Put Your Personality at the Center of Your Brand

This week, there seemed to be a lot of conversations about whether Google+ would be more valuable than Facebook, and similar questions. While I am participating in Google+, and closely watching how people are finding value in it, I’m also thinking: this is the wrong question.

Again and again, we choose to put the PLATFORM ahead of CORE VALUE in our brands, be it an individual brand of an author, or the brand of one’s company. Online technology platforms will come and go, trends and capabilities will have them constantly evolving. We seem to constantly be migrating to and from one platform or another. But there is one thing that is the unique differentiator for your brand that is constant and impossible for others to take away: you. For larger companies, this may be: you, and your employees. And for all of us in business: you, and your customers, fans, partners, and other affiliates.

So today I want to explore how we sometimes focus on the wrong thing: commodifying our own identities, our greatest unique differentiator, in order to develop “scalable platforms.” Nothing scales better than people. So while many brands do what they can to build themselves up to bulletproof entities, where every cog – every employee & customer – is an easily replaced component, I want to talk about the value of being a human being in business. Let’s start with a story…

Many companies create systems for innovation. Carefully constructed rulesets and practices that are supposed to encourage the creation, capture, and vetting of good ideas. Some of these systems are wonderful, and work well for specific industries and roles. But then you have the anomaly of thousands of years of human achievement: that innovation comes in messy ways, at inopportune moments, by the person you least expected. (and isn’t that sort of wonderful?)

I have been watching behind-the-scenes “making of” documentaries of innovative special effects films such as James Cameron’s Avatar and Peter Jackson’s King Kong. I am seeing a common theme emerge, I’ll use King Kong (from 2005) as an example.

The “making of” segments explore the years of development that went into the design of the characters, sets, costumes, visual style, of the creature of Kong, and the technology that made it possible. They go into great depth to show the complicated systems that are created, and how they overcame challenge after challenge to create a movie that has hundreds of special effects shots.

And then, the entire tone and focus changes.

At this point in the documentary, the focus turns to the actors. And what you see for the role of Kong is how the actor who played him – Andy Serkis – completely takes over. He dons a makeshift Kong costume, and motion capture is used to turn his movements into the creature. And it’s interesting because the entire movie hinges on this one guy. The development team who designed their fancy CGI system now relies on this one artist – who has his own interpretation of who the character is.

Technology – the platform – takes a backseat to the art – to the soul – of the story. And the director Peter Jackson ensures an actor does what he knows special effects cannot. (You can see the multipart documentary starting here.)

Many companies don’t do this when developing products, services, and platforms for communication and interaction. Instead, they commodify their processes, their employees, and even their treatment of customers. Why? For fear that a single person – a single cog – can gain too much power. Too much control. They also begin to feel that whatever they are developing, every product, service, and message from their brand, needs to appeal to EVERY person on the planet, so that core idea of having a personality is off the table.

Having a real personality means that you may be incredibly engaging to some people, and a total turn-off to others. Making that choice, for individuals is just part of our everyday lives. For a company or an individual building a brand, there is the temptation to vanilla themselves down – to become so bland that they couldn’t possible offend anyone. The unfortunate side effect is that they truly engage no one.

So for us, here on the web, we can’t let the platform alone drive us. Tweets, status updates, videos, social networks – all are useless without our personality, our ideas, our connections. The messy, human, amazing stuff.

The same goes for the work that we create and share. We can’t turn out voices into SEO linkable “content.” It is best to step outside of the echo chamber, to find a new sound, new ideas, a unique experience never before seen.

This is why I love when “best practices” are ignored and broken. Yes, they can serve as a guide, allowing us to focus on more important things. But breaking free of them can be the first step in a personal journey, one that might just surprise us, and the world.

After all, this is our legacy.

I saw a very interesting video this week, one that seemed to show someone with complete lack of inhibition. It’s a simple video of a kid dancing in the Apple Store:

(I found this video via Jeffrey Harmon)

When I watched it, at first I was sort of embarrassed for him. But as it goes on, you realize his confidence, and that frankly, he’s just having a ton of fun.

This reminded me of the feeling I remember having at the New York City Halloween parade years ago. I was in my late 20’s, and dressed up in a decent, but understated costume. But when you walk the streets around the parade, something amazing happens. People are completely alive. There are tons of others dressed in the craziest costumes, everyone is laughing and actually talking to complete strangers on the streets of New York. It is infectious. By the end of the night, you see someone in a crazy Snork costume, wearing bright orange spandex, and for a moment, you think to yourself: “I should have dressed like that.” You wish you went overboard, and feel completely lame for having censored your own creative energy.

