Marketing | Environment | Culture

Tag: BombBomb

11 Tips To Write A Book From a No-Name, First-Time Author

I always knew that I was going to write a book about my experience with simple, personal videos at BombBomb, but I was never clear on the intended audience or exact topic. Telling the story of a software company with which I’ve experienced +15,000% customer growth and +2,000% employee growth would be interesting. But who would it be for? Fans and friends of the company? Aspiring software moguls? It seemed self-indulgent and presumptuous to write that book.

Then, I hit my 6-year anniversary as a full-time team member, was struck with how far we’d come as a community, and published this blog post in October 2017.

The post was a declaration. An ownership claim. A planted flag.

The “relationships through video” movement is our movement – one we’re pioneering with, through, and for our customers. The philosophy and practice of communicating, connecting, and converting more effectively with webcam and smartphone videos in place of plain, typed-out text were created and advanced within our community.

But that avowal was as far as I took it for several months, until I decided to take the ideas in that post, information in hundreds of other blog posts, tips from dozens of webinars and stage presentations, lessons from TEDx and Ignite talks, new research, and various other things I’d learned and shared over the years and … write a book.

As a no-name, first-time author, this was no small undertaking.

Apparently, becoming an author is a common goal, so I thought I’d share some things I learned over the past 18 months from the time I decided to write a book through the first 15,000 copies sold of Rehumanize Your Business, a book I co-authored with my friend Steve Pacinelli.

Rehumanize Your Business, write a book, publish a book, Ethan Beute, BombBomb, Seattle, Barnes & Noble, readers
Friends and readers of Rehumanize Your Business.
#rehumanize

11 Tips to Write a Book

This list is by no means exhaustive. Steve and I learned so much over the past 18 months – too much to share in a single post.

If you want to write a nonfiction book, these tips may be more relevant than if you want to write fiction.

If you want to write a book, these tips may be more relevant than if you want to have one ghostwritten for you.

Whether you want to get a book published or you want to self-publish, these tips should be equally relevant to you.

If your question isn’t addressed here or you want more detail on any of these stories or ideas, please reach out to me on LinkedIn and I’ll offer what I can!

1: Find Your Motivation

For me, this one was easy. I’ve already described it here in this post. It’s what drives me every day to show up and bring my best to a team, community, and concept I’ve been working with for about a decade.

What we’ve done within our community at BombBomb has changed lives and careers (I know it sounds dramatic, but I’ve heard it dozens of times) by allowing people to be more personal and human in their business communication. More people should know about the opportunity and have help to get started. Organizing all our best stories, ideas, tips, and guidance into one package is a great way to do that.

Continue reading

Where I’ve Been (Since I’ve Not Been Blogging)

This blog has been woefully neglected over the past couple months.  It’s not for a lack of ideas or opinions; I’ve got plenty.  Instead, it’s more an issue of habit and focus.  The former’s insufficiently formed as it relates to punching out short pieces here.  The latter’s been divided over other projects.

So: a quick rundown of things I’ve been doing instead of blogging and in addition to working full time (in a plenty demanding position) and being a very highly rated husband and father (really, just ask ’em).

EthanBeute, San Diego, ocean, photography, West Coast, waves, surf, water, beach

La Jolla, California: One of the places I've been instead of sitting down and blogging.

