How To Start Your Prescriptive Non-Fiction Book

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That was a very fast intro video. Happy Tuesday, guys. I'm used to our normal 32nd one and that was like five seconds. But I hope you liked it and I hope your Tuesday has been going well. I'm Angela, I'm the operations manager here at Book Launchers. If you're just tuning in. We are. We would love to see where you are watching from. I know some of the areas where our YouTube besties are watching from, but please comment in the chat where you are watching from. I am currently in Miami and I feel like the sun just went behind some clouds so it's getting a little, a little dark here. We've also got Chad who is our in house pen to paper pro. He's going to be hosting today's topic which is about crafting a non prescriptive book and he is a pro at this as his title suggests. So we're going to be diving in with that in just a minute but we want to give people a chance to, to hop online, say hello. Oh, got someone from Fort Worth, Texas, Catherine. My heart is in dfw even though I live in Miami, that's DFW is my home. We've got Gary from Utah in the high desert. Oh, I like that you guys are being specific. Someone wants to say like the mountains or something. Something fun like that. Sure. Added in Deborah from Hampton, Virginia, Kevin hall, of course from New York, Alvin Dawkins from Austin also. I love all my Texas cities. Nice to see you here, Alvin. Got a few people who are lurking. I can see that we've got more people watching than are commenting. So we do of course have prizes. If this is your first, first YouTube live that you were catching live. We do love participation. So if you have a chance, whether you're on your mobile, on your computer, however you're watching, I'd love to hear in the chat, like I said, where you're watching from. If you've got questions, I will be holding all of those questions for the end. We will do an open Q and A session and we will answer the questions to the best of our ability. Tony from Australia. How fun. I have no idea what time of day it must be for you and it must be tomorrow. So happy Wednesday to you, Tony. Alrighty. We're gonna hang on for just another second. While we are hanging on, I'm just gonna give you guys a preview of some of the prizes that we have today. We have been doing a book theme for the past few YouTube lives, the past one or two deep dives and we're continuing on with that. Oh, it's 8aM Tomorrow. Well, happy Wednesday, Tony. So for today's prizes we of course have Julie's books. So we have. Sorry, I'm moving the books off this big stack that I have. We have Self Publish and Succeed and sorry, my background kind of blurs it a little bit but this is the ins and outs of publishing. We've also got the follow up to that which is marketing and promotion related which is Self Promote and Succeed. So that is a prize choice. We also have some books from some of our authors which is extremely exciting. We've got realigning medicine by Dr. Jordan Barber which is building an authentic, fulfilling and thriving health care practice. So we love Jordan. We've also got Nick Hutchison, Rise of the Reader. So this book is strategies for mastering your reading habits and apply applying what you learn. Now Nick's book. I have a few copies of this one. So if more than one person who's a prize winner today wants this, totally fine. Some of these other books I only have one copy of. So we also have, oh, another of Julie's books. I forgot to mention More than Cash flow. Got tons of those. After the Crash by Kelly Tuttle. This is how to keep your job stable, stay in school and live life after a brain injury. We've also got Scott Yamamura's book Financial Epiphany which is discover your ability to multiply money and reimagine your financial life. And then last one for our client books that I have is by Linda Magoon, Live Free and Hike finding grace on 48 summits. It's so fun for me to have client books in my hands because I typically only have Julie's books. Don't tell Julie. I mean I love having her books but it's fun to have some of our clients books in my hand as well. And then last but not least, it looks like we've got a few more people hopping on, which is great. Got a couple of Dale's books. Dale Roberts. We love Dale over here. So this one is the first of a series of I think five or six books in the series. And this is book one, Self publishing for new authors. This is a hardback book. This is great. I have plenty of copies of this one and then this one is the second book in that series and it's advanced self publishing authors. This is the last copy that I have of Dale's book. This has been very popular so this is the last one. But those are all the books that I Have. If you're a prize winner, I will give you the instructions and you can look up the books as well if you are curious. But I think it's time, I think it's time to, to dive in. Oh, we've got Mary Ellen. Oh my goodness. Mary Ellen, do you know how popular you are here with Chad? Oh my goodness. You are, you are very popular. Popular.

Yes.

And you are of course watching from Montana Balaka or I hope I'm, I'm doing the enunciation correctly on that one. Says both great books that are helping me each day. Oh, that's so, that's so great. Thanks for sharing that. And then we've got him part from Chicago. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in. I'm going to hand the reins over to Chad so he can dive in with all the info that he has prepped for you guys. I'll be hopping back online to help with the prizes and then again I will be in the chat. So if you have questions as Chad is, is going through his material, put it in the chat and I will be saving them for the end. Ladies and gentlemen, Chad Sanborn, our pen to paper pro.

Thank you, Angela. Nice to be here.

Those of you who may not know me, I'll just give you a little bit of my background. Like I said, she said, you know, I'm a what they call a pen to paper pro, which is kind of a fun way of saying I'm a book coach and a ghostwriter and basically my job is to help people get the book that's in their head onto the page and that's, you know.

The act of thinking of what the book is about and who it's for and writing the words and editing and making suggestions and how you tell stories and those kinds of things. So it's a lot of fun. I'm a writer myself, although I tend to write fiction. But I a few years ago helped a friend write a memoir and just was like, ooh, this is fun. And I'm kind of good at. Doesn't sound humble, but I was like this actually works. So ye kind of started studying how you would go about that. Hooked up with book launchers. I think I've been with them since I was a contractor first, so maybe four, four or five years. I was a contractor for a year and then have been with them as a full time employee ever since. And I really do. It's, I love helping people tell their stories. And so today I thought might be kind of fun to look at sort of how you get Started on telling a certain type of book or, you know, for writing a certain type of book. And you know, we do nonfiction, so there's certainly we can start with that, but I wanted to go even a little more narrow than that. We do work with people on memoirs. I'm working with Mary Ellen on her memoir right now. And it's a joy and it's going to be a really good book. But today I want to kind of talk about, you know, prescriptive nonfiction, which is most of what we do. And prescriptive nonfiction, you know, that's basically where you're offering reader, you know, they've got a problem and you're offering them clear instructions or advice or strategies. You'll see those names in the titles. A guide to a handbook, a playbook. But the point is that, you know, they have a specific goal they want to achieve or they want to acquire a new skill and you've got the information that they need. You know, it could be how to manual, like I said, a self help guide, instructional book. But we get the sense, you know, that it's, you know, it's really about. It's going from a point A to a point B in terms of knowledge and steps to take. You know, you're going to have actionable insights, they're going to be tangible results, tangible, you know, steps that people need to take. So all of this stuff goes into, you know, prescriptive nonfiction.

