How Writing a Book is Good For Business & Why You Shouldn't Do It Without a Coach

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1:00Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Leigh Shulman. She's a writer and writing mentor with two decades of experience under her belt. She founded the Inspired Writer Community, an online mentoring community for writers at any stage in their writing lives. Her bestselling book, The Writer's Roadmap, Paving the Way to Your Ideal Writing Life, helps thousands find their way in the writing world. So, Leigh, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's really great to be here. So I'm going to start off with the most important question.

1:37How did writing a book, in your experience, impact your business? I think the way writing a book impacted my business is that suddenly there was this calling card that could go anywhere in the world quickly and easily, whether digitally or a printed copy. And I didn't have to be there. So it could be disseminated without me even knowing about it. You know, I think it's actually Seth Godin where I first heard him say that a book is like a business card. And it very much is. It very much is. Um, you haven't asked me the question, but I'll go ahead and answer what people are probably thinking. How did it impact my business?

2:18I've written seven, seven books now. And I can certainly attest to the fact that writing a book was pivotal, frankly, to, to my, whatever level of success I attribute to my business. I, you know, I certainly would have survived without a book, but I think for me, it just amplified everything. You know, it 2007, so almost 17 years ago, my first book, It really kind of put me on the map. Certainly I had an air of credibility. It was harder to write a book then than it is today. So I think that made it stand out even more. So I support the mission of your business completely for that reason. Do you find there are types of businesses that a book's just more particularly beneficial for?

3:02I feel like a book is good for any business. I've worked with actresses and I've worked with, I've worked with a few actresses. I've worked with people who are doing copy editing businesses and psychologists and everything in between. And I don't think there's anything that telling a story or sharing a process can't help. And I think it, you know, when you were asking before, how does it help your business? Yes, it gets your name out there and it can sort of spread. And it's also a very low bar for people to buy, like maybe if your prices are higher, but people can easily get a digital copy of a book.

3:39The other thing that I think writing a book does for you is it really solidifies what you're doing because it's one thing to meet with clients and to go through your process or even to have a process written down. But when you write it in a book, it really forms it and give it to other people knowing you're shipping it out into the world. It really solidifies what you do. and I think it also helps pave the way for the next step because you're like okay this is the story that I'm telling and when you're finished telling that story you kind of know your next step already so as an example with my book The Writer's Roadmap it's a business plan for writers and it can fit any type of writing business which is is broader than I think most people think it can be.

4:26And when I was done writing it and it went out there and I started to see the responses to it, one of the things that I heard from people the most was how rejection gets in their way. So then I wrote a book on rejection and it became really obvious also what I wanted to do in my client work and in my community work where people really needed support in a way that I maybe wasn't doing as much as I could have been and now am. Yeah, that's probably not talked about that much. I think I have a lot of author friends and they, a year after their book has been out, they're like, oh, there's so many things I would now put in the book, you know, knowing what I know now.

5:04And obviously I have a good friend, David Meerman Scott. I think he's on this ninth edition of the new rules for marketing and PR. So I guess you go back and rewrite. But I do think that paying attention, I mean, it's almost like you start the conversation. And so then you're inviting that kind of feedback, aren't you? I think that's a really good point. I think we often think of books as these sort of static things when really they're part of a process. And in the idea that we're always learning and always growing, of course, you wouldn't want to be, you wouldn't want to write a book and then 10 years later have it apply 100 % and nothing has changed.

5:40You want to grow. So we talk about, and I think a lot of people say, oh, it's a marketing piece or it raises your authority. Talk a little bit about directly driving business, like getting clients, generating revenue. Do you find that a book is a good tool, not just as a, you know, untangible kind of your brand thing, but as a directly like, oh, I read your book, I'm going to hire you? I do think it relates very directly to what you do and hire and finding clients. So my book is about setting up a process of, all right, it's basically setting up a business plan for writers and it breaks it down into pieces.

6:18And the first and most important part is, you know, what is it that you want and what's your vision? What's your mission? And particularly for books and I think in creative fields in general, people tend to shy away from looking at it in that way from, you know, it's creative. You don't want to, it shouldn't have, you know, a mission or a vision that doesn't make sense or goals. But, you know, people would read my book and suddenly realize, oh, actually, it's not this whole business oriented thing. There's a creative element in figuring out what you want and laying it out. and many people have contacted me after reading my book well they usually contact me to get to my website they come to a you know maybe they test out what it's like to come to a workshop before they contact me to work one-on-one or to join the community so it allows people to know who you are what how you work what your voice is what your temperament is before they've even met you.

