It’s official. I’ve earned my Master’s degree – a goal I’ve had for myself for over 10 years – and now my audience gets to enjoy the rewards. During my program I’ve been studying leadership and influence, and how to move people in the direction you want them to go.

For the past year, I focused intensely on researching how to be highly influential as a nonfiction author. What fascinated me is the unique position these authors are in. They want to influence their audiences to make a difference in their lives, but they have no real power over them at all; no way of holding them accountable, no way of rewarding or punishing them for following through or not, no way of even following up with their audiences.

This means that these authors have to get inside the minds and hearts of their audience and get each individual reader to choose to make the change for themselves and on their own.

How do we do that?

Here are five of the 10 timeless secrets I discovered through my research:

1. You absolutely MUST be passionate about your topic. If you’re not, you won’t follow it through to completion, and you won’t dive deeply enough into it in order to make it unique.

2. Be extremely clear about the outcome you want to create. Some might call this intention. Some might call this a goal. Whatever you call, it will shape the entire process from start to finish.

3. Craft your message well. Know it. Be able to say it succinctly – and in various ways without watering it down. Not only does it make your writing more engaging, but it helps you as the author to know where to focus, where to trim, and where to add content as you develop it.

4. Finish. While this may seem obvious, how many times have you (have we all, really!) started something and not finished it?

5. Engage your audience in a way that they can’t NOT be a part of the conversation. I call this Values-Based Controversy. Not the kind of controversy you see on Jerry Springer and other day-time talk shows. It’s the kind of controversy that taps into your audiences’ deepest values and gets them to talk about their beliefs, with the intention of leading them somewhere.

So, where do you fall as an author? Are you passionate about your topic, or just interested in it, or worse – just doing it because it’s what you’ve always done or think you can make money at? Are you engaging your audience? How well are you crafting your message? How clear are you about the outcome you want to create from your writing?

Next month, I’ll address the other five. For now though, if you don’t know where to start, start with the passion you have for your topic. If you have that, the rest will follow – or at least you’ll have the energy and determination to get through the challenges that may exist.

And that matters almost more than anything else. After all, if you don’t have what it takes to follow through, none of the rest matters any way.

October 2013 Issue