LinkedIn DM Strategy: 50+ Clients with HJ Chammas

John Nemo: A, B, C, A always. B, B, C. Closing. Always be closing. Always be closing.

HJ Chammas: Shirley.

John Nemo: Uh, you can't be serious. I am serious.

HJ Chammas: And don't call me Shirley.

John Nemo: Put that coffee down. Coffee's for closers only. Come after me.

HJ Chammas: I'm a man.

John Nemo: I'm 40. All right. I am so excited. I have a special guest with me. This guy sent me the greatest email of all time, so I knew I had to get him on the podcast. Hghamas is here. Uh, you're the best. So I don't even know where to start. I mean, well, to kind of set up the episode for people, obviously we're going to talk about this incredible journey that you've had, uh, using LinkedIn to basically start a business from scratch, skills, scale it, become wildly successful. And you sent me an email about how, uh, the book LinkedIn rich has really had a big impact on you. So we're definitely gonna talk about all that because of course I wanna shamelessly self promote my own stuff. But let's start, man. Let's start with your backstory. So where are you from? Where'd you grow up? You know, what were you doing professionally? And kind of take us up to the point where LinkedIn enters the picture.

HJ Chammas: Yeah, great. Uh, first of all, John, great to be on the show. Thanks for having me. And indeed, when I sent you that email, it was from the heart because your book and actually changed my life. And we're going to talk about that in a while now. Going back to my back end story. So my name is Ejid Chamas. My first name is Habib, so my friends call me Habib. I was born in Lebanon in the Middle east and I was one of those immigrants who left Lebanon for 20 plus years and then moved to different places in the world between East Asia and Dubai. And uh, I joined the corporate world and I went through all the ups and Downs. In 2017, I started being an author. So, you know, like every other author, I thought, I'm gonna change the world. I was a bit naive in a way, you know, in my own mind and, and, and, and that, and the publisher kind of, you know, took me for a ride. He saw a naive guy who wanted to change the world and they wanted my money. So I, I was pumped in a way. And I paid 65,000usd US dollars for a publisher and it all went down the drain. Trust me for that.

John Nemo: So brutal.

HJ Chammas: But nothing happened.

John Nemo: Let's pause there. Let's pause there. Because so many people, myself included, and I tell a Story where I once spent $30,000 US on Facebook ads back in the day when I had no money and was putting everything on personal credit cards, trying to sell online courses and had zero sales.

HJ Chammas: So what?

John Nemo: How did you not let that stop you? Ah. And where did that lead you to? Because so many people make them, um, not make a mistake, but just get taken for a ride like that. It's got to be so devastating. How did you overcome that and what did it lead to?

HJ Chammas: You know what? I don't want my wife to hear me. I couldn't face my wife in the eye and tell her, uh, I'm a loser. I was naive and I lost 65k. Trust me on that. So what I've done, actually, I went back, I took a step backward, started to study the publishing world. How can I recoup my loss? I just wanted to recoup that loss. That's it. Full stop. Yeah. So. So I started to study everything about publishing, marketing, and even monetizing, you know, a book and the services. So, uh, and then I republished the same book that failed. Imagine. Same book, different cover, different title, but different promotion plan. And the book hit the bestseller list. And after that, I was invited to the media in the U.S. i did the media tour and started to get on different channels, and I thought it was by luck. This is how it started. Yeah. So I published two other books and then the third one. So a total of four in a way. And two of them actually each sold more than 100,000 copies. And I was surprised by that. Yeah, like, for an author who's not known, selling that much was really a game changer for me. This is when I thought, I have something that I could start sharing with the world. In 2022, uh, in Dubai, a lady approached me. She told me, sj, you've done all of that. Can you teach me? Can you share that with me? So I guided her on all the steps for free, by the way, and her book made a bank. And she started to appear on stages and stuff like that. And she told me, I think, man, you have a business model here. You should start doing that. And going now to Facebook. Then I was SC again by some PR agencies, paying them tens of thousands of dollars on, um, it wasn't met at that time, Facebook and Instagram and now doing all those ads and all this shit. Sorry for the word. Yeah, so that's okay.

