e158 The Book That Changes Your Life (is not one you read, but the one you write) with Lucy McCarraher
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[00:00:00] Welcome. Welcome to the Heads Together podcast. I'm your host, Gill Moakes, and thank you so much for being here with me again this week. I appreciate you. I'm joined by a fabulous guest this week. Lucy McCarraher is the founder and CEO of Book Magic AI. Honestly, it's mind blowing. I'm so happy to have her on the show.
The reason I really wanted her to come on is that, you know what, as coaches, we all have a book inside us, and a book is the best lead generation tool you will ever have for your coaching practice and for speaking gigs and for all the other good stuff that we like to do as coaches, right? So I was so happy when Lucy agreed to come on.
She's actually agreed to come and give a masterclass to my amazing Academy students and as well, so incredibly lucky. Lucy is also the founder of Rethink Press and the Business Book Awards. She's actually written [00:01:00] 14 books herself and her latest book is Book Magic, which obviously ties in with the app that she's created or founded for entrepreneurs who are writing business books, I wanna say, but also she says herself in our conversation that this is for coaches.
Her latest book is all about how to become an author faster and how to transform your expertise into business gold. That book has just launched, so do go and check that out. I'm gonna put all of the links to everything in the show notes. Of course, Lucy is actually the UK's most experienced business book mentor.
Okay, let's dive into the conversation.
Welcome. Welcome to the Heads Together podcast. I'm Gill Moakes, and I am obsessed with cutting through the noise when it comes to growing your business. Each week via intimate coaching conversations [00:02:00] and inspirational stories. I share what it really takes to get the results you want in a way that feels right to you.
I am all about attracting higher ticket opportunities, building authentic relationships, and creating the abundant, full fat version of your dream business. I mean, how many of us have beavered away creating a light version of what we really want? The thing is, I honestly believe when you are outstanding at what you do, there is no limit to what you can achieve.
So. Are you ready to put our heads together and make it happen? Let's go.
Hey Lucy. Hi. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really well. Thank you, Gill, for inviting me. It's lovely to be with you. Oh my goodness. I've been so looking forward to this. So for anyone who listens [00:03:00] regularly to this podcast, they will know that writing my book is. Something that I've been working on for so long and I haven't made that much progress with, so I was so excited when you agreed to come on the podcast.
So thank you very, very much. I would love if you could just share with everyone a little bit about your background. I mean, because you've been in this game for a while now of helping people bring their business books to life. Can you tell us a background before.
Absolutely. Yes. So I started off my publishing life, actually publishing magazines, well, a magazine. I published a a, I founded and published a, a theater magazine in Australia for eight years. The very beginning of my career, which was a fairly long time ago. Oh, I didn't know that. And then I've been, then I was in television for a bit.
I've been a journalist. I've been all over the place, really. And I've been a worklife balance expert. [00:04:00] And then I came back into publishing nearly 15 years ago when I had a book published called The Real Secret, which is a self-help happiness type. Book book. And I discovered that my publisher actually lived not far from me in Norfolk.
That's Joe Gregory. And he had just had a partner leave his publishing company. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I would like to get him back into publishing. I wonder if there's a role for me there. So I joined Joe as his commissioning editor of the company he was running then, which was called Books Shaker.
And then sort of within a few months, we decided to recalibrate and start a new company together, which was Rethink Press. And the difference was that his previous company had been running on the basis of a traditional business model for publishers, which is where. The publisher invests in the book, pays for everything that needs to happen, and then makes their money back their return on their investment through [00:05:00] sales of books, and was working with predominantly.
Entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, who were not necessarily interested in or capable of selling huge quantities of books. They'd probably had a niche market and they were more interested in using their book to build their business. And really that kind of involves giving books away as much as anything.
And using your book as a marketing tool, we always call it your undercover marketing sales agent. So we started Rethink Press, sort of wondering whether a different business model. Where the author would pay for the publishing services, and then nobody would be kind of committed to making thousands and thousands of sales on Amazon or, you know, out in, uh, out on the other retail arenas.
