Why Entrepreneurs Should Write Children’s Books
(Episode 1 of 2 with Timmy Bauer)
Timmy Bauer is the author and illustrator of many children’s books including: Lucas the Dinosaur Entreprepreneur. He’s also the founder of Dinosaur House, a company that makes children’s books for entrepreneurs, and the podcast host of five podcasts, including The Purpose Driven Entrepreneur.
In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Timmy’s career and why entrepreneurs should consider writing children’s books.
Key Takeaways:
We will cover the following key takeaways:
- Children’s books can be a great way to penetrate the home of our clients.
- We can use content such as podcasts and books to network with our customers.
- As we find a way to connect our passions to a customer’s needs, we can find powerful business ideas.
Becoming a Children’s Book Author
Timmy has always been very interested in storytelling. He explained, “I’m very passionate about . . . story art. I always knew since I was a little kid that I wanted to grow up and become a story artist. . . . [But] it wasn’t until I was seventeen and I had a little brother who was four and I started writing a kid’s book for him that I was like, Oh, I really like this.’”
With his passion and talent, Timmy founded Dinosaur House, his greatest success, where he helps entrepreneurs create their own children’s books. You may be wondering, why would an entrepreneur want to become a children’s book author? Why would they want to create a publication in a medium that is not commonly read by their target audience? I asked Timmy this same question.
Timmy explained that a children’s book is a great way to penetrate the home of our clients. We can write a children’s book for our industry, about our customer’s jobs. For example, Timmy works with entrepreneurs so he writes books to inspire children to entrepreneurship. His customers will buy his book for their children, and when they read it to their children, they will inevitably think about Timmy and his business.
“Chances are, the majority of your audience or customer base are adults that have children and grandchildren,” Timmy said. “If Dinosaur House does a good job and your kids book is hilarious to the kids of your customers, then your customers are going to be forced to read a book that your company made every night. You’ll be very top of mind if your customers’ kids are asking your customer to read a book that your company made.”
The owner of an airline could write children’s books about travel. The owner of a business that promotes diversity education in the workplace, could write children’s books about diversity.
Timmy explained it would be even better to write a children’s book about the customers’ career. The owner of the business that promotes diversity in the workplace, might write a book about HR instead. Timmy explained parents love this because it allows them to connect with their children.
He said, “If you can make a kid’s book that’s genuinely funny and hilarious that helps your customers talk with their kids about what they do for a living, it’s a type of account penetration that everybody is trying to hack.”
Content-Based Networking
Timmy’s best monetization secret is content-based networking. We can use content such as podcasts and books to network with our customers. If we write a children’s book it can act as our business card at events or gifts we can give away. Sometimes a book can be our way to our customers.
As an author, Timmy even uses other content to sell his books. Before he goes to different schools to talk, he has the school play a series of hype videos to the kids. These videos talk about his books before he arrives so the kids can pre-sell the book to their parents.
These videos are used to get the kids excited about the books so they tell their parents about it, and then when Timmy comes, the kids already have money to purchase the books. This is especially important when selling children’s books because while you are creating content for the kids, the parents are the ones who make the purchase.
“If you want to push books, you’ve got to lead with a performance and then create really strategic ways of making sure that you get sales off of those performances,” Timmy explained. Since he’s started doing that, he’s earned $500-$1500 on book sales per school.
Now, Timmy doesn’t just sell books. He uses his books to push other content — a course. The books work as a lead magnet to push the course sales while also helping him network with potential customers.
Monetizing Your Passions
In Timmy’s children’s book, Lucas the Dinosaur Entrepreneur, he simplifies an entrepreneurial concept for children. In the book, Lucas, who likes to play outside, finds a way to monetize his time by walking other people’s dogs. He’s doing something he loves but can be paid money for it. By writing a book like this, Timmy helps parents teach their kids principles of entrepreneurship while also gaining trust with new potential customers.
This principle of monetizing our passions is so simple yet very powerful. In today’s episode, we discussed it a bit more in depth than the children’s book. To monetize something we love, we can first ask ourselves, “What do I have the tolerance or love for? What am I already doing that can be valuable to somebody else? Who is the ideal customer for that?”
Timmy suggests we make two lists. One list will be of things we already do and don’t hate. The second list will be of things we love to spend our time doing. We can look at these two lists and try to find things that would serve a real need in the market as well. This is exactly what Timmy did. He loves storytelling and found a way to help others write children’s books.
To really get started, we have to make sure these passions align with a need in our customers. In B2B sales, we might look for companies that have a lot of money to spend and then ask ourselves, what do they need? What do they need that I can serve? In B2C we can ask similar questions about our customers. What problems can we help our customers solve? This should be a part of our brainstorming stage, not our selling stage.
As we find a way to connect our passions to a customer’s needs, we can start to find business ideas.
Connect with Timmy
Thank you so much Timmy for sharing your stories and insights with us today. To learn more about or connect with Timmy:
Next Steps
- Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.
- Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.
