#631 Turn Your Expertise into a Book That Builds Your Business with Suzy Vadori

What if writing a book could be the game-changer your business needs?

In this episode of Talking with the Experts, host Rose Davidson sits down with bestselling author and Advanced Certified Book Coach, Suzy Vadori, to explore how writing a nonfiction book can support, scale, and amplify your business.

Whether you're a coach, consultant, entrepreneur, or service-based professional, this episode will give you a clear understanding of what a book coach does—and how the right guidance can turn your book idea into a strategic business asset. Suzy has helped countless business owners—many of whom had never written a word—bring their stories and frameworks to life in a way that builds credibility, trust, and long-term brand value.

You’ll learn how to approach nonfiction writing with clarity and confidence, why books are powerful authority builders, and what steps you can take today—even if you’ve never thought of yourself as a writer.

This episode is full of inspiring insights and actionable takeaways for anyone ready to step into authorship as a business strategy.

📚 Learn more about Suzy Vadori and her Inspired Writing Community
 🎙️ Subscribe to Talking with the Experts for more conversations with industry leaders
🔗 Connect with Rose Davidson at rosedavidson.com.au

🔗 CONNECT WITH SUZY

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/suzy-vadori-2384634

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Website: https://www.suzyvadori.com

📌 PROMOTION: https://suzyvadori.com/book-coaching/

#NonfictionBookCoach #WritingForBusiness #SuzyVadori #ExpertBranding #EntrepreneurTips #BusinessBookStrategy #PodcastInterview #TalkingWithTheExperts

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Transcript

Intro | 00:01
Welcome to Talking With The Experts. Here we discuss all things business, by business owners, for business owners. Here is your host, Rose Davidson. 

 Rose | 00:11
I'm your host, Rose Davidson from rosedavidson.com.au. Have you ever thought about writing a book, a nonfiction book for your business? 
 Well, my next guest, Suzy Vedori, is going to be chatting with us about supporting our businesses with a nonfiction book. And as a nonfiction She's in Calgary in Alberta, Canada. She's a best-selling author of The Fountain series, The Fountain, The Westwoods and All of Wishes. This fantastical series has received three Aurora nominations for Best Young Adult Novel. She is represented by Naomi Davis of Bookends Literary Agency. Suzy is the founder of the Inspired Writing Community, a resident writing coach for Writers Helping Writers, a touring member of the Young Alberta Book Society and a program manager for When Words Collide, a festival for readers and writers. She specializes in breaking down complex writing concepts. For newer writers into manageable steps to get the book ideas exploding in their minds and onto a page in a way that will make readers take notice. She works with both fiction and non-fiction writers, And she is an advanced certified book coach from Jenny Nash Author Accelerator. Suzy, that was a mouthful, but welcome to Talking with the Experts. 

 Suzy | 01:32
We're getting through that. I've been doing this a long time. The list of what I do gets longer and longer. 

 Rose | 01:39
Absolutely. What prompted your interest in writing non-fiction books or writing books in general? 

 Suzy | 01:48
You know, it's, nobody ever told me that I always loved writing books and many writers will tell you this. They felt called to write from an early age. They always knew that they would write a book one day, but nobody ever told me that it could be a job. And I know that your audience is business owners and entrepreneurs. And, you know, many of us have felt this, that we didn't know that. This job existed. And so I went into banking and manufacturing for 20 years. And I was a chief operating officer at a company. And when I was on maternity leave with my third child, and she's turning 14 this month. 
 So 14 years ago, I was like, okay, this might be the last time that I have some time off work. And I always said I was going to write a book, I got to do this, right. And so I sat down, and I started to take it a little bit more seriously and went back to some of those ideas. When I was younger and didn't think it could be a job, I still thought that this was going to be a hobby. And as it turned out, once my second book, especially was published and the series started to take off and people started asking me to teach and write and to support them and edit and do all these things, I started helping other people. And because of my very deep knowledge and background in business and my love of building business, even though I'm a fiction writer, I started coaching nonfiction writers as well. Which is really amazing because many people need that. 
 Sort of crossover. So I've been working with, I mean, over the past decade, I've worked with dozens of writers who've written books for their business, which is a lot of fun because I know a lot about business. I know enough to be dangerous in a lot of different areas. 
 So yeah, so that's how I got into it. And it's been fun. 

 Rose | 03:29
It's good to start with. It starts as a hobby and ends up being a career. It's amazing. I love that concept. It's great. 
 So tell me. 