John Nemo: I would feel the same way. I would say I may have said similar words when I had that experience

HJ Chammas: and really down the drain until I found your book, by the way. I forgot how I found you. Uh, on email or something or LinkedIn. And you gave me that book. I really studied it. It's like a surgery. I did the surgical treatment of the book. Really took every word seriously. And I thought in a way we share some common background. You face somewhere you wanted to stand up. Maybe different story, but same concept in a way. So you were kind of my role model. So I thought if this guy John could do it, I can fucking do it. So let me do it. Yeah. So I started really, I mean, people on LinkedIn copying your style. Because it's not because I wanted to copy you, because it felt real to me. It felt I'm very close in a way. Yeah. So I started copying your style. Like the connection request, break the eyes, nurture the relationship, don't be sad, this kind of stuff. And it changed my world. So in 2022, I, end of 2022, I started that approach. In two years time, I got 50 plus authors with whom I published their books and did all the promotion services for them without a single cent of investment on Meta or Facebook or Instagram or whatever just because of LinkedIn messages. So everything was outreached. I built a relationship with them, I never sold them. I was always wanting to add value to them. They loved that. And when one was vulnerable enough sharing them that I failed in the past, they saw themselves in me. This guy failed. I'm failing now. So if he could do it like what he did to me as well. Yeah. So I started to be the role model for others and decided to get on board. But we take it seriously because I know what it takes to fail, how it feels and how lonely it could become. So now I became like, I make it as a mission in my life. I don't want other authors to be calmed by the system, to be taken for a ride. And sometimes I do have them for free. I don't do the work for them, I guide them. Do this and this and that and you will get that. And like you did now, I publish in my new book in a few days. Publish, promote, monetize, which I'm going to offer for free for everyone, for those who cannot afford by our services. Because I really want to help those to avoid going to the same trap or the same hole and stay there.

John Nemo: It's amazing. And there's so many good lessons in your story, Habib. Like first and foremost, you took a free book that I gave away and literally built, you know, a six plus figure business from Scratch like, you just did the work. And that's, you know, very rarely when you emailed me and that was, the email I got was like, hey, you don't know me. Uh, I've never, you know, bought your courses, invest in anything, but I took your book, you know, because I give it away for free everywhere, similar to what you do. Pick your book. And I did this. And I'm like, oh, my God, I got to get this guy on the podcast. But it just shows you that the power of actually implementing and studying and learning. And I think too, what's really smart of what Habib has done in his journey that other people can learn from is you're being transparent, you're being authentic. You're sharing your own journey. The ups, the downs, the roller coaster ride, the failures, not just staying fixed on, oh, I failed. I lost 65 grand and got taken to the cleaners by this kind of scammy publisher. Out of that, I decided to figure out, how does this industry really work? How can I help other people avoid the same mistake that builds so much trust and rapport and camaraderie with people? Because you're being real. Just like I share in my book LinkedIn riches, all the ups and downs and failures and different journeys. And I love, I love to. I want to talk a lot about the power of books because I know another thing that we bonded over is I always talk about this, how books are the best marketing tool on the planet. They're the best business card, giving them away for free, you know, and a lot of people are like, wow, why would you give your book away for free? Don't you want to make a bunch of money off it? And I'm like, no, the book is the lost leader. Like, give the book away for free. And if you do a book really well, it's 50% your story, your journey, your authenticity. It's 50% your frameworks, your expertise, your strategies. So people not only get to know like and trust you as a person, they also get to see you demonstrate expertise. And out of that, someone, if you have a business built on the back of that, like Habib does, then you get hyper qualified leads. And that's literally what I've been doing every day in my business since 2012. And what you do. So talk a little bit about your experience with that because you've taken your book further than anyone I know. Like, as far as, you know, your clients have gotten on, you know, big name media, Oprah's podcast, things like that. Like, what have you Learned, I guess. What are the biggest insights, you know, discoveries you've made about how books work and why, especially for coaches and consultants. They're so valuable because we have so many in our audience that are coaches and consultants, and if they don't have a book already, or maybe they have a book that hasn't done anything. Tell me about why books can. Can work so well for them if it's done the right way.

