Jeremy Burrows Sold 40,000 Copies of His Niche Book and Increased His Speaking Fees by 10x

When Jeremy Burrows wrote The Leader Assistant, he expected the book would generate leads and lend him credibility. What he didn’t expect was that—almost overnight—his speaking fees would jump 5 to 10 times higher.

The Multiplier Effect

With the speaking Jeremy had done in the past, his driving impulse had been just to get himself and his ideas out there. The money was negligible.

But joining the ranks of published authors elevated him immediately to a more select tier of speaking talent. The small fees he got in the past—but never thought much about—were suddenly 5 to 10 times higher.

Publishing a book has a multiplier effect on everything else you do.

It’s been five years now since Jeremy released The Leader Assistant: Four Pillars of a Confident, Game-Changing Assistant. Looking back at the networking opportunities, corporate trainings, and speaking gigs that have come his way, he reflects:

“Having that book is like taking your business and thought leadership to a whole new level. Part of me already knew this to be true—which is why I did it. But I was still surprised by just how much of a difference it makes to be a published author.”

When Jeremy Knew He Should Write a Book

The seed of Jeremy’s book was planted while he was between jobs as an executive assistant and suffering from burnout. He started blogging as a way to help other assistants—and started networking and coaching the executives he knew who employed them.

Over the next couple of years, he found himself sharing his advice to groups of assistants at different companies and organizations. Eventually, Jeremy realized he was having the same conversations, the same coaching sessions, the same kinds of interactions over and over again.

If he genuinely wanted to help as many assistants as possible, he had to get all his advice into a shareable, scalable version.

If you feel like you’re having the same great conversation 50 times, that’s a telltale sign you should write a book.

How Jeremy Wrote The Leader Assistant

Having already written 75,000 words of blog posts on the subject, Jeremy knew he wouldn’t be starting entirely from scratch.

But he also realized it would be a mistake to think he could just sweep up that existing content willy-nilly and call it a book.

It wasn’t until he sat down and put together an outline that everything clicked. From there, he was off to the races.

As it turned out, the blogs were helpful in writing the book. With the vision for The Leader Assistant captured in his outline, he could go back to relevant blog posts and rewrite, repurpose, and integrate them as appropriate.

But this wouldn’t have been possible if he hadn’t started fresh, so to speak—imagining what the book could be and laying it out first.

Taking the time early on made all the difference.