About a month ago, I undertook a new home project renovation:
-> Update the closet near the front hall.
I wish I had a 'before the project began' picture (note to self: do this from now on), but in a nutshell: it was an empty closet with a coat hanger and a wobbly top shelf.
We basically used it as a transitory drop off point for things we didn't want on the floor but weren't ready to bring up to the attic (or things that fell into the 'do we throw this away now or later?' category).
Bottom line: Not a great use of space.
So I got cracking.
Here's the midway point and the "after" point (the real before picture would just be a pile of nothing in there):
I still have to stain the wood seat, fill in some cracks, do a final paint touch up, but it's basically there.
This was a great project for a few reasons:
1. We probably quadrupled our storage space with this improvement, which is a big win because Blaise has way too much playdoh and we need a place to keep it.
2. We now have a new, beautiful space in our house where none existed before. You can just feel it - the energy has changed around this area.
I know that sounds nuts, but it's true.
That's because beauty has a physiological impact on the body. When you surround yourself with beauty, you will feel better, more energetic, and more connected to the world you live in. Fact.
3. My woodworking and carpentry skills have gotten substantially better.
When I first started getting into woodworking and carpentry, every piece of wood I cut or manhandled looked amateur (obviously). Now, my cuts are cleaner; I'm more precise; I see how things fit together better and I can plan multiple steps ahead much more efficiently than before.
Point is, my skills are growing each day, and I'm ready to move onto more advanced projects, to continue to improve and beautify our space.
But most importantly, I discovered this:
You learn with your hands, not your mind.
You can read every blog post, watch every YouTube video, subscribe to every magazine, and buy every book you want to learn ABOUT a subject...
But you don't learn unless your hands move.
Until you start implementing; until you put saw to wood, pen to paper, phone to ear - until you put your gloves on and enter the arena - you don't actually know anything.
You just know OF it, and that's not the same thing.
Here's where I'm going with this:
Entrepreneurs, authors, and creators ask me for help all the time.
I get dozens to hundreds of emails every week, and within these messages I noticed a pattern (not for every email or every person, but for many).
What people think they need is the insight.
The idea.
The "hack" that's going to turn everything around for them...
Unfortunately, more of these things won't make a difference.
Even if you could connect your brain to a machine to give you all the information in the world, you wouldn't end up like Neo, karate-chopping British clones like a boss.
It's more likely you'd end up like Bran Stark from Game of Thrones, with all the information of the ages and the ability to soar to great heights and look at everyone and everything through the lens of a bird...
...but when you wake up, you're still just a dude sitting in a wheelchair by a tree, next to a eunuch who recently tried to kill your whole family.
People say we're in the "Information Age" - as if information is the Holy Grail that defines this generation and the next (true story, I believed the hype for the last decade, now I'm over it).
I say let's forget that nonsense.
Let's change things up.
If we're going to title this time period anything, let's at least name it something useful, like the "Creators Age."
These aren't questions you answer with an idea; you answer them with your hands, with your sweat, and with the work you put in, each and every day, even if you don't see the payoff for months or years to come.
Max Kolysh is a serial entrepreneur and investor. After graduating early from MIT with a degree in Computer Science, Max co-founded Zinc.io, a 15 person startup in San Francisco, California, which now powers tens of thousands of e-commerce companies around the world.
During today’s conversation with Max, we zoom in on his entrepreneurial journey and how he grew his startup to $6 million in revenue. We also dive into what being a part of a startup incubator environment is really like. My big takeaway from today’s conversation is specifically on the aspect of user acquisition and customer acquisition. We discuss how Max thinks about acquiring new customers by leveraging their existing customer base to grow their platform through influencer marketing.
In this broadcast, Maxand I talk about:
What is Max’s founder story
How did Max learn about Y Combinator and what was that process like
Did Max’s startup idea change while going through Y Combinator
How did Max define the metrics their team wanted to focus on
What constitutes as metrics for a successful startup
Why you should be using non-revenue metrics
How is Max’s business at a point of organic sustainability
What was it like for Max as he was bootstrapping his business
Why you should look into pre-selling first
How do you decide what is worth your time and energy
In what ways has Max grown his business
Why are referrals a good way to increase exposure
What is Max looking at now in terms of improving his business
Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.