HJ Chammas: Yeah. And I love the word can because from. From experience, not everybody will have that success. And this is, by the way, part of our process. So before publishing a book, we put a condition. We have to go through the manuscript, we have to go through the author profile. And you have to make sure that, uh, we can really bring that author, you know, to a certain level. Not everyone could be taken there because sometimes the story is not strong. Sometimes somebody is only, like, preaching and not really that. There's no, no soul in it, you know, uh, and that's very important. So we do that, this kind of screening before we get an author on board, because that's important for us. We want a track record. We don't want to fail somewhere, you know, so we really make sure that we can win, number one. Number two is what I learned, and this could be limited to my experience. I'm not sure if you share the same thought. I believe there are two breeds of people, the extroverts and the introverts. Those extrovert extroverts will jump on TikTok and Instagram. They go live and they just speak to the cam. Um, I can never do that. I'm an introvert. Yeah. On my own, just. I could speak for hours with someone, but on my own, to the camp, I can't do that. Yeah. So this kind of breed of people, I think they could find some success in showing up there and getting a brand name, a personal brand name. And then they could. With that personal brand name, they could sell their books. But for the most of us who can do that, and those would be, I think few. Percentage. About like 5% of the people could do that. Yeah. For the most of us. No, we need. We need. We need the book to speak for us. Instead of us speaking to the camp, the book is doing the talk. Because guess what? What I've learned in the process is when somebody picks your book and they see a book before reading it, they think that this guy really thought about all the steps to write a book. Otherwise, there is some material here, there's some content, deep thinking, deep thoughts. Otherwise, it's not. There's no merit for a book automatically that. That's a kind of credibility check. Now if the book really helps people and you're really sharing your story and it helps people, uh, it makes them see themselves, the mirror. Like you're doing something that they're going through now or you went through something in your life that they're going through now, they would think you're a step ahead of them. So imagine for a coach. Imagine each coach of our authors is being seen as a step ahead of their leaders. Not like somebody who's really far there, like not the Tony Robbins who can. I can have reached out to, like only a few steps ahead, I believe. And this is what I learned. People start to trust those authors. They feel that they can take their hands, they can take them to the journey and help them, you know, move from, from, from the whole described a while ago, pull them up to the other side, you know, of, of, of, uh, uh, of it. Yeah. So I think a book can do miracles. As you mentioned. I call IT Business Card 2.0 is the new model of a business card. Uh, because if you do it well, if you have the right lead market inside of it, not a one, really something that, you know, you keep on adding value. That's always something. I say, keep on helping and helping and help some more and then really help some more until they ask. And this is the strategy. We never sell. And I tell my authors, never sell. Keep on helping, adding value. Take them up to the value ladder and trust me, they will ask for your services instead of you asking them. They will come to you. And that's really phenomenal for introverts who don't like to send it to anyone. In a way.

John Nemo: Yeah. And that's brilliant. And what I've learned with a, uh, well done book is two things happen. One is someone does all the work themselves and has great success, like Khabib. And they become your greatest salesperson ever because they're telling everyone, hey, you got to read this book. I used it and look what I was able to accomplish. And they're promoting your book, they're promoting your brand. They become your unknown salesforce around the world. That's type one. Type two is the people that read your book and go, this is phenomenal, but I don't want to do the work myself. Can I just hire you to do it for me or, or I so relate to your journey. I want to get a few steps further to where you are. Can you coach me, consult for me? Teach me, take me by the hand and bring me where you are. So that's what ends up happening. Now what I want to know is, um, where you know how to build a business on the back of this, Right? Because I was the same as you. And I was laughing when you said earlier when I published my first book in the early 2000s, well, this is good. All I have to do is hit publish, and I'll just make money and everyone will be. I didn't realize at the time, like, I need a business behind this. Like, so what for? Especially for coaches and consultants, because that's kind of, you know, a lot of our audience and a lot of who you serve too. What are the best, you know, quote unquote business models to build behind this? How do you, you know, how do you set that up ahead of time? What's your advice on that? Sure.

HJ Chammas: Let's set some basics first. Rule number one, or myth number one, you can never make money out of royalties. This could happen for, for, for a minority view. A lot of authors come on board. They think royalty is going to put food on the table. I tell them, if you're after that, please don't contract us. Don't do it. Don't jump into that world. It's not yours. So that's rule number one. Rule number two is most authors think what I have in mind is what I want to write about and tell them that's also wrong. Study your audience. Understand the pain point. What makes them up at 3am in the morning, you know, and, and they're thinking about, that's their pain. Is your book bringing a real solution to a real problem? If no, go back to the drawing board and make sure that you're offering great solutions to real big problems out there. When you study your readers or your target audience, when you do that, everything falls into place. If your content is really helping them, even by reading your book, feel that the needle is moving in the world, they're feeling better, they're feeling that, yes, I could do it most of the times. And this is the rule number three. Most people, by the way, in most readers, I'm not sure if it's laziness or they trust the author. They feel that, okay, what I've read is great, but I can't do it alone. Like in my case, I, uh, read your book. I thought I could do it. Yeah, but still, after some time, I wanted, I wanted to become your client

John Nemo: because I knew how do I take it farther? I'm only one person. Yeah, yeah.

