How To Embrace Your Inner Author: Expert Advice for Entrepreneurs
How hiring a book consultant will help you overcome fear and feel excited about writing a book to grow your business.
By Danielle Mendoza
Bespoke book consultant for entrepreneurs.
In the 4th episode of Change your mind. Write your book. Scale your business. I chatted with brilliant woman entrepreneur, Amber Petty. She had an inkling that she’d like to write a book, but found herself facing the mindset challenge of “How do I know when I’m ready?” and “Who am I to write a book?”
Exactly the kind of mindset drama any good book consultant should address!
Amber helps creatives get bylines and build audiences—aka she’s a WRITER! After acting for 13 years and getting tired of waiting to audition for roles like “Woman with legs spread at the gyno office”, Amber moved into freelance writing where she worked with the New York Times, Parade, Bustle, and a bunch more.
For the past two and a half years, she's helped over 900 students get bylines, start writing for actual money, and begin newsletters to build a platform for their writing careers.
So she’s regularly empowering people who have written in other areas or always wanted to write. She knows getting bylines is not impossible at all, and is something people can use to supplement their business, get their name out there, or build an audience for their newsletter.
Amber knows writing is a great way to make a platform for yourself without feeling like you're chasing followers. And she knows it’s totally possible for almost anyone!
Yet she felt hesitant to write a book that would serve her audience because she struggled with her limiting beliefs and confusion around how to write a book, what kind of time investment would be required, and not knowing what to do with her book once it’s published.
If you’ve considered writing a book, you’ve probably thought, How do I actually get myself out there as a writer? or I’ve got to build an audience of a billion people before I do that!
And then you just don’t do it. You’ve already talked yourself out of it.
Just like all of my other guests, Amber took our quiz, Are You Ready to Write a Book?
Her result: Perfectly Poised! This means she is exactly in the place where writing a book would serve her audience and her business.
Amber shared, “You know, I kind of thought I'd get like right under perfectly poised…like, well, maybe wait a little longer. [I assumed] I’d need to learn a lot more, wait a lot longer before I do something new, so it's kind of a cool thing to see…by basic metrics, [writing a book] would be a fine idea.”
As a book consultant, I know many brilliant entrepreneurs like Amber who self-sabotage by thinking,
One more certification, one more course, one more lesson, something else, some other thing I need to understand before just diving in and really taking the opportunity.
Instead of doubting yourself or looking for the magical DIY answer, it’s essential to ask yourself, “Who can help me with this? Who already does know the things I don't know so that I can actually move forward?”
The easy answer: a book consultant!
What made Amber interested in writing a book? At first, she felt like it was something she should do since she was running a business as a writer for aspiring writers.
She thought, maybe people will trust me if I have a book. But that felt needy to her, and like it was coming from the place of, “I've got to prove myself somehow,” which isn’t a great energy to write a book from.
Now that Amber is feeling more confident in what she does, the idea of writing a book has become more exciting. It’d be a natural extension of what she would like to do instead of doing it to impress people. This made my book consultant heart super happy to hear!
“There’s a big difference between coming to [a book] with the energy of [needing] to show people they can trust me versus [the book] being one way that I'd really like to demonstrate my ability and my trustworthiness,” Amber shared.
When she and I talked first about this idea of writing a book, before we recorded the episode, she mentioned that when she thought about writing a book, as opposed to the type of writing she currently does, she felt the burning question, “What do I have to add to the conversation?”
Her inner critic dialogue reared its ugly head because a book just felt so big and official and fancy. It was something new and that rekindled the old self-criticisms she’s always faced.
Like many of us, Amber has also read a lot of self-help or non-fiction books where she felt like it was a Wikipedia-page worth of information, not a book's worth.
The nonfiction world has, through self-publishing, been flooded with volumes, and now more and more we’re seeing books churned out by Ai sources like ChatGPT come to the market. (BTW, this book consultant does NOT recommend using Ai to write your expert book!)
As entrepreneurs and experts at what we do, we want to share the information we have. We want to share our knowledge and give people access to that. But when we can step back and say, “I want this book to be representative of the quality of my business,” we are driven to deliver excellence.
Because a book is lasting. It's out there as something that will exist for years to come, potentially even beyond your time in this world. This is why books are an amazing legacy piece. But when we're considering that intentional legacy, we want to make sure we're representing the quality that we embody. In order to do that, we need to be ready to weave in our stories and bring in a little bit of memoir.
A hybrid-memoir book is a beautiful blend of our stories and expertise. We share our stories in a way that relates to the lessons and information we want to teach.
This makes books enjoyable for the reader to go through so they don’t feel like they’re reading through a Wikipedia page or even an encyclopedia's worth of information. As humans, we want to experience stories to connect us with information and other humans.
Amber is not alone in feeling like what do I have to add to the conversation?
I see it all the time as a book consultant: fear and imposter syndrome rise to the surface, even if it’s been buried for years.
Sadly, this is really common, even in some of the most successful women who are running 7-figure businesses.
When you find yourself thinking, so-and-so has already written a book on this topic, what else could I have to say about this that's any different, remember, the difference is in your stories.
