The WAY to WOW Shows
Writing a Book
August 7, 2024
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[0:00] to people making money I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time to talk about professional development building a business Building Wealth all of the things attendant to those subjects and today I'm going to talk about writing a book so in my experience there are a lot of people who want to write a book and having written a book myself I can tell you it is very fulfilling it was a lot of work glad I

[0:37] very glad I did it and um through a a a program that I got from uh a fellow by the name of Michael Hyatt um he this program showed me how to get an agent and I did get an agent actually I got offers from two agents if you can imagine um and the one unfortunately the one I chose was not able to get me publishing deal that was that was a disappointment um but in any event I I think a lot of us want to write a book um but what I found was and and I I've I

[1:13] think I've wanted to write a book since I was a child it was it was always kind of a dream I had in the back of my mind but I never really did it and I I talk to a lot of people who want to write books and somehow they never quite get around to it it so I think the reason at least or at least part of the reason is because they're not sure about why and what and how those kind of basic questions the idea of writing a book sounds very appealing but but sitting there and putting pen to paper isn't

[1:51] necessarily um something that they're prepared to do unless there's a very strong push behind that so I'm going to talk about why you may want to write a book and if so and if you decide your why that's that's a big part of it then what you should write about and then finally I'm going to talk a little bit about how to how to write a book in in perhaps the um lowest uh brain damage way we'll put it to you that way so I'm

[2:29] gonna go through um eight different reasons why you may want to write a book be Beyond just I want to write a book so I can have written a book I mean that that was really my as you've heard me use you know reason for being for for many for most of my life is I wanted to write a book so I could say to myself okay you you you you wrote a book um now my my goal is to become a published author um not a self-published

[3:06] author although there's nothing wrong with self-publishing um what I'm looking for candidly is you know someone else who says yeah this this this book is is of the quality that you know we want to spend our money on it and take a risk publishing it so you know that that's and the reason I haven't done that is that's somewhat of not somewhat it's it's a vanity project um and it's just not something I'm going to spend time doing uh right now but in terms of more sort of practical reasons

[3:43] for writing a book that's that's what I'm going to talk about first and I think the first one is to establish your your credibility or your Authority as as an expert in your particular field so when when when you say you know for ex for example um I'm an I'm an expert plumber right okay it's all good and well to say that um if you say um I I've written a book

[4:19] on Plumbing that that was um you know published and and it explains uh you know how you can the kind of sort of do it at home plumbing things that uh that that you a homeowner can do so that that's at a different level because now you're you're essentially it's not it's not unlike being a teacher where you're putting yourself in the position of being able to train or explain to others something that they don't know right and so in

[4:56] doing so you you set yourself apart from you know kind of the rest of the pack so uh um this was I'm I'm gonna check and tell you exactly when it was um about uh oh gosh it was already five five weeks ago on my show Tres and Estates weekly I had my friend Cedric Collins on and he wrote a book called prudent planning planning for family Legacy so Cedric is a an estate planning lawyer and he is very passionate about helping

[5:33] people get their Estate Planning in in order in order to avoid a a lot of the headaches that are associated with having well with frankly with dying or with having a relative who passes away and so Cedric wrote and published this book and now when he talks to potential clients he can say hey you know I I wrote this book and there it is it's and it's it's quite quite a nice book The other reason in that whole sort of

[6:08] establishing Authority and credibility is it also builds trust so frankly even though sometimes books that are written are frankly a bunch of nonsense the fact that someone has written a book makes it seem like they're more trustworthy especially if that book has been published as opposed to self-published so we we kind of take it for granted that if a third party publishes somebody's book they are vouching for that person in terms of

[6:44] the truthfulness of the book or the value of the book and so that's another aspect of establishing credibility is the book stands as sort of a third party lending their Creed to to you as as a professional or someone in business so another reason for writing a book is to build your your your personal and brand image and um I I think that's another reason why Cedric wrote his book is his his Law Firm is

[7:20] known as one Legacy right and in in order to build that brand right he he he built a book book that was in terms of its image branded I think fairly similarly to his law firm and so that that spreads that that image more widely right and and now if you go to Amazon for example and look for books on estate planning you see his book and then if you're looking for an estate planning attorney and you see his website you're going to go oh wait I've I've seen this

[7:56] before Oh and and just just the awareness that you've seen it before lends that that you know it's like that's what branding is right it it lends the the the sort of credibility oh this is this is out there right it's it's the whatever you want to call it the cocacola effect right so in fact we can see the Coca-Cola logo without Coca-Cola in it and we're still we still go oh yeah Coca-Cola right because it's so common so we can do the same thing with a book so the book increases our exposure it also creates media

[8:31] opportunities so when I found out that Cedric had written his book I asked him to come on my show to talk about it right and and in so doing he he got an opportunity to talk about not only the book but present himself as a professional and so again that builds his brand through through that media appearance I also referred him to another friend of mine who has an even more watched show than I do and again he was exposed OS to all those people building his brand uh related to that but not exactly the same as marketing

