Debbie Jenkins Enhancing Professional Credibility with Short, Valuable Books

In this episode of the Wisepreneurs Podcast, my special guest is Debbie Jenkins, an accomplished author and publisher with a rich background in engineering. Debbie shares her thoughts on making a significant impact by writing short, valuable books to build credibility.

Our discussion revolves around the themes presented in her books, "Stop the Credibility Crisis" and "Stop Writing Books Nobody Reads," and how embracing authenticity and using technology can drive business growth.

Debbie’s unique approach emphasises the importance of credibility and how writing concise, impactful books can generate passive income and establish professional authority.

Episode Highlights:

•Debbie’s transition from engineering to publishing

•Key insights from “Stop the Credibility Crisis”

•Strategies for writing short, impactful books

•The role of credibility in professional success

•Using books as tools for business growth

•Maintaining authenticity in the digital age

•The influence of technology and AI in publishing

Resources Mentioned:

Books:

•“Stop the Credibility Crisis” by Debbie Jenkins

•“Stop Writing Books Nobody Reads” by Debbie Jenkins

•“The Emergent Approach to Strategy” by Peter Compo

Mentioned Names:

•Ann Latham, author of “The Power of Clarity”

•Liz Bywater, PhD, strategic CEO advisor

Connect with Debbie Jenkins:

•Website: Debbie Jenkins

•LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debsjenkins/

•Programs: Writing & Publishing Cohorts, Only Authors Club, The Asset Path® Weekly Strategy Calls—see Debbie's website for details

Transcript

0:37

Welcome to the Wisepreneurs podcast today I'm excited, and I really am, excited to host Debbie Jenkins, a prolific author and experienced publisher whose engineering background uniquely informs her strategic approach to business. In this episode, we delve into Debbie's insights from her latest books including Stop The Credibility Crisis and Stop Writing Books nobody Reads. We explore how you can write short, impactful books that can significantly enhance your business. Her expertise in writing and publishing offers valuable lessons for independent professionals. Join me for an engaging conversation with Debbie Jenkins.

Nigel Rawlins: 1:18

Welcome Debbie to the Wisepreneurs podcast. Can you tell us something about yourself and where you're from?

Debbie Jenkins: 1:23

Yeah, thanks Nigel for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you today. So yeah, I am a Brit but I've lived in Spain for the last 19 years. And so I've driven on the incorrect side of the road for longer than I've driven on the correct side of the road. And I was an engineer by discipline, so I did an electronics engineering degree, but I wasn't a very good engineer,'cause I talk too much. And so I ended up finally, after running a few businesses, finally getting back to the thing I always really wanted to do, which was anything to do with business and books and writing. So that's what I do and that's where I've come from.

Nigel Rawlins: 1:58

Did you start reading books as a young girl? Where does this interest come from?

Debbie Jenkins: 2:04

Yeah, I used to, so I come from a very poor family and so we didn't have many books in the house. And the books that we did have, I would have read them like 73 times. The old Reader's Digest and I would just dive into them. But we used to go to the library every week and I would use up my four library tickets. Siblings tickets and anybody else who walked past and didn't use their ticket. So I would be reading reading, and then begging us to go back the week after to swap them all out for something else.

Nigel Rawlins: 2:32

Which part of England was this?

Debbie Jenkins: 2:33

Central Birmingham, quite inner city

Nigel Rawlins: 2:36

Aren't libraries fantastic?

Debbie Jenkins: 2:37

I know, and they're so sad that there are so few of them. I love libraries and bookshops, and there's a few of those as well. But yeah, they're just, doorways into other worlds. They're amazing.

Nigel Rawlins: 2:49

Mmm, I think that's good. All right. So one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you is because of the books you've written, which I thought were fabulous. And the one I read was, Stop the Credibility Crisis. Can you tell me why did you write that book?

Debbie Jenkins: 3:03

I wrote that book for me, and I think that's one of the best types of books to write, if I'm honest. Cause I wrote that book because, I was grappling. with my own credibility crisis. So I've been running businesses for nearly 30 years and every 10 years or so, things would happen, the environment changes, the technology changes, stuff changes. And every 10 years or so you feel, and I think it's even more quickly now, more rapid, you feel things have changed. And in 2022, I started, having sold my previous publishing company, I realised I was in another crisis mode and I was starting to feel bored and boring just like seriously feeling bo boring and bored with what I was doing. And I evaluated that and thought what am I going to do to get outta being bored and boring? I would I joke, it's not a funny joke. It's a true joke. I joke that anybody who's ever written a book then becomes a book coach. And so I was seeing competition. Massive amounts of competition and and good competition. It was not knocking them, they were doing great jobs but massive amounts of competition and everybody's saying the same things. So we were all saying, I'm a book coach. I can help you write a book. You should write a book. A book's a really good idea. Business books are really helpful. And we were all saying the same things. And so none of us were standing out. And I was very fortunate because I've been doing it for 20 odd years and so I had great trust because I had what I think of as credibility clues. I had all of the testimonials, previous books that I've published, previous books that I've ghost written, previous books that I've written. I've written 17. So I had all the credibility clues, but I was boring and, slightly bored and so I evaluated what was going on and what did I need to do and that's when I came up with the idea for the book and I didn't write that book immediately. Why didn't I write that book immediately? Because I didn't feel capable or confident to write that book immediately. And first needed to write my other two books. So I've written 17 in total, but these three recent ones have come as a trio. As a short series of books. And so I needed to write the other two books first. And so in true Star Wars fashion, I wrote The first one last because you really should read them in the other order, but I didn't feel, competent or capable to write that third one first. And so I wrote the other two first and got some good feedback on them, changed my business model, changed the way I was working with clients, and then felt confident to write, the credibility crisis book.

