How to make a million with a published book to connect deeply and directly with your ideal clients.

Here's what I learned from facilitating the writing journey of over 50 consultants, experts and coaches.

If you are a consultant or expert, selling high value solutions to ideal clients,

 

Your Book is NOT  the product, Your Real-life, Lived-through Experience IS

 

The Catch-22 Paradigm that is sabotaging  your connection

with the Soul clients who are, RIGHT-NOW, searching for your services.

But they can't find you.

 

What do you believe is stopping you?

It's not the online noise of "the competition"

It's not the lack of time

It's the assumption that your authority book to attract high-value clients takes a long time to write,

and so you either put it off until you retire, or write a book to sell to random strangers

If the investment in your services costs anywhere from $5000 to $!00,000,

Your Authority Book IS your marketing brochure

 

 

1. If your clients are busy professionals or entrepreneurs, 

they are READERS. They don't have time to attend webinars or trawl through social media to follow your posts. 

Busy leaders prefer to absorb your content at a time and place convenient for them.

 

2. What's next?

Where are you leading your reader to?

What do you want your ideal client to do when they have read your book?

 Leave a "Like" on social media or praise your content in a 5* review on Amazon? - the Bookseller approach

or 

Do you want your ideal clients to read the content, then raise their hand and ask to work with you?

 

If you understand the difference between the "bookseller" and the "successful consultant". 

 

Here's what I learned from leading dozens of consultants, entrepreneurs and business owners through the writing, and publishing process. 

1. When you shift the focus from selling books to attracting warm leads to your high-ticket consultancy services

or mentorship offer

Your Authority Book can be written in days, not months or years!

2. The real reason that most successful consultants and coaches take so long to write is that they assume they have to sell a shedload of books in order to monetise the writing. This is the bookseller approach! And because they hold this assumption, they will either allow their mind to find new groups of people to include to boost sales, so that the writing process expands into a never-ending Odyssey or the project is abandoned until the writer believes they will have more time to write (they won't, they will just have less opportunity to serve the clients who are searching for their services!)

3. The power of going to give.

This is not the same as "giving to get"! 

It is the simple act of human connection without forcing an outcome. It does not hold the desperate energy of begging random strangers to "buy my book"!

What is it doesn't have to be done that way?

 

1. The "bestseller" or "bestselling author" title is written by copywriters. How do I know- I am one! But I am also a writer and editor who has worked in business and industry for a long time!  I know the tried and tested  power of the White Paper formula o clearly express the value of a product or as

"0ne solution to one problem to one audience".

 

To recap: the PURPOSE of your book: is to attract ideal clients to your high-value product or service.

With that aim in mind, the approach is to get the book in front of your ideal clients so that they read the contents then raise their hand and ask to work with you. 

So we avoid anything that prevents that happening.

Focus on connecting with your ideal clients. (Resist collecting opinions or advice of anyone who is not your ideal client- this just builds another mountain of "stuff" to wade through!)

The title is clear- a dart to the heart of your ideal client. 

Not a catch-all message to everyone that resonates with no-one!

 

 

We work together to extract your irresistible offer to your ideal client (one solution to one problem)

This is a process of asking questions to extract the information that is already in you! 

If you offer a high-value solution to a problem, you can express it in an hour.

The ideal client attraction book takes less than an hour to read (less is more- both for your reader and for the marketing logistics- more of that later) remember the purpose of the book to be read by the ideal client.

So, what happens in between- the writing process?

The hardest part of writing a book is being alone with your thoughts.  

I used to call this "the ego trip"; many writers call it "writer's block".

But the best definition of this phenomenon is simply "anything your mind comes up with to prevent you doing what  you intended to do that day".

That is why I recommend  you set a powerful intention before you start writing. 

I used to avoid telling clients how to write a million dollar book - precisely for the reasons I listed above - if you assume you have to sell a tonne of books to make a million dollars from a book, you will take forever and a day!

 

Your ideal client is not interested in how many books your sell, in fact, if you offer a unique high-ticket service, would you even have time to serve thousands of clients at that level this week?!  

 

What you are seeking is seeking you.

This is not a random universe, so why would you rely on random marketing to get your authority book in front of the soul clients who are, right now, searching for the solution you deliver? 

Here is the simple disconnect that is preventing your using your authority book to connect deeply and directly with your ideal clients.

Disconnection

You are an expert in your field, and your expertise has been acquired through your real-life, lived -through experience.

However, you are allowing your beliefs about books to sabotage your writing, publishing and marketing experience. 

 

Maybe you have already been through the traditional publishing experience or you are a first-time author who has started to write but are overwhelmed by the whole business of trying to stuff a lifetime's experience into one volume, and either given up or battled through the misery of writing and re-writing only to publish and find you have to begin the whole business of promoting and selling your book- or even trying to find other markets for a book that is not selling as easily as you thought it would?

 

You are not alone! 

I meet so many talented consultants and experts who are putting off writing their book until "Someday when I have more time, until retirement or until hell freezes over."

Why?

Writing the book of your solution to the clients who are actually looking for that solution, does not take long!  

If you are an authority in your field and I ask you how you help your consultancy or mentorship clients, you can easily tell me about your service in less than an hour. 

