How to Write a Great Business Book

If you have a business book idea and you're wondering how exactly to compile your expertise into a brand and business boosting book that's going to help your reader, then this video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers and done right will help you grow your brand, build your business and make you money. The best part? You yes, you keep all rights and royalties. The category of business book is pretty enormous. Just look at all the categories on Amazon. We have everything from Accounting, Biography and History, Business, culture, Economics, Finance, Human resources, Insurance, Job hunting and careers management and leadership, Marketing and sales processes and infrastructure, real estate skills, Small business and entrepreneurship, Taxation, and there's even a category for women and business that is a long list of topics and types of books and it is a big chunk of the nonfiction book category. So if you're thinking of writing a business book, there's a lot of places your book might fit and your plan to write a book could be a really great one. If your goal is to gain thought leadership in your space, expand your business, shorten the long sales cycle, get media attention, be interviewed on podcasts, land, keynote or paid speaking engagements, and so much more, your business book can become a powerful business and brand building tool. But revealing your expertise and experience in a book is a little more complicated than just putting on a pot of coffee, turning on your computer and sitting down at your desk. In fact, I don't even want you to write a word until you're properly prepared. And that's what we're gonna talk about right now. So what do you need to do before you start writing that book of yours? Well, first let's figure out who is the ideal reader for your book. This is the found of what you need to figure out before you start writing. If you want to use the book to sell your product or service, then the natural ideal reader is the person that you want to be your customer or client. If the book is to help position you as a thought leader in a specific space, then the question you have to ask is what expertise or solution do you offer that is unique and who would most benefit from knowing that? Finally, if you want to be a paid speaker or workshop trainer, or even even a high paid consultant, who is paying for the expertise that you have and what do they want their audiences or employees or affiliates to know that you can share? Ultimately, this question is not Figuring out a demographic demographics help, but this is really about matching your unique solution or message or your approach to your goal to find the people who need you. When you do this right, you're laying the foundation for your marketing because you're going to know who has this ideal reader in their audience already and you can start making connections. 2. How will this book help the audience? What's the benefit for them? If you've watched other book launchers videos, then you know this is all about hook development. And the hook is that single thread of an idea that ties your entire book together. Like your elevator pitch. It's what makes your book different. And hooks get that hook out, hooks your reader in and convinces them that they have to read your book right now. What's a problem you solve for the reader? And, and what do you know that most people don't know? But really the answer we're looking for is what is the outcome someone gets from that in their life or business? A great way to further develop your hook is to think about a sentence or two that people will use to tell their friends about your book. If you have something that has your ideal reader exclaiming, I have to read that book. Congrats. You've probably found your hook. Without a clear benefit for your audience, marketing your book is going to be a struggle. Now, I want to get specific here because unless you already have a large audience or a very big network of people with good audiences, you have to be specific versus general because, well, just take a look at the conference agenda of an event that you're going to or you're going to be speaking at. The only person doing a general talk typically is the keynote speaker. Everyone else offers a solution to a very specific problem. They've been identified as the go to expert on that specific solution. You want to be specific, so you can be known as the go to expert on that. For example, you don't want to be the leadership expert. That's a really, really packed city of people with a few giant experts already standing tall. But maybe your particular approach to leadership allows the frontline worker to become the leader and that increases profit and employee satisfaction for a company. Now you're starting to get to a really cool hook. You can see when you get there that you've got media opportunities, speaking opportunities, and opportunities to grow your own business. And at that, when you get a cool hook like that, you can start to see the opportunity for media speaking and just ultimately growing your business. Or maybe you're a sales expert. Now that's another really crowded space. But what if you're the expert at cold outreach on LinkedIn to get people to hop on the phone with you about your product or service? Now suddenly you can see the opportunities for business growth, speaking, consulting and more, right? So get more specific than might feel comfortable. You can always follow up your wildly successful book with a broader category book to cover all the things you couldn't cover in this book. 3. What are your goals as the author? We started to think about this in step one in order to help you determine who the ideal reader should be. But here's where I want you to write down what your actual goals are. While lofty goals can be great goals, they are often far too impractical to keep you on a realistic path as an author. I'll link to a video on the bestseller guarantees and the end so you're connected with what's involved with becoming a bestseller. But here's my caution. When you're coming up with your own goal, try to focus on something you can control. Wanting to be named a New York Times bestseller or getting interviewed on Ellen or Dr. Phil are big goals, but you have no control or you have very limited control over that outcome, and those goals are focused on you instead of on your reader. Goals like that put your ego in the driver's seat. And when it comes to publishing your book, putting your ego in charge makes you the product, not your book. My own personal goals tend to revolve around trying to write a book that will help achieve a specific outcome for a reader. And then I focus on getting X number of interviews, X number of reviews, and connecting with X number of influencers to try to help get the word out about my book. I can control those things. I can't even control how many books I sell, but I can control how much outreach I do. So that's what I focus my attention on. Whatever I do, I really try to keep my goals on things I can control the outcome on, and that ultimately helps me reach my reader versus focus. Feed my ego or hurt my ego. It's your book and your business, though. The big thing here is to get clear on what's most important so you can lay the path to set yourself up for the best chance of success. The final piece is what makes you the right person to write this book. In my latest book, Self Publish and Succeed, I share some thoughts on what has helped other people build their brand, and ultimately it comes down to you being willing to stand out in order to be known and share the things you believe that not everyone will agree with what is unique and interesting about you. The Author that perspective that you're sharing brings a different angle to your subject. Even if your book covers an often written about topic, remember no one else has lived your story and no one is sharing the insight for the exact same reason as you are. You don't need to be dramatically one of a kind different than everyone else to stand out, but you do have to share your unique story and perspective to write a book that will make an impact. Your book is something only you could write, so share your story. Once you're clear on these four things, you're on to developing an outline and then figuring out if you're going to write this book yourself or get the assistance of a ghostwriter. But at least now you're set up to avoid the biggest mistake most people make when they write a business book, and that is they sit down and write without having a plan. If you're wondering if you have a great book idea and you're looking for a company to help you write, publish and sell that book, let's chat. Just take a couple of minutes to tell us about your book idea@book launchers.com application. Don't worry, we keep it all confidential and whether or not we decide to work together, we'll make sure that we give you clarity around your book idea and the direction to move in. Now I'm curious. What do you love to see in a business book? What do you wish every business book author knew before they started to write? Let's chat about it in the comments below. And when you comment on the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbooksswag like our mug where coffee, tea and hot chocolate are all proven to taste better. Or our oh so soft journal for writing down all your important book ideas. We have new videos every Tuesday and Friday. Make sure you catch everyone by subscribing to the channel and turning those notifications on. Then you can also be the first to comment, which will move you one step closer to being one of my beloved YouTube besties. Joining the elite group with Mojo Poetry from the Heart Erin Crowley Mary Lynn Turner Rachel Robertson Bill Miller Andy W. Brian K. Morris Rising Tide Publications thank you so much for your likes, shares and comments. Being your bestie is the highlight of my day. You're really fun. Do you want to keep hanging out? Okay, excellent. There are so many videos to watch after this one, but I think you may want to know about hiring a ghostwriter, which is right here or if you're good on that, Then there's this one I promised on the bestseller guarantee. I also really kind of want to put a third one on here on hiring a book coach. So I'm going to sneak that in over here. So those are three great videos. Go ahead, choose one. I can't wait to see you there.