Writing a book is the #1 way to position your business as the authority in your niche. The good news? It doesn't need to be difficult to write a book!

In this episode, Mike Capuzzi shares how you can create a short, helpful book (a Shook™) in a few easy steps and begin leveraging the power of authorship for your business!

Specifically, Mike shares:

• How a book is your business card on steroids
• Why you should write a short book to promote your business
• The number one thing you need to know before writing a book for your business
• How to know what you should write about

Mentioned in This Episode:

** Get Your Free Gift from Mike HERE **

• Bite Sized Books
• The Magic of Short Books (Book)
• The 100-Page Book (Book)
• The Author Factor Podcast
• The Magic of Free Books (Book)

About Mike:

Mike Capuzzi is an Amazon bestselling author, publisher, and coach for business owners and sharp, aggressive entrepreneurs looking to get to the next level in their business. Throughout his 27 years in marketing and 24 years as a consultant, Mike's diligent and innovative use of High Impact Marketing has consistently surpassed the expectations and outcomes of "traditional" corporate marketing concepts and business strategies for his clients.

This expertise has led him to be a guest speaker on the stages of some of the world's foremost marketing experts, including Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer, Rory Fatt, Ed Rush, and Julie Steinbacher. To date, Mike has helped thousands of business owners create more profitable marketing.

In 2019, Mike launched Bite Sized Books, a new publishing venture founded on his proven formula for creating short, helpful books (known as shooks) for business owners, entrepreneurs, and CEOs.

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About Angela

Angela Frank is a fractional CMO with a decade-long track record of generating multimillion-dollar marketing revenue for clients. She is the founder of The Growth Directive, a marketing consultancy helping brands create sustainable marketing programs.

Her new book Your Marketing Ecosystem: How Brands Can Market Less and Sell More helps business owners, founders, and corporate leaders create straightforward and profitable marketing strategies.

Angela is the host of The Growth Pod podcast, where she shares actionable tips to help you build a profitable brand you love.

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Welcome to The Growth Pod.

Today on the podcast, we have Mike Capuzzi, who's an American bestselling author, publisher and coach for business owners and aggressive entrepreneurs looking to get to the next level in their business.

Throughout his 27 years in marketing and his 24 years as a consultant, Mike's diligent and innovative use of high impact marketing has consistently surpassed the expectations and outcomes of traditional corporate marketing concepts and business strategies for his clients.

Mike has been a guest speaker on the stages of some of the world's foremost experts on marketing, including Dan Kennedy, Bill Glaser, Rory Fat, Ed Rush, and Julie Steinbacher. To date, Mike has helped thousands of business owners create more profitable marketing. Mike, welcome to the podcast.

Angela, thank you very much.

I am very excited for our conversation today. You're going to let us know how we can stand out as business owner by being a published author.

But before we get started, can you share a little bit about why business owners should even consider being a published author to begin with?

So people are used to putting authors at a typically a higher pedestal, if you will.

We're also used to paying for books, even though there's a lot of free book opportunities out there, we're used to going to Amazon or to a book bookstore. So books are an asset that we are conditioned typically to pay for.

So those two ideas really make books and being a book author different than a lot of other types of marketing. So that's, you know, what I help people with. So, for example, nobody's paying for your business card, Angela. No one's paying to look at your website.

But once you publish that book, because I know you're going to work on one here in the future, they're going to buy it on Amazon, they're going to pay for it. And by that, just by that very nature, it changes the feeling that this is just marketing content too.

This is a book that has valuable content, et cetera. So that's one key difference.

And then again, like I said, the status, the authority, the expert limelight, if you will, that a lot of people put on authors really enables business owners to differentiate themselves. So real quick, let's just say we're talking about a local chiropractor, for example, in a small town, whatever it might be.

But in your town, chiropractor, a Just doing the typical old marketing. We'll fix your back, we'll fix your neck, whatever. Chiropractor B promotes her book that she wrote on the 10 Ways to Help your back pain.

That's a whole different level of marketing. It's a whole different level of positioning.

And oftentimes that person who's written that book, as long as everything else remains the same, will be the go to choice.

Yeah. And something that I've seen you talk a lot about is that writing a book doesn't have to be a chore.