HJ Chammas: Exactly. Because. And that's what my. Our authors tell us. They tell me we're an author. We're not a, um, marketer, you know, and do that stuff for me. I'm not a writer sometimes I'm an author. I'm not a writer as well. Do the ghost writing for me. In a way. Yeah. So when they built the right. If they push it to real problems, and if they build the story in a way that's personal and people could relate to it, and they build trust. You build trust. Like, yes, I'm moving you there. I'm adding value beyond the book. So I think there's a step between the book and getting clients. You need to nurture the relationship beyond the book by maybe inviting them to a podcast, maybe a newsletter, uh, maybe a workbook, maybe a cheat sheet, maybe. I don't know what. So whatever makes sense to each person's case. They should be adding value beyond the book. And this, I called it the trust tank. So you're building that trust tank. You're building credit with your audience so that whenever they feel they're ready and one day they feel they're going to be ready, maybe not immediately, because they will try themselves. They're going to fail a bit. They're going to try to get the learning from the book. They see it's doable, but they feel, I don't have time for it. And this is when they will approach the author and say, okay, I want your services. How can you help me? Imagine jumping on a call instead of you doing the sales. Somebody is telling you, how can you help me? It's the same way. After I've read the book. I built my business. I approached you two weeks ago and told you I'm ready to get to be. I want your services now to go to the next level. So it's the same thing, you know, because you built that trust tank when I. When I would. In my case, uh, you had a lot of my trust. When I read your book, when I applied whatever was in your book, I found the success. But then I thought, if what I applied on my own got me that success, what if that guy could do it for me? And this could be on another level, in a way.

John Nemo: Yeah. And that's brilliant. Like, you just see this. It makes it for the easiest sales calls ever. But somebody comes in and says, I hired my business coach this way. Back in 2012, I randomly found a book on Amazon that I liked the title of on marketing. And I read the book and I fell in Love with this guy. He was really funny, self deprecating and his marketing advice was brilliant. So when I came to him as a prospect, I was just hoping he would take me. I was hoping he would take my money, was begging him. And that was such a different thing than who are you? What makes you better than all the other coaches? Why would I choose you? What's your backstory? I already knew it all from the book and I was pre sold. So it obviously leads to a natural extension where as a coach or consultant, you know, people. And I did see this early with the LinkedIn book before I even had a done for you agency people saying, would you just do this for me or would you teach me how to do it? And that's where I built. So sometimes you don't even know. But like I built an online course just because people are asking, like, do you have videos to go with this? Uh, yeah, I'll make some. Okay, sure. You know, can you just do it for me? Yeah, I'll hire some people and I'll create an agency. And so I think the business follows from it.

HJ Chammas: Uh, I'd love.

John Nemo: Before we pivot into kind of what you did so well with LinkedIn, I'd love to know a little bit more. Kind of behind the curtain with, with Amazon, with promoting books, with getting bestseller lists, with getting featured on podcasts. Because you have such a good, you know, company, it's called Authority Publishing and we'll link to it everywhere. You have these different packages where you guys will help people, not just write the book. Um, you'll even take people that have already published a book that didn't do anything and audit it and figure out what went wrong. Then on the back end, you'll create ways to get it on bestseller lists and ways to get them on these big podcasts. What have you found about how to really sell a book? Well, let's say on Amazon and then also how to get people featured on podcasts. Is there a certain secret sauce to it? Is it just all depend case by case on the author and what makes them different? How do you tackle that?

