The Art of Repurposed Content: Book Edition

Are you ready to repurpose your thought-leadership into multiple revenue streams?  It’s easier than you think if you have a system and a process!

When it comes down to it, you can make writing a book less emotional and more of a business strategy.

This allows ego to move out of the way and the art of creativity and repurposing your content into another medium so much more easier. Here are some insights you can think about when it comes to taking the next step to start your book!!!!

INSIGHT #1: IDENTfIY YOUR FEARS

Here are a few of the fears that my entrepreneur/author clients and colleagues thought about before starting their books:

• Who will read my book?
• Nobody will buy my book!
• Who am I to write a book?
• What will people say?
• Am I good enough to write this?
• I’m not a good enough writer!

The list goes on. In fact, I even had some of these fears before I wrote my book, Ready to Amplify Tribe. Visibility. Impact.

You already have the content – on your blog, in your presentation or still trapped up in your head. You know your stuff!!!

INSIGHT #2: find the fuse…

Once you get past these fears or the thousands of others that exist out there, writing a book (or perhaps a blog or social media post for that matter) shouldn’t be difficult. You have the content!!!!! But it was also important to have the battle plan to make it a reality, conquer the new and old fears as they pop up and overcome any unexpected delays or bottlenecks along the way, me being one of them! 

I am a quick start, but it’s often hard for me to finish projects if I don’t have deadlines tied into them. I can dream big, but I definitely need some hard-pressed incentives to get me across the finish line. Usually these incentives are tied into some sort of commitment to others…whether that’s a production commitment, a sponsor commitment, a client commitment or an event! 

It took me 20 years of dreaming, but once I decided to write mine, I did it in five days by using key strategies!

Knowing this, I reached out to an event planner to sponsor the goodie bag with my book! I wanted to make a big splash; I wanted to take things to the next level. I wanted each and every attendee to have a copy of my book in their hands in time for this event! I invested in a sponsorship and a commitment to get that book into the bags by a certain deadline in order for the bag to be packed in time for attendees to receive it.

At the time, I had wanted to write a book for 20 years, but, like many people, I had completed many outlines and mock covers but never really started the writing process. There was always something more important to do than finish the book. However, with this kind of commitment tied into the completion, it was now or never time!

The fuse was the event, but additionally, it needed dynamite to get there – vendors, supplies, products, process. Everything costs money and time. I lined up a bunch of deadlines to coordinate this seemingly impossible deadline of less than four weeks to keep me focus and driven. 

Accomplishing Olympic-sized goals in your business doesn’t happen alone! It takes a plan, support, dedicated action and an inspired vision to get you to the finish line! 

INSIGHT #3: REVIEW YOUR CONTENT

Most business owners, coaches, consultants, experts, and speakers know their stuff and have done workshops, mini-courses, or blog series. They have content ready for a book and if you plan to use this book as your business card, I highly recommend going through content such as these first.

INSIGHT #4: ADAPT THE content for the medium and its reader

I went through all this content and decided to basically create my book with a foundation of content I created for a seven-day online challenge I created in the past that had seen results for my participants.

The next step was to repurpose this challenge into a guidebook. The seven days of video lessons and insights became the first seven chapters.   

BOOK OUTLINE: I put together a generic outline of a book to make sure that I included things like a foreword, an introduction, a summary chapter. I decided to add a love letter as well! (For an example of this outline, scroll down and opt-in to the replay of my masterclass, Leverage your Book Launch!)

CONTENT FLOW: I used a transcription service that provided me with transcripts of all my presentations and edited them, which became about seven chapters of the book. This gave me the bulk of the book.

CHAPTER OUTLINE: Usually with a masterclass or presentation a coach or consultant will have a workbook, checklist or a resource book for their participants to reference. I took emails that were sent each day to participants with thoughts, action items and recaps to form the introduction and wrap-ups to each chapter. Next, I created a second outline that comprised a breakdown of what the front and back of the chapter would look like.

INSIGHT #4: go deeper…

Despite the fact that I had multiple business incentives for this book, tied into the upcoming event, I still had layers of systems for success built into this goal.

One of those layers was to connect to a deeper why. A personal feeling of accomplishment, a gift to myself…and even more, to my friends and family around me.  

I encourage you to consider, how is your book going to make a difference in your life?

My why factor gave me the extra edge to complete it. A big part of why I wrote the book was my son; it was about setting an example, dreaming big, and thinking bigger. I wanted something tangible to show him, to inspire him and encourage him to see that anything was possible.

Yes, I also had a very tight deadline connected to a commitment to put this book into the hands of 250-300 attendees at the event as a gift. This kept me focused and on task. I visualized these attendees reading my book and how their faces would light up when they read it. 

Deciding that the event was going to be a done deal, I created space to write my book. I wrote most of my book at the cottage, early in the morning and late at night, between hosting guests and running a day’s worth of activities with my family. I had to maximize my productivity and literally crush my self-imposed deadlines. There was no room or time for fear!

Because I had my outline close by, when emotions creeped up I was able to shift between emotional writing and tactical/strategical writing components of the book to keep the flow going.

For example, if I had a ’bout of Imposter Syndrome showing up, (also see my blog post 16 Ways I Deal with Self-Doubt), I would shift gears and work on a glossary or a list item in my book that needed formatting or technical changes only. 

Are you ready to write and publish your book in 2023?

Learn more about how I wrote my book with a business strategy behind it, while still living my life and running my business and grab that copy of my sample book outline in my masterclass, Leverage Your Book Launch.