20 minutes a day of writing your book can make you an authority

In this show, I am going to share how to write a book in 20 minutes per day.   My first self-published work, the UnUnoticed Entrepreneur has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Business Book Awards UK, and so this gives me the self-confidence to share my process.   Dabble Writer is the software I use to collaborate with my virtual assistant.  I share my strategy of interviewing guests for 20 minutes to generate 1000 word articles which when curated could make a book of 80,000 words.  I also mention tools for transcription Descript, Otter and Rev.

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Transcript

Hello. And welcome to this episode of the unnoticed entrepreneur, Let me just start by saying, first of all, if you've never thought about writing a book, It may be time to start thinking about doing that. Uh, I'm wanting to share today. Some kind of exciting news about my book, about the unnoticed entrepreneur, not just because it's about. Something that I'm excited about them because I think book publishing and self publishing. Is proving to be a really good way for entrepreneurs to get noticed and I'm going to say. Writing a book in the loosest possible sense of the word. Now, what I've done is to publish. A book. Entitled the unnoticed entrepreneur. And it's a collection of 50 articles that have come as a result of this podcast. I have interviewed. Half a dozen publishers. Now people that are book coaches, for example, Oh of, uh, entrepreneurs, business people, and so on. So I've interviewed companies that are large and I've interviewed book writing coaches. There are some recurring themes. That I wanted to share with you. One of the themes that has come back time and time again, is that a book? Does give you authority. Obviously the word author and authority. They go together. And everybody that I've interviewed has really demonstrated to me that. Creating a collection of your thoughts. And putting them down. In more than 20 to 30 pages. Gives a sense that actually you are. Intellectually. Able to master a concept and to share that. In my book, what I have is 345 pages, some 80,000 plus words. And I'm going to share with you how I've created those. Over a period of three months. But. In your daily life. It's actually very possible. Two. Create enough content that over a period of three months, Could be a book. So let's just go through that because people say I couldn't possibly write a book. Well, actually the answer is you don't have to, you could talk a book, you could speak a book. What is. Very possible. Is that if you just record 20 minutes a day, That will create about a thousand words. Now, if you do the maths, you got. In my book. 80,000 words. And so actually all I really need is 80 days. In which I speak. So. If I record 20 minutes a day for three months. Then actually I've got a book now. What you could do a courses, you could do an hour a day. But what I found is just by doing 20 minute shows. The article that comes out is a long enough to be a piece for LinkedIn and for medium and for my newsletter. And it's long enough to be a long form piece of. Content. But it's short enough to be easy to edit. I've spoken to a number of people who are writing books. Uh, one of the challenges I think is that. They're saying that they've got such a lot of content to edit. And it becomes very, very hard then to know. How to structure it and how to make it all flow. In the same way that if you were to do exercise or if you were to make a meal, If you had started by trying to. Cook a banquet, for example. You would start. First of all by learning how to cook each dish and probably by first of all, learning how to boil an egg. My approach to writing a book has been to learn how to boil an egg first. And once I bawled quite a few eggs, then I've got some options I've been making. If you like. Hard hard boiled eggs, poached eggs, softballed eggs. Now I can make egg main, a sandwich. And I can make egg mayonnaise. Uh, in profiteroles whatever I like. The point is that we get a skill. In my experience, we get a skill by repetition. And for me, the discipline of creating the podcast. Of 20 minutes has meant that I then have the content for a thousand words a day. So I suggest. As one way to approach book writing. Is to think about. Book speaking. In first. What you can do is you can. Use the technology to help you. So. One is for example, just to speak directly into your mobile phone, that has a voice recorder. Another way is to. Press the button on your keyboard, especially on a Mac, for example. Control D depending on your shortcuts, we'll actually take dictation for you. And it's the same also on your iPhone and your iPad. You can actually talk to the machine. And it will dictate and, and. And do transcription for you there. And then. I'm using a tool called descript where I'm currently speaking to the microphone. And the software is transcribing this. Automatically as I speak. It's quite a miracle really, as I speak. It's. Uh, recording the audio. And showing me my words. I'm already making an article just by speaking. If you want to go down the path of recording a Nazi in the transcription. You could use. One of the many transcription service. Rev R E v.com. Or another one is Otter. Dot