Nigel Rawlins: 5:45

Wow. Because I read the credibility crisis first, and then I read, Stop Writing Books Nobody Reads. So which one did you write first?

Debbie Jenkins: 5:55

I wrote of these three, Start Writing Books Nobody Reads first because that's my day job. That is, I can help you write a book that people will want to read. And then the second part of my day job is helping you get use that book to grow your business, which is Stop Selling Books Nobody Buys. But the first book, which is, I wrote third, is Stop the Credibility Crisis, because that's the why you should be writing a book and using it to grow your business. Without the why, most people do the how to, the directions type books, but without the why, the doing doesn't make sense. You need the why to put the doing into perspective, into context.

Nigel Rawlins: 6:36

I can tell you from reading just those two, I really get what I need to do if I'm going to be writing. That's when I get the time, because I've probably written about 80 articles on my website, but I'm revamping that into a different way of doing things. And then I want to take those and, but the podcast has given me plenty to talk about too, or write about. But what You Stop Writing Books Nobody Reads, it's just quite brilliant, but we'll get into that. And I'm just going to, plug you right now that if you're not reading these books, you, and you're an independent professional you're not on the page. You need to get onto this stuff. Stop The Credibility Crisis, the why. It's for people who are running expertise based businesses to get credibility. So tell me something about why do they need to get their credibility and how do they get to stand out?

Debbie Jenkins: 7:31

Okay it is the problem. Standing out is the problem. And We can stand out for the wrong reasons. So what I was spotting, so these were the problems I was seeing. There were lots of problems, but the sort of main problems that were impacting me. And so those are the ones I mainly think about was that there is a really low barrier to entry from becoming an expert in a company to then be taking that expertise and becoming a consultant or a coach or a trainer or, an independent. So that's a really low barrier to entry. Previously, like when I started a business, the barrier to entry was much harder. the tech wasn't there, the support wasn't there, but now that barrier to entry has been just swiped. So that's one of the problems. So anybody can claim that credibility by becoming a coach or a consultant. The other problems I was seeing, and this is a problem for all of us expertise based businesses owners is that there is an overload of information. So we are not short of information. In the 90s you'd still read a book and you'd still go to a library. Whereas these days you just type it in Google and suddenly you have more information than you can possibly ever read. And for me, it became very loud. The environment feels very loud. There's lots of noise and how do you break through that noise? And then the third thing, so these are the three things that really impacted me. The third thing was about technology and AI. And this is in 2022, this was really very clear, which was technology and AI were making it so that, that, barrier to entry disappeared. Volume of information and technology and AI just accelerated that. It was just like a sudden what was already a problematic suddenly took off being even more problematic. And so any expertise based business owner will find themselves with those problems. So that's what I was trying to solve. So how do we solve that? And in particular, It was about how do people want what you've got to sell and trust you to deliver it. So it's a trust desire paradox I was, playing with, which is, you might have. So for example, I felt that I was being boring. And when I looked around the world, I thought lots of people were being boring. Sorry, everybody, We're all saying the same things in the same way, doing the same looking the same. We've gone through that period where everybody was on Zoom and everybody had their hello and love heart candle in the background, and we all looked the same. and so how did your potential client decide if they should trust you or not. And so there was a trust part of the scale, but then there was coupled with that, the desire. And so some people are really good at amping up the trust. That's usually our lovely expertise based business owners. They've got the qualifications, they've got the skills, they've worked with the people, they've got the, testimonials and case studies. Trust trust. And then other people are really good at upping the desire scale. And I call these bro commerce because I'm cheeky. And so they're the people who are really confident at selling something, even if they've never done it before. So they're like, they have this massive amount of confidence and they are out there. And they are really clever understanding what we want. So they're the people who say, six pack in a week and write your book in seven seconds. Boom.

Nigel Rawlins: 10:42

Oh, Twitter's full of it. Thousand people sign up for their writing course and I'm thinking, but they're all the same.

Debbie Jenkins: 10:48

And they're just going to churn out more noise, okay, and that's just going to make the problem bigger and louder and so I want for my clients and for the people I work with is that we can amp up the desirability and fall back and use our trust that, the things that we know we've already done. And that puts us into what I think of as the credibility quadrant. So it's, we're doing something that people want and we are trusted to deliver it, to be able to do it. So that trust and desire, without those two things, we either fall into boring or, into growth.