In fact, I've bought two of your books before this podcast. And for the audio listeners, I'm holding them up. They're very specific size and they're quite short.

So you talk a lot about this specific type of book and you call it a Shook. Can you tell us a little bit more about a Shook and how it can make the transition from business owner to author a little bit easier?

First of all, I love it, I think, and I've been on a lot of shows and I have, I have my own podcast. You are the first host that has ever bought my books and like, you know, done that kind of due diligence before the interview. So thank you.

So a Shook is our brand. It's my brand. It stands for short helpful book. Right. So I kind of mashed those words and made up Shook. That in itself is a little marketing lesson.

Right, everyone? There's a ton of people that help business owners publish books, but nobody except us. Mike Capuzzi, bite Sized Books is publishing Shooks.

So Shooks are about an hour read about a 60 minute read about 100 to 120 pages. They're done that way, Angela. And you know this because you've read them. It's intentionally small.

It's designed to say, listen, Angela, let's have a conversation, you and I, an hour conversation. I'm gonna teach you about the power of being a book author, et cetera. And if you want more from me, you can get more from me.

But for this conversation, for this book, this Shook, we're going to get together an hour, hour and a half, whatever. So a typical business book that you buy on Amazon, 60 75, 100,000 words, it could literally take years to write. Ashook is about 12 to 15,000 words.

And it's a heck of a lot quicker to write, Angela. Whether it's your first book, you know, that's a great way for a first time author.

We have dealt with many clients who've written and published and spent gobs of money on traditional books. And now they come to us because they see the value of this short, helpful content. So that's what a shook is.

Amazing. So now that we know what a shook is, what are the tips that you have for a business owner who wants to begin writing their own shook?

So the thing to understand, first of all, if there's any head trash like, oh, I'm not a great writer. Who am I to write a book? You know, who am I to do this? Et cetera, et cetera, I, you know, failed English, whatever it might be. Get that out of your.

Get that out of your mind, okay? It's like you said, it's. It does not have to be a challenge. I always encourage our clients to write like they talk. People like authenticity.

They like real people, especially when it's like local business owners, for example. You know, they want to know and get to know, like, and trust you, the person, not some facade. Right? So just don't worry about any of that.

Typical head trash. The number one thing, Angela, I would think of. Well, there's actually two things I would think of.

First of all, who is your ideal reader for the shook? Right? That's really key because not everyone should be reading your book. Okay? You want to target this and think, okay, who am I best able to serve?

Who am I looking to attract more of and write your short, helpful book to that individual, for example. Then after you identify that target audience, the next big thing is what I call sort of the big idea. Like, what can you share?

Most of us are doing the same thing that our competition is doing. Right? I'm a marketing consultant. I'm a book publisher. There's a ton of people that do the same thing.

So it's imperative that you figure out ways to describe what you do, how you do it, in what sounds like a unique way. And that takes work. That takes effort. It can be done.

So again, going back to our chiropractor, Chiropractors typically all do the same thing, but how does chiropractor A differentiate herself from chiropractor B with her unique system, her unique strategies, tips, whatever it is. Right? Procedures. You've got to figure that out and then wrap that into your book because that's. We call that your special sauce. Right?

That's what makes you uniquely different than all the other people who do the same thing you do. So those are two things. Who's your target audience and what's your big idea?

I love that.

For me, when I'm writing my book, I wasn't really sure what my big idea was going to be, but by the process of sitting down and kind of like creating an outline and then filling it in a little bit and mulling on it over the, like, a couple of days, I was able to create my big idea and be like, oh, yeah, this is actually the special sauce that sets me apart from my competitors when I'm consulting. So.

So do you find that that type of process works for your clients, or do you recommend that they sit down and do all this, like, what is my special sauce kind of background work before they get started?

Typically when they work with us, and specifically they're working directly with me, we brainstorm it. Right. So we get on zooms and such and we brainstorm these ideas. And these aren't just newbie business owners.

Again, I've dealt with folks that have been in business 20, 30 years, and they still don't necessarily know how to articulate their special sauce. But it's really thinking about, you know, let's say you collect customer reviews, client reviews.

What are your clients and customers saying about you? A lot of times you can glean little nuggets that will help you identify that you, you know, you are the expert, you know, what you do.

