Disrupting the business model of the book publishing industry with Milli Brown

From New York Times bestsellers to Pulitzer Prize candidates, Milli Brown empowers authors as the founder and CEO of the First Hybrid Publisher™. Milli pioneered a New Era in Publishing® by building BBPG as a fiercely independent, full-service publishing house with an author-first ethos.

During her unprecedented career, Milli invented a new hybrid business model for publishing, flipped the traditional model to being author-centric, and mans the helm of the only publisher on Publisher’s Weekly’s fastest-growing indie publishers list for 3 years in a row. Milli was told by everyone in the industry that her model just “wasn’t how it is done,” and has since proven critics wrong with each bestseller and award-winner published by Brown Books.

“The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer. Ultimately, the best way to predict the future is to create it—and that’s what we do as entrepreneurs.” – Milli Brown

Episode Highlights:

Learn how Milli know that the traditional business model of the book publishing industry was on its final leg
Learn Milli’s journey as an original disruptor in the book publishing industry
Marketing tips on book publishing that is appropriate for today’s industry
What is a typical length of a book sale marketing plan
KPIs to pay attention to on book sales
How to build up a network on a right clientele

Website:

www.brownbooks.com

Connect with Brown Books

Facebook.com/brownbooks
Twitter.com/brownbooks
Linkedin.com/company/brown-books-publishing-group/
Instagram.com/brownbookspublishing/

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire, I am Jaime Masters. And today on the show, we have Milli Brown. Now, she was one of the first hybrid business model for publishing in 1994. You can check her out at BrownBooks.com. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Milli: Thank you for the invitation.

Jaime: How did you know? Because 1994 was way early, at least in my opinion, when it comes to knowing that the book publishing industry was on its final legs. So, how did you know?

Milli: Well, I was just talking about that this morning because we are in the process of doing some huge things that someone at a very high level in New York just made a comment last night that we are the face of publishing now, that traditional publishing – this is someone who’s probably gonna be coming on board with us, that has been with one of the big five for many, many, many years. And I think that in the conversation I had this morning, if I can just recount that sometimes, if you just use your common sense. And I looked at publishing in 1994 and I’m gonna correct one little thing you said. I was the first hybrid publisher.

Jaime: The first.

Milli: First.

Jaime: Very, very first.

Milli: The very, very first. There was no one, and I gotta tell you, it was really hard when you decide that [00:01:36] publisher. But you’re not going to be a publisher like publishing is done. And you tell people, you have the hutzpah to tell people, go to their conferences and tell them you’re a publisher, you just don’t do it like they do it. And they look at you like you’re crazy. And they certainly made sure that they told me, to my face, not behind my back, to my face, that I was not a publisher. And that was not how publishing was done and I couldn’t be a publisher. So, you have to have some what of a conviction. I had thought it through, and I didn’t like the traditional model.

I just felt that it was unfair to authors and I’m really on the side of the authors because, I understand intellectual property. And whether it’s intellectual property for the recording industry or the film industry or for just Broadway plays. Intellectual property, without it, there would be none of those industries. So, I happen to feel that the author in the publishing industry, those are the VIPs. Those are the people that without them, we wouldn’t have books. So, when I came to publishing and saw that they were getting taken advantage of, I’ll be kind. I thought, that’s not right and so, I created a business model.

And it wasn’t anything genius. I just said, I’m going to create a business model like the rest of the world operates. I mean, how difficult is that? Everybody I know, and I’m sure everybody you know, charges you for their services. You find that best you can find and then you figure it out, you have to do your due diligence. And then you pay. And then they’re experts or authorities in their particular field. So, I said, I’m going to create a business model where I charge the authors for my expertise. I am going to be their publisher and the only difference that I wanted at that point in time is that, when the books sell, I’m going to give all the profit to the authors.

What I think I understood that New York didn’t understand is that, if the author is gonna make all the money, the author is gonna hustle. The author is gonna be that much more motivated to do the interviews and travel and do signings and presentations because they get all the money. So, I thought if I merge the synergies of, you have an entrepreneurial publisher and I find an entrepreneurial author, I think it’s magical. Because we will work very, very hard because it’s to the benefit of both of us. Because when my company is successful, they’re helping me build my brand early, early on. So, I’ve only taken the best of books and I’ve been very discriminatory.

