Boost Your Credibility and Authority with a Shook – Mike Capuzzi

Mike Capuzzi shares with us how we can easily boost our professional credibility and authority by writing a shook (a short helpful book).

Have you ever wanted to write a book but weren’t sure where to start? Then, you’re going to love this week’s episode!

Mike is a publisher, author, and book publishing coach who helps business owners become successful book authors by writing short and helpful books, which he calls shooks. Shooks are a great marketing tool that entrepreneurs can use to increase their level of authority while also providing helpful information to their audiences.

To help out his clients, Mike launched Bite Sized Books in 2019, which is a new publishing concept formula for creating shooks. He is also the author of 15 books, including two Amazon #1 Best Sellers, The 100-Page Book and The Magic of Short Books. Throughout his 27 years in marketing, Mike has helped countless business owners create “high impact marketing” and bring their marketing game to another level.

In this episode of the Think Business with Tyler podcast, we talk about the main differences between a shook and a regular book, why brand differentiation is key to your book’s success, how to overcome perfectionism when writing a book, and the importance of book promotion and marketing.

If you want to add ‘book writer’ to your resume, tune into this episode to get some powerful tips from Mike.

Guest-At-A-Glance

 

💡 Name: Mike Capuzzi

💡 What he does: He’s a publisher, author, and book publishing coach who has been helping clients create exceptional marketing results since 1998.

💡 Noteworthy: 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.

💡 Key Quote: “It’s better to focus on personality versus perfection. There is no such thing as a perfect book. Never, never, never, never. There’s no such thing. As soon as it’s printed, you’re going to find mistakes or things you want to change. So just stop obsessing over perfection.”

💡 Where to find Mike: LinkedIn

Key Insights

 

What is the difference between a shook and a regular book? A shook is a short and helpful book that helps entrepreneurs engage their audience and build brand authority. It’s a practical marketing tool that allows you to share your wisdom in an easy and digestible way. If you’ve always wanted to write a book but were put off by the magnitude of this task, a shook might be the right choice for you.

Mike talks about the main differences between a shook and a regular book. He explains, “The differentiation again with us and the kind of books that we publish for our clients; it’s not about making money on the front end of the book,

Tyler. It’s not about putting it up on Amazon, for example, selling it for 10 bucks, making $3. That’s not the focus. The focus is a book that really is essentially meant to be given away to ideal prospects. Again, I come from a market, and these are marketing and sales tools for the business owners and corporate executives.”

Brand differentiation is essential for your book’s success. In this day and age, anybody can publish a book. And while that’s technically true, you need much more than just the ability to write to stand out in the market. One of the keys to your book’s success is brand differentiation. If you want to stand out, you have to be unique.

Mike talks about the importance of differentiating yourself from your competitors. “There’s still a lot of opportunity, and that’s why it’s even more important. Tyler, I was talking earlier about having your own brand, having your own differentiation.

So what if there’s a ton of books about how to write a book? I happen to write a couple they’re on Amazon. They became Amazon’s number one best seller. Real bestsellers. And for people who are looking for a different style of book, my books, my shooks helped them. Again, it’s all about how you differentiate yourself, your information and put it out there differently.”

Don’t be a perfectionist. Perfectionism is a common obstacle for most writers-to-be. So if you’re one of those entrepreneurs that wants everything to be perfect, it’s time to put an end to it because it won’t get you far in your writing journey. No book is perfect, remember that. And you’re not trying to be the next Shakespeare; you’re trying to help your audience.

Mike explains, “We are not trying to write the next War and Peace or the next literary Hemingway, Shakespeare thing. It’s not what this is about, Tyler. So right off the bat, I try to reframe people’s expectations. You’re not necessarily trying to write a New York Times best seller either. You are trying to identify your ideal target reader and help him or her with a chunk of information in book format.”

Book marketing and promotion are tricky. Believe it or not, writing a book is the easy part, but then you need to promote it. Unfortunately, most book writers don’t take this part very seriously, so they get lost in a sea of competitors. To avoid that, you need to be consistent and persistent with your marketing efforts.

Mike explains, “Another little my proverbs is actually writing the book is the easy part, Tyler, so you haven’t done it yet. I know you will, but just trust me. It’s the easy part. Marketing and promoting is the hard part.

Because what happens is, it’s human nature, is we’re all excited when we get that box of books or whatever, the initial one, and then life gets in the way, and things get in the way. So it’s about a consistent and persistent effort to promote because if your book doesn’t get out there, if people aren’t aware of it, it’s not going to help the people.”

Top Quotes

 

“A short, helpful book, we call it a shook, and there’s a business lesson there we can talk about. But it’s a book, Tyler, that is meant to be read in about one hour. It’s a nonfiction book written by a business owner or a corporate executive, a coach, a consultant, to differentiate his or her business and to engage prospects with the idea of eventually them becoming customers, clients, et cetera.”

“Rather than have one big 500-page book, which no one’s going to read, why not dice it down, make it more hyper-focused so that the person potential readers can pick the shook they want to read, which makes it more likely they’ll read it and hopefully then engage with you the author. So I always say it’s better to write five 100-page books than do one 500-page book for the most part.”

“I think just about anybody who helps people with products or services, or consulting or coaching could definitely benefit by being a shook author because we could talk about this, in this day and age; still, a lot of clout and authority is given to people who write a book.”

“It’s better to focus on personality versus perfection. There is no such thing as a perfect book. Never, never, never, never. There’s no such thing. As soon as it’s printed, you’re going to find mistakes or things you want to change. So just stop obsessing over perfection.”

“From Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, he says it’s not enough to be the best at what you do; you must be perceived as the only one who does what you do. And that goes back to what I said earlier, right? No one else has shooks. There’s a ton of people publishing books, but no one else but Mike Capuzzi and Bite Sized Books are publishing shooks. That’s the part I think a lot of business owners kind of miss.”

Links

Get a free copy of ‘Magic of Free Books’ + 2 more free shooks

Bite Sized Books

Resources

Everyone Has a Story to Tell: Here’s Why You Should Share Yours – Michelle Prince

Why Mastermind Groups are an Important Tool for Entrepreneurs – Chris Williams