#651 Write a Book or Not? The Truth About Personal Branding Success

Should you write a book to build your brand—or could it actually hold you back?

In this insightful episode, best-selling author and brand strategist Doug Crowe joins Talking with the Experts to reveal the truth about using books as a personal branding tool. Doug shares when a book can become your greatest credibility booster—and when it’s simply a distraction that drains your time, money, and focus.

With decades of experience helping entrepreneurs and thought leaders navigate publishing, Doug unpacks the decision-making process behind every successful author-brand. He explains how to identify if your message is ready for print, what signs show a book will strengthen your authority, and the red flags that mean you should pause or pivot.

You’ll also discover powerful alternatives to publishing—ways to build visibility, impact, and trust without ever writing a page.

🎧 Tune in to learn how to make your story work for you, not against you.

🔗 CONNECT WITH DOUG

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thedougcrowe/

Website: https://authorityfusion.com/

#PersonalBranding #AuthorBranding #BookMarketing #ThoughtLeadership #EntrepreneurMindset #BusinessGrowth #PodcastForEntrepreneurs #DougCrowe

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Chapters

• 2:47 Books alone accomplish nothing without strategic marketing and distribution, as approximately 2 million new books are published annually competing for the same audience attention.
• 4:18 Modern automation and Amazon's platform have made self-publishing accessible to anyone within minutes, eliminating the need to seek traditional publisher approval.
• 9:09 Intentionally mentioning organizations like Vistage and American Cancer Society in book content can lead to keynote speaking opportunities with those same organizations.
• 14:01 Book covers should either answer existing reader questions, create curiosity, or present puzzles rather than featuring author photos, which serve vanity over marketing purposes.
• 15:51 Books provide permanent foundational branding elements that work continuously and never get discarded, unlike temporary social media content that gets forgotten.
• 22:21 Producing well-positioned books requires significant resources, time, patience, and professional teams, but creates permanent digital assets unlike typical marketing expenses.

Transcript

Intro | 00:00
Business insights on talking with the experts. Hosted by Rose Davidson. 

 Advert | 00:09
This episode of Talking with the Experts is brought to you by our future partners. Maybe that's you. If your brand aligns with authenticity, strategy, and transformation, let's collaborate. Visit talkingwiththeexperts.com/sponsor -talking-with-the-experts to learn more. Now, Let's dive into today's conversation. 

 Rose | 00:31
Why write a book? And why not write a book? My next guest, Doug Crowe, is going to share with us why a book can be the most powerful tool for building your personal brand and why in some cases you shouldn't write one at all. Now, Doug, And. Wasn't raised by wolves, nor was he rescued from rags to riches. He simply built his story the long way through decades of business, travel and storytelling. He's a Dale Carnegie Highest Achievement Award winner for and has traveled to 43 countries across all seven continents, even to Antarctica. He's a licensed pilot, scuba diver, and is the proud father of three. He's a best-selling author, an investor, a brand strategist, and a media contributor featured in Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, Yahoo Finance, and more. My goodness me. His insights have landed him on TEDx stages, CBS News and dozens of radio shows nationwide, including his own. On Wind AM 560 and later on WLS AM 890 in Chicago. Doug, that is a mouthful and such a wide ranging scope of achievements. Welcome to Talking With The Experts. 

 Doug | 01:51
Thank you. A pleasure being here. 

 Rose | 01:54
So, Doug, tell me what got you into all of the things that you're doing? 

 Doug | 01:59
Well, that's a long-- that's a pretty broad question, but I got a lot of answers. But in terms of what I'm currently doing, That's helping founders and CEOs share a better story. To get whatever they want, whether it's brand authority, lead gen, equity, channel partnerships, a lot of things a book can do for a founder and a CEO. 
 So I got into that by accident and it was kind of a, happenstance thing when I was used to be a real estate developer. But I got into publishing and it's been so much fun because I get to hear the greatest stories from the most fascinating people. 

 Rose | 02:35
Wonderful. So how do we know when or if a book will actually grow our brand and some of the key signs that publishing will amplify our credibility and influence? 