Yes, there is risk in choosing to take actions that show your personality in a larger way. But in that risk is where opportunity lies. To explore what you are capable of. To connect with others in new ways. To create something truly unique that has a positive snowball effect in the lives of others.

This is what many companies and individuals building their brand need to understand: that the formulaic products, platforms, and content they create and share leaves them too scared to really be brave. So they struggle for inches instead of leaping miles.

What are brands afraid of? Why do they do this? Well, because of Leeroy Jenkins. Who is Leeroy? He is the mythical “lone nut” who will destroy all of your plans. You can see Leroy in action in this classic viral video, where a group of players in the video game World of Warcraft strategize how they will attack a roomful of enemies. (warning: some cursing in this video, but hilarious and kind of instructive.)

This is why some companies fear giving their own employees too much power or freedom. How they justify restrictive customer service policies. Why it is hard to talk to an actual person if you want to contact a brand.

This is not just for corporations – you see this in many small businesses, and brands that consist of a single person.

In the end, this is all a personal choice. In how you represent yourself; in what you mean to those around you; in the legacy you leave the world.

Will you be just another status update sharing the same news, the same pithy comments, the same basic thing that everyone else is creating? Or will you create something unique, something special, something worth living for?

Thanks.
-Dan

Honing Your Craft vs Connecting With Your Audience

Should a writer spend their time honing their craft, working towards producing work of the highest quality – OR – should they focus their time on building their audience, connecting with others, and building their writing career?

This is a questions I have seen posed many times in many places in the past couple months. I often see people come back with a passionate answer of:

IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF YOUR WORK. DON’T WORRY ABOUT MARKETING UNLESS YOUR WORK IS AMAZING.

And yes, that resonates with me, that is something I can nod my head to. When I look at the great work of our culture in stories of all kinds, I find them to be breathtaking, and on high rotation in the playlist of my life.

But should writers ONLY spend their time head down, locked in the attic, creating and revising their work until it meets some standard of greatness? The more I consider this, the more I am convinced that honing your craft and connecting with your audience are not mutually exclusive activities.

So I wanted to explore this topic today. I will say up front: there are no right answers except for what works best for you personally. Whatever feels right in your gut: go with that. Okay, let’s dig in…

A Romantic Vision of the Creative Process

Oftentimes, we have a romanticized view of the creative process and success. We look for purity – we want to think our favorite singer became popular because of their sheer majestic talent alone, that there wasn’t a team of producers crafting their work, that they didn’t throw out 20 songs to come up with one amazing tune, or that they started out as goth before going alt-country.

We don’t want to know about the corporate machine – the business – behind art. The idea of the lone artist resonates with us, that they are creating their work in a cabin in the woods – completely pure. And then, magically, the world discovers their work, validates their effort, and shines a light on their gift. This is how we dream success will happen.

Oftentimes creating great work is akin to how sausage is made. You do not want to know what went into making that hot dog – you simply want to know it tastes yummy at a summer picnic.

When you hear your favorite song – it sounds impassioned, personal, it speaks directly to your heart. But even one verse can be made up of 20 takes, could have been processed in subtle ways (not something as obvious as auto-tune), and be composed of dozens of nuanced layers, all while being debated endlessly by the artist and collaborators. It’s been road tested at a dozen live shows, it’s been shared with friends for months, collecting feedback, slowly improving the performance, the rough edges.

The point is: creative work is often a long process of revision, of sharing, of iteration, of slowly adding and removing layers. In the music world, it is expected that bands will tour and play live shows endlessly before they “make it” – they hone their craft right in front of their audience. They are constantly learning about their fans, how their work connects to people, and are becoming not just better musicians, but better storytellers in the process.

For writers, yes, I love the image of JK Rowling sitting alone in the cafe, creating her little world. I. LOVE. THAT.

But I don’t want to pretend that is the only way for creators to produce quality work. That you are not allowed to come out of the attic with your work until it is amazing. I have been a writer, been an artist, been a musician. When did my work improve? When it was shared. When I took the training wheels off, and took a leap of faith to share it with someone.

Planning vs Doing

You learn so much when you share your work, connecting it with others, and listening to not just the feedback of others, but to how you yourself react to your work once it is free in the world.