 Suzy | 03:38
That's the dream, right? 

 Rose | 03:39
It's the dream. Tell me, what is a book coach? What do they do? How can they help out? 

 Suzy | 03:46
So a book coach is basically the Cadillac version of having somebody in your corner, or it's like having a personal trainer, but for your writing life. So if we're out there, we have goals and we want to hire somebody. When I first started doing this about 10 years ago, I found I was explaining this a lot. It's really become mainstream to have a book coach or writing coach and people sort of understand it a little bit better, but we do three things. 
 So a book coach can, like a personal trainer, can help you with Project management. So first and foremost, especially people that are writing a book for their business, you're busy, right? You've got other things on your plate, like write a book, adding that to your plate is insane. 
 So it can help. I have setting up deadlines so you have to have a certain number of pages or a certain exercise done by this date and then we review it together so it helps you actually slot it into your schedule, and I work with individual writers to figure out how they're going to get this done because every writer is different, but I gotta say that writing a book is going to take you much longer than you ever hoped it was going to. 
 Sometimes I wonder if I should tell people that up front because maybe you'll never attempt it. But yeah, once you've written your book, you're going to Dall-E back up and laugh about this one and say, yeah, you told me. But yeah, it's quite the process because it's a lot. 
 So that's the first thing is project management. The second thing is the writing craft. This is the piece that most entrepreneurs or many business people have a lot of fear around. 
 Like, is my writing good enough? How do I do it? I literally, and you read this out in my bio, my whole thing, because I was an operations professional, right? 
 Like I take complex messes and matricize them. Like that's how my brain works. And so I've done the same thing with the writing world where you can take all these sort of really nebulous concepts and I teach them in a way that's like, okay, here's why it's like that. And I teach it in a way that business owners can really resonate with and understand. 
 So it's not just me giving my opinion on what I think your book... You know, whether the writing is good or not good or what you should do with it. It's literally like, well, if you do it this way, here's what's going to happen to your readers. And if you do it that way, here's what's going to happen to your readers. 
 So what's our goal, right? And we have these conversations. The third thing, There's like some ups and downs in writing a book. And so the coach part is that emotional journey support and just helping you figure out what do you truly want out of this book. And that's the first step that we always talk about is like, okay, everybody says they want to write a book. About their business or whatever else. But what do you mean by that? And what is your goal? And really honing in on what things you can think about and because there's a lot of options and we can talk about that too but there's so many options when you just say I'm going to write a book there are literally a you know not a thousand but there's probably 20 ways that you could write that exact same book with the exact same content and it would have a completely different effect on your reader and so we nail that stuff down up front and we talk about what do you want to accomplish and why are you doing this and like all the things right dive in right in so yeah that's what I do. 

 Rose | 06:52
Wonderful. It's great to have someone in your corner when you're writing. 
 I mean, I've written e-books and I've thought about combining them and making them into a non-fiction book. But I'm not there where I can feel confident enough to go and do that. I think I just leave my e-books the way they I don't know. 

 Suzy | 07:14
Are. One day, someday you're going to write that book, right? 

 Rose | 07:19
I keep saying that someday. You will. We'll talk. - How does writing a non-fiction book help support our businesses? 

 Suzy | 07:31
Yeah. So I think, you know, there's this misnomer out there or this misconception that it's kind of like having a business card. I've heard this said before, you should write a book because it's like having a business card and you can hand it out to people. That's not the best reason to write a book. There's a lot of good reasons to write a book, though. How can it support your business? Number one, I would say, you know, just the act of saying I am writing a book gives you instant credibility because it is a difficult process and it takes a lot of confidence to put it out there. And yes, it's your own confidence, but you know, that a person's an expert if they really are going to do this, right. They, they're not just, you know, blowing smoke. They are actually for real. 
 Like there's a lot of credibility that comes along with that, but I've got to say that the actual reason why I encourage people to write this book is because. It will really help you hone your messaging and hone your processes. And I've seen it time and time again, regardless. 
 I mean, some of the books that We publish our like wild successes and some of them, you know, are kind of lukewarm and they're great for your customers, but don't go much further than that. It doesn't matter because what I've seen time and time again is as these business owners write their way through this process, they learn a ton. They hone their messaging. I've got a client who 10X'd her business. And she's like, she'll give me the credit. I don't take the credit, but she'll be like, Suzy, if we hadn't done this, that wouldn't have happened. It happened before the book was even published. The book was doing really well. It happened before the book was even published. It's the process. It's the different way of thinking. It's that confidence that you get by realizing and putting everything that you know, it's more than just writing one small thing, one PDF, one article on, you know, your expert topic. It's like, A whole thing and putting it all together and it. Kind of falling into place and you making all those decisions. Gives a voice to your business that you didn't have before. And that's one of the magic. 
 I mean, the book, yes, the book sales are amazing. Yes, you become an expert, all of those things. But I think it's actually in the process of writing the book itself. It's such an amazing journey. And it changes people's whole outlook. 

