Make Something to Help Your Ideal Clients Deal with the Pain They Feel Right Now

Once you know who your ideal book coaching clients are, the best way to get them to consider working with you is to make them something that will alleviate the particular pain they are experiencing at this exact moment in their writing career.

Writing a book is a complex creative and intellectual undertaking. Most people who attempt it have not done it before. There are woefully few places that actually teach writers how to write a book (most university programs don’t, most MFA programs don’t, and most writing organizations don’t) and the publishing industry is a confounding marketplace, so writers tend to have a great deal of confusion and frustration around the process. 

Even those who have written and published books before may be confused and frustrated because they may not understand what they did before that worked so well, or what they did before may not be working this time, or they may have lost their confidence or their voice or their motivation or their mojo.

The confusion and frustration each writer feels will depend on exactly who they are. The discussion we had in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series about who your ideal clients are and what transformation you promise will play into your answers about their particular kind of pain. Some examples of the kinds of pain writers might feel include:

• A philosophy professor who wants to write a nonfiction book for a broader audience needs to learn about the world of traditional publishing, how to write in a way that will attract the audience they want to reach, and how to market their work.

• A science reporter who wants to write science fiction needs to learn about character development and world-building and needs permission to use words that create mood and a vibe rather the words that only convey the facts.

• A romance novelist who has been rejected by agents needs to learn how to craft a compelling pitch, how to make sure their sample chapters are excellent, and how to avoid the common manuscript mistakes that drive most agents to say no.

• A memoir writer who is stuck writing the first three chapters over and over again needs to learn how to define their point, how to move forward, and how to get to “the end.”

• A historical fiction writer with ADHD needs tactics and strategies they can use to stop falling into research rabbit holes and stay focused on their long-term project.

• A busy parent working on a YA novel needs to find a way to carve out time for their writing and they need the accountability to stay on track.

• A busy executive working on a manifesto needs to understand where in their business funnel their book is going to sit so they know exactly what their audience needs to take the next step.

Making this list ^^ made me think about the people who ask me if the market for book coaches is saturated – if there are already too many of us out here. My reaction to that is always bafflement. There are so many different kinds of writers with so many different kinds of needs! There is no end to the need for book coaches to assist writers.

Help Them Where It Hurts

A smart book coach will make something to address their ideal writer’s particular source of pain. Making something shows your potential clients that you care about their problem and that you have a solution for it. 

Marketers talk about the “know, like, trust” factor. This is a way of explaining how potential clients engage with you and your work over time. At first, the writer doesn’t know who you are or what you do. Once they do know, they may not like you (yet!) because they may not know how you think, what you believe, or how you can help. Once they know those things, they need to trust that you can help them with their specific challenge – that you have the solution they need right now. Make something to help your ideal client know who you are, like who you are, and trust that you can help.

Some people call the thing you make for your potential clients a lead magnet because it is designed to attract “leads” or people who might want to work with you. It is often free or priced in a way that is very easy to say yes to. Courtney Foster Donohue, who has a fantastic course called Pocket Products that is just $47, recommends that if you are going to charge, you price your lead magnets under $99.

So think about what your ideal client needs right now in order to move forward. What can you give them to help them where they hurt?

Effective offerings we have seen our book coaches use include:

1. A cheat sheet – something to help writers leap over an initial problem or challenge.

2. A guide – something that shows writers a path forward through a sticky situation.

3. A webinar or summit – a live teaching session to explain or inform

4. A mini-course – a self-guided set of lessons to explain or inform

5. A quiz – an interactive experience that explains or informs

6. A challenge – an experience that prompts immediate action

7. A mini-coaching session – a coaching experience that explains or informs

Make Your Offering Matter

The thing you make for your ideal client needs to actually help. In order to actually help, it needs two things:

Criteria 1: What you make needs to be part of a bigger step-by-step process to achieve the outcome the writer wants.

This goes back to the transformation journey we talked about in Step 1 and it speaks to my whole philosophy behind book coaching, which is this:

The creative process can be controlled.

While the experience of the creative process is going to be unique for each individual writer, the creative process itself is actually not especially unique. All writers must go through key stages, including:

1. Landing on an idea that motivates them to bring it to life

2. Committing to that idea

3. Developing the skills and the habits to bring it to life

4. Revising and refining the work

5. Deciding when to be done

6. Finding a way to get the work into readers’ hands

A transformation journey will incorporate all these steps. 

Let’s say, for example, that your ideal client is a memoir writer who needs to learn how to define their point, how to move forward, and how to get to “the end.” The outcome you deliver will be to help them define their point, move forward, and get to the end. Here is how you might utilize the key stages of the creative process to define a transformation journey:

1. Landing on an idea that motivates the writer to bring it to life: offer strategy sessions to help the writer determine if their idea holds together and to understand their motivation for writing it. Through this process, they would define their point.

2. Committing to that idea: offer a coaching package that will give the writer the accountability and support to write forward.

3. Developing the skills and the habits to bring it to life: teach the writer the skills they need to do good work.

4. Revising and refining the work: bake in revision to the coaching process so the writer can see their writing improve.

5. Deciding when to be done: help the writer determine when the work is ready to show to others.

6. Finding a way to get the work into readers’ hands: help the writer select a path to publication and a marketing plan for reaching readers.

As a book coach, you don’t have to offer a service at every step in that transformation journey if you don’t want to, but you should have the journey mapped out and know where your services fit in it. It also helps to have other professionals you can recommend to your writers to fill in the gaps where you will not be helping.

Understanding the whole transformation journey allows you to meet Criteria #2, which is the important one for the purpose of making something to help your ideal clients.

Criteria #2: If you are making something that is free or inexpensive, and easy for the writer to say YES to, you aren’t going to be offering the entire transformation, but you must offer something that can make a real difference in and of itself.

Marketing guru Amy Porterfield says that your lead magnet should make you feel that you might actually be giving away too much for too little.  (Her free resources, including her podcast, are amazing; I often think to myself, “Wow, this is FREE?”) 

In the above process with the memoir writer, for example, you could carve out an offering from Step 1 of the transformation journey. This might be:

• A mini-course to help the client understand their motivation for writing their memoir

• A quiz to help them define their point

• A strategy session to help them determine all of the above.

These ideas offer the writer real help and they also set the writer up to take the next step in your transformation journey, so it’s a win for them and a win for you.

Next week, we’ll share some examples from some of our book coaches, and then talk about how to get your lead magnet or easy offer in front of people.

If you are thinking about becoming a book coach and would like to get some focused help, check out our $99 course, the One Page Book Coaching Business Plan. This is OUR lead magnet — so you can get a taste of how one works and build a one-page business plan for your book coaching business.