So when people sit down, like, you know, where do I start? When they sit down to write really any kind of book. But like I said for our purposes today, you know, prescriptive nonfiction, they sit down and write that book. And they've got one. They've got a voice in their head, and that voice is saying one of three things. One, it's saying, could be saying, no, nobody's going to want to read this book.

Or two, it could be saying, you know, somebody, somebody will want to read this book. And then there's the third voice, which is everybody wants to read this book. Now, you know, this book is for everyone. And I kind of want to begin with that last one there. When you say this book is for everyone, you've probably heard the old saying, you know, if it's for everyone, it's for no one. And that is true. But that's the only, that's not the only reason. I want you to ignore number three, because if you're thinking that your book is for everyone, that's an indicator that you haven't done the hard work of figuring out you know, who your audience is. It's just one of those things where it's like you can't write for everybody and still be effective. You know, they always talk about, it's this little quirk of storytelling or anything really is that, you know, it's specificity, it's being specific that tends to be universal. When you try to be universal or general, it just doesn't really connect with anyone. So, you know, there, you know, there may be some books that get read by a lot of people, but they're still not for everyone. The person who wrote those books is, you know, understood who they were writing for. So that's three. Get rid of that thought. If you hear that voice, just ignore it. The other one, of course, is, you know, nobody wants, nobody wants to read my book. And you need to ignore that voice too, because it's not true.

You as it relates to your subject matter for whatever you're going to write your book, you know, you either had an experience that you learned something and now you have this knowledge and you want to share it, or something excited you so much that you've spent time and energy and focus studying this subject matter. So sometimes it's lived experience, sometimes it's, you know, academic research or just, you know, how you spend your time. But the fact is if you were, you know, if you went through something or you found a subject so interesting that you studied it, chances are there are other people out there too. They just either haven't, you know, they're facing the experience that you've already gone through, or, you know, for whatever reason they're just starting to get interested in your subject or they haven't had the time to study it as in depthly as you have. So that's how you know that there is, you know, somebody who's going to want to read your book. Let me just take a little break here and see.

Yeah, so, okay, so we're ignoring one and we're ignoring three. You know, three is sort of a lazy lie that we tell ourselves and one is a lie that we tell ourselves so we don't have to actually do the hard work of writing that book. That leaves us with two. Someone might like to read this book. And then here is where I see first time writers, and frankly, some experienced writers make a key mistake that kind of sends them down the wrong path. From the very beginning they've got this idea for this book and it's probably a good idea.

And all too often they just start thinking about the things that they want to say, I've done this, or I've experienced this, I know this. And so I want to start telling people all these things when really what they should start by thinking about is focusing not, you know, on what their book is about, but who is the someone that would want to read that book.

That's a very simple yet powerful truth that, you know, it's not what your book is about, it's who your book is meant for. And if you can, like, really take that to heart in everything that you do in writing your book, that it's not what your book is about, it's who your book is meant for. That'll. That'll shape everything with your book. You know, once you get this sense of who your reader is, it'll shape how you write the book. It'll shape how you market the book and sell the book. Because again, you're. You're writing for a specific someone, a subset of the population. And it's going to really help that, you know, these people, what makes them a someone for you, makes them your someone, if you will, is that, you know, they need to hear these things that you want to tell them, but they need to hear them a certain way. They need to kind of hear them in a way that's going to make them. It's going to resonate with them. But again, if your book's going to instruct and you want to help someone, you have to, you have to show. You have to understand their situation, right? But that's not enough. You kind of have to show you're somebody that you understand their situation. It's one thing to say, I understand your situation. It's another thing to tell stories or share from your own experiences that, hey, I've been where you've been, or I've. I'm an expert on the thing that, that you're facing, you know, so you get. You got to show them that you understand your situation, and then you're going to make a little promise to them that your book is going to help them resolve that situation.

So once that they know you know, that you know their situation and that you have a solution, that's when we start to talk about connection with the reader. And again, this is why we start to think at the very beginning, like, who is this book for? Because we want to connect with those people. So like I said, just real quickly to recap, we want to show them we know their situation and that we have a solution. Because they've probably investigated a few books or a few other possible Solutions. And so you really want to get their attention.

And get that connection as soon as possible. But to do that, you got to kind of know what they're all about. You got to kind of know what they want. You know, in your book, you're going to. You're going to use stories that sort of captivate them, right? Keep their attention. Because it's, you know, there's a whole list of things we want them to do. But the stories that you're going to use, you know, they're going to be stories that do a couple of things. They might be from your own experience, or they might be, you know, stories from history, or they might be hypotheticals or whatever. But the stories are going to do a couple things. Like I said, they're going to keep people's attention. They're going to keep them reading your book.

And that's going to be a lot easier if you know who they are and if you know the things that they're sort of like the way to push their buttons, if you will, to get them to connect.

So I guess that leads us to, you know, who is my someone? You know, how do you get to know your someone? Because again, you got all these things you want to talk about, but you can't really talk about them until you know who you're talking to and how you can talk about them. And so we'll dive in that into, you know, how you figure out who your someone is next. After a couple of prizes, at least a prize.