And they could use their books to build their business, and we would give them all the help that we possibly could. The support and the marketing to use that book as that marketing tool, [00:06:00] lead generator, authority builder, and tickets to getting on podcast, getting in the media, all that sort of thing. So that was our aim.
We really started it on a bit of a, a wing and a prayer, wondering whether people would. Go for that. And actually it became very successful. Rethink Press has now been operating for 14 years and we're the biggest hybrid publisher of business books in the uk. So that's sort of the background to it. But then there's a whole other coaching, writing, coaching elements that came up.
Lucy also rethink press, correct me if I'm wrong, but it isn't just a. Publishing house either, is it? You also offer a really bit of a, a full service, which I think is so interesting because I think for the kind of authors you work with, like you say, who want their book to be this real business card, this lead generator for their business, which is.
Absolutely. My audience is mostly coaches and I know that that's why we wanna have these books. It's not only to [00:07:00] get out our genius in book form, but it's also to create leads for our coaching practices. And I'm interested in the fact that at Rethink Press you also offer kind of coaching and you know, help and support for authors to actually bring the book to life.
Right. Yes, that's exactly right. So we realized that all these authors we were working with were the experts in their field, but not necessarily, in fact, mostly not professional writers. And they didn't know where to start often with writing their book or putting it together. And then they didn't know how to, how to write it.
So I mean, it started with me and Joe doing initial coaching, and then we built up a team of fantastic writing coaches and ghost writers and structural. Editor and so we could offer a full service and we really basically through that and also because I was mentoring the key person of influence program, I dunno if you've come across that [00:08:00] with Daniel Priestly.
Mm, yes. Daniel Priestly's program. Exactly, exactly. So I became the mentor, the published mentor for that. So I was taking room fulls of entrepreneurs through the process of getting their book idea formulated and positioning it to their market and then planning it. Because one of my most important sort of learnings is about making sure you've got your book planned out in before you.
So easy. Kind of think, oh yeah, I know what I'm writing about. I stuff.
Yes, I totally agree with you. And interestingly, I think the positioning of the book is probably the most important part if you're going to be using it as a lead generator and as a, an introduction to your coaching business [00:09:00] particularly. Obviously that's my area. The positioning of that book is probably the most important thing you're ever gonna do, isn't it?
So I love that you give that. Kind of level of support. I think most of my listeners are gonna be quite familiar with, you know, Daniel Pree, he person of influence. So, you know, his books are incredibly well positioned for his audiences. So I can see that total alignment there with the work that you've done with that business for sure.
So what kind. Do you mostly work with, is it coaches and people like me who just kind of have this background and probably have developed their own methodology and framework and all kind of have almost like the book outline in our coaching practice? Would that be true? Yes, absolutely. That's exactly who we work with.
I mean, I would say probably predominantly coaches because they are the ideal people, the ideal market to be writing books and to have books out there [00:10:00] that will build their business, that it works so well for coaches. And I think that the mistake that people make often is thinking they've got to get some big new idea and they've gotta write a bestseller and you know, they're gonna make their money back on loads and loads of Amazon sales and.
The case, the important thing to understand is that you are writing to your market. Your ideal reader is your ideal prospect. You are talking to them as you would if you were meeting them and pitching to them in the book, but you. Telling people what you do, how you do it, your story, perhaps your case studies, certainly, and just showing people demonstrating your value.
And as you say, if you've got a methodology, a model, a framework, then that's perfect for creating the structure of your book from it and also introducing people to your unique way of writing. So yes, those, you know, coaches who have, you know, a practice in.[00:11:00]
What do come up against with coaches in terms of the barriers that put in front themselves? This, you touched on it just then, and I think I'm guilty of this. I feel like. I've spent so long thinking this book has to be my everything. It has to be my best work. Every word has to be so perfect, and that is so paralyzing.
I can't write it because it, I'm just being such a perfectionist and such a, it feels so overwhelming. So what would your advice to me, basically, I'm, I'm basically accessing you as my own mentor for this. Podcast. Absolutely. No, that's That's completely fine. Yeah. So my first piece of advice is exactly that, that you do not have to come up with anything more than you already know and that you already do.
