Who taught you more than they realised? Why the best business experts have doubts about writing books

Who taught you more than they realised?

Think about that for a moment. Who was the person who genuinely changed how you think, how you work, how you see yourself in relation to your field. Chances are they had no idea they were doing it.

I had a Philosophy Professor at University who held a hall of 400 students completely entranced, speaking directly into the mic pinned to his rust coloured jumper, head down the entire time, never once looking up at the room he had completely in his grip. Then there was my Political Philosophy tutor, he wasn't a professor, he never even went for promotion, but he was hands down the best educator I have ever encountered. He cared about how we thought, not what we memorised, and I became the teacher I later went on to be largely because of him.

Contrast them with the lecturer who thought handing the group a single word and disappearing for two hours constituted teaching, or the one who kept his study door permanently locked because his real interests lay elsewhere and the academic position was purely for the title. Same institution; worlds apart in terms of impact.

I would love to go back and tell my tutor what he meant to me. I can't, sadly he died, and I suspect he never knew how good he was.

Why the best business minds often don't write books

I saw the same pattern throughout my teaching career. The colleagues doing the most extraordinary work in their classrooms, transforming outcomes for young people who had been written off elsewhere, were consistently the ones who assumed everyone else was doing the same. One of my sixth year pupils left me a card that said "you taught me so much more than English." I still think about that because it made me realise how invisible our own impact can be to us, precisely because it feels so natural.

When I moved into working with business owners I expected to find something different but I didn't find it. The founders with the most genuinely valuable methodologies, the ones who had built something that actually worked through years of testing and refinement and hard-won experience, were the ones most likely to say "but surely everyone knows this already."

What is the curse of expertise and how does it hold business owners back?

The closer you are to your own knowledge, the more ordinary it feels. You have lived inside your methodology for so long that you can no longer see it from the outside, and you have forgotten what it was like not to know what you know. The framework that feels obvious to you because you have used it for years, refined it, tested it against reality, is genuinely revelatory to the person encountering it for the first time.

One of the things I notice working with business owners on their books is how much clarity they develop about their own business through the process itself. The act of articulating your methodology, of having to explain not just what you do but why it works and how you came to know that, forces a level of reflection that most people simply never make time for. They come in thinking they are writing a book but they discover they are also understanding their own expertise more deeply than they ever have before.

How do you know if you're ready to write a business book?

True expertise almost always comes with doubt. Doubt about whether you are the right person to take to the stage, to write the book, to send in the proposal. In my experience that doubt is usually evidence of the opposite. The people with no doubt tend to have the least to back it up. The people who hesitate, who question whether they are really qualified to say this, usually have the knowledge that could genuinely change things for others.

What is everyday to you could be life changing to someone else.

Is now the right time to write your business book?

It is rarely time, or resources, or not knowing enough yet that holds people back. It is usually the persistent belief that their knowledge is not special enough to deserve a platform, combined with a vague sense that the moment they feel ready will arrive sometime in the future when they are more certain, more successful, more qualified.

That moment does not arrive. The people who write the books, build the platforms, become known for their expertise, are the ones who moved before they felt ready, usually because someone else helped them see what they actually had.

My tutor never had that. I work every day to make sure my clients do.

If you are a business owner with a proven methodology, a clear insight into your field, knowledge that has been tested against reality and actually works, and you have been telling yourself that writing a book is something you will get to eventually, I have one question for you.

What are you waiting for?

Take my two minute quiz, 'Are you ready to write your book?' and let's find out where you actually are. I'll send personalised feedback to everyone who completes it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does an author coach actually do?

An author coach works with you from the point of "I think I have a book in me" all the way through to a finished manuscript you are proud of. That means helping you to clarify your idea, structure your thinking, develop your voice and keep moving when the process gets difficult, which it always does at some point. It is part strategic, part editorial and part accountability.

How do I know if I have enough expertise to write a business book?

If you have built a methodology, developed a framework, or accumulated hard won knowledge through years of working in your field, you almost certainly have enough. The question is rarely whether the expertise exists. It is whether you can see it clearly enough to articulate it, and whether you believe it is worth sharing. In my experience, the people who ask this question are exactly the ones who should be writing. The ones who never ask it are often the ones with the least to say.

Do I need to be a good writer to write a business book?

No. You need to be clear about what you know and willing to do the work of articulating it. The writing itself is a craft that develops through the process and part of what an author coach does is help you find the version of your voice that works on the page. Many of my clients are excellent communicators who have simply never had to translate that into long form writing before. That is a learnable skill, and it is much easier when you have a structure to work within and someone to guide you through it.

How long does it take to write a business book?

It depends on the scope of the book, how much time you can realistically give it, and how clearly your thinking is structured at the outset. Most of my clients working at a sustainable pace alongside their businesses take between six months and a year. That said, the clarity work at the beginning, getting the structure right before you write a single chapter, is the investment that makes everything else faster. A book built on a solid foundation takes less time to write than one that has to be pulled apart and rebuilt halfway through.

What are the business benefits of writing a book?

A book does several things that other forms of content cannot. It positions you as the authority in your field in a way that a LinkedIn post or a podcast appearance simply cannot match. It gives potential clients a way to understand your thinking in depth before they ever speak to you, which means the conversations you have are with people who already trust your approach. It opens doors to speaking, media and partnerships. And perhaps less obviously, the process of writing it tends to sharpen your offer, your messaging and your understanding of your own methodology in ways that have an immediate impact on your business even before the book is published.

How is an author coach different from an editor or ghostwriter?

An editor works with a manuscript you have already written, improving what is there. A ghostwriter writes the book for you, in your name, based on your ideas. An author coach works with you through the writing process itself, helping you develop the thinking, the structure and the words. The distinction matters because the process of writing your own book, with support, produces something an editor or ghostwriter cannot, which is genuine clarity about your own expertise and a book that sounds unmistakably like you. That authenticity is what makes a business book actually work as a business tool.