Note from Phil: What follows is a guest post from my friend (and best selling author) Carol Roth. I asked her to write this post for you my friends, as I know how hard she’s worked to make her book kick butt (it’s at #1 on Amazon overall now) in addition to kicking it in the backside in her business. I hope it’s helpful in your journey!

Got an idea that you just can’t shake?  That idea could manifest itself as a business or a book.  I have spent a lot of time talking about how entrepreneurs should approach a new business and have found that there are a lot more parallels between starting a business and launching a new book than you might imagine.  As I launch my first book, The Entrepreneur Equation, ironically on launching businesses, I thought I would share a few insights on the similarity between the two.

What’s Your Purpose?

Deciding to start a business is different than deciding to start a successful business.  The plans to open one store vs. a goal of creating a massive nationwide retail chain vary significantly.  It is hard to know what steps to take if you don’t know your end goal.

The same goes for your book.  What’s your end game?  Are you using it as a calling card to get more clients?  Are you seeking a label of achievement (like “best seller status”) for your brand?  Are you hoping to make gobs of money from it or are you using it to spread a message (by the way, if your goal is make gobs of money, you might want to chat with a few industry professionals first)?  These goals will significantly impact the planning and strategy of not only your manuscript, but the launch and marketing of your book.

And while you are at it, you might as well set the biggest goal that you can.  Nothing happens if you don’t achieve your stretch goal, but as Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100% of shots that you never take!”

Know Your Customer

I am always preaching in business about how important it is to know your customer, but my first book manuscript go-round was somewhat lacking in this department (which got fixed in the second go-round, thanks to great feedback from industry folks!). 

To be successful in business, you have to know what pain point you are solving for your customer and how you are delivering value.  Plus, if “everyone” is your customer, you are going to have a hard time reaching anyone at all, so having a focus is critical.  The same goes for your book (particularly non-fiction books).  Ask yourself what tangible benefits your reader will take away from investing their time and money into your message.  Who is your specific reader and what quantitative and qualitative benefits are they seeking?  This will shape not only how you deliver your message in the book, but also how you plan to market your book. 

The Idea Isn’t Valuable; It’s The Execution

In an era where we have access to virtually everything we want and need, plus a whole bunch of crap we don’t care about, it is hard to have a truly novel idea (pun intended).  Having the idea for a business isn’t valuable; it is executing on the business plan every day.  The same goes for a book.  Once you have the idea, you have to write the manuscript and then market, market, market!  Most publishers care at least as much, if not more, about your marketing plan than the content of the book.  So, even if you have a great idea, if you can’t or don’t want to pound the pavement to meet your goals, there isn’t a lot of value there.

The Day You “Open For Business” Is Where The Hard Work Starts.

Conceiving a business idea and writing your plan is a cakewalk compared to what you have to endure day in and day out to make your business successful.  The same thing goes for a book.  The common misconception is that you are done when you finish writing- not so!  Writing the manuscript, as daunting as it may seem, is easy compared to everything that comes next.  Prepare to devote a lot of time, effort (and depending on your goals, money too) AFTER the book is written!

The takeaway: Make sure you evaluate and prepare for launching a book, just like you would a business, if you want to be successful with it.

And if you want to learn more about The Entrepreneur Equation and some of these principles, it is available at Amazon.com and everywhere now!

About Carol Roth

Carol Roth is a business strategist, deal maker and author of the new book, The Entrepreneur Equation. She has helped her clients, ranging from solopreneurs to multinational corporations, raise more than $1 billion in capital, complete hundreds of millions of dollars in M&A transactions, secure high-profile licensing and partnership deals, create brand loyalty programs and more.

Carol is a frequent radio, television and print media contributor on the topics of business and entrepreneurship, having appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, Fox Business, WGN TV Chicago and more.  Additionally, Carol’s Unsolicited Business Advice blog at CarolRoth.com was recently named as one of the Top 10 small business blogs online.   You can find her on Twitter @CarolJSRoth.

My friends Stephen Smith and Brad Shorr are among the smartest guys online. They really *get* writing for the web, as both of them have been doing this for quite a while, and have worked with freelancers like me to write great copy.

I must admit, I can’t afford to use either of them very often, because they get over $100 an hour for copywriting help, and for even the most basic of things, I end up investing $500 or more for their services. Can you relate?

So when Stephen and Brad decided to collaborate on a course about Writing for the Web, I was very excited.

And then I saw they priced it an amazing price, and I knew I had to share it with you. I’m not sharing the exact price because they could change the price at any time.

You could hire Brad or Stephen to write your copy for you, and invest your learning dollars in an expert. I’ve done it, and it is a fantastic investment.

If your budget is smaller, you could instead buy a copy of Writing for the Web and learn how to be a better writer, at your own pace, over and over again, until you master it.

5 great reasons to purchase Writing for the Web

1. Increasing your visibility on search engines generates qualified leads and strengthens existing brands.
2. Content optimization allows small and midsized firms (read: folks like you and me, fighting to get ahead) to compete against large ones.
3. Most small and midsized firm websites have lots of room for improvement in search engine optimization.
4. You know your products and services…you just need a little more tweaking.
5. You’re not being found for what you’d like on the Internet, which means your company is practically non-existent.

Oh…and one one more CRITICAL reason you need to buy Writing for the Web:

6. It works!

I’ve been using the information I learned from Writing for the Web to optimize my website. While I’m no overnight success, I find myself near the top of the search engines for several of the articles I’ve recently written.

I thought it would be a LOT harder than it is to optimize my website. Boy am I glad I was wrong!

Full disclosure: I do get a small commission if you buy through any of the links for Writing for the Web on this site. If you prefer to buy this for yourself without an affiliate link, that’s okay by me. I believe in what Brad and Stephen are doing so much, I’m going to offer you a non-affiliate link. Click here to buy Writing for the Web without giving me a few bucks.

I’m at the 3rd annual SOBCon (Successful and Outstanding Bloggers) conference, and I wanted to add a little bit about this for those of you who couldn’t join us in Chicago, or who would to learn more before you come with me next year.

I’m in a session right now with Stephen Smith and Brad Shorr about how to do a better job of writing your blog. I don’t do all of these (yet).

• Grade your blog/website at http://website.grader.com/
• Categories should be broad in scope but limited in number
• WordPress related posts plug-in
• Use tags and add a tag cloud
• Use hyphens not underscores in post-slugs and in categories
• Use header tags (but not H1 tags)
• Make sure your hyperlinks is in a separate color from the rest of your text
• Use title tags on your hyperlinks to provide a little more information
• Name your pictures something friendly and descriptive so folks can find them when doing a Google search (I have an image of Klinger from MASH that I used to get several THOUSAND hits a month on. I removed it because none of it was for what I wanted folks to find me for)
• Use an ALT tag and a TITLE tag on your images whenever possible (I always ALT, wasn’t sure about TITLE)

If you want to listen to a very in depth conversation about this, check out Writing for the Web Inside and Out at the SOBCon blog, and soon, the slides will be on http://www.slideshare.net/SmartWealthyRich

And if you want to follow me on Twitter, I am trying to live Tweet stuff, or just go to the Twitter search for SOBCon and see what EVERYONE has to say.