And I would have made a lot more money if I had published anybody and everybody. But no, I knew I had to stay the course and not get tempted. Even when times were bad, ever book has my name on it. So, fast forward to today and we are definitely at the fore of, I’ve had several people in the publishing world comment that we are the future of publishing. These are people that’ve been around a long time and my goal was never to replace traditional publishing because there are a lot of people that are not entrepreneurial, or they would not be good at my business model.

Or they couldn’t afford it. Some people just can’t afford to do it the right way, because if you self-publish, I’m not a fan of self-publishing. But I am the original hybrid – I don’t like the word hybrid, it’s not sexy enough. But I don’t know, the industry came up with the word hybrid a couple of years ago and I went, whatever. So, anyway.

Jaime: That’s awesome.

Milli: The long-winded answer.

Jaime: Yes. Well, you said the original, I said, you’re the OG. You’re the original gangster of the hybrid, unsexy name, model. Well, especially back then.

Milli: I will tell you, the first time that someone called me a disruptor, I was a little taken aback because I thought, what? I didn’t know that that was a good thing. Because yes, it was a David and Goliath story, because here I was, I came barging right into a traditional industry and just changed it slightly in the very beginning and today, I have people turning down traditional contracts and coming to me.

Jaime: I love that. At the beginning though, asking authors to pay, that was so different, right? Did you have a hard time getting people to understand hey, let’s do it like this instead?

Milli: I love that question because, I’ve got a story that is as fresh as yesterday because I was so traumatized. When I came up with the concept, I could not wait to get out and tell authors all about my new idea because no longer did they have to find an agent. No longer did they have to grovel to get a contract and they make all the money. And so, there was a Romance Writers of America Conference that came to Dallas. And I couldn’t wait to go and tell all of the authors there about my new business model and I really in a way thought salvation had come to authors. That they now had an opportunity to be published and get their book out there.

And so, I was so excited, I went to the conference and what I remember is, I found a group of ladies and we were standing there. And I wrangled them, and I was telling them all about my new business model. They were gonna own the rights and they were going to be involved in the process. They’re going to work collaboratively and they’re just staring at me, just staring at me. And there are about four or five of them and I’m going on and on. Finally, one woman said, so in other words, we pay you. And I thought oh, wow. Okay, that wasn’t exactly – I said, all right. Maybe I forgot to tell you the part about yes, you pay me. But then you get all the money when the book sells.
And they’re still staring at me. I mean, no emotion. Just still staring at me. And she said, but we pay you. I was speechless. I couldn’t understand that they were so hung up on that. And I went home that night, and I was so dejected. I didn’t know what had happen, that they didn’t think it was as wonderful as I did. So, a couple weeks later, I happened to be at SMU. I don’t know what I was doing there, but I was talking to a gentleman in the hall, and I was telling him about my new business model. And so, I told him, and he looked at me and he said, so in other words, I pay you and then when the book sells, I get all the money. And I say, yes. And he says, when can I come see you? I thought well, okay.

And of course, I left that day thinking, what was the difference? All right, what happened here? And what it didn’t take me long to figure out is, my model does not appeal to everybody. If someone is not comfortable with risk reward, it’s scary. And traditional publishing was created for a certain group of people. And shall I call them, writers. Who just wanna write. They don’t wanna promote. They don’t wanna think about sales, for the most part. I mean, obviously there’s all kinds of writers. But the thought that they’re gonna be in business for themselves, they don’t really like that part of it.

Whereas I was tapping into the crowd that understood that a book was a product to be sold. And if it sold, made money, they wanted to make money. So, I was looking for entrepreneurs, not really writers. Matter of fact, the first time that [inaudible] [00:10:53] I giggled a little bit to myself, and I thought, I’m a publisher, but just not for writers. But we’ve come full circle, I publish for everybody now.

Jaime: See, I love that story because the ideal customer, who your avatar has made such a huge difference and people could be pounding on the doors of people that are like oh, I pay you? And not realizing that there are a whole pool of people that are excited about the I pay you part.

Milli: Correct. And so now, when I talk to people – Another facet that I didn’t mention is, sometimes people – and I don’t wanna diminish and say anything negative. If somebody gets a contract with Simon and Shuster today, pop the champagne, celebrate. I get it. There are a lot of writers, to them, that is validation because they have grown up, every class they’ve ever taken, everybody talks about getting the contract. And so, that to them is their arrival as a writer. And if that’s more important to them than either making money or growing their business, because books are a great tool in that, then I can’t say anything negative against it.

