Five Fundamentals for Creating a Successful Book, Podcast or Video Series

There are many good reasons to want to create something, including: personal expression, helping and/or entertaining others, catharsis, curiosity, changing the world, supporting a business or career change and so on.

In this article I want to respond to those of you who’ve asked for advice on writing a book, starting a podcast or creating a video series (particularly one geared to supporting a business).

While I don’t have all the answers to guarantee success (nobody does), I see the same pitfalls again and again for those wanting to venture into creating media. I’ve made lots of those same mistakes myself. I also see some personality traits that hurt the chances of eventual success (e.g. ego, lack of a quality mindset), and some traits that help (humility, openness to new ideas, continuous improvement mindset and so on).

You can begin to address these potential pitfalls by thinking through five initial planning steps (a.k.a. the five fundamentals) that help align and strengthen your idea, and ensure you don’t neglect critical steps that are essential to the overall goal you are trying to achieve (beyond just creating the media).

These five steps are:

1. Match your creative process (and expectations) to your why
2. Don’t tell, Communicate
3. Get creative
4. Less is more
5. You still have to market(,) genius

Let’s get started!

1. Match your creative process (and expectations) to your why

Before jumping into creating your book, podcast or video series, I suggest that you first ask yourself why you are creating in the first place.

Asking why is great practice for any new endeavor. Why can help you to stay motivated and to stay on target.

This is particularly important since when you get into the weeds and the routine of creating your media, it is so easy to find yourself having done a lot of “stuff”, but at the same time be completely off course.

If you think about it, creating media is usually a means-to-an-end rather than the end in itself.

Hopefully the creation process is fun, and lets you grow, but most of us at least want to have an audience and/or use the media to support a business, or make a change in the world too. That is the “ultimate end” I’m talking about.

To be honest, writing a book, recording and editing a podcast, and shooting video can be a real grind and you might want to give up, particularly if there is a long lead time before you get to show your work, or if there hasn’t been much response to the work you’ve shown.

Statistics show that most media get an audience of less than 200 on a regular basis. Most books sell less than a few hundred copies, most podcasts have less than a couple of hundred listens per episode, and so on.

This is sobering news for new creators. Most of us have seen the success stories, and kind of assume that our idea will be a hit and fame and fortune will follow instantly.

That probably won’t happen, and overnight success is myth in the majority of (if not all) cases. Most creators have been at it for a while, and have followed steps such as the ones I’ll outline below to strengthen and scale their idea.

It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to monetize/break even on your media project straight away, but it’s important to also look beyond audience numbers to understand what media can do for you and your business/causes.

Firstly, you might just enjoy doing what you’re doing for the love of it. It would be absurd to not do something that you’re curious about, passionate about or love, just because you’re not guaranteed a huge income from it straight away (and by not doing anything you ARE guaranteed not to reach people).

A media project can help extend your reach to other circles and networks. A media project can help position you as an expert in a field. Media can help you connect with a new audience and connect more deeply existing audience/customer base. Self-produced media can help garner interest and publicity from both other creators, and from traditional media.

Two of the best things for me from hosting a podcast, for example, had nothing to do with pure numbers or economics. Firstly, I got to hear personal stories from listeners of how a show had affected their lives in a positive way. And secondly, I got to meet a wonderful group of guests, many of whom I’ve remained friends or collaborators with since.

I think that those two “indirect” benefits had to do with the “why” of the show being about helping people and making the world a better place. The why influenced the rest of the creative process.

Your why might end up infusing everything you do, hopefully making it more unique, and increasing your chance of success.

It’s common sense, but I’d say that the longer the potential timeframe to produce your media, the more clear (and strong) your why should be, and the more disciplined your planning around timing and execution should be.

So a book is typically long form, long time (9 months to multiple years from idea to publishing). For a book I’d suggest going deeply into all five steps in this article before putting pen to paper. For a short form video that takes a few minutes or hours to shoot and edit, you can skim through the steps more quickly. It might be more important just to do the thing and get feedback (and some confidence that you can do the thing, even if the quality isn’t there yet), rather than get too bogged down at the first pass through.

But… over time, it still makes sense to be more systematic about doing the five steps more thoroughly otherwise your audience will plateau, or diminish. They’ll support that you’re doing something new initially, but if you’re not creating value for them, they’ll quickly get distracted and spend their time elsewhere.

