today I want to share with you the process of how I wrote five books before turning 40 while also having three kids under five so I'm going to share with you my methodology my framework that allowed me to stay focused get the books completed and actually write books that ended up becoming bestselling books so I want to share with you the secret framework behind the scenes as to how I wrote those books so before we get into the framework let's talk about why you would want to write a book uh anyway so my personal belief is the book that changes your life is not one you read it's one that you write I've never seen anyone who writes a book that didn't change their life having a book makes you an author makes you an authority it gives you a scalable way of telling your story it formalizes your value it gets you to think about what it is that you do and put it all in one place it's a great excuse for getting case studies and stories it's a great excuse for getting on platforms like podcasts and Live Events it's a really really powerful tool that does so much for you everyone should get a book out I really really believe that if you're going to build a business one of the key tools is to have a book now it's not just me that's saying this if you look at the CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the world they've prioritized getting a book out there are so many bigname CEOs who one of the first things that they did to formalize who they are and what they're all about was to create a book Richard Branson writes books the CEO of Microsoft wrs books Ray Dalo the head of Bridgewater created an amazing book called principles Cheryl Samberg wrote a great book uh Ariana Huffington wrote a great book so there must be a reason that all these people are writing books it's positioning them them it's formalizing their knowledge it's allowing their stories and their ideas to spread it's a Cornerstone document that creates customers and culture and solves lots and lots of problems it's also a mark in the sand no one can take it away from you once it's done it's an important step that I think every entrepreneur should take okay let's get into the framework the first thing that you need to do is you need to think about who the book is for so you need to create what's called an ideal reader so that ideal reader is that person that you want to be speaking to it's the person that you've got in your mind when you're writing the book it's very important that you get this right because if you don't get this right two things will happen you'll either accidentally write the book for a beginner and it may not be for a beginner that you're writing the book or secondly you'll write the book for yourself 5 years ago and that might not be the person you want to write for either so it may be the case that you're writing this book for a CEO or an executive in which case they're not a beginner and they're not you 5 years ago you might be writing this book for someone who's not Technical and you are technical so you want to be able to strip out all the tech technical jargon because you know you're writing for someone who's not technical so it's very important that you get a name a real life person that you imagine that you visualize while you're writing so that you're writing the book for a particular type of person now what I like to do is I like to make a few little lists about this person I like to make a list of all the things that frustrate them I like to make a list of all the questions that they're asking I like to make a list of their hopes dreams wishes outcomes desires that they wish would happen and I like to make a list of all the things that have frustrated them in the past in particular particular things that they tried that didn't work so I'm making those lists to start with and I'm getting in my head and I'm turning those lists into chapter ideas now once I've got all of this I start organizing my book into a few key sections of the book let's go through them now you may want to get a pen and paper for this we're going to go through a lot of information really quickly in this video and you may want to take some notes the opening of the book is the introduction the introduction is where you sell the reader on why they should read the book now that's the point of the introduction whatever you've heard about the point of introduction the key point is that you sell the reader that they should finish the book so you're going to tell people what are they going to get from the book what problems is it going to solve what questions is it going to answer what methodology is it going to reveal you may want to even explicitly say that they should finish this book in a certain time frame or that if they get to the end of the book there are some bonuses or there are certain things that they'll get just by finishing the book once you've done the introduction the next section is where you disrupt the reader I want three or four chapters that really deal with the fact that people's current thinking or their current path that they're on is not the correct path you want to disrupt people and say the the general consensus or the thoughts that are out there or the way that most people approach things is wrong and that there's a new way there's a better way so you're disrupting the reader so for example in the book key person of influence I open with the idea that your best thinking from 5 years ago is your baggage today it's a very disruptive idea in the book 24 assets I talk about the idea that the entrepreneurial journey is predictable and and that follows predictable stages and steps and it's not random and it's actually very predictable across millions of different businesses there are certain steps that businesses go through and then I'm going to reveal those steps so it's quite a disruptive idea in the book entrepreneur Revolution I talk about the idea that the Industrial Age is over and that there's this new age that's just beginning and I call it the entrepreneur Revolution and I literally say there are old ways of thinking that no longer apply so that first section is all about disrupting the reader and making people think hm maybe I don't know so much maybe I've got something to learn from this book this book has already disrupted my current thinking now the next part is called insights insights is where you take that disruption and then you start sharing the new ways of thinking this is where you tell people hey don't think this way start thinking this way you want to talk about high level big picture ideas you want to talk about Frameworks you want to talk about principles that are the new ways of thinking about things so you're going to be coming in and saying here's my five or six key ideas that I want you to be thinking about if we're going to get results in this particular topic now at the end of this Insight section I want you to put a call to action in the book best kind of call to action is a scorecard or benchmarking tool that is going to get people to Benchmark themselves where they are today in preparation for more Improvement that's to come so if your book is about health and fitness you might get them to take an online scorecard benchmarking their current health and fitness so they can see how far they improve as they read the book if your book is about leadership you might do a leadership benchmark uh if your book is about cyber security you might do a cyber security scorecard something that benchmarks them at that particular point before you reveal what's to come next you're going to get them to Benchmark now what this actually looks like in the book could be a one pager that says I've created a tool for you to uh assess how far you've come so far and identify your opportunities for improvement so it could be there as a one pager it could be a few paragraphs that you do this but at this particular point you need a call to action so that you can turn your readers into warm qualified leads problem is that if you sell a book on Amazon that person knows you they like you they trust you they're reading but you have no idea