I'm back, everyone. I told you I would be back for the prizes. So, yeah, I think that's great. And this is one of the things where Chad is really, really good about guiding people. Like, he is a literally a pro at helping coach people through this thought process and identifying who is your someone or. Or, you know, it's not going to just be a singular reader, but who is that group of people and why is your book important for them? And that's exactly what this is about. So let's see. I want to do a giveaway for the people who have commented live. So I'm going to pull up this giveaway tool you're watching and you have not yet commented. Now is your time to do so while I am getting this prepped. So let me pull this up over here. Whoopsies. And I'm going to share screen. And then for all the people who have watched or who are currently watching and have commented right now, you will be the prize winner for.

One of these awesome books. There we go. Okay, let us see. Yes. Okay, you guys can see this. So let's see. We had 14 different people. I, of course, even though I've been in the chat, I cannot win these books because I already have plenty. And plus, we. We need to share. We need to share the love with you guys, Tony Jones, all the way in Australia. Well, it's a good thing that we are doing books just because that is a long way for a package to go and we only send books outside of the. Outside of the US because of the these. So, Tony, congrats. I'm not sure that you've actually caught a live live before, so we're glad to have you. Please email me at Team T A M Book launchers dot com. I will of course need your mailing address since you're outside the U.S. i will need a phone number as well for customs. And then let me know which of these awesome books that you want. I'm not going to go over them all again right now because as you guys heard at the beginning, there are a lot. But yeah, let me know which one you'd like and we will get that shipped your way. Yay. I'm so glad that you won. That's awesome. So I'll put it in the chat, the email address. Oh, and this is your first time watching live. Well, then kismet, Tony. That's awesome. Maybe go buy a lottery ticket today as well. That's awesome. Alrighty. Well, I'm gonna stop sharing and we will go back over to Chad. There we go.

Thank you. So, yeah, so we kind of talked about, you know, now we got to figure out, like, how do you get to know who this someone is? And, you know, and you know, Angela, she made a point there about like, you know, obviously, you know, you're going to have more than one reader of your book.

But when I work with writers on their book, I really do try to have them focus on like a single ideal reader. It's just easier that way. And if you remember, you know, a book is essentially especially prescriptive nonfiction or a memoir even. You know, it's a conversation with. With one person and that's the reader. And that conversation takes place in their head. And so that, again, helps drive that sort of connection. You know, they're reading the book and you are talking to them.

So yes, when we say, you know, someone will want to read your book, we are talking about a, you know, a large subset of people, more than just one person. But again, as you're writing it and even as you're trying to market to them later on down the road. It's helpful to think like, who is this one person? It just sort of simplifies our thinking. So we're not trying to please many people. We're trying to please the people that we really should be pleasing. We may pick up people outside of that along the way. You may be writing a book for women. You know, you're not going to market to men. If men pick it up and get something out of it, that's great, but that's not where you want to spend your time and effort. Whether it's writing the book or marketing the book, you really want to focus on getting to know who your someone is. So with that, we'll kind of jump into part of that process of who we figure out or how we figure out who they are. And the first thing that we need to focus on is think about what they have to go through and what we want them to do just to get to the point of the book.

We don't want them to just, you know, buy your book. We want them to buy your book, but not just buy it. We want them to read the book. Right. And that's one of the reasons that we want them to, you know, connect with what's with the material that's in it. Because if it's not interesting to them, if it's not written in a way that they respond to, they may not finish the book. And all this great knowledge you have to share, it's just going to be in that book if they don't connect with it to the point that they finish the book. So that's a very important part of your someone is how do we make sure they finish the book. But even that's not enough. I mean, they've bought it and they've read it, but what do they got to do next? They need to take, you know, they need to make the effort to apply what you've shared with them in their own life. You know, I always talk about the last chapter of a book and it's sort of a. I always say, imagine you've got your reader, your somebody, and you've told them everything. You have to tell them in a way that they want to hear it. And you got your arm around them and your walking them to the door. What sort of final words do you want to send them off with? That's really kind of how you think about that last chapter. And so the thing is, we don't want them to just put the book down and be done. We want them to then take those things and apply them in their own life. But even that's not all we want them to do. The next thing. And this is the best of all.

Chances are the person who's facing whatever problem or obstacle that you're providing a solution or a way around, they run in circles with other. Other people who are facing the same things. So we want them to talk about your book. They buy it, they read it, they use it. And it works so well that they absolutely have to tell people, you know, you want a book to change their life in some small way, maybe in some big way, depends on your subject matter. But what you want them to do is to be so excited about the fact that you help them, that they want to tell people. And chances are the people they're going to tell are people who are facing similar things. And that's, you know, that's how word of mouth works. Your book starts to take off because, oh, it helped me. It might help you. Hey, it helped me, you know, so anyway, so again, these are all reasons. We've got a lot we're asking of, of our, of our. Of your someone, you know, your reader. So we got to make sure that we're. We got things really tight in terms of what we're saying and how we're saying it.

So, you know, even before jotting down an idea for your book, you got to figure out who that someone is, you know, who will want to do all of those things. And at this point, a lot of writers, again, new or experienced, they make a minor mistake. They default to, you know, demographics to describe their someone. My reader is this age, you know, my reader is this gender. My reader makes this much money. My reader has this much education. Doesn't hurt to know these things, to have an idea of these things, you know, especially later when it comes time to market your book. But when it comes to writing your book, it. It's more important to kind of understand sort of what your someone is up against, whether, you know, externally and internally and, you know, as it relates to your book subject. And when I say, you know, externally, I mean, what are they up against? Out the world? Out in the world, you know, the, the, the, you know, the obstacle or the challenge, the problem, like, what's the thing in the world? But then also internally, you know, where's their head? Where's their heart? You remember, you know, at the beginning I talked about there are these voices in your head. You know, I kind of did the same thing when I was you know, putting this together, you know, the people who are attending this, what are they going to want to know? You know, how can I talk to them, you know, about the things that relate to them? And so that's. Those are sort of the internal things. And we call those like, you know, their need, you're somebody's need or, or their want or, you know, and their fear. You know, we get into those things really trying to figure out like, you know, how we can get as close to reality with those things with our, you know, with your someone, you know. So like I said, externally, it's what problems are they facing? You know, what goal do they hope to achieve? What obstacle are they getting around? You know, internally it's like, what do they value? What fears do they have? What misconceptions do they probably have about your subject matter that they don't even realize are misconceptions? What do they need to know that could help them? And these are called psychographics as opposed to demographics. And the great thing about them is they really cut across demographics to one degree or another. It kind of varies. But I'll give you an example. Let's say you're writing a, a book to help salespeople, you know, improve their sales. You know, the first thing you're going to talk about is, you know, is, is this an experienced salesperson or is this a novice? Again, that's sort of an external thing. I have experience or I don't have experience, you know, and it would be, you're right, it'd be very different if you're writing for a, nails, a novice sales somebody versus, you know, who's just starting out versus someone who's established and, and you know, they've got some sales, you know, they're gonna, these two people are gonna have very different goals, different challenges, different needs, different wants, different fears, you know, the experience versus the novice.