This process begins to help define you as a writer, or artist, or musician or other creative. The work lives, it has been unleashed, it can’t be taken back.

For some, this is the start of their career – of their identity. They learn how to share, how to deal with reaction, how their own vision evolves, changes, and grows.

Consider the difference of practicing basketball by yourself, perfecting your moves and shooting vs playing in an actual game. The difference is night and day. It’s the same with music – the difference between spending thousands of hours practicing alone, perfecting your technique vs the experience of playing with a band. BOTH sides of this equation are useful. But something special happens when you experience your craft with others, you see it from an entirely new light. Oftentimes, it is the difference between planning and doing.

There are some things that you can’t learn until you experiences them – with real people reacting to your work, with the insights you gain that make your next piece even better. This often works best if you build it slowly over time, instead of rushing out of the gate with something to sell six weeks before your book comes out.

So how do you create quality work? By doing. By sharing. By publishing. By repeating that process.
This is the principle around the “lean startup” process for launching a business. That, instead of getting an idea for a product, and diligently building it until it is what you want it to be and THEN launching it, you launch little iterations quickly. The idea is that things rarely go according to plan. That what you think is perfect when you launch, after you have expended all the time and resources to create it, is often missing key elements. That you can never predict how people will react to it. So you should launch small “good enough” versions, get feedback, and quickly improve the product to meet the needs of others and improve overall quality.

When you share, you learn so much not just about those who do or don’t react to your work, but about the work itself, and about your own understanding of your vision and abilities.

Storytelling is a Process
For most of us, our work gets better over time. What this means is the first work we create may often be of, say, lower quality than we would like. We mean well, but we simply didn’t have the experience to craft amazing stories, or songs, or works of art yet.

But, as the saying goes, it gets better.

We try, we share, we connect. Just as bands tour their work – they learn, they grow, all through the process of creating AND sharing. It is not an event, it is a PROCESS.

Ira Glass, host of This American Life, reflects on his process of finding and sharing great stories:

“All we do is look for interesting stories, and there are 7 or 8 of us now. I have to say, more than half of our week is engaged in looking for stories and trying stuff out. We’re really good at our jobs, we are as good as anyone who does this sort of thing. Between a half and a third of everything we try, we kill it. By killing, you will make something else even better live.” (meaning they record and produce it, and then they throw it in the trash.) Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.”

It speaks to the process of creative activity. That it is a cycle of creation, of sharing, of creation, of sharing. Ira and his team aren’t sitting in a room, alone, making one story better and better. They are out there, in the world, researching, listening, creating, broadcasting, and in a constant process of creating and connecting – because both sides of the process increase quality over time.

The Subjectiveness of Quality

Let’s just say you have written one of the greatest works of your lifetime – a book that will electrify an entire generation, become one of the biggest sellers of all time, and create a billion dollar empire. Here is the reaction that JK Rowling’s literary agent got when they approached publishers:

“The agency sent Rowling’s 200-page script to 12 publishers, all of whom, to their eternal regret, turned down the book. Harper Collins showed interest but was too slow in formulating a bid and so the first book by the most lucrative writer in the world was picked up by Bloomsbury for an advance of £1,500.”

Or how about another writer’s story. After being rejected by more than 20 publishers…

Early in 1965, Frank Herbert received good news from a surprising source. Chilton Books, best known for publishing auto repair manuals, made an offer of $7,500 (plus future royalties) to publish the three Dune segments.”

Once these writers received 10 rejection letters, should they have gone back to revisions, back to their cabin in the woods, to somehow increase the quality of what have since become classics?

The Confidence Game

Oftentimes the biggest the biggest barrier to someone who wants to create something is themselves. They create a document on their computer – a story, a song, a poem, and image, a video – and they never share it.

Success relies on more than the quality of work. Lots of quality work goes unnoticed. Lots of brilliant people die alone, unknown, without any measure of success or legacy.

Being successful is often as much about confidence, as it is about anything else. Confidence to create. Confidence to share. Confidence to persevere.

I have found that if you share something you are working on with JUST ONE PERSON, a whole new world of possibilities opens up. We live in a world where having “only” 32 followers on Twitter is disappointing. Imagine that – 32 FANS! Never before could you do that, especially on your own, without affiliation of a larger entity.

This is well summed up in this mention from Nathan Bransford’s blog/forum:

“Comment! of! the! Week! I really liked Cathy Yardley’s answer about what she wished she had known when she started writing, because it’s something I believe in wholeheartedly:”

“I wish I’d know that everybody writes alone, but nobody becomes a writing success that way. Not just the critique aspect, but the support. It’s too tough a business to lone wolf.”

