It's not too late to get a damn good book for your business written this year! - Holly Ostrout

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[00:00:00]: So we are already deep into this year and here's what I keep thinking about. You are still saying someday to your book. Listen, I'm going to hold your hand while I say this. Every day you wait. Your competitors with books are taking the opportunities that should be yours. While you are overthinking timing and perfection, other business owners are creating assets that generate income for years. And here's what nobody else is telling you. Starting now actually gives you an advantage that you didn't even know existed.  

[00:00:31]: Let me show you exactly why this moment is the perfect storm of opportunity for getting your book written and working for your business this year. Really quickly, I'm going to introduce myself. In case we haven't met before, I am Holly Ostrout, your go to book bestie and I help established women entrepreneurs write a damn good book that creates real business impact. Whether it's getting you booked on stages, selling your high ticket offers, or helping you stand out as the authority in your niche, I am all about helping you create a book that works for your business long term and that deeply connects your readers to you. I've got street cred like single handedly reviving Cliff's notes from zero to nearly a million bucks in sales in just 12 months. I've written four books myself and I've helped tons of entrepreneurs turn their expertise into life changing, profit generating books. I actually even went to grad school for publishing, but less about that because I am at the point where I've decided to let my grades grow out and thinking about grad school just reminds me of my livejournal era which we could all do to forget. So enough about me.  

[00:01:34]: Let's dive in. We are entering what some people call the trust economy. You may have heard this term, you may not. But in general what it means is consumer trust right now is becoming the most valuable currency for businesses. All businesses. So think about it this way. When everything feels uncertain, when you are when your ideal clients are bombarded with content and ads from every direction, when anyone can claim expertise on social media with faceless Instagram reels, what makes your ideal people actually trust you enough to spend their hard earned money on you? Books. Not Instagram posts that disappear in 24 hours.  

[00:02:16]: Not LinkedIn content that gets buried by whatever algorithm chaos is happening right now. Probably. Books create what psychologists call a parasocial relationship. This is when readers feel like they know you and trust you on a deep level. So think about Taylor Swift. If you're a Swiftie. If you know a Swiftie, you know what I'm talking about here. People who love Taylor Swift love Taylor Swift.  

[00:02:39]: They know her birthday, they know where she was born, probably what hospital she was born at. They know everything about her, but she doesn't know them. It's a one to many relationship. They feel like they know Taylor and they do to some extent. And so they trust Taylor, they love Taylor even though Taylor doesn't know who they are. So we see this a lot with celebrities and books do this too when they're written, right? Of course. And this happens because of three things. First, because of the extended engagement time that you get with a book.  

[00:03:10]: So hours with a book versus minutes with a blog post or seconds with a social media post. Number two, because the intimate nature of reading when there's no distractions or fewer distractions and no notifications. So when you're browsing on the Internet, you know, Facebook's got ads on every different side, you've got notifications popping up in the corner. But with a book, it's just you and the paper or you in the audiobook or are you in the Kindle. But also number three, the perceived commitment that comes with authorship. So when somebody sees that you have written a book, their brain automatically pops you in that category of oh, she's legit. She's taken the time to get her thoughts together. She's taken the time to prove herself.

[00:03:53]: She's taken the time to research this and make sure that what she's saying is worthwhile to put in a book and not a blog post, that if she realizes she should have backed up a claim, she can go edit it three weeks later. It adds an additional level of authority. And the business impact of a book is wild. So recently there was a survey by marketing consultant Mike Schultz and he found that the vast majority of authors, 96%, said they realized a significant positive impact on their businesses from writing and publishing a book. Authors are perceived as more credible than non authors even when their expertise is identical. Even if you self publish instead of getting a traditional book book deal, you still get this credibility boost then. That's because when you do professional self publishing, readers do not care. They do not care if Penguin published you, they do not care if you publish yourself.  

[00:04:49]: They just care if the content is good and if it's presented professionally. So when you are scrolling LinkedIn and you see two posts with identical advice about one person has author of whatever book in their byline and the other one doesn't, who are you more likely to trust? You know the answer to this. Your book Becomes your credibility shortcut. In a world where everybody's fighting right now for attention with content strategies that worked in 2019 but are not working now because we are in a different type of economy, a trust economy. Right now. People need to not only know, like and trust you, they need to know, love and trust you. And that's what a book can do with. So let me tell you a story.  

