with thousands of audience members and be paid $20K for a speaking engagement. • I frequently get messages from people (women and men) who thank me for writing this book because it genuinely helped them. WHAT ARE UNREALISTIC BOOK OBJECTIVES? Of course everyone secretly hopes their book will sell millions of copies and be a breakout success—but if you make that your objective, you are setting yourself up for failure. Those are not realistic goals. If you set realistic goals, you give your book a chance to actually succeed. In fact, the most important thing you can do with this question is kill your fantasies and set objectives that are achievable. These are unrealistic objectives: • Sell a million copies the first year • Be asked to do a TED talk • Become a famous author • Be a New York Times Best Selling author • Get on Oprah/Ellen • Fill an ill-defined emotional void Here’s the thing about these objectives: they are not literally impos- sible. People have accomplished them all. We’ve had a few of our authors do them. But they are exceedingly rare, and most books have no shot at these objectives. The more you focus on realistic objectives, the better your book will be at hitting the audience you need to hit in order to succeed. REFERENCE: If you want to read a deeper dive into what exactly a book can get you, both in terms of branding and tangible ROI, read Reference piece 9.2: How Writing A Book Can Build Your Brand, and 9.3: How To Make Money With Your Book. figUrE OUT yOUr BOOk OBjECTivES · 61