  • A family vacation to San Diego that inspired 11 photo sets, including visits to the Pacific Ocean (several), Joshua Tree National Park, Cabrillo National Monument, Torrey Pines State Park, Legoland, Los Angeles and more.  The photo above comes compliments of and merits compliments to my wonderful wife.
  • Landing an MBA scholarship from the Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, an award for which I was pleased, excited, honored and appreciative.  Sure, it just involved completing their scholarship application, tightening up ye olde resume and constructing a couple short essays, but it still required dedicating an entire Saturday morning to the effort.  It all adds up.
  • Theme-building, copy writing and copy editing for Seeds Children’s Home.  For a decade, they’ve been providing food, clothing, shelter, education, medical care and discipleship to orphans and other children in need from the Kipsongo slum in Kitale, Kenya.  They’re launching an emergency fundraising campaign to get an orphanage built after the home they were renting was sold, displacing the orphans and their full time care providers.  This one’s just getting started; there’s plenty of work to be done.  I was invited into the project by a friend whose sales and marketing consultancy website I reworked earlier this year.
  • Messaging strategy and copy editing for Roundhouse Support, which specializes in technically supporting apps and app developers.  Little of my work is yet live, but the site’s getting a nice upgrade from Infront, a leading web design, development and SEO company here in Colorado Springs.
  • Learning about myself with the Culture Index, an assessment tool recommended highly by an esteemed colleague who specializes in true, internal branding.  I completed the online portion and await my initial and foll0w-up meetings to interpret the results and to turn them into practical action.
  • Ongoing miscellany with BombBomb, a video email marketing startup here in Colorado Springs.  Great idea (seriously, try it free!).  Great team.  Great fun.

Meanwhile, summer’s here!  Though I’ve enjoyed some quality outdoor time, I’ve only made it to one summit so far this season.

I do love this blog.  I also love helping people, learning things and going outside.  Everything in moderation, I guess!

Who Trumps How Many: This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis

Earlier, in my brief examination of social whoring, I included a mention of “who” being more important than “how many.”  The basic idea: 10 Twitter followers truly locked in to you – your persona, your concept, your product, your service or your brand – are more valuable than 1,000 followers who are just hanging on for the follow-back.  Not genius, but fundamental and oft overlooked.

For several  months, I’ve been watching This Week In Startups with Jason Calacanis.  This morning, I realized that a) I should bring this excellent, entertaining production to your attention and b) it perfectly illustrates the idea.

Regarding TWiST itself: It’s a YouTube channel under the This Week In web TV network.  It’s a round table format about – obviously – startup companies, entrepreneurship, venture capital, angel investing, founders, CEOs, etc.

Guests have included Gary Vaynerchuk, Groupon founder Andrew Mason, David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, the founding developer of WordPress, the director of search at Bing, the founder and CEO of Gowalla, the founder and CEO of EventBrite and more than a hundred others.  Themed segments and episodes include Shark Tank (very frequent, idea pitch and judgment), Founders Roundtable, Global Meetups and more.

Regarding who versus how many: Dozens of the episodes (of which there are 120 or so) have fewer than 100 views.  Most have views in the 100-1,000 range.  A handful of views are in the 2,000+ range.  Total subscribers … 402.  Note: this does NOT take into account the live audience of each show.

A traditional take on these kinds of numbers – unimpressive.  A local television station provides 2,000 simultaneous views for even poorly-watched programs.  Though insanely inane, other YouTube channels have far greater reach – like ShaneDawsonTV2 with 250,000,000+ video views and 1,600,000+ subscribers.

So how do Calacanis and company land sponsorship from leading software companies like email service provider Mail Chimp?  (Note: my ESP of choice is BombBomb, who’s putting video inside the inbox).  Those few hundred subscribers and few thousand viewers represent a tight, high quality community of entrepreneurs, tech/web people, investors and financiers.  It’s probably as dense a concentration of these types as you can reach.

I guarantee that buy isn’t on an old school cost per thousand basis.  I’d also bet that if you looked at the sponsorship (however it’s structured) on a CPM basis, the CPM would be astronomical compared to most online buys.  There’s a premium on concentrations of smart, shrewd, softwarey people.  Yes, I made that last adjective up.

The point?  Sure, more viewers and subscribers would be good for TWiST, but who makes up that audience is far more important than how many there are.

Here’s an embed of a recent episode with Tony Conrad, co-founder of About.Me (sold to AOL for $800M four days after launch) among many other projects and successes.  If for no other reason, you should watch this to learn how the About.Me team lined up that killer url – obviously a fundamental piece of their overall strategy.

More on Jason Calacanis on Wikipedia.
Follow Jason Calacanis on Twitter.
Check out my About.Me page.

© 2024 ethanbeute

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