Why books build brands for financial planners, trusted advisers and experts –?the Octo interview with Lee Robertson

Books Build Brands, Episode 1. From an interview between Lee Robertson, CEO of Octo, the app for financial planners and advisers, and Steven Sonsino, a business school professor who also publishes bestselling books.

If you'd prefer to watch the interview click here.

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Episode 1: Why Write Books?

Lee Robertson, Octo: I guess the big question is why write books?

Steven Sonsino, Authors Channel: It’s absolutely the best question to start with, because unless you have a really clear idea of what it is you want to do, what’s the outcome for you, then it’s a huge hill to climb. It’s a lot of effort. Why would you do it?

The first answer is in this story. I was interviewing David Meerman Scott for the Authors Channel podcast a couple of weeks back. He’s the guy who wrote the now classic New Rules of Marketing and PR. Writing a book gives you an unfair advantage, he said.

I asked, what do you mean by that? It’s like getting paid to do your marketing, he said. I loved that. The idea that the very act of writing a book gives you a commercial return and then the book goes on to market you in lots of different ways, which we’ll come on to in a moment. I'm going to steal that idea.

Writing a book is like getting paid to do your marketing, says David Meerman Scott

But moving on from that, let’s highlight all the obvious reasons you’d want to write a book. There’s the satisfaction of seeing something, touching something, holding your book in your hands, and that’s absolutely fine and really important. Huge satisfaction there.

You can see the reason where you would want to inspire and support your community. Penny Power OBE wrote a really powerful personal memoir about mental health and wellbeing, Business is Personal. And so it may be a surprise that a memoir can be an inspiration for your community.

But I think we also need to bear in mind that writing a book has a primary business function. There’s a real business case for writing a book. And I think your Financial Planning Stories initiative, and what’s happening generally at the moment, is really significant. For example, recently there was that the report from the Financial Conduct Authority – remind me what it was called?

Lee: Yes, I know what you mean. The FCA, yes, they’re talking about the advice market. And I guess the most contentious point that came out was this thing about ongoing fees and value.

How can financial planners demonstrate their value?

Steven: I think it was John Lappin wrote that piece, and the answer to this question – of how do we demonstrate our value? – is to write a book. One of the really significant reasons for writing a book is to demonstrate or showcase your expertise, the process that you have. But also to persuade people of your point of view.

Too much we’re sucked into this idea that communication – and social media in general –?means short tweets or shallow blog posts. ‘Short is what people want.’ But all of that is what Seth Godin calls interruption marketing. We’re constantly trying to interrupt people as they’re scrolling through their feeds. Writing a book is a different mechanism. And I think it’s a really powerful mechanism.

Writing a book attracts the right clients automatically

Because what happens when you write a book, if you do it the right way, is that you actually are attracting your ideal clients, the people that you want to serve.

How does that work? Well, when you write a book, it goes on Amazon or some other platform. Perhaps you put it out in electronic form, on Kindle, for example. You might do an audio book, and audio books by the way, are one of the biggest and fastest growing parts of the publishing community. So don’t forget considering an audio book.

You know, I was pleased to hear that that the head of Gap’s leadership development team fell asleep on a plane, listening to my words. I mean, I don’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he did have the guts to tell me that he’d fallen asleep to my words. But here’s the thing, he then wanted to learn more.

Books are inherently persuasive

I think one of the things that’s special about writing a book is it’s long. Long-form content. So, in addition to attracting the right people to you, the structure of the book will guide your reader through a way of thinking, a way of seeing the world, that perhaps they hadn’t thought of before. You can’t do that in a blog post.

So in a book, in a piece of long-form content, you’re doing two major things. You’re actually attracting the people to you that you want and filtering out everybody else.

Secondly, you’re guiding the people that you want by writing in a way – telling stories and sharing evidence, creating an argument through your words – in a way that persuades them, that takes them on the journey.

And then, by the time they get to the end of the book, perhaps even before they finished, they want to ring you. They want to get in touch. So it’s a very persuasive mechanism. I don’t know anybody who’s persuaded by a meme or an Instagram post or an Insta story or anything like that.

Be everywhere now – your book gives you that material

Now, I do share my material, on LinkedIn and YouTube, but mainly so that when people are reading my work and they think ‘who is this Sonsino guy?’, they go out to YouTube or iTunes. They will find me everywhere. So a book allows you to create a vast amount of content and be everywhere now.