Nigel Rawlins: 11:26

The bro commerce, I look after 18 websites and I probably say this every podcast I talk about and some of them don't need to stand out so much because they're fairly established businesses and they've got their clientele, but others are in a competitive situation and they're competing against 20 or 30 other websites and they're all using SEO and writing booklets and writing blog articles and stuff like that. And that's the issue. And if you're an expert in something and there's 20 other experts in the market or a hundred other experts and now across the world there can be experts who are competing with you. Your problem is standing out, so what you're talking about is actually creating something that stands out and gets through that noise. We live in an expertise economy. I have hired people in Spain to do a couple of different jobs, experts there, or hire people in the Philippines, New Zealand, many countries I hire people from, so that we're in a world economy in many ways, especially if you're a freelancer or self employed professional, so what about the technology? That's obviously changed and that must be quite stressful because you've got to, for people who are older you're not so tech savvy and you're out there trying to work, what are some of the challenges you found with the technology?

Debbie Jenkins: 12:45

Yeah. So I think the technology, so AI for, let's use AI, cause that's the big technology that everybody's talking about. And AI is really useful as what I think of as a sidekick. So I call him Buddy and I use him as a sidekick, but I would never, I personally would never allow my AI to write my book. And I know that there's some people think that's a good idea. And I, I'm not going to have a stand up argument with them, but I don't want to read a book written by AI. I want to read a book written by a real person, a real human being who's been through all the things and done all the things. Gets me, understands me, can build rapport with me. Like for example, this podcast I wouldn't want to be interviewed by a robot. I would much prefer to be interviewed by the wonderful Nigel, because then we have a conversation, we build rapport, we understand each other, we can change direction. Technology, back to the question, technology has leveled the playing field. So it's given everybody access, which is a great benefit, but all benefits, I think, come with their downsides. And I think it's going to just make the amount of noise in the market louder. And I have three things that I think we need to do. I think we need to be disruptive. We need to be creative and we need to make connections. And if we don't be disruptive, creative and make connections, then it doesn't matter how loud we shout, people are not going to hear us above the rest of the noise. And so Nigel, what you do with your podcasts is this connection. You help people connect. We connect with you, but we also connect with each other because we can hear each other's voices. and that connection, I think is, it's just so valuable. I think it's only going to get more and more valuable rather than get more diminished.

Nigel Rawlins: 14:29

I think that's definitely it. The personal is going to be important. Again, the biggest problem of me producing a podcast is I'm competing with every other podcast out there. And, and that's why I've called it the Wisepreneurs. It is aimed at older, more mature professionals, mostly women. Who are self employed or thinking of being self employed, and hopefully that's a narrow enough niche that eventually somebody will say, Oh, that's what I'm really interested in. But even after 50 episodes, I'm not getting that many followers. So it does take a while, but I've noticed a lot of on the podcast chats, they're saying I haven't got many followers or gee, it's so hard, I've got to keep doing it with the 50 activities I've got to do to produce one podcast, there's virtually 50 things you have to do. You do them automatically, but I'm, as I said I'm trying to automate some of those processes so it doesn't take so long. And that's the issue is there's so much information out there and so many people screaming. And as you said, the bro commerce people they're very good. You're right. I've paid for some Twitter courses to get 50, 000 followers and it doesn't work. It worked for them, maybe.

Debbie Jenkins: 15:38

Yes. It worked for them because you're now one of their followers. And so there is a really big market for selling like for example, LinkedIn. So how to build your following on LinkedIn from a person who has a massive following on LinkedIn, but they don't do anything else.

Nigel Rawlins: 15:55

I signed up for one of those courses.

Debbie Jenkins: 15:56

Me too.

Nigel Rawlins: 15:57

The course was 200 bucks, so it wasn't that expensive. So very smart positioning, expert in that. But, as I went through it, it was all formulaic. And if I was just thinking, and this is the problem, and I think you you clicked on it that you've got to differentiate in many ways, or be different or confront them. If those people are using that formula, they're all going to sound the same again.

Debbie Jenkins: 16:20

Absolutely. All you're doing is just adding to the noise and still you won't be standing out. And I think there is a risk and it's definitely a risk for people starting their first business. I fell into this in my first business in the nineties, which is the risk is you say we are better. So now you're commoditizing yourself against everybody else and you're just putting yourself in the same band, but you're saying we're a bit better or a bit cheaper, which is even bigger danger. And I think what we have to say is we're different. This is this disruptive part. So we're different. Why are we different? Because we don't just say do the same thing. So for example, with book publishing, I don't say write your book, it's your legacy book. Okay. 40, 000 words. Blum done. I say write short, valuable books, lots of them, make more of them, do a series of them because then you're going to get the flywheel effect. You're going to get Amazon on your side because they'll present your books. You're going to write fast and get books out there faster. So that's a differentiation. That's something a slightly disruptive because most people think they're only ever going to write one book. And I'm saying, no, write a series of books. So it's disrupting the sort of pattern. One of the things people when I talk about disruption though is oh my gosh, I've got to do everything completely different. Now, I've got to do podcasts standing on my head. I don't know, they're like silly disruption. I don't think you need to do that. I think you just need to find a differentiation angle that people can grasp and understand and that will pass what I think of as my 12 year old test. So if I explain to you, write a series of short valuable books that I take to a 12 year old, this is my fidelity test, a 12 year old could then tell a 10 year old and if the 10 year old told it to me it would still make sense. That's a differentiator, that is a disruption. If your disruption is just crazy for crazy's sake, then that's not going to get you what you're looking for.

