Book Coaching with Jennie Nash, Ep 202

Jennie Nash, CEO and founder of Author Accelerator, talks about her program for training book coaches to help writers write books worth reading. Kevin and Jennie discuss coaching, as well as Jennie’s new book, Read Books All Day and Get Paid For It: The Business of Book Coaching.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Jennie Nash - Wordslinger Podcast

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

book, people, author, helping, writers, coaches, money, offering, writing, pay, calls, accelerator, coaching, business, marketing, viable, expertise, service, ideal reader, agent

SPEAKERS

Jennie Nash, Kevin Tumlinson

Kevin Tumlinson 00:02

Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in. Now I, here's what's interesting about what I do. I travel, I go to all kinds of conferences all over the world. And I meet some some pretty incredible people, and in particular, I meet a lot of folks who work in some aspect of this industry. And that is what happened with today's guest. I'm talking to Jenny Nash. There's a lot of ways that Jenny and I are connected. But one of the first ways we met was at San Francisco writers conference about two, three years ago. I think. I'm not even sure at this point.

Jennie Nash 00:37

Yeah, that's right.

Kevin Tumlinson 00:38

Now, okay, just the official stuff, Jenny, I'll throw it in there. Jenny Nash is the founder and CEO of author accelerator, a company on a mission to train book coaches to help writers write books worth reading. And we're going to be talking to her about that and about her new book, read books all day and get paid for it, the business of book coaching. I'm looking forward to Ironically, we discussed this just before the show, but I've got like back to back, our author consultations all day today. So this is an ironic topic for me to tell people how to make money doing it, that's where I need to start upping my game. like I always do a lot of these for free. So I need to start making some cash on this stuff.

Jennie Nash 01:21

Oh, let's talk about that. Should we jump right into it?

Kevin Tumlinson 01:23

Let's jump right in. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for being a part of the word slinger podcast. So yes, let's jump right in. And how does somebody make money reading books all day?

Jennie Nash 01:32

So I want to talk about the money because I've been a book coach now for about 10 years. And I make multiple six figures as a book coach, and we at author accelerator. We recently did a poll of about 180 people who do this type of work, and I turned out to be one of the top paid people and that's great for me, but what was horrifying was The number of people who are not making very much money at it and the more that you dug into it, the number of people who give their work away for free and here I am talking to such a person.

Kevin Tumlinson 02:11

I don't give it all away for free, let's just make that clear. But I am obsessed with helping authors succeed and so that sometimes Trumps me charging them for it. I think so.

Jennie Nash 02:22

Okay, so here's the thing. I'm obsessed with that too. And, and it is such a noble and good thing to be obsessed with because, as you well know, the publishing industry is super fast changing all the time things it's pretty chaotic things come, you know, companies come they go trends come and go. There's, you know, self publishing wasn't even a thing. Basically, when I when I started coaching like it, it everything changes so fast. And that combined with this pervasive myth that writers don't make money writers don't have money to spend to help them. or invest in their careers, this whole starving artist thing this whole, you know, oh, we all just do this for love thing. And it makes me crazy because so many of the myths that I just spun off are not true writers, a lot of writers do make money a lot of publishers and publishing companies and people that are helping writers do make money. It's a big industry of infinite and people were making money it would not, it would not be so right. So I am, I am kind of on a mission to to change this and to help people who help authors with their writing to help coaches, raise the bar, be more professional, ask for what you're worth realize the value of what you're giving. So I want to talk about this all day long.

Kevin Tumlinson 03:49

Well, you're in luck. We can talk about it for at least 30 minutes. Yeah, no, I, I understand I you know, that's the thing and then the sector of authors I tend to deal with Our incoming. So how do you build a profile? I don't want you to give away the story here. But, you know, how would someone like me who deals with a lot of incoming authors who don't typically have any money? They're not making any money from the books yet. They may have a book yet, right? I'm like where's the starting point of that my my trouble with so I did author coaching for quite a while and charge people money for but I never really managed to make it a viable business because I maybe I was overcharging maybe I was under serving I don't know. So I never, it never took off as a business for me. Now I do it as part of kind of other things.