That’s one of the other advantages of writing a book – it creates and actually replaces a lot of the content marketing that you might do. I mean, for me, content marketing is the hamster wheel of death.

A strategically-focused book replaces random content marketing

So what I really urge people to do is not to create a thousand random pieces of content and then hammer that into a book, but to write a book, a strategically-focused book, to answer the biggest questions that your clients have. Take the biggest question that your best clients have and answer it in a book.

And that gives you a whole load of articles and podcasts, and maybe even videos, to put on your social platforms. So that when people Google you, as Google, you they will, they find you, but they find through finding part of your core message.

Your book content on social media leads people to you

And that also is why you should write a book. Because when people find you and are attracted to you, all the material you share provides a breadcrumb trail back to your website, or to your phone, that I think is so much more persuasive than shoving your material down people’s throats.

The ability to be found – by influencers, for example, who want to find other thought leaders in your area – is really helpful. And you know, if you are in the Spears 500, or if you aspire to be in the Spears 500 – you should be thinking about how can I persuade people that I am a thought leader, that I am a trusted advisor. Is this making any kind of sense? Being attractive is creating a magnet that attracts people to you, rather than trying to force your message down people’s throat.

Books create a magnet of IP

Lee: So in effect, then, you’re talking about pull marketing rather than push marketing.

Steven: Absolutely.

Lee: So create a magnet of intellectual property that’s helpful, you know, showcases you as an individual, is what you’re saying.

Steven: Absolutely. And one of the things that I would urge people to do is marshall that IP, marshall the knowledge that you have in service of the right audience, the audience that you care about. And sometimes we foul up on that – I know I have. Jacqueline Moore, my wife, and I fouled up big time.

We wrote a book called Leadership Unplugged. You’re old enough to remember MTV Unplugged, I think, the whole idea of go back to the acoustics and let the tune speak itself. So we wrote Leadership Unplugged as a way of saying, let’s get back the basics. Leadership is about constructive conversations. It’s about relationships, emotional intelligence, those sorts of things.

Why did I write it? Well, my day job is teaching leadership at London Business School, as you kindly said, and other places, too. And I was getting a bit confused and a bit put off by all the masses of leadership books that are out there saying so many different things about leadership. So we said, look, let’s get back to some real simple things.

Write your book for your best clients

But I wrote the book for my colleagues in the business school. I was trying to show off, if I’m honest with you, right? It was a huge mistake. And it’s a massive piece of work. It’s still the best thing we ever did.

And till I die, I shall be so grateful to Harvard Business Publishing, who reviewed it and said it was ‘learned yet practical’. And I’m happy with that. Now I can go to the sky in peace. If this book was a theatre show, this would be the three words hanging outside, you know, the review… ‘learned yet practical’. Wonderful feedback.

But my mother, my best friends, they just can’t get into this because it's written for other academics. So don’t write for your peers. Don’t write for the community that you’re in. Write for the community that you serve. That is absolutely number one when you sit down to write your book.

Write in a conversational style

I think one of the other things that I very quickly learned from this was to write in that conversational style. When you finally get to writing it, you are writing a conversation for the reader. If your words are in their head make sure it’s a conversation not a lecture.

And it’s a very tactile thing, isn't it, a book? Somebody is holding your work, whether it’s on a Kindle or hardback. Or if they’re hearing your words in their ears. It’s a very intimate experience.

And actually when they’re reading it, people are shutting out all the other things, the stream of stuff that’s happening in their life, to concentrate on what you say. So why not speak in a conversational voice?

And that will lead later on to a conversation about how to create a book, because it is possibly the largest piece of content that you’ll ever create.

Dictate your book –?speak it out

So finally one of the tips we give and we’ll get onto that later, I’m sure, is to speak it out. Record it rather than sit and write it.

There’s something odd that happens to people when they think they’ve got to write a lot of text. They start to write and it sounds very formal and very pompous. When actually the best persuasion is verbal and?interactive, as this conversation is. So I think that to me is a big message, right?

Anyhow, concluding thoughts: write to solve your best client’s biggest problem. And write for them and them alone.

Discover Octo for financial planners

If you’re a financial planner or adviser, learn more about Octo here: https://octomembers.com

Resources to help you write your book

If you need help to structure and write your book download our flagship title, You Should Write a Book.

Download it now from our website: https://authorschannel.co.uk.

Or get in touch – we have a complimentary book idea audit that will help you shape what your book could look like and how it will win your customers over.

Check that out at https://bookideaaudit.com.