Tina van Leuven helps soulpreneurs align their energy and mindset with the intentions, desires, and vision they have for their business and their life. She does this by helping to clear their money blocks and energetically release lifelong limiting programming that have been sabotaging entrepreneurs from creating the results they know deep within their hearts are possible, yet haven’t been able to achieve. Tina helps entrepreneurs reconnect with their own source of joy and abundance while discovering ways to express that in their business so that they may begin monetising their unique gifts.
Today we’re talking about what abundance is, why it’s important, and some interesting archetypes that go along with the idea of abundance. We’ll also dive into a short discussion about her recent launch that we worked on together. My biggest takeaway from this conversation is that we all have an archetype, but it’s how we use and embrace this archetype that will see us reaping the benefits.
In this broadcast, Tinaand I talk about:
What is Tina’s entrepreneurial journey
What are the Sacred Money Archetypes
How can you use the Sacred Money Archetypes to reach your money goals
In what ways can you approach the strengths and weaknesses of the archetypes
How can you strengthen the “Celebrity” archetype
What are the steps to embrace rational awareness
What is Tina’s energy clearing process
Why you have to be open to doing deep work to change yourself on the inside so that you may be successful
How you can run a successful launch
What are the pros and cons of hosting challenges leading up to a launch
How did the challenge set the foundation in place for Tina’s launch
What did Tina focus on after the launch
Is Tina going to explore influencer marketing to drive more traffic to her launches
What was Tina’s engagement like with a live launch
Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.
Kyle Gray is an entrepreneur, the founder of ConversionCake, and a bestselling author who helps startups and small businesses grow their businesses with content marketing. He has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs create scalable content marketing strategies while also creating step-by-step processes and templates to automate and delegate tasks. Kyle’s book The Story Engine outlines his process for making content marketing and brand storytelling easy and effective.
In today’s conversation with Kyle, we’re talking about how to use storytelling to become an authority in your niche while boosting sales and winning the hearts and minds of your audience. In other words, we’re exploring how you can start selling with story. My biggest takeaway from this conversation is that using story in your marketing really does sell and it is what cuts through the noise and nonstop interruption based marketing techniques that you see all over social media.
In this broadcast, Kyleand I talk about:
What was Kyle’s journey when it came to writing The Story Engine
Who is The Story Engine best suited for
What is a proprietary process
How can you approach the proprietary process
What is a good outcome versus a bad outcome
Why having a clear outcome helps you set yourself apart
How you can make naming your offerings easier by knowing the outcome you’re offering
What is a success path and what does it include
What are Kyle’s top five story elements
When should you use Kyle’s recommend story elements
How can you use these story elements to teach
What is The Buyer’s Journey framework
How can you implement know-like-trust into your stories
What is The Hero's Journey and how is it different than The Buyer’s Journey
Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.
If entrepreneurship is the process by which value is created where less (or none) existed before, then the entrepreneur is the person who initiates and leads this value-creation process.
Here's how it works:
When new value is created, the customer receives some portion of this value. It could be faster speeds. More storage. An improved or refined UI/UX. You get the point.
At the same time, the entrepreneur typically captures a small piece of this newly created value. This is called profit.
This profit allows the operation to support itself while it continues to grow (so it can continue to provide more value to more people).
The entrepreneur as extractor
What this boils down to is this:
Entrepreneurship is an extraction process.
For instance, the extraction of physical commodities like oil and natural gas, or the cultivation and extraction of food, water, and shelter. These things, once extracted, can then be distributed to people who need or want them.
Most people think of these sorts of activities when they contemplate entrepreneurship because these are obvious areas where entrepreneurs can make a positive impact.
However, if you stop here, you miss the full scope and power of the "entrepreneurial approach."
The extraction process also applies to non-tangibles, such as information. Because systems and processes are critical for growth, the success of any venture depends on the person who can extract and implement the best ideas.
Everyone is (or can be) an Entrepreneur
Here's why this is important:
It means you don't have to be a founder or CEO to be an entrepreneur. Thinking otherwise is a short-sighted, and self-defeating worldview (which is as true for the employee as it is for the employer).
Everyone, from the newest higher to the 20 year veteran, can think and act like an entrepreneur for his company, team, or project. These are the type of people you might call linchpins.
