by Alvin Ramirez July 10, 2014
Another Book Journeys episode with Angela Lauria featured certified Life Coach and Coach Mentor Linda Bucher who wrote the book, The Confident Coach: Connecting the Work You Love to the Success You Want to Achieve. Bucher wrote the book as a love letter to new coaches although the appeal is universal. It talks about uncovering one’s confidence after finding your true passion and purpose, discovering what makes you uniquely suited to serve your people, and then redefining success for who you are. The bottomline principle of her book is about “wrapping what one is doing and how you’re doing it around who you are.” Bucher shares that her motive for writing the book was not to gain more credibility or exposure, but it was really out of a deep desire to share her knowledge as a coach and mentor to other coaches and to document her journey so it might serve to help others. But the real purpose of the book didn’t really come to her until she was halfway writing it, so it was, for her, a gradual progression and all the clarity came in at the end. While her book is targeted to coaches, she envisions rewriting the book for many different audiences.
Bucher had a unique approach to hold herself accountable to finishing the book. She didn’t just set a date deadline, but she committed to having her book available in physical form to sell at a conference five months after deciding to write it. It was her way of telling herself that it was a done deal. One other thing she did was to write the book section by section so that once she finished one section, she would send it to her editor and then she wasn’t allowed to touch it anymore. This forced her to move on to the next section and not keep coming back to the previous ones.
Self-publishing was the best option for Bucher because she knew that the five-month deadline that she gave herself was too short to be able to find a publisher who would want to pick up her book. She found the process of self-publishing surprisingly easy, with her editor making the decision for her to publish through Lulu and putting up the book for her. By self-publishing, this allowed her to be able to write the book she wanted to write and not worry about having to impress a publisher. However, the difficult part for her is marketing the book as she finds herself wanting someone else to do this for her. She admits not doing what other authors would usually engage in to market themselves because while she may be an author, she is really a teacher and a coach and this is where she wants to put her focus on.
The best thing that came out of being an author for Bucher was conquering the resistance to write a book. She never really wanted to write and would rather talk all day long, but she realized that writing a book would give her that great big opening that she wanted to have. Her advice to those who are in the same position as she has been is to stop resisting and just give in to do it and let it come. She adds that they should not worry about who wants to read it or where it’s going to take their career, but just write what wants to be written. For her, it meant writing 30 minutes a day because anything more than that seemed like a whole lot of work which she did not want. “Just get it out. Let it be, let it fly, let it flow,” Linda Bucher imparts.
Listen to the Linda Bucher interview on BlogTalkRadio