Jennie Nash 04:41

Right. Right. So I mean, the way that I like to think about it is is this, the, there's this idea with writers that this sort of lottery idea, like I'm gonna roll the dice, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna get picked and I'm going to get picked either by a publisher, an agent and a publisher, I'm going to get picked by readership out in the universe. And the thing behind that is, is that and then I'll leave my day job, right? And then all I'll get a movie deal with Reese Witherspoon and and then you know, like whatever the thing is that that the get picked mentality. And that mentality is so pervasive that writers think that that, you know, I'm just rolling the dice and and it's like they're holding their breath. They're not thinking of their own book and their own career as a viable business. And part of what I do is to help people change that mindset, like what other industry and what other industry which you bring a product into the world and that product could be anything. It could be a podcast, it could be a service industry, it could be, you know, you're growing firms to sell to people for their Fern gardens. I don't know where that came from, but you No, like whatever business nobody starts a business, thinking, I'm just going to get picked and, and like look out of the despair of my day to day job by by selling this thing to people people don't think like that. But with books, they think like that. So part of the mindset is shift is helping them think, okay, like the one of the first questions that I asked him out there is what is your goal with this book? And if their goal with this book is I want to write something to leave a legacy for my kids. And, you know, I don't care if it sells, I don't care if it gets read beyond that. That person's not going to probably make any money off of their work. Right. But if they most people are not going to say that, by the way, if they say, Well, my goal is, you know, if you really can have an honest conversation with them, they're going to state a goal that has something to do with selling books. And so what I talked to them about is then what do you need to invest in? In order to make that come true in order to have a viable business model? What skills do you need? What support do you need? You know, the business that you're in? One of the businesses you're in isn't helping people actually produce their book, you can actually produce a book and not invest money in that in that production. production costs. So the same should be true with writing the book, how are you going to learn how to write a book? How are you going to get the support, you need to do it? How are you going to decide which publishing path to go on? All of those things are investments in that outcome that they're trying to see? Right? And get people to start thinking about their outcome, then you can start talking about the value that you might add to their process. And then that means you have to be really clear about what value you're adding and what you're actually doing for them. Yeah,

Kevin Tumlinson 07:56

yeah, yeah. I agree. I agree. One of the one of the things that always nails me is I have all my little excuses lined up and then somebody comes along and pulls that peg and I can't use any of them.

Jennie Nash 08:15

That's me.

Kevin Tumlinson 08:16

That's exactly what that's supposed to be right. So what is that what author accelerator is about? Like, tell me about author accelerator?

Jennie Nash 08:26

Yes. So I have been training book coaches, I've trained more than 50 book coaches. certifying them and part of that process is teaching them how to manage a Writers Project with a project being the book, how to help that writer, raise the bar of that writer, raise their their own writing standards and skills, make a good publishing choice. The author accelerator is all about the development process. So once you get to the point where you're going to produce the book, you Have to go to somebody like draft to digital or some other person that's going to or entity that's going to help you produce the book. We don't do that. But we help people all the way up to that moment. And so I'm training book coaches, to guide writers and to help writers think about how they're going to make money from their book, if they're going to make money for their book, you know, a huge part of what we do is burst people's bubbles. That if how hard it is to make money at a book, you've got to know that in advance and why you're doing it again, back to the goal of that writer and the goal of that book and, and really making a plan for it. And so I'm helping the coaches help the writers think through that process and think through what they're doing. And we're we do that work in the context of helping them with the writing of the book. I I am Market focus by market focus, it's like, okay, who else is writing a book like you for a book, and it's going to be a book of essays. And it's going to be a book of essays about all the bad boyfriends I've ever had. And there have been 23 of them. So there's gonna be 23 chapters about all the bad boyfriends I've ever had. And I'm going to write these essays about that. The first thing I'm going to say is, are you aware that for an unpublished writer with with no platform to bring out a book of essays is The hardest possible thing in the world to sell. That's the first thing that I would say, right? And they would then then they always come back to me and say something like, but Tina Fey did it, or David Sedaris did it. And it's like, well, Yes, that's correct. But let's look at the hurdles that you might have getting to the marketplace with this book. I'm not trying to get them to write something different. I'm not trying to shoot down their dream, I'm trying to be realistic about it. And, and if they say to me, okay, what how can I ship this so that it might be viable for the marketplace, then we might talk about their structure, we might go look at audiences who are buying books like that we might try to find a way to bring that content to life in such a way that it is viable. So that's what I mean by being market focused. And if I'm going to do that, I I've been in the publishing industry for more than 30 years, I've helped a lot of people come to market. I've seen a lot of books, I'm going to charge for my expertise and my time, I'm not going to help that person out of the goodness of my heart, which sounds super cold and calculating now that I'm going to help that person if they're serious about reaching the marketplace, they're going to have to pay me to get my expertise.

Kevin Tumlinson 12:21

Yeah. And I and again, to draw on your earlier examples. I mean, this is not an unreasonable ask, when it comes to any other business is just for some reason, when it comes to businesses tied to people's dreams. Then all of a sudden, we are cold, heartless, capitalists.