Cultivating the entrepreneurial mindset, then, is a critical task for all organizations, big and small.
And that's exactly why GE invited me to their premiere leadership event of the year to help teach their most promising executives and managers how to cultivate entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial mindset in their employees.
We did this by assembling a panel of proven entrepreneurs who have succeeded across a wide range of domains and industries. I then extracted their best insights on business, marketing, creativity, and leadership during a live panel interview.
The full training is below.
The Entrepreneur Mindset Panel: How to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset in leaders, managers, and employees
Entrepreneur Mindset Panelist #1. Megan Reamer, co-founder of Jackson's Honest
Megan Reamer is the co-founder and CEO of Jackson's Honest, a healthy foods company. Jackson's Honest makes potato chips, tortilla chips and grain free puffs all cooked in organic coconut oil.
Megan and her husband Scott started Jackson's Honest as a way to share their son Jackson's story and the delicious snack foods they made for him.
They've since had their products featured on the the shelves of Whole Foods all around the country and have impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe.
Entrepreneur Mindset Panelist #2. Patrick Vlaskovits, 2x NYT bestselling author and founder of Superpowered Inc.
Patrick Vlaskovits is an entrepreneur and 2 time New York Times bestselling author. His writing has been featured in the Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal, and he speaks at technology conferences worldwide.
Patrick is founder and CEO of Superpowered Inc, a TechStars funded startup that is the leading interactive audio development platform for desktop, mobile, IoT and embedded devices.
Entrepreneur Mindset Panelist #3. Bret Boyd, CEO of Knoema, and author of "Catalyst: Leadership and Strategy in a Changing World."
Bret Boyd is the CEO of Knoema, a software platform for data access and discovery. At Knoema, Bret and his team build tools to help public and private-sector organizations make better decisions with data.
Bret began his career as an infantry officer in the US Army. Bret has published numerous articles on technology, strategy, and change management and is the coauthor of "Catalyst: Leadership and Strategy in a Changing World."
What we cover in this training:
How to differentiate a new product in the marketplace (How Megan entered a marketplace that is hyper crowded, where the competition is composed of multi-million and billion dollar companies, and yet was able to get her product on the shelves of grocery stores around the country)
Brett Boyd's book "Catalyst" which talks about the nature of business cycles and how these are compressing across time, and what that means for businesses and leadership within organizations and startups (specifically how Brett implemented this both as an employee and founder)
How to perceive and evaluate pockets of opportunity, and where in the value chain to focus your efforts (how Patrick built a mobile audio startup in a hyper-competitive industry)
Partnerships (no organization, no department, can thrive on it's own; it requires strategic partnerships…how Brett applies this inside Knoema, Megan with Jackson's Honest, and Patrick with Superpowered
How to approach the creation and roll-out of new products (How do you conduct market research? What would keep you from rolling out a new product? Any examples of products you killed before you launched?)
Positioning a business for growth (how should you organize your business to profit from this growth?)
How to think and act like an entrepreneur as a member of an organization (How do you instill that thinking in your team? How must you organize your team, or rewards, etc. to achieve entrepreneurial action?)
Finding, hiring, and retaining top talent (how to find and hire rockstars who can drive a business and organization forward?)
Dealing with employees who are under performing (how do you properly measure performance so you know if someone is genuinely not pulling their weight?)
Plus a lot more audience Q and A covered at the 42:20 minute mark
Joshua Zloof is the CEO of Sudden Coffee, a premium instant coffee brand. He has 10 years of combined experience in Mobile App Product Management, Lean Operations, Supply Chain, and Logistics.
I brought Joshua onto In The Trenches to discuss his startup journey and what it was really like for him to develop his idea and actually launch it. To many, Joshua’s idea of founding a premium instant coffee company might sound bizarre, because we equate “instant coffee” with “cheap”. However, during today’s episode you will learn that the two are not mutually exclusive. I think what Joshua has done to build his business with various marketing techniques and experiments is really quite fascinating, and so my biggest takeaway is just that... It’s okay to do something different and to go against what everyone else is doing because it might just pay off - in real life and online.