[9:07] and Business Development so a lot of people will write a book and they use it specifically for business development so they're not necessarily interested in selling the book per se through Amazon although it may be available there really what they do is they give it to people who are respective clients or customers so I I don't know if this is what I'm I'm using Cedric as an example just because it's it's it's recent he's a friend so you know give him a little

[9:42] you know free publicity here um I don't I don't know if uh Cedric is is giving his book away to people for free um but you know he certainly could do that or if he's if he's working to get someone as his client he could send him that book and and they they would look through that and and not only does that build his credibility but it also it becomes then a marketing tool oh well you know this this fellow who wrote This Book he's obviously very dedicated to helping people out and this is the kind of person I want handling my estate

[10:17] planning from the legal side so so there you go and and you know you can also if you're going to uh conventions conferences is um different types of um um like Bar Association meetings right if you have a stack of books on the table or if you're at a speaking engagement and in the rear of house you have a stack of books that are available either for people to take or even to buy so then that becomes a marketing and Business Development

[10:52] opportunity again now next reason again related to that is networking and relationship so marketing these days a lot of marketing is done through through networking networking is a type of marketing and so when you write a book it gives you the opportunity to build connections okay so in the same way that I use my shows it this should be no surprise to build connections so in in Cedric's case we you know we were we became friends last year we've connected

[11:27] a few times but having them on my show deepens that connection so as a relationship building tool a book can as well and it can do it in in a number of ways one is um excuse me the not unlike the marketing you can offer the book to people next is you can consult with people while you're writing the book in order to get their expertise and perhaps highlight that in the book

[12:03] okay so in in I I I I I haven't read all of Cedric's book but you know if there was a an accountant who specialized in Estate Planning and and administration that he was building a relationship with one of the things he might have done is spoken to that accountant and maybe gotten kind of like a quote or or even just a a paragraph or something about one of the accounting challenges and then included that in the book and in that and in so doing he's building that relationship because he's giving someone

[12:41] exposure without them having to do anything other than perhaps speak with him for 30 minutes or an hour right and so that builds that relationship okay and then you can also collaborate so write a book with someone else and again that really builds a relationship now collaborating can be a challenge of course uh especially writing but there there are you know collaborations can be a great way to get to know someone better and to share expertise so for example to you know a lawyer and an

[13:16] accountant might get together and write a book on estate planning from both of those perspectives and in so doing make the book even more valuable because it's dealing with both the legal as well as the financial aspects of putting together an estate plan next is is personal development so one of the things that writing a book will do and this was certainly the case when I wrote my book is it helps us take this body of knowledge that we have and codify it

[13:52] into a more organized way of understanding it and then it will also show us where there may be gaps in our knowledge so I know in writing my book and I'm I'll gonna show you the book later so I'm gonna sort of you know tantalize you with that a little bit wow um but in any event what I found was as I was writing my book there were certain aspects of the subject that I realized I didn't know enough about so that that motivated

[14:31] me to go and research those topics talk to other people so that I could fill in my knowledge enough to be able to write about them credibly and so that's that's another aspect of of writing a book is it it's it's a personal development tool and by the way just exercising the discipline of writing a book is a personal development vment function even a short book takes a lot of self-discipline in order to get it done

[15:06] it's so easy to be distracted so I know I I used to talk to my daughter about this because she's she's an excellent writer and she likes to write stories and comics and all these things and one of her challenges was she would start writing something and then get bored with it and set it aside and yet in the back of her mind she's she would she wanted to finish it and so we would how you know Daddy how do I finish it and I said well you know in the end what most successful Writers Do Is

[15:44] they set aside time each day to write okay or now if they can't write every day you know if that's not their profession then maybe they set time aside three days a week or something like that and during that time they shut out everything else and they just write and even if at the end of the set time period they have nothing of value nonetheless they've exercised the discipline to write and when I I I will say when I wrote my book each at four mornings a week from I believe it was 8

[16:20] until 11 I blocked out those three hours to write and sometimes I was very productive and sometimes I get to the end and like okay well didn't get anything here I can use and and that's just the way it was and I kept doing that until I got the book written and it was both grueling in a way but it was also quite fun in a way because it really was a challenge and and it and it gave me a a sense of personal personal growth that I was able

[16:57] to stick to this plan plan and then just as an aside after I got done writing the book I I kept that same thing because then in the process that I learned from Michael hayatt of of sending out of writing a a book proposal and sending out queries and all that of stuff it's the same kind of thing it's pretty much a discipline play because it's an iterative process so you just have to keep doing it and doing it and doing it and and so again you know blocking out time I don't I didn't do that for three hours a day I think I blocked out an hour or an hour and a half a day for doing that but just for that time that