Some people just wanna see their book in print and there’s all kinds of reasons and I know exactly who’s a good fit for Brown Books. And who will just love us, and we’ll love them. And I think we do a really, really good job at – a lot of people believe this but, I talk to people on the phone when I see the manuscripts come in, people call. I will schedule 15 minutes with just about anybody. And because, it’s an interview. I’m looking at them just as much as I’m looking at their manuscript because there’s certain people that I know are gonna be great for us and we’re gonna be great for them. And there’s other people that it’s just not gonna be a good fit.

So, this is about the relationship, and I say that is all over our website. And a lot of people get really flustered and they can’t believe that it’s really Milli Brown talking to them. And it’s like, should I be in my ivory tower? What would I be doing up there? I love talking to the people. I love the personal connection. So, yes. You call and I will talk to you and don’t be surprised.

Jaime: I love all this. And I think what’s so important is you were talking about conviction beforehand. Because sometimes, when there’s rough years, you’ll take on writers potentially who don’t have entrepreneurial skills. Or somebody would, you wouldn’t. And then they would be like oh, this is really difficult, right? They’re making it harder than it needs to be because they’re not sticking with their values. Have you just always had that much conviction? How did you work with that, so you kept going?

Milli: The simple answer is yes. And I wonder about it sometimes. And I thought, maybe when I go back and write my book, then I’ll have an opportunity to psychoanalyze what fuels me. I have been pretty much successful at everything I have ever done because failure is not an option. And I think if people would just come with that mindset, that it’s not gonna be easy, I don’t care what it is. Nothing’s easy. And if it’s easy, then everybody’s doing it and you’re not gonna make any money. So, yeah. Just keep that in mind. But I have always surrounded myself with an industry that I liked the components. I love everything about the publishing industry.

And I particularly love it when somebody comes in to meet with me and they don’t have a manuscript. And I’ve had people that come in, they don’t even have an idea for a book, but they need a book for a particular reason. And usually, I’ve had people that wanna sell their business and they know that a book will help them toward the end. Or somebody who just start – a lot of it is business related because a book, there is nothing more powerful than a book. So, I love to start from the very, very beginning and start with the idea for the book. And then bring everyone together, whether it’s the ghostwriter, because sometimes busy people, sometimes people just aren’t writers.

There’s nothing wrong with saying you’re not a writer, I’m not a hairdresser. There’s a lot of things I can’t do. So, I love being able, I just love the industry. I love the publishing industry, I love sales, I love marketing, I love PR. So, I’m not just into creating the book, I love that part. But if it doesn’t do well, I’m not happy. Because we didn’t do all that hard work to have a book go out into the world and not do well. So, we’re really emotionally invested in our authors, even though they make all the money.

But then, when they make all the money and they’re successful and they’re happy, they’ll come back and write another book and they’ll tell all of their friends, and they’ll have second printings. So, I really is a wonderful cycle and circle of success.

Jaime: Well, and a lots changed since 1994 just with online marketing, right? So, we talk about the success of a book, and you’ve probably completely changed what you did then to what you do now for sales. Do you help them with the marketing side, and can you give us some tips on what that looks like now?

Milli: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Love to. Well, we are three companies. We’re actually three companies. Brown Books Publishing Group is the publishing house and then we have the agency at Brown Books, which is PR, marketing and social media. And then, we have the distribution company. So, everything that an author needs under one roof, which was my dream from the very beginning. And it’s much easier for an author to come in and have everything 100% turnkey. They don’t have to go anywhere for anything. And as I like to explain to them, we have a little saying here in Texas, then they only have one neck to choke if something goes wrong.

Jaime: Of course, that’s a Texan saying, that makes total sense.

Milli: So, and I stand good for anything and everything. If I tell somebody something, of course I can’t control the world, but my agency does a darn good job at promoting and I have, matter of fact, my director of PR, my PR manager, I recruited out of New York. She worked for three of the biggest houses in PR in New York. So, she has those very valuable media contact. She has been doing this for over 10 years. And so, she came fully charged, ready to go and is so incredibly successful with the big media. Not the little, local newspapers. She really goes after the big ones.