You know. And let's just take it a step further, okay? It's a book for salespeople and they want to improve.

Improve their performance, right? So, you know, there's a difference between say a sales someone who has, has done, you know, who does 75k in sales versus someone who does a million in sales a year, right? So demographically, you know, the one in the million dollar sales someone probably makes more income than the 75k sales someone. Again, that's demographics income. But maybe the 75k person is not a novice. Maybe they are established. Maybe their next level is 500k or maybe their next level is becoming a sales Manager, again, sort of their external things and maybe the millions, sales somebody wants, she wants, you know, her next level is, is 5 million or maybe she wants to cash out of the game entirely at this point. So those are the sort of external things you might writing a book for a salesperson who wants to, who's, you know, wants to get to this level, who wants to get out, who wants to manage a sales team. Again, you're kind of like, what is the specific obstacle or goal that they have?

And that's kind of why, you know, your book is secondary to what your book is about, you know, that's secondary to who it's for. And knowing these external challenges, these psychographics if you will, you know, helps you decide, you know, who you're writing for. It's going to help you shape the book and help you market the book. But when you get to the internal psychographics, this is where it's fun because these will tell you a lot more about, you know, what your book needs to say to them and how it needs to say it. So again, sticking with the sales, someone's, you know, the $75,000 sales, someone who wants to jump to 500k, you know, what does he want to know? What does he need to know that you know, but he doesn't, you know, what are his fears? So you know, you're not looking at so much of, you know, oh, what steps should they take? But what keeps them up at night? What are they worried about? Why haven't they taken these steps already beyond just maybe a sense of not having the knowledge of what to do next, what else is going on in their head? You know, that's very different from. And if that's, that's very different, somebody like said is at 75k and wants to run a sales team, they're going to have a whole different set of obviously external wants, but internal fears too. You know, managing a sales team is going to be, you know, how do I lead, how do I get people to respect me, how do I, how am I affair supervisor versus someone who's trying to get to, you know, a million or 500k in sales? You know, it's totally different thing. So again, who's your book for is going to shape what you're writing about? And you know, the fears of the million dollar salesperson, you know, who wants to get the 5 million, those are going to be different from the needs or the wants and the fears of the million dollar salesperson who wants to retire early. So again, it's it's key to have both the external and the internal. You know, have a good idea of these needs, the things that they want to know, the fears that they have. The fears are so key because that's like the quickest way, like, to address and make connection is to address those fears. And these are the type of people, once you nail that, you know who they are, what their fears and what they need, what they want. These are the type of people who will be attracted to your book and they'll buy your book and they will apply what you teach them in the book, and then they're going to tell everybody else that's like them, oh, you got to check out this book, because it really helped me. But you really can't do that until you got a sense of who those someones are. So you spend a little time thinking about what is it they want and what do they need. You know, those someones, like I said, that they're going to tell. They all share those needs. And these people, once you nail this, they're going to, regardless of their age or gender, income or whatever, they're going to be interested in your book because you've really taken the time to figure out, you know, who you're talking to and how. And when I say how to talk to them, I mean you're talking about the things they're concerned about, not the things that you want to talk about. And that's great. I can hear you out there right now saying, that's great, Chad. So, you know, how do I do that? How do I gather those things? And we will talk about that after another prize.

Awesome.

All right. Perfect. Perfect segue. I think that we should do this prize for. For. Let's do a hashtag, Chad. Let's. Let's get some participation in the chat. What. Is there a specific hashtag that you think based off of what you're. What you've been talking about, that we should make people put in the chat, and then we will see who writes that hashtag.

Who it's for.

Hashtag who it's for.

I will write it in the chat. So you guys know capitalization does not matter. So we're going to do hashtag who. We're not gonna have the apostrophe. Don't put the apostrophe. Who's it for? So you can put that in there. I'm even helping you guys out by writing it in there so that you guys know exactly what it. What it looks like. So we're gonna give you guys Just a moment to do that. And Balaka, I see your question. I have started so that we can get to it at the end. And this is the. What Chad is talking about is going to help set your book apart. Because if you dive into reviews on Amazon, on Goodreads, on Barnes and Noble, you're going to see that if you don't have some of these things niched down, if it's too broad, if it's a book that's for everyone, you are going to see that a bit reflected in the reviews because people will notice that. So it is actually very key to address these specific things that he's talking about and figure out those fears. Take the time before, before you even start writing or if you've already started, it's okay to, to go back and make sure that you have these elements in there of are you addressing their fears? Are you giving them clear action steps that they can take from your book to apply to whatever area of their life, their business, whatever your topic happens to be. All right, awesome. So, okay, I think we have plenty of people, so let me. We are going to go back over here. I am going to share screen again in just a second, but I need to actually write the hashtag that we're looking for over here. Okay, so let me share screen. We're going to figure out who this next prize winner is for one of our books.

All right, awesome. You guys can now see that. Who's it for? Let's see.