who they are unless you give them a call to action like an online assessment someone who goes from a reader to someone who signal their interest in what you do and they've given you the data that you need to have a sensible conversation with them at a later date okay so you've disrupted the reader you've shared some insight you got a little call to action your first call to action is in there and now you're going to share with them your methodology ideally this is going to be your signature methodology it's a methodology that is completely unique to you and to this book and this is where you're going to walk people through step-by-step things that they can do to achieve their goals or deal with their problems or frustrations in the book 24 assets the methodology is the 24 assets methodology and key person of influence we're talking about the 5 PS in the book oversubscribed we go through a campaigning methodology where we go stepbystep on how to run campaigns so in the middle of the book we're talking about how to achieve a result step-by-step using a methodology so a methodology normally has kind of five or six or seven big pillars and then it breaks it down into steps underneath each pillar you don't have to give away absolutely every piece of detail you need to share enough for people to be able to go directionally correct and see that you know what you're talking about and they could get more information from the book or they could actually get you or your company to do it for them okay next on the list we're going to do something called objection handling so the next section of the book looks at all the reasons why people would not adopt your methodology and they're going to have a whole list of things oh it's too hard it's too expensive um it's too complicated I'm not good enough I'm not sure if other people have done this and it worked I'm not sure if it still works maybe it's old maybe it's outdated right they're going to have all sorts of things in there that make them go I'm not sure if I want to go ahead with this why do we do this because the truth is people normally are pretty naive to what it takes to get a result and you've just given them all these steps and all these things that they now have to do and ultimately people want it to be easier they want just the magic pill right and now they're going to have a few objections it's normal you're asking people to do something they're going to have a few objections before they actually do this so if you've already done sales meetings in real life you already know the key objections that people typically give you they give you the price objections and they give you the commitment objections and all of that sort of stuff and you want to think back into your sales meetings and say how do I normally handle those what stories do I tell what analogies do I use what case studies or examples of clients do do you use in order to hand handle those objections put all of that into that next section so that people's objections are handled and then they go you know what I'm going to give this method a try so after you've handled objections now it's time to do your second call to action the call to action this time is a bit more specific you're going to tell people exactly what you want them to do in order to get started so you might say that you want people to start by doing these activities you might say that you want people to start by doing this for a particular week or two you might say that you want people to get in touch with these key suppliers including perhaps yourself uh you might uh tell people that they need to do an audit of their current situation and have that put into a report that they can then bring to you there's all sorts of specific things that you now want people to do in order to get started on the methodology so you want to make that easy for people to understand this is what I want you to do in order to get started now once again you may at this point want to get people to take the online scor card if they didn't do it the first time you definitely want to ask them to do it again here so you want to put in a paragraph or a little one page or a little block out that says if you didn't take the scorecard earlier Now's the Time to take the scorecard you really want people to take that scorecard because that's going to turn an anonymous reader into someone that you can talk to and have a sensible conversation with it's going to give you all the data that you need in order for this book to be the beginning of a great business relationship now finally you don't want to leave people with a to-do list or you don't want to leave them on a call to action you want to leave on an inspirational uplifting high now this is where we go 30,000 ft we go right up into the stratosphere and we talk about the big picture of getting this done what's the real reason that you want people to act what is on the other side of pain what's on the other side of commitment and discipline if someone follows your methodology for the next 2 3 years into the future and they've already got great results now in what it is that you do what does Heaven on the other side look like versus the frustrations that they've got currently today right so we want to paint that picture we want to leave people on the big inspirational finish want to leave people feeling uplifted and positive so that they finish that book and they say I really want to talk to you and that's the key thing we want to do that little bit of a test as the book leave people wanting to have a conversation with you or your team once you've written your book you need to get a publisher uh you probably should have been talking to someone along the way you can either have a hybrid publisher like rethink press or potentially you could get a big publisher but the truth is most big Publishers only want to do generic really kind of like wide reaching books they're not really big on the whole Niche topics most books that build your business are very niche and very focused they're very wide and they're not particularly good at building businesses so my recommendation is work with a niche focused publisher who can help get the book that is right for building your business the goal of the book is not to sell books right the key thing I've always thought about when I've had books is that I use books to build relationships I think of them as a gift that I can send out to people as a way of getting to meet people that I would never be able to meet in the real world I love the fact that my book is sitting in people's offices I love the fact that my book is on people's desks and I love the fact that my book can go anywhere in the world it's always on brand it's always on message it's always telling the story the way that I intended it to tell the story it's also pretty cheap I print up books thousands at a time they work out at a few dollars each by the time you've sent it to someone the cost of the book and the cost of the mailing would really be around the same cost as having a cup of coffee with someone at a nice restaurant or something like that so essentially for the cost of having a cup of coffee you can actually get a book out to someone no matter where they art and the good thing about that is the scale it's very hard to have a, cups of coffee with people in a month but it's very easy to send out 1,000 copies of a book so I really encourage you to get that book out right stop thinking about how you might apply what I've just shared with you to get your book into many people's hands you'll be so glad that you did the book that changes your life is not one you read it's one that you write and it's one that you give away a th000 copies every single year and know that that will create some book magic for you so if you've enjoyed this video leave me a comment below are you going to write a book are you going to get started did I sufficiently inspire you and give you enough information for you to get started I'd love to know about it in the comments below also subscribe and leave me a like I look forward to sharing more with you really soon