Three years ago today I launched my book Wind In Your Sails: Vital Strategies That Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Growth. Thank you to all of you who have read my book and let me know how it has had an impact on you and your business. As I reflect on the three-year anniversary, I realize that these are the reasons it was important to me to write Wind In Your Sails.
Clarify My Thinking
Creating a book forced me to get clear on what was most important in my entrepreneurial career. I first figured out the organization of the book. What did I want to include? In what order did I want to present the business strategies that helped me? I created an outline of the chapters and major subheadings for each chapter before I started writing. With that, I then started the actual writing, often using blog posts I had written as starting points for the content. As I continued writing, my thought processes clarified and I became confident in what I was sharing.
Connecting with Others
While I have had an amazing entrepreneurial career, I knew that Wind In Your Sails would be richer by including the experiences of many others. I interviewed over 45 entrepreneurs, sales, marketing, and other leaders as part of the process. I learned a lot. When I was done, a third of the content was the stories of other entrepreneurs, their journeys in building their businesses, and the lessons that they learned. While you may not connect with one of my business stories, you might connect with the stories of the many other entrepreneurs that I included in Wind In Your Sails.
Being of Service
I wrote Wind In Your Sails as a reference work that would be useful for years. What I wanted was for an entrepreneur to read my book and have something tangible they could use immediately to improve their business. I included an index, so that when an entrepreneur is stuck they can pull Wind In Your Sails down from their book shelf, look up their problem in the index, and get an immediate idea or suggestion for how to solve the problem they are dealing with today. My story and those of the other entrepreneurs in Wind In Your Sails were intended to help entrepreneurs avoid some of the potholes that we hit while building our businesses.
Having an Impact
I am happiest when someone who has read Wind In Your Sails tells me of a specific way it has helped them through one of their business or life challenges. It is more important to me that ten people have a significant change in their lives from reading and applying the lessons from Wind In Your Sails than 10,000 skim it without impact. To connect with entrepreneurs, I started every chapter with a story that highlighted a challenge I had overcome. Stories are how we make connection and connection is how we have an impact on others.
I am fortunate to have so many in my life that have contributed to my entrepreneurial journey. My hope is that entrepreneurs past, present, and future may relate and continue to benefit from Wind In Your Sails.
I continue to want more entrepreneurs to benefit from Wind In Your Sails. You only get the benefit if you buy and read my book. To make that easier, here are some of the online retailers where you can purchase it today.
