Ever wondered if writing a business book is worth the effort? I’m breaking down the real impact my bestselling book, Establish Yourself, has had on my brand coaching and consulting business. From attracting premium clients to scaling my services without a team, this episode is for you if you’ve thought, “Should I write a book this year?”

🎯 You’ll Discover:

• The surprising way writing a book helps you attract better-fit clients who are ready to invest.
• How a book can clarify your expertise and build a stronger business foundation.
• Why it’s not about book sales—and where the real payoff comes from.

📝 Resources Mentioned:

• Join Business Boost Read-Along with the Author, kicking off January 8th: https://www.greateststorycreative.com/boost
• Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anniefranceschi/

📚 Curious about whether writing a book could grow your business? Tune in to learn what it really takes—and how it could pay off for you.

#BusinessBook #CoachingSuccess #ClientAttraction

 Are you curious about writing a book to grow your business this year? According to self-publishing school, as many as 81% of people say that they want to write a book- but only about 1% actually do. I'm in that 1%. And today I'm going to tell you whether it feels like it's worth all that effort and share the real impact that writing a best-selling book has had on my business.

  Welcome to the Establish Yourself® Podcast, your guide to elevating your brand, offers, and systems as a coach, consultant, or service provider. I'm Annie Franceschi of Greatest Story Creative®. I'm a brand strategist, author, former Disney storyteller, and forever Muppet fan. If you're ready for next level success, we'll get clear on your brand, package your process, and streamline your systems so you can land quality clients, boost profit, and make time for big dreams in your business and beyond. If you're ready for less confusion and more magic, it's time to establish yourself.

 I knew exactly what I wanted for my 35th birthday.

I wanted an entire day to outline my second book, Establish Yourself. It was hard to imagine on that day that I actually got -thank you to my husband, Gus for watching our 3 month old baby at the time- I did not know that it would take me two years to write and launch Establish Yourself.

That is the book that inspired this podcast and it brought together nearly a decade of my work. The premise of the book is helping you come up with a clear roadmap to brand, streamline, and grow your business that will not keep you on social media, 24 /7. I hate that. I don't know how you feel about it.

We're going to talk a lot about it on the show, but, that's the general premise: clear action steps for you to grow your business to the next level without living online constantly. It was a bestseller in seven categories on Amazon. It has 57 five star reviews. It's sold hundreds of copies and it took me about 440 hours to create and thousands of dollars in editing and getting new brand photos and video. So the question really is- was that worth it? And what can you expect if you invest your time, energy and resources into writing a book this year? My clients are just like you.

They are coaches, consultants, experts, and they're toying with the idea of writing a book. Many of them have written at least one, if not multiple. I have done it actually three times now. And today we're going to talk mainly about that book, the business book.

I did write a self-help book called Permission to Try and a children's book called Small Biz for Kids. But I want to focus today on the lessons I learned from Establish Yourself, because that is the book I wrote that details what I believe about business- put it all together into a framework- and it's the book I use to establish my expertise and to grow my practice.

I want you to know what that impact really looks like. And I'm going to share three things today, from my experience that might just motivate you or talk you out of writing that book.

The first thing. One of the biggest impacts, real impacts of having written a business book is attracting my favorite clients. Without a doubt, Establish Yourself has brought me better fit clients for the work that I am most excited to do. It is really exciting to have a free consultation and have people show up to that conversation literally holding the book on the other side of zoom and they've read it, or there are a couple of chapters in, and they're so excited to work together. They are showing up ready and invested in working with me, which is huge, right? You always want to have those conversations where people know what you do. And they're excited to talk to you and it's not a convincing conversation- it's really about is this a fit and is this the right solution at the right time? Putting out this book has really turned me from being a done for you provider, someone who does your logo and your website and your brand into much more of a done with you consultant. People who are coming to me because they've read this book and they want to implement the advice because the advice is not only about yes-

how to, start branding yourself- but it's also about running a smart business and having confident offers and great systems. And so the book has helped me shift and has attracted clients who don't want the done for you as much as they want the done with you. They want to learn how to establish themselves.

They want to put this work into action. So I've gone from being 98% done for you to now about only 25% done for you and 75% coaching / consulting, which is really exciting. I get this question a lot too, and it fits under this world of attracting clients, which is, has the book paid for itself? I certainly invested many thousands of dollars into having professional editor, into having new brand photos done and having, a video created for the book.

So it was not a small investment by any means, several thousand dollars I did a number of other things like the cover and the design layout and things like that. I would say absolutely. And I can measure this at the book has paid for itself many times over. So what I paid to self publish it has certainly paid for itself. One of the ways it pays for itself, it's not in book sales.

Okay. A lot of people make this mistake of thinking that book sales is where you're going to make money. Your book really ends up functioning like your business card. So the way that the book has really paid for itself is one- I have a program called Action Club- which is a direct lead in from the book that has certainly paid for my book expenses many times over.