But to your question, how it’s changed, my very first PR director was someone, she used to call herself [inaudible] [00:18:41] I don’t eve know if you’ll know who that is. But anyway, if anybody older is listening, they’ll know who that is. That was a Hollywood socialite who just loved the media and celebrities. But her tool was, she had a telephone and a rolodex, and she’d go in her office every day and she had a rolodex and a telephone and that was PR. And she was very, very good. Very good at it. But obviously today, when I talk about PR, marketing and social media, you really, really need all three. And PR is, as I was saying, our PR manager, she’s going to get the media interviews.

She’s going to help get, whether it’s print or radio or television. Because you have to have publicity. A nice story in People Magazine will go a long way to helping someone be successful. But our marketing person is focused on working with the bookstores, getting the books into the bookstores, getting the signings set up. Book reviews are very, very, very valuable. And right now, we were just looking at a list this morning that that big book reviewers, the ones you really, really want that’re the hardest to get. Your book has to be in their hands at least six months before it’s printed.

It’s one of the reasons why self-publishing drives me crazy because people will wait until a book comes off the press and then they figure out how they’re gonna sell it. Well, you miss so much when you self-publish. This is an industry that is very structured. And if you don’t do it right, the ship is going to sail without you. Matter of fact, we have sales reps. We have six regions all across the country. We have many sales reps. At last count, it’s somewhere around 100-ish. And these are pros. These are people that’ve been in the industry for decades. And they have all the contacts, they know who buys books and they go out in their region, whether it’s out on the west coast, they sell it at Costco.

Obviously, if it’s the southeast, they go into Walmart. If it’s in the north, they go into Barnes and Noble. But they have all their special accounts, and they sell to anybody and everybody in this country that buys books. If it’s a coffee table or beautiful art book, they’ll go into museums. So, their job, and they make money on a commission basis. So, they have to have good books to sell, and we have great relationships with our sales reps. There was one company that when we originally contacted them, they really did not get us, and they just turned us down. And eventually, a couple of year later, we got a phone call from them, because they can see our numbers and they can see our growth.

And because we were not the traditional, we were different, some people chose to just sit back and watch. And they came to us and wanted to represent us and this past April, we just started working with them and they’re the best in their region. And so, having all these ancillary opportunities with people that’re helping you, to think of an author out there by themselves trying to come up with all of this, they can’t, please. Don’t do that to yourself. I want my authors just to be an author. And their job should go out, get on the stage, talk about your book. I want you to just do nothing but be an author, do signings and be the celebrity.

You shouldn’t be thinking about the business and where to sell it and how to sell it and how much to charge. Let a publisher, it’s gonna cost you, it’s gonna cost you more but you get results. I tell people all the time, people come to us for results, and I know that is what we’re tasked with and if it’s humanly possible, we’ll do whatever we have to do. What is today? Sunday night, I had one of our authors, brand new author. He’s a Kinsey alumni and he calls himself a fixer. He was tasked with going into major corporations and fixing them. And he came and did a presentation about these books to my staff Sunday night at my house.

And I had a chef, I had it catered and it was just a lovely evening of really, the more that you know about an author, the more you know about their message, the more you can sell it. So, we immerse ourselves in our authors so we can then pitch them, market them, promote them. Social media obviously, a lot of our authors are older. Older, very, very, very successful people. And social media, I get a kick out of it, but when I ask them, are you involved with social media, and you can tell me what they say.

Milli: Yeah.

Jaime: They say, I have a Facebook page. And then I have to go well, that’s not exactly what I mean. But we have been able, we can do everything for them turnkey. And I don’t know if they’re afraid of putting stuff out there, but I have one of our clients, I get a kick out of it. You talk to Cassidy and Cassidy is now the voice and she does the promotion, social media, for an 86-year-old billionaire. And it’s so funny because she’s studied him, she knows him. And now, he’s getting into it, and I suspect that in the not-too-distant future, he’s going to wanna put his hand in there and put some things out there.

But if now, we’ll continue to do it for him. But it’s so important, as you know, social media, it is vital. And sometimes, it is the most important when it comes to certain topics and certain books, depending on the demographic. So, there’s so much that you have to do, and it can be overwhelming, and it really, really, really does take a village and we are that village.

Milli: When it comes to social media or any of those things, the skill sets, just learning Instagram and its algorithms and Facebook and in two years it’s gonna change anyway so none of that’s gonna matter from beforehand. I think that’s what people don’t understand when they’re getting into the game of any online marketing. They’re like oh, it’s a humongous space. It’s like horseback riding, there’s a million different types and you have no idea if you don’t know, right? And then you try it once and you’re like, I such at it, I’m just gonna stop, right? That’s usually what ends up happening.