Lastly, it is so so important not to neglect all the other critical tasks supporting your overall aim beyond creating the media.

What I mean by this is that if you’re planning on starting a business, or using media to scale an existing one, you can’t drop the ball on things such as sales and marketing, networking, strategy, business model testing, operations and improvement, budgeting, planning, cost management and so on.

Be honest with yourself and remain flexible. Do you really need a book or podcast to start doing the things you imagine will come with publishing?

Usually not.

Act as-if. If you wanted to write a book to get speaking engagements, why not start trying to book those engagements now.

Practice your speaking and build relationships now. If you can’t deliver a half hour presentation to a kind audience, is your idea really that well developed at all to start putting pen to paper for a book?

Audience feedback will keep you honest about the strength of your idea and presentation, and reveal blind spots e.g. did you remember to offer concrete examples and actions.

Be humble throughout all the steps to follow. It is virtually guaranteed that you won’t have the idea or the execution 100% there straight away. Seek and ponder advice from others.

There’s a saying that people are usually right that there is a problem, and usually wrong on how to fix it! Listen, and use your own judgment on how to apply the feedback

2. Don’t tell, Communicate.

Although it is obvious when you think about it, books, videos and podcasts are all forms of communication.

The root of the word communicate means “to share”. So what are you sharing, and why that, and with whom?

The AIM model: Audience, Intent and Message (e.g. Russell and Munter’s book Guide to Presentations) is a great place to start to work this out.

The Audience is specifically who you’re planning to communicate/share with. You should already have a basic idea of the audience from Step 1, but now it’s time to dive into more detail and narrow the field.

Otherwise you’ll try to be everything to everyone.

Who is your ideal reader, listener or viewer?

In the creativity and storytelling workshops I run, I almost always get participants to create an avatar or persona representing the ideal recipient / customer of the message, products, services etc.

You can create an avatar by answering questions like: What are that ideal audience member’s name, age and gender? What do they do for a job? Where do they live? What are their needs, hopes and dreams (not just related to your topic)? What is “keeping them awake at night?” There is a lot more info online for how to do this in detail. Step into the shoes of your ideal audience member!

Understanding your (planned) ideal customer gives you a starting point to tailoring the content and format of the message you’ll share with them. Instead of trying to please everybody, better to try to elate a small number of people! Those people will then get your message out by word of mouth to other “like-minded” folks.

Your avatar might well change once you begin to try things and experiment in the market. For example, the persona for my business Total Life Complete, let’s call them “John Doe” began as a mid-30’s professional male wanting to change up their life. In fairness, I was a mid-30’s male wanting to change things up, so I started with me.

It quickly became apparent though that my “John” was actually a “Jane”.

By looking at the analytics, women made/make up at least two thirds of the customers for my media and events.

Now, what to do with audience insights is a strategic decision, but the point is to test your assumptions about your audience with real stats/feedback. For me, these audience insights have influenced who I interview, the type of events I organize and what I write about.

As well as audience gender analytics, see which content resonates the best (not necessarily what you think is best, or spent the most time creating), and look at how to push those ideas further.

Now is also a good time to find out where your potential audience hangs out both online and in person. Find out what other media they are interacting with. Join in the conversation online and in person.

Next you need to think about your Intent in sharing the specific message. While your “overall why” might be to support a business or career change, the intent we’re talking about here is in terms of how you want your audience to react.

What do you want them to do, feel, think or understand while and after you share your message with them? What’s in it for them in terms of the value they get from the message you’re sharing?

Your intent might be simple e.g. to entertain your audience, or it could be something more involved such as to measurably increase their competence in specific skills, for example. Thinking about these intents and audience will give you many clues about the ideal depth, content and frequency of messages you need to share.

The final part of AIM is the Message itself. What you are saying, how you are saying and where you are saying it.

At the most general level, you can think about messaging in terms of:

• Topic — which topic or topics (think hashtags) you’ll talk about
• Style — expert, commentator, satirist, facilitator, authentic sharer
• Channel — medium (book, podcast etc) and platform (website, YouTube, LinkedIn etc)

Part of thinking through your messaging in this way is to also think about your “point of view” and which “lane” or differentiated position that you will occupy.