Jennie Nash 12:42

Right. And that's the thing that makes me crazy. And I mean, the other thing it makes me crazy is there are a lot of people out there who are preying on authors, dreams and desires. It's easy to do because you tell an author, I can I can help you publish this book. I am We could do it in 90 days, you could be a best seller on Amazon. And they are all like, here's my money. Right? Well, you know, guess what, I just published a book, my own self. And I put it on Amazon and I literally did nothing, literally nothing other than hit the button. And it came up as the number one new release best seller in whatever category literally not one book sale. And I am I got that little Amazon bestseller flag and the people who are are selling that, like, we have a strategy for your book becoming a best seller on release day and we'll help you with this strategy. And we'll put you through these paces and people pay money for that because they don't know any better. And that makes me crazy, too. So Yeah, same here. There's people that prey on authors desires and dreams and, and I don't think it's right and fair. And so a lot of what I'm trying to do is tell them the truth. This is going to be long. It's going to be hard. And guess what? You're going to have to pay money. Let's talk about what you're going to have to pay to bring this book into the world. And do you want to do that? Right? Yeah.

Kevin Tumlinson 14:11

It's interesting, because I talked to people about this, this concept all the time in these coaching sessions, by the way, the very same ideas, because there is a hesitation among authors to do things like market themselves. Right? And, you know, it's the exact same idea. You know, I've, I wish I could remember the exact quote, I had a guest on the show, several years, a few years ago now, who said that if you are building something that can help people, then it is your responsibility to to market it and in this case, to charge for the service? Like that's part of the responsibility because that's how you continue to keep being able to offer that. Right.

Jennie Nash 14:57

Exactly. And, you know, you mentioned other things Jeez, like if I I mean, here's a perfect example. I'm in my car brand new, by the way, three days old. My car was hit the other day somebody backed into the rumor. I was at a standstill back to the road sucks. So hard. So what do I do? I call my insurance. I get a tow truck. The tow truck guy drives into place. Do I have to pay the tow truck guy? Yes. Because he's, he's saving my bacon from it was raining the cars in the middle of the intersection. So of course, I'm going to pay the tow truck guy. And you know, then we take it to the body shop. You know, it's going to be $4,000 to fix the thing. Like all of those. Those things are things that I need. They're solving a pain point of mine and you don't question for three seconds that you're going to pay that fee because it's you have this point of pain. I can't drive my car. My car's been So we pay when we have points of pain and writers have points of pain, they don't know things, you know things you've been in this you're inside this industry, you know exactly how it works, you hone your skills and your expertise, they come to you the reason you're having these calls is because they need your expertise and they have a pain they want to solve. And so that's how I start trying to talk to my coaches is what particular pain Are you trying to help this writer solve? Is it is it deciding on a publishing path? Is it making decisions about your investment towards that is it that the writing is not strong enough and needs to get better? Is it that you're getting rejected all the time out in the marketplace? And you don't know why is it that your covers bad, you know, there's a lot of pain points along the path and if somebody is helping a writer solve those, the that Pain. They're adding value and should be paid for it just like the total.

Kevin Tumlinson 17:04

No, no, you're you're right, I think is a kind of a supply and demand kind of thing. You know, you can, it's easier to charge someone when they're kind of over a barrel on that tow truck driver, you need this vehicle towed. Now we both know you're going to pay me a little different

Jennie Nash 17:22

thing. That's what's interesting is one of the things that I guide people to do is to choose what pain point they're going to specialize in as a coach, where are they going to help people and, and how are they going to frame that help? Because the writers are going to actually feel the same way as I did with my broken car. You know, if the writers got a book that they're dying to get into the world, they're going to feel that same pain and, you know, we talked at the beginning about how confusing this industry is, if you're outside of it, you know, how do you know what to do? How do you how do you know what to pay? How You know, there's a lot of confusion. So you didn't ask, but if you were to ask me how to convert these calls into paying into paying customers, I would think of these consultation calls as, okay, you're helping them for 30 minutes or an hour or whatever you're offering them and help them with some of their questions. I would think of them as consultation calls to a service. So it's like, this is the way that I could help you. This is how the decision that is in front of you, I'm seeing that you have these choices, and I can help you walk you through those choices and make a good choice. And then I can help you, whatever the next step of the process is. And if you're interested in that, I have a service that we could talk about, you're signing up for. It would be you can still help people out of the goodness of your heart. I do that all day long as well. But, you know, like, the other day, I was talking to a woman Who writes a column for Forbes? magazine, and she wants to write a book. It's her second book. And she she was trying to make a decision about agent or not agent on this on the second book and, and I got on the phone with her and, and had an hour long conversation, I was sending her links I was sending her, you know, information, I was talking about money, I was talking about what it takes to find an agent, how much it would cost her to work on a nonfiction book proposal with somebody like me how much time it would take, I was feeding her information, I was helping her. And it was all in insert in it that my intention was well, this is probably going to shock you but the the service that I would have worked with her on is a $24,000 service. And that would be for a serious professional to get a nonfiction proposal that hopefully will get them a book deal. Yeah. She turned out she she did not take it, she did not go for it. She decided that she didn't want to go for the agent route she that was not for her. She was horrified at the pros and cons when I laid them out of agent versus not agent. she opted out of the service that I was offering. So I spent it an hour using my best brain work to help her to help her decide not to use me. In my mind, that was a good use of time. I helped somebody I helped her come to a good decision. I did good in the world. You know, I did not get the $24,000 client. But guess what next time I might or next time I might and so you know, I think you can combine the helpfulness with the money part.