That is the content of your book. You don't have to come up with some extraordinary new world shattering [00:12:00] idea. Your book is talking. To one person your ideal prospect, avatar, and you are speaking to them. I mean, of course it'll impact lots of other people and lots of people who won't actually end up working with you and that, but they know you're not talking to them.
That's fine. But the people who you are talking to who are gonna come back and work with you will feel that book. The the second thing is, as I. Just be clear that everything you need to know is already in your head. I talk about coaches, entrepreneurs sitting on a gold mine. Your experience, your expertise is all there.
You don't need to go out doing loads of research, finding out other stuff. It's all in your head, and all you need to do is shape it into a lovely book format and then you know the writing will be easy when you've got a list of topics. Chat. Case studies are really important because they're [00:13:00] absolutely unique to you.
So if you think that you might be writing stuff that other people have already said, or other coaches, no, that's not the case. Your own story, for example, is yours and your case studies, especially the, I mean, obviously you're gonna anonymize them, you know?
Sign interventions in their lives, and that's what will sell your readers on coming to work with you and getting the same for themselves. Do you know, Lucy, even you just saying that has suddenly made it. I dunno if everyone else listening is feeling this as well, but just that fact of you don't have to go out and research all of these new ideas and it, it really is just taking what's already there and getting it into a book format, which really is a lovely way for me to come onto what I wanna talk to you about, which is my kind of latest obsession that I've been playing [00:14:00] with, which is an app that you.
And I am dying to talk to you about this because personally I think this has just made writing a business book accessible to so many people and. I also think it's the thing that is gonna take the elitism outta having a publishing a book, writing a book, being a published author. Because at the moment I feel like so many people are, feel that it's not available for them.
Feel that there's, you know, well, I would love, of course I'd love to write a book, but I could never do that. I feel like the software that you've developed, the book Magic AI, is just amazing. It suddenly made the playing field very accessible for coaches to be able to create this incredible lead generation strategy, which I know is gonna change so much for so many coaches.[00:15:00]
Can you tell everyone listening, first of all, what is. So Book Magic AI is an app that we have developed over the last couple of years, and essentially it takes everything that we do in terms of coaching coaches and entrepreneurs, uh, and consultants, whoever, to write books. We've taken all that experience and put it into an app so that instead of having to either.
Pay for an expensive one-to-one coach or join a book writing program, you can just do it through the app. I mean, what, what I'm really pleased about is that I thought initially it might be a bit dry, it might be a bit, you know, it's kind of online. It might. Be a bit kind of impersonal. Yeah. But actually what our developer, Jonathan Farrah has managed to do is incorporate all the humanity of working one-to-one or in groups with authors that I've experienced over the years and learned [00:16:00] over the years.
So there are lots of videos. There's an AI version of me, which is a bit weird. I love it. The coach will take you through the process in a very personal way, and honestly, the AI is phenomenal once you've told it. I mean, it's your prompted to respond to questions about who your ideal client is, what kind of person doing.
Information in the app that the AI can then use to help you get the book, um, positioned, properly written, properly structured. So you can ask the AI at any stage. You know, what, what should I say about this? Or what's another topic I can add in here? I feel like I'm missing something as my ideal client.
What would you want to know on this topic? And even things like, can you give a better metaphor for this piece of information I'm writing about? [00:17:00] And it's just brilliant. It gives you all that support and a very one-to-one personalized basis. Amazing. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean. What I feel like this does as well is that this isn't necessarily for authors whose goal in life is to win a literary award for creating the absolute, you know, Shakespeare level work, right?
This is for. Authors who already have everything that they need to teach or tell or explain to have an impact on the people that they're working with. It's a way to get that out, isn't it? So I think there has been this kind of, I guess it's like a moral conundrum, isn't it? With writing and ai. It's like, well, but then is it mine and is it, you know?
But the me with this is that this is not pretending be.