HJ Chammas: Yeah, sure. So first of all, we divided our model into three main pillars we call the publish, promote and monetize and actually look at them as a tripod. If one of them is absent, the whole thing will not stand up. Yeah, uh, because if you don't monetize all of that. And when I say monetize, that's not royalties. I mean monetize your services. You could never sustain. Keep on promoting your Book and your brand in a way. So when you publish a book, I think we spoke about that earlier, I don't want to go too far into that. Make sure that your book answers a real problem to a real audience and offer solutions to real problems from real audiences. Rule number one. Yeah. And of course that there should be really some processes, some good content that really makes changes. But this is where most of the publishers and the world stop. The publisher book and they fail you. Goodbye, delivery on your own. And you don't know what to do about it. So what we do is we take the hand of the author and to the next step. Let's promote your book. Let's promote your personal brand. So what we do is for best sellers, I think we think of it like stairs. Stage number one, you should become an Amazon bestseller. But that's the easy one. Stage number two, you could become a USA Today bestseller. And that's another different level of, of getting sales. And then level number three is the New York Times bestseller. So we always tell our authors, start with an Amazon bestseller. Don't dream of the next two until you build a business. Because once you start to monetize your services, you could dream of the next level and the following one. So to go on the Amazon bestseller, if your book really has great content, nobody will see it unless you promote it actually. So what we do is, uh, we start running Amazon ads because Amazon is a search engine like Google. But the beauty of it is it's a search engine that has your credit card and you could, with one click you could purchase the book. So imagine now you advertise on Amazon what the crowd is because they're searching for something on Amazon and you run Amazon ads for your book. But of course Amazon ads, if not run when it could be, you could lose a lot of money there, by the way. Yeah, so, so you could master the keywords, the categories, the asins. So how to market, you know how to choose the things you want to uh, uh, bid on big keywords or asins or categories, and then really understand the finances. Like, okay, how many clicks I could afford for making a sale, when should I drop that keyword, so on and so forth. So there's a lot of manual work that should be going on a daily basis in the beginning at least to optimize those ads to start to deliver results for you. But Amazon ads by itself will not really make it that big. So then number two is we go to the book promotion sites. There are a lot of credible book promotion sites out of thousands who are not credible. So you should so over experience because we burned a lot of money myself. Like I spent 50 here and 100 there and. But they add up, man. Yeah, I know what works and what doesn't work. So we compiled a short list of book promotion sites that really deliver big results on small investment in a way. So imagine now Amazon ads with the book promotion sites. Then imagine our book, a new book from a new author that doesn't have customer reviews yet. That's normal. Okay, so there's no social proof. We need to bridge that. So the way to bridge that gap is we work on editorial reviews. So each author have their own entourage in their own environment, some thought leaders. And we have them how to approach them, how to give them a book and ask for an uh, editorial review. Or we could do it for them. So it depends on, it's a case by case scenario. And then also to bridge the gap of social proof, we start nominating those books and authors for literary awards. Imagine now new author is an award winning or award nominee. Actually look at, sometimes we go to the movies, we don't know the authors and that movie is an award nominee and we want to watch it. The same shit for books, award nominated. Even if you don't win it, it's great. It's a social proof by itself. If you know how to promote it and you display that this book is an award nominee for blah, blah, blah. Uh, so we bridge all of that cap. So now imagine social proof is there. You're getting the Amazon ads, you're getting the book promoters. But I, in my opinion from an experience being guests on, um, podcast, and those are the tier one and tier two podcasts will really move the needle a lot. Because what I call that's leverage. You're leveraging other people's connections or followers. So imagine now you jump on a podcast and you're through. You're just sharing a story. And when people love it, people will come to your book, they will come to your visit your website and this is what moves the needle. So now imagine on Amazon, you're running the ads, you're getting all that social proof and you're getting fresh traffic from podcasts out of Amazon. Amazon would love you, man. Wow. This guy is getting us fresh traffic. And they will start to show more of your book. And they start. And even your bidding on the ads will start to get lower. So the more you have traffic and the more you have conversion, the less the bidding. And this is where you become profitable over time. It needs about six months by the way, to have profitable ads on Amazon. People think I'm going to make it, I'm going to break even in few weeks. I have never seen that happen. Actually I saw that in only in a couple of our books because the authors had lots of followers, they were kind of celebrities. So uh, we do all of that to the promote. But this costs money to be here and there and Amazon, blah blah blah. So we need to monetize in parallel. So the monetization, the third pillar, we plant seeds for it in step one, promote publish. I mean, because when you publish your book you need the lead magnets. You need to see how can you draw people to read this to your ecosystem, your website, your funnels, your CRM and nurture that relationship with them. So on the monetize also we have uh, some values or like values we live by. We always tell the authors, please don't sell, don't sell anything. When people come to you, nurture the relationship, keep on helping, send them articles, send them another book if you have or whatever and eventually they'll jump on a call. Even when you invite them for a call, don't sell, just add value and eventually they will purchase. And uh, this is what's happening in my case. So we have authors joining us for ghost writing that could be around 35 to 50k investment to publish their book. And trust me, we never sold them anything. They came to us because they loved what we do. And we have the other authors who publish the book and go into circles not getting anywhere on Amazon and they tell us, uh, can you help me from that point onwards? And also of course we could do that.

John Nemo: It's so brilliant. Yeah, you've really got the model down. And I know a lot about this too because I've done self publishing since the uh, early 2000s and I've made all the mistakes. And you know, I mean, I think we're at the point now where people know you can just publish your own books. You don't have to go to a traditional publisher. But having a partner like Khabib is so smart because a. I'll speak from firsthand experience. Amazon's really freaking hard. It's really hard to know how to get the right categories, how to get the right keywords. The ads are a whole nother animal. Uh, I've lost so much money on amounts. I've used different agencies. So like there's a lot involved there where you do want expertise. And I love, I love though how your model builds on all these different things, you know, so, you know, the podcast, um, traffic drives it to Amazon, which helps lower your ad costs. It's brilliant. So I want to pivot now and kind of finish up with LinkedIn, because obviously that's what we started with. That's how you came into my world. Tell me a little bit about kind of what you took from the book and implemented that worked so well because you really dialed in. And I'll actually show your profile here. Um, and this is actually, um, for the video folks, we'll actually do a little screen sharing. So, uh, we'll do a little feature of Habib here. But you've got a really good, and I'll even say, like just from the book, a really good client facing profile. You've got your social proof up here. You know, you make it super clear in your headline. What is, what do you do? It's not. CEO of authority Publishing. You're not talking about yourself. It's done for you. Book publishing, that could not be simpler, right? Oh, okay. I know exactly what I'm getting. If I connect with Habib on LinkedIn, done for you. Book publishing and relaunch programs. And then I love you, did follow the book. Exactly. You're so. And he says, because the two key things for LinkedIn headline are the service you provide and then the target audience. So you're saying, done for you. Book publishing and relaunch programs. Then you say four coaches and consultants.

