15 Feb 117. The Real Reason People Trust Your Expertise After You Write a Book

Why do you trust the person who wrote a book on a topic to know what they’re talking about?

Why do you see authors as experts?

Probably for the same reasons everyone else does.

In this episode, discover how writing your book will set you up as a credible authority and why that reputation is well deserved.

For more writing tips and inspiration, follow me on Instagram @candiceldavis.

Mentioned in This Episode

Authors Ignited: Group Coaching Program for Nonfiction Authors

Jump-Start: A free guide to help you jump-start your nonfiction book.

Complete Author Coaching (1:1 Coaching)

Episode Transcript

Hey there and welcome to Nothing but the Words. I’m your Book Coach, Candice L Davis.

I hope your week and your writing are going well.

In this episode, I want to talk about how writing a book makes you better at what you do.

It will be obvious how this applies to writing a nonfiction book, but if you’re writing fiction, pay attention too, because it also applies to you.

A few weeks ago, I was coaching one of the authors in my group-coaching program, Authors Ignited, and she was reluctant to talk about her progress.

She was trying to avoid saying that she’d actually pressed pause on her writing to go back in and rework her outline.

For background, she’s a coach and she helps entrepreneurs in a very focused niche.

She was worried she’d gotten off track, but as she explained, I was so excited for her.

I could hear how she had made a breakthrough in her process, the same process she uses to coach clients and the same process that provides the framework for her book. 

That, my friend, is the hidden benefit to writing your book.

It’s the win few people talk about because it’s not easily measured.

Writing your book is still the best way to demonstrate your expertise.

It’s the most lasting way to share your story or the stories, real or fictional, you want to tell.

Writing your book is a great way to grow your business, increase your perceived value as a speaker.

You know all these things, I’m sure.

But what people don’t often talk about is who you become as you write your book.

Let’s look at some specifics.

Let’s say you’re writing a memoir. 

In that case, you’ll tell your story, but you’ll also share the insights you’ve taken from those experiences.

As you write your book, you have to articulate, on paper, in a way that few people ever do, what happened and what you learned from it.

This is an opportunity to question what you took at face value.

It’s a chance to more deeply examine your beliefs and conclusions.

Outside of therapy, which has a whole different purpose, we don’t often have the opportunity to slow down and question how we’ve been telling our own story for years.

Writing your book allows you to do that.

It allows you to say, “No, wait. This is what I really believe.”

And if you’re a coach or speaker, or you teach from those ideas in any way, you owe it to your audience to challenge those ideas before you teach them as effective or true.

One of my friends recently honored me with the privilege of editing her memoir-in-progress.

It was wonderfully written, and I learned a lot about her life.

But even more, I learned how she thinks and what she’s taken from her experiences.

I’ve known her for years, and I had some idea of where she stands on different issues, but in writing her book, she clearly took the opportunity to challenge herself to get really clear about her philosophies.

I have no doubt she has grown as a person and in her work as a coach through the process of writing her book.

Let’s say you’re writing a personal development book or a professional development book, like the client I started this episode with is writing.

Maybe you’re already teaching your ideas, so you feel like they’re proven to be effective.

But putting them in a book requires you to justify and support them in a deeper way.

It requires you to systematize them and communicate them clearly enough that someone can follow them without you standing over their shoulder, ready to point out where they went on track and how to get back on.

The process of writing a how-to book requires you to test your processes, from start to finish.

It’s an opportunity to prune what really doesn’t work or isn’t the best option anymore.

It’s a chance to improve what you’ve always been able to kind of overlook or work around.

And yes, writing a novel is an opportunity for growth too.

Your story and your characters will challenge what you believe. 

Even if you have no specific theme in mind when you set out to write your novel, themes will emerge, and you’ll have to decide what you really want to communicate and leave your readers with.

This is a rare opportunity for you to evolve and have fun in the process.

Writing your book is like a purifying fire for your values and your beliefs and processes.

It’s a test for your ideas, your processes, and your philosophies. But it’s a test in a safe environment. 

No one sees the results but you. And you can adjust and make changes before you send your book into the world.

As you write your book, be prepared for the possibility that some of your beliefs, tools, or ideas won’t make it to the end with you.

That’s actually a good thing. It means you’ve evolved in those areas.

As you write your novel, you may shift your perspective to see your fictional world in a new way that changes how you see the world you live in.

As you write your memoir, you may rewrite the stories that have held you back so they empower you.

As you write your personal development book, you may create new tools to serve your readers better.

As you write your business book or how-to guide, you may streamline the processes you teach.

As Your Book Coach, it’s my job to help you write the best book you possibly can, not just by focusing on your writing.

I help you unpack the content so you can go deeper and refine your ideas or your processes. 

I challenge you to articulate it all even more clearly and in the most effective ways.

That’s my job.

Yes, you can do it on your own, but there’s nothing quite like having a pro to do it with.

If you let it, writing your book will make you a stronger coach, consultant, speaker, teacher, or thinker.

And it’s well worth the effort.

That’s all for this week’s episode. Thanks for listening to “Nothing but the Words,” I’m your Book Coach Candice L. Davis, and I’ll see you next time.

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