Who's it for? Who is this winner? It can't be me. Christy Piper. Yay. I know you just won recently, but there might be one of these books that you have not yet won. So you're welcome to claim one of these. If you want to give away your prize, that's fine as well. Just let me know. But yeah, otherwise, email me at teambook launchers.com I will need your mailing address again, even though I know you sent that and I think that was for one of the books that Sarah has. So let me know your mailing address and then which of these books you would like. So thanks for tuning in, Christy. And we are going to hop back over here. Let me stop sharing screen back over to you, Chad.

Thank you.

So, yeah, so that's great. You know, how do you start to gather these things? You know, how do you identify these needs and these wants and these fears? And again, now we're starting to get specific. And the answer is you start with yourself. And I don't mean the self who's sitting down the right to write the book. I mean, the self that you were before you went through everything that you're about to share. When you were facing what certain people, what your somebody is facing, what your someone was facing, what were you like then? What fears did you have? What obstacles, external and internal, were in your way? What did you want to know? What do you wish you had known then? You know, somebody had told you then, you know, what could you tell yourself back then that would make it easier to get to the point? Just kind of put yourself back in that mindset of who you were before you gained the knowledge. Whether again, it's through experience or intensive study. That's a good place to start. Just kind of spend a, you know, a good amount of time thinking about what was, you know, what would have helped, what was I afraid of, what stopped me, what kept me from moving, what obstacles appeared along the way, not just, you know, at the beginning, but, you know, throughout the process.

You know, and then, you know, I think the main thing is that, you know, you're just looking for what do you have in common? Or what did you have in common with your reader? What do you have in common now, of course, but what did you have in common with your somebody today? Just kind of figuring those things out will give you a really good start on their external and internal psychographics. What they need, what they want, what they fear. And I just keep saying those words over and over again because those really get to the heart of sort of addressing them specifically in their needs. So.

Like I said, you kind of think about, like, what bothered me, what kept me from doing it. And then once you've kind of exhausted that and, you know, spent some good time, you can then kind of start to take a look at, you know, maybe you're, you know, you want to interact with the people who are kind of like, you're somebody, right? And, you know, if you're lucky enough, you know, you may have a consulting business where, you know, say you're a financial planner and you're writing a book for specific someone in terms of planning for retirement or whatever. And again, this is not a retirement book for, you know, planning for retirement for everybody. It's going to be really specific of who you're talking to.

You know, so if you're lucky enough to work with those people, you probably have a, you know, directly. You probably have a good sense of, of who your somebody is because you're, you're working with them every day. You know, if you're a physical therapist and you've got some, you know, some knowledge you want to share to help people stay healthy. You know, chances are you got people coming in and out of your door every day. You kind of know. You know how to talk to them already. You kind of know what's on their mind, what they're thinking when they walk in the door, or, you know, how they get halfway through the. And people tend to drop off for some reason. So you kind of. You can anticipate those things. So, you know, you've got yourself, and then you've got people that you, you know, you interact with. But let's say. Let's say you don't interact with people who are your someone for whatever reason. You know, it's just not. You're not. It's not a business that you're interacting with those people a lot. But you, again, you do have experience. You've been through it.

I think the next thing at that point is to kind of, you know, you can. You can go online and you can kind of seek those people out, figure out where those people hang out, read comments, sections. You know, Angela talked earlier about, you know, go look at reviews of books that are, you know, very general and not specific, and you'll see that the reviews, you can tell the reader is left lacking, left wanting something. And that's, you know, that's another good way to kind of gather information about what's on your someone's mind is go look at authors and reviews, you know, for books that are in your subject area and kind of look and see what people are still saying they wish they had. That'll, you know, help you speak to them and also help you differentiate your book a little bit, which is never a bad thing. So those are like some really, you know, three really strong ways to kind of figure out, you know, who am I talking to? What do they need to hear from me?

Just see what's next here.

So after you've done that, like, you've kind of got this list of what you think are their needs, their wants, their fears. You've got a really good foundation here. You know, you kind of. Yeah, you're starting to take shape. And again, this is a list that, as new information comes in, as you have conversations with people, update this list. Add things, you know, fears that you didn't think about or whatever. Because the next part, you know, even though you're continually refining this list as you get new information, you know, once you have a good solid understanding of who you. Who your someone is and what they Want what they need, what they fear.

You know, then you can kind of focus on what you want to say. And at that point it's, you know, I usually have people just go through like a brainstorming exercise or make a list. Make a list of all the things about your subject that you want to talk about. Doesn't have to be in any specific order. Doesn't have to be pretty. We just want to get as complete as possible a list of the things that you want to talk about. Remember at the beginning I said, you know, people start out talking about what they want to talk about because they've been thinking about this book for years. Probably I should write a book. So they've been thinking about what they want to say. So usually this part is pretty easy. I've walked them through how you figure out who you're talking to. Now they get to do the part that they wanted to do at the very beginning, which is, okay, here's everything I want to talk about, and get down as much of that as you can.

The next step is where we kind of bring it all together. You take all of those things you want to talk about, and you see how they align with all those needs and those wants and those fears that you've already outlined that your someone has their, you know, external and internal psychographics. You know, so and it's, you know, this is pen on paper. This, you know, write them out or on your computer and sort of like, here's the need. And then which one of the things you want to talk about addresses that? And you do that for everything. You know, you get all your ideas and all their wants and needs and fears, and you're going to get to the end and you're going to. Maybe you'll have some things that you want to talk about that don't have a need or want or fear, right? And that can mean a couple of things that can mean that you are missing a need or a want or a fear. Again, maybe something that you didn't realize, oh, that was one of my fears as well back when I started. That's why I didn't make your list. And so you're like, oh, that is one. So then you can add that to the list of your readers, your someone's needs. And then you have a place for the thing that you want to talk about.

Could also be that you're just wanting to talk about something that doesn't interest the person who you're someone. Because it's not. It doesn't. It's not a concern of theirs. It's not a need, it's not a want, it's not a fear. So that's sort of a good way to kind of go, you know, here's what I want to talk about. How does it match up with the things they need to hear? This is where we really start to bring that together. The other thing could be that there's a need, a want or fear that you have listed that doesn't have anything from your list of things you want to talk about, which at that point means, you know, you probably missed something. So let's go and take your experience or knowledge and figure out what you have that addresses that need and want to fear. That way you're giving them everything that as best you can tell, they want to hear. And again, that's kind of where those, like I said, going and reading the reviews on Amazon and other bookseller sites to see what they say gives you a real sense of, oh, they missed this, and maybe I missed it too. But now I know there are people like my someone and this is one of the things they want to know. Excuse me.

