Although I’ve been helping small businesses with their back end operations for over a decade, I recently switched my focus to working with book coaches. I’m still keeping my current clients, who I love helping, but my goal is for all of my new clients to be book coaches.
How Book Coaches Influenced My Writing and My Business
My First Book Coach
This turn in clients has been a slow journey, but one that feel absolutely right. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but it started when I got serious about writing in 2018.
I started with telling some family history stories using a creative nonfiction structure. Until then I’d only written business nonfiction, so being a little creative felt odd at first. But the more I thought about these people and how they acted, lived, dressed, etc,, I realized how much I loved story telling and decided to write a book completely from my own imagination and not a fictionalized tale of real people.
So, like all new writers, I word vomited pages and pages of whatever came to mind. When I went back to put it in some kind of order I had no idea where I should start, what to leave in, what to delete, or even if I had a good story idea.
So, after some Googling, I found a site called Author Accelerator that sounded like exactly what I needed. I filled out a form about me and my book and within days I was matched to a book coach named Sarah Williams. Her background in psychology and her writing experience was perfect for my novel about romantic relationships and family dynamics.
I don’t remember how many months we worked together (2018 feels so long ago!), but with her guidance, direction, and expert feedback, I finished the book. Working with Sarah also taught me so much about writing and how to curb my info dump tendencies. I learned more during the time we worked together than I did from trying to cobble together information from books, Facebook groups, and random experts.
By the time that writing project done, Amazon had introduced Kindle Vella so I focused on creating serial stories for that platform.
My Second Book Coach
While putting stories together for Kindle Vella I had some longer novel-length ideas roaming around my head that I couldn’t shake. One seemed to beg to be written about but I didn’t know where to start. Around that time, a book coach I followed on Instagram, Amy Goldmacher, put out a post offering to answer questions about writing a book.
I DM’d her with my question and she gave such thoughtful and helpful advice that I signed up for a paid 1 hour call with her to discuss it further. While I wanted to tell a big story that spanned years, she helped me see how I could focus on a smaller slice for my book without losing the context I was going for.
That story is still unfinished, but when I go back to it I’ll have a much better idea of how to tell it.
My Third Book Coach
The third time I worked with a book coach was just last year. Robin Henry is an Author Accelerator Certified Book Coach I connected with when she posted her Estonia writing retreat on my Writing Retreat Directory in 2023. I also had her as a guest on my podcast, Your Writing Retreat Connection where I learned that she specializes in historical fiction.
Because I can never have enough half finished writing projects, hahaha, I had also been working on a very fictionalized version of my grandma’s story in West Texas in the 1930s. Robin’s background and focus on historical fiction led me to join her small group coaching program for a year. The feedback and notes on my manuscript were invaluable for helping the story and the characters really come alive.
I also used a VIP day Robin offers to help me get the scenes in the right order as well as another service where she evaluated an idea I had for a novel set in the mid-1800s in Oregon.
Interviewing Book Coaches
And, to top it off, without even trying I’ve interviewed many book coaches for my podcast because many of them also host writing retreats. So after experiencing book coaching from a writer’s perspective, I was starting to see how their businesses worked.
And, being a systems and process professional for, well really my whole life, I began to see how my services working with small businesses could help them.
Bringing My Personal Philosophy to My Business
But what sealed the pivot for my business was that over the past seven years, I’ve solidified a philosophy “Because the World Needs More Storytellers” and a mission to support those who help writers get their stories and voices out into the world. I already do that with my personal passion project, the Writing Retreat Directory, and I want my business to embrace that as well.
It all boils down to book coaches help writers, so I want to help them.
Your Turn
Is there a specific type of writer that you love to work with? One that lights you up and excites you to work with? If you’re up for sharing, leave a comment.