HJ Chammas: Boom.

John Nemo: So if I'm a coach or consultant and I connect with Habib on LinkedIn, I know what's in it for me. He can help me with either publishing a book or launching it, right? And then he's adding another line, helping turn your book into leads, clients and authority. And then as we go through your profile and you know, even just what you set up on your own, you did such a nice job following the format that we've seen work well for client facing profiles, which is what I do, who I work with, why it works, what makes me different, how it works, right? So you're walking through and you're answering each of those questions with a real simple explanation. So what I do, I help coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs publish or relaunch bestselling books that then bring them. What. What's in it for them? Position them as the authority, turn those books into consistent, qualified leads for business. Who do I work with? You go deeper. Uh, you know why it works. We've talked about that. You know, you explain that in your profile, what makes you different? And this is where you tell a little bit of your own story, you know, failed under a traditional publisher, built your own system, sold over, you know, 100,000 copies, helped all these different professionals. Right? So you've got a really good client facing profile, which is a lot of people never get there. Right. So now tell me a little bit about your messaging. Right? Because we talk a lot about in the book LinkedIn riches and I scream it from the mountaintops. You know, the money's in the mailbox, it's in one on one LinkedIn messaging and DMs. Um, and so many people come back to me and go, oh, it's just all spammy and everyone's trying to sell and it doesn't work and everyone's just pitching. But you obviously found immense success there. So what types of messages did you use? What kind of formulas that worked best for you in your experience?

HJ Chammas: Yeah, sure. Before I go to the messages, I just want to add one point about the profile. John, I just copied and followed every single step you laid down in your book. Trust me, even the photo that has all the social proof. I saw yours and I wanted to see how does that translate to in my case. So I really followed, really to the point, at least to my own, um, knowledge that what you advise there. So going back to the messages, even in your book, by the way, you share some examples. You shared them. Um, I took them one by one, step by step. So first one is to connect. But when I connect, I plant a seed of why I'm connecting without being sensitive. I tell them I'm, um, connecting with authors, coaches, consultants so that we can exchange notes about how personal branding can help us monetize our services. So they think now personal. I also planned something about books. So personal brandings are publishing a book to monetize our services. I'm not telling them I want to sell you. I want to exchange insights with you. But in a way, I'm planning to sit down there that that's what I do without telling them m this is what I do, blah, blah, blah. Because in reality, nobody gives a about me. That gives a about how can I have them in life. Yeah.

John Nemo: Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people. Nobody cares about you, nobody cares about me. Care about themselves. Morning, noon and after supper. I built my whole business off that line. And it's true. Yeah, so. Yeah, so. So you get connected, you have a great message. Hey, positioning myself. It's a let's exchange ideas and insights. So then what goes into. Yeah, those early messages, how do you

HJ Chammas: get them message what was a game changer for me M. Which was actually kind of a copy of your message. So I tell them, tell me something I don't, that I can't see about. I don't, I can't know about it from your LinkedIn profile. And I tell them, this is mine. So what I tell them is how I starting Covid I started to work on Zoom and sometimes I forgot that in my shows, you know, I could stand up and stuff like that. And. But what that another seed is when I'm on Zoom, calls with potential, with consultants and coaches who want to build their brand of, uh, personal brand through publishing a book. So I'm telling them who I am without selling them, but they would know that that's the kind of people I'm always on a call with. And people reply and they tell me they become vulnerable and they share their stories. I love it. Sorry. Please go ahead.

John Nemo: Brilliant. So you did two things great. You did what I call the icebreaker message, which is simply like, hey, what's, you know, what's one thing I can't learn about you just from looking at your LinkedIn profile? Here's mine. And it's typically, you know, a funny, you know, self deprecating anecdote or a hobby or a passion outside of work that you don't talk about. And then you say you did even a better tie in, which is the funny Zoom story. And by the way, I'm usually on Zoom with authors talking about books and branding. Brilliant. Brilliant. And that shows people too, you're not AI, you're not a bot. This isn't templated. And that's such a great way to get engagement. And then, yeah, how do you move the conversation along? Because obviously we can make friends on LinkedIn all day long, but how do you kind of keep moving it towards seeing if this person's a lead or not for you?

