Blake de Vos

In most industries, the work goes to the person the client has heard of, not necessarily the person who is best at it. Blake explains why skilled experts stay invisible, what it costs them, and what actually changes how a market sees someone.

• The visibility gap: you can explain in ten minutes what took you ten years to learn, and the people who could hire you have never heard of you (ch. 1–2)
• Referrals can build a great business, but there is a limit to how far they travel when almost nobody can see your work (ch. 1)
• Authority rarely arrives as a transaction; it shows up as faster understanding, better introductions and warmer first meetings (ch. 23)

Audience takeaway

Being good is not the same as being known. Visibility is something experts have to build deliberately.

Why Blake

Blake works with established business owners at exactly this point, and his own books introduced him to people he would never otherwise have met.

AI has made competent content cheap and everywhere, and a lot of experts now sound the same. Blake is not anti-AI; he uses it in his business. He argues for a clear line between what it should help with and what an expert must never hand over.

• Clients were never really buying information; they were buying judgement, and judgement is what AI-written content strips out (ch. 9–10)
• Where AI genuinely helps: doing more with the knowledge an expert already has (ch. 10)
• Why a book written by a human is becoming a stronger signal of expertise, not a weaker one (ch. 10)

Audience takeaway

Use AI to get the book done faster. Don't use it to replace the thinking that makes the book worth reading.

Why Blake

Blake built AuthorImpact, a writing platform for experts that includes AI support, so he works on both sides of this question every day.

Blake sold more than 3,000 copies of his own books through advertising and found that, once the cost of reaching readers was counted, royalties were not where the value was. He breaks down what a book actually returns to a business, and why measuring it like a product is the mistake.

• The three returns of a book: what writing it does to your own thinking, how the market sees you, and what finally shows up in the numbers (ch. 23)
• Why one right reader can be worth more than thousands of sales for an expert with a premium service (ch. 23)
• A book keeps producing content, introductions, speaking invitations and reasons to reconnect with people you already know (ch. 14–15)

Audience takeaway

Judge a business book by the opportunities it creates, not the copies it sells.

Why Blake

He has run the experiment with his own money, his own books and his own advertising, and changed his mind because of the results.

Most experts carry their best thinking around as habits: things they do instinctively and explain differently every time. Blake explains how documenting that knowledge turns it into intellectual property a business can teach, package and build on, and why most experts have already written more of it than they think.

• You forget which parts were hard to learn; that is exactly the knowledge clients pay for (ch. 18)
• Your book already exists in proposals, client calls and the frameworks you repeat every week (ch. 7)
• Start with the reader's problem, not your life story; it is the problem a stranger picks the book up for (ch. 7–8)

Audience takeaway

If your expertise only lives in your head, the business depends on you being in the room.

Why Blake

Helping experts pull frameworks out of their heads and into a structured manuscript is the core of what Blake and his team do.

When experts ask whether they should 'go with a real publisher', Blake says they usually mean they want someone to accept them. He separates what a publisher actually provides from the feeling of being chosen, and is fair about when a traditional deal is still the right call.

• Editing, design and distribution are hireable; acceptance is a feeling the old model taught people to chase (ch. 4)
• A traditional deal still suits some books, but waiting up to two years for a short shelf life is a serious trade for an expert who wants the book working in their business (ch. 4)
• Much of publishing's professional talent now works independently, so a professional team is available without a deal (ch. 4)

Audience takeaway

The question isn't 'who will choose me?' It's 'who do I want beside me while I build this?'

Why Blake

He runs a publishing company that works outside the traditional model, and has published his own books the same way.

1. Why do the most qualified experts so often lose work to people with bigger profiles?
2. You took six years to finish a three-year degree. How did someone who didn't see himself as a writer end up running a publishing company?
3. Your first book took three years, and you rewrote it in six months. What changed?
4. AI can produce a manuscript in an afternoon. What should business owners use it for, and what should they never hand over?
5. You've sold more than 3,000 copies of your own books. Why do you say the royalties weren't the biggest win?
6. What does it actually mean to turn expertise into intellectual property?
7. When does a traditional publishing deal make sense, and when doesn't it?
8. Most experts could write more than one book. How do they work out which one to write first?
9. What does a book actually do inside a business once launch day is over?
10. For someone who has been saying 'one day' about their book for years, what is the first practical step?