Nigel Rawlins: 18:09

That's what I love about your book on Stop Writing books That Nobody Reads because you do go into that and you're saying it's okay to write a shorter book and you go into why and how and we'll talk about that. But yes, the 40, 000, words it's the thing. And you might take three or four years and some of the writers do take three or four years or more to write them, but you're saying write shorter books. So let's talk about that. Because, I thought, wow, that's smart.

Debbie Jenkins: 18:37

Think this is how I was thinking of it. And this is why I did it was because every time I would come to a writing of my own book I'm helping my clients write theirs, it would turn into a gigantic project. It would get bigger and bigger and bigger, because they would feel, and I would feel that we had to get everything in there because it's'The book'. Okay. So there was a pressure to get everything, in there. So if you, take that pressure away and say I'm not going to get everything in here. Okay, that's, first of all, that makes it easier for you, the writer. But it also makes it easier for the reader because the reader doesn't need to know everything you know. They don't need to know everything. They just need to know that you can solve their first, next problem. And then after that, you can solve the next problem. And then after that, you can solve the next problem. And then they'll follow you. They'll come along with you. And then You'll build up that trust. You'll build up the desire for the next book. So you're building trust and desire by creating the books. And we tap into this short attention span Tik Tokers and 30 second videos and that stuff. And we tap into that, without trying to fight it all the time. We just say, okay. I'm going to write you a book. It's a short book, you can read it in a couple of hours. At the end of it you're going to get a transformation, a result. And then you're going to love me because I've helped you get that transformation. And then you might want to work with me. And then you might want my next book. And then you're going to tell other people about my book. Whereas if it's a long book, I don't know about you. Our first connection was you said you've got all these unread books on your Kindle. Oh my gosh, and I was like, yes, me too. I have hundreds of opened and unfinished books. Whereas if you write short, valuable books, people can read them in a couple of hours and dive into your world with you and then take action, get a result and be happy.

Nigel Rawlins: 20:23

I think that is fantastic especially for a specific thing. Like most of the books I read I don't really read a lot of business books. There's one I've been reading that I've read twice now and I will interview the author. It's about, believe it or not, strategy. It's brilliant. But I read it on my Kindle first and now I bought the actual physical book and I've been reading it, underlining, and then I'll take some notes on cards and then I'll just keep going through because I really want to get this in my head. This guy's pretty retired now, but he worked for DuPont for many years, and he's written the most brilliant book. But it's not something that you can read in a day. It's taken me six months and it'll probably take me another couple of months till I've got my head really around it, and I can actually use what he's saying, because I find it fascinating. And then I'll talk to him on the podcast. And I've already spoken to him and I think he's brilliant. But Richard Rumelt, who wrote a book on strategy, said to him, you are the only one I've talked to because you're not an academic And I think he wrote an introduction to him or something. So the brilliant thing you've just said is write a short book that I think solves a problem. And then maybe they'll buy another book from you. And then maybe they'll want to work with you. Now that's the interesting thing, isn't it? Because if you're an expertise based business or professional, you want clients. So what you're saying is, by writing these expertise based books, It builds up your credibility and because they're short and sweet and on the ball, they might buy the next one and the next one, and they're affordable. Of course,

Debbie Jenkins: 21:59

Yes.

Nigel Rawlins: 22:00

eventually they trust you enough. You can do it on your website, but it's hard work.

Debbie Jenkins: 22:03

Yeah, and there's still a credibility, extra credibility clue with a printed book. There's still, and I hope that will go on for a long time, but there is still that because if you've gone to the time and effort and energy to get your book professionally edited, produced, published, then that adds an extra clue to people that you take yourself seriously. I think it's one of the problems for e books at the moment, remember I said earlier about the barrier to entry so low? Anybody can write an e book. But it takes just a bit more energy and effort to get published and to publish a print book. And that helps with the adding an extra level of trust in you to help with that credibility. I was just thinking, the strategy guy book there is still space for your strategy guy type books, which are, these are the big, meaty, deep, important research books are still placed for those books. But they're not necessarily the type of book that's going to for our expertise based business owners, our professionals, it's they're not necessarily the types of books that are going to help them build business, to grow their business, to help them get clients because they take too long to write and then they take too long to read and that lag can be the death for some businesses. If the lag between an asset getting into hands and converting it to a client is too long,

Nigel Rawlins: 23:26

my aim of that is to distill it down to something that's useful for a one person professional business. So I guess that could be a book in itself.