In this broadcast, Joshuaand I talk about:
How Joshua founded his coffee brand and his journey as an entrepreneur
What is the difference between Sudden Coffee versus other instant coffee brands that are currently on the market
Who does Sudden Coffee target with their brand messaging and marketing
How to increase sales during the beginning stages of your business
How to turn your business plan into a subscription-based business plan
What are some things Joshua thought was working but failed in his business
When is using influencers in your marketing strategy a good idea
What are a few strategies to use for Facebook marketing
How to prioritize spending money during the startup phase
What are the critical roles to begin hiring in order to gain traction
The pros and cons of a venture-backed startup
What is the plan for the future and expansion of a brand
How to start and develop your idea for a product or business (what’s the most important factor that contributes to a successful launch of a product)
Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.
The way we market and sell online is changing.
There are more people online than ever before, spending more money than ever before on things that give them a leg up in the world. That means more money going to ebooks, ecourses, and other forms of online education; coaching, consulting, and advisory services; software solutions, and high quality implementors (engineers, designers, etc.).
This growth comes with a price: more noise (aka competing offers other than your own that are targeting the same market).
And things are only going to heat up over the next 3 to 5 years.
Question is:
Are you positioning yourself and your business in such a way that you can profit from these changes over the next decade?
Today, I want to share some of my lessons learned (the good, the bad, and the ugly) from writing this book...
But first, a bit of background:
I started this project a year ago this month. I actually ran the Publishizer.com crowdfunding campaign in November and doubled my funding goal by early December, 2015. To be honest, with my small audience of about 1,500 subscribers, I wasn't sure I'd be able to hit my goal...but somehow we made it happen (thank you to all my early adopters - couldn't have done it without you).
The problem with crowdfunding campaigns, though...especially successful ones...is that you now have to make good on the promise.
While the campaign was hard work, writing and creating a book worth reading was the REAL hard work (young Tom would later come to find out).
And now, what started as just an idea about 360 days ago, has finally become a 352 page, beautifully designed and formatted book published by Insurgent Publishing, and is almost ready for hardcover printing and distribution.
Here's a mockup of what the hardcover will look like when it gets into your sweet little hands in January, 2016:
To say I'm thrilled to see this come together is an understatement.
And I couldn't have done it without you, the reader (nor would I have wanted to).
As a way to say thanks, here are 7 of my biggest "lessons learned" from writing a business book:
7 Lessons Learned From Writing a Business Book
Lesson #1: If it's worthwhile, it will be hard to write
To be clear, Collaborate is not my first book and not my first business book, but it is the biggest, most bold book project I've undertaken , and dwarfs the other books I've written in terms of raw content and scope.
The idea for Collaborate has been incubating in my brain for the past 3 to 5 years. I wasn't ready to write this book for the longest time. Ironically, even after finishing it, I still don't feel ready to write it in a lot of ways...
Why?
Because I'm writing something that hasn't been written before...not in this way, not in this style, not for this purpose.
It's (generally) easy to regurgitate what others have said - it's much more difficult to develop a new framework by collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing hundreds of seemingly disparate ideas, perspectives, case studies, research, and more...and do so in a way that is easy to follow, to understand, to use, and to embrace.
Harder still to make sure that the majority of readers will actually benefit from the book (in other words, to avoid writing fluffy drivel...I HATE fluffy drivel...).
I pulled my hair out for the past twelve months writing and rewriting Collaborate.
I seriously felt like this:
I think I went through at least 5 unique drafts, totally different from one another. The current iteration, the one you will see in your hands in a few weeks, went through over a hundred iterations as the writing progressed.
If you're not up to the task, scrap the idea before you start; it will save you a lot of time, money, and pain.
Alternatively, if you're committed to your idea - if you know you have to turn this thing into reality....and you have the grit and hustle to make sure it comes to fruition, then make sure you finish and ship. Anything else is half-stepping (and nobody likes a half-stepper).
Learning Lesson: doing anything worthwhile is hard; don't run from the discomfort, embrace it.
Lesson #2: Whatever your estimated timeline, quadruple it
Humans are terrible planners.
I know this from heuristics, but academic studies have confirmed it. From Wikipedia:
"The planning fallacy, first proposed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979, is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias (underestimate the time needed). This phenomenon occurs regardless of the individual's knowledge that past tasks of a similar nature have taken longer to complete than generally planned."