There is already a glut of content out there. What will make yours stand out?

How can you build momentum by staying focused in a general area, rather than flitting about all over the place? Being all over the place from the start might be interesting, but it doesn’t make it easy for people to feel comfortable in sharing your stuff.

Before going deep into crafting individual messages, it pays to look around in the market and on the channels you’re considering to see what else is out there.

So what is your unique spin on the topic or audience or intent that will differentiate your message?

Of course, differentiation is in the eye of the beholder (the audience). Many of us fall into the trap of believing that our idea is blindingly unique or interesting because we haven’t put in the research to understand otherwise.

There is much more to say about segmentation and strategy here, but I’ll save that for a future article. What I will say though, is that you should repeat AIM for each audience, intent and message (each combination will be a “row” in a table).

3. Get Creative.

You’ve thought about why you’re creating something, and who the audience is (and what they want or need), and you’ve hopefully got some ideas about the topics and subjects you’ll be working in.

The next step is to get creative with that idea.

There is a truism in creative circles that “the first idea is usually not the best idea”. But beginners (in a particular form of media creation) tend to treat their original idea as sacrosanct and then plough straight into the technical details of how to produce that idea.

Don’t do that!

If you haven’t done so already, then this is a great time to test your idea with your potential audience. Did you nail the “problem” that they are experiencing, are they interested in hear more about what you have to say about the solution?

Inevitably, a real person will tell you something valuable that you didn’t ever expect (because you don’t know what you don’t know). Sometimes the best creativity is just listening and responding better than anyone else to a specific problem or opportunity.

Next, you’ll check out the “competition”. Find out who else is working in a similar space to you, and engage with their content. The aim of this is not to try to copy, but the opposite, to find ways to put a unique spin on the idea.

Using the AIM framework again, perhaps you’re innovating by trying to reach a different audience to others. Perhaps you are trying to achieve something different with that audience, perhaps what you say and how you say it will be different.

It’s a pitfall to see others creating content is similar areas to you as competition.

Instead. you’ll find that others in your space might become your future contacts and collaborators, IF you’re committed to working professionally, and you get clear on your lane.

I’d never seen a self-help book written from the perspective of a professional in the trenches, and that was my angle for The Good Life Book.

For the Total Life Complete Podcast, I focused on giving it a strong local flavor with guests from Dallas. Even though the podcast attracted an international audience the point (the moral) was that you could meet interesting people and change your life, where you were.

For the video series I produce, I try to think about being a bridge between the creative and the business community. In other words, I try to just be myself. And, frankly the only things I’ve ever done that have been successful, are a reflection of my genuine interests and passions.

My general advice on being creative is to start with you.

Find out what you’re interested in, how you approach things, how you see the world, and which communities you sit in by virtue of your cultural, work and life experience background.

There’s a saying in creative writing to “write what you know”. This is solid advice, and even experienced storytellers seem to find a way to fuse their life experiences in the broadest sense (including people they’ve met, situations they’ve witnessed) into moving story.

I’m also a fan of the advice to “make what you want to see”. I like business, but I’m always looking for ways to talk about business that are irreverent, and not stuffy. The b-side show I produced was an attempt to mix up the interview format, with music and graphics.

It might be harsh but “If you don’t have anything new to say, then say it quickly” as the saying goes.

If you don’t have anything interesting to say, then perhaps best not say it at all? Before moving on, convince yourself of why the world needs what you plan to produce.

Sometimes we can produce content just for the sake of it…thinking that quantity or sticking to a rigid schedule is more important than quality.

On some occasions the idea you were excited about won’t be good enough, and you’ll have to go back to find inspiration to see the topic in a different light. Or cut it loose and move on.

If you’re stuck, try to brainstorm 100 ideas, rather than just one. If you believe you have the perfect idea from the start, then still try to come up with 100 alternative ideas. Usually, the strain of trying to come up with 100 ideas forces you to table “far out” or unexpected ideas.

Give yourself time to play with the idea and to take inspiration from a broad set of sources.

4. Less is more.

“Less is more” should be your mantra in order to refine and strengthen your idea.

When picking your audience, for example, can you be even more specific. Better to blow a few people’s socks off rather than try to be everything to everyone. Kevin Kelley’s work on 1000 True Fans is still definitely worth a look on this point.

