My new book, Grounded, was published on Friday April 1, 2016. No joke. On April 5, 2016, I did a keynote on Grounded for 325 attendees in Madison for the Wisconsin ACH Association (WACHA). This event was booked months ago, but, as it turned out, this was the first keynote when the book was published. Somehow, WACHA had the foresight and budget to procure a book for every attendee. It was truly amazing to see the room setup with 300 books on tables waiting for people to return from breakout sessions for the final keynote.
Two hours earlier, I was sitting behind the registration desk autographing those 300 books. Since WACHA is a part of the payments industry where I have been active for over 30 years as a software executive, speaker and consultant, there were a number of people from the industry that I knew. Since I had to sign all 300 books before my talk, I wound up talking with about a dozen different industry executives. Without exception, they were all old friends, some that I have known for over 25 years. And yet, there was something different today.
I was an author. There were stacks of MY book all over the table. And as they approached to talk with me, they were impressed that I had written a book! All were congratulatory; some expressed their interest in “someday writing a book,” others were curious about the process, how I got it accomplished with my consulting/speaking schedule (here’s a hint: invest in people that can help you. I did this with Linda Baskin as my initial writing consultant and Blooming Twig www.bloomingtwig.com as my publishing and social media consultant). I am not sure what it is about being a published author but there was a definite additional level of adulation given to the new author. Did they not think I was pretty smart, had good ideas and a good public speaker before I wrote the book? Of course. However, now there is a tangible record of my musings, at least in this one area.
Which brings me back to the whole point of my book, being Grounded (if you want to order a copy, you can get it here – www.davidpeterson.com/buygrounded.html. I have been told over and over again that one of the reasons that I regularly get booked to speak is how easy I am to work with. I go out of my way to try and make the meeting planners’ lives easier and am constantly reminded how some keynote speakers are generally a pain in the ass (which I totally don’t understand. Speakers, I get it that not everyone has the aptitude to “command the podium” and enthrall a crowd but lets face it: in the big picture, public speaking is a pretty sweet gig. Why not go out of your way to be nice and easy to work with?). But if there are people constantly telling you how great you are and “I love your book,” I can see where, over time, a Grounded speaker could become the very person that I describe above. So I have to be on watch for that, to make sure I am “practicing what I preach.” I am committed to doing so and I am empowering all who read this to keep me to my word.