 Rose | 09:52
You can, you know, maybe find out a little bit more about yourself too when with writing a book, even if it is a book about your business and all, you know, the things that you do. Within your business, you know, I think you can find a lot of discipline in writing a book. I think you can find a lot about yourself and the type of business owner that you are. 

 Suzy | 10:16
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think one of the things that most entrepreneurs kind of have a blind spot on is what makes them special or different. Right. 
 So there's a lot of book coaches out there in the world. I know that I'm same as them. They're my colleagues. I met with somebody today and helped her with her business. And like, I just, I love that we're each individuals. And so maybe because we're more creatively tuned, that's more obvious, but. Every single person, especially entrepreneurs, you guys are the best, right? 
 Like people running businesses are absolutely amazing. I supported many entrepreneurs as a chief operating officer before and I never thought I would take the leap myself to be honest. But there's something really special about your business. And if you can figure out what that is, and part of this process is figuring out that special sauce and figure out how you say it differently. Why? Why do customers come to you? Why do your clients come to you? What is it that they see and why are they willing to pay for your services? 
 Like all of those things are things that some of us do second nature and actually recognizing that and figuring that out and having coach to reflect that with you and figure that out with you is going to get you more and more excited about your business. It's, Have fun. 

 Rose | 11:33
Sounds like it. Yeah. And you could be right in that, you know, bouncing ideas off somebody else can be, What? Enlightening, I think, you know, to, you're right about why people come to you, why people buy food, and, you know, it gives you that, that unique selling point, I think, if you can hone that skill or pinpoint that expertise, I think, yeah, and selling a book, I guess, and sharing those ideas can only be of benefit to the business and to the person writing it. 

 Suzy | 12:11
Exactly. And the person reading it, right? 
 Like, we're thinking about what are the benefits to the business? And that's where that imposter syndrome comes off. 
 Like, who am I to be writing a book? And who's going to want to listen to what I have to say on, you know, having a podcast or on book coaching or whatever it is that we're writing about. But at the end of the day... If you think about it and flip it, this is like a sales technique all the time. 
 Somebody out there is waiting for your book. Somebody out there has a pain point. They need this book. They're waiting for your expertise. What is that? Right. And if we can sort of narrow it down and just write that book and not try to put one of the biggest mistakes that I see when entrepreneurs or business owners come to me and say, want to write a book. Number one, sometimes they have no idea what they want to write about. 
 And then that's a little bit of heavy lifting up front. We figure that out very quickly, actually. But number two, they'll come to me with a list of table of contents like they would. They'll come to me with a proposed table of contents. Lately, people are generating that with the IAI. That's a whole other conversation. But they'll come to me with this list of topics. I look at them and I say, okay, but business books today are not what they were 30 years ago, right? We're not writing, a reference manual. We're not writing a, a textbook. 
 So the difference between a textbook and today's business books, you get to infuse a lot of your personality, but I'm a fiction coach. And so there's a lot of fun things that are really actually the same. And if you remember way back to, you know, your high school or wherever you went to English class and you think about Story Mountain. 
 So we've got, you know, the action and the climax and Rosa's nodding. You've seen this before. Yes. And so then you've got, you know, your beginning, your middle, your end, the action, all these things. And you're following the protagonist or the main character and you're seeing what happens. OK, so you're like, well, that looks not going to be like that because I don't have that. Right. It's not fictional. It's not. Fantastical. You're not world building all of these things, but you are. And so here's the thing in a nonfiction book, that protagonist or that main character is You know who it is? It's your reader. 

 Rose | 14:23
Yeah, that's right. 

