Bezos Bucks 👨🏻‍🦲

🎶  Happy bookaversary to Survive and Thrive 🎶

That’s right! This week marks one year since I published Survive and Thrive: How to Build a Profitable Business in Any Economy (Including This One).

It’s hard to believe, because it seems like I wrote the book yesterday.

No seriously—when I wrote the book, the world was in the midst of an economic and social crisis with a heightened concern for global war and a major economic shift in the role of (and need for) everyday entrepreneurs.

… Doesn’t that sound like yesterday? 🤔

Sure enough, if there’s one constant in the human condition it’s that we’re either “in a crisis, coming out of a crisis, or going into a crisis” (a harsh-yet-true insight I shared from Tom Schwab in the book).

I just found out that when we cross 100 reviews we unlock “Bezos Bucks” where Jeff Bezos pulls out his wallet and starts paying for ads on his own platform to sell copies of this book! 🤩

I’m not sure how Amazon tracks that on their P&L… but I know that means a chance to reach a broader audience of everyday entrepreneurs, and those aspiring to be entrepreneurs—so let’s do it!

Right now, Survive and Thrive has 50 reviews between Amazon and Audible. How amazing would be if we doubled that, and crossed 100 reviews this week?

I think it’s doable, but I can’t do it alone (trust me, I already checked 😉 ).

Here’s how to help:

1. Click here to open Survive and Thrive's review box
2. Share one thing you found useful or helpful
3. Submit your review, and that's it!

Once we cross 100 reviews, I’ll host a live celebration video combined with Q&A (and Amazon will start spending Bezos Bucks on my book).

Survive and Thrive’s Greatest Hits

Over the last year, it’s been a joy to hear how readers are creating real solutions to real problems for real people.

I read every review (at least twice) and regularly hear from people who are putting the book to work. Here’s a real-life email I just received:

Isn't that incredible? I get similar emails nearly every week!

Yes, it was also fun to hit the #1 bestseller list on Amazon (twice) and win a few awards.

Survive and Thrive was a Gold Winner in the 2021 Non-Fiction Book Awards and an Award-Winning Finalist in both the International Book Awards and the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards

Still, my greatest joy is seeing how people react to the book.

I discovered that Kindle has a “Most Popular Highlights” feature, where they call out the parts of the book that multiple people highlighted—a good sign that those made a positive impact, enough to revisit later on!

Here are the most popular highlights, as of now:

Wealth, after all, is a reward for serving each other, for creating real solutions to real problems for real people, all over the world.

There is no shortage of opportunity today, but there is a shortage of execution.

I like to think of profit as a report card for how well I’ve served humanity.

Not only that, but to generate profit you have to get people’s attention (marketing) and persuade them to purchase your solution (sales) while simultaneously managing the incoming dollars and outgoing dollars to end the day with more than you started with (finance).

Welcome to the Attention Economy. That’s the term coined by Nobel prize-winning economist Herbert A. Simon in 1997, when he identified that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Most business owners have begun to wake up to the fact that today’s economy isn’t about owning supply, it’s about owning demand.

With the Attention Economy combined with the Age of Insight, there is a massive demand for innovative entrepreneurs to step up to the plate, make sense of the world around us, and communication a vision for the world ahead.

You need to consider who your business is designed to help, what problems you’re prepared to solve, and who actually wants to help with their problem(s) at all. Those ingredients should help you start to define your Target Customer.

Talk to your customers and really listen to them. Don’t call with an agenda, don’t call to sell them something, just call to find out where it hurts.

To build a thriving business, focus on solving problems for real people who are aware of the problem in question and engaged in actively seeking a solution to that problem.