The Embedded Entrepreneur is a book about audiences written with and for an audience. From the start, the book was written in public, because I knew that my future readers were the best source of feedback.
The original title of the book was "Audience First," which got changed to "The Embedded Entrepreneur" after I had a few insightful conversations with my audience.
It all started with a landing page at embeddedentrepreneur.com, where I talked about the main theme of the book, and asked interested readers to tell me about the topics they'd like to see in a book about building (for) audiences.
Here is what that long list looked like, fusing my own ideas with suggestions from my future readers. I added almost every suggestion that I received to that list — and many were incredibly eye-opening. Lots of topics I might have missed had I not asked.
I can tell you, people love to have an impact on what a book should be about. Over the months of talking about the project, hundreds of interested founders sent me emails with ideas and questions, most of which made it into the book.
I used those questions as a guide to creating the initial outline of the book. On January 1st, 2021, I sat down and started writing the first draft. I finished by February 1st. I wrote 1000-3000 words every day, jumping back and forth through the book.
From there, I immediately took the manuscript and started sharing it with my future readers. Using helpthisbook.com, I started inviting batches of alpha readers to check out and comment on the draft.
Overall, more than 500 alpha readers were involved in the editing process. Four drafts were collaboratively edited before the manuscript went for final professional proofreading.
With a professional cover (which was also hand-picked by the alpha reader community) and a dozen wonderful illustrations by the great @GraemeCrawley_, this book clearly is a community effort. Without the founder community, this work would not exist.
Here's a glimpse into the Table of Contents (and a peek at the whole book):
Each step lays the foundation for the next one. I made each chapter as actionable as possible because this early stage of the business is the most crucial one: validation can't happen soon enough. Embedded Entrepreneurship focused on just that.
In the Audience Discovery chapters, you will learn how to find the people you want to serve and empower with your business. You'll find a 5-step guide to brainstorm a lot of potential audiences, score them, and pick the most lucrative one.
The Audience Exploration chapters will teach you how to then embed yourself in your future audience's communities, learn what they care about and how they communicate.
At this point, you will start doing Problem Discovery. You're hunting for signs of critical problems that you can help solve. You'll learn how to recognize problems in the communities you're already in and how to research them methodically.
Finally, you'll learn how to build an audience. This isn't limited to mere follower numbers. The Audience-Building chapter will introduce you to the concepts of Engagement, Empowerment, & Valuable Content. I share a lot of my experiences using Twitter to build (for) an audience.
The Embedded Entrepreneur is a practical book for people who are ready to take action. If you want to find the audience you will love to serve and empower for many years, get the book today and start reading.
The book is available on Amazon and Gumroad. On Amazon, you'll find a paperback, a hardcover, and a Kindle version. Gumroad offers the eBook, a PDF version, and — additionally — The Embedded Entrepreneur's Toolkit: 15 actionable spreadsheets and 6 additional guides.
Please visit The Embedded Entrepreneur website to find the best Amazon links for your store.
If Amazon doesn't carry the print book in your country, you can order it from a book store via this ISBN: 9783982195766. Call up the store, ask them to order the book, and it'll be printed and shipped to the store by @IngramSpark.
An audiobook will be available in the future, too. Once all the kinks are ironed out with the book, production will start. Shouldn't take long this time. I'll be very vocal about progress on this one.
For the first time, I offer additional content. Because this is a practical book that benefits from a data-driven approach, I have created The Embedded Entrepreneur's Toolkit, a collection of 15 actionable spreadsheets and 6 additional guides.
If you have already reviewed the book, either as one of the many alpha readers or as a reviewer, please consider leaving an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Gumroad. It'll give other curious minds a chance to see if the book is for them.
I'll be updating this thread with sales information and other milestones for the next few days and weeks. If you want to know anything in particular, reply and let me know!
And here we have it, the first @gumroad sale within seconds of launching the book:
If you want to support me, please like and retweet the first tweet in this thread. I'd love it if you'd let me know what you think of the book as well in a reply or as a quote tweet. It really makes a difference.
@mijustin@TransistorFM Here's the latest episode where @robfitz talks about the Mom Test, writing useful books, the future of AI and what it means for founders, creators, and our collective knowledge production systems.
I feel like today, we’re seeing the exact opposite. People don’t know how to technically build a website but they sure know how to present a fake life that appeals to other users of the medium.
In the early web, we didn’t have anything to optimize for.
Today, we are so focused on getting attention, that the thing that we share stops to matter in many cases.
As someone who is teaching others to build an audience, I feel conflicted, but I don’t think this is unresolvable.
Remote work is here to stay. Stay-at-home work, so to speak. 🏡
But our homes are usually ill-equipped to make working a full-time job enjoyable or productive.
This can —and will— change.
What would the ideal futuristic remote-first home look like?
Here are 5 predictions 👇
1) Every house will have at least one office space. In fact, new builds might focus on having one office per adult inhabitant. With that comes a hunger for reliable bandwidth, which will move from afterthought to determining factor for building location. Partnerships will thrive.
2) Gone are the days of the single-purpose guest room. Modular rooms will be planned for remote-first houses, with quick-to-deploy-and-hide furniture, movable sections, and flexible lighting. “Remote first furniture” designers will flourish.
This is my gift to you: for just today, my work, valued at $150+ at the very least, will be $5 if you buy everything at its minimum price. Two eBooks, two audiobooks, and an extensive course.
Of course, you can pay as much as you’d like, but that’s 100% up to you.
Why am I doing this? Well, I know that many of my followers can’t afford or haven’t yet made up their minds about getting into my books and courses. Today, I want them to be able to.
Also, here’s me as a Hobbit, according to @midjourney.. Let me explain to you why that matters:
I'm looking for sponsors for The Bootstrapped Founder (podcast & newsletter) in 2023.
If you're running a business that helps and empowers creators & entrepreneurs and want to reach thousands of them, reach out at empowerment@thebootstrappedfounder.com or book here: