Authorship in the Age of AI: How to Write a Book That Positions You as the Authority in 2026. with Tina Kapp-Kailea

Welcome to how to run profitable retreats. I am Leni Kavassos, retreat strategist and host of the show for coaches, entrepreneurs and transformational leaders who want to design retreats that actually make money. If you've ever put your heart into retreat only to walk away exhausted or worse, bro, you are not alone. This podcast is here to change that. Each week I'll bring you stories, strategies and expert insights to help you create meaningful, transformational retreats that also support your business, your lifestyle and your bottom line. Let's make your next retreat not just powerful but profitable. Hello, welcome back to another podcast episode of how to run profitable retreats. I am your host Leni Kavassos and I am very excited to have what need today. Tina is a multiple international number one best selling author, Global Bruns Book Award winner and publisher with senior leadership experience in New Zealand, the US and Europe. She is editor in chief of our European women's magazine and co-founder of Odios Magasine. She brings better depth to the world of authorship. An award winning embodiment coach, TEDx speaker and sacred circle facilitator, Tina works with clients who are ready to step into writing as an act of truth, leadership and legacy. Blending strategic publishing expertise with deep emotional safety to help authors, shape books that are both personally true and professionally powerful. Tina, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I love this conversation we about to have. Yes, and for everyone who is listening, you just, you want to know that I have met Tina probably for at least four years ago and we studied Hodgson just I'm so excited to have her here to talk about the power of publishing a book and how it left your authority because when you want to sell your retreats, when you want to grow your business, when you have want to have events, having a book that is published by you or even a collaboration like what they call anthology books, it's a great way for you to immediately gain authority. So Tina, tell us a little bit about like why are you helping women do this? I mean, I know you have all the experience in the world so you can do it, but what was this piece that let you to say, okay, this is where I'm heading? It's been a bit of a journey because I love everything about books, always have since I was a little girl I used to be a complete everdreader and my journey in publishing was a stepping stone out of manufacturing and routing which is where I sort of had my career up until that point and I can remember where I said I want to be more creative writing, designing and I made it leap into publishing and ended up being more distribution, more finance, more general management and I thought well, it's a way into the industry coming from sort of left field and it was really fun when it was good, but then the global financial crisis had pulled the rug from under media and publishing was not a good place to be. On top of that I had a journey of burnout fertility and when I came out of this, I guess, complete breakdown and burnout, I really had to go and make changes in my life and redesign what success meant for me and where I was going to go with my time, what did I want to do? Because I forgot what that looked like. So I see it, I'm never going to do anything to do with corporate again, never anything to do with publishing because all my burnout happened in that industry, but then the more I was sharing about my journey and really being vulnerable about what I had gone through, I realized that it was resonating with women to the point where my speaking career took off in that respect and also my trauma-informed culture because I see this happening with women still and I'm kind of like a cautionary tale of what happens if you don't address burnout earlier. And I thought, well, maybe I'll wind a book and I thought, easy, I know everything that is about publishing, piece of cake, until I had to go and write down the part of the story that was really traumatic for me and I hadn't really dealt with a lot of the stuff that I pushed down. So when you writing that you're reliving the story and everything comes back out again and I realized that that's a part, no one talks about it and I called it writer's block, "procrastination, being busy." They were just excuses not to have to go there, but then if this is a part of your journey, especially for those of you who are cultures, retreat holders, you have modalities that you really now facilitate and turn into businesses, there's a trajectory of how you got to that point and that is where the gold loops when you're trying to connect with your audience, whether you're a speaker, you're better your whole space or whether you're writing a book. It's that part that is really hard to live through and I needed help because my book had me on my knees and when I published it, I realized that it's a missing part in the industry where there's so many places where I go, you can write your book in 90 days and all those sort of courses, but it doesn't help you with the heavy lifting to see which part of your story you put in, how much, how deep, how much do you share, do you name people? And I realized that my healing journey and my own publishing experience writing my book, "Plasti Expertise" was creating something a bit different. So the book mystic and the book Dula talks into holding that space for an author to feel all the imposter stuff, all the trauma that you relive, but that makes the story you and uniquely human because that's why your audience wants to work with your book, you or come to your retreat. So this is kind of how I ended up doing what I'm doing now. I love it and I think for me, something that really stood out on what you were saying is, the part of how much of the story do you tell and what do you tell about the story and what's the angle that you used to tell the story because I mean I hear it all the time with retreat leaders, but I also hear it with my other company where we have experts coming and getting on stages, where sometimes they tell me I just want to tell my trauma story to people so they see that I went through it and I usually tell them no. Oh no, just my therapy on stage or in your book. Right and I was at this live event and there were these speakers and some of them were great, but then we had a full section of speakers that their whole story was about all the struggles that they went through and not in the transformational space of I'm going to show you that I am here now because I went through this, I changed and now like look at what I became, right? This arc of telling the story from a perspective of how the person can relate, but it wasn't really from this messaging of I am a bit them and guess what? The room felt it. Everyone was kind of like, yeah, but what's happening here, right? I wanted to leave the room. I was like, I felt bad. I didn't want to leave the room because I didn't want to be like this respectful to the speaker, but really I was like, why am I in a place where someone is putting their like, their