It really is just becomes incumbent to figure out ways to make it sound new, different, you know, exciting, unique. And that's really the strategy. So it takes time. So good for you for doing it. It will evolve.

Yeah. As somebody's spectral sauce evolves, do you recommend that they go back and update their book? Yeah. Okay. So try to keep it constantly up to date.

I do.

I recommend that because a couple reasons, and I do that all the time, because a self publishing and hybrid publishing, like what we do, it makes it very, very simple to make those kind of updates, Angela. So, yeah, the days of you write a book and it's done. I mean, a lot of people still do that. Right. But technology has made it so easy to update it.

You wouldn't know that, but we're constantly updating it, you know, feedback from our clients, things I See missed opportunities, fixing mistakes. So, yeah, I would keep it fresh. Okay, so, and by the way, sorry to interrupt real quick. The other thing is use it in all your marketing, right?

It's not just meant to be in your book. Use that effort that you created, that special sauce and have it permeate your website. You know, whatever trainings you do, whatever it might be.

Yeah, I think that's really key.

The number one thing that I'm finding when going through this process of writing my own Shook is that it's forcing me to think about these ideas and communicate them in a way that's much more effective than any of my marketing has been to date. So it's going to make my website better.

It's going to make all of the communications that I have with clients and prospects better, and it's going to make just kind of like the whole marketing ecosystem. That's actually what my book's gonna be on. The whole marketing ecosystem function a lot better. So with that, these books are really quite short.

You mentioned 100 to 120 pages. Can they really be effective? Are we able to effectively put ideas in this book? And then something you talk about is using them as a sales tool.

So how do you fit all of that in just 100 pages?

Well, let me answer your first question. And if I forget the second one, remind me.

So if you and I were just after this is over, if you and I were to sit down and continue this meeting for an hour, for the next 60 minutes, do you think I might be able to help you write even a better Shook or maybe think about your own marketing differently? All right, well, there's the answer, right? A Shook is a 60 minute conversation in written format, right? In a book format.

So yeah, it can be super impactful. You showed my other shook 100 page book. When I last checked how many copies of that we sold.

That's what it was. A new client joined and we do, we do a first meeting.

And the way he found out about me was because two different people that are in his inner circle gave him copies of my book. So, like this, the way it all works is it's just amazing. And yes, it can be very, very powerful when you publish A book.

And it's out there for the world, whether it's your local community or on Amazon, for the world. The amount of possible impact is amazing. And I mean that relies on the fact. And you and I were talking about this earlier. It's got to be a good book.

It's got to be a quality book. You have to have good review. It's got to be real, right. It's got to be good. Right? Short, helpful. And when that happens, magic can happen.

I love that. I will just plug your book one more time. You go into all the things about how you can make your book not only a book, but also a sales tool.

And I think we can go so into the weeds on all of that. But it's better if somebody just picks up your book so it will be linked in the show notes.

But I want to know for the people who are inspired from this episode to write their own book, they have it written. What do you do now you have your book. What do you, what do you do with it after?

It is the critical part. So I will tell you this, Angela, and you're going to experience this when you get your book published.

Writing the book, publishing the book is the easy part. As much as that you may like, you're crazy, Mike. It took me weeks, months, years, whatever it is. Right? It's the easy part.

Marketing and promoting and giving that book out, I call it the consistent, persistent promotion of the book day in and day out is the harder part. So it's a long term game. This is not something like, hey, I published my book, I'm going to market it for three weeks and be done.

Unfortunately, a lot of people do that. And unfortunately, there's people with boxes of books in their closet, et cetera. It's a long term play, Angela.

You have to figure out ways to use it, keep it fresh, get on podcasts, whatever it might be to keep it out there and keep it circulating. Doing paid advertising on Amazon and other, you know, other venues. So there's no shortage.

But I don't know if you read it yet, but you know, you'll have to in the future. The Magic of Free Books. It's a book about how to use.

Now, typically, our authors are just giving their book away as much as possible, but whether you sell it or give it away, it doesn't matter. But in that book, I share 50 or 60 tips on how to use your book once it's done. And even that list is not exhaustive. So, yeah, it's a grind.

Yeah, I also Read that book before. That's the magic of free books and short books. Because I was able to read three of your books before we hopped onto our show today.

