Write a Book, Win More Clients (Authority Secrets)

Want to stand out from thousands of other coaches and consultants? Publishing a book is your secret weapon.

In this episode of the 7-Figure Life Fulfillment Podcast, host Ken Steven interviews Donna Amos, a StoryBrand certified marketing strategist and author of 'Best Damn Marketing Tool Ever,' about how coaches and consultants can leverage book publishing to build authority, attract better clients, and grow their business.

You'll discover:

- Why coaches and consultants should write a book (1:25)
- How to use The Authority Architect to presell your services to prospects (2:35)
- The 5 proven book structures that work best for coaches and consultants (4:55)
- The role of AI in writing your book (8:40)
- Real case studies proving books transform businesses (10:20)
- The importance of adding stories to engage your reader (12:10)
- How to use your book to gain authority and reach (14:00)
- The free 1-hour consulting offer to write your first chapter (18:55)

Key Takeaways:
- Books immediately establish authority and credibility
- Your book pre-sells clients before they even contact you
- The 5 book structures: step-by-step, big idea, case study-driven, hybrid, and Q&A
- Use AI responsibly as a tool, not the foundation of your book
- Stories and authentic case studies are what make books convert
- Books become your business card, lead magnet, and competitive differentiator
- Use your book to get podcast appearances, speaking gigs, and media features

If you're a coach or consultant struggling to stand out, this episode reveals why a published book might be the revenue growth driver your business needs.

Grab a copy of Donna's book: available on Amazon.com

🎁 Free Resource Mentioned:
Ready to write your book? Visit inspiredpresspublisher.com for a free 1-hour session to write your first chapter.
👉 https://inspiredpresspublisher.com/

Thanks for listening to the Seven-Figure Life-Fulfillment podcast.

🎁 Claim Ken's free gift — Find out how ready your business is for another $20K revenue per month. Take the Revenue Growth Readiness Scorecard.
👉🏻 https://scorecard.kensteven.com/ken-ldxawjii

Transcript

Ken Steven 0:00

Ifz you're a coach or consultant who's struggling to grow your reach and authority outside your current network, you're going to love my special guest today. Hello, and welcome to the Seven Figure Life Fulfillment Podcast, where we share strategies to help coaches and consultants grow their income while working less and build a life they actually enjoy. My guest today is Donna Amos. Donna is a story brand certified guy, marketing strategist, author, and founder of Solopreneur Solutions. With more than 30 years of marketing and sales experience, she helps coaches, consultants, and small business owners clarify their message, build authority, and attract better clients through practical, story-driven marketing. Today we'll be talking about the latest updated edition of her book, The Best Damn Marketing Tool Ever. I love that title. Love that title. The book shows experts how to turn a nonfiction book into a powerful business building asset that opens doors, builds trust, and creates new opportunities. Don, I'm so happy you could join us here on the show today. You are my first guest for the second season of this podcast. Welcome to the show.

Donna Amos 1:09

Thank you. I'm happy to be here in woohoo! Season two.

Ken Steven 1:14

Well, I'm eager to discuss the updated version of your book because I, you know, I read it and it contains some absolutely golden business growth nuggets for coaches and consultants, which is our audience. So why don't we start with the most obvious question? And that is, why would coaches and consultants even want to consider writing a book?

Donna Amos 1:35

I wish I had the exact number of coaches and consultants that are out there in the world, because that's the biggest challenge. You're up against thousands of others, and you have to find a way to stand out. And who doesn't um respect an author? It like immediately gives you authority, the fact that you've written a book.

Ken Steven 2:01

Authority, you mentioned authority, and it's the perfect segue into my five business growth driver framework. Uh, why I wanted you to be on the show to talk about this today is because authority and reach is the fifth driver in my Five Business Growth Driver framework. And you just mentioned that the best way to get authority, or one of the ways anyway, to get authority uh is to write a book. Uh and and write a book about something that helps people understand that you're an expert at something. So exactly and and so picking up on this theme of authority in chapter 12 of your book, you you talk about the authority architect uh and and and how that how coaches and consultants can become authority architects. Can can you can you explain how that works?

Donna Amos 2:51

Absolutely. So there is a process that that is outlined in the book that helps you to build out that content so that it lets the reader know where you're an expert, how you, what the problem is that you solve, what your solution is, but more importantly, the transformation that the reader will get from following your process. So, and that's what people buy, they buy the transformation. So if you can articulate that in your book, you will again you'll stand out from the competition. And it really helps to pre-sell your services to the reader.