burden on me, right? Like it's transferring this emotions rather than using it as a teaching moment, rather than showcasing if I could go through this so can you, right? So it's about how you shift the story that makes a huge difference and 90% of people telling stories are telling this in this old way of pain point, pain point, pain point, pain point, and this is why I'm here today. That's it's a very potent point and because in my speaking career, there is a very big responsibility on you as a speaker and I've seen everyone can be a speaker, but a good speaker has a responsibility on the audience and whether it's a TEDx or a keynote, you're going to go and have those teaching moments like you say, take them out and I think you have to have acknowledged all of you've gone through, you have to have closed those loops to be able to take the energy back out from taking them down, you're taking them up again, otherwise you're just going to leave the audience and this it is really bad vibe and I mean you work with energetic so do I. It's not something that we want to use to to make them feel bad so they, I don't know, follow you or buy from you. That is that is not what we're here to do. We're literally becoming a role model and look at yourself that way, whether you're writing a book, it's a legacy piece and a speech, people may forget about it and obviously it does go sometimes on the internet in video form, but a book, there's something completely different, it's it's cathargic, there is an element of being very therapeutic and I always work with authors one on one if there is a really big deep story, some don't want to do a group program because there's so much there and I let them write because that is clearing it, not everything will make it in the book and this is where you need an editor in someone with my expertise to go, okay I hear you, but here's all the things that you've written them they're out from your chest and yes you can burn your manuscript when this journey is over. and clear it, but here's what we need to show so your reader can actually follow that red thread and you're delivering through the hard times. You're then teaching them the lessons you've learned and then you position yourself so that reader does have a takeaway and it's a very fine line writing a memoir versus a book that actually positions you as a leader in your field and this is where a lot of people go array. You can do a lot of books and they feel easy to write but is it valuable to your reader and I know it's not an easy one to hear but if you have that trusted person walking alongside you you can save yourself a lot of time and investment later on because you might make create a book that is completely off to the sideline and it's not actually designed to help you with your business and people don't put a book away and you mentioned if you have a retreat or a speaking event often books and whatever goes into the conference bags that people take away comes out of a different budget so it's not only an additional income stream and not when you put it on Amazon but the actual physical book it's value and all the QR codes and all the flyers might end up in the bin or in a pile on a desk a book people put that on the coffee table then put it in the shelf eventually they're going to go and remember I was this woman and I talked about XYZ and then they grab the book and they read and they go wow I need to find this person she's speaking to me I can relate to this story but look here's the steps to get out of it I need to find her and work with her and that's a really well crafted book versus something you've just written and published I think you said something very important first of all that it was like the difference between a book that builds your authority and a memoir yeah really like I think that's the first thing that you need to ask yourself when you think about writing a book do I want a memoir or do I want to build my authority because that's going to change the trajectory completely when it comes to writing a book and also the value of having this book I think what you said is so important and remember last year at the cell retreat summit I brought a copy and I gifted a copy to every single person who came to the conference and guess what I got a few compliments so the first one they were like oh my gosh you're gifting it to me and I'm like well yes I am because it is something that I wanted to like really do so then I had a book signing while the event was taking place so people were getting the book signed by me all that like throughout the days and then also something that I did when it came to editing the book right like the the look and feel of the book and it was something that people were I'm thinking if I have a copy here of the book I do have it I will pull it in a second but something that people did say to me was I am so grateful you used a lot larger font yeah makes it easy to read you wanted to be to be very easily able to land and it's well you can get very very carried away with designing the interior but there is a certain way of how we train to read books and what font is used and we're not going to reinvent the wheel and be standing out let your message to the talking not a special font that you use and yes larger is definitely easier yeah so look here's my book and it's quite thick because the the size of the font yeah it's quite large because my audience are usually people in their 40s or 50 so they don't want they're like I'm so grateful I don't have to take out my glasses in order to read it yeah so when you're putting like when you're putting a book together all these little details are things that you might not be thinking of and that's why you want to have someone who does it if you really think about novels like from bet like New York best selling novel writings I mean I read a lot to the point that my Kindle is just next to me all the time okay so and I love like printed books but my Kindle has also saved me a lot of money for sure but when we think about how like the journey of writers right when they're writing a novel they go through 10 like maybe 10 12 sometimes edit rounds of edit after books and the whole point is someone else is reading it when that person is looking it from a separate perspective than your own I think that's what really stands out for me when you work with someone who guides you through your process because when you're inside of you and it's your stories you can be like oh my gosh this book is great and then no one understands what is it's all about I mean I had my mind and I was prepared for this book and I gave it to other people to read and I said do you understand what's happening inside of it does it make sense does it take you through a journey and now I have a the book and on a store and the store owner told me the other day they're like oh this person came and grabbed it and just read a couple of pages pages and said oh I'm gonna take it because this book is so engaging and interesting I want to keep reading it so they bought the book and so many times I feel that when we tell our stories we tend to start halfway in the story and we assume that people know what the hell we're talking