What Is the Release Date?

This summer I finally opened my book I put out seven years ago, and I want to tell you I did it out of curiosity, but the truth is I had been avoiding it. An organization wanted to buy a few dozen copies, so I pulled up the manuscript, and I sat there genuinely afraid of what I was going to find in my own writing.

I was pleasantly surprised. The thesis was right there, and I had not drifted nearly as far from it as I was afraid I had. What I found was the foundation of almost every framework I use on stage today, sitting in those pages six years before I had names for any of them.

Here's the part I'm less proud of. I did not know what I was doing. I self-published it, and somehow it landed on corporate desks, and I have been invited to keynote because somebody bought that book and passed it along. Every bit of that is a wonderful outcome, and almost none of it was a plan. It was a happy accident.

So that has had me thinking all month about books, and specifically about the ones that never make it out at all, because a lot of what made mine work is stuff I stumbled into and would much rather you do on purpose.

Whenever somebody tells me they're working on a book, I ask them one question: “What is the release date?”

Occasionally someone will say, "I'm working with an agent." That's the answer I like, because it means somebody whose entire job is the calendar is watching the calendar.

The far more common answer is some version of, "Oh, I'm not sure yet, whenever I'm done."

Here's the thing, though. The missing date isn't really the problem. It's the symptom of a much deeper underlying concern that plagues so many would-be authors.

Often, people can't name a date because they've never actually decided what the purpose of the book is in the first place.

So before you write another word, I'd get clear on the purpose. And I mean that in both directions, because an impactful book has to do something for the reader and it has to do something for you.

A book is a key

When people ask if writing a book is worth it, I often describe it as a key.

It’s a key that can open doors to stages, clients, credibility, rooms you weren't getting invited into. It's the key, and that's genuinely a great key to have on your ring, but a key only works if you cut it for a specific lock. Having a decorative key on your keyring serves little purpose if you don’t know which doors it will work to open.

A book for a book's sake is not always the best angle. There are plenty of those in existence, and they dilute the pool for everybody trying to do it well. Mine happened to fit a lock I did not know was there, and I would be lying to you if I called that strategy.

Five questions before the first chapter

When I reread the book this summer, I could see that I had generally answered these, mostly on instinct, and the ones I got right are why the thing is still working seven years later. I would just rather you answer them on purpose than find out years later that you got lucky.

So answer these, in this order, and write the answers down where you can see them.

1. What does the reader do differently when they close it? Not what it's about, not your thesis, the actual behavior on the other side. I say the same thing about a through-line in a keynote. This is the single most common thing people get wrong, and it's the thing I make somebody sort out long before we ever talk about chapters. Having good content is not the same thing as having a book. I have plenty of content. So do you, probably. Content was never the hard part.

2. Which door is it supposed to open for you? Name the specific one. More main stages. A different tier of client. Publishing a major framework or concept. Credibility in an industry you're trying to break into. A book built to open every door tends to open none of them.

3. Who is it for? Not "leaders." Not "entrepreneurs." Think of three actual human beings you could email today. Be specific. Hal Herzog opens his book, “Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat,” telling the reader exactly who should be reading it.

4. What's the release date? Pick one. Then say it out loud to somebody who's going to ask you about it in a month, because a date nobody knows about won’t hold up. Put it on your calendar. Prep your launch plan and work backwards from that targeted date.

5. Who honestly reads it before anybody else does? One of the biggest mistakes I see authors make is cranking out a manuscript and quickly self-publishing it without ever getting somebody's feedback, insight, and input on it. Who is poring over every page and every word, challenging you, and telling you honestly what's good, what's working, and what's not? And more importantly, are you willing to listen to them and change elements of your book? This is the one I did get right in 2019. A whole group of people read that manuscript before it ever went out, and I am certain that is part of why it held up.

Back to the one I was afraid to reread

Cracking the Millennial Code came out in 2019. I wrote it as an encapsulation of a keynote I'd been giving for years. It was light on framework, at least named framework, but it was rich in content. My goal was to memorialize my concept of the generational pendulum, while also hoping to increase credibility and unlock more stages.

It has Millennials in the title, which by every rule should have aged it into the ground by now. It didn't. The label got old and the framework didn't, and that gap right there is the whole difference between writing about a moment and writing about how something works.

That book has opened more doors than anything else I've made. The door it opened turned out to be bigger than the one I was aiming at, and the only reason any of that happened is that I finished it and let it out into the world.

The new printing is out now. Same text, a new preface, some more pointed birth years, and a real works cited at the back so you can check my work. You can get it here.

And if you want the long version of what I found when I reread it, I wrote that up over in COLLIDE.

Until next time,

P.S. So let me ask you what I ask everybody. What's your release date? Hit reply and give me one, even a date you're not sure you'll hit. I want to know how many of us have one written down somewhere, and how many of us are still saying "whenever I'm done."