Ken Steven 3:40

Ah, pre-selling. So it's not, it's not just, hey, here's here's a book to show you that I know what I'm talking about on this particular subject that someone could buy just for interest, is actually uh a way that you can pre-sell clients so that they don't basically come to you and say, How can you help me? They already know how they can help you.

Donna Amos 4:02

They know. And they've bought into it already because you have, you know, walked them through that process and they see themselves on the other side. They actually see themselves in the transformation that you share with them.

Ken Steven 4:18

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Donna Amos 4:19

So they're already sold.

Ken Steven 4:21

They're already sold. Okay. That's that's definitely a business growth nugget right there. Okay. The book pre-sells your clients, they come looking for you instead of you having to go looking for them.

Donna Amos 4:31

Exactly. And if you're competing with somebody else, you'll win every time.

unknown 4:38

Right.

Ken Steven 4:38

You've even got a great little story at the beginning of your book talking about the two guys, they all started the same way, got the same kind of businesses. One's got clients, one doesn't. The guy with the books got the clients. That's good. That's good. So you mentioned in the book that okay, assuming everyone now buys into the fact that having a book is a great idea, okay. Uh, you mentioned there are five proven book structures um that that you can follow. And I thought that that would be a great thing to share with the audience today because um, you know, I think most people just think of, well, it's a step-by-step. This is how you do something. But but you've got four other options in there. And I think I think people would be interested to discover what those are.

Donna Amos 5:24

Yeah. So the first one is that step-by-step process, you know, a book that walks them through do this, do that, you know, take these these five steps, and you'll end up at the end with the result that you want. But there are several others. So there is the big idea book. You know, you've got a really big idea and you want to share it with the world. So you put it down in writing. It tells them um how your how your idea can change the game for them, you know and make such a difference in their life. Um, you use real life stories that actually prove that your big idea is real, that it, you know, makes sense. Um the only con is it's harder to write about a big idea than it is like a step-by-step process. So it takes a little more finessing, but if you have that big idea, it's not as hard as you think to put it down on paper. Okay. The others, the next one is structured three is a case study-driven story book. So you share case studies written as stories because that's how people really learn. That's how we can see ourselves in the story. We buy into the fact that you know, John made it to the end and you know, he was successful, and we can see ourselves in that story. So if you have great case studies, that is a really good structure to build your book around.

Ken Steven 7:08

Okay. Um number four.

Donna Amos 7:12

Number four is the hybrid model. So you use your case studies um and you build out the story around your framework. So you have a framework, you discuss the framework, but then you use a story to emphasize how that works. Like we could take your five, uh, your framework of five. Yes, and we could write a case study around each one of them to prove the validity of your framework and how it helps.

Ken Steven 7:45

Well, great. Maybe we'll do that right after the call.

Donna Amos 7:52

And then number five is the QA, it's the problem solution. So if you solve maybe more than one problem for a client, and most coaches do, um, they may focus on one problem, but they actually probably solve several. So if you can identify the problems that you solve for your clients and then provide the solution to each one of those problems, that can be another way to structure your book.

Ken Steven 8:22

Okay, so you that there are like five choices. Um, once you pick the one that you think fits best with your level of expertise, um I guess the next temptation would be for everybody to want to use AI to write the book. Um, what are your thoughts on how to use AI to write a book?

Donna Amos 8:44

So I think AI is a fabulous tool. Um, and I use it. However, it cannot be the basis of your book. You've got to share your um perspective, your real case studies. You can't let AI make up studies for you. You you've got to be um authentic. That's what it comes down to. And people are gonna know when they read the book if it sounds authentic. That's you know, it's not whether AI can write better than you can. I, you know, maybe it can, but it doesn't have the experience that you have, it doesn't have the human experience that you have. So you've got to have that piece has to be included in the book, even if you use AI to help you tidy it up at the end.

Ken Steven 9:44

Okay, so you've mentioned a couple of times this notion of story, right? And and the importance of not just I mean, it's there's going to be the stories that make it authentic, right? Um do you have some tips for people uh on on how to add the story elements to the book?