Kevin Tumlinson 20:50

I think in scenarios like that, you could take that conversation, boil it down to the points that were made. And then you can Create something that could simultaneously educate incoming authors who might have the same question and help you nurture mailing list for example so hundred percent right you could totally turn that into a top of funnel offer

Jennie Nash 21:15

100% and and I have so much free content I have so much amazing resources on on my website people are welcome to come you probably do too. You know, it's it's that push and pull between offering something but not offering everything. Yeah. And I think you're right we we tend in these realms that are about creative pursuits, we tend to diminish the, the value of the expertise and I want to change that.

Kevin Tumlinson 21:47

Yeah, same here. Actually, personally.

Jennie Nash 21:53

Here's what I do with those calls. Just flip your mindset. Just think this is a consultation call personally. That I could offer. I'm going to help them on this call. I'm going to I'm going to be generous and helpful. And I'm going to, instead of giving all the answers away, think more in terms of framing the questions they have to ask. There's questions that you need to answer. Here's the decisions you have to make. Here's a way that I could help you if you wanted to sign up for that service.

Kevin Tumlinson 22:24

Yeah. So does does your program I mean, speaking of markets, does your program kind of arm authors that are the coaches rather with how they would market the service how they reach these authors and you?

Jennie Nash 22:39

Yes, yes, I do. And I studied on my own personally, a lot of marketing people and and tried to adapt the the best practices for book coaching in in my new book, which is called read books all day and get paid for it. Go way into the marketing. And I've had a couple of other top coaches reviewing the book. That's all happening right now because because it's just come out and I had somebody say to me, Jenny's advice on marketing was so spot on. And it made me laugh out loud. So I'm not going to tell you what that is, you'll have to read the book to

Kevin Tumlinson 23:21

see how this works.

Jennie Nash 23:24

I totally help people do it. And here's, here's the key thing. It's not what you probably think it is. It's not take out an ad on this website or go to this conference and print out a bunch of swag or, you know, it's not that really what it amounts to is knowing what you're offering and who you're offering it for. Right. I'm going to totally botch how he says it but Seth Godin and his new book, this is marketing says something along the lines of marketing is about doing something That matters for people who care. That's, that's what I help people do is what are you doing that matters? And who's going to care about that. So if you're somebody who's helping people, at the very beginning of their book idea, going from idea to getting it on the page and helping them frame that the structure of their book, you could specialize in that point in the process and do really well because you'd become known for that part of the process. You could become someone who specializes. I have a coach who wants to specialize in helping lawyers who want to write fiction. There's a lot of lawyers who want to write fiction. Yes, yes. What a cool nice, right. Yeah. To be able to speak to a lawyer to be able to help them translate the way lawyers think and speak and write which is a very particular way to to fiction writing. I have somebody else who wants to help women in speculative fiction, because it's mostly a male dominated genre. So they want to focus on helping women get into speculative fiction. So if you focus on who you're helping, so doing Oh, I think we might have froze. Yeah,

Kevin Tumlinson 25:33

we froze. But we're gonna, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna muddle through.

Jennie Nash 25:40

So they say that again.

Kevin Tumlinson 25:42

Yeah, you were to you're just introducing us to the idea of the woman who was helping other women who are speculative fiction, and go, Okay,

Jennie Nash 25:51

okay. I have another coach who's specializing in helping women break into this big speculative fiction genre because it's very male dominated, and her expertise is going to be that. So if she becomes known for that, everybody's going to send those writers to her because that's her. She's helping those people with that particular pain point. So that's what marketing in terms of book coaching is all about is becoming known for doing something really well, that helps people at a place where they really need help.

