Years ago, Walt and I hosted a three-day event in Ireland. We got a bunch of folks interested in building a solid coaching practice to cross the pond and listen to us expound upon the framework we use to do just that. We also introduced our audience members to some other valuable speakers and took them on some fun excursions, including kayaking in the bioluminescent waters of Lough Hyne. (Not to be missed!)

An Irish friend I’d met at some entrepreneurial event approached me one evening in the hotel bar. She’d listened intently to what we’d shared and taken a bunch of notes. “I had no idea,” she said after a drink or two, “that the two of you were the real deal.”

At the time I had no idea what she meant by this. I mean, what would we be, other than real? Robots? Blow-up dolls?

I eventually figured out why my friend had used the term: Not every person who puts themselves out there as an expert knows of which they speak. (That sounds polite, doesn’t it?) Anybody and their brother can hang up a shingle and report a multi-million-dollar yearly (oh, hell…monthly) income. They may look all sexy and successful, but dig an inch deeper, or worse, hire them, and you’ll quickly discover a distinct lack of substance.

I mean, isn’t that why we’re so cautious about buying anything? After a while, it all starts looking like snake oil.

Write that Bestseller in a weekend, solve your marital strife in one conversation, lose 60 pounds in 10 days…

Really?

You can’t be sure who or what you’re dealing with.

If you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, coach… this is the environment of distrust you’re now operating in.

Now, I just got back from a mastermind meeting in which 30 or so entrepreneurs discussed the challenges of growing their business in this current environment. We heard many a tale of formerly booming businesses being down by 50%. Lots of theories were thrown around to account for this trend. More competition, post-pandemic stuff, the upcoming election…

I chalk it up to the growing unease.

Journalist David Brooks describes the foundational breakdown of trust in our society in his book How to Know a Person. Thanks to a whole host of factors, including the rise of social media and AI, we’ve grown distrustful of others and assume they’re out to bilk or fool us. We’re paranoid, far more likely to exaggerate threats, fall for conspiracy theories that explain the danger we sense, or latch on to leaders who allow us to feel like we belong to a tribe. Just because we’ve lost sight of what is true. We’re not even sure it exists anymore.

If you ask me, we, as a society, are hungry for realness and substance. Yes, our heads are constantly turning this way and that way, but we’re desperate to rest our feet on solid ground. We want to be able to run our hands along the contours of a person—be it a leader, business owner, professed expert—and sense a wholeness. Not empty air.

I mean, I don’t think it’s just me. And David Brooks. Is it?

Now, I tell you this story for a reason.

If you’ve been flirting with the idea of writing a book for your business but ….insert all the reasons you haven’t gotten around to doing it…you’re missing the opportunity to build this much desired trust, to provide your readers—aka your potential clients and customers—with the necessary data they need to sense your realness. Give them that and they can breathe a sigh of relief and come to a rest in your good hands.

If you’re running a business of some kind, status quo is likely no longer working. In fact, there’s more flash and noise and sexified offers drowning you out than a few years before. All that junk? That’s driving the people you want to help right into their hidey-holes.

But… when you take the time to write a REAL book (don’t get me started) for a reader whose desires and challenges you understand as if they were your own, when you share some (relevant) truth about yourself, why this stuff matters to you, you have an opportunity to deeply connect with them. (That’s what we all want: connection.)

When you focus on the reader, what they want right now, and why. When you devote your writing to changing their lives, making their dreams come true, helping them get what they want….This is how successful businesses are built, not just books.

How can you build trust in an era of sheer paranoia? How can you demonstrate that you’re “real”? How can you give someone the information they need to sniff you out so they can settle down and be helped?

It ain’t another course, or a website revamp, or a $47 offering, I can tell you that.

It’s giving your readers eight or so hours to hear you out in the pages of your book, without all the jazz hands and the screaming.

Why should you write a book now? As opposed to waiting for a more opportune time? (Hahahaha, as if.)

Frankly, I don’t think you have that luxury. And I can’t imagine a better moment to separate yourself from the platitudes and the rhetoric and the empty buzz that’s plaguing our society. Because, man, do we need something real we can hang on to.

We need your wisdom, heart, and story.

You up for that?