7:16And people, I think people not fall, maybe fall in love a little bit with your process. And that's why they want to get to know you. Sometimes people treat you like you're a celebrity because you've written a book. Oh my God, I read your book, your name. It's in the, you know, I found it here. And I'm often a little uncomfortable with that, but I mean, celebrity and authority, I think there's a little bit of difference. But I think authority means, okay, I'm coming to you for work, whereas celebrity is almost unearned in a way. Which is, I think, why I feel a little uncomfortable with it. But it's a cool thing.

7:59And then you get to meet someone and be like, all right, let's get to work. Let's be real people here and get this done. Yeah. Well, I think part of the customer journey, the most important part I always say is trust. And I think that, you know, rather than celebrity, it might just be, I, you know, other people have trusted you. Somebody trusted you enough to help you put this book out there. You know, if I'm comparing two people, you've got a book, they, you know, I mean, there's just all those kinds of things. It doesn't have to be celebrity. I think it's just a real trust banner. Yeah, for sure.

8:31Well, and I think people, when they know your name, they see you, they know they can find you online or on Amazon or on a bookshelf, there is an automatic trust that's sort of given to that because not everybody writes a book and not everybody puts it out there. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the things you said early on in that last answer was this idea of there's lots of reasons to write a book, but you just have to have one, right? I mean, there has to be, you know, the goal is the book, is it to make money, you know, on my book? Is it to raise my authority or to help people know that I stand for X, you know, as opposed to, is it to get me business?

9:07And I had an editor a long time ago, I think it was on my second book, David Moldauer is his name. He's still out there editing for various publishers. And he said, you know, what first question he asked me is what's the one thing you want somebody to do, you know, after they read this book? And I was like, I don't know. Well, you got to get clear on that first, then we can start talking about what should be in the book. And I think I still today think that's brilliant advice. No, a hundred percent. I'm very big on one sentences, one sentence, you know, one sentence mission statement. One, I call it the about of your book where it's, what is it that you want your audience to understand and feel when they're finished reading your book?

9:48You know, that moment where you sort of sit down and even you're as a reader, you finish reading and you're like, Oh, oh, I see things a little differently now. And then figure out, well, what is the next step? So, you know, I work with people with fiction and nonfiction. So fiction is usually, it's different than nonfiction in terms of how that one sentence affects people. But, you know, with a nonfiction book, a nonfiction tends to be very process driven, which makes it easier to write in a lot of ways. And I read this online recently where, you know, people who think, oh, I can't write a book, oh, it's going to be too big.

10:25you know, if you've been doing your work, you've kind of been writing your book your whole life. And so you know what it's going to be, you know, what's in it. And, you know, when I mentioned, I've worked with actresses, there was one woman, we did a one hour one-on-one and in one hour, we managed to sit down and not only outline, know what her book was about, outline the whole thing and know exactly how it was going to be laid out. So, you know, and you said, in terms of people writing books. I think at base, I believe most people want to write a book and have the ability, have a book in them and have the ability to write it.

11:01All people. I've seen research that, you know, something like 89 % of, you know, people surveyed, you know, have at least expressed some desire to write a book. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. So you mentioned fiction versus nonfiction. And I'm, I think in the context of my listeners, we're probably talking mostly about nonfiction, but I'm curious your take on it. They're very different. So like, Are they different people? I mean, I saw recently James Patterson is going to write a nonfiction book. And, you know, I'm wondering is like a lot of people, I mean, successful nonfiction writers, can they be fiction writers as well?

11:36Or is it really a whole different brain? As far as I'm concerned, people can write both. You know, I actually gave a workshop recently and it's a how to plan your book workshop. and half of the people who showed up were writing fiction and half were writing nonfiction. And usually it's all fiction, the people who come to that. So as I was going through it, I just made sure to apply it to both for the people who are writing nonfiction. It's slightly different. Like I said, fiction tends to, it's story driven, whereas nonfiction is process driven, but because nonfiction, there's always a story in it.

12:17You know, if you're talking about a character, there's still a character in a nonfiction book, but the character is the author or the examples that you give or the person that you're writing for. So you're always relating to people on the story and arcs. You know, we talk about the arc of the story. Both have an arc. The arc might be a little different and the impact on the characters or the people in it are a little bit different, but it lays out relatively similarly. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested.