Kevin Tumlinson 26:24

I think you just hit on something that has always nagged at me, by the way, because there is whenever I have offered author coaching, now, right now, I'm doing it through DVD, you know, we do our consultations, little free consultations, and it's, it's meant to help the people who showed up at our webinars and stuff, so I can't charge folks for that. And I'm not trying to, but when I've tried to add this in the past, there is always that problem of, you know, focus, right. And there's that aphorism that if everyone's your customer, no one's your customer. Yeah, I think what you're saying here is that there's an opportunity if you are willing to focus on a specific aspect of this. So for me, I might I might coach, people in writing thrillers, because that's what I write, or I might coach them in, right in using, you know, I might pick something out there, right? Yeah, just the process of writing. I could do all that. But it's too broad too general. And that's probably one of the reasons why it never quite worked. I wasn't advertising or I wasn't marketing, specifically enough.

Jennie Nash 27:30

Right. So you, you can't make a business on even what you just said. I'm going to help people writing thrillers. Well, what people what kind of thrillers At what point in the process? Have they written a book before? Are they writing their second book? Are they writing a series or do they have a plan to write a book a year like you've got to really narrow down on what writer where they are in the process what they need? Are you helping somebody right faster? Are you helping them right? Like plot out faster. Are you helping them plot better? Are you helping them raise up their writing skills? Are you helping them? Like what exactly are you doing? So there's so many layers to figure out and, and just helping. So if you're on a consulting call with someone, and I'm sure you've been on a million of these calls, people are asking questions about all over the map, right? marketing, about social media about my website about my book cover about the production about the time about the cost about the writing itself about this and that, like that's just scattershot. Yeah, advice, but if you're honing down to really say, I can have your thriller writer, writing your first book, you've never done it before, and you need to make X, Y and Z choices. I can help you do that efficiently, effectively. And, you know, to help you toward your goal. Now I thought a viable business. Yeah, well,

Kevin Tumlinson 28:56

that that is the ideal reader. concept. That's the ideal reader ideal customer concept. And I'm shocked that I never put it together.

Jennie Nash 29:10

One thing because it's what book coaches help writers do, like if I'm working with somebody right now who's writing middle grade fiction, and she's actually a very successful nonfiction writer. And one of the things that I've become known for is helping successful nonfiction writers who want to switch over to not true. I helped her write the book that got the six figure deal for her first novel, excellent. And so I kind of have a specialty in that regard, and I'm helping a woman writing a middle grade story and she She had her story was a hot mess. Okay, so she came to me with a manuscript that just was all over the place. And it had all these characters and all these ideas and all these themes and all this stuff. And you know, it's not going to work. And so part of what I did with her was exactly what we're talking about. Who do you want to reach? Who's your ideal reader? Can't it's not enough to say an 11 year old girl, it's like, an 11 year old girl who reads what and who does what and who's thinking about what and who cares about what and we've really got to hone down on who that 11 year old reader is and what she cares about and what she needs in that book. Otherwise, that book is not going to work. So I, I do this with the writer, and we need to do this with the people helping the writers to is, you know, what are what is your gig? What are you doing to help people? Yeah.

Kevin Tumlinson 30:53

And as That's it, what's funny is here's what you always come back to their sort of universal pieces of advice. that fit no matter what industry you're in. If you're an author, it's no matter what genre you're in. That's this seems to be one of those pieces is to identify the specific reader slash customer you're trying to reach. We are we're at time. So which is unfortunate, because I'm enjoying this quite a bit. And I'm getting a lot out of it personally. Those are always the toughest interviews to end. But I appreciate why don't you back on Now, before I before we drop out of here, I did want to say you have coming up January 20 2020. You have a summit coming up. You want to talk about that for just a second.

Jennie Nash 31:43

I would love to I'm doing a free week of programming about becoming a book coach and I've got 15 killer experts who we have conversations and take you through everything from how to market how to make money, what book coaching really is how it works. And that you can find all the information at author accelerator.com slash summit. So that's author accelerator, comm slash summit. And it's free. It's a week, it's January 20 2020. And I would love to have people come. And if you can't make it, we'll be sending out those recordings so you can grab them after the fact. Very good.

Kevin Tumlinson 32:25

Very cool. All right. I am I think I've signed I think I managed to sign up. So I'm going to check that out and everyone listening to the sound of my voice, you should also check that out. Thank you so much, Jay, for being on. I really appreciate all the wisdom you've dropped on us.

Jennie Nash 32:44

Thanks for having me. All right, everybody. Right now.

Kevin Tumlinson 32:47

You are probably hearing the groovy bridge music and you may dance and place it will and stick around for whatever I'm going to say whatever pithy fun thing I'm sure I came up with Right after this interview and I'll see you all on the other side