Suzy Prudden, author of Change Yout Mind, Change Your Body and co-founder of Itty Bitty Publishing

Suzy Prudden talks with Bill Ringle on My Quest for the Best about Itty Bitty Books, entrepreneurship, and why you shouldn't be afraid to just pick up the phone.

>>>Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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Interview Insights

Key points that you’ll learn from this interview:

How an Itty Bitty Author went from making $100,000 a year to $750,000 a yearWhy it’s so important to pick up the phone and follow-upWhy you shouldn’t give your book away as a business cardHow the internet has changed the publishing industryWhat’s it like to write an Itty Bitty Book

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

00:52 “I was a fitness expert. I had a fitness school in New York City.”1:05 Prudden describes all the rapid changes that occurred after she sold her business at 40.1:33 “I couldn’t pay my franchise fees, so I lost the franchise, thank goodness, so I started to work with entrepreneurs.”1:52 “Working with entrepreneurs is very exciting because entrepreneurs, they have to be self-starters.”2:21 “The most challenging thing for most entrepreneurs, literally, is picking up the phone.”3:03 “People don’t like to hear the word no.”3:55 Why it’s so important to follow up right away.4:49 Prudden discusses the origins of Itty Bitty Publishing.5:10 [On writing the first book with her sister] - “We didn’t know what we were doing, we had no idea what we were doing.”5:25 “We had 2,000 to sell, we have 1,800 left. It just didn’t work.”5:50 “I asked my sister to change the cover of the Itty Bitty Book, and to cut it, make it shorter.”6:40 [On the Amazing Itty Bitty Weight Loss Book] - “My ego had a blip…I looked at my sister and said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want my name on the book?’ And then I looked at the book and said, ‘Actually, that’s a million dollar business.”7:05 “2 weeks later we had our first author, 6 weeks later we had our first published book.”7:19 “Because of the internet, the publishing industry has totally changed.”8:00 “The world is being inundated with information.”8:33 “So when we look at Itty Bitty, we thought: ‘All we want to do is we want information that’s going to make a difference for the reader that they don’t have to weed through.”8:55 [On sorting through larger books for salient info] -  “Itty Bitty Books are the yellow highlights.”9:38 [On the type of person who should write a book] - “Any person who has a sort of expertise that they are using in their business.”10:40 How having a book you’ve written in your area of expertise will increase your credibility and open doors for you.11:00 Examples of writers who have written for Itty Bitty Books.11:15 “A lot of our authors sell their books, a lot of our authors give them away, which I don’t like them to do that.”11:30 “People don’t value what they don’t pay for.”11:58 [On why she dislikes people handing out books at conferences] - “If I buy the book because I’m interested in reading [it], that’s a whole different thing.”12:25 “You should not give your book away as a business card, you should sell your book.”13:18 “If you give your book away as a business card, that book usually ends up in a pile that either ends up in the garba...