 Doug | 02:47
Yeah, great questions. Well, a book all by itself will do nothing. 
 So just the fact that you've written and published one doesn't mean diddly squat. You're not going to all of a sudden be discovered and on television in 30 days, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you're. Perspective, but there are approximately 2 million new books every single year. And everybody is vying for the same set of eyeballs and attention from similar audiences. 
 So to make the book work, it's a complete, I have a very unique way to do that. But the fact of creating or writing one is a lot of people put a lot of. Focus and attention on the creative act, which is important for sure. But without a marketing and a strategic distribution to go with it. Your odds are better to win the lottery than to sell a million copies of your book, unfortunately. 

 Rose | 03:41
Yeah, absolutely. I have a couple of books in mind that I want to do. One of them is gathering all my podcast guests together and writing a book about their interviews. And the other one is writing a book. A book of my personal journey from childhood up till now. But, you know, Sometimes you think, you know, I really want to do this thing, but... I think fear holds a lot of us back in, you know, getting the, we have these ideas, but getting the book out there can be really challenging. 

 Doug | 04:18
It is, you know, it's funny. There's so much automation now that wasn't available a few years ago to help us with that journey. And, you know, before Amazon got very popular, it was a lot of people. You had no choice. You had to go to a regular publisher and beg for permission to get attention. And nowadays it's, impossible not to publish your own book. You can actually, with a couple of clicks, type a manuscript and you can be a published author in a matter of minutes. And that's a good thing. And it's a bad thing because anybody can publish. Which is good and bad, depending on what you're reading. 
 So that's why it goes back to the marketing, positioning that you need to establish even before the first word is written. A lot of people focus on, you know, social and podcasts and things like that to get attention to their book. And we have a very unique position at our company. We actually do all of that work. Before the book is written. 

 Rose | 05:12
Okay, explain why. 

 Doug | 05:14
Well, think about it. If, if you spend all this time. And energy and resources and thought and writing and editing and proofing and layout and production. And you go, "Okay, world. Here I am. And the world's like, Who are you? Why should I care? 
 So if we backtrack nine months at the beginning of your process, okay, well, Who are you and why should we care? Let's address those questions first before you write. Because if you don't write with some intention to solve a problem for somebody, to entertain them, to become useful, interesting, or some combination of those things. Your book is going to go nowhere. You've got to really understand your reader experience. And what they want and need and what they've tried before and failed with. One of our key functions we do is we develop some software that is called Page Pulse. What it does, it goes into Amazon and it goes to your book category. Say your category is in business development, advertising, whatever it is. Our software goes in there and analyzes all the bestsellers under their three-star reviews. We ignore one-star reviews. People are just Angry. And we ignore five-star reviews. It's usually somebody's mother, right? But a three-star review... Gives great intel. Number one, it's not completely negative or positive. It's in the middle. 
 So I was like, you know what? I'd like your book, but I enjoyed reading this. And I wish you would have said this. I didn't like this. And we, Pollate over 100 reviews like that we get data gold. We get such value from those three-star reviews. We can use that information to draft a better manuscript. 
 So stage one, we know what the audience is yearning for, what they don't want and what they do want. The second thing we do in terms of pre-marketing is we're If your book is about For example, your podcast guests, or they all have some thin thread that connects them together. 
 You know, business insights. Well, what I would do is I would say, okay, That's fine. We could take 10, 20 podcast guests, but let's go ahead and be intentional about maybe half a dozen of them. Find out who has the biggest company. Who has their own PR department, who has a big list of 50, 100,000 people in distribution list. Let's make sure they are in that book. 
 So when your book comes out, Hey, Bob, you're in chapter 3 and 7. You want me to send you a copy? Yeah. This is great. What's he going to do when he sees your book, right? Rose, he's going to go to his chapter first. 
 Well, there I am, right? Geez, how can I get this to my company? How can I get this to my community? I'm so glad you asked. 
 So when you treat your future readers, as collaboration partners, as opposed to a customer, you get a lot of things solved. It's easier to create your content. Your book sounds better. It's not just me. It's you and your community. And you got a prebuilt launch team to get it out there. Most authors, when they promote their book, He's got about two or three days. We've seen this, right? We go to our friend's See, hey, I got a book coming out. Okay, great. Thank you. Maybe I'll get it. Maybe I won't. Next day, yeah, I know you got to book out. Third day, I heard. Within a week, It's like, I'm sick of your, okay, I got other things to do with my life. You can only promote your book for a few days. Advocates, dozens and dozens of other people helping you promote your book. You are running up a very steep hill. 