Debbie Jenkins: 23:34

It would be a brilliant book.

Nigel Rawlins: 23:35

That's what I love about his stuff, it's so practical and it's just so real. And it's called the Emergent Approach to Strategy because it says you cannot predict the future. You have no idea what's going to happen next week, but you can plan for it, and it is all very interesting, and I think you get it as well too. You write about books, that get read. Let's talk about that. The book has to get read. I've got lots of books that I haven't read.

Debbie Jenkins: 24:00

Yeah, I call them the sloppy shelf sitters. I have lots of books that I haven't read on my Kindle, on my desk. And I have really good intention to read them. Usually the title or subtitle is fabulous, or the author is fabulous. And you go, I really need that book. And you get the book. And then it comes, and it's heavy, and it's big, and it's thick, and it's deep, and there are no pictures. I love pictures in books. And that kind of reduces your chances for me of reading a book. And so we don't want that as business owners. We actually want people to read our books. And why do we want them to read our books? Because if they read our books, this is my idea, which is if they read our books, one, they're going to get to know us a bit better because they'll understand why we're saying the things we're saying. But two, is if we've written our books well, they're going to get a result, they're going to get a transformation, something will change in their lives for them. And then we, by association, are connected with that transformation and therefore we have more credibility in the reader's eyes. And we want our books to be read, and we want our books to be referred to. And if you read a book, it's much easier to refer it. You can say, you need to read chapter six, because chapter six talks all about the problem you've just been describing. And so we can refer books. They don't necessarily need to be bought. And that's the subject of the green book,'Stop Selling Books Nobody Buys'. Because sometimes we can use, and frequently we can use, our books to generate business without selling them. We just get them into the hands of the right people. They will read it, they will enjoy it, they will be transformed, they have some sort of transformation, and therefore associate us with that brilliant transformation.

Nigel Rawlins: 25:41

So it's actually being written for that purpose, to create that transformation. But your book explains how you do that and it is, it's quite a discipline you've got in there. You're saying, you need to get people to give you feedback and it's got to be a real problem for one person.

Debbie Jenkins: 25:58

Yeah, I'm so bossy about that.

Nigel Rawlins: 26:00

Yes, I

Debbie Jenkins: 26:01

I am. Okay, did you notice? Yeah, I was running a session last week with some clients and I was saying we need to write this for one real person. They're like, Oh, she's on that again, the one real person. Okay. I really believe this is true. having written 17 of my own books and having published over 200 over the years. I know that the books that do best for the author are the books that were written for one reader. Why? Because if you really, truly understand that one reader and you write the book to solve their real problems, not the guess problems, the imaginary problems you might have made up, but real problems that they have, because you've asked them, You've understood them, you've investigated with them, you've seen what they tried before that didn't work. If you've done all of that, if you've done that due diligence and you really understand your one reader, you will find that there are other readers just like them. But if you try and write for an avatar or a group of people, you end up writing for nobody and nobody feels like the book was written for them. So excited when somebody says, Oh, it felt like you wrote that book for me, that means I did a good job.

Nigel Rawlins: 27:08

And you also say as you said, the book has a job to do, not all books are read, and there are types of books you're suggesting they should do, so you said the'directions type book','the landmark book', but not'maps'. Do you want to talk about those three?

Debbie Jenkins: 27:24

Yeah, that's another of my bossy things. Again, I'm a very bossy person. So I think of books as a business asset. So it's something that you should Invest in and it should give you a return on that investment rather than just be a a cost for you in your business. Okay. So I think all assets can fall into directions, maps or landmarks. So what are direction type assets? They are one, two, three, ABC, do this, then this. And in order to write a directions type book, you have to know exactly the one reader. Or the one listener, in your case Nigel with your podcast, where they actually are right now. Okay, so you can then give them directions to turn left at the pub type directions, yeah? But you can't give a turn left at the pub type direction if you didn't know where they were. So directions type books and they're brilliant books. They are how to get stuff done and so it might be how to get your website done on WordPress or how to start a podcast or how to set your tech up for audio. Okay, whatever it is. They're how to type books. And so in my case, it's how to write a book that people read great books, good books You can write them, succinctly and you can make them very valuable. On the other end of the extreme are the landmark type books. So these are I'm standing on top of a mountain waving a flag. I don't know where you are, reader or listener. But you're somewhere and you're looking for a flag. Okay. And this is my flag. There are going to be other mountains with other people waving their flags, their landmarks. And your landmark has to be really distinct, different, probably a bit disruptive. So that the reader or the listener will take the time and effort and energy to walk up your mountain. They might be already halfway up someone else's mountain, and you need to get their attention and get them down their mountain and up yours, okay? So those are landmark type books, and they're wide, too. Really strong, distinct why you should do this. And Stop the Credibility Crisis was a why to book, it's my landmark type book. It's if we don't do this, if you don't do this, there's going to be a disaster. Rah! Okay? And then there's those books in the middle which are called map type books. I call them map type books. Now map type books, there's nothing wrong with them, I've written some map type books. But for expertise based business owners, we don't want to get bogged down in mapping the terrain, the rules, the regulations, giving them much attention to every part of the map. What, how we see the map, it's our version of the terrain, it's not the real terrain, it's a map of the terrain. We don't, that's quite labour intensive job to do. And frequently the reader doesn't care. They just don't care. they just want to know how do I get this job done or why should I do this job in the first place? And often, if we write a map type book, we end up writing a book that won't get read, won't get referred, won't get searched for, won't get shared, because there's just too much and they also go out of date. Our map type books, the deadliest. They go out of date quite quickly. So I've got a map type book which has been in production for nearly 20 years. And I'm at my fourth edition. And every single time I publish on that edition, immediately, I see something that's out of date. This is because map type books are dreadful for expertise based business owners. This is a different business that I run in Spain. Focus on directions or landmarks and you'll keep yourself safe.

