Here’s my second of eight videos on questions to ask yourself as you write your first book as a speaker.
Building on what we had before, you need to ask yourself what sort of person are they that wants to learn from you.
- who are they
- where do they live
- what are their ages
- what is their living arrangements
- do they own their own house
- are they renting
- do they live on their own
- do they live with their family
- do they live with their parents
You need to know why do they want to know what you can help them with?
A school kid learning French wants to learn French probably to pass an exam. Somebody older in life learning French might have bought a villa out there and wants to integrate themselves with the community. Why do people want to learn French? What is the ultimate goal? What is it they really want? Do they want to feel appreciated? Do they want to communicate better? Do they want to save money or time or effort or live a pain free life or what is it? Why do they need to know? What is it?
The final bit is precisely what do you need to tell them that they need to do? What do they need to do to achieve those objectives and think about that because that will help steer what you’re doing. In other sections when I’ve talked about research how did other people meet those requirements? How did othfer authors get that objective met? What can you learn from that? How can you do it a bit better?
Think about people’s learning styles. Some people like to read. Some people like to listen. Some people like to watch face-to-face video like this. Audio books particularly popular format for business books because people listen to them while they’re in the airport going from one destination to another and things like that.
Some people if it’s something where you’re mastering something like a language a lot of those people like interaction and quizzes and they like to be asked questions and see if they know the answer to give them confidence. They like the positive reinforcement to encourage them to do the next chapter. Think about the sort of people, what motivates them, what makes them learn most efficiently and most quickly and most thoroughly and think about that when you’re planning your book before you even start writing it.
How much resolve has your reader got? Do they want to lose a bit of weight in seven days or are they the sort of people who will chip away at it six months and work really hard? How much resolve have people got? How much resource have they got? Are they going to spend money on solving their problem? If you’ve got a book on how to keep your house clean and if your readers are short on cash they’ll want to be using vinegar to clean their windows. If they’ve got a lot more money, they might use one of those electric steam cleaners you see advertised on the shopping channels.
They’re going to have different amounts of commitment and everything so you need to bear that in mind when you’re giving them advice, when you’re sharing the process. I would recommend that you pick the lowest common denominator, easiest path all the time for your processes and your techniques that you’re sharing.
Just bear that in mind.
How can you make something as
- pain free
- easy
- cheap
- quick
- simple
as possible for people to follow… because people will love you for it in your book.