It'S getting a little dry there.

So basically, like I said, you at that point, you've kind of tied everything together. You're talking about things they want to hear. You know, another key point is sort of using language that they use. That's another great thing. If you're not interacting with your someone on a regular basis, it's kind of just the language that they use in comments, online, in reviews. That's, you know, that's another quick way to get people to connect with you is to use the language that they use. And again, that demographics does kind of play a part of that. But certainly, you know, facing these certain, you know, fear or want or need, if you can couch it in terms that I, your someone, immediately recognize, again, I'm like, this is for me. I'll keep reading. I want to know more.

So basically, like, you've tied these things together. You're getting a sense of what they need to hear from you so that you can couch what you want to say in those terms. And now you got the basis for a rough outline because each of those things is essentially a talking point. It might be a chapter, it might be part of a chapter, but. But at some point you're going to address all these things, right? Because you know, that's what they want to hear and you've got answers. That's your rough outline. You know, then you get. You spend time figuring out, what's the sequence? What do they need to know? Because you don't want to throw it all of them at once. You want to parcel out the information and digestible bits. You know, there's maybe something you want to throw in that doesn't really need to show up until the end of the book. But you're just, you know, so excited to get out there. This type of thing will keep you from doing that. You know, like I said, you'll have this, this list and it's all tied together and that's how you kind of reach somebody. You know, you're somebody. There's somebody who wants to, you know, again, going to be attracted to your book, they're going to buy your book, they're going to read your book, they're going to apply what's in your book and then they're going to tell other people who they think, you know, could benefit from that. And your book, you know, will have made their life a little bit better. Maybe it's made it a lot better. But either way, if you keep, if you take one thing from this, it's, you know, it's not what your book is about, it's who it's meant for that will help you from writing all the way through selling. Just focus on that, who your book is for. And that's kind of all I got right now because it's. That's a lot to digest. But, you know, if you, again, if you just put yourself in their mindset.

It'Ll. It'll go a long way. It'll go a long way.

Yeah. That is something that Julia's talked about in a bunch of videos is your book is written by you, but it's for your readers, it's not for you. And so doing these different things to, to keep your books content directed to the reader is so key. It really is so key. This is going to set you up for an excellent, excellent foundation for maybe a book you're currently working on, maybe future books, maybe even if you do like a second edition of your book, these are elements you can go back and look at what you'd previously done and maybe enhance or add to or maybe even take away if you had too much stuff in there. So that was awesome. Thank you so much, Chad. I, I assume that was the end. Is that correct? I don't want to cut.

The most. Oh, you're good.

So I got four more points. Okay, so we have a few questions that have come in. If you guys have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat. We're going to go through those and then we do have one more prize before we sign off today. So this first question, what is your advice when you have to mention something that's controversial? For example, in my Women's safety book, I, I have to mention the possible tools of self defense that women carry around.

I'm not sure why that would be controversial in a book. Again, that's, you know, again, very specifically for women. And it's about safety. I think that, I think if, if those tools weren't in there and I bought that book, I would be, I would be disappointed. Now you can certainly acknowledge that there are, you know, other points of view about maybe some of these things. Like, you know, for instance, handguns. You know, and obviously, you know, I'm sure your advice would be some, something along the lines of, you know, if it's for you, great. If it's not for you, there are other options. So it's, it's never what it's about, it's how it's about what it's about.

So, you know, in terms of offering up and mentioning, you know, self defense tools, you know, the context is I'm giving you some ideas of what's out there. The choice obviously is yours to, to do what you're comfortable with. But you, you know, I'd be doing you, the reader a disservice if I didn't let you know exactly what's out there, you know, and all the caveats and all that kind of stuff.

Stuff.

So I think it's, you know, I think when you, you look at something like that, it's like it's got to be in there. I would say. Otherwise it's, it's going to leave your, your reader, you're someone that you're writing for. That's one of the things that they're going to want to know. Obviously it's, you know, that's, you know, to some degree very fear driven. You know, I'm afraid I want to protect myself. You know, you've got, you've got to speak to those fears. And that's another fear though, right? I, maybe I'm a person who doesn't like handguns. So you figure out, okay, what is it that I know that I can use to speak to that fear of handguns? And again, you're not trying to bring somebody around on handguns. That's not the point. The point is how do I talk about handguns to somebody who doesn't like handguns? That kind of Thing.

So anyway, yeah, and Gary had a good point as well. Give your readers the tools and then let them make the choice. So, yeah, excellent. Thank you. We also have a question from Henning. What's your view on the fourth leg? Will it add to the red thread of what you want the reader to get out of reading it?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Was that maybe the fourth voice? Henning, I think you're still, I think you're still online. Let us, let us know, Henning, if you can clarify just, just a little bit and then we'll go back to your questions. Oh, and it looks like Balaka has follow up. There's so many legal implications, so she's afraid it's often used on the user itself. Unless they're trained.

Yeah, I mean, and again, those are the sort of caveats that you can, you can put in the book as you're introducing the thing or you can put some blanket statements at the beginning. Some sort of the, you know, everything within this book is, you know, you have to, you need to be trained, you know, be sure and get training. This is not the training manual simply giving you the option, some version of that that, you know, again, yes, there are. And you know, if you're, if you're that concerned about legal implications at some point, you know, you probably want to have a lawyer take a look at it just to make sure you're covered. That's always a good idea. But you know, at some point, you know, as long as you've told the user, this is, this is the purpose of what I'm sharing with you, you know, and you're not saying run out and get a gun. I think you would probably say, if you're going to get a handgun, make sure you're properly trained and you might even provide resources where they could get properly trained. That's a great way to like drive somebody back to your website, you know, for a list of resources in your state and you, and you keep that on your website or something. And so it's a reason for somebody to like, you know, interact with you. Again, they're not looking to you. You don't necessarily have to have all the answers, but you are a resource to them. And the more that, like you say, I don't have the answer to that, but here's where you can go. That is always huge in terms of building a connection with your reader because again, they've gone from the book, they've reached out to you to say, where could I find this and you've given them a resource where you can find that. You're not saying, I'll train you on how to use a handgun or whatever it is, but here's a, here's where you can go and get training trained. Here's where you can find out. So again, just giving them information that they want to know is paramount. Is key. That's really where that connection comes in.

