Hey to my Modern Authors!

Let me say the quiet part out loud:

Most teaching books don’t teach.

A few months ago, I asked an experienced facilitator why she hadn’t written her book yet.

She sighed:

“I don’t want to just make another slide deck with a spine.”

Oof. That one stuck.

Because she’s not wrong.

Most “teacher” books read like passive lectures. Heavy on insight. Light on instruction. They mistake clarity for curriculum. They forget the magic isn’t just in what you say... it’s in how people learn it.

🧠 Great teaching books don’t just explain your thinking.

They structure the transformation.

And when you do it right?

That book doesn’t just “share what you know.”

It becomes a scalable learning experience: a framework you can apply.

One that can get licensed. Taught. Embedded. And implemented... with or without you in the room.

That’s the play.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you know this is Part 2 of my Profitable Author series, where I break down the 7 Modern Author Personas and the strategic moves that help today’s authors turn books into their most valuable business asset.

This week, we’re talking about the Teacher. And to be clear, our Teacher-Author isn't your elementary school type. These are modern educators from Simon Sinek, Adam Grant, and Scott "Professor G" Galloway to Brene Brown, Kim Scott, and Cal Newport. And candidly these are the teachers all of us probably wish we'd have had at some point in our lives.

Here’s the model we’re unpacking:

📖 Your Book Is the Hook.
🧠 Your Persona Is the System.
💸 Your Business Model Is the Result.

Let’s explore what the best Teacher Authors do to build real learning journeys... and how folks like Vishen Lakhiani, Derek Gaunt, and Priya Parker turn books into curriculum that scales.

Why Most Teaching Falls Flat (and the Books Do Too)

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room:

📉 Online course completion rates? Hover around 1–2%.
📚 Most “teaching books”? Read once, then shelved.
🧑‍🏫 Most instructors? Still using the same slide deck from 2016.

Why? Because most “teaching” is a broadcast, not a transformation.

Here’s what the best Teacher Authors know:

People don’t pay for information.
They pay for a shift.

And once you get out of a traditional classroom setting, the only way you can monetize teaching is if you deliver shifts.

What Real Teacher Authors Actually Build

The truth is that one of the largest markets for knowledge entrepreneurs today is corporate education: companies and organizations who pay teachers and educators to train and teach their employees or members.

It's a massive $600 billion dollar a year market.
Teaching... outside the classroom.

But not everything is able to tap into this market. Let me break down what separates high-impact Teacher Authors from everyone else trying to “just teach” online:

1) They build learning scaffolds, not just modules.

They know the order matters.
They know the stories matter.
They know when to push, when to reflect, when to assess, and when to repeat.

The best Teacher Authors build journeys... not PDFs.

2) They write books that teach by design.

Their books aren’t just interesting.
They’re instructional.

They embed frameworks, recap pages, diagrams, exercises, and reflection tools, so readers engage and retain, not just read and forget.

(Think: Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering. Nir Eyal’s Indistractable. Or James Clear’s Atomic Habits, which is secretly a behavior design curriculum.)

3) They plan the downstream business model before the first word is written.

They ask:
• “Where will my book become a curriculum?”
• “What formats will this translate into: slides? cohort-based courses? certifications?”
• “How do I license this?”

Their book is the core instructional asset... not the end product.

And this may be the biggest shift:

They aren't just teaching content.
They become the university themselves.

Let’s Talk About Vishen Lakhiani

Vishen didn’t just write a book.

He wrote a system.

When The Code of the Extraordinary Mind came out, it wasn’t just a one-off mindset book. It was the instructional spine for a movement... and a business empire.

From that single book, Vishen built:
• Mindvalley University (a global platform)
• Courses and certifications taught by others
• Live events around the world
• Masterclasses that convert like crazy

He designed for transformation, not just explanation.

Vishen calls it “consciousness engineering," and he embedded it chapter by chapter in the book.

Every chapter? A framework. Every framework? A workshop. Every workshop? A new income stream.

He didn’t just publish. He taught.

Now Contrast That with Derek Gaunt

Derek is one of the partners at Black Swan Group, the powerhouse negotiation firm behind Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

But Derek didn’t set out to write a negotiation book. He wanted to teach emotional intelligence for leaders.

What did we help him do?

👉 Turn his facilitation experience into frameworks.
👉 Build Ego, Authority, Failure not as a speech… but as a curriculum.
👉 Create training modules that companies could license or run internally.

Derek’s book didn’t just explain the “why” behind emotional intelligence. It trained the how: how to recognize, de-escalate, respond, and lead.

And the result?

Dozens of companies now run his material without him in the room.

That’s what Teacher Authors do: They design once, teach forever.

How Teacher-Authors Become the University

What excites me most about the future of education isn't what's happening in higher education. It's the rise of new educational institutions... Vishen's Mindvalley, Simon Sinek's Optimism Company, and Scott Galloway's Section 4 (now Section AI).