[17:32] was the time for doing that and and again it was it was a great exercise in personal development so next is to sort of build a legacy to have an impact and I I think at the heart of of my desire to be an author part at least part of it is is that that you know a book it outlasts us or it can Outlast us so if you consider something like Livy's History of Rome which was written

[18:10] now what I think 2500 years ago or something like that so you know Livy the author is long since dead right but his book still is read I mean I have it in my library I've read it okay or or William Shakespeare right his his work is what 500 years old or something like that um so you know a a book can Outlast us now obviously most books are not going to become you know Shakespeare or Livy or something like that but the fact the matter is it does give us an

[18:46] opportunity to leave a legacy behind and and and that can be important and now if if the book is targeted for example to your specific field and it really helps people in your field develop so then it even though it's not going to be you know a Livy or you're not going to be Olivia or a Shakespeare nonetheless your book may live on for Generations because it's so useful a tool right so Black's legal dictionary Law Dictionary black is a person I'm pretty

[19:21] sure right and and his Law Dictionary has been around for over a hundred years I think so here this is a book that's you know used by law students and lawyers today because the the the definitions of legal terms don't really change that much and so it becomes it's it's become something that's important to the legal profession okay so those six I think are if you will the best reasons there I have a

[19:58] couple of others and I I'm I'm separating these two because the reality of the book business today is they're far far far less likely to happen than they would have been you know 40 years ago or even 30 years ago so one of them is financial benefits so in theory if you write a book you might have something that you can sell that would create an additional Revenue stream now in the days when large

[20:36] Publishers controlled most of the book publishing business if you were able to get a publishing deal you probably were going to if if the book had if if you hadn't written the book yet oftentimes you would get what's called an advance which means an advance on royalties and so in essence you're getting paid to write the book book if you've already written the book you'd be able to sell the book uh retaining the copyright usually and you would still get an ADV an advance against royalties and it

[21:12] would depend now if you know if you're an extremely well-known person these days you can still get in some cases even a seven fig advance so very well-known politicians former presidents it's not at all unusual for them to get a seven fig advance on a book that they would write even taking into account that the book may be you know ghost written frankly okay but the reason that Publishers will give these hug huge advances these days is the person is very well known and when the book comes out there's a certain level

[21:48] of guaranteed sales so they're going to be able to recoup that advance for you and me it's much much harder to get an advance and it's and in fact it's it's pretty unusual these days most books do not get advances these days they they just don't unless you're already somewhat established and I'm not going to get into the the details of this but if you are if you have a social media presence that's large enough then maybe you you

[22:24] can get an advance but these days a typical Advance is not very long large so I remember this is even going back years ago back 30 years ago I met a young woman she was just starting her academic career and she was writing a book about I think it was one of the founding fathers or some of anyway she had gotten I believe it was a $25,000 Advance now $25,000 was a lot more money 30 years ago than it is today but it's not a huge amount of money it certainly

[22:59] would not have qualified you know even a Year's income not even really I mean maybe six months income nonetheless this was a huge advance for an academic for the type of book that she wrote and she had quite a bit of I want to say industry Fame that doesn't sound right but but it in academic circles it was she was known for having gotten this very large Advance right so but but think about it if it's going to take

[23:36] you you know a thousand hours to write a book and that's that's entirely possible when when all is said and done and you get a even if you get a $25,000 Advance that's $25 an hour right so that's not horrible um but the reality is today that would be e today 30 years later a $225,000 advance would be a pretty good Advance right so you know $5,000 Advance would would be nice for a lot of books so there you know

[24:13] you're really you're making not even you know minimum wage so writing a book for f the for the financial benefits you're you're probably not in the end you may have a small Financial benefit but it's unlikely that what you make from selling the book is going to even come close to reimbursing you for the time that it took okay now you might write something and it becomes a big hit and you know and all of that and that that does happen Okay uh but I would caution

[24:50] against expecting that to happen because it is it is unlikely especially given the millions of books that are published these days so the other uh why for writing a book is to have a piece of intellectual property so when you write a book assuming that you're writing it of your own valtion and it's not a work for higher so now you own the copyright to the book and that can be a nice thing uh the fact of the matter is

[25:25] though a copyright is only valuable to the extent that people will pay you for basically a license uh for that copyright so so again owning a copyright is is nice having intellectual property is nice but in the end it it it it isn't anything other than you know owning the intellectual property so you know I I own this uh coaster it was made by um the allegiance flag I think is what it was called it's

[26:00] got their logo on it right and I think I paid whatever $4 for it you know and and you know it it's it's nice I own it okay but you know whatever doesn't doesn't really mean anything and and by the way um so just talking about in intellectual property for a minute this is their logo it may be a little bit hard to see here I'll show you in the light you see it's it's basically a triangle with stars in it right so this is one way that they were Alliance Flag Company I think actually it is this is one way they were able to make money off of their intellectual

