I had the privilege to interview un curso de milagros, New York Times bestselling author and CEO of Business Ghost about why corporate executives and professionals should write a book. Having written novels, business books and co-written with or ghost written for many high profiled professionals,such as Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, football broadcasting legend Pat Summerall, FBI undercover agent Joaquin Garcia and E-Myth creator Michael Gerber, he offers a unique insight that is a wealth of information.
Michael has also written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and many other top outlets. Plus he is an eight-time national best-selling author and his books have received outstanding reviews in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, People Magazine, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Examiner, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, Esquire, Booklist and other leading publications.
So relax and learn how you can become an author of a book in just 13 weeks and help propel your business to the next level. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed conducting the interview.
Marsha: Why do you recommend that people write books in order to promote their businesses?
Michael: That’s a great question. We live in an era where the Internet is turning practically every business, service, or consultant into a commodity judged primarily, if not only, on price. In other words, the only way a lot of people are able to get business is by competing on price, and the rule in business is that any business you get by competing on price, you’ll lose when someone undercuts your price. So the question becomes this: how do people stand out in an overcrowded marketplace, where consumers and prospects have access to more information about your competition than ever?How do you make people realize that you are the most trustworthy advisor and that you can solve their problems?
At the end of the day, every website pretty much looks like every other website. They’re all attractive. They’ve all got blogs. They all kind of look the same. So even spending a lot of money on a website, let alone on traditional stand-alone marketing material like brochures, just doesn’t cut it. There’s nothing as powerful as a book to get people’s attention.
With a book, you’re able to demonstrate that you understand like no one else the specific nature of the problems that your prospects face. I always recommend targeting a niche with a book instead of writing for the general public. Write exactly for the people you’re trying to sell to. Show them that you understand their problems and that you offer solutions. In a book, you can lay out everything that you do to solve these problems. The goal is that if your book is generous enough with information, they’ll say, “I could do this on my own, but I would be much better off hiring the author to solve this problem for me.” That’s the result we’re looking for. That’s why you want a book.
Marsha: What can a book do that a good website can’t?
Michael: It really comes down to what I said in the previous answer-help the author stand out from the crowd. Again, everybody’s got a website, but how many of your competitors have books? Probably none. A book is an outstanding “leave behind”-you can’t exactly print out your website and leave it on the prospect’s desk. You can send your book in ahead of you and it’s so impressive that you’ve written a book while everyone else just has a website. You can get radio and TV appearances, as an expert or as a guest, because you’re an author. If you want to be a speaker, you really have to have a book, because the first question people ask you if you want to speak is, “Where is your book?” You can get lucrative speaking engagements, media exposure, a presence on the Internet beyond your own website… all with a book. Not just with a website. Of course you’ve got to have an attractive website, but again, so does everybody else. What’s going to make you unique?
