https://youtu.be/GltLs_tkjQ8
Alinka Rutkowska is the CEO of Leaders Press, a USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling press. We talk about how writers can turn their books into bestsellers, the benefits of using books to grow your business and the differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing.
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Automate Your Bestseller with Alinka Rutkowska
Our guest is Alinka Rutkowska, the CEO of Leaders Press, a publishing company that helps nonfiction authors achieve USA Today and the Wall Street Journal bestselling status. She's also the author herself of several bestselling books, including Write and Grow Rich. And her books in combination have sold over 80,000 copies. So, welcome to the show, Alinka.
Thank you so much for having me here, Steve.
I'm excited to have you. And it's in the morning here in Virginia, but you're in Italy, right? So, it's in the afternoon for you.
That's right.
Just after lunch. So, hopefully that's not going to slow us down. So, I'd like to start our conversation as always about your entrepreneurial journey. So how does one become the CEO of a publishing company that helps entrepreneurs publish best-selling books? How does that even happen?
Well, for me, it all started with passion. I used to work in multinational corporations. And at a certain point, I just felt like there was a ceiling that I sort of couldn't push through. And it wasn't definitely, you know, the top of the company was middle management. And I was being pushed into roles that I didn't want to do. I wanted to do something that they didn't want me to, to do. And so, the best way out was actually leaving. And so, as I was considering that move, I wrote a book and self-published it at the time that was over a decade ago. And the royalties from that book basically exceeded my corporate salary.
So, when that happened, I thought, hey guys, I don't really need you anymore. I'm leaving. They even paid me to leave. So, I had those funds, funds from the royalties, and that allowed me to comfortably explore what I really was meant to do here in this world. And so, it started with writing more books, with marketing those books, with helping others do the same, and steadily it grew into Leaders Press, where we now help entrepreneurs turn their book ideas into bestsellers, including the big list and distribute through Simon & Schuster, which is traditional publishing. And we're now a 30 people business. So, this all happened step by step, starting with passion and the desire to do what excites me.
Wow, that's almost unbelievable because I hear so few people who actually hit the jackpot with their first book. It's very rare, isn't it?
It is very rare. And it's also quite naive to think that you could, you know, live off of the royalties of your one book for the rest of your life. I was very lucky when I did that. I had some marketing background. I asked a lot of questions. I looked for the answers. I tested things and I had that early success which got me super excited. Then, you know, that might have been a one-off for that one book, but eventually I created a system that is working now every time. We do a book. So, you know, sometimes it's the early lucky when that gets you excited and gets you in business.
Well, definitely you need some luck, but I don't buy it that it was just luck. It must have been more than that. So which one was the first book that and why do you feel, why do you think it became so successful? How did that, you know, hit a chord with the readers?
Well, it was a self-help book that I don't really even advertise anymore. It was called Read Me, I Am Magical. Why was it successful at the time? I think the market was not very saturated. It was just the beginning of the self-help book excitement and self-published books were just hitting the market in a massive way. But still, it was 10 years ago, so it was much easier to succeed and get noticed. So partly it was finding a niche that appreciated the book, a lot of marketing strategies that traditional houses didn't use, so it was a lot of guerrilla marketing, just digital door to door, no large campaigns, so a lot of creativity and some of those strategies worked.
Okay, that's great. So other than launching a book and obviously learning the lessons and then incorporating that into your business and using that to do it for other people that are successful for yourself, figuring that recipe out. Other than doing that, was there any other management blueprint that inspired you to build your business? Maybe a book that you picked up some concepts from that you implement in your business. Can you talk about any such thing?
Yes, definitely. Well, at the beginning, it was just me and maybe one assistant and one writer. It was more of a try to figure out how to do it in the most cost-effective manner, how to spend as little as possible. But then as we started growing and realized that we're dealing with premium clients here, we changed our approach and decided that we need to systemize things. So now we're very strong as far as processes are concerned.
So, in order to build the business as it's functioning today, there's this book that really helped me, Traction by Gina Wickman, so I think it's a must for any growing company. Actually, first listen to the audio book, then read this, then listen to the audio book again, then read parts of it again and implement it. This is the first time it's, you know, sort of an eye opener and then you read it to actually implement it. And as far as what we do inside the business to create our books is concerned.
We have our process, which I described in Outsource Your Book, which is 17 steps that we use to create the book. So, the table of contents, you don't even have to read it. Open the table of contents, you get our 17 steps. This is on our website, leaderspress.com, right there when you go if listeners want a copy. So, everything is structured. We work with Asana, so all our projects have timelines and clients get updated every week about what's going on. So, it's really process driven.
I learned that the more robust our processes are, the less human error we have. So, when the behaviors are driven by automatic reminder of your supposed to do this, you're supposed to update this, and it's all in one big master spreadsheet or software program, then we don't have to rely on them remembering, ah, I need to ask for editorial reviewers to prepare the reviews. No, it's there, so they know exactly what to do. And thanks to this, I'm not even involved in operations anymore, and I have my team taking care of everything.
The more robust our processes are, the less human error we have.Share on X
That's very interesting. So, tell me a little bit about this Asana and how you implemented it and how does it help. I understand the daily reminders and stuff, but I'm sure there's more to it.
Right, so within Asana, every project is assigned to a project manager and every task is assigned to a responsible person. So, let's say that in order to create a book, okay, we have 17 steps, but each step has several sub-steps. So, let's say there are a hundred things that need to be done to get a book done from scratch. And so, we would automatically, the moment we start working with a client, have this timeline created based on when the book will come out, of this day is when we need to do the strategic positioning.
And this is the person who's going to do it. So even before that, we would have to schedule this meeting with the client. At a certain point, there would be a cover design and who's going to design that cover. So, then the project manager would reach out to that person who would design the cover. And so it's a hundred things that at first I had them all in my head, but I could have it in my head for one book, for two, for three, for five. But after that, it's over.
You can't scale having the whole system in your head. And I thought I had this black magic powers that allowed me to send these books to bestseller lists, but that's not true. That could all be extracted and structured and put into a checklist and taught. So now we have a whole team of people doing that. And my up with new creative services, ideas, growing the business through ways that we're not doing right now. So, whatever is now part of a process, once upon a time was something new and creative that I put together.
As soon as it becomes something that's our normal modus operandi, I'm no longer so excited by it. Okay, well that's how things are done and I want to create and do more and I might have you know a hundred ideas, 20 will be good, but those 20 good then they will become our processes and will stand by them, guarantee that they work and so I can do what I like to do which is do the creative things and inspire the people, grow the business and what does work becomes the process.
So, you are what Traction or EOS calls the visionary entrepreneur, right?
Yes.
Who is going to run the day to day. So, do you have an integrator or an operator of the company that does that? Or what processes do it for you?
I have, I would say even two integrators. So, we have two chief COOs, Chief Operations Officers. One is responsible for client relations. So, the front desk, so to speak, and the other one with all the processes, it'll be the back office. And they have completely complimentary talents. Like we did the Colby tests, all of us, and we are really good fit because the visionary gets bored as soon as they figure something out. The integrator, they want to put it together.
But I'm not a total screw-up as far as integration is concerned. I also use some of that language and processes. When I ask people to do something, I want to know by when, by whom it will be delivered, and so I don't just say, ah, let's do this new creative thing. Now, I want to assign a person, I would want to have a report by a certain date, so this is what you need to do to integrate.