Nigel Rawlins: 30:49

And you do explain those in this book, in the'Stop Writing Books That Nobody Reads'. Now your steps to write the books are really quite interesting. If you use AI you just say to AI give me an outline for this particular topic, but you're saying capture your thoughts first. In other words, maybe use a bit of paper and pen and write it down. Then you write an outline and then you use a pyramid scheme to write things or the structures. So tell us what you mean by capturing the thoughts.

Debbie Jenkins: 31:17

Yeah, I think, most expertise based business owners, you could class them as thought leaders if they found that confidence to get their thoughts out there. So you Nigel will have a hundred thoughts a day and some of them will be brilliant thoughts and some of them will be thoughts that you'll just let fly by. And so the key is to capture those thoughts and to mix those thoughts up. That's that differentiation. That's that, disruption that we're looking for. Okay, so we need to capture our thoughts first. If we say to the AI, write me a book about writing books, it's going to give you the book that everybody else's could write, and you don't want that. You want that differentiator. You want the distinction. And so one of the things, another of my bossy things, is that I encourage my authors to think for almost as long as they're writing, so we can write within three months. If we've done good thinking first. And so I take them through two steps in that thinking process. One is to write a working outline. So it's just all these things I've captured over the years or however I've captured them. I use Notion, sometimes I might use Roam or Obsidian. But however you've captured, you might use paper. I use lots of paper and notepads and cards and post its. However you've captured them, you now go through the thinking process and create a working outline and you test that working outline with your one, at least your one real reader, and then a smaller inner circle group, which I think of as the book lovers team, but you test it. You don't just assume you know what people want to read. And then there's another step I encourage people to do, which is to create the writing outline because the writing outline, this is where I use Barbara Minto's SCQA process because it's just a beautiful process. It's a true tried and tested process. It works really well and it helps you get there faster, which is SCQA, which is situation, complication, question, and then your chapter is the answer. If you go through that for every chapter, you have one situation, complication, question, answer for the whole book. So that's your one, answer for your one reader, but you know where they are, you know what's complicating things for them, you know that the question that they want resolved, and then your book is the answer. And then you do that for each chapter, and then you do that for each sub chapter. You're going to create a book that is so easily readable that people fall into the next chapter because it's clearly ordered and organized. And the better thing than all of that, which is brilliant for your reader, is it makes it so much easier for you, the writer. So you, the author, that means you can get it written in a couple of months. Now you can just say to AI, write me a book about writing books and it will come up with something. And you can then say, fill in that chapter, fill in this chapter, fill in this chapter, and it will come up with something. But it's not going to have that intelligence and that thought and that nuance and that ability to connect different ideas that you add to whatever book you write.

Nigel Rawlins: 34:16

Oh, I think that's spot on because I'm finding now I have used AI a lot, but it's not capturing what I want it to say. So if it kicks out something from say, for example, a transcript of one of the podcasts I now say to it look, I was thinking about this, during the podcast, and these are the things I want to emphasize. Kick me out something with that, and then I have to edit and saying, no, I want it to be more like that. And then I can take it when I put it into say Grammarly, which I'll edit in there, and then I'll rewrite it myself in my own words. So it does help you, but I think your approach it's changed the way I think about how I write now because that's the big issue is how do we get who we are, our writer's voice out there? And you won't do it with AI. It's an AI voice and it's pretty obvious, I think anything that, like I'm seeing the word seasoned a lot. We're seasoned professionals.

Debbie Jenkins: 35:11

Yeah, and'realm' is my favourite. If I see the word'realm' anywhere, I guess it's AI. And so sometimes I even actually use it. In the realm of writing books. In the realm of podcasting. Landscapes. Oh gosh, yeah. So there's so many words. But Nigel, you're using AI fantastically. I think how you use AI is brilliant. I think of that as source grounded AI, that rather than you just give a question to the AI and let it go and find the average of the average, which is what it creates from the large language model. You're giving it your source, so your interviews, your podcasts, and you're saying, from that source, write in my voice, writing the way I want you to write, follow my rules, and that source grounding is a brilliant use of AI, and I, I encourage my authors to use that too. But we never let the AI write our stuff.