Which is great, because, in my experience of helping clients connect with their high value clients, a client attraction book takes around an hour, or less to read.

That's great, you may say, but what about the bit in between?

Good question- and this is where I came in, because writing a book is about asking Yourself the right questions before you start writing.

The reason most writers get stuck is that they ask themselves or other random people, the wrong questions.

Why less is more

If your clients are busy professionals or entrepreneurs, they are readers. 

 

Most book publishers arrive in answer to the wrong questions.

 

The Catch-22 paradox - or the two myths that stop you writing your book now.

1. A book is a low-ticket product with a low return on investment

2.Because the ROI is low, it is a low priority item in my business and I will put it off indefinitely in favour of more immediate, high-profile activities.

Examples of solving the wrong problem! 

The "Bestseller" label. This is seldom written by the author, but by the copywriter. Ask yourself how many books do I have to sell to become a bestselling author. Answer: very few. All you need to do to become a bestselling author is to publish a book. The rest is subjective. The people who are really selling a shedload of books are virtually indistinguishable from those who have sold a few dozen copies. 

The first question I ask new clients is : do you want to write an authority book or do you want to be a bookseller?

This is confusing, because the belief that you have to sell a shed load of books to make a million dollars is so ingrained.

Unfortunately, out of all the beliefs you hold about books and publishing and the value of the book, this is the most dangerous. It will delay your writing journey, and dilute your message to your hungry clients who are looking for you.

If you believe you have to sell hundreds of thousands of book as a strategy to get in front of your ideal clients, then your clever, ingenious mind will feed you all sorts of ways to make your message appealing to as many groups of people as possible in order to fulfill that requirement. 

Leading to "The longer you take to write your book, the more opportunities your mind will have to stop you. " 

Belief No. 2 : The process of writing and publishing a book takes so long, that I will do it "one time for all" and cram all I know about everything into my swan song. 

What if we just answered better questions? (This is the real job of the book coach, but you are not going to hear it from a bookseller or a publisher!)

Better question : What is your financial goal for your book. 

Before, people , being well-meaning and altruistic, told me what they believed I wanted to hear. Oh, I just want to get my message out there! Later, in private they might nervously ask "Do you think I might make a few dollars profit?" 

INTENTION 

If you aim for nothing, that's what you'll get. This is the road to disappointment and misunderstanding of the importance of getting your book in front of the people who are waiting to read it!

1- 

The purpose of your Authority Book is to get your solution in front of the people who are right now looking for it- your ideal clients- so that they recognise you and get to know like and trust you and raise their hand to ask to work with you on your high level programme or services.

2. When you know who you are writing to, you will no longer be bound by your mind field reminding you that you need to go wide rather than deep with the content. When you dilute your message, and attempt to speak to everyone, you resonate deeply with no-one. It's like writing a love letter that begins "To whom it may concern".

3. Know your customer. No-one knows your soul clients better than you do! Your clients are a reflection of you. They might be a 20-years ago version of you, and they want to know how they can achieve what you have achieved.

4. Know your numbers. This one is tricky if you are working with a traditional publishing house, or even trying to win badges with Amazon! (This is your Authority Book, not the Brownies!!) Look, your publishing company is a business, not a charity. They depend on you selling a tonne of books, or at least not leaving them out of pocket! When you don't make the Selling books target after your contract, they will drop you like a hot potato. Not callous, just business. The same with Amazon. I hear a lot of people complaining about profit margins on Amazon. They forget that they are allowing you this amazing publishing platform free of charge. And so they go off answering the wrong question "how can I maximise the profits on my book?)

Better question: Your book is your sales page, your marketing brochure! Would you seriously expect people to pay for your marketing brochure? 

 

Here's the bottom line, you have done all the hard work. Your years of expertise have value to the people following you. They may have less value to your Auntie Jean or some man in the pub whose brother once published a book. They are. hey are not your ideal clients, you respect their opinions, but their comments are irrelevant. Sorry!

 

 

So, now I ask a better question: what is your intention for your book?

Do you want to serve high-ticket clients deeply and directly?

Do you want to make a million dollars with your book?

Ideally, the answer is : Both!

 

For those who say they don't have time to write a book, I suggest they don't understand how a book fits in your marketing strategy.

 

This is not because you can't write or you don't know your subject, but because you are caught in a "mind" field ; a disconnect between what you want to achieve and how you think it should be achieved. 

The simple mind shift that exposes the beliefs keeping you stuck, so that you can write your book in a fraction of the time. 

Of course, if you are a process-oriented person, you might enjoy the writing process so much that you never want it to end ( I call these people the "under a tree in Tuscany  group", not as a criticism, but who are waiting until they have some free time, or retirement, or, ideally, a substantial advance from a publishing company that allows them the time and luxury to ponder and wonder and write and re-wite." 

I honestly didn't know there was such a group as the slow route until I began working with writers and  found that most of their beliefs were based on myths and the world of fiction, but, as you may have guessed, there are those of us who would rather just take a break in Tuscany, unhindered by the pressure of "writing a book".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

About me

British English writer and copywriter with extensive field experience in UK industry, and international organisations. Born in Edinburgh and educated at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK, I offer a hands-on background in science, technology, and international relations together with writing in-house for publications and independent consultants and coaches. .