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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 happens from there on, once you get started, for example, how you help the reader with style and sentence structure and editing and all those things. We’ll be back in a few seconds.
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Bill Lampton Ph.D.
we are here with Anita Henderson, the author’s midwife, on the biz communication show, continuing our conversation. And what I mentioned a few seconds ago is that what happens you’ve had the VIP day you get going, and then, certainly you’ve got the framework, but then, then we need the content. So what is your what is your frequency of contact with the author who is contracted with you to be the the writing coach? What happens again? I’m your I’m your client. I have agreed to the VIP day. What contact are we going to have from here on out how frequently and what will happen?
Anita Henderson
You know, Bill, we have as much contact as you need as the author, but trust me when I say when we’ve been. English with VIP day you are ready to go off and write. We don’t need to talk every day. You need to silo yourself somewhere and write. We also offer ghost writing services. But I highly encourage most people, most of my authors, write their own book, even the ones who come to me and say a need I’m a terrible writer. I tell them, You’re a better writer than you think you are, and you can write this book with the structure that we create in VIP day and the framework that you have. You already know what the chapters are because you’re writing what you already know. You’re not making this stuff up, stuff up as you go along. You’re writing starting
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
from scratch. Yes, you’re not starting from scratch. Bill,
Anita Henderson
whether it is your memoir, you’re writing your own life. You lived it. You know what to say. If it is your professional approach to a specific concept, you already know that you’re not making it up as you go along. You’re writing to the structure and the framework we’ve created. So you already know what to write. Plus, I encourage people to go back and mind your business again, and that means go look at the speeches you’ve given, the presentations you’ve made, the information products you’ve created over time, the blog posts and articles you’ve written, those you’ve been on. Right. You’re finding content that you already have, especially when you’re writing a book that’s exploring a specific subject matter that you’re the expert on, or if you’re writing a book that examines your system or process, you already have it. Maybe you’re a coach, maybe you are a consultant, and you have a process that you walk your own clients through. So you’re not making this up. You already have it laid out. You’re just writing it in the format of a book that is guided by the framework and the structure that we created for VIP day. So when we finish with that day you go off and write. You already know what to write to when you get stuck, and sometimes people do, we check in every couple of weeks, perhaps, but I don’t want to interrupt your flow. I want you to structure your writing sessions in a way that makes sense and that that is not when you feel like writing that is really defining that, you know, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 8am to noon are my creative times, and that’s when I’m going to write and I’m going to I challenge my clients to get to a minimum of 30,000 words in their first draft. Now for some people, how
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
many pages would 30,000 words be?
Anita Henderson
Well, it doesn’t matter how many pages it is. It doesn’t matter. People always worry about page count. We don’t care about page count. In my world, we’re concerned more about the word count. Okay, so if you decide so if I’m telling you to get to 30,000 words, and in each of your writing sessions, you write about 1000 words. You only need 30 writing sessions. If you wrote every day, that’s a month, you’d be done.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you. Certainly, don’t
Anita Henderson
write every day. Most people don’t write every day, right? And probably most people, once you get going, you’ll write more than 1000 words. So we give them that general guideline to go by 30,000 words at minimum, but structure your writing time during the times when you’re most creative, most awake, least distracted and disrupted, right and just right if you get stuck and you’re not sure how to explain something, sure we can talk and I’m going to check in with you from time to time, just to make sure you’re on track to get that writing done. We often get on schedule, which typically is, believe it or not, about two months after VIP day, about two months now, here’s the thing, life happens for a lot of people. Bill, we get nothing’s your world just because you decide to write a book. So if business gets going, you’ve got some travel, you’ve had an injury, whatever these things happen, and we can make adjustments. But typically, when I begin with a client from VIP day until the day they have that book in their hands, it’s about 10 months before the book is complete. That’s it. 10 months out of your life you’ve got some structure, and that includes the writing of the content. It includes our editing process, which includes BETA readers, and we can talk about that if you want to. It includes the design of the book, uploading it to our online retailers and the printing so. If you can’t afford 10 to 12 months out of your life to get a phenomenal book done, then I say, go for it. Work with us.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I’ve heard years ago equip where a guy was at a cocktail party and somebody walks up to him and says, I hear you’re writing a book. And the guy says, yes, I’ve got all the pages numbered. Well, it’s, it’s much more complicated than that. And the the discipline that you talk about as you say, life has its interruptions, but it does take setting aside blocks of time when you won’t be interrupted, when your train of thought can be consistent and steady and and on, on topic, on target, it takes it. Now I want to get back to something you said a few minutes ago. You were talking about people ask you, well, what about if I get a ghost writer and you, you and I are connected on LinkedIn online, and today, I noticed that you posted something about people who may think, Well, I don’t need to write the book. I’ve got artificial intelligence now it, not only has, I’ve used it to write articles. Well, if it can write articles, it can write it those 30,000 words you’re talking about. If I give it enough prompts, what’s your comeback on that?