 Rose | 08:40
Yeah, absolutely. I had, a podcast guest who recently released a book and asked me to write a review for it and my name's included in the book because i've made some comment which is you know really nice but then when it came down time to promoting it was like email after email and I'd already promoted it you know a couple of times for him anyway but it just got a bit tiresome. 

 Doug | 09:09
Very true. So if you have in mind, like, I'll give you another example. One of our clients, mentioned Vistage. CEO peer group and the American Cancer Society in his book. We did edit out we left those names in there. Where are his first two keynote addresses? Vistage National. American Cancer Society because we intentionally left their names in the book. That's just a small thing. If you really lean into that and really make it a big deal, you don't have to write your book for a company. But if you're aligned with their values, or part of their USP or something like that, and you align with it, Man, bring them in. Treat them as collaboration partners. 

 Rose | 09:51
Yeah. Yeah. No, great idea. They actually top notch ideas. Thank you for sharing all two. 

 Doug | 09:57
Those. I've got more. That's just the first Well, you know, you only have a few minutes here. 

 Rose | 10:00
Share more please. So when is writing a book a bad idea? 
 You know, what are some of the warning signs and common mistakes that we. 

 Doug | 10:11
Make? Great question. 
 So. I'll use the word writing and I use the word producing separately. It's usually always a bad idea to write a book because unless you are a professional storyteller, and I mean, professional, like you know character development, Hooks. Rising action, tension. Alliteration. You got, if you understand the writing process and how I'll use this example, Hollywood. Spends $100 million and famous actors to hold our attention for two hours. As an author, you're asking the reader, for four to six hours of their attention with no visuals, just your words. Hollywood spends $100 million to hold your attention. Not all the movies are that good. You expect your words, your ink on paper to hold my attention for four to six hours. Who are you? Are you Hemingway? 
 So most people shouldn't write. Most everybody. Should publish. And there's the key differentiator is the task of writing well, like I said, because you can have AI write a lot of stuff nowadays, but to write well and to embed your emotions and your soul and your story in there, most people can do a good amount of that. But to make it story arcs and make it interesting for the reader, Boy, that takes either a really good developmental editor or a professional writer. 
 So every, most everybody should publish a book. Hardly anybody should actually write it themselves. 

 Rose | 11:42
All right, so who should we get to write it? 

 Doug | 11:46
Well. It depends on what your book is about, right? If it's, Our company, I'll just talk about myself for a moment. We've been ghostwriting and publishing for founders and CEOs for 15 years. And I've gone through well over a hundred ghostwriters. And I've seen a trend where a writer tries to infuse their own... Personality or politics into a manuscript. I'm like, don't do that. You got to mirror the author and I call my clients authors, even though they're not reading all the writing. 
 So a person who understands. Personality, psychology, a person's voice, cadence, style. If they can capture that, they can and mirror it, they're in great shape. We use a separate function for journalism, writing Editing and proofing and layout. There's at least five different skill sets or five different people to pull that off. A good journalist... Ask the questions that the reader wants to know. You mentioned maybe writing your life story, nothing wrong with that. But I encourage you to have someone to interview you who's a professional interviewer. Who can? Go down those rabbit holes and spy. Now, why did you say that? Where were you when that happened? My gosh. Why did he do that? You think, you know, I'm all right. Now you've mentioned it, you know, because a good journalist is painting the whole picture, whereas most people write their own books are telling their story from their perspective, which is fine. Until it isn't. Until it all of a sudden goes off the rail or sounds like a diary, or there's no meaningful reason I should read this. One thing I... Don't need to be mean to anybody, but when I see people with their picture on the cover of a book, I generally laugh. From a sales psychology standpoint, Why would you do that? Does anybody know your face besides your family and maybe a hundred friends? No. 
 So putting your face on a cover of a book, It's vanity. It's not. It's not marketing. Cover is designed for one purpose. To make somebody look at the back cover. 
 Yeah. And there's your sales page. Okay, now I'm gonna get the book. 
 Yeah. So if you're a supermodel, maybe it'll help, right? Most of us aren't. If you're famous, it totally works. But if you're an ordinary person, don't put your picture on the cover. This is lazy and it's egocentric, doesn't work. 

