6 lessons I learned from Marshall Goldsmith when it comes to writing your bestselling book

Since I first met Marshall Goldsmith, when we were running workshops in adjacent rooms in India, I’ve been fascinated by how he uses books to support his workshops and keynote speeches.

So here are six sometimes counter-intuitive lessons you can apply when you write your own books.

Marshall Goldsmith’s Six Counter Intuitive Lessons

1.    Focus on your readers’ pain not your panacea

2.    Don’t flatter or pander to your readers – challenge them

3.    Write a new book every year or two

4.    Make new books VERY different

5.    If your writing isn’t brilliant get help

6.    Don’t obsess about copyright – give it away

Let’s look at each of these in detail.

1 Focus on your readers’ pain not your panacea

Don’t be afraid to focus on the pain or the challenge facing your readers – especially in the title and promise of the book.

Consider the outstanding title What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There. Explicitly saying you might be successful but in the next phase of your career or life you won’t be. Implicitly saying there are some things in this book you might want to pay attention to.

In the same vein there’s Mojo: how to get it if you’ve lost it or how to get it back. It speaks to you if you’ve lost your mojo. It suggests you might want it back. And it implies there are some strategies inside the book that will help.

So don’t be afraid of controversy in the title. After all you only have a few seconds to attract a buyer’s attention.

2 Don’t flatter your readers inside the book – challenge them

Controversy doesn’t end with the title. Being controversial also applies inside the book itself.

‘Everyone I coach is a mega-successful person,’ says Marshall. ‘So I talk about NOT the blessings of success sometimes, but the curses of success. Why it's hard for successful people to hear the truth, why we get lost in our egos when we become successful. I talk about the classic problems of success.’

Where are the challenges facing the audience for your book?

3 To stay in the public eye write a new book every year or two

Quickly following What Got You Here and Mojo, Marshall wrote Triggers and then in a collaboration with Sally Helgeson How Women Rise and more recently The Earned Life. It keeps him getting invited to run workshops and to give keynote speeches around the world.

So once your firstbook is done, write a new book in the next 2-3 years. (Remember to make it better by learning from what you did first time round.) Just… don’t keep harping on about the same old same old.

It’s worth remembering that a book IS the most long-lasting ‘piece of content’ you will ever create. Its longevity is measured in years and not the few seconds of a tweet or the few minutes of a social media post.

How long is long? Well, your book’s initial shelf life will probably be 3-5 years. Which is long enough to stay current in the minds of meeting organisers, business conferences and institutions around the world hiring for keynote speeches.

But it will most likely fall out of favour or fashion after that time. To be honest you too will want to move on. To highlight new issues and trends as your work moves forward.

For coaching and consulting purposes your book will stay current for a greater length of time. But even then you will want to be more than a one-trick pony.

4 When you do write more books, make them different

Your book may not be as gigantic a bestseller as Marshall’s are, but when you write a follow up your readers will notice if you palm the same stuff off on them.

Your solution? Be radically distinctive.

‘When you write a New York Times bestseller, people are sensitive. You write two New York Times bestsellers, people are VERY sensitive. They don't want to see a replay of the last book. So we really needed to differentiate the books,’ he says.

I asked how?

‘What Got You Here Won't Get You There was about interpersonal relationships and leadership behaviour’ he says. ‘Mojo is much more intra-personal, it's much more about who am I and my identity. And then Triggers is more extra-personal. It's about our relationship with our working environment.’

So remember to keep your readers engaged over time. You can’t repeat the style and substance of your first book and expect your follow-up to do as well.

5 If your writing isn’t brilliant get help

If you’re working with a traditional publisher you will have an editor work with you. If you’re self-publishing you can hire one yourself. You can even hire a ghostwriter to get the ideas out of your head, if time is short.

The story of What Got You Here is that a literary agent and writer called Mark Reiter (seriously) read a New Yorker magazine article about Marshall’s life and was stunned.

‘I've read everything you've ever written,’ Mark said to Marshall. ‘The New Yorker magazine story about you is better than anything you've ever written by far.’

Marshall shrugged. ‘Well, I'm hardly ashamed of that. I'm not a writer for the New Yorker. I have a day job. And the fact that some woman at a magazine can write better than me is hardly something to be ashamed of.’

So Mark asked him: ‘Why don't we write a book that sounds like that New Yorker magazine profile?’

‘Well, if we can do it, let's try it,’ said Marshall.

He describes the process they devised. ‘I talk, he writes, I talk, he writes, I edit.’

The result was the brilliant million-selling What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

‘So that book is by far better written than my other books,’ says Marshall. ‘Why? I didn't write it.’

With his tongue not entirely in his cheek Marshall suggests that the key to writing a New York Times bestselling book is simple. ‘Find someone who can write the book for you.’

6 Finally, don’t obsess about copyright – give it away

Some would-be authors are concerned about other people plagiarising or outright stealing their content. But Marshall stands out by giving away his material. Including his rights to videos as well as PDFs.

‘I'm taking a different approach for a couple of reasons. First, I'm a Buddhist. My basic attitude is that in the long term we're all going to be equally dead. Might as well do a little good, right?’

So he gives everything away.

‘People can copy, download, duplicate, translate, use in church, charity, non-profit, put their name on it – I don't care. Do anything you want to with any of my materials. My attitude is, maybe it helps somebody. If so, that's great.’

Every day someone writes to thank him for his material.

‘What's that worth? It makes me feel good. It doesn't cost that much money for me. And also it makes my life easier.’

I asked how.

‘I never have any problem collecting money from any of these things,’ he says smiling. ‘I have no distribution problems. Nobody says it's overpriced. And nobody complains. There's a lot of advantages here.’

Before we close, let's recap...

ONE MORE TIME: Marshall Goldsmith’s 6 Counter Intuitive Lessons for Authors

1) Focus on your readers’ pain not your panacea

2) Don’t flatter or pander to your readers – challenge them

3) Write a new book every year or two

4) Make new books very different content-wise

5) If your writing isn’t brilliant get help

6) Don’t obsess about copyright – give it away

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