AI, which is also very good. The one I like is Otter. Personally. And I find that the price and the service really good. Because also you can link that to other platforms like your zoom meetings. What you can do is you can record your audio. On your phone either into the. Into the voice memo that you have or onto the Otter app. And it will then transcribe for you in real time. Now, what I would suggest is that you don't read it in real time because the transcription isn't perfect. It's not as good as writing. But it's close enough. To give you all the notes that you need for polishing and editing later. One of my, if you like. Sheets. If I can call it, that is that I have then. Worked on creating the book by asking other people for their ideas around the central theme that I want to curate. So the central theme that I want to create is this of what I call speak PR Storify personalize, engage amplify, and to know. Which is an overarching concept. For entrepreneurs to understand so that they can do their own public relations. The value I add is forming the structure. The value that I add is finding people that can talk about specific aspects. Of the speak PR. If you like dimensions. That all can form. A much deeper. Reservoir of knowledge, then maybe I would bring up on my own. But also as a result of doing the interviews I've learned, uh, moved my own theories on at the same time. One of the challenges I think that people have, when they think about writing a book. And I know I did is what would I say? That covers 350 pages. And most of us look at a book. And say I could never fill one. Actually, you don't have to. There are lots of people out there. Who've got lots of great ideas who would love to tell you about them. What I did was I interviewed them on the podcast and I limited them to 20 minutes. If you think about how much content you want, you could, for example, have them speak to you for five minutes. You could have them speak to you for an hour. It really doesn't matter. If you assume. Or if you know that people speak at about 100 to 150 words per minute. Then you can just do the maths on how many words you need. In order to make your book. So all I did was just a mass. If I want 20 minutes, I'm going to get about 1200 words. And then I can edit that back down to get a thousand words. And then I just need 80 of those and I've got a book now. I interviewed 50 people. Because I wanted to create this structure where I have approximately 10 people. Uh, per section. To give it some balance. Again, This is how I can add value as the author and as the curator of the idea so that the reader. Has an experience that is easy to follow. Has a lot of great content. And in the case of the unnoticed entrepreneur, I've interviewed 50, very smart. Entrepreneurs and technologists from around the world and created a master class in a book. I have 50 people. That the reader can listen to. In effect for 20 minutes. All within the pages of one book, it's an extremely economical way for people to get access to these 50 experts. If there was a listen to my shows that have 12, 13, 14 hours worth of listening. But they can get through the book, maybe. Six or seven hours. And of course they can reference. Back and forwards and in the book. What I did to make it a reference, but it was, I included the details of all the people. That I had interviewed LinkedIn. Websites emails, because I wanted to make this a functional book for people. And I want it to make it a book. That was valuable for those people that came on my podcast. So when you think about the book that you want to write, if you think about the role is going to play in your overall strategy. Then you can start to build in some of these dimensions. I know some people are writing a, a fiction. That's great. What role does that play? How does that narrative that you're writing? Fit into what you want to do with the book. If you're writing a fiction book about a location, maybe it's because you work in travel. For example, for me, I wanted to position myself as someone that understands public relations, but also someone that. Is connected. Someone that can actually access other experts because. As we know. We can't know the answer to everything. But if we know somebody who does, then we can provide value to the client. I've used the book as a way to learn a great deal about everything. From listening to AI, for content creation, to amplification for measurement. And for sentiment analysis, for example. So in the writing of the book and the interviews. I've had an amazing education. All about the five elements of my public relations theme. So as I wrote the book through interviewing experts, My own theory became stronger and stronger. It's in a way, quite a. An efficient and possibly a little bit of, uh, a cheat. But if you look at your book, And think of it as part of a way. To overcome some of the weaknesses that you feel that you have not just about marketing. But maybe in your professional skillset. You can use a book to overcome that. What I've also learned by creating this book. Is that there are lots of people out there creating books. And it is possible to self publish books and there is a whole industry. Set up to help people like me to publish books. And you to publish your own book without a lot of costs, to give you