[26:35] property this is their logo and they they got this nice leather and they made these coasters right and they sell them for a few dollars each okay so you know you might be able to do something like that with your intellectual property but unless you're going to make it your full-time Endeavor the reality is making money off of your intellectual property typically is going to be at most a secondary rationale for writing a book rather than a primary one all right so assuming you have made the decision

[27:13] you are going to write a book and you've got your why okay so what should you write about so I'm going to give you several ideas here um this isn't necessarily A a complete list that I put together but I think some of the some of these ideas May resonate with you so one one idea is to write about your industry or professional expertise so that's for example what Cedric did with his book on estate planning right he's been an estate planning lawyer for I believe it's 10 or 12 years and he wrote a book

[27:49] about it because he knows he knows so much about it and wanted to be able to share that knowledge with a larger audience okay and and you know it gave him the opportunity to really dig into his expertise and and order it okay which is one of the you know reasons for writing a book okay and and now you can write about just you know how to do something but you can also write about for example an emerging Trend in your industry okay so let's say that you are very involved

[28:26] with AI right that's the big thing in technology these days so perhaps you in a position to write a book about emerging Trends in AI that would be probably of interest to a lot of people because a lot of people are interested in AI even people beyond the tech business right so a a lot of people in a wide variety of businesses are trying to figure out well how is AI going to impact my industry and so if you write a book about emerging Trends then people in I don't

[29:03] know automobile sales in Estate Planning in estate Administration right we might buy that book in order to get ideas about how we might apply AI to our businesses or professions okay another subject that you might write about is your personal Journey so your your career progression or what I call your career Arc oftentimes guests on this show that's what we're talking about is their career Arc and that's one of the reasons why I have guests on the show is so that you can learn from their

[29:40] experience so by the same token writing about our career experiences also gives people the opportunity to do that and it's something presumably we know well since we lived it right now along the way in talking about a career Journey we can develop lessons learned that people can apply to their lives right that's really the essence of having a guest on people making money is is for people is to distill lessons learned that we can apply to our lives so you can do that in a book as well

[30:16] another popular subject for a book especially from people in business or professions is leadership and management now you see this in particular among military people who e either are out of the military or retired and they go into the civilian business world and they take their the leadership skills that they developed in the military and then they they use those in the civilian world as consultants as coaches as

[30:51] trainers um my friend uh Mark Brooker has written I think two books now on leadership he he he's a retired captain from the United States Navy his last job in the Navy was he ran a medical center so he's basically the the chief you know administrator of a hospital and I mean throughout his career he exercised leadership but at when you're running a hospital with you know hundreds or even thousands of of of

[31:26] employees there so leadership and management is is the skill that you need and Mark was very su he very successful in in that particular Billet um he I think they were named the number one Hospital in Navy Medicine West or maybe even in Navy Medicine Nationwide and so and and and that's not mark would tell you he would say it wasn't due to my leadership it was due to all the people who work so hard to make that happen that's frankly his humility

[32:04] coming through which is a good thing for a a leader to be is is humble um because in part I think the reason people excelled at their work not the only reason but part of the reason was because Mark is such a fine leader and he has a very deep passion for it he will go to we we met because at the time I was chaplain at a Seal Team and Mark was interesting interested in talking to some of the seals about leadership issues and so I invited him to my unit

[32:39] and you know gave him the chance to I introduced him to people and gave him a chance to talk to them make some contacts and and and and all of that so so leadership and management is is a popular topic for people in business especially to write about another is business strategies and tactics so if you've seen my Tuesday show uh business lessons from the military this is essentially it's not a book of course it's it's a show but it's about business strategy and tactics and the the idea of

[33:16] the show is I look at business I'm sorry at military Doctrine at military history at the practices of great military leaders and then I train translate that into the civilian business realm okay so each each week I spend 30 to 40 minutes essentially speaking a short book maybe it's like a you know an audio book if you will on business strategies and tactics and what I find and this is what I found as as a teacher in general is if

[33:53] I can use an example that's Vivid people will remember the underlying ideas much better so you know I I when I was teaching I would do I would stand on the table and make up these elaborate stories and all this kind of stuff when we when we write the same thing is is the case so writing about business strategy and tactics we can take examples from our career and show how they either worked out well or

[34:28] completely bombed right and and and then draw lessons from them okay not unrelated to that is innovation and Entrepreneurship so whereas uh strategy and tactics might be a a broader category Innovation and entrepreneur well entrepreneurship is is a pretty broad category but Innovation which is really the driver of Entrepreneurship can also be a subject to write about especially if you've been a successful entrepreneur now this this word

