846 Three Steps to Writing Your Book

WRITE FOR OTHERS, NOT FOR YOU. There are a lot of smart, accomplished people in our audience. You know things that are valuable to others. You’ve got great businesses. You’re ready to share that knowledge with the world. But figuring out where to start can be overwhelming. For this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with Tucker Max where he shared his three steps to starting your book. Tucker Max is a NYTimes Best-selling Author who was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential in 2009. He invented the genre “fratire,” and his number one bestseller, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, was made into a major motion picture. Tucker is the co-founder of Scribe, a company that turns ideas into books. He says that before you sit down and start typing, you should first hone in on who you’re writing for and what you’re writing. Learn how to find the goal, audience, and subject of your book in Episode 846. In This Episode You Will Learn: How to understand what kind of book you’re writing (02:00) How to find the audience for your book (03:00) The way to figure out what to write about (04:00) If you enjoyed this episode, check out the show notes and more at http:/www.lewishowes.com/846 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Lewis Howes?

  We've got an awesome guest today. His name is Tucker Max. Today, we're talking about how to write a book. So if you're an entrepreneur, a coach, a speaker, an expert, you're a lawyer, a financial advisor, you've got some type of expertise, and you're thinking about writing a book. We talk about the different ways to go about it.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  The basic steps are very simple. We actually released a book about our method, but there's a lot of books out there that are about sort of what to do. But it's very simple. You have to understand. So I'll tell you exactly how we do it. First, you need to understand what kind of book you're writing, right? So to do that, you need to understand why you're writing a book. So you need to sit down and think, okay. And if you say, "Oh, I want to be a bestseller and sell a bunch of copies," that's nonsense. That's not a realistic goal for someone who, unless there's someone like you who has a big platform and that kind of stuff, right? You're looking at a book as a means to another end, right? So you need to know specifically what it is. If you want to be able to speak at conferences, okay, that's a goal. If you want to increase the number and quality of clients, that's a goal.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Things like that. So you need to know what is your goal? Why am I writing this book? Sharing your wisdom with the world is part of it, right? But that's not actually the goal. That's the result of what you do. You need to know why, what you're hoping and expecting to get from this book, right? So once you understand that, what's your goal? What's the expected result? The next thing you have to understand is what audience do I have to reach to achieve that goal? So if you want to be booked to speak at conferences, then the audience you need to reach are the people who book speakers at conferences and the people who go to those conferences, right? Or if you want to book consulting clients in the fashion industry, then it's the decision makers at fashion companies. That's your audience.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  And like, people always want to say, "Oh, my audience is everybody," or "all women." That's not an audience. Not even the Bible's audience is everybody, okay? Right? Seriously, like, there's a lot of Hindus don't read the Bible. Like, there's plenty of people who don't care about the Bible. So it's like, the best-selling book of all time doesn't fit that. Neither does yours. So you need to be very specific. So you've got your goal. You've got your audience. Now, you need to ask yourself, what do I know that that audience will find valuable? Because that's what your book needs to be about, right? The book needs to be about other people, not about you for it to be successful for you. You've gotta, you've gotta write, we talked about this at the very beginning, right? Like, what makes a book successful?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  And I said, I said, you write a book that other people find valuable. Like, I wrote, my original books were entertainment books, right? People bought them to laugh, and they made people laugh. And so I sold millions. If you want to, um, to become, you know, to be established as a, as a high-level financial consultant, then you need to write a book that has information that people who are looking for financial consultants will find valuable. That really serves them in a high way, in a big way, that gives them results, yes. What, what you, the problem you see with so many authors, and even high-profile authors, is that they write books, uh, that they wanna write that are about them. Ultimately, they just write like bragging nonsense, right? Or, "Look at how smart I am, look at how fancy I am."

• 3:25Speaker 01

  And you'll see these really famous, noteworthy intellectuals or whatever come out with these books that flop and go nowhere. And that's why, is because the book wasn't about their audience. They didn't, they weren't creating value for other people, they were just celebrating themselves. Those books go nowhere. But I, I, I know for a fact your audience is, is, um, covered in these people because we, we served them as clients, they were our first set of clients. Right, right. You have a bunch of people in your audience who are really smart, who are really accomplished, who know things that are valuable to other people, and that wanna share those things with the world. Well, uh, like, that's the way you do it, right there, that's the process. Whether you pay us, and then you just can do it over the phone, or you do it yourself, that's where you need to start, is what's my goal? Who's, uh, my audience to reach that goal?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  And then, what do, what do I know that need, that that audience will find valuable? Because that's the book.

• 4:20Lewis Howes?

  Hey guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you'll love the free book I'm giving away right now. It's called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.