Write Business Results

----------------------------------- There are certain times of year I just love, as a business owner. Take September, for example. The 'going-back-to-school' time when we delve back into our businesses with a fresh perspective having had (hopefully) some time to refresh over the summer. We take stock of our accomplishments so far, plan exciting things in the run-up to December to close the year having hit our targets, and re-evaluate our current commitments and narratives, deciding what still serves us and what will no longer do.  I review my progress against my yearly plan at the end of each quarter but spend a whole day doing this and making refinements at the end of Q2. Others do their biggest planning in March/April in lieu of the tax year; whenever you make your best plans for the months ahead, I’m interested to know what you are planning on carrying with you, and what you intend on letting go.  So many people make promises to themselves tha...

________________ I get asked a lot which is better; to self-publish your book or go with a traditional publisher. And then there are done-for-you services, which appeal to busy business owners for obvious reasons. It can feel like a tough call; do you pay £30,000, £50,000, even £100,000 for a traditional publisher because it feels safe and it's "what authors do", or do you decide to embrace courage, and go down the more rugged individualist path of self-publishing? Do you spend hundreds of hours on writing your book, sourcing the other complementary service providers like editors and designers, experiencing the various frustrations and setbacks, go through the publishing process alone, and then spending further hours/weeks/months on the marketing? Or do you simply outsource the lot to someone who can provide the full package? How on earth are you supposed to decide? The honest answer is, it depends entirely on your goals, but that's not very helpful on it...

_______________ Perhaps in our shortest blog EVER, today we expose the B word… The 3-letter laggard loitering around so many aspiring authors… That waspish self-talk we know doesn’t serve us but somehow can’t resist… The crème de la crème of procrastination… It’s that big BUT!   No matter how hard you try, you can’t shake a feeling that you haven’t been cautious enough. You want to start, but you need to do more research before starting something this personal.  You’ve been burned in the past by service providers and just don’t feel comfortable relinquishing control. Perhaps you’re lacking clear criteria or a decision-making process and that’s keeping this project stagnant in your pipeline but without a clear way forward, what can you do? We do get ourselves into some decision-making dilemmas and with the average adult making 35,000 decisions each day, that's not surprising. In business, it could arguably be more. H...

________________ So your book isn’t a stand-alone item. It is, in fact, a part of your business plan. It’s a marketing tool and a highly effective one at that. But we know this already; don’t we?   Then why do the majority of business owners who’ve gone to the trouble of authoring a book fail to link it to their marketing strategy and then measure its performance?   In my experience, it’s the same fears that to date may have stopped you from authoring your book. It’s the unknown. It’s this big time-consuming unknown field.  Thinking of tackling a project like writing and publishing your book can be understandably daunting and it can lead to the procrastination our brains often do as a result.  Many aspiring authors drive all their energy into creating the book, but then don’t have a plan in place for how to use it once it’s done. The promotion of it becomes secondary. The message I really want to get across is if you r...

_____________ The written word has been used to communicate our most important messages since the beginning of time. Cavemen and women used early forms of language to write on cave walls, passing on information to future tribes and generations. In fact, I bet if you think of any of your business role models right now, they are also an author.   The word ‘author’ stems from the same word as ‘authority’ in Latin - auctoritatem - meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, command, or the noun auctor; promoter, producer, father, progenitor; builder, founder; trustworthy writer; historian; performer, doer; responsible person, teacher, literally one who causes to grow (ref). It’s no surprise in that case that successful business leaders are authors and vice versa, given that in order to be successful you need to create, promote, influence, produce, build, found, do, teach, ‘cause to grow’ and assume responsibility. Knowing even just that little bit of...

Foreword What Is A Book’s Foreword & Why You’ll Want One The purpose of a foreword is to reinforce the message within the book and give it maximum credibility via a personal message to the reader. It is written by someone who isn’t the author, who has a high profile in the field the book contributes to and someone whom the reader likely knows of and respects. It’s a great bit of marketing for the book and expert positioning for the writer and the author. Placed within the book itself, it goes before the preface, introduction and other content. Because of its positioning, the foreword has the power to set the readers’ expectations for the entire book. Some key points good forewords include are (in no particular order): A few lines that sum up the essence of the book, the overall message, its purpose A paragraph or two on how and when the expert and the book’s author first met with a few lines on their ‘journey’ together from then un...