Writing To Get Business

Donna is 6’5” tall and a woman who both literally and figuratively stands out. Her height gave her the confidence to succeed in the male-dominated world of real estate, and her intuitive gifts enabled her to become a master player and teacher of poker.

Poker helped her to develop the belief that one’s life is created by one’s perceptions, a mindset perspective that enabled her to recover her speaking ability three days after having a massive stroke.

A few weeks later, when she was waiting to have a heart procedure, staff members, having heard that she was a master poker coach, asked her about it. When she explained her mindset principles and exercises, she influenced not only more than a dozen people but also the doctor who had performed her procedure.

She has published these principles and exercises in MindShift On Demand: QUICK Life-Changing Tools, her second published book. Donna, who recognizes that exposure to the Internet and related technology has created a need for information presented in a simple way, plans to create several smaller books on this subject and card decks.

“Keep it simple” and “Keep on repurposing it” are her guiding principles in writing and publishing. These principles can serve any authors who want to get the maximum value from their work.

Join me for this episode of Writing to Get Business to discover

• How does extensive experience in writing articles help you write a book?

• What question must you ask yourself when you plan to write an article or book?

• How can your customers’ and clients’ questions tell you what to put in a book?

• Why must you consider how the modern demand for instant gratification has changed what people want in an informational book?

• Why is “Repurpose” the magic word of publishing?

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If you’re a consultant or member of a C-suite, you take a different approach to writing a book than an academic or fiction writer. Your primary goals are to increase your business and to help your clients increase theirs. That means you need to see your book not as an end product but as one aspect of your overall business strategy. You want to implement a holistic approach that integrates innovative business tools with a book’s content.

Traditional and hybrid publishers published Steven Shapiro’s books. He also published independently and is an expert on leading from a holistic perspective. He’s a generalist in the best sense, for he brings what he’s learned from a range of businesses to each new consulting position.

Unlike some authors, who move from subject to subject in each new book, Stephen advises going deeper in a way that creates more value for the reader. He also feels strongly that a book’s purpose is not about royalties; it is about impact. A book’s impact has a ripple effect on all the other services and products one offers.

If you want to explore the possibility of getting the maximum impact from a book and build your business, study this podcast carefully.

Listen in to this episode of Writing to Get Business to discover

• How can an author best choose between traditional, independent, and hybrid publishing?

• What are the advantages of writing and publishing books for particular clients?

• Why can a brand color be a powerful marketing tool?

• What are the three basic realms of products and services?

• When is it better to create a new product instead of a new book?

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Perhaps the biggest challenge for someone who wants to write a book is how to begin. How do you choose a subject, and how do you manage to write the 40,000 or 50,000 words, which, even in these streamlined times, are needed?

Here to break this down for you in easy, understandable steps, is David Avrin, author of several books, and a business consultant who focuses on customer service.

In terms of choosing a topic, David focuses on relevance. This word has a twofold meaning. The subject should be relevant to current challenges. Because these challenges change, an author, in order to continue to be relevant, especially to his actual and potential clients, needs to publish every two to three years.

David has learned that if you think, “I have to write an entire book,” you can be stopped before you start. Instead, he takes one task at a time.

Anyone who hesitates about taking on the work of writing a book will find encouragement in this podcast. Get more pearls of wisdom from David here.

• What is the number-one rule in writing?

• Why should you abandon perfectionism when writing your first draft?

• How does writing and publishing a book help your business?

• What is the most important quality for someone who writes about business?

• What are the advantages of writing in the program Scrivener?

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Has your business gotten trapped in its own innerspeak? Are your communications with clients verbose and full of vague and confusing language? Do your website stats show that visitors are bailing out after 15 seconds?

Your company may be suffering from Business Blather. That’s the title of a new book by Jerry McTigue, author, copywriter, screenwriter, and a master of writing simply and clearly. In this podcast, he identifies several issues that limit a company’s ability to reach its audience.

Jerry says that businesses fail to recognize how drastically people’s attention spans have shrunk. You need to get your message out immediately or at least get your audience sufficiently intrigued to want to know the message.

He has also observed that during the pandemic, many advertisers switched from the “pain point” approach to a more positive mode of expression. His viewpoint is that both approaches are valid and that copywriters should use the one that best fits the product.

Consider this important takeaway: Companies should always test-market their major messages and change them based on this feedback.