The funny thing is, no matter how well I "know" myself, I still make huge timeline mistakes on just about any project that will take more than a week to create and ship.
I expected to finish Collaborate in 3 months.
I was all like:
But then I started writing...
And the project became much more complex than I expected...
And I had to do a lot more research, analysis, and work than I anticipated...
And I ended up not finishing Collaborate until November 2016, one year later, or 4x longer than expected.
At this point I'm all like:
...and I'm just happy, that, somehow magically, Collaborate is finished.
Why, knowing we are bad at planning, can we not mitigate this reality?
I honestly have no idea.
Neither does science.
Learning Lesson: The only thing I can say is that if you're starting a new project, use this rule of wrist:
Whatever your estimated time to complete a project, quadruple it.
Lesson #3: Nobody will write your book for you
I write, although I don't consider myself a writer.
And I'm certainly not one of those people who wears the word "writer" proudly like a piece of Chotchkie's flair.
That said, I recognize that writing is an important part of what I do - and an important part of what any notable entrepreneur, creator, or politician does.
I also learned pretty quick that, regardless of how much you might hate the writing process at times, nobody can write your book for you.
I learned this the hard way. Here are just a few of my missteps:
Mistake 1. I tried using old blog posts as the foundation for my new book. I really liked the idea of re-purposing useful, old (but still relevant) content. However, blog posts are blog posts and are not chapters in a book; they are written a different way with a different purpose. I ended up scrapping everything I pulled from my own blog and rewriting everything from scratch...this set me back several weeks.
Mistake 2. I looked for a co-author. I actually found a great one, a good friend of mine, actually, but after a few sessions, we parted ways because we realized the vision for the book didn't quite align. I could have looked for another, but after spending a couple weeks trying to make this work, I decided that the particular vision I have for this project is probably only one I can bring to light (no one else will see the things the way you do). While I love the idea of co-authoring a book, for something like this that had been incubating in my brain ball for so long, it was hard to work with anyone else on it (my mistake for not recognizing this from the start). In the end, I was left writing the book by myself.
Mistake 3. I hired someone to transcribe my interviews into working pieces of content. In other words, I didn't just want the pieces transcribed (well, I wanted that to begin with), I wanted them edited into a book-like style (with intros, properly quoting the interviewee in the context of the topic, etc.) so I could more easily place them into the context of the book. I put a lot of money toward this and what I got back were "articles" that were so incoherent with so many spelling and grammar mistakes that I literally laughed out loud. This was from a professional ghost writer, mind you. I tried to rectify the situation by asking for a rewrite...which I got, but the articles were still terrible...so I asked for a rewrite, and got back another terrible article, just with less spelling and grammar mistakes...
When I got back the third iteration of terrible, expensive articles, I was all like:
But regardless of how upset I was, there was still work to be done...and I was still forced to write everything myself.
Learning Lesson: If you're a picky writer (and you should be if you're writing something worthwhile...see Lesson #1 above), nobody can write your words for you. Suck it up and get to work.
Lesson #4: Create in the proper sequence
After my crowdfunding campaign I spent a lot of time organizing design notes, prepping my live webinars, outlining my course...
Which is all great, and still stuff I need to do, but these weren't CRITICAL PATH items, which means working on them in the beginning slowed my progress.
I would explain the critical path, but Seth Godin is much smarter than me:
"The longest string of dependent, non-compressible tasks is the critical path.
Every complicated project is the same. Many people working on many elements, some of which are dependent on others. I want a garden, which means I need grading, a bulldozer, a permit, seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, weeding, planting, maintenance and time for everything to grow. Do those steps in the wrong order, nothing happens. Try to grow corn in a week by giving it a bonus or threatening to fire it, nothing happens...
Critical path analysis works backward, looking at the calendar and success and at each step from the end to the start, determining what you'll be waiting on.
For example, in your mind's eye, the garden has a nice sign in front. The nice sign takes about a week to get made by the sign guy, and it depends on nothing. You can order the sign any time until a week before you need it. On the other hand, you can't plant until you grade and you can't grade until you get the delivery of soil and you can't get the delivery until you've got a permit from the local town.
Which means that if you're the person in charge of both the sign and the permit, do the permit first." - Seth Godin, Understanding critical path
Bottom line, whatever you are creating needs to be created in a particular sequence. That particular sequence should be developed by creating a critical path plan. That critical path plan should be developed at the start of your project by working backward from the ship date.