Milli: Correct. And again, I have some authors that they wanna do. They wanna do their own social. And I watched them, and I have had to make that phone call and tell them, do not sell your book. That is the worst thing you can do. You want to be friends with people, you wanna be likeable. You don’t want someone, every time they see your name, somebody’s gonna be saying, buy my book. That’s the last thing in the world, it’s just soft sales and it’s just mentioning it in passing.

And there’s so much that an author, who only has one book and is really excited about selling it has to learn and sometimes, they learn at their own expense and it’s sad because they cost themselves a lot of money. And they think they’re saving money by doing it themselves. But it’s like anything else, I can’t make people do anything and just try to reason with them and let the professionals – I have a great, great, great respect for professionals. And some people just always wanna get the cheapest and they don’t get the results they could have.

Jaime: How long are your marketing plans typically? I know you’re saying some things are six months in advance. What is a typical length of a book sale marketing plan?

Milli: All right. I’m gonna tell you something you’ve never heard before. Okay. This is revolutionary because my PR manager, who came from New York. When she came here, we were talking about some of our authors, some of the books we were promoting, and I was introducing her to the authors and the subject matter and just going over what we had been doing for them. And I mentioned one of our books that we’d been promoting for five years. And she said, five years? Well, how could you promote a book for five years? And I said well, it’s really simple. If it keeps selling, you keep promoting it. If you quit promoting, it’ll quit selling. It just works that way.

And she really could not comprehend that because in New York, they will promote a book for a month or two, depending on if you’re an A-list author, B-list author, C-list author. Obviously, John Grisham, they’ll promote his book. They’ve got a big budget for him. But for a new author, a debut author, not so much. They’re gonna throw it out there and if it doesn’t catch on fire right away, they’re gonna pull it. They’ve got too many coming after it. So basically, to answer your question, you can keep promoting and you should. You should keep promoting your book for as long as you’re noticing that it’s still selling.

And if it stops selling, then you need to step back and reevaluate, what’re you doing and has the environment changed? Has the world changed? Is this a subject that people aren’t interested in anymore, it’s run its course? Or have you just been going down the wrong path and you need to reevaluate how to get out there with the message. So, it’s just a constant way to make sure that you are always evaluating and assessing the world as it is and your market and being flexible and changing because we’ve always got a couple of pitches up our sleeve. If this pitch doesn’t work, this pitch might.

There’s more than one way to sell a book and sometimes, you don’t even sell the book and that’s what a lot of people don’t understand. That there are some people that’re gonna be turned off if you’re pitching your book, whereas you might have a great angle personally or your company or what you do for a living. So, don’t always be pitching the book because the media knows that your just wanting free airtime from them. They’re not dumb.
Jaime: Yes, totally. Not at all. So, when it comes to your KPIs that you track for the marketing side for authors, do you care about platform, are you just caring about book sales or what’re some of the key performance indicators that you’re paying attention to? Do you have funnels on book sales? Is it more of a platform based or is it just mostly results on book sales?

Milli: Yeah. A lot of the results sometimes are a surprise to even us. Because you just don’t know, I’ve seen so many books that I knew could not miss, that did. And then some books that you’re just oh, yeah. You were a little bit nervous about, took off like a rocket ship. So, when you talk about a platform, I know that the big publishing houses, you have to have a platform, you have to have so many people. I find that, what’s a nice word. We create if for our authors. I don’t require that they come in here because that’s, again, taking advantage, that’s the slam dunk. For instance, when I’ve published someone with celebrity status, that’s a slam dunk, you don’t have to sell them.

All you have to do, you could get an intern say hey, call these people and say they’re gonna be in town on such and such date and book them. And that’s how hard you have to work. But with authors that aren’t world famous, you have to really be sharp, and you have to figure out, how are we going to promote this person. And I like that better. I know, maybe that sounds a little crazy. But I would rather have to work and be creative and use my brain than have a lay up with somebody who has a platform of millions of people. And I just, that doesn’t excite me as much as someone I like what they do, I like their message, I like the subject matter.

And now we have to roll up our sleeves and figure out how to make it work. And so, I don’t require that they have a platform, because I wanna build it for them. I wanna help them create that platform.

Jaime: David and Goliath. You’re the little guy helping the little guy that needs the help.