Overall, he recommends following your intuition. If you have any feeling that your copy isn’t communicating, you’re probably right. Don’t be afraid to change it. Don’t be afraid to communicate directly. You have a narrow window of opportunity to communicate with your client or customer. Make the most of it.

Join Jerry and I for this episode of Writing to Get Business.

• How do business communications become pretentious, verbose, and incomprehensible?

• Why must your website message attract interest immediately?

• What’s the difference between copywriting and content writing?

• Why are stories so important in all forms of advertising and promotion?

• What’s the importance of being specific in resumes and LinkedIn Profiles?

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Al Kushner, financial educational specialist, knows about the pain and suffering being financially unprepared for the cost of a funeral causes at a time when people already feel overwhelmed with grief and sorrow. He has seen people have to take out loans, max out their credit cards, and start ill-fated GoFundMe campaigns.

He wanted to help people stay clear of these economic quagmires. This desire inspired him to write The Savvy Guide to Burial Insurance.

Al understood the importance of timing and knew that people would, unfortunately, have a particularly great need for the kind of specialized information he could provide. He researched a wide variety of options and compiled them in his book. He provides information about various ways to prepay for a funeral and explains in detail the relationship of age and health to the cost of insurance plans.

Al’s choice of subject material can teach any authors who may feel reluctant to tackle difficult and sensitive issues—even if it’s their area of expertise. If you are such a person, let Al’s story help you realize the necessity and immeasurable value of airing these subjects. If you give one person the tools to solve a huge problem, you will have made a difference.

Here’s what Al has to say in this episode of Writing to Get Business Podcast.

• Why is caring about people’s needs such a powerful inspiration for writing?

• Why is timing everything?

• How do you evaluate the need for a book about your area of expertise?

• How important is your personal knowledge and experience?

• How does the information you share in your book leverage your ability to increase your customer base?

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She started in the Obama administration and was appointed as an entrepreneur in residence for them. She eventually became the Director of innovation.gov, and created a movement of change called the Better Government Movement in the federal government.

Combined with her being an empath and highly sensitive person (HSP), she has written a book that blends empathy and innovation to take change to the next level.

Sympathy is the feeling that makes you feel like you’re lesser than the person for whom sympathy is felt. Empathy brings connection. Empathy builds this belief that I’m here with you rather than for you. Empathy is essentially this feeling that you are feeling a feeling with somebody as if you’re feeling it yourself. They find that people who are empaths have this thing they call a mirror neuron system. So, they have these neurons that, as humans, we want to connect with other people.

People who are empaths have a more enhanced mirror neuron system. They want to connect, and they actually can’t stop connecting. They’re very present with them.

Being a highly sensitive person is like having a world of technicolor. It’s like when you walk out when you’re in The Wizard of Oz, you go from being black and white, and everything is bright around you.

That has been Amy’s experience in a lot of ways. She feels things differently, and she feel things very deeply, sometimes. But that is something that she’s had to learn to harness and understand herself a lot more as she’s done this work and her own internal work, too.

Enjoy this episode of Writing to Get Business and see

• How can you turn your life’s difficulties into a vision for social change?

• What does innovation really mean?

• How can empathy initiate change?

• How can reaching out on your social network help you find people to interview for a book?

• How can writing a book become a journey of self-discovery?

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Did you know that a consultant has to be an archaeologist, anthropologist, detective, psychologist, and serve in multiple additional roles? Dave Dragon, an experienced consultant shares both in this podcast and in his book, I Solve Mysteries, the complex and fascinating world of consulting.

Learn how you can accept a consultant’s evaluation of your business with less pain.

Many companies are looking for answers on how they can optimize their processes, and be more productive, compete more fully in the market, and tackle business challenges. Dave Dragon is an expert in the area of larger companies dealing with some of those challenges.

Dave works on large transformation projects for companies. And, typically, it has to do with their business processes being broken. And when you go into one of these projects, they may have opinions about what they think is wrong, but 90% of the time, they really don’t know what’s wrong. So, when Dave is going in to run a project, he’s really trying to understand what is the root cause of their issue. And that’s what the mystery is.

One of the first things that Dave leads people through is what we call a current state analysis, and that’s documenting their business processes. And through that, he starts seeing where their issues are, and he starts identifying and understanding some of the cultural issues that they have, because people may be in conflict. He starts to get information back from his analysis.