To get out from your [00:18:00] head the really key concepts and all of the things that, you know, will have an impact on your ideal audience. But you wouldn't be able to just sit down and write a book without that coaching that comes through this and helps you with the positioning and the outline and, and making it a logical format.
So adding into that, the AI coaching of, you know, give me another metaphor or, you know, you are my ideal client. What do you wanna hear? I think that's just brilliant. I love it. Such a good use of AI in my It went. Exactly. That's, and I should make really clear that the AI is not there to write your book for you.
That is the bit that you have to do because the AI is brilliant at, you know, accessing everything on the internet, all sorts of information and ideas, but the one place it go is inside your head.
It's your story, and as I said, your case studies, the AI can't make those up. They, it has to be you and also [00:19:00] people want to hear it in your voice. They don't want to hear, you know, AI generated content, which has its own. I mean, I think the problem is sometimes AI generated writing looks very sophisticated, onm.
So the AI is there all around the book writing process, but it doesn't. But I, you know, I'm very clear it doesn't write the book for you, so you still have to do that work. But for people who are not that confident about writing, you can speak your book in Book Magic. You just click on the microphone icon and do and talk and it all on the screen as if.
Published should have a.
And that's what, you know, we'll add the final polish and make it look professional and, and, and [00:20:00] read beautifully. So that's the process. Basically. What I think Book Magic does is it takes this kind of unattainable dream of having a book, which I think is what it is for so many people. It's something that other people do not, not me.
You know, I think it takes that and it makes it so doable. It makes it real. One question that I'm curious about, this might be a bit of a how long is a piece of string question, so bear with me, but I wa just wondering sort of from someone having the idea that, you know what, a book is gonna fit perfectly into my marketing ecosystem.
How long can they realistically expect to take to then go through this process? Positioning, planning the book, writing the book, and then promoting the book? Because book Magic, it helps you with the promotion of the book as well. Right, which is amazing. What's the kind of average [00:21:00] timeline, would you say?
Well, I would say that in the normal course of things, I think most people who are committed to writing a book and do it on their own probably take about six months to get it written. I think it's very easy to get it written in three months in Book Magic. It's just so helpful. It helps you plan your writing schedule for a start, and it prompts you to, you know, to set the times you're gonna write and get going.
I always say, get into a writing habit. Do it again and again at the same time in the same place. And then it becomes kind of like easy to do. So, you know, maybe get up an hour earlier, you know, write for an hour before you do anything else at all. And then you've got your thousand words written and you've got the rest of the 23 hours to process your next piece of work.
[00:22:00] 30,000 words written in a month, and then you've got the other sort of steps to take, like kind of reviewing and improving and testing with beta readers and doing your final edit. And so three months is very, very doable with Book Magic. I mean, for people listening, that is gonna be a relief. There's gonna be a lot of people listening, thinking.
This is doable. This is doable. And it's all about getting clear on why you are writing the book as well, isn't it? I think just finding out, since we first spoke about this, and for me playing around with it, it's changed the way I'm looking at writing my book for sure. I'm definitely gonna be going with it.
It's, it's such a good tool. You know, you just, if say, if.
Should a good business [00:23:00] book be? What do you think is.
Yeah, no, I, we've always said that rethink, press that that 30 to 40,000 words is the ideal length for a business book. A book that builds your business. Because yes, you can write 60 you, but actually your ideal prospect read that and you. Them to read everything you've got to say to take them through your process, your model, as you say, and understand how you work.
30,000 words is, again, I keep using this word, but it's doable. It's not, you know, like a massive tone. It's, it's a very solid kind of, I mean, I'll just show you. This is, this is my. Book, book Magic, and it's, you know, 30, I think it's about 35,000 words. Right. And it's, it's a solid book. It looks, you know, it's got well-designed pages.
It's absolutely fine. 30,000 words is perfect. Yeah. So for everyone [00:24:00] listening on the podcast, Lisa was just holding up the copy of her book, book Magic, you know. Normal sized book that it's not one of those kind of skinny pamphlet of a book. It's a normal sized book. It's, it's what you would expect a business book to look like, a nonfiction book to look like.