So...
If you're writing a book, stop looking at interior design inspiration before the book is written...
If you're building a startup, stop analyzing competitor logos before you have an MVP...
If you're building a membership site, stop reading about "scaling" until you have at least 10 customers...
I know all this, but I broke my own rules (for the first couple months at least).
Eventually, though, I defined the critical path and stuck to it. And finally, I was all like:
Learning Lesson: the hardest work you can do as a leader (solo or collaboratively) is defining the critical path and sticking to it. It's the hardest because it's the most important. Don't skip it.
Lesson #5: The Enemy will try to make you fail
Seth Godin calls it the lizard brain; Steven Pressfield calls it resistance; Winnie the Pooh calls it Heffalumps...
I like to refer to those things that keep us from doing our great work as the Enemy.
All the ups and downs of writing Collaborate came from the Enemy; it was never any external forces that kept me from writing faster or better - it was the Enemy trying to stop me from reaching, expanding, and stretching my boundaries.
Luckily, I took care of the Enemy every time I saw it rear its ugly head:
Lesson learned: if you're trying to do something new, different, outside your current status-quo or paradigm, the Enemy will sabatoge, prevent, and slow your progress every step of the way. Accept this. Keep moving anyway.
Lesson #6: Every book is a collaboration
I mentioned earlier that nobody will write your book for you. That's still true. But, if you're a writer (and if you're the author, that's what you are), then stick to writing. Get experts to edit, design, market, and sell.
I leveraged an amazing team of experts to bring Collaborate to life.
I had multiple editors, a great designer, and have a team that's ready to market and sell the book when I pull the trigger. I would not attempt any of this alone.
Lesson learned: make sure you're not going it alone. No matter how small your project, it could benefit from creative collaborators. If you aren't sure how that works or where to start...hey, look at that! A new book on the subject:
In Collaborate, you will learn:
How to take personal inventory of your business and life to make better choices
How to define, identify, and connect with experts in your niche
How to assemble and organize a small team to create faster, better, and more enjoyably
How to rapidly prototype your idea, presell it, and then collaboratively crowdsource to build the final product
How to leverage the best free and inexpensive software to make remote, collaborative work a breeze
Lesson #7: I'm never writing a book again...until the next one
And my final lesson learned is that I don't want to ever write a book again because it's hard. Really hard. So hard I think I started to go a bit crazy:
Lesson learned: once you finish your first book (or 50th), start on the next one; momentum is on your side - take advantage.
In Summary
Writing Collaborate has been an adventure with a bunch of ups and downs, but the book is finally (almost) ready to print and ship (finalizing the design right now).
My hope is that you've enjoyed this article, and found it useful enough to:
Share with you friends, family, and social network.
I've made some clicktotweets to make this easy (they may or may not be appropriate, I'll leave that to you to decide).
Thanks in advance for your support:
What Nicolas Cage epic freak-outs can teach us about writing: http://bit.ly/1Ran0Zj [CLICK TO TWEET]
What do Nicolas Cage epic freak-outs and writing a business book have in common? http://bit.ly/1Ran0Zj [CLICK TO TWEET]
7 lessons learned from writing a business books (hat tip: Nicolas Cage): http://bit.ly/1Ran0Zj [CLICK TO TWEET]
Hat tip: Nicolas Cage for the inspiration and giphy.com for all the amazing Nicolas Cage gifs
Tom's Note: this is a guest post from Matthew Turner, the indomitable author of The Successful Mistake. I don't normally take guest posts, but Matthew's article hit a nerve with me as I've experienced a lot of failures in my life. If you've ever felt like quitting when things get tough, this article is for you. Read this. Bookmark the page. And then share with people you know.
As I looked at the screen, I knew I wouldn't make it. After all those months of planning...After hundreds of hours crafting emails, coming up with rewards, and writing my campaign copy...
After all the time, money, and energy spent putting my campaign together...
They say you shouldn't take business personally, but I did.
This book is my baby, and I put a lot of work into this campaign. I wasn't one of these people who woke up one morning and decided to crowdfund my book.
I meticulously outlined and perfected my plan, and I did everything I was supposed to do, so why me?
