Reasons to Write a Book

OK, well, I didn't write the book, but Shep wrote the books. And we always say that a book is really an expensive business card.

Yep.

So, we don't write books to make money, but you write it for a lot of other reasons.

So, let's talk about the other reasons, right? So, if you're not doing it to make money, I mean, one is there's obviously the intellectual, the curiosity, the codification.

Credibility.

Credibility, yeah. So, what's the benefit? 'Cause Shep's a busy guy, he's got things to do. What's the outcome? What's the benefit?

The benefits of having the book? Well, it's really when people wanna hire you for— to speak or to do training or whatever you do, if you have a book, that really lends a lot of credibility. They like that. It gives them something they can touch and feel, and then they can also, you know, get it and give it to their people. They like that.

Yep. And it's a differentiator, 'cause if they're looking at Shep, they might be looking at 4 others in the customer experience. If he's the only one that wrote a book, Tiebreaker, he won. The trick is, from a timing standpoint, when you're writing a book, it's all-encompassing. It takes a lot of energy and effort, and most people, most of the time, think, okay, glad I got that over with. Now let's go into marketing and whatever. The piece to think about in terms of marketing the book is the content that is derived from the book in other formats, like video-based training, like assessment tools, like Train the Trainer. Like whatever, that can be pulled by that, pulled from that same content. That's how you get the most, the most juice out of the lemon. And the time to think about that is not 4 months after the book when you shift gears and say, now I'm in the marketing mode, because then you look back and go, oh geez, I wish I would have asked these couple of questions in here. I would have done a case study on a manager or a leader or my industry or whatever the case may be.