Clearly – the goal is to produce quality work – stuff that will shape our culture, touch our hearts, inspire others to greatness, and leave a legacy long after we are gone. And I think that what I am describing in that post is one process to achieve work of the highest quality.

Is this hard work with no clear roadmap? Oftentimes, yes. But I will leave you with this quote from comedian Louis C.K.:

“I’ve learned from experience that if you work harder at it, and apply more energy and time to it, and more consistency, you get a better result. It comes from the work. I remember seeing this thing, a documentary about a Los Angeles coach [John Wooden], the guy who coached UCLA to huge wins, so they couldn’t be beat for three seasons. He’s a very legendary coach, but a very unassuming guy with thick glasses. They just won and won and won. They talked about the difference between him and, like, Bobby Knight and Vince Lombardi. He didn’t make winning speeches. He never made speeches about being winners and being the best, like, “This is our house,” that kind of horsesh*t. Never said it. He said that to focus on that, to win, win, win, is worthless. It just has no value. He’d address all his players in his little voice, “If you just listen to me, and you work on your fundamentals and you apply yourself to working on these skills, you’re probably going to be happy with the results.” I think about that all the time.”

Thanks!
-Dan

How to Build Your Brand? From the Core.

A big focus for my business is brand building – how does one establish and grow a brand online, and create the processes and systems to turn an idea into a business. Today I would like to talk about the idea of building your brand from your core – how to create something that is uniquely you, and that provides not just a career and revenue, but fulfillment and creative control.

Charlie is a Brand
I’d like to introduce you to Charlie. He’s 20 years old, he’s from England, and there’s really nothing special about him, per se. Except… that he records and uploads videos to YouTube, mostly of him talking to the camera on some topic.

The thing is, each of his videos get well over 1 million views, oftentimes closer to 2 million views. And this usually happens in the first couple days of him uploading them. He now has 1 million subscribers too. So the question is: why, and what can we learn from Charlie? Well, here is Charlie introducing himself, and explaining what he does:

Charlie McDonnell

A recap:

  • He’s never had a proper job, he just makes videos on YouTube.
  • Google pays him to do it via advertising revenue.
  • He also plays in a band that makes music about Dr. Who.

Why does this work? He won’t pretend to know, he basically fell into all this accidentally. But he does share this:

I don’t like to think of [my audience] as a sea of eyeballs that I need to trick into ‘liking’ my video or subscribing to my channel, or leave me a comment. I try and make good stuff. If I do that, the rest of the good stuff will come with it.

He doesn’t speak to a “community,” he speaks to individual people. You are just a person, one normal actual person. That makes it personal.

Since his success, he says he has been contacted by people “wanting a slice of the Charlie pie” – people making offers of collaboration, capitalizing on his popularity and turning it into a business venture.

He went down that road a bit, hiring a manager and trying some TV presentation. But it was weird for him, he had to work off a script, written by someone else, pretending to be him.

So he’s back out on his own. This is why:

“It has to be fun. If its not fun, I’m not going to want to put in the extra effort to make it as good as it needs to be. Fun is a necessity.”

Personal Brands as Business Strategy

Understandably, there are many folks online who want to build their career by becoming something more of a brand. Some have blogs or video blogs or websites or actual businesses, with products and services. Unlike our friend Charlie above, other folks may actively seek out affiliation with a well-established brand. For instance: if one can build an affiliation with Tide or Ford or Smart Water, then that credibility may land them other affiliations that will lead to a audience growth, a book deal, and of course, your own TV show.

And this works well for some people.

It’s interesting to consider what Charlie is doing compared to those who collect badges from major brands to display on their blogs. Charlie’s possibilities are in his own hands, and that has its own challenges and rewards.

But a primary one is that everything Charlie builds is coming from his core. He isn’t slowly changing what he does in order to fit with a sponsorship, a career path, or doing what he can to please a partner or client.

Drifting
How did you end up in the job you work right now? A lot of folks I know slowly drifted into their chosen career path, often based on convenience and building on where they were at the start. For instance, a friend of mine was a salesperson at a store in the mall during college, and then he became assistant manager, then changed jobs to another retail job, and little by little, carved out a career as a manager of major retail stores.

Was this his goal? When you were 24, was your goal to have the job title you have right now?