When testing your idea can you pitch it in a one-liner? Can you pitch the premise of your book / podcast / video in 10 words or less?

Even if your idea does 10 things, ask yourself what is the main thing it does (and must do) to deliver value to an audience? Talk about that.

What is the one intent that is more important than all the others?

Can you make the content shorter, get to the point quicker, start in the middle?

5. You still have to market(,) genius

It is a fallacy that good quality work will sell itself. It probably won’t in such an overcrowded marked (or at least not sell itself very quickly at all).

For those that do recognize the importance of marketing, most leave it too late e.g. until after the product is finalized.

For example, I literally didn’t know until I sat down to write a book, that in traditional book publishing the industry is working on marketing at least one year ahead of when the book will be released. Sure you can short-cut production time by self-publishing, but that doesn’t mean you can shortcut marketing. I started way too late with The Good Life Book.

There are plenty of resources out there on good practices and tips for marketing media and, frankly, these continue to evolve. So look for the top tips and tricks for 2020.

When planning your marketing think about communicating both your personal branding (who you are, your values), and your personal business branding (what you can do for others).

Be professional in how you approach marketing, and make it easy for people to connect with and follow you, whether on social media or via an email list. Get some business cards printed up or some other effective way of sharing details (e.g. adding contacts to LinkedIn).

As I mentioned earlier, it pays to know others in your field. Connect with them, comment on and share their posts where it would benefit your (growing) audience. By doing this, you’re not just “saying” that you are good, you are demonstrating it through thoughtful curation and insight. And creators appreciate comments! We do.

Again, if you don’t have anything thoughtful to say about others material, then it might be a warning sign that your idea or knowledge in the field needs further rounding out.

Countless times I’ve commented on others work and either made a connection and/or learned something new that has been the source of a later article or bit of advice. What goes around, as they say, remember to support others and they’ll likely support you.

Many of the things I’ve talked about here are, unfortunately, sourced from mistakes that I made along the way.

For example, although I had all the basics in place for marketing my book, for example, I was probably only spending 5% of my time on marketing during the writing process. And on some (too many) weeks I wasn’t spending any time at all. Not good.

An insight here if you’re planning on self-publishing is to remember that a team of people traditionally did what you are trying to do. Many of those roles still need to be done, so allocate your time accordingly, and get help.

OK, so we’ve covered the five fundamentals now. Applying all of these is an iterative process.

As you test and refine your idea, you’ll get feedback, you’ll understand more of what you’re trying to do, and new possibilities will open up.

The last piece of general advice I’ll give is to keep your eyes and ears open and don’t be too rigid as your idea is called to evolve, and if things don’t work out the way you expected or intended (deviations from what was planned might seem bad, but are inevitable and might even be good).

To paraphrase some advice I got from Thomas Riccio (the first guest on the podcast) “let the thing tell you what it is”. Don’t try to force fit an evolving idea back into your initial frame of reference.

Creative ideas often seem “silly” or “unreasonable” when they first arrive, but following the trail leads you to create something original.

OK, let’s get into some really quick advice on specific media. You can find lots of information online, so these are just the tips at the top of my mind.

Tips and Tricks — Book.

The ideal person to write a non-fiction book is someone with a large, engaged audience, a track record in the subject, and a well developed idea / lane.

Most of you reading this won’t be in that position. I wasn’t.

So, accept that you’ll have to work so so much harder to build your audience and refine your idea.

Don’t just start writing, hoping that it will all come together later, because it won’t.

And you’ll be so far down the track (sunk costs) that you’ll be reluctant to listen to feedback, or pivot direction. You’ll fail (you’ll create a book that few people read, and even fewer find useful).

There is a reason why books are based around a single idea, elaborated. Don’t try to beat the system by putting everything and the kitchen sink into your book. Keep it simple and do a 100% job on a good idea, rather than a 10% job on 10 ideas, or a 1% job on 100 ideas. Get help on the structure of your book early on — make sure the structure tells a story. It’s rare that all your ideas will be totally original, so find references to other books and people to support your key ideas. If your idea is really original you’ll still need to find references, examples etc to contextualize the idea and both show how it is different, and simply explain what the idea is.

