What Do You Talk About When You Talk About Book Coaching?
Some thoughts on the difference between your ideal client and the topics you talk about in your outreach, social sharing, and marketing.
I was speaking to a book coach the other day who has identified their ideal client as an early-career writer who is bringing a Christian worldview to their fiction, memoir, and nonfiction writing. This is a solid description of an ideal client — it’s specific both in terms of the writer and the writing — and that is an excellent foundation for building a reputation and working in your Zone of Genius.
But this coach was struggling with what to share on social media and in their marketing because they didn’t want to talk exclusively about faith and religion.
There were a number of reasons for their reluctance, including 1.) the fact that while the narrowness feels right in terms of defining an ideal client, it is not the only way they think about their own identity so they feel uncomfortable going all-in on it in their marketing and 2.) the fact that talking about religion anywhere right now can quickly become divisive.
They know they want to serve this kind of writer, but they don’t want to be up on a soapbox all the time about their faith.
What I explained to them might be useful to you, too:
Your ideal client is not one-dimensional
You want your ideal client to come to know, like, and trust you to help them with their writing challenges.
You want them to convince them that you are the right person to guide them towards what they need.
What they need is tied to the book they are writing (the genre, the topic, the craft of writing it well, the choice of how to publish it), to be sure, but it is also tied to who they are as a person, where they are in their writing life, why they need support at this phase of the project, and what their goals for their work are, among other things.
Who they choose to help them may at first have to do with how that book coach is defining their packages and offerings (e.g.“I help early career Christian writers lay a strong foundation for their books so they can write forward with confidence”) but there are hundreds of other nuanced decisions that go into their choice to work with you.
Some writers may love working with a coach who cracks the whip on deadlines, while others may seek out a more gentle presence.
Some writers may feel they need a coach who shares a certain characteristic with them — perhaps they are seeking out a person of Southeast Asian descent, or someone who grew up in a single-parent household, or someone with ADHD, or someone who owns a dog — while others may not care about that shared characteristic at all.
In the case of early-career writers, they may feel overwhelmed by all the different paths to publishing and all the chatter they hear about which path is best. Finding someone they trust to guide them through their choices while also helping them define their book idea may be equally important to them as the ability to understand a Christian worldview.
I once had a client who was a reporter for a major international newspaper. His beat was the coal industry and he was sitting on an incredible story about a historic feud that was about to blow open. He had conducted hundreds of hours of interviews and had done an incredible amount of archival research. He had never written a book and wanted my help in crafting a compelling narrative. He was my ideal client because he was an expert in his topic, a seasoned writer who had never written a book, and serious about doing an excellent job.
But I was woefully ignorant about the coal industry. I said, “I’m not sure I’m the best person to guide you because I don’t know anything about the coal industry, its history, or the people who work in that field. I’m the reader who probably skipped over your front-page articles.”
He laughed and said, “No one knows more about this topic than I do. I don’t need you to understand the coal industry. I need help writing a good book and I like the strategic way you approach it.”
I learned a lesson that day not to look at a potential client in such a one-dimensional way. (We went on to work together and he produced a powerful and important book.)
You are not one-dimensional, either
When you talk about what you do, you can bring your whole self to that work. You are not bound to talk about just one dimension of your coaching.
The coach who loves guiding early career writers who are working on books with a Christian worldview could talk about many different things in additional (or besides) Christianity and their faith, including:
How do you start writing a book to set yourself up for success? What are the key steps, the most common missteps?
How do you bake a message into a novel and not come across as heavy-handed? What are some examples of people who have done that in various realms?
How do you define your ideal reader and how do you research other books they may be embracing so you can position your book in the marketplace?
Why I left academia for book coaching and why I feel I can have a greater impact as a teacher in my new career.
Why I coach writers in multiple genres.
Why I love high fantasy and which books I love above all the others.
What I love about running marathons and how I bring the lessons from the road into my work as a book coach.
My quest to train my new puppy.
The message about the Christian worldview does not have to be front and center in the marketing topics. It could live on the coach’s website, either at the top of the home in a headline, or in more subtle ways on the About page, in the deeper descriptions of the coaching packages, and perhaps in the look, the feel, and the overall site and the photos.
Speak to the whole person
I believe it’s critical to define an ideal client with as much specificity as you can. Serving “everyone” is the road to a chaotic business (and, not incidentally, it’s also the road to a watered-down book for writers — a book that speaks to “everyone” speaks to no one.) Without an ideal client, it’s impossible to create repeatable systems and processes, hard to build deep expertise, and tough to become known for what you do.
But don’t let your ideal client dictate your marketing content. You can show up in the world as your whole self, speaking to your ideal client’s whole self.
Thank you for this very helpful article, Jennie.
This was very helpful, Jennie, since I have the same clients in mind. It's given me a new perspective. Thanks!