What Is a Business Memoir?
What I’ve found after two decades of both writing my own business books and helping others write their books, is that there is nothing like a book. In fact, I have seen with over 120 authors and myself and my co-authors, nothing in their career beats becoming an author. Additionally, no amount of white paper creation comes close to the impact you make and the influence you gain by writing a book. Today, one of the best types of books you can create is the business memoir. But aren’t memoirs for recovering alcoholics, mentally ill survivors, and abuse survivors? Yes, and no.
Memoirs are personal accounts centered around a specific theme, or series of memories or stories from your life, your business, your failures. Memoirs typically focus on overcoming, on the things you survived in order to succeed. Memoirs are written from personal knowledge. Memoirs are books about your life, the lessons you learned, and the key moments that shaped who you are. The keyword here is a theme, not a timeline. A memoir is not a record of your entire existence or a history lesson of your life. It’s a reduction of your most intense, profound, experiences with a particular skill, a moment or moments, and your insights. A memoir takes those events, emotions, insights, and experiences and reduces them down into a rich sauce that can be savored and enjoyed.
Shoe Dog, by Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight, for example, is a memoir, not a biography, not an autobiography. Knight shares the inside, mostly unknown story of Nike. From a solo startup with first-year sales of $8,000 to their current annual sales of $30 billion, THIS is a memoir! What other businesses can learn from Knight is how he went from selling shoes out of the back of his car, to the success he is today. It’s about struggles and obstacles and backstabbers, haters, and incredible times that would have made most of us give up. Knight didn’t. You can’t share that kind of journey in a white paper but you can share it in a memoir.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
A memoir is to a business what a mentor is to a mentee. Mentors take the most valuable lessons, moments, and experiences and distill them into wisdom their mentee can (hopefully) incorporate into their own careers and lives. Learning from the experience, failure, insights, and wisdom of others is far more valuable than following a lesson plan, manual, or how-to book. That’s why memoirs are so powerful. They touch us deeply. They share the very things we believe will make us vulnerable, and show the world that what we thought was a weakness, was muscle being made. If you’re not a gym rat, the lesson is that you have to tear down muscle to build it. We have to fail before we learn to succeed. Those lessons are showcased in the memoir. It’s not the carefully crafted steps one, two, and three that inspires. It’s the voice of experience that moves us.
The reason Malcolm Gladwell’s books are consistent best-sellers is that Gladwell takes the theme of a thing, and writes a business memoir – focusing on lessons learned, insights gained. His insights are real. His interviews targeted, his understanding, and that of his interviews, authentic.
A memoir, by definition, is “… a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources.” It’s an essay on a learned subject. Who doesn’t prefer a good story over a lecture?
There’s a time and place for white papers, and a time and a place for memoirs. When people come to us for help with their book we ask them three questions:
- Who is your audience?
- What is your message?
- What is your story?
Their response to those questions tells us what kind of book they need to achieve the things they want to achieve. Sometimes it’s a manual. Sometimes it’s a memoir. Sometimes it’s a combination. For more information on what a business memoir looks like, read our post about The Art of the Business Memoir.
Completed with special partner co-author – Becky Blanton, TED Global Presenter