an idea. My book has cost about two and a half thousand pounds. And that's because I did hire somebody for about 800 pounds to be a consultant on the first launch. But I wouldn't need that person again. How did I do it? So inexpensively. What I did was I did the 20 minute podcast and I was disciplined about that. And then I have a VA in the Philippines. And I had the VA. In the Philippines. Edit the transcript that came in this case from descript. Uh, make those into the articles that I needed then for my LinkedIn and my. Medium and my newsletter. And for everywhere else that I'm sharing it in my blog. So on. So the VA is costing about 20 to $25 per article. May sound like kind of a lot. But. You can hire a VA in the Philippines for less, but this is writing. We're talking about this. Isn't just a commodity item. I need them to add some value and frankly also. I'd like to pay them properly. They deserve, to make a good income and then they will treat my project seriously. Otherwise. They'll just job hop. So you have, then these articles. And I have another VA in the Philippines. And she loaded these articles into a platform called dabble ride, which for $10 a month. Is an online platform where you can host your articles. And you can edit and by sharing. My account with her. She, and I can both edit concurrently the articles. You can actually pay for an upgrade. For, You know, multiple editors on the same platform. If you want to. But because it's just her and I, we're just going to log in with the same account. There's nothing sensitive or strategic in there to worry about. So we used to have a writer and then once we finished, we have to download that to make the index. And we found some software for $80 to create an index. 'cause dabble rider. Doesn't do that. And then we found some people in the Ukraine. And. Uh, let's hope. They're all. Okay. to do the layout. And that costs me some $200. As well to do that. And then we went on to Ingram, spark and onto Amazon and you can upload. Your own. PDF. Version of the book and you sign up and you can do the pricing and you connect that to your bank account. And I have been getting. Royalties for my book. From all over the world when it's been sold. Slowly, but surely. I don't think it's ever going to be a best seller. But what has happened is that. I then entered it for an award. And the business book awards in the UK just announced their finalists in their business category. And the unnoticed entrepreneur. Woo is a finalist. I have to say I entered it. I sent my full copies. I paid my 75 pounds. I didn't expect to be a finalist. But it is, and I'm super, super excited. There's a big event happening in may that I should attend. And there are books. In the awards by lots of people like you and me. There are six sec six steps to success as your own boss writes Rob curve. For example, there's an unprepared entrepreneur by Sonja Barlow. This, uh, asking for trouble. By John Cohen. There's build your sales tribe by Steve Schrier. There's grow your people. Grow your sales by lay Ashton. All of these people. Uh, including me, our regular entrepreneurs. Who and writers who are using book publishing. As a way to get there. Brand and their views into the marketplace. As people say, it's probably one of the thickest business cards that you can ever have. So my book, the, I noticed entrepreneur. Is in there as well. And so I'm really excited about that. But having shown you and shared with you the process on how to create a book. I just want to let you know that this is accessible. You know, it took me overall about six months. I now have the second book. The second version. Or rather the second volume of the, I noticed entrepreneur. Ready. It's in dabble writer, we're just working on the second cover. And we now have a publisher in India for the book. And we'll release that at a lower cost. And same at. Same language, but with a lower cost Brint. Quality to make it affordable for people in India. And this is something that you can do. There are coaches out there. There are courses that you can pay for on platforms like Udemy. There are a number of coaches that I've interviewed that you can look through. Uh, my higher, my archive to find. But writing a book, doesn't have to be 80,000 words. It can be 30,000. There's a guy called shed some OSV who wrote a book and it said, On the front cover. This is all the things that men think about when they're not thinking about sex. And it was. 200. Blank pages. It got him noticed. Everybody has got a story to tell what's yours. Think about putting it between the pages longer than, longer than an email, more content than an Instagram post. You can do this. If I can do this and who knows. What's going to happen with the award, but my reward is that it's out there. And I'm learning and I'm loving the confidence and the experience and the opportunity that it's given me to learn more. So just want to share this good news with you, but also to say that if I can do it. So, can you thank you so much for listening to this episode of the unnoticed entrepreneur. And it doesn't go without saying of course. That all of our thoughts are with those people in Ukraine. And I have been playing the Ukraine Anthem, and I will do that again at the end of this show. So until the war has done. God bless and stay safe.