 Rose | 14:01
- yeah, I agree. I wouldn't buy a book with someone's, unless I knew the person. 
 I mean, what's the point? I'd rather a nice cover with sunshine and roses and flowers and all sorts of other things, rather than looking someone. 

 Doug | 14:15
- The cover and title is supposed to do a couple of things. It should either answer a question that's already in the reader's mind, like, "Hey, I'm new in town. "How do I make friends here? " look, there's a book. "How to Win Friends and Influence People." That answers my question. Or it should create a question like, What's this book about? Blink. What's up with that? I'm curious. 
 So that's pretty much it. Either answer a question or ask one. And the third one I love the most is harder to do, but it's to create a puzzle. One of my friends wrote a book. Forgive me, but it won the worst book title of the year award about eight, 10 years ago. It's called Cooking with poo. 

 Rose | 14:53
It's 

 Doug | 14:54
A Thai cookbook. That's her last name is Poo. It's her name. No. Tondra. With the brown cover, it makes people go, what? It gets attention. Right. And it works for her. I saw at the airport just not a couple of years ago. 
 So anytime you do a double entendre, which does a pattern interrupt, a person's like, what? It makes them spend an extra second on the title to figure it out. 
 So puzzle, curiosity, or answer a question. Those are the three things a cover should do. It should not. Reveal the whole book. 
 Because then why bother reading it? You know, if you can answer all the. 

 Rose | 15:31
Questions. Absolutely. 
 I mean, when you said the title, I thought, grace. Anyway Doug what are some smart alternatives to a book for building authority I mean There must be some proven ways to strengthen our personal brand and attract those that we're all looking for. 

 Doug | 15:51
I was reading an article this morning by Mark Schaefer about personal branding, how it's more important now than any time in history. And the big picture is, as we have seen in the rise of the internet, the social media, and everyone's got a TV studio, we're doing a podcast now, unheard of a few years ago, to be on TV with you, right? This is brand new, but The numbers don't lie. I think it was, what was it? Forgive me if I mess this up. Maybe 10 years ago, there was like a couple hundred thousand podcasts. Now there's like 30 million. It's amazing. Everyone can do it. Ahem. 
 So it makes it, Social media and video and podcasts and writing blogs were like a big deal when they were rare. Now anybody could blog. What makes a book unique and still special, even in all the... 
 You know, tools we can use nowadays. A book is still special for one reason. I don't know what I clicked on an hour ago. I don't know what I commented on two hours ago. I don't remember a speaker I heard a week ago, but I've never, ever. Throwing a book in the garbage can. 
 A book is permanent. We have this visceral reaction. It's like my God, I can't throw a book away. That's like burning a book. We never do that. 
 So a book is a permanent foundational element to your brand. It's working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's going to be around when you're dead. 
 I mean, it's permanent. Everything else is permanent. It's temporary, no matter what it is. 
 So a book is an essential element of a personal brand provided You tell a story well. You make a point and you give some value to the reader that they can take some action on, not just feel good, but hey, I'm going to do this thing today. 

 Rose | 17:38
So it's Yeah, my friend recently... 

 Doug | 17:39
Important for personal branding. 

 Rose | 17:43
Published a book it's called he's he it's called own your media or own your own media because he was kicked off Facebook for no reason and lost nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Through clients and everything. And he was just like devastated. 
 So he... Published a book. Self-published, I might add, but it's done quite well. It got to 14th on Amazon or something, so that's not a bad start. 
 Yeah, I mean... Just because he was frustrated with the whole social media debacle. 
 I mean, I've been locked out of Facebook for a month now because I posted a link and I'm a threat to cybersecurity, apparently. 

 Doug | 18:27
Gosh, that's terrible. 

 Rose | 18:29
Yeah, and I mean, Yeah, I've got a few thousand followers and You know, I can't use my, I can use WhatsApp and I can look at Instagram. 

 Doug | 18:30
I thought- If you don't own your space, you're in trouble. It's weird. 