Join me for this episode of Writing to Get Business Podcast.

• Why is an outside consultant’s work sometimes like that of a medical doctor?

• Why is the method of handling returns one of a company’s biggest challenges?

• How can “test marketing” your ideas for a book make it a more useful one?

• What is people’s first reaction to change?

• What do the five stages of grief have to do with the consultation process?

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As a writer, do you struggle with how much to assume your readers know? Are you a stubbornly independent person who doesn’t want help? Does perfectionism plague your attempts to write and publish? If any of these challenges ring true, you’ve come to the right place. DJ Eshelman has experienced all of these issues and, in an engaging and informative way, shares how he triumphed over them.

DJ published his first book, Be A Citrix Hero, in March of 2020 amid the time we weren’t supposed to be doing anything, right? We were supposed to be cowering in our homes in fear of what was going to happen. And he said, “No, I’m going to go ahead and publish this book.” And so that was the first book. It was born out of that notion of “Let’s do it, see what happens.”

His reception was pretty good in that regard, of people being astounded that somebody in the line of work that he did was able to write a book. There’s a whole host of perceptions that people have about what a book means. That opened up all sorts of doors.

As part of being an author, DJ had to deal with the curse of knowledge as he planned his content.

Join me for this podcast episode for Writing to Get Business to get to know DJ better.

Learn how you can feel good all the time

Ways you can fully embrace your Zone of Genius – what you are uniquely qualified and gifted for in this world

Tips on spending more time with those you care about, less time “working”

How to live your own unique life and learn how that will create wealth in every aspect of your life

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While a common recommendation for would-be authors is, “Write what you know about,” the writing journey of Pamela Rasheed, MSN, RN, who specializes in infertility counseling demonstrates that you should also write what you care about. A friend’s advice to choose to write about women’s and couples’ struggles to have children resulted in Barren: The Inside World of Infertility.

Pam came from Guyana as an immigrant, in her very early twenties, alone, and having to navigate the complexities of living in a big city. Pam arrived needing to get established, find a place to live, get a job, all on her own with a couple of children. We met through a course that I taught on teaching people how to write books.

Pam thought about this book morning, noon, and night, about how to shape this book. She had the clinical background that added credibility to the book.

Nurses can be very effective if they would incorporate a holistic approach into the care of patients with infertility. And that was a reason why she thought, she needed to shed light on these hidden costs that these patients carry as a bigger burden, sometimes. How are we going to pay the mortgage but then afford the medications, which are very expensive?

How did the women in the book dealt with their difficulties? How did they get through? And Pam realized this book is not only for the medical professionals, it’s also for patients who are going through this.

• When is it a sound idea to give up one book idea and take on another?

• How can you closely define the audience for your book?

• In deciding to interview people, how do you select them?

• How can asking the right questions to yourself about your subject lead to useful organization of the material?

• Why is passion for your subject so vital?

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Self-promotion presents special challenges to those in the healing arts, but Sheri Kaplan, healer and spiritual transformational coach, has put together an integrated package of a short (20-page) book and a 20-minute consultation for a price that attracts potential clients to ask for more of her services.

She shares how she compiled the book, the importance of having an audio version, and the necessity of a backup copy of everything. Her lessons learned apply to anyone writing, producing, and marketing a book. Sheri’s book focuses on chakras, the energy centers in your body. They’re like vortexes that need to be spinning in a clockwise direction, pretty much at a nice speed. You don’t want one to be too fast or closed.

Look at it as like tires on a car, and you want them to be going in the same direction with the right amount of air, the right amount of pressure, and the car is going to go. We are the car, and our chakras are the tires.

Sheri’s goal is to get all the tires in alignment, nothing out of whack, no holes, no treads, no squares, so that way the car is going to move. When people chakras are not in alignment and things are holding them back, that’s the body’s hesitancy about being able to move forward. It’s like you’ve got the brake on.

Maybe, you have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake, and you’re being pulled, and you can’t understand why. So sometimes the chakras are the cause of the imbalance in the body.

Watch or listen to this episode of Writing to Get Business to see how Sheri answers these questions:

• How can the desire to help people turn into a book?

• What social media techniques help promote one’s business or book?

• Why is it important to listen to what people are asking for?

• How do you decide what to include in your book?

• Why is having an audio version of your book important?

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