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13:33If you want to do more and spend less like Uber 8x8 and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive at OCI at oracle.com slash duct tape. That's oracle.com slash duct tape, oracle.com slash duct tape. The part I always, you know, I'm a, I, when I retire, I'm going to, I keep telling people threatening my wife, I'm going to write a fiction book. And the part that I'm always so drawn by the fiction books that I really like, the part that always sucks me in is dialogue. and to me, I always find, I look at that and I go, how do they do that? That, you know, all I do is I go out and I do something and I write about how I did it.

14:15Whereas, you know, the idea that you're going to fabricate theoretically this entire world of characters and they're going to talk to each other just to me seems like crazy art. But you know, I bet like so many things, I think the minute you sit down and do it yeah it'll start to lay out very you'll suddenly realize oh wait I mean you've been talking to people your whole life certainly that's going to come into play well not your whole life but most of it and you know and actually when I write fiction I start with dialogue because it's like we we tend and I work with people in doing that because it's very easy to generate dialogue.

14:57Now, the truth is when you first generate dialogue, it's, you know, it's, there's a lot of chaff, you know, and the truth is when humans talk, humans talking and dialogue are actually very different. We say things three or four times, we kind of bundle things up. So you get that down and then you kind of clean it up. And that's the beautiful beauty of any kind of writing, you can edit it. Whatever ends up on paper, you can then shape it. Yeah. So this plays right into really your business model, but I mean, would you, I was going to ask you a question that's a silly question for you to answer.

15:34So I'll sort of tee it up as though I know how you're going to answer it. Does every writer need a coach? I mean, not every writer, but I mean, is it a really good idea? I mean, I've never written fiction before. The idea that I'm just going to go out without any coaching, without any practice, you know, doing it and write a bestseller is pretty crazy, right? You know, I mean, it happens. It definitely happens. And I'm very big on, you know, the world of possibility and not counting things out before you even try. So I won't say it never happens. I will say getting some guidance, having a coach, having someone who can help guide you through and get through the obstacles that come up.

16:09So, you know, there's so many people that I work with. They'll say to me, like, well, I don't know what's going to happen at the end of this book. And people think you're supposed to know what happens when you're writing a book, but just to have someone there to say, no, you're not supposed to know the whole point is playing and letting it, letting it come out. And that I think applies to nonfiction too, because it's in that play and it's in that chaos that some of the magic really comes to the surface. Having a coach really helps you get rid of a lot of the grief that comes along with writing and the giving up and the starting and giving, you know, I started a book, but then I won't come back to it for two years because I didn't like what I was writing and it wasn't any good.

16:49And all that self-talk and sort of lack of confidence that a lot of people have with writing your coach. And I see that with my clients, like they say to me all the time, I don't know why, when I'm writing with you, this just feels so easy. And I've worked with coaches too, you know, so it's not like I'm just coaching others and I don't know what it's like to be coached. I very much believe in coaches because they give you feedback, knowledgeable feedback that helps you move forward so much faster. Yeah. Yeah. And theoretically with the right relationship, you know, it's pretty judgment free. It's like, no, we're just trying to get you across the goal in here, you know, that you defined.

17:28Right. And as opposed to like if I show my she's not here, so I can say this. If I show my writing to my wife, you know, it's like, yeah, it's OK. I don't know. It's like, are you kidding me? It's brilliant. So we've gotten, oh gosh, 16 minutes into the show and I haven't mentioned AI. What is that doing to your world? I mean, just between the hype and the misinformation and the actual usefulness of it, you know, where does that landing with misconceptions or maybe some really crappy stuff? Well, it's funny you ask because I literally just took a course on AI because I wanted to know more. And I will say I left the course feeling much more positive about the possibilities of AI.

18:11I think some of the issues that people have with it is, you know, a lot of the chat, GBT and the other generators, they're taking all this information from the Internet, often people's books and proprietary information that they really shouldn't be using. and recently there was a, I think there was a publishing house that, or there was somebody, some group who had a law change or something so that AI generators cannot use proprietary information. And I'm a hundred percent behind that. But one of my big takeaways from the class that I took was, I think people are so scared of what AI might be that it makes them really rigid against it and therefore it makes it harder to use it really well you know and obviously you know you want to protect people's copyrights you don't want to use their personal information you know there was somebody in the class who does 360 reviews of her clients but feeding that information or the chat chat gpt or whatever you don't want that for everyone to see and to be used for all these things forever but when ai is collaborative and because it really can like i sometimes when i use ai and i often will use ai for you know for prompts for different things if i need writing prompts or there's one prompt going around that's basically you know based on all the the searches i've done tell me what you know about me that i don't know about myself and it's that i don't know about myself that I think makes it really interesting because it did put something out about me that, I mean, I can't believe I'm saying this, but it almost made me cry because it was exactly what I want and it's exactly what I want to be.