So, yeah, I love that. And again, it's just, it's accessible now. It's, it's, we can all do this as coaches. If you're listening to this, and you've heard me talking so much about marketing ecosystems. Book is just a brilliant, brilliant addition to that. It's one of the best ways to generate leads for your coaching practice.
I really explore this in notes, of course, so that you can look. We touched on something there, Lucy, because I know that for a lot of people they think, well, okay, but even if I write my book, how on earth am I gonna actually promote it and get it out there? And I think you touched on something important earlier, [00:25:00] which is, you know, just be clear about why you're writing this book.
It's not to clock up thousands of sales on Amazon. You're not writing as a
said. Do you give people to, to promote the.
Well, uh, book Magic is now we've just released a new level called the Ultimate Level, where actually, even if you've written your book already, you can upload a whole book and then it gives you a whole kind of promotion. AI. So it can read your book, it can turn it into 12 LinkedIn articles in a few seconds.
One lets, it can produce a whole range of Facebook, Instagram, whatever you like. LinkedIn posts for your book. It can into a series, so works in a promotional. And best of all, it'll do it for you. It'll upload them. You just [00:26:00] give it a schedule. You put in the schedule when you want them posted, and it'll do the posting on all your social media platforms for you.
So it produces a whole kind of social media promotional work for your book that you can repurpose over and over again. It will write articles for you. It'll write blog posts for you. It'll even create video scripts for you, and it'll create graphics as well. That is really how you sell your book. It's, I mean, not, I mean, I say sell, so it all that sort of promotional, which is where you get your lead generation from, is there, and that's really the best way to do it.
And on top of that, I mean things like offering free copies of your book. So just before the launch of my book, my book Magic. Book, we put out a, a whole load of posts saying, would you like a free copy of this book? And then it led to a landing page where people gave their email addresses. You know, we sent them an eCopy of, and then of course you've captured those email addresses that on your list, and [00:27:00] then you follow up with them.
I mean, we got nine, we gave away 900 free copies of the book. That was 900 new leads for the business. So that's how you use your book to be a lead generator. And also, of course, it gives you incredible authority. I mean, I really genuinely believe that nothing says this is an expert like a book. It's just that iconic format.
I mean, of course you could do video, you could do social media, you could write articles and stuff, but actually being the author of a published book is something else. And media. It's where podcasters are going to find you. Oh, this person's written a book. They must have something interesting to say. Yep, I definitely know that myself, of course.
But yeah, I know that 78% of Stephen Parks guests on, uh, diary of a CEO, 78% of them are all were authors when we last looked. So that's where you kind of get your message. Absolutely. [00:28:00] Also, I think for coaches, you know, a lot of us love speaking. We love getting on stage. We love talking about the thing that we're passionate about, and one of the best ways to get on stage, and particularly if you want speaking to be a revenue stream in your coaching business, if you wanna paid speaking opportunities, having a book is gonna open a more doors if.
Absolutely a fact. Yeah, so I think for those coaches who are listening, who are really wanting public speaking, to be part of their offer ecosystem, a book really needs to feature in, in their portfolio, doesn't it? Absolutely. And there's nothing like a printed book landing on someone's desk. Someone who's organizing an industry event or, you know, speaking gigs or whatever to say, here's an expert who should be talking to you.
It's, it's a gift. It's got monetary value and you are sending them that, but it's your [00:29:00] expertise packaged in the book. The other thing is once you've written the book, you've got all your talks written. So it's all the content is there to repurpose and you can point to the book and say, look, I can do a talk on this here.
It's in chapter two, or I can do a talk on this here. It's, you know, at this point in the book. So it works on every level. Definitely. Absolutely. I'm just thinking as you were saying that, I'm like, oh my goodness. You know, I'd never thought of it like that. I'm thinking about my own framework that I take my students through in the Coaching Business Academy.