Donna Amos 10:07

Yeah, so um I'm gonna share a story with you first. Okay. So I had a client that he's retired now because well, I'll tell you at the end. I have it, I had a client that was a financial planner. He focused on um elder care. So, you know, not a great topic for people to have that conversation. We had been writing blog content for a couple of years. So every week we would put a new, and he needed something to set himself apart. And I convinced him we could write a book. And I convinced him we could then take that blog content and use it for the content in the book. We had to reorganize it, we had to do some editing. I had to sit with him and get some real stories from him, you know, the kind of thing. But we put together the book for his practice. He then hired an individual that went out to nursing homes and senior um services and places like that where people were having those conversations, and she took that book with her everywhere. So that wasn't, she didn't have a business card, she had a book that she used to um give to the people in those centers. And she would leave behind a few books, and they could give it then to the families that were coming in to discuss all of those unpleasant things that you have to discuss. Uh, his business started growing exponentially because they saw him as the expert in the local market, you know, because there was not other financial planners, planners that had a book. Um, when he got ready to retire, he was able to sell his practice for a significant um increase in you know revenue because he had really grown the practice and he had been in business for quite a while. But the tool, the book really helped him to stand out, and it was the stories we put in it that really made the difference.

Ken Steven 12:21

So what would be a good example of like stories would be like case specific case studies, like like transform stories of actual transformations that occurred. You know, that'd be probably what coaches and consultants would mostly be dealing with in their case studies.

Donna Amos 12:41

Right. Yes. So um if you sat down with um a client and you wanted to explain to them how your process, your framework work, you would probably fall back to share a story of how you use that framework with another client. So if you could take that same information and write it as a story so people engage with um seeing somebody else accomplish what they want to accomplish. So if you can put that in story form, they can see themselves in the story and they're more likely to buy into what you're putting out there.

Ken Steven 13:26

Oh, that's great. Oh, that's great advice. That's great advice. So let's say they follow this process. They've they've they've picked one of the different structures. Um, they've used AI responsibly to maybe help them with some research, maybe tidy up the editing at the end and that kind of thing. Use it maybe as a as a as a brainstorming tool as opposed to um you know writing writing actual content, right? They've added some elements of story to make it far more interesting to read and so that people can actually engage with it because they can see themselves in it. They've got this book now, it's all published. Um, now let's get back to the authority and reach driver. How do you use that book to build your authority and reach?

Donna Amos 14:14

Okay, so it's not what you think. You're not gonna make a bunch of money selling paperback books unless you unless that's your full-time job. So, you know, six dollars a book is not gonna put you in the rich house. No, but using your book to get booked on podcasts, to get booked to be on this on a stage as a public speaker, to, and anytime you can get in front of your audience in a larger group, so to speak, you're gonna your reach is gonna grow and your authority is gonna grow. Because if you're on a stage, people think you must know your stuff, or they wouldn't put you up there in front of, you know, 300 people to talk. So that makes a difference. You'll find that you get invited to write articles for other publications because of your authority in your area of expertise. You will also use that book as a business card, just like William did. You take that book with you and you give it to everybody you meet. And if you're not meeting them face to face, very often I will send a connection on LinkedIn, a copy of my book. Because I now stand out from others on LinkedIn that just say, hey, this is what I do, kind of thing. Ah, right. So so it may cost me six dollars to mail them a book, but it's what it's it's well worth the to make that connection even stronger.

Ken Steven 15:56

So that the book would actually be a great lead magnet then in terms of prospecting for business.

Donna Amos 16:02

Oh, yes. My first edition, this is the second, my first edition that I published in 2018. For years now, I've given it away for free. All they have to do is opt in and they can download the book.

Ken Steven 16:14

So it's it's uh it's good. And and now, I mean you just talked about the six dollar charger. It reminds me of, you know, last season I had as a guest on the show, Robin Waite, who's uh who's a business coach over in the UK. And and what he does, he literally, anybody who requests a copy of his book, he he's got he's got I guess Janet down at the post office, I think that's what it was. So she's just got all these stacks of books, and she just mails them out. She just mails them out. So he he physically mails a copy to anyone who wants a copy of his book. So that's a great example. That's a story. See, I just use the story. That's a great that's a great example of using your book as your calling card. And of course, the entire book is written as a fictional story, but it's based on his whole business uh coaching methodology, right? But it's written as a fictional story, right? So so you're right. Now he's pre-sold his audience that he knows how to grow their business.

Donna Amos 17:10

Yeah, exactly. Yep.

Ken Steven 17:12

So a great example of what you just talked about, like use the book to pre-sell your expertise so that people come to you as opposed to you having to go to them. Yeah.

