Today’s post comes to us from Author Accelerator CEO Jennie Nash. If you enjoy today’s content, you can sign up for Jennie's weekly newsletter here.

When I first started out as a book coach, I would help anyone do anything. 

Did they need help starting a novel? Revising one? Writing a query letter? Figuring out whether the book they wanted to write was memoir or self-help? Making sense of the mysteries of rejection? I could be the coach for that! 

I considered my flexibility my superpower.

I was good at coaching writers and I liked the work, but despite those truths, chaos ensued. I was always scrambling, always behind, feeling crushed by this work that I thought would give me a certain measure of freedom since I was the one, after all, in charge of it. And despite the fact that I was getting a lot of clients, I wasn’t making very much money.

Then I took a course with Natasha Vorompiova who was an expert in business systems. It was the first time I’d paid several thousand dollars for a course — and I was blown away.

I knew nothing about systems thinking and how to apply it to my book coaching business. I gobbled up the lessons.

After the class, I hired Rosie, a colleague Natasha recommended, to help me get my email and calendaring system organized — an undertaking I thought might take a few weeks and cost a few hundred dollars.

I ended up working with Rosie for 6 months, spent many thousands of dollars, and we barely cracked the surface of what needed to be done. Every system we fixed shone a light on another system that needed to be fixed. I realized that if I was going to level up in my business, I needed to go all in on the systems work and the support to help me do it. Rosie helped me hire a full-time assistant, and Lianne picked up where she left off. Lianne has been with me for more than three years now.

All the systems work eventually revealed the true problem I had as a book coach: a failure to choose.

Systems thinking taught me the power in choosing just one kind of writer to help and one way of helping them. You can’t develop a system if your mission is to help anyone who knocks on your door. That writer could be on their first book or their fifth. They could be just starting a new idea or working on their fifth manuscript revision. They might need to write 20,000 more words or cut 20,000. When every client presents a new problem, every project becomes a process you are making up from scratch and that not only costs time and money, it causes chaos.

Once I understood the problem, I didn’t immediately make a change. I understood emotionally the imperative to choose, but I couldn’t do it. Clients were showing up wanting to pay me! And I could help them! So I kept up with the chaotic business plan. I had much better systems and processes behind the scenes — a seamless intake process, an automatic scheduling system,  templates for contracts and welcome letters and gathering testimonials, worksheets for my writers to use before our first deadline, a document naming and storage convention — but I was still scrambling in my business, and it was becoming much less fun.

I had learned my lesson about asking for help and paying for that help  — it has become a bedrock of my growth as a person and a business owner — so when I realized I needed more help, I flew to Arizona to work with Pam Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation (and more recently, The Widest Net, a fantastic book about marketing). At that time, Pam had an intensive VIP day-long deep dive coaching session that was perfect for my schedule and my way of learning.

Pam was tough and wise. She pushed me hard to define my ideal audience and as we worked through that process of discernment. It became clear that I wanted to serve a particular kind of writer at a particular stage of the process (experts working on nonfiction book proposals to pitch to agents) and that I wanted to work in a particular kind of way (always starting with my Blueprint process and taking them all the way through the pitch process, which meant for an intensive coaching relationship over a 4-6 month period of time.) 

Pam taught me that if I was going to offer this kind of intensive service that I needed to charge for the value I was bringing, which meant I needed to raise my prices — by a lot.

One of the benefits of being coached is that you experience how valuable it is. You know the value you are getting and that helps you to place that value on your own work, too. I raised my prices the day after I got home from my session with Pam.

Once I decided on who I was serving, how I was serving them, and what I was charging for it, I was able to make systems and processes for doing the work.

I had finally found my zone of genius, and when I leaned into it, my coaching business exploded.

I was doing work I loved in the way that I loved to do it, and just as important, I was not doing work that I found irritating or silly or distracting.

I was helping writers achieve their goals and getting rave reviews.

I was making very good money (six figures, and then multiple six figures) in a way that felt easeful.

When people ask me, “What do you wish you had known when you started your book coaching business?” it would be this: chose who you want to work with. Narrow your niche. Find your zone of genius and don’t be scared to stick with it.

Now I help other book coaches find their zone of genius. At Author Accelerator, we train and certify book coaches, and support them as they build their businesses. One of the fundamental philosophies we teach – a concept that underlies everything we do – is the idea of working in your zone of genius.

If you don’t find your zone of genius as a book coach, you will meet resistance as you build your business.

And if you do find your zone of genius, magical things happen. I have seen it time and again with our book coaches. When they choose to focus on what they are best at, and where they can have the most impact,, everyone (who matters) suddenly knows who they are and what they do, and they begin to attract their ideal clients, and they know what to do marketing-wise, and their coaching businesses start to soar.

Are you ready to end the chaos of your editing or coaching business? Or are you ready to start a career as a book coach on the right foot?

I'm hosting a $99 USD working session, The One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan, on February 23. My goal is to show you exactly the kind of book coaching business you could have if you did what I didn’t do from the start.

I am hoping that if you can picture that business in your mind, you will have the confidence you need to work toward it. 

I am also hoping to convince you to enroll in our Book Coach Certification program and join our thriving community of book coaches. We’re pushing each other toward excellence, working to get the word out about book coaching, and sharing everything from clients to stages to the ups and downs of running a business. We would be delighted to have you join us.

The One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan

Date: Thursday, February 23, 2023

Time: 1pm PT / 2pm MT / 3pm CT / 4pm ET

What: A $99 two-hour working session with Jennie Nash