Hey Revenue Writers,
This newsletter edition was first recorded as a podcast and I used AI to turn it into newsletter form.
While AI was used to repurpose these are my words… I often write the newsletter first and then record a podcast but this is the reverse order to show you all how you can use AI to create while it still being YOUR ideas, YOUR content, YOUR words.
Enjoy,
The book that will grow your business
I get this question a lot.
“What book should I write? What should my book’s topic be? I want to write a book, but I don’t know how to figure out what to make it about.”
If you want to build a business around a book, the answer is very different than if you just want to write a book to pass on to your kids. I’ve done both, and I enjoy both. Today I want to talk about how I approach writing a book to start or grow your business.
It’s not the only way to do it. It’s how I approach it.
Why the book itself isn’t where the money shows up
You’re going to think you’re making money because of your books. It’s more of a catalyst.
Most people say, “I’m only selling 100 books a month,” or whatever it is.
I only make $400 or $500 a month usually on my 8 insurance books’ sales. That’s when it does okay. Most times it goes lower than that.
My business, IA Path, has done really well. It made up to $750,000 a year most years, and it’s mainly centered around my books. But the book sales don’t drive the business. And it’s not always leads driving it either.
The reason a book is so good at helping you grow your business is because you have to understand your topic to such a degree that it makes you truly an expert.
What actually makes someone an expert
I have to understand things to the stupidest degree possible. Otherwise I feel like I can’t talk about it or help other people with it.
Knowledge is useless.
Look at AI. It knows everything.
Knowledge is great, but it’s abundant, so your knowledge is not much of an advantage.
Your experience is part of your advantage.
What makes you truly an expert is if you can replicate the results you’ve had for yourself with other people. You put it together as a package to pass on to somebody,
“This is how I got the result. Here’s how you can do it, too.”
You make it to where someone else can understand it AND get the same result you did.
Now you’re an expert.
Books happen to be one way that’s done.
You can do it through courses, through presentations. But the most easily transferable form of media that exists is books. Because there’s no video, no audio, it’s text on a page. To make it make sense to somebody else, you have to boil it down to its fundamentals.
That’s the power of writing a book.
How to know what to write about
Once you know what you want to write about, that’s the topic and subject matter you’re going to become an expert in.
“But Chris, I can’t just pick random topics.”
No, of course not.
You have to start where you already have experience, because you can’t prove expertise until you can transfer it to somebody else.
Think of a restaurant. You don’t open a restaurant and ask what you want to cook. You ask what you’re already good at cooking. What have you made that was so good people wanted more of?
“My mother is Italian. I’ve made Italian food my whole life. My kids ask me to make lasagna every year on my birthday.”
That’s probably your category.
Wherever your experience lies, that should be one edge of your category.
The three things that form your category
Once you have your big broad topic, figure out three things:
The person you want to serve.
The problem that person has that you have experience solving.
Your point of view, gained from your experience, of how they should solve that problem.
Here’s how it worked for me.
I looked at my expertise,
“I’m an insurance adjuster by trade, so that’s my big broad topic. But I’m not the best at everything in insurance, so I should help new people. I’ve had friends who wanted to get in the industry and couldn’t because they didn’t know how. So my person is someone who wants to become an adjuster but doesn’t know how.”
The problem?
When someone wants to accomplish something, what is stopping them?
For my person, they found there were experience requirements. So the problem is they want to get in the industry, but there are experience requirements stopping them. They feel trapped in a maze.
Then the point of view.
Everyone was trying to become an adjuster a certain way, and I had a different way. My point of view was they should get started with auto claims. That’s the experience I had. Other people got started in property. My experience was different than a lot of people’s.
Your experience gives you the big category umbrella, and your person, problem, and POV give it its shape.
Turn your point of view into a framework
With your POV, make it very different from what most people do.
If it’s the same as everybody else, dig deeper, because a point of view has to be unique. If it’s the same as everybody else, they can get it with AI.
You might be thinking,
“Chris, I don’t have a unique point of view.”
You probably do. You just don’t realize it.
One, it’s unique because of your unique life experiences.
Two, to make it truly sound unique, turn that point of view into a framework.
Here’s how I do that. I come up with the steps of how I would solve the problem with my point of view. To become an independent adjuster based on my point of view, I interviewed 100 people, drew from my life experiences, and found there were seven steps everybody had to do to get work in this industry.
I wrote out the seven steps. That was my unique point of view.
No one else had ever said it that way.
No one else had ever made it that clear.
No one else had my life experiences.
Those steps of the framework became my book.
The whole process
If you want to build a business around a book, or use a book to grow or start one:
Determine the big category you want to be adjacent to. For me it was insurance adjusting.
Determine your person, your problem, and your point of view.
Figure out the unique framework you want to teach people and pass on.
To make it transferable from a book, it has to be something that makes sense like a framework. That’s the book you should write. That’s where you should start.
Sure, there are other ways to do it. But you want my opinion, that’s what you do.
Now go do that process.
Spin it up.
Until next time, keep spinning.
Coach Chris