Yeah, and that's also great to think down the line as well. To think, is there a way that I can provide resources for my readers like that? That's a little marketing tip right there. A little marketing Easter egg there. That is very good.

Again, if you know at the beginning who your someone is and that that is an issue, you can prepare for that. You don't write the book and then get out there in the world and be like, oh, I didn't address that. You know, you've addressed it in a way that you're also comfortable with. Again, not presenting yourself as someone who's, you know, gonna provide them with handgun training or whatever it is. But yeah, that's, again, if you know that going in, it's, it's so much more effective in the way you write the book and the way you market the book. And because again, you realize that that is a concern that your someone has. Awesome.

Okay, next one from the Community Positive project. What do you think about asking ChatGPT to create psychographic segmentation examples that you should consider for your book about blank. To help you often narrow it down, have an outline and have you, Chad, use something like this.

I'm not, I'm not opposed to it. You really have to understand that, like.

You know, you, you're going to have to still do work.

If chances are, if you are an expert in the subject or you've got experience in your subject, I would do the first pass at my, you know, my idea of what the psychographics are. Again, based upon your experience, you were this person or you work with these people, or you can studied this. And then I would, you know, I'd be fine with going and saying, you know, trying to fill in the blanks there. Because again, if you think of AI as a, as a writing partner, that's essentially all you're doing is like, what am I missing here? What else is there? And again, once it spits out some information, you got to double check it, you got to verify it. Does that make sense? So it's a great way to, you know, I have, I have what I call the rule of 10 just anything I'm working on. If I need to come up with, with some options or some ideas I don't, I have to come up with at least 10. And you can't stop until you get to at least 10, because usually the first seven or eight ideas are ones that everybody has. It's when you get to, you know, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, that you start to get to the ideas that not everyone has thought of. And so I really enjoy that game. But, you know, AI is a great way to kind of help with that, where you go, okay, I've got my, I've got my eight, you know, let's see what I miss. Or, I've got my 10, let's see what I miss. Let's see what, let's see what the machine says about what I may have missed. But again, you have to be. You can't just take it at, you know, oh, well, then it must be true. You really have to then kind of dig into that. That comes up with something that you're like, I didn't think of that. You got to figure out why you didn't think of that. You know, was it because you just didn't think of it because you don't have enough, you know, context, or is it because it spit out something that doesn't really make sense and, you know, either way. So you still have to spend the time to go, is this real? But it's a great way to kind of go, okay, let's see what I missed. What else could I come up with?

And it looks like they were originally asking.

Using that to clarify if they're on the right path. Right. But yeah.

It'Ll give you, it'll give you a sense if you're on the right path. But like I said, if say you did it and like, your list was completely different from their list, you know, then you have to go like, okay, where am I off? Or is it off? If you didn't do a list first, you would have no idea. So you really, you can't just go, hey, machine, spit out the answer. It's, it's, it's a tool just like anything else. And it's to make things easier, maybe make some research easier, but it's still something that you're going to have to be in control of. You know, why is this different? Or how does this compare to my list? It's just the way it is.

Perfect. Thank you. We've still got a couple more, so. Okay, we're gonna go. It looks like Henning Provided a little bit more context. So I'm gonna go back to the original question, then I'll go to the context pieces that he had added. So what's your view on the fourth leg? Will it add to the red thread of what you want the reader to get out of reading it and so some other context. It's good to research what your target audience wants and it's easy to dwell on the needs and wants ones. And then he forgot the third one that you mentioned. So on the fourth place, I found that sanity checking. If it keeps the book coherent and following the thread, that will make sense for those reading it.

Yeah, that's part of the process that comes later when you, you know, after you've kind of got your. Everything that you want to talk about lined up with the things that they need, want, or fear, you know, how you're going to address all those. Then at that point you've mapped everything together. Next is you're going to come up with sort of your sequence. And that's where you start to look at, you know, okay, is this all coherent? Is this, does this flow? And it will for the most part, because you've already done the hard part of going, like, it's not just what I want to talk about. How do I make, you know, does it relate? You've already made sure that it relates. Then it just becomes a question more of, you know, what do they need to know? What do I need to address first before I address this other thing? So that's when the sequencing, and that's, you know, it's easier said than done, the sequencing. Just like anything with outline, it can change. You can be like, I'm certain that it should go in this order, and this is the order of my chapters and this. I want to talk about it. And then you can get into writing the initial draft of the book and just realize it doesn't work. It's gotta, I gotta, I gotta combine these things or I gotta put this other thing first. There's, you know, outlines are great, but they're living documents and they change. And as you're writing, that changes. It's when it's on the page. Sometimes you don't know until it's on the page. So, you know, writing is rewriting. That's why they say that. But again, if you've done the work up front, it's going to be pretty coherent and it's going to be pretty solid. There probably will be, you know, some tweaks and things you have to move around. But you know, it definitely will make sense for those reading it because you've already figured out who you're writing for, who's. You've already figured out who's going to buy that book. You're not worried about people who don't fit the profile of your someone because that's not your target audience. If they pick up the book, that's great. And you'll see negative reviews a lot of times of books on Amazon and other booksellers, and there'll be one or two really bad reviews, which, by the way, you want at least one bad review. It lends credibility. But you look at it and you can tell, oh, that book just wasn't for them. They bought the wrong book. You know, if you get a ton of those, then you have to look at like, what are we marketing the book to the wrong people? But if you get a couple, you're just like, oh, they just picked up the wrong book. And you can't really. Not much you can do about that because again, that's not who you're writing for. This isn't for you. I'm not your cup of tea, you know, so, so long. So, yeah, that's. If you do the work, it'll make sense for people who are reading it.