[35:04] entrepreneurship has been somewhat watered down over the previous decades to mean starting a business entrepreneurship used to mean starting an innovative business right so nothing wrong with starting a plumbing business but in general you know Plumbing is what Plumbing is it's a fine business but it's not really entrepreneurship for most plumbers because they're not doing anything particularly Innovative however I I had

[35:40] to have the drain line in front of my house uh uh basically well I didn't have to replace it this was this was the Innovative thing so the plumber who came out to fix the problem which was a a drain line that had collapsed had this Innovative method where basically they opened up the drain line at one end and at the other end and instead of having to un trench the whole line and lay a new line they they were they put this thing through it that that basically created

[36:16] a i it was it's essentially it was like putting another pipe inside the original pipe except for this would prevent the original pipe from ever collapsing again and it it was it was quite a fascinating process and the the plumbers who were doing it explained it to me because like I said it was very Innovative now maybe if you're in plumbing you would say oh no no we've been doing that for a long long time okay fair enough I mean I'd never seen it done before but my point is is that there are Innovations going on even in the businesses that have been

[36:52] around for you know a long long time and so to the extent that that you're doing something Innovative entrepreneurial in your business or profession that can make a great topic for a book okay next is personal development and productivity so because running a business is a personal development um Endeavor okay

[37:29] that always is a is a good subject for a book okay so um one of the why is as you recall for writing a book is because it helps us de with personal development okay so the process of writing the book is is a personal developmental function the subject two though can be personal development so I know for myself being in business especially the first time I was in business and when I had my first company building that company and getting to the point where

[38:04] it was successful required me to learn a tremendous amount it required me to examine some of my ideas and values so some of you have heard me talk about this before um I was brought up to believe that people became Rich through nefarious means either through cheating people or or or or stealing or something like that and you know when you're I was in a business where I needed to get business from wealthy people and it it was works at Cross purposes to think

[38:39] that wealthy people are a bunch of liars and cheaters but yet I want your business and I think in the early days of my business they could sense somehow that I didn't have a particularly high opinion of them and at some point I I had to reexamine that especially in light of the evidence that many of the wealthy people that I met were very charitable they were good people they loved their children took care of them very well they had a lot of friends sincere friends all that kind of stuff so well it's certainly true that some people become wealthy through cheating

[39:15] and lying or whatever my experience as I was building my business led me to change my ideas about how wealth happens or how people become wealthy and that was a personal developmental function for me or or or Endeavor for me for it really being almost forced to examine my thinking and how my thinking was first of all untrue and second

[39:50] impeding my own success so to the extent that you have that experience in in your business or your professional life um that can be a great subject for a book now a sort of a maybe even a subset of of several of the categories that I've or several of the topics I should say that I've mentioned is doing a case study or documenting some kind of success story so for example there have been books written on this is one of my favorite examples I use this periodically the

[40:27] whole new Coke debacle right when Coca-Cola thought they would change their formula make it more more similar to Pepsi and and that would allow them to you know finally completely defeat their Archen enemy Pepsi right and it was a disaster there there's just no other way of describing it right and so subsequent to to the working out of that and the the bringing out of classic Coke and and all that there were books written about it and they were essentially case studies in what do you do if you make a strategic move that

[41:06] doesn't work how do you recover right that's that's a a great topic for a book and it happens with a lot of businesses so if you've had something like that happen where oftentimes by the way case studies where you just were successful from day one those those are fine but oftentimes the most effective case studies are how you recovered from something that went wrong because most of us we know things are going to go wrong and and recovering from them is a more

[41:42] common need the fact that we build a plan and it goes off fine from the get-go that's nice it's I mean I I wish all that happens to all of you right but that that's not usually how things happen in life usually we have ups and downs and often times especially if we're starting some sort of new Endeavor we're not going to be successful right away we've got to sort of wallow around in the muck so to speak in order until we figure it out and so writing a case study uh especially about you know

[42:19] recovering from a debacle and going on to making that initiative successful can be a great idea okay I'm going to just um quickly go through uh a few other topics I have here on my list um Ju Just because um I I I I I want to get to the house of writing a book and talk about that a little bit but some some other ideas are um H how to network and build relationships how to Market your business um how to deal with technology especially how to deal with some kind of

[42:55] technological or digital trans information okay you might talk about financial management in a business or just financial management for people personally right this is uh what's the fellow's name Doug um can't think of his last name right he built his entire business by writing books about how people can handle their personal finances right crisis management is another thing work life balance you know another idea and then uh a couple of other ones are industry predictions and Future Insights I.E where is where is my

[43:34] industry likely to go right now I mentioned this earlier about ai ai is probably going to impact pretty much every industry every type of business every type of profession the question is how right so when I talk to lawyers which which which I do fairly often one of the topics I'd like to talk to them about is AI because the reality is a lot of law is drawing up documents and