 Suzy | 14:24
So if you think about your reader and where they are at the beginning of the book, like where are they at the beginning of the book? And then what is their rising action? What do they need to learn? And what's the climax? What's that aha moment where they're going to be like, mind blown, I got to share this with my friend Janine because she needs to read this book too, right? 
 Like all those things, all those moments, what journey are you taking that reader on? If you just give me a list of table of contents, you're not doing that, right? And so if we can figure that piece out and map out your reader journey and flip the tables, that's where the fun part comes in. And that's where your sales start to take off. That's where, how you talk about your business starts to take off. That's where, when you really hone in on who is my, you know, who's my ideal customer. Really starts to take off. Now, A lot of people come to me and they will say, well, ideally, everybody will read my book. And I know that's, you know, the same thing that we say about sales, but he's going to listen to my podcast or everybody's going to listen in the whole entire world. And you know what? If you do this right, maybe they will. But if you're writing a book on how to run a podcast, then maybe people who want to, you know, start a podcast is your audience. That's awesome. Guess what? If, and when you're successful and people start to use this as the go-to Bible for how to start a podcast, guess who else is going to read it? All your competitors that already have podcasts and all these other people and their friends and their two friends. 
 So you still have to hone it. And I mean, they're not going to be pissed off that the book isn't written for them. It's very clear that it's not written for them, but they're going to learn from it anyway. Right. 
 So narrowing your audience, knowing who you're talking to, and then taking them on that journey can be a lot of fun. And it's really eye opening. 

 Rose | 16:12
It can be. I mean, that's what my e-books are about starting a podcast. 

 Suzy | 16:18
Amazing. There you go. 

 Rose | 16:20
Yeah, who would have thought? And I've got an online program that, you know, that... That teaches people to start a podcast. 
 So, you know, from the very inception of it to, you know, launching the thing. And, you know, it's amazing that, a lot of the stuff that I teach in my in the online class is what I would put in my book and and that's where I got a lot of the curriculum from was from the actual ebooks that I've written so yeah that's it okay see what why. 

 Suzy | 16:53
Not you're closer than you think I think you're closer than you think Rose and that's a good like I'll ask you the next question or ask myself the next question is you know, who can write a book? Well, anybody, but if you've got content already, if you've got like a lot of things, it does make it easier for sure. There are some ways to make it you know, turning shorter eBooks or turning articles or turning things into a book, there's some tricks. If you're used to writing shorter articles or doing PowerPoint presentations or courses, what's the old adage? You tell them what you're going to tell them and then you tell them what you told them. And so a lot of people will come to me that have formal business writing and they're used to doing proposals that way or articles that way. And they do that in every single chapter. And it's so boring because you're wrapping it up in every chapter. 
 So you kind of have to open it up a little bit and do that at the beginning of the book and the end of the book. The end of the book. And kind of make that arc and find ways to tie all those chapters or all those topics together. Because otherwise people are going to use your book like this. They're going to open it up. They're going to look in the index and they're going to look at the subject that they want. 
 And then they're going to go, great, got all the info. Now I'm done. Right. 
 And then they're going to put it down. And that's not what we want. We want each piece to build on the next piece. 
 So yours would be a great journey. 

 Rose | 18:14
Well, there you go. So yeah. There's still hope for me yet. - Suzy. - Absolutely. Great conversation. 
 You know, so you've already sort of pretty much explained the approach to writing the book. So, you know, getting a coach is probably one of the, first things that you need to do. How about getting it published? 
 I mean, you've got your coach, but publishing is another kettle of fish altogether. 