Donna Amos 17:22

Share one more story with you. I'll tell you about the first book I published, which was from a young girl that was 14. She had written a book about fear, about overcome, about how children can overcome their fears. Her friend had done all the illustrations. Her mother was currently a client, and she came to me and said, Do you know how to publish a book? Natalie's written a book. And I said, Nope, but we'll figure it out. So I did all the research. I figured out what we had to do. We actually published the book. It was beautiful. And when she went on her college visits, that book went with her to every college visit she went on. And she was able to say to them, I just wanted to share with you the book I wrote when I was 14 to show you that I can follow through on any project I start.

Ken Steven 18:16

Oh, very nice.

Donna Amos 18:18

So she wasn't a coach, but that book did wonders for her getting, you know, standing out from the other students that were showing up for those interviews.

Ken Steven 18:28

Yeah, I think that if it when it's put in that context, basically what you're saying is the book is your competitive differentiator. Right? If you have one and and if you have one and and and anybody else you're up against doesn't, you're the one that will most likely stand out and win in a competitive. Exactly. That's great. That's great. Um Donna, how can how can people reach out to get in touch with you and and and maybe get your help in writing their book?

Donna Amos 19:03

So you can go to inspiredpresspublisher.com and you'll find when you get there that I offer a free one-hour session over Zoom where you and I will write your first chapter to your book at no cost to help you kickstart that writing process. That's the hardest part. It's getting started and then writing until you actually finish, which only 3% of the people do actually finish writing. Is that right?

Ken Steven 19:32

Really?

Donna Amos 19:33

Yes.

Ken Steven 19:34

So so what if if they decide to work with you, what kind of a process would you take them through?

Donna Amos 19:40

Yeah, so um so the initial first chapter, you that I would go with I ask them specific questions. We walk through building that first chapter in their book. Once we've completed that, I can actually help them to identify all of the next chapters. So let's say their next 10 to 12 chapters, knowing what each one is going to be. And that's a huge step because now that you know this is what this chapter is about, you can easily go look for case studies, you can um tie it back to your process, to your framework, you can do all of those things that makes the writing process easier. The thing that gets in the way is between their two ears. When they start saying to themselves, who am I to write a book? I don't have the authority to do that. Yes, you do. Everybody does. Everybody has a book in them.

Ken Steven 20:37

That sounds great. That's uh uh I I know I went through that process myself and I wrote my book, and it and and and you're right, you that's how it all starts. You're saying, like, is is have I really earned the right to write about this? And and and I think that what a lot of people think, and maybe a lot of coaches and consultants out there right now thinking that, well, what I do is nothing really special. What they don't realize is that they do it every day, and that's why it doesn't seem special. But there are so many people out there that really could benefit from their solution and the way they deliver that solution. And and I think you even got it in one of the chapters in your book that the trick is is really to the thing you're taking for granted right now, that methodology, that framework, give it a name, okay? Like put a little TM after it, and all of a sudden, you know, build a little diagram around it, as you say, build a framework, okay, so that you talk about it the same way every single time. And all of a sudden, yeah, that's your competitive differentiator. That's what, you know, that's what makes you as a coach different than every other coach because you deliver the solution in a different way. It may be the same solution and the same transformation that everybody else can achieve, but they're not doing it the way you do it, do it, do it with your signature solution, right? Like that becomes

Donna Amos 22:03

Exactly. And if you ask all of your clients, you know, have I really helped you or how have I helped you? They will just, you know, gush on about what you've done for them. And it's because, like you said, they see that as, you know, I do this every day. It's not a big deal. But it is a big deal to the people you help.

Ken Steven 22:23

Right. Right. Donna, I want to thank you for being such a great guest on the show today. Um I guess that there were some really good, good, as I said, good, good golden growth nuggets here on the show. Um, everybody, if I think a strong case has been made, why if you're a coach or consultant, you might want to consider writing a book. Okay. Find something about the solution you provide that can become a framework, a methodology, a way to, and and find a way to frame it in a way that that is totally yours, totally unique, so that people can see that uh the way you solve the problem aligns with the way they'd like the problem to be solved. Um, and then reach out to reach out to Donna and and take her up on her offer and get that free hour of consulting to write that first chapter of your book. Just so uh I think exactly please take Donna up on her offer. And uh, I'm gonna have the link for for how to get a hold of Donna in the show notes. So uh so make sure you you click on that. And uh again, Donna, thanks again for being such a great guest.

Donna Amos 23:27

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Ken Steven 23:29

All right.