There is nothing wrong with this, I am simply reflecting on the fact that sometimes we end up in places far away from our center because of the choices others make for us. We pursue opportunities one step at a time, but 367 steps later, we find we went off-course somewhere.

The Right to Choose Your Path

This week JK Rowling announced an online “experience” by which she would finally release the Harry Potter books in digital formats. She was able to wait so long, and follow her own path because she retained the digital rights to the books.

Likewise, on May 13, 1971, Stevie Wonder turned 21, and his Motown contract to expire. From Wikipedia:

“Wonder independently recorded two albums, which he used as a bargaining tool while negotiating with Motown. Eventually the label agreed to his demands for full creative control and the rights to his own songs. The 120-page contract shattered precedent at Motown and additionally gave Wonder a much higher royalty rate.”

What followed were a series of seminal albums – an outpouring of creative mastery.

The thing is, we all inherently have the legal rights to choose our own path. We don’t need to negotiate them away from some larger corporate entity.

Justine Musk recently shared a wonderful post on building your brand, and had this advice:

“You don’t invent your personal ‘brand’ out of thin air, any more than you invent your life or your self. You search your soul, you explore your past, you excavate your fascinations and beliefs, and drill down and drill down for the meaning of it all.”

It’s not something that comes to you from others, it comes from inside of you. It’s not a business card, an office, a product, a newsletter list, or logo, or a contract with a major brand. It is an intangible that comes from within, and is baked into everything you do.

On the Cusp
We are always on the cusp of greatness. Sometimes it takes an extraordinary risk to move past boundaries.

In all of this, I have been considering, “Well Dan, what is YOUR brand?” I honestly have no idea. I was looking back through my blogs the other night, and surprised at what I found. I was reminded of who I was, what I dream about. This post from 2007 seemed relevant to this discussion: What Rockstars Can Teach Us About Innovation. It shares a single moment where Bono risked the entire career of U2 with one ten foot jump. But doing so launched them to worldwide success. The video:

Playing at Live Aid in 1985, U2 had a cult following, but by no means had any kind of mainstream fan-base. Their albums had fallen out of the charts, and they had a 3-song slot at the concert. The plan was to end with their strongest song, and hopefully attracting new fans with it. But during their second song, Bad, Bono went way off script.

Midway through the song, he wanders to the front of the stage. Looking down at the crowd 10+ feet below, he begins to focus on faces. With tens of thousands of people in the arena, and millions watching on TV worldwide, he was looking at the face of a single woman. He suddenly starts waving for security to allow the fan to go over the barrier and come up onto the stage. They don’t understand his intention, and as Bono becomes frustrated, he makes a split second decision to leap down 10 feet to the floor of the arena.

The band keeps playing in the background, unsure of where Bono went or why. The precious few minutes are getting eaten up, and the moment he jumps off the stage, they lose all chances of having time for their third song – their big shot at stardom.

Meanwhile, back on the arena floor, Bono pulls a fan from the crowd and slowly dances with her amid security guards. He finally makes his way back on stage, where the band continues the music from Bad. Bono grabs the microphone, and instead of singing any U2 song, he looks out at the crowd and begins to sing lyrics from the Rolling Stones’ Ruby Tuesday. Then he goes into Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side.

As their time runs out, Bono rushes past his bandmates and off stage. They hated him for what he had done, and Bono assumed he had just inadvertently broken up the band.

But as the days passed something strange happened. U2’s albums began re-entering the charts. Bono’s effort to reach out to the audience became the highlight of the entire concert – the one person who broke from the script to create a moment of meaning from a massive spectacle.

What Bono did was stop talking, and start listening. The audience was not a thing, it was made up of unique individuals. Bono knew U2’s songs didn’t matter in that moment, bur rather, the songs that brought people together.

This came from his core, not the “plan” of promoting their songs.

This is Our Time

Each of us are on the cusp of greatness. But we have to stop the train that is our lives to take the action to realize that greatness. This is our time to share something worth being remembered for. To create the space in this world to give, and to help empower others.

So when we use imperfect words such as referring to people as “brands,” this is what I think we are referring to. A word that encapsulates everything we are and everything we can be.

Thanks!
-Dan

Showing is Not Teaching

I am excited to announce the summer session of my 8-week online course: Build Your Author Platform. (click the link!)

This is my flagship course – something that I have spent months and months developing. This course gives you a complete strategy to build your brand and become a part of a community of people who appreciate your writing.