 Suzy | 18:43
Absolutely. So the first thing is, I mean, we always talk about this in the beginning because there are a lot of options out there now and they're equally exciting, right? I've got nonfiction writers who independently publish, which is another fancy word for self-publish, who get traditional publishing or who go hybrid, which is sort of a mix in between. I can go into that as well. 
 Yeah. It doesn't matter how you publish because these days there's benefits to both. Right. But these days, but all three versions of that are acceptable or, you know, have the same cachet as well as. The writer is really expected to promote themselves. 
 So another thing that we do right from the get-go is we talk about your platform. So as you're writing this book, the really cool thing, okay, I'm going all over the map here. I have so much to say. The cool thing about a nonfiction book is if you want to go the traditional publishing route and go with a big five publisher, you need to have an agent. Okay, so that's true of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, it's true of all of those because they just don't accept unaccepted. Unsolicited manuscripts, right? And so you have to have an agent and you go through this query process. It automatically tax time. On because you have to find an agent and then the agent works with you a bit more and says like I know that these guys are looking for this and these guys are looking for this and they have these conversations and then you might do a little bit more work on the book before you go on submission which is where the agent goes to the publisher so it automatically is a longer process so depending what you're writing about that may not be a good idea. 
 So for instance, I was working on a book this month. I did a developmental edit for a tax book, right? And it's going to be out of date. 
 So they got to get to market. So it doesn't make sense for them to go traditional because it could be three years and that's fast, right? Before it's there. But if you are thinking about going the traditional route, you don't have to finish the book. You can actually write it on proposal and sell it on proposal and then finish the book later. And so you can get paid to finish the book. 
 So that's kind of a neat option. So what I usually say is that people are thinking about doing that. We work on the first, you have to write three chapters on this proposal, which is basically a love letter to the publishers saying no. Book is about, by the way, but why there's a market for it. It's a business case for your book, which is really kind of a different way of looking at it. And so what we do is we create that proposal, we start shopping that proposal, we query it out to agents, and we go to some nonfiction publishers who are except without agents, and then they're finishing the book in the background. It's you can kind of do those two things simultaneously. 
 And then if they don't decide to go the big five router with an agent, then they have the book being finished in the background, and then they can go a different way. So there's some sort of industry stuff that you can get through. Does that make sense? 

 Rose | 21:50
Absolutely. Yes. 

 Suzy | 21:52
So lots of options for publishing. 

 Rose | 21:54
Absolutely. And, you know, most people I know go through... A place where they can get on Amazon and, you know, get them Kindle books. All those sorts of things. And that seems to be the way that people are going. More and more these. 

 Suzy | 22:10
Days. And I mean, the biggest thing is what is your platform, right? Because as a nonfiction writer, people are buying you. They're not buying the content, they're buying you. And even if they need the content, they need to know who you are. And so you'll find it is easier as a celebrity or as somebody who already has millions of followers to sell a book to a big publisher. Yes, but there's lots of ways that you can do it, right? And so as you're working on your book, you need to be thinking about how, where do my readers hang out? Where am I gonna meet them, right? And how am I gonna start talking about it? And so one of the things that I find really interesting is lots of times writers come to me and they're really anxious to get that book out this year, right? 
 Like, well, do you think it's reasonable that we get it published? You know, maybe not 2025. It's getting a little late in the year to be starting now, but yeah, is it reasonable for me to publish this thing with the inside of a year? And I say, whoa, hang on. 
 Like, why do you need to do that? Number one, unless it's a timely topic, because as soon as you start writing the book and you know when your publication date is, guess what? You get to start talking about it. 
 So even before it's out there, you can start, you know, building your platform. Maybe you go get Rose's eBooks and learn how to build a podcast, right? 
 Like start building your audience. Because if you have... 12 people or a hundred people waiting for it. When you publish that book, that's better than zero. And guess what else? Especially if you only plan to write one book. Many authors that are writing business books don't necessarily think down the line that they're going to write 10 books, right? 
 Like one book might be enough for you, but milk it. Because right now I can say, I'm going to be publishing in 2027. That's cool. 
 And then in 2027, it's new. And in 2028, it's still pretty new. If I get it out this year... Then by 2028, the book's three years old, right? 
 Like, so plan it and don't be in a huge hurry unless that topic actually is timely. And there's no reason to rush it because as soon as you're in that pipeline, as soon as you're, I'm writing a book, Especially if you have a publisher lined up or if you know what you're doing and you have a date, it's really easy to get out there promoting it. You get on podcasts, you can start writing articles, you can start doing speaking tours, whatever it is that you want to do or start talking to your clients about it. 

 Rose | 24:36
Great. Wonderful. Great tips, Suzy. Thanks so much. If you want to find Suzy, you can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram and on her website, which is Suzyvidori.com. And she is offering some book coaching. 

 Suzy | 24:54
Yes, absolutely. I would love to hear from you. You can fill out the intake form there on my website. Site and let me know what you're thinking and we can just have a conversation and see if it even makes sense to work together. 

 Rose | 25:08
Wonderful, Suzy. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing about how we as business owners can publish our nonfiction books. 

 Suzy | 25:16
Thanks for having me. 

 Rose | 25:18
Bye for now. 

 Outro | 25:20
You've been listening to Talking With The Experts, hosted by Rose Davidson. Make sure you have a look at our back catalogue over at talkingwiththeexperts.com. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss out on any episode. We look forward to your company next time.