At the core of these modern educators lie their writing and books. And their books are all built differently.

If you want your book to teach (or to get paid more to teach), here’s the real blueprint:

1. Start with Outcomes ​
• What will your reader be able to do differently?
• What will they know, say, or feel?

2. Sequence the Scaffolding ​
• Chapter order matters.
• You’re not just telling stories... you’re building stairs.

3. Embed Practice ​
• Reflection prompts, assessments, small experiments.
• Even Atomic Habits is basically a workbook in disguise.

4. Brand (or License) the Learning aka Become the University​
• You don’t need to be the teacher forever.
• Others can teach your method, if you’ve made it repeatable.

If you're delivering transformation, you're a modern teacher.
If you're building a platform for transformation, you're a modern university.

But if you're just providing information, you're toast.

The Business Model Stack for Teacher Authors

One of the most common things I hear from aspiring authors:

"I'd love to be able to teach a college course some day."

Teaching is one of the most powerful author personas… and one that many of us have on our bucket list as an opportunity to give back. But it’s also one of the most misused.

If your book is built like a course, it can:
• Create transformation at scale
• Drive high-ticket learning programs
• Unlock licensing and downstream revenue
• Build trust faster than any ad ever could

But if your book is just a lecture?

It’ll get read once. Maybe liked. Rarely remembered. And almost never referred.

Once the book works like a curriculum, here’s how it unlocks revenue:

📚 Book → Bootcamp

Run a 1- or 2-day immersive workshop. Charge $500–$2,500.

📚 Book → Certification

License your framework. Train others to teach it. Recurring revenue.

📚 Book → Corporate Training

Convert your material into decks, guides, and facilitator scripts.

📚 Book → Mastermind

Lead a cohort of learners. More support = more revenue.

📚 Book → Adjunct / Institutional Teaching

Use your book as a university-level curriculum. (Bonus: street cred.)

Package this up into your organization, your brand, or with your peers, and this becomes a modern university (just without the football games and Greek Row).

Most Teaching Books Fail Because They’re Just “Interesting”

Let me say the hard part again:

Interesting ≠ Instructional.

Just because you’ve got clever stories and sharp insight doesn’t mean you’re actually teaching anything.

You have to: • Design how people learn • Bake in repetition, practice, and frameworks • Make your knowledge exportable

If you’ve ever taught something in real life, you already know this:

🧠 The ah-ha moment doesn’t come from hearing it.
✅ It comes from doing it.

So why would your book be any different?

TL;DR: How to Write Like a Teacher (That People Pay to Learn From)

✅ Think like a curriculum designer.
✅ Build practice into your pages.
✅ Design for teachability.
✅ Plan the business model before you write.
✅ Remember: teaching = transformation, not information.

Final Thought: Teachers Don’t Just Share Ideas. They Scale Impact.

There’s a reason this Profitable Author series moved next to the Teacher persona.

Because teaching, done right, doesn’t just help one person at a time.
It creates repeatable, scalable transformation.

Vishen didn’t just share ideas about mindset and meditation. He built Mindvalley, a global learning platform that’s reimagining personal growth. His books were never just books. They were curriculum prototypes.

Derek Gaunt didn’t just lecture about hostage negotiation. He helped design Black Swan’s entire training system, turning the Never Split the Difference philosophy into workshops, corporate seminars, and institutional learning journeys.

It's a big reason why I shifted from a Professor of Practice at Georgetown into a greater focus on my work at Manuscripts and Super Mentors. I realized these platforms let me become the university and expand my reach beyond just who was in my classroom.

And I’ve seen it again and again…

Authors who stop creating content and start designing learning systems:

→ Bootcamps
→ Workshops
→ Masterclasses
→ Certifications
→ Organizational curriculum

That’s where the leverage is.

🧠 They don’t just write something smart. They write something teachable. And then they become the university.

So if you’re sitting on a bunch of slides, modules, ideas, or IP that’s just sitting there…
It’s time.

You’re not just a knowledge sharer. You’re a curriculum builder.

Write the book that doesn’t just explain it.
Write the book that teaches it.
Write the book that becomes the first day of class in someone’s transformation.

And if you’re already teaching?
Let’s multiply your classroom.

Have a great day and happy writing, y’all.

Eric

⸻

🟦 This is Part 5 of a 10-Part Series on Modern Author Personas. In the coming weeks, we’ll be diving into the Guide, Builder, Speaker, and more, breaking down exactly how each persona uses their book as a profit engine and growth system.

📬 Subscribe at ModernAuthorGuide.com to get the rest.

🟩 Want help designing a book that teaches, scales, and multiplies your expertise?

Reply and let’s talk. Let’s build your curriculum... and your legacy. And if you're like to schedule a call to discuss your book idea with me, love to chat: https://go.oncehub.com/ManuscriptsBookTopicChatf​