I want to give you a free copy of my new ebook … but I don’t want you to keep it.*
Let me tell you why. On June 18, my newest ebook will be released and I am writing it for an audience that may not include you. Unless of course you happen to be in high school or college, or starting your career right now.
It’s graduation season and there are lots of pieces of advice floating around the Internet these days. Some are going viral – like the video inspired by a forgotten commencement address from late fiction writer David Foster Wallace back in 2005. About a week ago a small video production agency in LA created a video of his address, titled “This is Water.” In it, Wallace shared some cold hard truths with graduating seniors from Kenyon College about what they would soon face amidst the tedium of daily life. The speech was part warning, part inspiration … but it inspired the video recreation because one of the creators of the project said he heard the talk and couldn’t get it out of his head. Watch it here:
Great pieces of advice are like that. They stick in your head. They cause you to create videos years later. They inspire. I have continually benefited from advice like that across my career. The nice thing about being a writer and speaker is have many chances to share what I have learned with others in person at many events. For years, I have been planning to do more than that. Now I finally have the chance.
Always Eat Left Handed: 15 Surprisingly Simple Rules Of Success is a book about the unexpected rules of success that have helped me throughout my career … but that I have generally only managed to uncover by mistakes or through extremely insightful advice. Eating left handed is a technique I started using at networking events, to be able to shake hands with confidence – without starving, fumbling plates or glasses, resorting to “elbow bumps” instead of handshakes, or transferring “networking cooties” from person to person. It is a symbol of the type of learned trick that we all use in our daily lives to make the things we need to do a bit easier.
It is also a symbol of the type of little advice that sometimes gets lost in all the big picture guidances we seem to revel in sharing with graduating youth about to face the next stages of their lives. Showing passion, never giving up, or doing what you love are all perfectly reasonable pieces of advice to tell someone just starting their career. Unfortunately, they are not terribly unique or insightful.
Instead, the aim of this ebook is to share 15 non-obvious pieces of advice that you probably haven’t heard before. The book will talk about why learning to play the cello and hating cauliflower are both great career moves. Why leaders never wear sweatpants and why great listeners interrupt in every conversation. Through a combination of stories from my own life and across history, the book will offer real tips on how to stand out in a faceless sea of similarly competent people. It will be a jargon-free guide to being more successful by learning lots of little skills.
If that sounds valuable, use the link below to register for my launch webinar (hosted by my friend Adam Metz and UberConference). Everyone who registers will get an email on June 18th (when the book comes out) with instructions on how to download your free copy!
*PS – You are, of course, welcome to keep your own free copy of the book whether you are graduating or not! It should offer a few ideas you can use no matter what stage of your career you happen to be in.
I look forward to the 4th of june! I really love books written on somebody’s experiences and to learn from somebody else’s mistakes to avoid mine 🙂