[00:05:39]: Anytime I introduce myself at an event, a networking event, or just around town or in our neighborhood, even when somebody asks me what I do, guaranteed somebody is going to say, oh, I'd love to write a book. I think I'm going to write a book when things slow down or I need to wait until I have this figured out completely before I write my book or my personal favorite. I want to make sure I'm really ready and I'm over here. Like, when exactly do you think that's going to happen, sis? Because it's not just going to happen unless you make it happen. For example, I had a client who spent seven years thinking about her book. She wrote 11 different book proposals. She kept tweaking her angle like what she wanted to talk about, like the story. She was including it, always, always finding some reason why she couldn't quite make it happen right now.  

[00:06:30]: Like it wasn't the right time or she couldn't quite figure it out. Seven years of someday until we worked together. By the way, her book is done and published now and just it was written in a matter of weeks, by the way. Then I had another client, well, many clients actually who fit this. But I had another client who basically said, screw it, I am doing this. And went from zero to more than halfway done within just a couple of weeks. They had the same level of expertise, they had the same crazy schedules. They were both parents, they just had a different approach.  

[00:07:02]: So what was the difference between these two? Because it wasn't their expertise. They were both brilliant at what they do. They both wrote amazing books in the end. And it wasn't. They had a different amount of available time because they're both running successful businesses. They both had kids, they both have lives, they both had friends, things they wanted to do, grocery shopping. But the difference was that one of them stopped believing the myth that books take forever to write and stopped agonizing over the process. But everywhere I look, someone is lamenting that they need to take like a two year sabbatical on an expensive writing retreat to write their book.  

[00:07:43]: I guess maybe because they've seen some influencer do that on Instagram, but If you'll permit me a dad joke, that is complete fiction. You do not need that. The data shows that most successful business books are written in three to six months max. And my clients prove this. Daily books written in three weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, a few months. In fact, you're probably sitting on half of your book already with your workshop materials, with your client session recordings, with your email sequences that you've written. It is all potential book content waiting to be just tweaked and amplified and organized. You don't have to start from a blank page.  

[00:08:19]: You just have to know how to put what you already know into a book. So the difference between getting a book out this year or waiting for that mythical two year sabbatical isn't talent or time. It has happened the right system. Your expertise is already there. You can do this. I mean, your expertise is growing every day. But every day that you wait, it's also going to waste because you're not capturing it in your book. Your competitors aren't waiting for permission to share their knowledge.  

[00:08:49]: They are writing their books now. And that compound effect from writing it now and letting it work for you over the years starts when you start writing the book, not when you finish writing the book. Every day that you don't have a book working for you is another day that you are explaining the same concepts over and over until your voice gets hoarse by the third sales call. Until you are sick of repurposing the same social media posts. It's another day that your rates get questioned because you don't have that automatic credibility boost. It's another day that someone with a book is getting speaking gigs that you should have landed because you probably were more of an expert. Which brings me to the question that I know some of you are asking, is writing a book really worth the investment of my time and money? Well, let me give you some numbers because we are all business people here. We love a number, we love an roi.  

[00:09:41]: So let me just give it to you straight. The average business startup costs around $30,000 according to research. Frankly, I think that research is outdated. I spent way more A professionally self published book. You are looking at 1500-15,000 total. And that's going to include your marketing for launch. Depends on how much you want to diy, how much you want and what extras and bells and whistles you want. But unlike most business investments, and you know that you've spent that much on coaching, unlike most business investments that start losing value the second you make that investment, a strategically written book can generate revenue for five to 10 years or more.  

[00:10:21]: That is like if you have kids, they are going to be out of the house by then or they are graduating high school and this book is still working for you. We are talking about creating an asset that works all the time. It doesn't need as much help from you to get off the ground. It doesn't need your constant hand holding. And so while you're on vacation with your phone on airplane mode, while you're focused on delivering top tier support to your favorite clients, Yearbook is out there doing the same for you. And there are sa.