HJ Chammas: Before I move to the third on the second message, I have over 50% reply rate, by the way. People love it. That's amazing.

John Nemo: Yeah, it's incredible.

HJ Chammas: That's the first time I see someone on LinkedIn who's not, you know, corporate style and you know, who's vulnerable and who's sharing. It's better. They tell me your main story and people love it and they open up and they love it when they open up because they become vulnerable. And by them becoming vulnerable, they will share their pain points. And from that I could build on. They will tell me, okay, I failed in publishing my book, or I failed in this or I'm failing, they open up, ma'. Am. And open up is a gate, is a gate opener to enter their world and start the conversation. Yeah, so, and then I take it, really depending on what they reply to me. So because each one, they have their own reply, but I make sure I reply to them, I don't take it for granted. Okay, I know. No, I look at this small opportunity from their reply on how I could pivot the conversation more towards personal branding or towards publishing a book. Okay, uh, so let's suppose they tell me about their story and something amazing I tell them, have you ever thought of sharing your story with the work for a book, for example? Yeah. So I really take it very personal. Now, for those who don't reply, I take them through a third message, which is another vulnerable story telling them. When I started, early in my career, I wanted to do coaching. I failed because people didn't trust me. They didn't know who the heck is this was, this guy. And I failed. Then I figured out how a book could position me as an authority and I read an article, sorry, I wrote an article about that. Would you like me to share it with you? Copying you. Give me an okay or thumbs up and I will send you the link. So I never sent it up front. I shared with them the fact, the context of the story and why the article if they relate to it. A lot of people give me the thumbs up and then I send them the article. So usually there's three, three messages, three articles. They could relate to either of them in a row before I start to slow it down with them. Now when I send them the link to an article, this is where the magic happens. Because within the article, I'm nurturing the relationship more, I'm adding more trust. They see me as more credible. They trust me more because I'm sharing great information with those article, not love. And then, uh, at the bottom of the articles I tell them, would you like to talk about that? Do you have something in mind? Shall we jump on a call? I give them a banner, boom, click a call with me. And they know that I'm not going to sell them anything because they already saw me on LinkedIn, not trying to be salesy, always asking for permission to send them even a link. Uh, and I saw a lot of conversions coming from those articles. Man, my calendar is about, at any month, 8 to 12 minimum calls, uh, a month, not now appear. Maybe I didn't learn something from you, which is how to kind of make, uh, sure that they are the right caliber of uh, before that I jump on a call like how to pre qualify them. So I'm not going. And that's something to optimize later on and learn from you. But uh, my Canada is always booked and you know, maybe I'm getting 30 plus percent conversion. But that's awesome.

John Nemo: Well, you do some brilliant things there. One is you're, you're planting seeds, you're talking about their deepest desires. Have you ever thought about sharing your story? Have you ever thought about publishing a book? You know, and you're getting them excited, going, yeah, and if I was ever going to do it, man, Habib seems like a guide I could trust. He's been vulnerable, he's been down this road, he's made all these mistakes and now I'm going and looking at his profile and looking at his website. Wow, he's working with all these authors. Look at all these social proof, you know, and then you've got another great strategy that you use where again you offer value upfront and you solve a real problem. Uh, and you offer to do it for free in the form of a call, which is a book audit. Right. So explain that strategy to people because that's another area where you can offer to someone that already has a book your expertise and that gets them engaged and you have services on the back end. So explain that one to people too.

HJ Chammas: Yeah. So for those who are already authors and publish the book but really are going to circles, I'm not really seeing any traction on the book at the end. That's fine, I've been there. Let's offer you a free. We call the book posture report. That's how we call it. And basically it says 7 to 10 pages depending on the book that really explains things to them in a very objective way through data. So I always tell them what you're going to see here. The good, the bad and the ugly. It's not the personal opinion is everything is driven by data. But explain to them why the title is wrong and why the COVID is wrong or the category or whatever the keyword indexing. Because we have some tools that we can extract if they did indexing the right way or the categories the right way and how much they're selling and kind of stuff. We go even to the description is the description following a certain psychology to convert. Uh, and trust me, there's a lot to do on descriptions also, uh, on um, starting with the pain, exaggerating the pain, introducing you as an authority and the outcome and the call to Action. So there is certain flow we need to follow, which I always find it lacking in most authors, by the way. So when we explain things to them through data, uh, and keywords, and I share with them the report after the call, I tell them, attend the call. At the end of the call, I'm going to send you that report, no questions asked. And you could do whatever you want with whatever you want with the report. Even if you want to go to another agency, another publisher, it's yours for free. This builds trust. Imagine I'm closing the call, not asking for business. The fact I emailed them the report, boom, it's another trust level. I'm, um, building those credits. And. In the trust bank. Yeah. What happens? They reflect on it most of the time. They tell me that's the first time a publisher goes to that level of detail and shares real data with me. Most of them, they want to make big bucks. They publish the book without doing that homework, and guess what? They either come back to us to republish their book, or they come back to us to publish their next book. But, uh, this is a game changer, in my opinion, from experience.

