BooksFamily/CommunicationPeopleMarch 21, 20160Spreading Good Ideas…Person-to-Person

First, my apolo­gies for not post­ing last month. It’s been a bit wild in Pro­teus — land late­ly, all for very good rea­sons. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing because we have a num­ber of new clients and new con­sul­tants — which is fun and excit­ing, and requires atten­tion and effort.

The main wild­ness — induc­er for me, though, has been the launch of my new book, Be Bad First. The offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion date was March 8‑but the pub date is less and less mean­ing­ful these days: the hard copy, e‑book and audio ver­sions were all avail­able on Ama­zon before that date, and lots of inter­views, reviews, and arti­cles had already come out relat­ed to the book. Two things I’m espe­cial­ly excit­ed about: an arti­cle about the book’s mod­el in the March issue of HBR, Learn­ing to Learn, and the book being select­ed as an Edi­tor’s Choice by 800CEOREAD.

There’s a tremen­dous amount of  effort involved in putting out a book, not only for me, but for our pub­lish­ers and pub­li­cists — and the Pro­teus staff (espe­cial­ly my wing­man, Dan) have done a lot to sup­port the book’s suc­cess, as well. But it all seems worth it: hav­ing these ideas about learn­ing and mas­tery out in the world is good for lots of peo­ple. It sup­ports the growth of our busi­ness, it gives our con­sul­tants more tools to help our clients, and it helps those clients nav­i­gate this com­plex world.

The part of writ­ing a book that’s espe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful and almost mag­i­cal to me is know­ing that thou­sands of peo­ple I will nev­er meet or know are read­ing it and, I hope, ben­e­fit­ting from it. I love think­ing about them find­ing out about it, decid­ing there’s some­thing in it that might be inter­est­ing to them, and then start­ing to read or lis­ten. A long-time client and friend of mine was com­mut­ing into NYC on the Long Island Rail­road a few weeks ago, and the woman across from him (he did­n’t know her), pulled Be Bad First out of her bag and showed it to her seat mate, remark­ing that she was read­ing and lik­ing it. He took it from her and start­ed read­ing the back cov­er — that’s when my friend Brad shot this picture.

I loved hav­ing this lit­tle win­dow into two peo­ple I don’t know (and may nev­er know) being touched by the book and (I hope) explor­ing the ANEW mod­el. I love even more get­ting to see the viral aspect of this: she liked it, and then told some­one about it. It’s love­ly to imag­ine that hap­pen­ing all over the world (we’ve just heard that they’ve sold the rights in Chi­na, and are work­ing on a rights sale in South America)…people being helped to become bet­ter learn­ers, and turn­ing to friends, fam­i­ly, col­leagues, and telling them about it, so they can become bet­ter learn­ers and more able to future-proof them­selves, in order to thrive through change.

It’s one of the great things about liv­ing in a world where knowl­edge can spread so quick­ly and effi­cient­ly-one per­son, one idea, one action, can have a huge pos­i­tive impact. So: do good things.

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If you’ve read Be Bad First and enjoyed it, please spread the word by writ­ing a review on Ama­zon.  Thanks in anticipation!