Milli: Yes. And I almost said, and that’ll make me a big guy. I think one of the big, big, big advantages of our size is, I love the fact that we can get together in, I’ve got a big conference room. But we can get the staff together and when we’ll have a staff meeting, we will have in the staff meeting, design and project management and editorial and PR marketing and social media. And then basically the executives of the company, and then we all give our input.
And this author is getting the value of all these people knowing about them and giving their feedback on how to help their book be the best and how we can market it. And even with distribution. We monitor their books and we’re constantly looking at how it’s selling and if it’s selling. If it’s not selling, we need to talk about that. Especially during COVID, obviously it was different. With the bookstores being shut down, that was problematic and distributors, sales reps weren’t really working but now, we’re back with abeyance. It’s very exciting.

Jaime: So, how do you find your ideal clients, because you have such a skew of the right types of people, how have you built up the network of the right clientele for yourself?

Milli: In the early days, I did a lot of lecturing. I would go out to colleges and universities. Matter of fact, UNT, the University of North Texas, is just creating a Milli Brown Award that they are going to be presenting October 15th. That’s my birthday, so I remembered it. How could I forget it? I will have to be somewhere. But they have the Mayborn Literary Conference. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it but it’s pretty big. They’ve been doing it for 17 years and every year, they have a contest for the best book.

And so, because this year was still disrupted by COVID, this year they’re gonna tell everyone because I have offered to publish the winner and give them a traditional contract, so they don’t have to put up any money. I can’t give them a publishing contract and then say, now you only owe me… I don’t think that’d be right. So, I’m gonna publish it on my dime and I’m gonna give the proceeds, give a 20% contract and give 10% to the author and 10% to UNT. So, when is this gonna air? Because nobody knows about it.

Jaime: October 18th, actually.

Milli: Oh, good. Perfect. Perfect. It’ll be out there then because I just thought oh, I think this is confidential. Yeah. So, to go back to your question, I used to go out and lecture. And I loved talking to authors and I loved being in a room full of, here would be a children’s book author sitting next to a sci-fi author, sitting next to a cookbook author. And just a room full of people who had nothing in common, except they wanted to be a writer. They wanted to have their book published. And I always felt good because I thought, I wanted to give them an overview of the publishing world and talk to them about the reality of publishing, so they were hearing it from the horse’s mouth.
They weren’t getting it second hand from someone who may have been misinformed. So, I grew the business one author at a time, and I can tell you right now, I have got so many. This lady I’m gonna be talking to at 1:00 today, a great book and she’s coming back for more, but I’m gonna talk her into doing bigger things. Because when she first published 15 years ago, I didn’t have everything that I have today. So, it’s a wonderful book. I have an attorney who just retired. I published for him about 15, 20 years ago. He’s coming in to meet with me next week about another book.

And I have Spirituality of Success, that’s a book that’s on our spring list. And the author, I published him 20 years ago and he’s bringing it back out now as a second edition. And 20 years ago, we sold his book in 28 different countries. So, those have all expires so we have to go back to those countries and get a second bite of the apple. So just, they keep coming back and back and back. So, in addition to the new authors, the people that I’ve published for previously coming back, it’s just kept us growing and growing. And then we have lots of new ideas and we’re now getting agents that’re bringing their authors to us, so we’ve crossed over that barrier.

Jaime: How do you do that? Yeah, so who does the agent get paid for then?

Milli: We’re cutting different deals. We’re wheeling and dealing. And that’s one thing that most people need to understand, that an entrepreneur is not stuck in the mud. It’s just, make me an offer. Let’s talk about it. Let’s see what we can come up with. And we’ll maybe wheel and deal. So, whatever works. And if we want a book badly enough, who knows.

Jaime: That’s a great idea. And I think what’s so important, especially for newer people in the three to five years of the business. Everything feels like it takes so long.

Milli: Because it does.

Jaime: Right? Patience is a virtue, people. Yeah. But it’s hard, it’s hard.

Milli: There’s nothing you can do about that. Just enjoy the journey. If you’re constantly, I remember when I first started out, I thought I had it around my office somewhere. I had a wish, I called it my wish list. And I had on my wish list, new exercise clothes. And I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had to make money to live while I kept the business afloat. And glasses I think, or contacts was on my wish list. And that’s fun to look back and it just took a long time and a lot of determination and added to that, I knew that it was gonna work because it made sense.