Angry and frustrated and swarming with sadness, I sulked and played victim for a few hours, but it didn't take long for my curiosity to take over...
Why did I fail?
What did I do?
What didn't I do?
Where did I go wrong... ?
That's what I hope to share with you in this post, and it's why I turned to Tom, because he succeeded with his crowdfunding campaign, and he's someone I turned to during my own book crowdfunding Project.
If you have a crowdfunding campaign on the horizon, I'm sure you're devouring Tom's content as well. And indeed you should.
But it's also important you see the other side of the coin: what failure looks like so that you can avoid the same mistakes I made.
I don't have all the answers, but I'm able to look back and appreciate the mistakes I've made.
Hopefully, my own experiences will fill in a few gaps for you and help you find that slight edge that can push your crowdfunding campaign (or any project) to the finish line, successfully.
And that a spark can turn into a great fire that can change our lives, as long as we bring the resources and hustle necessary to make that happen.
How then do we expose ourselves to great ideas?
The short answer:
Books.
Books are the perfect harbinger for ideas:
Books give writers the space to explore and analyze an idea in depth (much more so then the modern mediums of blogging, podcasting, or youtube, for example)
Books are compact enough to hold, carry, and share easily with others (and this ease of sharing is increased exponentially through digital books and ereaders)
Books require focused attention from the reader, making the understanding of the idea being spread much more likely (no adds will popup in a book...and hopefully the author has the good taste to not add too many links in the text)
On that note, I want to share a few books with you that have personally sparked positive change in my own life.
These books are specifically related to business, entrepreneurship, and / or startups in some way, shape, or form, but I think many of the lessons from these books extend far beyond that subject matter.
My hope is that if even one of these books creates a spark for you like they have for me, the world (or at least the people who matter) will be a lot better off.
Enjoy.
1. Poke the Box by Seth Godin
The book that started it all for me.
I read Poke the Box in 2011 when it was first released. It was figuratively the poke (or better yet: kick) I needed to stop talking about all the ideas I had and start bringing them to life.
You won't find anything "how-to" in this book - instead you'll find about 96 pages of cajoling, prodding, and poking with one call to action:
Start. Today, not tomorrow.
Also, the design of the book, from the cover, to the shape, size, and weight of the book is something special. It's such an easy book to pick up, read, and share, making it truly timeless (it's also one of my biggest motivators for becoming a publisher in the first place, so I owe a lot to this book).
I'm biased here - I had the opportunity to work with Dan to launch this book (his first) to market.
That said, I loved this book from the first read through - it challenged me to reevaluate the business I was building, specifically how I was building it. Was I taking calculated and measurable action rapidly, or hiding behind research, study, and other things that don't actually allow us to validate our work?
The book itself has been a bestseller since launch, sitting next to the biggest names in business / startup nonfiction, including Peter Thiel's Zero to One (another book that made this list) and Eric Ries' The Lean Startup. The fact that the book stands next to these giants speaks for itself.
At a fluff-free 150 pages, you can read it this evening and be launching your business tomorrow.
3. The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
If you're looking for a nuts-and-bolts approach to business without losing site of the 10,000 foot, strategic vision of it all, check out The Innovator's Dilemma.
This is the first book I read that hammered home the idea that every product or service is actually a "job to be done."
In other words:
Why should someone hire your product or service?
What job does it do for them in their life that other products and services aren't able to do?
As a potential customer, why shouldn't I ignore you?
Answer these questions and you have your killer app.
Trust me when I say: these questions will change everything about how you approach, build, and sell your product or service.
Jeff Goins, author of Wrecked and The In-Between, is getting ready to launch his latest book: The Art of Work.
Full-disclosure: because I'm working with Jeff on his new book launch I got early access to the book itself. After reading it in one sitting, I can say this: The Art of Work is an essential book for every artist, writer, and entrepreneur - and at times, it's a tearjerker (although I was born without tear glands, so I definitely didn't cry).
Jeff has an uncanny ability to approach a subject analytically yet passionately, never losing focus of the big picture (the "why"). In The Art of Work, Jeff gives us a framework for approaching our life's work - what we were meant to do - and does so with enough tough love to get us moving.