Nigel Rawlins: 36:02

I have thousands and thousands of notes in Roam because I've been taking notes for four years. So I read articles and it feeds in, and then all the books I've read on the Kindle, I feed in. So some of those topics, I've got several sources so I can try and mesh it together and bring it out. I'm even using AI now to process the notes I have on my ROAM database. So asking it to give me a summary, asking it to find the major themes that are in there, give me an FAQ. Give me some questions that I can ask. Give me some alternative, article ideas that I can write. But that's because I've been using it fairly heavily all day, every day, and I also learn as much as I can about it. But I think just pressing a button and saying write me something like that, that really frightens me. and I'm hoping that, cause one of the big issues for all my clients is that their website does stand out. Now, if Google is going to have, a keyword dense, article written by AI, beat a handwritten, thought out professional one, then we're in trouble.

Debbie Jenkins: 37:08

Yeah, same with books. If Amazon's going to allow an AI written keyword dense book, trump a thoughtfully written, rapport building, real person, credible person book, then we are in trouble. We are in trouble and we dunno what's gonna happen. So we have to read your strategy book to be better at at the emergent approach. Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: 37:30

The interesting thing about that strategy book is the strategy is a rule. It's a constraint that you have to follow. And that's what I liked about what you say. This is how you write a book like this. You have to do these things. It's a decision he calls it a decision making framework, and out of that decision making framework, you come up with the rule that you follow, which is the strategy rule. That helps you make your decisions.

Debbie Jenkins: 37:58

I need to read this book. My engineer background is just like waving at that book. I really love it. The Theory of Constraints. I put constraints into all processes, all books, 20, 000 words is the constraint. Obviously you can break your constraint if you want to, but otherwise you're tending to chaos and, entropy and all sorts of horrid things. And you don't want to do that you want to have nice constraints so that you can get jobs finished.

Nigel Rawlins: 38:24

It's about bottlenecks and the emergent approach is the whole idea there is, it's very hard to define what the world's going to do. So you have to have some rules. How are you going to know? You've got some rules.

Debbie Jenkins: 38:36

Yeah, it's brilliant, I love this idea. I'm actually writing a book at the moment, it's called Dog Gate Stick, which is about the theory of constraints. The idea is that, if you imagine a dog with a stick in its mouth and it tries to get through a gate, and the gate is the constraint, the dog has to do something. If it keeps walking towards the gate with the stick that is wider than the gate, it's never going to get through, banging your head against a brick wall type thing. But so this idea of constraints and having rules some people really don't like, I'm not, you can't tell me how to write my book, I'm not going to tell you how to write your book, I'm going to tell you why to write your book with these constraints, so that your voice is there and it sounds like you and we get it finished.

Nigel Rawlins: 39:21

That's the issue. I'm really interested in AI and automation at the moment, and I've got three little e books that I've written that I haven't yet edited and made sure that it's got my little thing in it. Because I'm really interested in getting these automation things done. And I really need to do this podcast. And that's my biggest danger with a strategy rule is that's really going to constrain me and I want to do 50 things. And I've realized, that's the lesson we have to learn. You can't do everything. The other big lesson you have to learn is it takes many years to stand out that it's not gonna just happen with one book. You've got to do the series, but the discipline that you've got in there, that's what I really loved about it. I squirmed when it said, Show it to somebody, get some feedback. And I'm going, Oh, but it's mine, it's personal, I want to just put it out there. And you're saying, no, get somebody to look at it, get some feedback.

Debbie Jenkins: 40:13

I tell you that, that process, frequent and regular feedback changes books. it changes the people who write books because it makes us a little bit more humble, I think, because we do have that. I certainly do. It's it's a lovely book. It's fantastic. I wrote it. Of course it's brilliant. I have one of my wonderful beta readers. She reads everything I write and all. So thoughtful and chic. Her name's Karen Cory and she's fabulous. And what she does is she makes everything I do better, and she does it so effortlessly and she does it so beautifully. When you find those types of people in your life who can give you that feedback, they don't make you feel foolish or silly for making a mistake or getting something wrong or for not being clear. They make you a better writer. Gather those people around you. They're your wonderful, I call them the book Clubber's Team.. You want two or three of those people that are really on your side, but also have that confidence to give you the hard feedback. You went off track a bit there, Deb.

Nigel Rawlins: 41:15

That's that will be my biggest fear is finding three people and asking them to do that. But, I think that's what you're saying. If you're going to try and stand out in, with your expertise based business, these are some of the challenges you're going to have to face.

Debbie Jenkins: 41:29

Yeah. Those people that read your books and that give you that strong feedback, they tend to turn into your biggest advocates, your biggest referrers, because they really get you and they've invested because they've given you that feedback, they've invested in what you're creating in your asset. And so they tend to turn into your biggest advocates and referrers as well. So I think getting over the fear, and I have the fear, I have the fear every time, every single book, every single thing I have the fear of what are people going to say, but getting over that really helps you write better books and also create a little gang of people who love what you do.