Anita Henderson
Well, let’s not get ghost writing confused with artificial intelligence, two different things. Ghost writing is a professional human who will work with you and hold your hand throughout the writing process. So that’s one thing. Artificial Intelligence is a wonderful, wonderful new tool. It’s a resource for a lot of different industries, including book publishing and I believe that there is a place for artificial intelligence in the book writing process. It is not to be used, in my opinion, to actually write the content of your book. Artificial Intelligence is a support. It is perhaps a resource tool that research tool that you could use, but there are some really good aspects and different ways that you could use artificial intelligence to help create some good content and give you some guidance and structuring your book. We all know, hopefully by now, a lot of people know that one of the most important things about using artificial intelligence properly is the prompts that you give it. You have to tell it what you want it to give you back, right, right? And so you don’t just say to a chat GPT or Gemini or whatever you know, online artificial intelligence platform you’re using. Hey, I’m writing a book about how to be a great podcast host. Give me some content, right? What do you think you’re going to get back? You will get back probably a bunch of gibberish and probably some information that’s been pulled from other resources that if you were to take that verbatim and put it in your manuscript, you are plagiarizing. Yes. Where do you think artificial intelligence got it from from actual people who’ve written something about it, right? So I suggest to people who want to use artificial intelligence, use it for a couple of things, and one of them is, if you want to sort of DIY your book and not use a human to help you coach, for example, then use it. One way to use it is for structuring your book. I talk about the fact that we spend hours in VIP day developing a solid structure, a framework for your book. You could query artificial intelligence and get a semblance of that. The important thing is the query, right? Is the prompt that you give it. So you would say something like, I’m writing a book about how to be a great podcast host, and I’m writing this book for entrepreneurs and and, you know, startup entrepreneurs who want to use podcasting as a way to market their business, and these people like you’ve got to give it all the information, right, your prompts going to be super long. And. Probably by the time you finish writing the prompt, you’re like, hey, I could probably write this book myself. But you’ll also want to give that platform some information about who your target audience is, what they should get from the book, right? What transformation you’d like for your readers to have? Like, there’s a lot of information you need to give it, and it will likely spit out some information for you to use as a structure. Then you’re asking the question, what types of what should I include in my chapters? What stories could I tell? So you’re going to ask it some things, and it’ll give you a generic structure for your book. But you’ve got to use your human brain to beef that up, to formulate it and to make it uniquely your own. You can’t just use what artificial intelligence gives you. You’ve still got to use your human intelligence to make it your own. So that’s one way that we can use artificial intelligence in the book publishing space, and there are some other ways as well. So I’m not the one to poo poo it because it’s a new technology. I think it’s great, and it’s not going away, but it is not to be used to develop straight content. Take it off of the platform, drop it into your manuscript and put your name on it. That’s a no no. Well,
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I, from my standpoint, the writing that I do, mostly for online. At this stage, I have found artificial intelligence helpful for gathering facts. If I, if I want to make sure that I’ve got the details right about something. I can, I can, as you say, pose the right question, and I get some some facts, and those are generally, widely known, not copyrighted facts. So it’s, it’s for me that has, that has been helpful, right?
Anita Henderson
It’s great for research. I would even suggest, though, depending on the subject matter, even if you use artificial intelligence for research gathering, and depending on what the subject matter is of your book and how well you want to use that book to support your expertise in your authority, I would suggest you still get a couple of other resources right to support the data or the information that you get from artificial intelligence, even when you’re doing research that should be one data point or one reference point. You’ve got to dig deeper if you’re using it for research purposes, yes,
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Anita, I can understand now why you are the author’s midwife. I of course, had I had seen one of your products, an author you have worked with, and that’s John Ray’s book, The generosity mindset for me and for many people, that book has become a wonderful guideline for our presentations about our services, our sales and marketing efforts, and that’s a wonderful example of the way that you work with a writer. I know that there are our viewers and listeners who will want to get in touch with you, so please give us your contact information. Absolutely,
Anita Henderson
absolutely. Well, I will say about that one book that it was a joy to work with John Ray, and the book is amazing. I’m glad you had a chance to read it, and I’ve gotten so much information from it. I love working with my authors. And so for anyone who’s interested in having a conversation with me, please visit the write image.net and write is like you write a book the write image.net and you can schedule a book strategy session with me. It’s completely complimentary. If you’d like to follow me on social media, I’m on LinkedIn, Anita Henderson, and if you are on Instagram and want to see some fun stuff that happens with the author’s midwife, you can find me on Instagram at Anita the author’s midwife.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you very much, and I know people will want to get in touch with you. Now that you’ve given your contact information, I’m happy to share mine, my YouTube channel, Bill Lampton PhD, all of the previous editions of the biz communication show are their interviews with highly qualified people, as you know from this conversation with Anita Henderson, invite you when you’re on my YouTube channel to hit that subscribe button. As for my website, since I’m the biz communication guy, quite logically, my website is biz. I Z biz, communication, gaia.com and I also, as Anita indicated in her case, I would love to talk with you about your communication challenges and problems, and we can discuss how I can assist you with them. So my phone number is 678-316-4300, again, 678-316-4300,
Anita, I think it would be very valuable. I know that this has been so beneficial for so many, and I know it would be very valuable. If you take 30 seconds or so and sort of pull together what we’ve talked
Anita Henderson
about, I would say for those who are ready, committed, dedicated to share your knowledge, your expertise, your information and your concepts with others. A book is an excellent way to do so when you’re ready, get help. If you’re a busy executive or entrepreneur, it’s a lot. It’s an all in endeavor, and expect for it to take about 10 to 12 months and get some help. And I’m happy to help you. I would also say that a book is one of the best marketing resources you can have for your brand. And once your book is published, it’s out there, you want to make sure it’s the very best product that you can produce, one that you are happy to have your name on. And so I would say there are lots of resources out there. I would love to be one of them for you, and let’s do it together.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you, and those who choose to follow that invitation will benefit from doing so. Thank you so much to Anita Henderson, the author’s midwife, for being with us for this edition of the biz communication show. Appreciate those of you who joined us through video and those who joined us through the podcast and invite you to be with us for the next edition of the biz communication Show. I’m your host. Bill Lambton, the biz communication guy. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