I think I was checking about two and a half times over. But really where it's paid for itself has been attracting four and five figure clients who show up and they're not shopping. They are ready and they are interested in working only with me because of that book. So that's the first bit is the real impact has absolutely been attracting favorite and profitable clients. The second impact I've seen is that it's really helped me confidently own my expertise. It did this by forcing me to create a body of work. When I had my 35th birthday and I started outlining my book, I had no idea it was going to take me twice as long as my first book Permission to Try, which is a self-help book. But looking back, it makes a lot of sense because the thing that took me so long about Establish Yourself that didn't happen with Permission to Try was I was having to take eight years of what I have practiced and what I have done with clients and make sense of it, put it into frameworks, put it into examples, put it into stories.

Give it a structure and say, "what do I believe? And what don't I believe about how we should be showing up as coaches and consultants?" So what was cool about writing the book and then ultimately launching it and leveraging it in my business has been that it forced me to pull all of what I believe together into this big body of work.

It was certainly an existential crisis to do a lot of that kind of work, but so incredibly valuable. I think it also really helped me to confidently own- this is what I believe, and this is how I think we should do business and I think we should not do business. And I think that, that energy and that effort though, painful at times , full of second guessing - has really helped me to build an amazing foundation of growth and change in my business.

I'm so, so proud of that- helping me confidently build that expertise and create that body of work. Flowing into that is the third thing, which is writing that book gave me a profitable foundation to scale my services, to go from having one signature offer, which is The Brand Story Solution.

I can do your clear marketing message, your consistent visual brand and a website that pulls it all together- into an entire offer suite and value ladder. I'll talk more about value ladders in future episodes. Um, but that's the idea of having multiple offers for people at different price points. I like to organize them. Around the same person, but at different levels of emotional and financial readiness. As I said earlier, the money that I've seen come from the book has not actually come from book sales. Transparently, my biggest year with book sales was actually about $5,000

It has been a phenomenal way to get people into my world. They discover who I am. They read the book and they become those favorite clients for other services. Right. Um, so It has really helped me to create natural extensions of what I am doing and help me scale without having a big team. I don't really have any interest in managing other people.

I really love what I do. I want to work less on the BS tasks, make more money, have more fun in my business. So having this book has really given me a way to scale, to charge more for my services, to have more services, but I'm not reinventing the wheel. And that's something I want to talk a lot about on the show as we go into future episodes. You do not need to create a million things.

All of the time. I wish someone had told me that it really is about building this body of work and I'm going to do a whole body of work episode soon. But the idea here is that you can take what you have and remix it. You can go deeper, but people want to get to know you for something. And if you're always hopping from thing to thing- people aren't going to get to know you for that.

And I was floored. And it led to almost $20,000 in new clients and clients who come almost completely sold out my program called Package Your Process. Having a book, I thinking about it, not like literally I'm going to sell so many copies, but really there's always different ways that it can have this impact for you.

So this is just a couple of those examples of how it has gotten people ready to work with me. And it's helped me create more offers to meet people where they are. If you were to ask me, is it worth it? Absolutely. I think with the right expectations and strategies, it is a hundred percent worth it, but you have to go into it knowing that it is a lot of work.

It is a lot of hours. As I said, at the top of our time together 440 hours, I did track it. Many of my clients had also written books and have seen similar effects. They've also used the book to get speaking engagements and other opportunities. And certainly I've done that too. But if I had to boil it down to these three things, I would say, if you want to bring in more favorite clients, you want the pressure and the benefit of defining what you believe, your methodology, your frameworks, and you would love to have more of a foundation to scale your services-

I think writing a book could be a really worthwhile investment. So keep those potential results in mind. And if you have big ideas for your business, and you are curious about Establish Yourself, as I mentioned, I'm actually leading my virtual book club- Business Boost Read-Along with the Author- right now.

It's starting on January 8th. So if you're listening and you want to hop in and join us, you haven't missed too much. We're going to start with a kickoff on the eighth. You can join even that week as well, but come and join us, read the book along with me. Come ask your questions and let's go make a clear growth plan for the year. Come ask me about self publishing as well.

Be happy to answer those questions. Maybe I'll see you there or on our next episode, I'll make sure that the link to Business Boost Read-Along is here in the show notes.

Until then I am cheering you on, as you decide whether now is your time to write that book you've been thinking about. I can't wait to hear what you do.

 Hey, do you like surprises? Here comes the show's credits, but just like a Marvel movie, stay to the end so you don't miss something fun I put in just for you. Thanks for tuning in to the Establish Yourself® podcast. I'm Annie Franceschi and I want to hear from you. Follow me on LinkedIn. Share your favorite takeaway from today's episode as a comment on my latest post.

Mention your favorite Muppet in your message so I know you're a fan of the show. And for expert branding help, a free consultation and more resources, visit greateststorycreative. com / slash podcast. Now here it is your moment of magic.

Fun fact. Even though I've written books, I actually prefer watching movies to reading. My all-time favorite movie is While You Were Sleeping. Chris Kattan who was on SNL- he liked to say your favorite movie should be the one that you'd watch if you were stuck on a desert island. "Schindler's List" is a great movie, but I can't watch that forever. So what is my true favorite movie? I would absolutely say it is Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping. Bonus fun fact, that movie was actually called, "The Coma Guy.". So don't feel bad if your first draft title isn't so perfect.