It's in how you came about the opportunity to embody the insights you want to share. And you can share them from a place of authenticity! Because you can share how you’ve been there with your reader, you have true authority on the subject.
It takes many voices to share a single lesson with the masses. So even if someone else has said what you said, there are people out there who don’t connect with the famous voices. Believe it or not, there are people out there who hear one of the more well-known voices and think, yeah, that's not really for me.
This means they’re waiting to hear important, valuable lessons from the right person, and that person could be you! Some of these people will pick up your book, and it will blow their minds and open up their hearts to important ideas. Even though they're the same ideas that some other writers have presented in their books. This is because it takes a collective of voices to advance all of us!
So…how will you know when it's the right time for you to embark on your book journey?
If you’re like Amber, then part of you just doesn’t want to overwhelm yourself with more things to do because you’re already a busy entrepreneur. You might also assume that books are a longer-term investment, and require you to wait to recoup any sort of ROI. It's easy to prioritize a workshop or a class that you sell and cash in on quickly.
So when would it be the right time? As a book consultant and experienced author, I can tell you there's not going to be a moment of absolute certainty! It’s something that you have to feel comfortable making time for—maybe in the next year, or a few months from now.
Amber shares some foundational wisdom when she realized saying “Yes!” to a book is first responding to the desire, and believing you have something to add to the conversation. Then it comes down to understanding the process and how much time you’ll need to write your book.
When someone hires me as their book consultant and commits to using the process I’ve developed, their book can be written in as little as 90 days!
That’s the power of hiring a book consultant with a proven process. And in those 90 days, my clients only need to set aside eight hours a week. Writing a book does not require an overwhelming amount of time! You could easily set aside some two-hour chunks over four days in the week, or commit to a couple of four-hour days. Some of my book consulting clients like to set aside one weekend day a week where they sit down and go all-in on their book.
It gets even easier than that! As entrepreneurs, we have SO MUCH content. Everything you've written, everything you've spoken, it’s all content you can pull into your book. When you join forces with a book consultant like me, before you start writing, we’ll decide on your golden thread—the overall, big idea that you're going to be presenting throughout the book. Then we’ll break it down into an outline of chapters.
From there it’s easy to scour your existing content and pull words into your book. You get a huge jumpstart on word count when you acknowledge you're not starting from scratch! You already have this expertise, you've already been presenting it. There are words you’ve spoken or written about your subject across social media, in emails, blogs, podcast transcripts, and media articles.
When I wrote my solo book, Manifest Success, my business consultancy was only a few months old. I pulled from my existing content and had 10,000 words before I ever sat down to type out anything new. This is the power of repurposing, and by the end of 90 days, you’ll have a beautifully strong first-draft manuscript done.
If you feel your inner critic shouting about needing to write a completely perfected, finished, polished product, tell it to step down.
You simply need to get through that first draft manuscript (with the help of your book consultant, of course).
Then you get to work with editors who bring in their genius, and through that process, you work together to create a book that represents your brand quality and your heart, and you can get it out into the world in a way that feels really good.
Then comes the launch, and it’s not any harder to launch a book than it is to launch a course or any other offer to your audience. In fact, your book will be a no-brainer purchase for your people because it’s the most financially accessible way to encounter your expertise!
I encourage you to consider what writing a book can do for your life and who you will become as you work toward that sense of accomplishment. Just overcoming imposter syndrome, moving through the process, and learning what you can will grow you as a person.
Jim Rohn said, “Become a millionaire not for the million dollars, but for what it will make of you to achieve it.”
The same is true of writing a book. It's not about the book itself as much as it is about who you become in the process of writing that book.
From there, as an entrepreneur, consider that your book can add six figures to your revenue, year after year, even if you never sell a single copy!
Here's the thing: we are not authors by trade. We're not here to sell a million books. But what we can do is leverage our books for greater visibility. As a successful entrepreneur, you already know how valuable visibility is to your business! And when you get visible, then you can give your book away.
What happens from there—because any good book consultant will help you embed your leveraging strategy into the book itself—is you’ll capture warm leads from the book.
And so let's say you get your book into the hands of 600 people who end up on your email list because they love the book. They love what you have to offer, and at a very conservative email sales rate of 4% you're talking 24 new clients in a year! If your program is $5,000, you've just added $120,000 to your revenue. Your book will become one of those things you can leverage year after year for great returns.
When you own your authority in a book and do the work to make it go bestseller with your launch (which is not hard to do—it's part of the service I provide as a book consultant), you can leverage that new bestselling author status. It will make you an easy YES for podcast interviews, speaking on stages, platform exchanges, and earned media. And from there, you’ll have all these new people to give your book away to! So it's a snowball effect you can create in your business.
This understanding of how a book actually works as a tool for creating new business (without focusing on book sales or running tons of fruitless ads) inspired Amber to look beyond her fear, shut down her inner critic, and hire me as her book consultant! She’s now perfectly poised to release her book in 2024 to an audience of adoring fans and to leverage that book for brand exposure, audience growth, and lead nurturing.
Everything you want in your business is on the other side of your fear.
If you’ve dreamt of writing a book and helping more people have access to your expertise, then it’s time to let go of your fear, of your not-enoughness, and unleash your brilliance in a book!