Anita Henderson

Bill, Hi there.

Bill Lampton Ph.D.

Welcome to the Business Communications Show. I’m your host, Bill Lampton, the biz communication guy, bringing you tips and strategies that will boost your business. And you get those tips and strategies through my conversation with a highly qualified guest, and certainly Anita Henderson fits that description today. Anita Henderson, from the Atlanta metropolitan area, is known as the author’s midwife. She is the founder and CEO of the right image consulting, Annette Wright is W, R, i, t, e, the right image consulting and chief author coach and book publishing strategist with Write Your Life, where she guides corporate executives And entrepreneurs to write, publish and leverage their memoir, inspirational story, our instructional book. As a coach, Anita Henderson pushes new and seasoned authors. You got to do that, you know, with tough love and honest critique, and she produces the vital accountability and expertise that’s required. Anita is an award winning, Best Selling Author and ghost writer, a sought after editor, a lifelong book nerd and an avid world traveler. In fact, she just got back from a wonderful trip. Her memoir, becoming the minimalist entrepreneur is her ninth book, so she’s about seven ahead of me, is her ninth book, and chronicles her quarter century as a business owner and the valuable lessons she learned along the way. So I know that you will join me and welcome. Welcoming. Anita Henderson, hello, Anita

Anita Henderson

bill, hello, hello, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Bill Lampton Ph.D.

Delighted to host you for an informative and helpful conversation. I’m sure the first question that comes to my mind is, you help entrepreneurs and business leaders get their book to the point that it can get published. But going back a step, my question is, are books still in vogue? I think of so many ways that people get their information now, social media, all kinds of internet, podcasts, and we could name at least a dozen or 15 other ways. And so are our books still being read and bought and treasured as they were before we got all these paraphernalia.

Anita Henderson

Yeah, there are a lot of ways that people engage with content these days, right? We’ve got social media, we’ve got videos. There are, you know, ebooks, all the digital content that we have available, but people are still, yes, still reading books, whether they are reading them in digital format, if they are reading them, reading them as audio books, very popular these days, and it’s still considered reading if you listen to an audio book, or if they’re reading them as physical books, the good old fashioned Books with paper and a cover and all of that kind of stuff. So yes, people are still reading. Ask anyone you know, what was the last book they read? And they can tell you, I mean, smart people read and business people read, executives read, so we’re all still reading. So don’t buy the lie that books are dead and no one’s reading anymore. We absolutely are. Our reading preferences and approaches are different, but we’re still reading books

Bill Lampton Ph.D.

Well, clearly you affirm what your career underscores that you do know you don’t think, but you know that books are very important. Suppose I’m a successful business person, and I have in mind writing a book and I call you or make an appointment with you, what would what would you tell me are the advantages of. Being a book author.

Anita Henderson

Well, Bill, before I tell you anything, I’d ask you some questions. I would ask you, yes. I would ask you, you know, what are you doing now as a business owner, as as the majority of my clients are either business owners themselves, founders, CEOs, or they are executives with another company. What are your goals? What have you become known for, or known as that you would like to share more of with the world? What is your unique approach or methodology or concept or system that you would like to share with more people in the format of a book. I would ask who your ideal audience is, which most often is also an authors and a business owners and entrepreneurs ideal customer, right? Who do you want to reach with your message? And then, of course, I’d ask you, what do you think they should get out of it, right? So you’ve got this wonderful system and process to share, what do you think your readers would possibly get out of it? And then I’d ask you, what help do you think you need in order to write and publish a great book? So before I tell you why it’s smart to write a book and get it published, I’d ask you what your goals and objectives are, because I’m honestly and I tell people this often I am not in business to convince anyone to write a book? Absolutely not. I don’t do it. People come to me when they are ready to write a book. They may be curious about the process. They may wonder if they have a great idea that they’ve been thinking about probably for years, and they’re still not quite sure if it’s book worthy. But I typically don’t get people who come to me and say, Anita convinced me that I should write a book tell me why I should do this. I don’t get people to do that. And even if they did as I said, I’d ask them questions before I’d answer that question, because when you’re ready, you’re ready, and I’m here to sort of usher people through the process so that it is not difficult, so that it is not confusing, and so that it is fun, and that they end up with a book product that they’re proud to put their name on.

Bill Lampton Ph.D.

I think what’s intriguing and helpful about what you’ve just said is that, before you talk to anybody about, let’s say the steps that you would go through with them are the mechanics, are what’s involved in a timeline or a fee, or anything else You find out if, first of all, if they have centered their thinking and they know what they want to present to the public in a book, and then when I get to to your statement that you don’t try to convince anybody to write a book, My gosh, if you have to convince them they’re not ready, because having been through the process a couple of times myself and knowing many authors and what they go through, it takes not only a fine idea, but it takes an enormous commitment of time and energy and research and organization and reviews, and those are the kinds of things where you come in. And that leads me to the next question, and thank you for the response you gave there. And the next question is, what specifically, okay, let’s say now, now you haven’t had to convince me. You’ve explored what I want my theme, who I want it to address, and so I’m ready to write a book. Okay, where does the author’s midwife take me from there?

Anita Henderson

Oh, wow. We begin the journey right when you’re ready, and you have an idea that you’re ready to put into book format, we start with what I call a framework, right? We develop a framework, and that requires us to spend some time together, right? This is a journey, so I’m sure people have heard of the write a book in a weekend programs, or, you know, you’ve heard of someone who wrote a book in a week, or whatever. So we don’t do that and write your life. It takes time. It takes a lot of focus. And so we do what I call a VIP day, right? Very important. A person. But also we sort of vet your idea. We give you some information and pull information from you, and then we also sort of test your process and your concept to make sure that it is appropriate and that everything that you want to say is actually relevant for good book content. And so we spend a day together prior to COVID, my VIP days were in person, but since then, we’ve done quite a few virtual VIP days that are still full day. We still do in person VIP days when it’s convenient for the author, but we hash out, I mean, it’s like a roll up your sleeves. It’s no PowerPoint stuff. I’m not teaching you anything. What we’re doing is really minding your business, mining your brain for all the information you know and the stories you want to share and the concepts you would like to teach and include in your book. We lay it all out. We think about who your ideal reader is. We actually profile them very much in depth, so that they actually have a name like you know who this person is, right? You’re thinking of this person as you’re writing your book. We think about what your goals are as an author. So this is the strategic part. We look at what the reader should get from your book and how that’s going to happen. We talk about marketing strategies even at the very beginning, because what’s the point in writing the book and publishing it if nobody knows it exists? So we talk about that. But we really delve deeply into the strategy of book writing and publishing. We deal deeply into the structure of your book, so that when we finish with VIP day, you have a framework. You know what chapter one should be, how that flows into chapter two. And we also talk about the stories that should be told, because story is everything, and so you know where this story goes in chapter five, and there’s another story in chapter eight and so forth. So structure stories and strategy is what we work on with VIP day, so that you leave ready to write. And we’ve actually created content in VIP day. That day is recorded and transcribed in real time, and it becomes a starting point for your writing. So that’s sort of the beginning. And then we go into some of the other publishing aspects and editing and so forth. But everything starts with a VIP day, so that we start off on the right foot.

Bill Lampton Ph.D.

Yes, and, and what we want to do next, I want to talk with you about all right, you get into the writing, and as the author’s midwife, that makes sure you’re directly involved. So we’ll be back in a few seconds, and we’ll talk about what hap