My Wife Is Better at This Than Me
Day 42 of 100 Days to 10,000 Copies
Today is day 42 of 100 Days to 10,000 Copies, my project to launch my new book - Easy Discipline (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible).
The Wall
What We Did:
The whole idea of publicly declaring the 10,000 copies goal to the world is that it forces me and my team (mainly Tracy) to come up with unconventional ways to achieve it.
2,000 pre-orders is normal. 5,000 is ambitious. 10,000 is impossible.
To do this, there is no one way to achieve it, but a collection of different methods. Some are moonshots. Some are old reliables.
So… how are we doing?
I’ll start with what didn’t work: YouTube. While narrating my book, I wanted to restart my YouTube channel. It made me famous more than a decade ago, and I wanted to revive it for my 100 Days to 10,000 Copies project. However, it has proven to be ineffective. I’ll tell you why tomorrow.
But here is the good news: another channel started shining. Corporate bulk purchases. And this is all Tracy. Holy smoke, my wife is amazing! Every time I see her, I see a combination of Juliet as a lover, Mother Teresa as an inspiration, and Estée Lauder as a businessperson.
She started calling our friends and contacts who work in organizations, one by one, and just asked them to buy my book for their teams. And many said YES! If you look at the Wall, most of the names are from companies. In fact, there are quite a few more companies that have committed, and the Wall will climb in the next week or so.
Will corporate purchases alone get us to 10,000? Probably not. And I don’t want them to. I want this campaign to be a combination of individual readers and organizations. Still, corporate buys are effective. That’s why you see corporate sponsorship everywhere.
More importantly, it shows that when you have an impossible goal, you try everything. Some of it will fail. Some of it will succeed unexpectedly.
By the way, if you can organize your team/organization to bulk purchase books, let me know. Not only will your team thank you for an awesome read, but your organization's name will forever be etched on the 10,000 Copies Wall.
EASY DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLE - You Do You
Why is Tracy so good at getting people to buy books? The answer is simple: she loves people, and can talk all day. Everyone, I mean EVERYONE, loves her back and wants to help her.
I call Tracy the Zoom Queen.
For me, getting on the phone and talking all day is like removing a broken toenail. (I literally did that this week. The toenail was more fun.) But for the Zoom Queen, it’s heaven on earth. She LOVES it.
The same phone call that drains me fills her up. That’s the whole point. The method that works isn’t the best method. It’s the one you actually love doing.
And that love is the most important weapon in achievement.
Not ambition. Not discipline. But love.
That’s the essence of Easy Discipline.
For You
Hey, what do you love to do? Writing? Drawing? Coding? Chatting with people? Whatever it is that you love to do, that you’d do over and over for free, or even pay to do.
Figure out a way to use it to achieve your goal! Whether it’s a deep passion or a casual affinity, use it!
That’s your David’s slingshot, your King Arthur’s Excalibur, or your Tracy’s Zoom.
Oh, and if you want to figure out what that is and how to use it… buy the book.
And don’t forget to get on the Wall. I’d love to see you there.
Jia, I read this in email. The title of your upcoming book seems to be outdated in the description of you at the end of that email. Suggest updating it.