[44:09] while it may have in the past have been every document was different these days there's a lot of standardization in legal documents and so to the extent that legal documents are fairly similar AI is it can be used to draft them much more quickly and effectively than drafting them from scratch and indeed I was talking to somebody yesterday and we were talking about how um lawyers today in general prefer to deal with some kind of form document

[44:46] uh oftentimes I should say prefer to deal with some kind of form document rather than creating something completely from scratch because if it's a form document it's been looked over and reviewed and revised multiple times usually and so the likelihood that something will be left out is significantly lower than drafting a document from scratch so but if it's the case for example that AI is going to deemphasize Document Preparation in the law business how is that going to change

[45:23] the law business right so if you're a pargal and a lot of what you do is document drafting how is AI going to affect your profession on the other hand if you're a lawyer and you don't really enjoy drafting documents but you like being in front of clients okay like my friend Ben enman who's an estate planning attorney in Virginia so Ben has used technology in his practice in a way where he really I I put this in quotes makes his

[45:58] money talking with his clients meeting with his clients learning as much as he can about their needs right so that when it comes time to drafting the documents which by his own acknowledgement are you know there's a lot of similarity between trusts that he writes for two different clients but by being able to really focus his time on talking and meeting with his meeting and talking with his clients he he can make the alterations that need to be made to tailor that document for them

[46:33] much more effectively than if he would have to spend a tremendous time drafting the document because the the the money that he charges is spent mostly interacting with the client and so he can give a much higher level of service it's very interesting to see how Ben has built his business right so that's another thing industry predictions and Future Insights and then finally just specialized topics so I'm going to mention my friend Ben again Ben again he was a guest on on this show a few weeks

[47:09] ago in addition to being an estate planning attorney he's also a Firearms attorney which is a really kind of Niche uh area in in the law and I think hopefully one day Ben is going to write a book about this it's such a specialized topic now most people are not going to be interested in the topic but for people who are firearms enthusiasts or for people who are interested in Firearms policy right Ben has a long history I I invite you to you know go Shameless plug right go to our YouTube channel and check out uh Ben's

[47:45] um ep the episode where I talked to Ben about being a Firearms attorney um for people who are policy makers who are in that Realm of the law um Ben you know he's he's been in many different aspects of dealing with Firearms law and so he has a very informed opinion about these and and this very specialized topic so so you know that that would make I I think it would make a terrific book in fact next time I speak to Ben I'm gonna mention that to him so so those are some

[48:21] ideas on what to write your book about so then it comes down to how are you going to write your book so I'm going to offer a couple of ways or that that that you can do it now I mentioned earlier the way most professional writers work is they allocate a certain amount of time each day for writing so if you read uh Stephen King's book on writing okay it's it's it's a a brilliant book on How

[48:57] to Be an Effective writer okay when I was writing my book that was one of the books I read for inspiration and and there are many books about writing that that are can be very helpful Stephen King's book is helpful because it one of the things he talks about is is is this blocking out of time for writing and and how to make that process most effective okay I I think it's it's king who talks about he plays a certain type of music music that that helps keep him focused and you know he sets up his environment

[49:32] the the right way and then he just just gets down to it and writes now that's a it's a viable way to do it okay however I I would say that for the you know lay writer like like me like probably like you that that's a difficult way to go if you haven't built up your writing muscle so how can we build up our writing muscle one of the ways to do it and this is the way I did it was I was a blogger for many years before I wrote my book uh

[50:08] in fact I started blogging in 20 12 I believe it was 2011 or 2012 and I didn't write my book until I think it was I think I wrote my book 2016 2017 was when I wrote my book so I had been blogging for four or five years maybe yeah four or five years before I before I wrote my book and while I started out doing only one blog post a week one short blog post a week at the

[50:43] height I was writing three blog posts a week okay of whatever they were 400 or 600 words each or what whatever I I don't remember anymore if you if you go to my website you can read my blog posts now now one of the one of the what I did then when I decided to and and one of the subjects on on which I blogged was the topic what became the topic of my book so over the years that I blogged I I blogged on a number of different topics and one of them ended up being I

[51:19] I started doing some coaching around this as well I know I'm keeping you in suspense da d right um but when you blog on a subject it gives you an opportunity to investigate a lot of different aspects of a subject okay and the thing about blogging and and I I learned this from Michael hyot uh he he very very famous blogger at the time that I started getting into it and he was one of the pioneers of it really um is that

[51:54] um I just I just lost my thought that you you do it on a regular basis so that's why I started out doing one blog post a week okay so again it's it's it's not just about doing the writing it's about building your writing muscle so writing one blog post every week will build more muscle than writing four blog posts one week and writing none the next two weeks and then maybe two the week after it's it's it's getting into the hab habit of doing it that's what will