19:53And it was so clear. But I think as long as people are using AI, they're clear about what they're using, they're transparent about it, and they're protecting people's intellectual property. I think there's amazing benefit for AI. I think what's really getting in the way right now is the proliferation of write a book in two hours and make$100 ,000 on Amazon stuff. And that kind of gets in the way of people actually looking at the practical use of these tools. But does that actually happen? Can people really write a book? I just, I found that very hard to do. A book - I think you can produce 45 ,000 words.

20:32How's that? And then call it a book. And then you better have a really solid marketing team who's willing to go to the ends of the earth to get that book out there because I'm not sure the book is going to carry itself. I mean, I've done that. The course software I use has an AI generator. And just to see what happened, because I've been putting together an editing course and it generated it and it made it more complicated for me because everything was so top level. that I couldn't use it to teach the way I need to teach editing. And it wasn't getting to the sort of core of what it really means.

21:10And I suspect that's what happens with AI-generated books too. Yeah, no question. One question I'm sure you get all the time, especially people that own a business, have a life that is not an author's life. How do you find the time? I mean, how do you help people find the time? I mean, obviously, I think it's probably how do you make it a priority is probably the same question, right? Absolutely. I mean, I think that really is, that is it. You know, whenever people talk about that, how do you make time to write? My two go-tos are, you know, set boundaries and say no to stuff so that you're not doing as much.

21:45So you literally have more time. Now, the reality is every time, you know, if you have a week off, stuff fills that week really quickly. But if you're intentional and say, all right, I'm going to spend, I'm going to work on my a book this much and then continue to move forward. I mean, writing a book is like so many other things, just one step at a time. You just have to take that next step and be aware that there might be chaos. You might sit down one day and amazing, brilliant, you know, 20 pages, and you may sit down the next day and you're sitting there messing with a paragraph all day and it doesn't, isn't quite what you want.

22:23And I think getting used to that, getting used to that, that your time may not always be used in the way you think it will, as long as you keep, as long as you set it aside and use it, you will write that book. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I just would always say, I'm, you know, I'm going to every day, write a thousand words. And sometimes a thousand words were really hard. Sometimes I'd look up and I'd written 5 ,000, you know, but it was just the fact that I made myself sit down and start because I'm the kind of writer that I, it takes me 20 minutes of fussing to start to like the keys going, you know?

22:59And, and so I know if I just do it, if I just commit to it, you know, then the fussing will be over. I'm not one of those people that go, oh, I've got a half hour break here. I'll, you know, slam some stuff in. I have to have chunks. That makes sense. And I mean, I feel like, I mean, most of the people I work with need that entry time where you're just kind of spewing stuff out and letting get past the junk and the, whatever you're thinking about to get to the actual writing part. I think it's easier to just sit down and do 30 minutes for me anyway, when I'm, I'm further along in the book writing process.

23:34So I'm like, okay, I have 30 minutes. I want to work on this dialogue piece, or I know this paragraph, it's almost where I want it to be, but let me edit it. As opposed to when you're beginning a book where you're not sure where you're going yet and you need time to like mess around a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Lee, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the duct tape marketing podcast. Is there anywhere you'd invite people to connect you and find out more about your, certainly the writer's roadmap book, but also the work that you do with writers? Sure. Well, there's two places that I generally send people.

24:05The first one is specifically for podcasts. And so it's leeshulman.com slash podcast. And there's a form there. So if people go there and you have a book idea or you want to connect over something, just fill out the form. Tell me about yourself. I love hearing people's stories about their books. And so people, I'm sorry, I went on forever. I love it when people do that. You can send that in. And then the other place to check is Instagram. And I'm thelee shulman in Instagram. And that's sort of my main place on social media where I have all the information about the projects that I have and I talk about writing and I will always write back to you if you send a message or leave a comment.

24:48Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully, I don't know when I'm getting to Argentina next, but hopefully I'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.