John Nemo: Yeah. And it's demonstrating expertise and providing value. And they've already been down a road with a publisher that didn't go well. So you're also tackling the core objection of. Oh, boy. I've been. I've tried this before. You're gonna take my money, too. You're gonna scam me. Whereas you're. No, no, no. I'll just show you why it's not working. Do what you like with it. It's a blueprint to fix it. And then the more that they see that, they're gonna go, wow, and this guy's different. Like, he's showing me stuff the first publisher never did. And we run into that, too, where people say, well, I used other LinkedIn agencies, and it didn't work. And I'll say, well, let's. Let's, you know, examine what happened. Right. And let's audit what you tried, and then we can point out, you know, why it failed and what we do differently or what we would suggest you do differently. And then they can decide do they want to do it on their own or not, so. Man, you're a genius. I'm just gonna. You just. I'm gonna work for you. You got it all figured out. Well, I love. I love. I love this conversation, and I so appreciate you taking the time. I want to make sure people can find you online. So I'm going To show a couple things, um, just to make sure for the video audience they can find Habib online. So he's got an amazing website. It's Authority, Authority and then a hyphen publishing dot com. So authority, hyphen publishing dot com. You can go there. He's got an amazing website, um, all kinds of insight and info. He's got, uh, I love the book covers. You guys do some amazing covers here. So definitely go visit it. I mean, you're going to see such a great. I mean, look at all the different titles and topics. And that is so cool. I mean, you've got, you know, everything from being on the stage to time management to, you know, innovation, creativity, parenting, you know, mindset.

HJ Chammas: Um.

John Nemo: Oh, look at all this stuff. Yeah, you've got so much good stuff. Uh, employee millionaire, right? Being a real estate investor, you've gotten clients, you know, um, featured in different places, TEDx interviews. Man, look at this. Like, this is incredible. So Authority Publishing.com is where you can find Habib's company. And then Obviously he's on LinkedIn as well. If you just go to LinkedIn.com and then the little forward slash in and then it's just HJ Shammas. So HJ C H A M M M M A S. And we'll link to all this as well, um, in the show notes. But, man, really, really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. It's been so fun to hear all that. I've saved your email. I'm going to print it and frame it. That's like I tell my wife all the time. That was the best email I've ever gotten. Some random guy I've never met halfway across the world took this book, implemented it, changed his life, changed his business. So now I have this sign, right? Look, I'm kind of a big deal. Look, I tell my wife, see, I'm not doing the dishes. I'm not doing the dishes. I'm helping people. I'm too busy. Change of the world. Habib Chalmers, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.

HJ Chammas: My pleasure. Just one thing to, uh, add. Also on our website under Author Resources, I'm offering a free copy of my book, which is practically everything we do in our agency. If they want to do it on their own, they're free to just read the book, implement everything. It's like how you taught me how to implement things on LinkedIn. I'm, um, teaching every other author how to implement their own thing on publishing a book and promoting their book and becoming bestseller and and monetizing their services. Everything is really detailed in the book that anybody could do on their own if they have the time for it.

John Nemo: So this is the new book. Thank you for bringing this up. It's called publish. It's your three pillars. Publish, promote, and monetize. That's the name of the book, and it says how coaches, experts, and thought leaders build authority and a personal brand, grow their business, and turn their books into profit machines. And yes, you've got it. It's on the website under author resources. You can get a free copy. Look at this. I'm gonna opt in and get it. I wanna learn all your secrets. That's amazing. Yeah. And I love that you're following that blueprint. You're giving away all your expertise. You're showing people you're the real deal. You're telling your story. And as we noted, people are gonna do one of two things. They're gonna implement it all and give you the credit and tell everyone they know and become a salesperson for you that you never even meet and drive people to you, or they're gonna come to you and say, this is brilliant. Nobody really has laid it out this well. I want you to do it for me. So, Habib, you got to figure it out, dude. I'm excited.

HJ Chammas: John, thanks for everything. And thanks to you. I changed my life three, four years ago. And what you do is really amazing. M. You do it out of heart and you walk the talk. You don't talk shit. You just do what you've been doing. And I love that.

John Nemo: Thanks, buddy. Appreciate you.