[52:29] help you develop your WR writer's muscle and go on to be able to write something longer form okay and by the way this is where most people fall down when they're blogging is they'll blog for a while and then they stop doing it for a long time and and be and I I can tell you as a former blogger it's very very difficult to do it week after week and when I was doing you know three blog posts a week wow that was it was a lot of writing it was a lot of coming up with ideas and writing titles and posting them on my website and all that kind of stuff so

[53:07] you really learn and promoting them by the way so you really learn how to be discipline now so that's that's one way of not only working on developing writer muscle but also Gathering material that you can then used to compile into a book and and that's part of my book is were is blog posts that I had written over the years and I went through my blog and said oh I can use this one this piece and this piece and

[53:42] this piece and this piece and I organized them and reorganized them and and it was it was sort of like building a puzzle getting them into an order that made sense and then as I mentioned earlier figuring out oh where where were parts of my topic missing in which case in some in because I was still blogging at the time I was writing my book I would I would maybe write a blog post on that topic or I would just do additional research for the book in order to fill that in so that's a very effective way

[54:18] of writing a book now you can say well I I don't want to wait five years to write a book well okay you you know you don't have to write wait years by you can start out from the get-go writing your blog with the intention of Comb comp compiling all those posts and turning them into a book right so if you write even one blog post a week after a year you're going to have about 50 posts okay and depending on how long they are that may be enough material for your book depending on you

[54:53] know what your topic is and why you're writing and all that kind of stuff right not not every book needs to be three four 500 pages sometimes you can write a very effective book that's 80 Pages 110 Pages something relatively short so it really just depends on on your why and your what okay so that's one way to do it another way to do it and this was suggested to me by a friend of mine um named Anita Jacobs so Anita Jacobs was I I I don't know I think she's retired

[55:28] now but she was a a speaker she she did a lot of training for fundraisers and she spoke excuse me in support of various organizations um excuse me for them for them to do fundraising and I was talking to Anita one day she was she's one of my mentors and I was talking to her about writing a book and and I was saying but I I just don't have time and she said she said aren't you teaching real estate classes I said yes I am she said well then

[56:06] you've got you could you've got the easiest way to write a book ever I'm like really how and she said well just record one of your classes and then have someone transcribe the recording and now you've basically got the you know a draft of a book you'll have to revise it and organize it and all of that but but you'll have you know at least the beginning of a book right and I I I I actually started working on that and then I got way later whatever but in

[56:41] these days because with technology there's technology that can transcribe something that we've spoken right so it would be even easier to do that today so for example I don't do a Blog anymore I do what could be called a video blog right podcasting is essentially an outgrowth of of blogging right and and there's audio podcasting there's video podcasting like this right that's the format I use so if I wanted to write a book for example called

[57:19] business lessons from the military and I honestly I didn't even think about doing that until just now one of the things I could do is transcribe all my shows for the last two seasons I could probably find some online trans transcription you know app to write all that down and then I could organize it into uh you know categories management strategy tactics uh marketing or you know whatever whatever might be right and I could turn that into a book and you could do the same thing so so

[57:56] whether you're actively uh podcasting or whether you're you're teaching something whether you're you know giving talks you can record them and then transcribe those recordings and use that as the basic material for a book by by the way if you find it hard to write but you you speak you can also these days just dictate a book right like if you've seen in movies right um Miss Jones come in with your pad I'm gonna you know for dictation right right in the days when you know

[58:31] that's what secretaries did right they'd write it down in shorthand and then they type it up right so we we can do that today uh on our computers we can do it on our phones I imagine so that's another way of writing a book that may make it simpler now if you are not already either podcasting or speaking regularly teaching regularly or or blogging regularly so if you are going to uh for example dictate your book to to an

[59:06] app that is essentially the same thing as I was talking about at the beginning of this section I.E blocking out time each day to write your book in this case you're not you know typing it or writing it long hand you're speaking it but it is the same discipline and so I would encourage you to think about that in fact I'll I'm I'll put a link to uh Stephen King's book on writing in the show notes if you're going to go that that sort of professional writer Direction I I can't encourage you enough to read Stephen King's book because it

[59:42] really will give you a very good sense about what what you're G need to be doing in order to make that technique actually work but these days you don't have to be typing things out you can be dict ating them and in fact you can probably be dictating them and and it can probably come up on a screen you know as you dictate it or you know on your phone as you dictated so that technology is probably out there so those are those are some ways of you know how can I write a book right now you know you might say well shouldn't I

[60:18] write an outline first well I mean you can go that route okay um but sometimes it's better to get your expertise sort of out of yourself onto paper and then look at what all of that is and then organize it into a coherent book okay because while we talked about all of those whats like what should you write about you may have the intention to write about let's say emerging

[60:53] Trends okay and then you you you you you know you you get your whole outline doing that and then as you start to write the book or even if you're even if you're writing blog posts that you're going to compile into a book what you may find is that you're really struggling to find kind of find your voice on that topic whereas if you write about something within your business or profession that interests you and you just write about it this is why I like the idea of blogging so much so then