As my friend, and book marketing expert, Elizabeth Marshall says: “Writing is for you. Publishing is for an audience”. If you want to be successful at publishing, you need to be communicating what the audience needs to hear, in a way that they need to hear it. Otherwise you will have written your book for an audience of one. You.

As my editor reminded me (it was the first time I’d worked with a professional editor) on more than one occasion, “work out what you want to say, then say it”.

Sounds simple, even trivial or patronizing, but most humans think by writing, and can put hundreds of words of words on a page without a clear idea of what we want to say!

Better to spend the right amount of time getting the idea and structure crystal clear before you start writing. It is excruciating to go through rounds of line (detailed) editing again and gain, and realize that a particular point or paragraph wasn’t needed at all.

The next part is, when you’ve worked out what do say, then think about how to say it best.

Even experienced writers get stuck when we try to do work out what to say and how to say it at the same time.

Improve the how of how you say it using examples, stories and so on.

Tips and Tricks — Podcast

My top tip is to find out how to involve others in your show i.e. co-presenters, guests, and collaborators. Having guests gives the show different voices, and an “unlimited” number of potential episodes.

If you’re an expert in an area, you might have to, for the sake of the show, step into the role of facilitator to get the best results. A show about how smart you are is rarely entertaining!

I’d recommend splitting up your planned podcasts into seasons with a relatively small number of episodes e.g. 6–9, particularly when you are starting out. Give yourself a formal checkpoint to solicit, and act on feedback.

I did 22 episodes in the first season of the Total Life Complete podcast which was too many, the podcast starts working you rather than you working the podcast. Make sure the podcast is driving your business or cause if that’s why you’re doing it!

Also debrief after every episode. Find 3 things that worked well, and three areas of improvement to take into the next show. I found that I didn’t, for example, need to make a comment on everything the guest said for every point, I could just move on to the next question!

Make sure that you start to really know who your audience are (get specific) and what they want. Find out what resonated most (might not be what you think), and see if it makes sense to do more of that, and less of something that you thought the audience would like, but they didn’t.

Being a host is a learned skill (it’s not automatic that you’ll be a good host even if you’re an expert in a topic), and it’s your job to keep the show on track. Be professional in how you communicate with and deal with the guests (booking times and following up). If appropriate, let the guests know the topics and/or (some of) the specific questions you’ll be asking.

Build trust with the guests that you won’t do anything to make them look stupid (unless that’s the point of the show, and they know it). Lastly, please please try to make your podcast entertaining (in the broadest sense), even if the subject matter is serious. Be aware that podcast listening is a background activity, don’t try to stuff too much content that requires undivided attention into the audio. Provide show notes and/or transcripts with more details, links and so on. These show notes also help your findability on search engines.

Tips and Tricks — Video series

Barriers to entry for creating video are so low that anyone can do it, but does that mean everyone should do it? Maybe, or maybe not?

Many of you thinking about producing video will already be hung up on the question of what sort of video equipment to buy. I’d say start with your smartphone and instead of stressing about gear, focus on having something interesting to say, with decent audio (find somewhere quiet to record).

Doing things this simple way will make it glaringly obvious where improvement areas are, and mostly those improvements will have nothing to do with technology, but more to do with your skills in communicating on video, getting to the point, asking and answering the right questions, keeping it brief etc.

This next point applies to podcasts too…I’d say that early on it’s great to edit your own content. It’s possible to pay someone to do it, but editing yourself is the fastest way to get feedback on improvement areas. Plus you learn a skill that you can be paid for later on (in your portfolio career).

Improvement areas might be eliminating verbal and visual tics from your presentation (I say “sooo” far too much, I know it), or they might be structural things like how you arrange and ask questions to streamline the show, or just working out better questions to ask.

I (and I think most of us) also appreciate video that is more than just “talking heads”. Have some b-roll to get your message across with visuals, change up the shots and locations and so on.

Some final thoughts:

My final advice is to start small, get feedback quickly from a real audience, and enjoy the process! It can be immensely rewarding to make various media, and perhaps even change your life.

If you have any other questions then please write them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.

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Brett is the author of The Good Life Book, host of the Total Life Complete Podcast and presenter of various video series including b-side, Complete, and Total Life Complete TV. Brett runs Total Life Complete, a media, events and learning company focusing on creative personal and professional growth.