Now, if it didn’t make sense, then I wouldn’t have done it. But I thought it through. And the fact that I didn’t realize it until one day I was talking to someone and all of a sudden, I looked at them and I said, you know what. I’m publishing for me. This is the publishing company that I would have wanted, and I never knew that for many, many years. Because I would like to be involved. I’m not gonna let anybody put my name any something that I don’t have the final say so on. Sorry. I’m just not gonna do it. I wanna retain the rights because that’s where the value long term could be. I want to be totally involved in the process.

I’m not gonna be a micromanager, but I’m gonna hire the best people and then step back, but I’m gonna be watching. And so, I love the business model because I would sign on with me. Of course, I would.

Jaime: Well, and like you said, enjoying the process. I think we discount that a little bit too much or we hear it as a cliché, but if you actually enjoy the process and it takes double the time, then it doesn’t really matter, you’re still doing the thing that you enjoy the whole entire time instead of being like, crap. I’m not going fast enough.

Milli: Well, unless you’re really financially in dire straits, I get that. Then a day can seem like a year, and you may need to take a part time job. You have to do what you have to do but it’s never easy. And to be successful, I think every person and you probably interviewed enough of them. Oh, you could write a book.

Jaime: I have a book actually, traditionally, that I will not do traditional ever again, just so you know.

Milli: Yeah, all right. So, you do know what I’m talking about.

Jaime: Yes, definitely.

Milli: Okay. No, I cant tell you how many people I have published for that have previously published with traditional publishers and they have now done two, three, four books with me. And one, I published, made him famous. Wiley came to him and then he came back to us for the next book. And in the dedication, he wrote, it’s good to be back home. And that meant so much to me. Oh, welcome home.

Jaime: And I really appreciate what you said before about getting a part time job because that’s part of your conviction. You’re showing hey, I’m still not gonna fail. Part time job doesn’t mean I’m quitting this dream, it just means it’s gonna take a little longer because I have to figure out my finances first. And a lot of people aren’t willing to do that. So, I love that because failure is not an option, you’re willing to do whatever wiggle room it takes in order to get what you want in the long run.

Milli: Well, I’ve been known to say, if somebody had come into me with a book of fiction about this virus, it takes over the world and it shuts down Manhattan and people can’t go out of their homes. I might have said, I don’t know if I can publish this. I just don’t know if anybody is gonna believe it. Who would have predicted, you just have to keep on keeping on however you do it?

Jaime: Yes. And be open and flexible and it sounds like you totally are. I know we have to start wrapping up, so I’m gonna ask the last question. What is one action listeners can take to move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Milli: I think it’s what we just talked about. I really think that if people can just get it through their head, however they have to do it, depending on their personality, that failure, they’re not gonna fail. That failure is not going to be – maybe this. Maybe go out, and this is gonna be a little self-serving for the industry. But buy books about people who were not overnight successes. People who struggles. And we didn’t talk about this, but I started out doing books, in 1990, I created company called, Personal Profiles. And I would interview people and do books just for their families. So, these were memoirs, or actually, family histories.

And I loved it when I would sit there and these people who are so successful now and boy, they had some nosedives, and they had some days where they didn’t know how they were gonna pay their staff and they had all kinds of scary things that happen to them. And I think, maybe if people who don’t totally believe, and I’ve had days where you’re human, you can’t help what you think. You can get rid of the thoughts, stop it. But if people can just have conviction and if you don’t feel like you have it, go out and read some books on people who struggled and how they ultimately became successful, and you’ll see that it’s not been easy for anybody. Everybody has a story, and I don’t care who they are.

Jaime: I love that. We need to know that we’re all human, even the most successful people have gone through this too. Tell us where we can find more about you online, all of the different publishing group pieces that you’ve got or where we can follow you on social media.

Milli: Well, just go to BrownBooks.com and we have all the contact information there. I think our website’s pretty good, and I think we’re pretty transparent and I like that. In the old days, I used to have people say, can I talk to some of your authors? And now you can just go online, and you can see them. If you can find them and look them up and talk to them, that’s fine with me. But yeah, we’re very transparent and I’m always, always, always looking for good books. And you don’t have to have a million people on your platform.

Jaime: Few. Few, there’s not many of those. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Milli. I really appreciate it.

Milli: You are very welcome and thank you. I enjoyed it and I enjoy your interview style. You’re very comfortable and I think you do great interviews for your listeners.

Jaime: Thank you, have an amazing day.

Milli: Thank you, you do the same.

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