[61:31] you're writing something that that you you you're really engaged in and then you can take all of that engaged writing and see well does it work best as a case study does it work best as a Tome on leadership and or management does it work best as a story of a personal Journey right you can look at some of these options and see well how is what I've written how can I best present that so it will be of the greatest benefit to the readers so I don't I'm I'm sure

[62:08] there are people who absolutely disagree with me no no you have to know what you're writing from the beginning I I don't I don't agree with that topic with that idea I should say I think that the key thing in writing is to write and this is what I used to tell my daughter all the time is if if you want to be a writer you need to write okay and and pick just pick a topic and write about it and write about it as as as much and as often as you can it's but but indeed on a regular basis okay once a week twice a week whatever you're doing so I'm gonna end the show

[62:45] by showing you my book some of you have seen this before my book is called the eight deadly sins of job hunting avoid employment held taking the only five steps necessary to getting a high-paying job so at the at the time that I wrote this book I had been blogging about job hunting for Veterans for several years I think two or three years and I had run a program coaching veterans on how to find a high-paying job and so I took that

[63:24] experience and those blog posts and I turned them into this what became this book okay and you know right the very dramatic cover there that I design right hell the fires of hell and all of that um and and of course it's a play on words because there's not eight deadly sins there's seven deadly sins my joke is military people we like to really do things with you know a lot of Gusto so and and and the title came out of a study that I did of why veterans were

[64:00] not getting the kind of Civilian job that they wanted and what I found after doing a series of over a hundred interviews some lasting only 10 or 15 minutes some lasting over an hour and and as an aside I'll acknowledge this was not scientific in in the sense of something like the Pew Research Center might do but uh it was a lot of time spent and in most cases pretty in-depth conversations I found that the the things that were keeping veterans from

[64:35] getting the job they wanted boiled down to eight sins I called them they were there were eight reasons why most veterans were not finding the job they wanted and that became the basis for the book and so that's all good and well okay I you know it's all good and well to tell veterans well here's what you're not finding a job but but then what are you gonna do about that I mean it would be completely negative to write a book about why my life isn't working right so that's why I created the these five steps for getting a high paying job and

[65:13] so excuse me H let me go to the um um shoot now this okay here it goes yeah Google Books um oh wait what is going on here oh is this taking me through documents a okay I wanted to let's see if I can four that work nope okay yeah the Google Docs doesn't want this is part of my LoveHate relationship with with Google Docs that's why I don't like it but um I was

[65:50] G I was going to try and take you to the um the uh open in Google Docs maybe let's see I was going to take you to the um table of contents so you could see eventually how I organized the book and it's it and Google is just spinning and spinning and spinning but what you would see if I could show you the table of contents is I described a deadly sin or two deadly sins I think in one case I think yeah I think there's most it's two then I show

[66:26] the step you take to overcome that deadly sin right and the book is it it it it really was I I took the blog posts reformatted them as chapters to the book and then after each chapter is a task so that it was really not just a step by step but a task by task system for finding the job that veterans wanted right and that that became the basis for the book and for for me who's as as you

[67:02] know if you watch the show very highly organized you know OCD type guy that seemed to me to be the best way to organize things but I didn't come to that organizational scheme right away and in fact it was through talking with other people through the coaching work I did with veterans Etc that I came up with this you know five steps to get a high-paying job job and then married these two ideas together in a way that made sense in the book so um like I said I I I had had an agent um she wasn't able to get me a book dealer a book deal

[67:38] I should say and now I I I do I coach I still coach veterans pro bono through something called veterati and I offer them a a free pdf of the book if if they want it and and that's what I use it for these days um maybe someday I'll try hunt up a publisher again uh who knows um but I I have ideas for other books so you know my maybe my my desire to become a published author will happen some other way so that's the story of writing a book and I thank you for joining me if

[68:13] you have any questions comments criticisms thoughts please do post them in our social media the links will be in the show notes after the show posts on YouTube and and if you have anything of a private nature my email address will be there too you can always send me an email happy to answer those and that wraps up that wraps us up for this week so before signing off just want to remind you next week Monday at 10:00 am all these are pacific times my show trusts and Estates weekly on Tuesday at

[68:49] 101 a.m. uh business lessons from the military seven days from today we'll be back for the next addition of people making money and then next week on Thursday at 5:00 pm is our newest show jigger's place it's a opportunity for us as we head to the end of the week to just spend some time together talking about everything except Business and Professional matters so we have a cocktail and talk about uh a topic together so I invite you to come and relax uh for for 30 or 40 minutes

[69:25] minutes at jigger's place on Thursday afternoon 5:00 p.m Pacific 8:00 P.M eastern time so thanks again for joining me appreciate it very very much looking forward to seeing you next week and signing off as I always do Marie darling you are my bell courage at all times my friends