Absolutely. Okay, we have just a couple more. Michelle asked question for you, Chad. How much do you conceptualize the book around the transformation that the reader emotionally wants to have?

Yeah, that's, that's important too, as you, as you're going through and again, you've aligned things up.

With, again, one of their needs or wants or fears with how you want to talk about it. And that how you want to talk about is sort of, you know, if you do this, it will take care of that need one or fear, and then this is the result and this is the transformation. And that can, you know, you can include that in the outline. Usually you know your subject matter so well that it becomes sort of part of that chapter almost without you having to write it down. If you think of it, write it down. The transformation is key. And certainly when you're in marketing the book, it's all about the transformation. It's all about the benefit. It, you know, nobody cares about the, you know, how many, you know, how much steel belting is in the, the, the tire, you know, and they don't care about how cool they look. What they want is safety. Right. And so is my kid safe in the car. They sell you the benefit. You watch a car commercial, you know, wet roads, kid asleep in the back, they're not talking about seven strands of steel, round two, wrapped by one anymore. Those days are gone. It's about that transformation. It's about that benefit it. So it's, yeah, it's key to have that in mind. But that's a little farther down the road, you know, once you've done this, this initial work where you're starting the book.

Awesome. All right, we've got two more questions. Then we're going to do this prize. Then we are going to wrap up, folks. Okay, this next one is from Tony Chad. Do you write the book in the first person?

Definitely. For prescriptive nonfiction, again, it's a, the book is a conversation between two people, you and the reader, and it's taking place in the reader's head. So lots of I, lots of you try not to talk. You know, even in emails. You know too, if you have an email list, you should still write your email as if you're writing it to one person as best you can. So yeah, in the book, I'm totally, yeah, like I always change things. Have people change things from, you know, they or you, you know, to you and I. It's all about you and I, you and I. When people say we and they mean it in like the royal sense of we, society drives me nuts because it's so confusing. Do you mean me, we, the reader and the writer, you know, or do you mean we, the royal we? And so that's why it's like, you know, we tend, don't say we tend to, you know, people tend to. Or I tend to. Or maybe you tend to that again, that's a little like subtle thing that over time helps build that connection when you're talking specifically just to them. And again, when I talk about language, that's a good part of it, you know, but what word would they use? Would they use, you know, strategy? Would they use concept? Would they use idea? There's a lot that goes into that, but eventually you're so in it that you just, it just starts to come naturally. Usually by about the third, third chapter, your voice kind of clicks together and you're using the words that they use versus the words that you use. Especially like if you're an academic and you're writing for non academic audience that that can be really tough where you're trying to like not dumb it down but like almost like, you know, common sense eyes it, if that's to coin a phrase. But yeah, definitely write right in the first person. Especially prescriptive nonfiction and memoir of Course.

Okay, well, this last question from Alvin. How do you know how much contextual background to share before getting to the transformations and their learnings.

At some point? Well, first of all, if you're fortunate enough to talk and interact with people who are your someone, you can kind of play with that. You can kind of workshop it it. You can have conversations where you maybe introduce something that you were thinking you were going to introduce later. You drop it in the conversation soon, sooner, and kind of see what their. What their reaction is, you know, and you'll know. You'll know because they'll either get the dead eyes like, I don't get what you're talking about, or it'll click like the light goes on. When you see that in a conversation with someone who's like, you're someone, and you're kind of workshopping this idea that's going to be in your book and you see that light go on, write it down, make note of that, because that's exactly how you want to do it in your book.

A little harder if you're not actually interacting with those people. That's where things like, you know, content editing and other readers who either are like, you're someone or who is a professional who knows, like, okay, well, this book isn't for me, but I'm trying to figure out, like, what you're trying to accomplish. Did you accomplish it? And if not, how can I help you accomplish it? That's what. That's what a good editor, a good content or development mental editor will do for you is they'll be like, you know, you give them too much context here before you got to the transformation. And again, they're usually tied together within a chapter. Books where you're setting everything up in the first part and then answering all the questions in the second get really confusing. So you do want to keep those things together, but you got to make sure that you have. You demonstrate that you have a full understanding of their obstacle or their problem before you give them an answer. Otherwise they're gonna be like, yeah, but you didn't include or, you know, they're not gonna believe your suggestion or your answer if you leave out a key piece. And that's what you. Some of it's feel and some of it's talking to people and having people read it. You know, is this essential? Is this necessary? But again, if you go back and look at what are their needs, wants and concerns, that'll answer that question for you.

And that is one of the great thing about having other pairs of eyes versus just you or just one single editor or like AI looking at your manuscript is because they can help, help narrow down or help clarify those things. Alrighty guys, we need to do one last prize before we hop off off for today. So I am going to share screen again and we're going to go to our handy dandy giveaway tool and I need to pick the right thing. We are going to see who is the winner of one of these books and if you have already won today I will be redrawing just so that we can share the book. Love, Aubrey Hudson. I didn't see that you had commented. I must have missed your comment. So great to have you be on here today. So Aubry, you know the drill. Please email me@team TamokLaunchers.com I feel it's been a little while since you've won so go back to the beginning where I talk about all the books and you can let me know which of these books you would like because I am sure that there is probably more than one of these that you might not have. So thank you so much for tuning in and thank you Chad for I'm trying to stop share screen so I can see everyone. There we go. I almost ended the session too early. Thank you so much Chad for helping today and for hosting and giving some great insight on ways to write your non or to write your nonfiction prescriptive book. So thank you everyone for tuning in. We do have another deep dive in a couple weeks and then we also have a or I'm sorry a YouTube live in a couple weeks and then a deep dive this month as well. So hope to see you on those and have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday. We'll see you around guys.

Thank you everyone.