely little person over here. You were really sharing that you liked what they did.
Well, not everybody knows this. A lot of people, a lot of people have their hand out before they extend thank you.
Cedric: Oh, I see. Yeah. A lot of big names have helped me. It’s very humbling. If I was naming some names, it was amazing. I don’t even know why they do it is, it is big names. I have reached out and I said, look, check this out.
Hold on. You’re talking to me, but it’s pretty cool. If you just show gratitude, people it’ll be a, it’s amazing.
What Zig Ziglar said. “You can have everything in life. If you just help another people get what they want.” It’s very true.
Judy: I think it totally is. Now, if people want to connect with you, how would they get in touch with you?
Connect with Cedric and Get the Book
Cedric: LinkedIn is the best way. Probably on LinkedIn.
Judy: Okay. Well, I think that’s pretty awesome. And. I’m going to be directing people your direction, because this is the other critical part about being an author. Your book is a product, and if you don’t treat it like a product, no one’s ever going to hear about it.
And it’s okay. Because your message is so beautiful. You’ve embodied that you can show up and share it without being slimy, because a lot of people think sales and they go, oh, bad word or marketing. Oh, bad word. It’s not a bad word. You are simply having a conversation and being helpful. And I love it. Oh, you are so wonderful. What I’m going to do right now is just do my outro because. I wasn’t quite sure we were going to do it this way, but this has been an author spotlight on Cedric Crumbley and I’m Judy Baker, Book Marketing Mentor. And if you want to be an author and a spotlight, get in touch with me at bookmarketingmentor.com
Apply for Your Author Spotlight
(https://schedule.bookmarketingmentor.com/spotlight) and definitely check out Cedric on LinkedIn. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cedcrumbley/)
Thanks for joining us for Author Spotlight on Cedric Crumbley
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