Nigel Rawlins: 42:06

So let's just talk about your coaching then. So people hire you to help them do this. How does that work?

Debbie Jenkins: 42:13

So the big thing I changed so yeah, so previously I've been doing one to one. One to one is lovely, it's wonderful, but it's very intensive and that means it's very expensive. And so I still do one to one but it's, the price is high. And there has to be a massive commitment. The price is not only in cash, but also in time and energy and thoughtfulness. Okay, so what I decided to do was, I also I noticed that that one to one relationship is brilliant because you can build up lots of strength in that. But I was always getting my authors to go outside of our one to one relationship and get that feedback like we were just talking about getting to the book lovers team. So I thought, what if I brought two or three or five authors together and they're still going through that almost one to one because I'm there with them every week. But they also have an inbuilt feedback gang, peers, group, book lovers team, already built in, who are also going through it, so they're going to be very sensitive to giving feedback and understand that fear that we're all feeling. And so that's when I came up with the idea of writing cohorts. And I've done four cohorts now, and I'm recruiting for the fifth one in September. And the cohorts have been amazing because, this is community, this is connection, this is everything wrapped up in one. It's the intelligence level in the room. Each of my clients is super intelligent, but then you bring them all together and the intelligence is off the scale. And and the empathy is off the scale, the understanding. I am so proud to say how brilliant their books turn out because It's just like an accumulator effect. And that's how I'm working with people mostly now. So you join a cohort and you work with a small group of people who are all dedicated. We get our books written within a year and published within a year. And so you have those constraints in there. So we're in this stage now We have the whole publishing process and package, and so we publish their books for them. But the benefit to them is not only the cohort and the group, is our publishing model is different. So this was another of my disruptions that came up with in 2022, which was the publishing model is different. The old traditional publishing route is you would go out there, you would pitch to a publisher, they would take a bet on you, you would then be on the line for writing your book and fit within their guidelines and all of that, and you would have a, rule set on that. And then you, the author, would be, on the line for marketing your book because all publishers require and rely upon the author to market their books. So that's the old way. And then a new way came about, which is my old company that I sold, which is called a hybrid way, which is you pay for the professional services and then the publisher takes a percentage of royalties. But the new way that I came up with which has been going around for a little while, but the way I do it is slightly differently, which is you just pay for the professional services. And the addition I've added on there is, and we do a reverse royalties, so you have 100 percent control of the published book, and then you pay me a royalty once a year. Okay, so it's a very low royalty. So now I am committed. Traditional publishers, you have the benefit of them being committed to making a good and professional product because their name is on the line. Hybrid publishers you have their commitment to a good product because, they're going to get usually 50 50 of the profit. the publishers of service type there was no commitment there. So you pay an editor and they don't care at the end of the day. They just walk off and do another job. You pay a designer. They don't care at the end of the day, their name's not on the line. It's yours. Okay. Whereas this model now brings the benefit of, I'm going to look bad if I do a bad job because I'm committed to the relationship. But gives you, the author, all the control of what you wanted, which is why you might have gone self publishing in the first place. That's the model, our publishing model, which is you get complete control, you get a professional product at the end of it, and you get to keep all of the royalties and pay us a percentage at your discretion once a year.

Nigel Rawlins: 46:17

Fantastic. All right, is there something else that we could talk about?

Debbie Jenkins: 46:21

I'm a bit of a chatterbox. I think we've covered everything. If I could make one suggestion, is if any of your listeners are finding themselves bored of what they're saying or doing. They might find themselves in that boring quadrant where I found myself. And if they find themselves there, then be brave and ask people what they think of them. That was my kick out of the boring quadrant. I said, what am I really good at? What do you really like from me? When you speak to me, when you come to me, what do you come to me for? And so that was when I realized that I needed to up the desire. And so I think that's my, if I could give one takeaway from my chatterboxing, it's to be brave if you find yourself disappearing into the noise and ask people around you what they think you should do next and what they think about you.

Nigel Rawlins: 47:11

I think that's good, yes. It can be a lonely place if you're feeling like that. How would you like people to find you? I will put detailed show notes with this. So where would you like people to connect with you?

Debbie Jenkins: 47:24

The easiest place is just to connect me at DebbieJenkins. com, because everything, anything else that you might want to do with me, and I have a free bi weekly group where we just meet up and talk about one of these subjects so anything that you want to do with me or connect with me will be from DebbieJenkins. com is the best place.

Nigel Rawlins: 47:43

And are you on LinkedIn as well?

Debbie Jenkins: 47:45

I am on LinkedIn, I love connecting with people there. It's my favourite place.

Nigel Rawlins: 47:48

That's fantastic. Thank you very much, Debbie, for joining me. It's been a wonderful conversation, and as I said, I love your books, and I would hope that people are going to reach out and buy them. You can get them on Kindle.

Debbie Jenkins: 47:59

Yay! Thank you, Nigel. Thank you for having me on.