What We Can Learn About Book Coaching From Mount Everest (Part 2)

Some lessons from the top of the world

Photo by Alexander Zabrodskiy on Unsplash

This is the second (and final) post in a series of lessons inspired by the book Everest, Inc: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World by Will Cockrell. You can read Part 1 HERE.

Lesson 4: Coaching someone through the process of writing a book is not therapy, but it can have a deep and lasting impact

About two-thirds of the way through Everest, Inc., Cockrell brings up the idea of people committing to climb Mr. Everest not because of the pure love of mountains and alpine climbing (“Because it’s there") but as a way of working things out in their minds and their lives. He introduces a woman named Heather Macdonald, a former alpine mountain climbing guide who became a therapist.

“`I think everyone who wants to climb Everest should be required to go through a year of therapy first,” Macdonald says, only half-joking.’”

The reason for this statement is that the best clients — those who are not likely to sue their guides or put themselves or others in mortal danger, and those who would approach the moutain “humbly” rather than with arrogance — have some measure of self-awarness about why they are there.

Macdonald claims that there are three types of Everest clients (meaning people who pay to be guided to the summit as opposed to people who undertake the challenge on their own):

“The first are those looking to awaken something they feel might be dead or dying inside them. The second are clients looking to discharge something, some built-up negative energy or tension from something that happened to them or from something they are going through. Finally, there are the people who just need a new experience to help them reorganize their life a little.”

This all felt extremely familiar to me.

A book coach is not a therapist but client self-awarness is also critical to our being able to do good work.

You can’t effectively coach a writer through the book writing process if they don’t know why they are doing it, or what they hope to get out of it — both in terms of the tangible outcome of the book itself, but also in terms of their deep-level why for writing.

Are they trying to prove something to themselves or someone else? What is their personal connection to the story or idea they are writing about — the deep beliefs they want to share with the world? Why do they feel such a burning desire to raise their voice?

Writing a book has to do with mortality and identity, too.

People often say that they have always wanted to write a book, ever since they were a child. Doing so feels like fulfilling a promise to their younger creative and visionary self.

They will say that they are passionate about sharing an experience or idea they can see so clearly in their mind. The concept of raising their voice — of shouting into the void and having someone (a reader) listen — is what is driving them.

They will say they they want to write a book before they die. It is a core part of their life’s ambition — to create something meaningful that has the chance to outlive them.

A coach who coaches with the writer’s deep-level why in mind has the opportunity to guide their clients through an experience that will have a deep and lasting impact, whether or not that writer reaches their external publishing goals. This is why all three of my Blueprint books start with why, and why, despite some people’s dislike of the author’s style/attitude, I recommend Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why.

The lesson here is to remember the deep impact the work of book coaching can have and to let it inform the way you attract your clients, define the outcomes, and approach the writer and their writing.

Lesson 5: The money is not the motivation

In any market, there are going to be accusations of some companies being irresponsible, unscrupulous, and greedy, and the business of taking clients up Mount Everest is no different.

I was fascinated by the discussion in Cockrell’s book about money. Different guiding companies landed on different price points depending on the level of service they offered — everything from the ratio of guides to clients, to creature comforts (such as amount of oxygen available in the death zone), to the speed with which acclimatization and summiting are promised.

Over the years, there has been a lot of criticism and finger-pointing from company to company based on their relationship to risk (see Lesson 1: people die) and the level of service they offer for the price. Some companies have designed business models that have made their owners enough money to a.) stay in business and b.) make it worth their while.

But the end of Cockrell’s narrative is this paragraph:

“Yes, it’s a job, and particularly for Sherpas, the astonishing economic boon their work has given not only them and their families but also their wider communities would be reason enough to do it. yet whether they are Sherpa or Western or otherwise, very few guides would say the money is their motivation. They talk, instead, about the intoxication of getting people to the top.”

This sentiment resonated with me because it includes both things: the need to make money running a business and the intoxication of doing the work. This is what I believe about book coaching: We can’t run a business if we don’t make money but we wouldn’t even choose to try if we didn’t feel a deep love for the work.

Lesson 6: Doing the thing is different from helping someone else do the thing

Cockrell’s book makes the point from the beginning: “An elite high-altitude guide is a very different thing from an elite high-altitude climber.”

I loved this message most of all because I have been up on my soapbox saying the same for the 10+ years I have been in the business of book coaching: a good book coach is a very different thing from a good writer.

Knowing how to guide a writer — to ask good questions, to help them find the right structure and shape for their story or book, to hold a safe space for them to develop their skills and their voice, to help them manage the emotions of the creative process, to hold them accountable to their goals, and to help them decide on the right time to press ahead and the right time to turn back — is simply a very different thing than knowing how to write.

But the biggest difference between doing the thing and helping someone else do the thing, is the fact that a book coach is choosing to do the work of coaching.

We may or may not want to be writers ourselves, but we embrace the risk, responsibility, and reward of guiding others to do it. This was the thing that Cockrell explained so beautifully about why mountain guides do the work they do.

These were two of my favorite passages around this idea:

“`My big revelation was discovering that I got more pleasure, or more satisfaction, from seeing another person achieve something than I did achieving it myself,’ explains Steve Bell, a pioneer of the commercial climbing expedition who lead the first British guided ascent of Everest in 1993. “`You have this sort of incredible vicarious glow — you’ve given something to someone. Or, rather, it is a gift that. you’ve enabled them to receive. There is something very special about sharing a mountain with a client, with somebody who would otherwise never be able to go there.’”

“‘When you facilitate someone doing something they never thought was possible — or a lifelong dream like climbing Everest — it has a huge impact on their life,’” reflects Jimmy Chin,” a professional mountain athlete, National Geographic photographer, Academy Award-winning film director, and New York Times best selling author. 

These explanations for why mountain guides choose to guide made so much sense to me. It’s the same reason why I love book coaching. It feels like I am enabling writers to do something that is profoundly meaningful to them, and that makes it meaningful to me.

Cockrell’s book chronicles one of the most extreme human endeavors on the planet. I started my list of lessons I took from it with the fact that no one is going to die trying to write a book, because while writing a book is a complex intellectual, emotional, and entrepreneurial endeavor, it does not push the limits of human capability the way high alitude mountain climbing does. But the resonance I found in the story of the people who guide climbers on Mount Everest was strong — and I loved thinking about our work through this unusual lens.

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