Because they were short, right?

They were short and they were easy to read.

Where most guests, they have the typical nonfiction really thick book where I'm lucky to get through, you know, maybe a third of it before I'm able to have a conversation with them.

But in your book, the Magic of Free Books, you talk about so many ways to give your book away and that the goal after you publish could be that you give a book away every single day.

So if there's 30 days in a month, you should aim to give away 30 books, which I thought was really transformative because I mentioned before, one of the things that you really talk about is using your book as a sales tool. And so therefore, by giving your book away, though it's going to cost you a little bit upfront.

It just should reap a large ROI in the long run if you.

As long as you're giving it away to the right people. Right.

That's, that's that key thing about just making sure, like obviously me being on your podcast, the business oriented business growth podcast, your audience, your listeners are ideal for me. Me being on, you know, a cooking podcast probably wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

Absolutely.

So you really have to think about the type of people that you're trying to reach with your book and then the type of clients that you're trying to bring in your door by writing your book. What's next for you? Mike, you have written over 15 books. You help people write books. Is there a new project you're working on?

I'm really curious what you are up to.

Thinking about retirement. Think about moving away and getting a lot of land and, you know, just being away from it all. Partially true.

We are doing some updates on our end of just doubling down. We have carved a really nice little niche for our short books. There's others that do it. I see. You know, maybe they're copycats, maybe they're not.

I don't know. You know, we work with business owners, entrepreneurs and corporate leaders.

So, you know, getting out there, sharing, you know, sharing the gospel of short books, if you will, you know, that's not going away soon. I have some side projects that have nothing to do with book publishing and stuff like that that are in unique industries.

We just built a big membership site for that. So these are different companies I'm partners in.

So I've got some unique things that I'm not going to share publicly just because it doesn't really make sense for your audience. But just, you know, there's those things that keep us busy. But I just want to keep. I will tell you, Angela, and you'll see this.

As you grow your consulting business and, you know, help more and more people. It really is very cool when you bump into somebody, someone leaves a review, someone emails you whatever it might be, and they say, you know what?

You really helped me. I struggling. I figured this out. And that's what keeps you going. Because, you know, most of the time you don't hear from folks, even clients.

I work with clients for three, two, three months straight. They publish their book and then I don't hear from them again. Maybe that's on me.

But, you know, it's just that knowing that you're helping people is what keeps me going. And, you know, we'll just keep seeing how. Where this takes us.

I love that.

If someone wants to keep up with you potentially because they want to write their own short book or because they just want to kind of keep up with what you're doing, where's the best place for them to do that?

Well, with your permission, can I offer a gift?

Of course.

All right, so we have three shooks. I call it my magic kit. The magic of gratitude, the magic of working together, and the magic of short books, which you did read, right?

Yeah.

So I have a, like I said, my magic kit. Now, these are digital books. If you want the print versions, you have to go to Amazon. You can't. Two of those you can't get on Amazon.

But regardless, they're digital books. I'll email you a link. You can read them online. The whole book, there's nothing left out. But if you go to mikecapuzzi.com magic, it's a hidden page.

And just let me know you heard me on Angela's podcast. I'll email you the links and you'll have three of my shooks to check out.

Amazing. I'm definitely gonna have to check out those other two. I read the Magic of Short Books and I got so much out of it.

So if you're listening and you're at all in what Mike is doing, the link he just said will also be in the show notes in case you're like me and you are like, driving while you're listening to this and you want to make sure that you have it later. Everything will be there for you. Thank you so much, Mike, for joining us today. I really enjoyed our conversation Angel.

Thank you and again, congratulations on all you're doing. Yay.

Thank you. And let this be my thank you to you. Like you have helped me just through your shooks.

So I want to express my gratitude for coming on the podcast, sharing everything that you know with our audience but also just putting out these really helpful books. So thank you.

I have a little, a little one more little offer before I can't let it go. When that in your Shook is published, whether it's a shook or not, Angela, I'll invite you on my podcast.

I've been doing it for five years called the Author Factor and I only interview nonfiction book authors, which I assume you're going to be. So we'll have you on my podcast.

I would love that. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode of the Growth Pod, please leave us a review.

Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.