My business is all about leverage. At AWriteToKnow.com, we help entrepreneurs and small business owners leverage the power of story and their own published book to boost their business.
I started helping people write and publish books in the mid-80s. One thing that always bothered me was my poor authors usually ended up with a published book that in most cases would take them nowhere.
Part of the problem was lack of a solid marketing program. Publishers do precious little to market a book, and most authors have no idea how to do it themselves … and no money left to pay a publicist.
The other part of the problem is that a book is inherently a poor profit center. It is nearly always a low-ticket item, with most of the retail price going to cover production costs.
I always warned my authors about this in advance. Authors who’d written their own books typically assured me they’d be happy with a few books they could give to friends and relatives, and maybe a few more they could sell.
But those who’d hired me to ghostwrite, and some of those who’d believed they didn’t care about reaching a large audience, ended up disappointed with their inability to get their books into the hands of a wide readership.
I didn’t like that.
The other thing that bothered me was the obvious fact that time limitations would never allow me to move beyond serving a few authors each year. I hated turning authors away. And I hoped to move beyond the income constraints of having to do that.
It occurred to me that I needed to take my business online, so I enrolled in the Directions University Bachelor Program to learn how to do that. That’s where I learned about the importance of leverage in business.
It took me awhile to realize that the answer to the problem of a book being a poor profit center was to switch to helping authors for whom the published book was but a means to a greater end. That meant speakers, business owners, and entrepreneurs—people for whom a book became a door opener, a credibility builder, a mission clarifier, a means of solidifying a team behind a single mission and vision.
In short, for an entrepreneur or a small business owner, a published book becomes a lever that boosts every aspect of your business.
After a few false starts, in 2015 I founded AWriteToKnow.com to help the growing army of entrepreneurs and small business owners striving to grow beyond your present reach.
In so doing, I put the leverage concept I’d internalized in the DU program to work in myriad ways.
First, to solve the problem of time limitations and the concomitant earning constraints, I would build a team of service providers. That meant writers, editors, book formatters, cover designers . . . and marketing experts, too, to make sure the books got enough play to do their job.
So now I had created a point of leverage: People Power lets me serve a wider audience, make more money, and offer my team members decent wages.
But what about the entrepreneurs and business owners we serve? Being one myself, I wanted to help them as much as I could.
Most of you probably do not want to hear that you need a book. That may be because you don’t understand what a book will do for you. Here’s a partial list:
- Forces you to clarify your vision for your company
- Builds credibility for you as the authority in your industry
- Garners media attention; you’ll be in demand as a TV and rasio show guest;
- Attracts a wide range of customers/clients;
- Earns the respect of you competitors, and even their referrals for a problem they can’t solve;
- Helps Clients get better value from your offering, turning them into “raving evangelists”;
- Simplifies the qualifying and training of staff and outsourcers.
- Saves you time repeating yourself; you just point to the book and say, “Chapter 7!”;
- Makes you more attractive to the right joint venture partners and strategic allies;
- Builds the value of your mid-range and high-end products;
- When you’re ready to sell your business, a book can make it more attractive to a potential buyer.
That’s leverage!
Nothing else can do that for you. A video cannot. Everybody online makes videos. But even today, with nearly a thousand new books coming out every day, only a small fraction of the business owners and entrepreneurs in any industry have published a book.
And if you don’t have one, none of them is helping you!
But there’s more to the story of how A Write To Know has turned out to be about using leverage to help you.
Entrepreneurs and small business owners are busy people, harried to stay abreast of the constant changes on today’s Internet as you struggle to push and keep your companies in the forefront of your niche. “I don’t have time to write a book!” is what I hear. Some (like Jack Humphrey and Robert Kiyosaki) make time, but most never get around to it.
You need ghostwriters. In recognition of that fact, I engineered a DFY system to provide everything from the initial interview to the finished, ably marketed book. And that, my friends—again, using People Power to get the job done—is another way we make leverage work for you at AWriteToKnow.com.
But wait … there’s more! Because a book cannot exist in isolation. If one of the main reasons you need a book has to do with increasing sales, we need to make sure that book works in tandem with everything else you’re putting out—including your other publications, your social media posts, your email campaigns, and more.
So … we provide DFY ebooks and reports, social media management, and email campaign management—again using People Power, this time to assure the consistency of your message.
And now we’ve entered into the Branding conversation. I’ll end this article by touching on the topic of Business Storytelling, the very heart of branding a business.
If you consider yourself a great storyteller, you’re in the minority. If you don’t, don’t worry—it is a learnable skill.
But why bring storytelling into a discussion of leverage? Because story is leverage. I can give you facts and figures, and they’ll make sense to you but you won’t remember them. But if I tell you a story instead, I can get the same message across and you’ll remember it—and you’ll be more likely to pass it on to others.
That’s leverage.
What makes storytelling is so essential for your business? Whether you’re good at it or not, you are always telling a story. Everything you do is part of your story. Ask yourself, Is the world hearing a well-crafted story about your business? Or a muddled one? And how is that affecting your bottom line?
Whether you’re ready to invest in getting a book written or not, you need to learn the fine art of telling a consistent story that builds your brand in the hearts and minds of your target audience.
With that in mind, we help you craft your branding story and hone it for your various audiences: prospects, existing customers/clients, team members and outsourcers, potential JV partners, and even your exit strategy story.
Your story doesn’t have to be fantastic. The story I’ve just told you, about how my company is all about leverage, is not. Yet it’s my number-one story, the one that gets across the very essence of what we do.
If I had written the story of what can happen when you write a book for your business, that would have been a good story, but it wouldn’t have conveyed the full picture of what this business is all about: Leverage.
For me. For my team. But most important, for YOU.
I hope you’ll check us out, at awritetoknow.com. And schedule an appointment with me to discuss creating your branding story. Let’s get a book into your hands that will leverage every aspect of your business, make sure your brand is consistently represented, and get your message out to the world in a way that only leveraging at every level can accomplish.
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Chiwah Slater, founder of AWriteToKnow.com, heads up a team of professionals dedicated to your success. She loves nature, books, and animals, and also helps people write their pet books at PetWrites.com.