When a Book Is More Than a Book

Some thoughts on the role of a nonfiction book in a writer's larger business ecosystem

Here is Diana teaching at Blue Spirit

I just got back from a week at the Blue Spirit Retreat Center in Costa Rica. It was seven days totally off the grid with 35 people who had come to do yoga, eat beautifully made locally-sourced natural food, and go deep into the Wise Effort Method —a framework therapist Dr. Diana Hill developed that I had the great privilege of helping her sharpen and articulate when I coached her on her book, Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most (Available now for pre-order.)

The experience of being at Blue Spirit was like being inside of a book come to life.

Diana has an incredible gift for embodying the lessons she wants her students to learn. We did yoga, drew pictures, wrote poems, went on a silent group meditation walk, shared in small groups, and every night at sunset, swam together in the sea. We were immersed in her teachings.

We all cried at one point or another — all of us — because Diana invited us to open up, to be vulnerable, and to look for more healthy ways forward with whatever we were struggling with. Here is a summary of what her method looks like:

The Wise Effort Method:

1. What is your struggle?
2. What is your genius?
3. How is your genius also your problem?
4. Open up to feeling
5. Open up your mind
6. Open up your Wise Self
7. Open to change

I cried after the very first session because there was my client — and after a year of intense work together, also my friend — leading us through her method and teaching us with such authority, power, and ease.

I knew exactly how hard she worked to create her framework so that it reflected her process and her beliefs, and so that it would function smoothly when she presented it in this precise way.

To be there in person to experience the unfolding of it was one of the most intense and satisfying experiences of my entire book coaching career.

Workshops, Retreats, and Programs by Design

Diana’s seven-day retreat guided by the framework of the book was not an accident. The book was designed to be a companion guide for exactly that kind of in-person program, which Diana loves to lead.

The book was also designed to support the online Wise Effort courses she is launching soon for people who are struggling with work, relationships, leadership, parenting (college applications!), and eating.

The book was designed, in other words, to be a cornerstone of an entire business ecosystem. The big vision Diana has for her work and her life is all connected in the Wise Effort Method and presented in the Wise Effort book.

You can learn her method by reading her book, enrolling in one of her courses, listening to her give an interview or a talk, or going on retreat with her. Each of these ways of engaging with the material will of course result in a different experience (no nightly ocean swims if you enroll in an online course!) but all of it will give people a taste of Diana’s teaching and it will all lead to the transformation she cares deeply about helping people achieve.

This was my retreat group, doing one of the assignments

How to Help a Writer Think Beyond the Book

When nonfiction writers first come to a book coach, they are probably already an expert in their field. They are likely teaching, consulting, speaking, or coaching in some capacity. They probably already have a framework they use or a specific container for sharing their ideas.

They probably also have a lot of ideas brewing for getting more exposure as an author, speaker, workshop leader, or retreat host.

I find it helpful to ask my nonfiction writers to sketch out an ideal customer journey to help figure out where the book sits in the progression.

Is it the reader’s first encounter with the writer’s ideas? Or an invitation for them to go deeper after encountering the ideas in a speech or short course?

The book might look very different depending on their answer.

I also find it helpful to brainstorm with my writers their vision for their future business, and this applies whether they are the CEO of a VC-backed tech company, an educator dipping their toes outside of academia, or an entrepreneur whose work is gaining traction online.

What are their hopes and dreams for their whole business? And where does a book fit into the mix?

Is the book a capstone project of their career — a kind of valedictory summary of all their work? Or is it launching a new venture, taking them in a different direction, giving them a new beginning?

Make Sure You Evaluate the Framework

One powerful coaching move to make when working with a nonfiction writer at the start of a project is to evaluate the framework they present as “their thing.”

Don’t take it as a done deal, even if they say this is the framework their entire super-successful company uses across the globe or if they say they have been teaching the method for twenty-five years and there is no need to assess its efficacy.

I have frequently had the experience where the framework my nonfiction writer presents has glaring holes. If they are teaching or consulting in person, they can fill those holes in with their stories or explanations — something just their mere presence — but in a book, they don’t have that luxury.

The framework has to be watertight — and sometimes that means helping them create a whole new way of explaining things. Sometimes it means designing a new framework.

The Outcome Outline, the heart of my Blueprint method, is very useful for this part of the process.

Imagine the End Goal

While we were working on her Blueprint, and then on her book, I asked Diana to imagine what she wanted a participant in her Wise Effort retreats and courses to experience.

What was the outcome she wished for them in terms of what they might learn?

What new tools would they have at their disposal?

What were the thoughts and feelings they would have at the end? (This was a very meta question for this particular project as hers is a book about thoughts and feelings.)

Diana always had an answer; she knew exactly what she wanted.

She baked those same ideas into the book itself, so readers will get the same things from the book that participants will get from her courses and workshops. It’s all part of a seamless whole.

She owns it and it’s powerful.

I know how her method and teachings work in the book: Diana takes people on a journey deep within their own thoughts and feelings so they can better understand their genius energy. She teaches people how to use wise effort in everything they do. Her book will change lives. I am certain of this because her teachings have dramatically changed mine.

And this week, I got to experience how her method and teachings work on a retreat. It was next-level to be deep within Diana’s other way of teaching the same material.

It helped me as a person to go even deeper into her method.

But it also helped me as book coach because I will keep asking clients these holistic questions that go beyond the books, but I will do so with even more conviction now.

---