 Rose | 18:44
But I can't interact, I can't, you know, post anything or see comments or anything. So I'm sure you're Absolutely. 

 Doug | 18:52
Encouraging your clients to market on social, but own your own platform. 

 Rose | 19:00
Yeah. Yeah. 
 Yeah. That's what he's done. I've never built. 

 Doug | 19:02
A community on any social platform for that very reason. You're not the only person that's gotten ripped off. I had one. Political group that I set up. It was, it's called Tailwag's Dog, why the extreme left and extreme right are working together to keep us apart. It was kind of clever. Even though it was middle of the road stuff, but they closed it down. 
 Like, all right, fine. I'm not going to talk, censor me. It's. 

 Rose | 19:26
Crazy. It's absolutely crazy. A bot has decided that we're a threat in some way. - Yeah. And there's no real person behind the fact checking at all. 
 So I think it's absolutely ridiculous. 

 Doug | 19:40
It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. 
 Yeah. So yeah, it's important to own your community and you use social for marketing as well, but don't live there. It's dangerous. 

 Rose | 19:49
No, absolutely. No, I'll certainly won't be doing that in future. I'll be moving them over to something else, but yeah, getting back to the book thing. 
 I mean, and you're right because book, having a book is a legacy and something that will be there for absolutely forever and you know If you've written your book well enough and it keeps selling, I mean, look at the royalties that, you know, even your family can enjoy. So, you know, you need to look at those sorts of things as well. 

 Doug | 20:17
Most business authors understand that the revenue from a book is usually pretty small. Even if you sell a thousand copies, you're getting, you know, maybe, you know, eight or nine dollars US on that. It's not huge money. The big money for most business authors, I always say that you can make money. Big. Money. From your book. But not I'm sorry, you make your, I get this wrong all the time. You make money because of your book, not from your book. Most of my, I had one client who we did a book for him. He built software. I don't know why he wanted to do a book, but he had great stories. And I called him up as we're done. 
 You know, ghostwriting and publishing his book for him. I said, hey, you want to be in some podcasts, get some media attention and get your book out there? 
 So I have no time. I mean, no time. You just spent like 50 grand to get your book done. Let's promote it because I don't have time for that. Can you tell me more? He goes, he had like only 250 customers at a software company that was enterprise software. And I said, I mailed it to all my clients. They gave me so many referrals. I don't have time for anything right now. 
 So his marketing was already built in because he wrote his book. For his customers. And one year later, he sold the business. 

 Rose | 21:32
Wow. Exceptional. Now, if you want to find out more about Doug, you can find him on LinkedIn and on his website, the authorityfusion.com. And he has some... All right. AuthorYourBrain.com. All right. I'll get that link from. 

 Doug | 21:53
You. Yeah, it's okay. Authority Fusion, we have a community there. They can join that as well. It's fine. It's just in terms of getting... Getting some free goodies. You'll get more of it off your brand. But either one, actually, there's plenty of stuff there for everyone. I didn't say that. - Authority Feud or author your brand are both good. 

 Rose | 22:09
I'd love you to share more words of wisdom, Doug, before we close today. 

 Doug | 22:14
Sure. Ask me a specific question. I'll give you something. 

 Rose | 22:17
I guess, Pros and cons of writing a book. 

 Doug | 22:21
Yeah. The pros are once you're done with it, and it's a laborious, tedious process, you're done. And you can just get it out there and focus on the marketing. 
 So it is an asset. Most marketing, in fact, all the marketing is an expense. 
 That's why your friend on the media, he's on to something. Pro to producing a book is you've got permanent digital asset or printable asset that you can use over and over again. The cons are to do a well-positioned, a well-articulated story. It takes resources, time, patience. And a team to do it. 

 Rose | 22:55
Absolutely. Doug, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing with us today. And I look forward to chatting with you again soon. 

 Doug | 23:03
Thank you, Rose. Appreciate it. 

 Rose | 23:04
Bye. Bye. 

 Outro | 23:08
You've been listening to Talking with the Experts with Rose Davidson. The podcast that brings you real stories, bold insights, and strategies that work. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast channel so you never miss an episode and dive into our full library anytime at TalkingWithTheExperts.com. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing and keep talking with the experts.