Literally, each one of those modules is a book chapter. Each one of those book chapters is a talk, and you can get really strategic with this. This is gonna be a game changer, honestly. What about all of the ancillary stuff that has to go on Lucy in terms of actually getting, 'cause some of us wanna hold that book in our hands, don't we?
Does book magic give suggestions for kind of actually getting the book published [00:30:00] in, held into someone's hands and things like the cover design and stuff like that? Where do we get the help and support for that? Well now you can do cover design on book magic. You can get your front cover design there.
We're not there yet, but we leading up to a full self-publishing option through book. So you could literally go from an idea. To books published on Amazon kdb, but we're not there yet. So I have to say that, but I mean my preference for everybody would actually be to not self publish, but to publish. And obviously I'm that rethink press is the.
Absolutely we do have a lead through to rethink press from Book Magic. And you know, you can have a chat with one of our commissioning editors and see if that's the root for you. But the other thing to remember is that your book is an investment and if you self-publish for the first time and it doesn't, you know, you, the trouble is a self-publisher.
You don't dunno what you dunno [00:31:00] to begin with. And publishing is more complicated than you. Actual publisher to take you through that process with a professional team of editors, designers, proofreads, all the rest of it type setters is the best way to go. And we publish a lot of coaches books at, uh, rethink Press and yeah, we've just, the Business book Awards has just, um, released their short lists for this year.
And, you know, a lot of coaches books are there and a lot of Rethink press books are there. Wonderful. So, yeah, do take care when you are publishing your book and, and do that well because it's an investment and you'll get your money back if you then use that high quality book, well-written, high quality produced book to sell you.
Because if you have a kind of, a bit of a tacky self-published look to your book, it doesn't say authority in the same way. So just be aware of that. I'd say no, it doesn't. And I think you're right. It's an [00:32:00] investment and it's an investment in creating an asset in your business, you know? So I think it's really important and really great advice.
You know, this is an asset that is gonna make you money for a long time afterwards. Yeah. Lucy, this has been so handy. I'm gonna put all of the links of course, into the show notes. But if someone's got, they're listening to this and they've got lots of questions or they, you know, they definitely already know that they wanna write a book, they want that to be part of their offer ecosystem, their marketing ecosystem.
What's their first step? What should they do to reach out? Or should they just head to the website? What do. I would go to Book Magic and you can try out the start of the process for free before you decide whether it's for you and signing up to a monthly subscription. When you do sign up, obviously done.
Compared to, you know, hiring an actual coach or going on a program, it's [00:33:00] so much cheaper. And as you say, we just want it to be inclusive and for this to be the Author Revolution and for everybody to do it. But absolutely, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I think that's the best place connected me on LinkedIn.
And message me and I'll get back to you. Oh, good idea. Yeah. And if you're at the publishing stage, if you've written your book or you are halfway there, go and talk to one of our commissioning editors at Rethink Press. Just go to rethink press.com and there's a Connect, uh, you know, contact kind of form there.
So have a call with them and see if Rethink Press is, is your publisher. Oh, that's perfect. Thank you. I love any business that meets people where they're at, so I think that is so great. Whatever stage you're at, if this is just an idea in your head, and actually it's just an idea in your head at the moment, go, because the very first.
Thing it'll help you do is kind of brainstorm the concept and the positioning and titles and subtitles and things [00:34:00] like that. That can be that very first step. It's free to just have that little taste of it, and it can be that first step that makes it start feeling real. So I would definitely go and do that.
Lucy, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a pleasure to. Thank you so much having me, Jill. It's been lovely talking to you. I just hope lots coaches listen. This will feel yeah.
Exactly. I hope so too because, uh, that is what I really want, because now this is doable for all of us and I'm putting myself in that category. So for everyone listening, hold me accountable because it's time. It's time. Thanks Lucy. And for everyone, I will see you back here again, same time, same place next week.
Bye for now.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and that getting our heads together this week has [00:35:00] filled your mind with what's possible. I. If you love the show, would you do me a massive favor? Please? Would you leave a five star rating on Apple Podcasts? It would really help you Put more heads together, reach more ears, and expand more minds.
Until next week, bye for now.