Recently, I’ve talked about why I love teaching. Today, I want to talk about the difference between truly teaching, and merely “showing.”

I bought something this week, and while opening it up, I couldn’t help but noticing the promises it made on the side of the box:

Fisher Price Door Toy

WOW! How much would you pay for something that does all of that? Maybe $10,000? Or more? I mean, this is comparable to a college education, right? At this point, you must be asking, what magical gadget can teach all of this. May I present to you:

Fisher Price door toy

Sure, it’s a new toy for my 9-month old son’s play area – essentially a big doorway with lots of buttons to press. But does pressing buttons equate to teaching?

I am considering this as a metaphor, how each of us approaches career development, and the many projects and services that we encounter that somehow promise us an easy path to our dreams.

Now, the object above SHOWS my son what letters look like. Maybe if he presses some button it will say “A” in a pre-recorded voice. But this is not teaching. And this is the failing of many training and education products and services aimed at adults in developing their careers. Showing is not teaching.

Teaching requires the instructor to “get their hands dirty” – not just wrestling with the material, but working WITH each unique student. Oftentimes, it’s not just about intellect, but about emotions. Learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it occurs within the context of our already busy lives. And let’s face it, each of us are coming from a different place, and have different goals.

The larger educational system solved this by creating standardized tests and assigning letter grades to determine who “passed” and who “failed.” I won’t go into any commentary on that, and I won’t pretend that is a straightforward issue. (massively complex, in fact)

With launching the summer session of my Build Your Author Platform course, I have been obsessing over issues such as this: how can I best TEACH; how can I actually move the needle in someone’s life, bringing them closer to their goals.

I have been developing this course for well over a year now, and this is only the second time I am making it available. Why? Because I keep wanting to analyze it to make it even stronger. I took 2 months off between the last offering in the Spring. That time has been spent analyzing feedback from students, adding features, and ensuring how my time can best be spent with the students who sign up.

If you feel that this course would benefit someone you know, please spread the word. Here’s that link again:

Build Your Author Platform.

Thanks!
-Dan

Is My “Build Your Author Platform” Course Right For You?

Registration is now open for my 8 week online course: Build Your Author Platform. The class is nearly full, but I wanted to share some more info as to who this class might be for, in the event you are considering registering, or know of someone who might be right.

This course is for:

  • Passionate writers with vision
    So much of what I teach is about focusing, researching, defining – and then connecting it to the world, to a real community of people. A bit of uncertainty is absolutely expected for any student – that you may need help honing your brand, understanding how to communicate the value of your work, or identifying the audience who it will best connect with. This course does help clarify a lot about an author’s brand, their work, and their community – and help make it all a reality. But that vision and passion, that is what I hope the writer to come with.

  • A writer who wants to connect their work and vision with the world
    Someone who is not afraid of technology – you are comfortable with a mouse, and the idea of actually interacting with people online. You need not be an expert by any stretch, but if you want to spend as little time online as possible, it will be harder to engage your audience, which is something I am passionate about. Many writers I know are apprehensive about social media, and unsure of how to use it best. That is absolutely fine, I review the value, and specific steps to get on board. But the writer must have an innate desire to connect with readers.

  • A writer looking for a framework for success
    The success of a writer is not always a plug-and-play solution – ONE secret button to press. It is about establishing a process to create great work, and connect it with others. That the writer is willing to invest TIME in building their career. This course presents a valuable framework by which to expand your writing career, and to do so with your existing resources.

  • A writer who is focused on building a long-term writing career
    This course does cover specific tactics to get the word out about your work in the very near term. But overall, it addresses the needs of someone who is committed to their work and their audience for the long haul – that they are interested in building a viable career, not just marketing a single book.

Do you have questions about the course? Check out the course details and registration page.

I am incredibly excited for the course, it is something I have poured my heart into, and am constantly thinking of ways to make it even better. If you think it’s right for you, please don’t delay registering. Registration officially closes on Wednesday February 23, but I may need to close it early if it fills up. I want to keep the class size to a reasonable number, to ensure I can provide as much value as possible to the students.

I also recently announced a bonus to the course: Guest Lectures!
As a bonus to the regular course material, I have arranged for a few guest speakers during the course, including Jane Friedman, Kevin Smokler and Justine Musk. These are super-smart and passionate people on the topic of building your author platform – an incredible resource to have them as a part of this. I hope to add more guest speakers (my ideal is one per week), but these three are confirmed.

Thanks!
-Dan