about when they don't and Tina tell me a little bit about this is the same thing like if you sell a house yeah go ahead oh yeah I was just gonna like keep like tell the story about the house because I'm very I'm very interested a book is a bit like selling a house because you know those bars that the real estate agents put out at the front you need to be able to stop someone from driving on oh wow so you need to position it in a way that it's powerful and also the information you use on the cover the back cover and the introduction is key you can have a great story and a great interior of the book but if you don't communicate it and extract the key elements people keep driving apart and this is why real estate flies on open home you want to get as many people to the open home to engage which is what you just described with that person in the store going oh wow I'm gonna take it because this is easy so a book is pretty much the same approach I really enjoy that and then what is your your take on uh we see nowadays a lot of people just going and being like oh chat gbt write me my book and I mean I love AI as a tool don't get me wrong but I do feel that there is something there that takes away from the experience of writing the book and really also I would say not having this loop because if we if especially if you're using chat gbt tends to go on the loop and then suddenly you end with 10 chapters are saying the exact same thing yeah and it's a it's a discussion I have daily I use AI daily and I think most people who don't will realize it's here to stay but it comes back to integrity which is one of my biggest values in business and in life um what integrity do you show if you just outsourcing the very essence of who you are as a person and as a business owner and what you teach your modality is you you unique and AI is a tool and I have a whole module called the authentic author because it's authentically using AI in a way that it's great to um to brainstorm titles or uh chapter um summaries for example but it's not going to write for you by just putting a few prompts and and I still see a lot of people not being able to actually understand the difference between a custom gbt and open AI because if you don't if it doesn't have your voice on your and then it doesn't even exist on the free version anyway so if you dabble a little bit you're not you're doing yourself with this service you're watering down who you are do you want to be just another vanilla Instagram account or somewhere out there what's makes it uniquely you it does take courage and again you need someone by your side that can hold your hand because I'm telling you when that book hits the shelf and no matter how much you've edited and read it there's an elevator fear we go oh this feels uncomfortable everybody can now read my innermost secrets for better word because you shared vulnerability and that does come with um it could be with with trolls with misunderstandings can come with all sorts of things it's a little bit loaded and Josie from school is going to read it my granddad maybe the people in the book even you may have renamed them but the fear is real I had talked about my narcissistic boss that put me through hell and back and I realized well anyone who knows I worked for this company even though I didn't name it I didn't use any names people know I'm talking about and you know once you once it's out there you can't undo it it's casting a spell it's it's spelling for a reason which means from an energetic point of view it is the number one tool that keeps you human in the connection in this iih where you are still you and if you embrace that you can charge premium you position yourself as you the personal brand and you stand out and that's what is your intellectual property so a book can do this beautifully for you and I'm pretty sure when we get into this a i world with more robots more bots we crave someone real not only to work with but also to listen to on stage and to read material that doesn't come out of an eye-toil, but that came from your lived experience with all the bumps and all the emotions because that's what makes it real and we are real. So I think it's an exciting time but let's not fool ourselves that I can write a book for you. I would strongly detest that it will help it's a tool but it's not going to do the heavy lifting for you. Yeah, I mean I wrote my book and I had worked for months putting all the stories together and it was not just the stories that ended up in the book. There were a lot more right and then from there I had to choose which stories then I had to think about the framework and what I wanted to teach inside and how I wanted to name each chapter and the name of the book and every single piece of it and it was a wonderful journey but I wouldn't say that if I knew you were doing this when I did it I would have definitely hired you because it would have made my life so much easier. Yeah, it's the opportunity cost that's lost if you try to do it yourself and then self-publishing has never been easier but I said it with a caveat because if anyone is trying to upload files to the backend of Amazon and navigate that and your text not your friend or you don't know the publishing language is around that's where a lot of those people go oh my god this is all a bit hard and they stall so I do that as a 360 wrap around because I don't want people I want them to basically get the car get the keys there you go. Cars build you're going to get to drive it everything else is done for you and I think this is including the personal touch is what makes me different and I love it it's it's what I'm here to do and I nothing gets me more excited than knowing that this person is going to receive their first printed copy proof copy from Amazon and seeing the look on their face when they're open at envelope is just the best feeling in the world for me. Yeah thank you so much for sharing all but with us and I just want to leave everyone who's listening to this episode really thinking about what are you doing in your business to position yourself as an authority because in 2026 and it's been happening for many many years but you are gonna see it it is so important for you to be positioned yourself properly so you can sell your courses so you can sell your retreat so you can sell your services because no one wants to be one of the choices. People need to know exactly what why you're where you're at why you do what you do who do you do it for what problem do you solve and the only way to that is that by building your authority and having a published book is one of the easiest and fastest ways to gain instant authority so if anyone is considering writing a book I would highly suggest that you talk to Tina so you're gonna find all her links in the chat but Tina if someone wants to reach out to you what is the best way? There is one would be on LinkedIn just at Tina Kay Kay Lea or find me on Instagram at the underscore femprenure that's F-E-M-M-E-P-R-E-U-R Perfect well thank you so much for being here Tina I really enjoyed having you as a guest and I can't wait to see all the magic that comes in the future. Thank you so much for having me appreciate it bye