Hey, successful entrepreneur writing a non-fiction book for your business. Want to know what to include in a book?
Want to turn your readers into clients and/or fans? Well then, spell out a CLEAR SOLUTION to AN urgent problem.
Don’t try to solve every problem known to man all in one go. CREATE AN MBA IN A BOX. Throw in everything you know about business (or your topic), including the kitchen sink. Dazzle mankind with the breadth and depth of your knowledge.
Look, you know better. You really do. Only problem is, you also see how the urgent problem is multi-faceted and inter-connected. You can’t address this problem without winding backwards to this one and that one, then this.
The best business books have a very narrow scope. Those authors resist the urge to go down rabbit holes; or they wisely listen to their editors, or do both.
Let me give you a really good example.
My client Vicki is an international speaker, business consultant, and coach. She’s been showing small business owners how to thrive, not just survive, for more than 25 years. Vicki enables her clients to get a grip on their business vision from day one. She’s all about understanding one’s financials, establishing systems, and creating structures to support business growth.
In other words, Vicki knows an awful lot. If anybody could write an MBA in a box, it’s Vicki.
She’s also an incredibly kind person, which means she’ll go the extra mile to solve it all.
When Vicki showed up with a draft in hand, it was clear that we had ourselves a case of information overload. She had two years’ worth of business lessons embedded in just the first chapter. Vicki wanted to teach contractors (that was the first choice she had to make, which niche she wanted to focus on) everything they needed to know about staying profitable, having effective sales conversations, managing client and employee expectations, understanding spreadsheets and accounting reports. And so on and so forth.
You catch my drift.
Except, despite the value of the information, it was way too much. Readers are looking to solve one urgent problem at a time, even if we, the expert, know that problem to be an 8-headed hydra.
Without a narrowed scope, without the promise of a solution to a very particular urgent problem, one that the reader could identify with, the book would lead to information overload. And we know what happens to those.
I mean, suddenly a busy owner is reading bodice busters instead of a book that will turn his or her business around. And I venture to say, that’s just wrong.
Vicki knew something was off, but what? She knew she had to do something, but what?
The job at hand was to identify the big result she helped her clients achieve, and the benefits that accompanied that big result. To home in on that one saleable thing that people would pay her good money to help them solve.
That there problem, that’s the foundation of your expert-positioning book. (Yah, I’m talking to you.)
Well, Vicki got down to brass tacks (I’m going to start charging myself $20 every time I use a cliche). She chose from among the most common presenting problems she encountered in the field and walked the reader through her signature process for solving it. She focused on the main steps and left the secondary stuff off the page.
Because only then would her readers identify with the problem. Only then would they recognize that Vicki had the solution to their very urgent problem. Only then would they want to hire her to solve that problem, and others, or put her in front of their audiences because, remember, Vicki is a speaker as well. Event planners would be looking for that very same outcome.
We limited the scope so we didn’t overwhelm her readers with massive amounts of information, no matter how valuable. We solved one problem at that time. We didn’t take on global warming.
Unless you’re Greta Thunberg, leave global warming alone.
You must choose one urgent problem to solve, reducing it to its simplest components.
See how I set that statement apart? That’s how important it is.
Here’s what this trick did for Vicki, just as a start:
- Her book is so readable, her clients are out there promoting it to people in their field
- She’s so clear on her signature system, she’s created an online course to handle the client overflow
- By focusing on contractors, dramatizing their urgent problem in such an insightful way, she’s poised to become to go-to expert in that niche
Imagine what that fix could do for you and your book.