Life is too short to do what doesn’t matter, to waste your time on things that don’t amount to much. What we all want is to know our time on earth has meant something." - Jeff Goins, The Art of Work
While The Art of Work won't be officially released until mid March, Jeff is doing something really cool: he's giving away free copies of his book (you just have to pick up the shipping and handling).
So if you're looking for a powerful, easy read (that won't be so easy to forget), grab it while it's hot:
This book taught me to how to turn a great idea into an actionable business model, one that reduces waste (of time and money), uncertainty (the framework will help you figure out what you don't know), and fear (because your sole focus becomes validation).
This should be required reading for freshmen in high school, along with a corresponding four year track that teaches students how businesses operate, how startups work, and practical, hands-on experimentation to test out the theory in real life.
Sorry for that aside. I just think this book is incredible. I'll get off my high horse now.
an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making when we don’t understand the world, expressed in the form of a personal essay with autobiographical sections, stories, parables, and philosophical, historical, and scientific discussions in nonoverlapping volumes that can be accessed in any order." - Nassim Taleb
Antifragile and Nassim Taleb's corresponding incerto are some of the most valuable books I've ever read in my life. A combination of timeless philosophy, astute mathematics and statistics, and enjoyably opinionated reflection on the modern world, Taleb doesn't pull punches nor does he sell out to industry leaders, many who he unabashedly calls our for being frauds.
A must read if you're starting a new venture as it will help you build an antifragile business (a concept and term you'll grow to love as you explore Taleb's Antifragile).
Not a business book but certainly more than a book exclusively for writers, The War of Art is a rallying cry for great work.
Steven Pressfield is the author of so many bestsellers it's hard to keep track (including my favorite book of all time: Gates of Fire). This book is the culmination of a lifetime of creative work, in the trenches, day after day, struggling to get noticed and sell even a single manuscript (coming close to suicide at least once in the process).
The War of Art is a tough, brutal, uncompromising book.
Yet at its core, The War of Art is hopeful.
It teaches us that we can conquer our inner creative enemy, that we don't have to throw in the towel when things get tough, that there's always a solution if we're eager and disciplined enough to find (or create) it.
Any entrepreneur intending to do something bold in this life, read this book first.
Like many of the books on this list, I wish Crossing the Chasm had been mandatory reading in high school. Not because it's easy - quite the opposite.
It's hard, but it's necessary.
It's hard to understand what makes a great product, how to grow a company beyond early adopters, and what moves an economy at its most fundamental level (believe it or not, there's more to it than supply and demand curves) - hard but necessary if you want to create a business that makes an impact.
If you're interested in how successful companies must evolve to move from early adopters to early majority, I highly recommend Crossing the Chasm.
Assets put money in your pocket. Liabilities take money out of your pocket.
This simple phrase was enough to change the trajectory of my life, peaking my interested in real estate investing, stock investing, options trading, and eventually business, publishing, and teaching.
A short read and for some it will be painfully simplistic, but still highly recommend as a basis for what makes good investing (and good business).
10. Frogs into Princes by Richard Bandler and John Grinder
I'm reaching a bit with this book, but found it important enough to share.
Frogs into Princes is not a business book. In fact, it's hard to call it a book at all. It's actually a transcription from a seminar conducted by two psychiatrists and, to my knowledge, is the foundation of what has evolved into Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
From the outside, Frogs into Princes is a book on psychology, but at its core, it teaches us how people respond to triggers. In other words, what makes someone tick - or take action.
For those creative enough, these ideas can be extrapolated into the business world, helping us create products and services - and the marketing and sales copy around the product or service - that make people want to take action (buy our stuff).
Zero to One is one of the best books on startups I've ever read.
Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, takes on startups, innovation, and what it takes to create the future.
Unlike Running Lean, which provides a practical framework for creating a startup, Zero to One is more conceptual in nature, challenging preconceived notions of startups, or rather: what it takes to create a truly important startup.
Important startups are companies with products or services that move the needle from zero to one.
While The 7 Day Startup challenges us to take action today and launch something fast (which I love), Zero to One challenges us to think big and act even bigger - the perfect compliment to fast action, in my opinion.
The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.” - Peter Thiel, Zero to One
The book that started it all for me.
I'm biased here - I had the opportunity to work with Dan to launch this book (his first) to market.
Zero to One is one of the best books on startups I've ever read.