Ideation

How I Wrote YDNTB

You Don’t Need This Book officially went on sale April 1st!

To commemorate this milestone, here’s the story of how I rolled everything I know about entrepreneurship into 37,456 words that spans just 200 pages.

Inspiration

Over the past 15 years, my own entrepreneurial, intrapreneurial and community building experiences created a baseline of understanding. Along with my own journey, I’ve extracted insight from thousands of students, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, mentors, investors and entrepreneurial ecosystem builders.

With all that bottled up brain power, I started to feel as if I may regret not passing my experiential wisdom on.

Catalyzed

This book started as an outline on my phone. Each of the chapters represented a pillar of entrepreneurship. It lingered there for around six months. As you’ll read in the Foreword of my book, Victor Hwang and I were talking about this literary project back in 2019. He shared a poem with me that really resonated. My interpretation was that everyone has a story to tell. When it starts to keep you up at night, it may be time to put pen to paper. I had reached this tipping point so on January 1st, 2020, I opened a blank Word document, dropped in my outline and began to write.

Composition

For the next few months, I focused on finding 1-3 hour blocks to write. Some authors jump around and write into areas they feel most confident about before stitching things together. I chose to write from start to finish in what felt like the most common path for an entrepreneurial experience. The ease at which this story started coming together energized the work and made me even more determined. Along with writing, I learned as much as I could about book publishing. Seth Godin’s advice for authors guided me, but a growing collection of bookmarks kept the research going. The COVID-19 pandemic hit so I leaned on more wisdom from Seth Godin to find my inspiration at home. EDM kept flowing in my ears and my written words continued to construct the story. After around six months I had reached my goal of 25K words, but then the hard work began.

Refinement

With my first draft written, I brought everything into software to simplify, clarify and embolden the manuscript. I also focused on removing duplicative thoughts and optimizing the overall flow. This process took way longer than I expected, but the result was a dashing manuscript ready for review. My brilliant wife read it first. I knew that if the most intelligent/thoughtful person I knew approved, I could move forward. She loved it and helped me improve the readability even more. I then sent the manuscript and a book summary to family, mentors and other early readers. I implemented their feedback and kept building into this document that really started to feel like a book.

Polish

With a solid manuscript in place, I reached out to Victor Hwang and asked if he would do me the honor of writing the Foreword. When he said yes, I asked Brad Feld if he would like to contribute into the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem section of the Community chapter. As you’ll read in the Acknowledgements, jamming with these rockstars was a special treat. Having two thought leaders complimenting the manuscript provided me confidence and their contributions added some remarkable credibility to the book.

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The manuscript was written without the Oxford Comma. Based on Brad Feld’s comments, a quick Twitter poll and both of the editor’s suggestions, the serial comma got woven in right before publishing.

As these contributions came together, Brad Feld introduced me to the developmental editor who worked on Techstars books in the Startup Revolution library. Collaborating with Pete Birkeland resulted in the addition of my Introduction section and the 20+ personal sidebars you’ll see throughout the book. I then asked Michael McConnell to be my final copy editor. He had worked with authors like Seth Godin and Todd Henry, so it was neat working with an expert to a polish every single word to make the manuscript ready to publish.

Publishing

It took an entire year for the manuscript to emerge. I had been talking with different publishers and researching the publishing process as the manuscript came together. With a project that became so personal, I often felt paralyzed by this foreign process. This paralysis was not from a lack of options, but instead, so many options that it made me question so many decisions that had to be made. To navigate through the fog, I kept asking questions, digging deeper and decided to create my own publishing company to wrap around this project.

I then began collaborating with Nathan T. Wright on cover art. This was a magical experience that became icing on the cake. With so much influence from Seth Godin, I also decided to reach out to my hero for the very first time. This interaction with my favorite thinker is something I’ll always remember and the epic result was the only blurb you’ll see on the back of my book! With caffeinated cover art in place, I learned how to design every interior page to give readers a exceptional experience. Pour Over Publishing unlocked preorders four weeks before the official launch, as I worked with Amazon and IngramSpark to finalize the softcover and eBook that are now about to ship worldwide.

Results

Whether this becomes a bestseller or not, You Don’t Need This Book: Entrepreneurship in the Connected Era is now something I can be proud of for the rest of my life. It was an unbelievable amount of work, but I’m thankful for the support of so many people which allowed me to persevere. I enjoyed sharing this first look video and have activated community-driven marketing as we prepare for launch day.

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Wanna help spread the word? Here’s a media library to make your posts pop. To say thanks, feel free to use the friendly coupon codes as well!

Publishing my first book and watching sales roll in provides a sense of accomplishment, but I’m most excited to hear how YDNTB makes an impact with people like you. I simply cannot wait to hear how this synthesized narrative helps you build that new business, improve an existing company, fire up a side hustle or evolve your own entrepreneurial ecosystem!

In addition to more caffeinated conversations, now that I’ve navigated the fog, there may be more ways to accelerate others by helping hidden leaders write their own book. I’ll leave you with an open invitation. If the story in your mind starts to keep you up at night, let’s chat about evolving your ideas into reality.

By Ben McDougal, ago

The Idea Machine

Ideas that you can wrap a business around do not come naturally for everyone. If you’re struggling to generate realistic ideas, you must first learn how to flex your mind. With practice, you’ll soon be firing good, bad, big, small, crazy, and enlightened ideas into the world. You’ll end up with plenty to choose from and even more to give others. In fact, as you become an idea machine, the hard part will be deciding which ideas to execute around. Let’s hit the gym.

If you don’t know where to start, here’s a simple exercise that will train your brain to become an idea machine. Pick up a pocket-sized notebook that inspires you to write within it the moment you think of an idea. Every day, write five ideas in this small notebook. No less, but more is fine. See how long you can maintain this daily activity. After only a few days, you will have transformed it into a personal idea book.

The ideas need not be world changing; the important part is to write them down the moment they spark. It’s tempting to use technology, like an app on your phone, but pen on paper provides freedom to practice in more creative ways. Go old school and give yourself the blank canvas needed to explore any type of idea. As you thicken your idea book, don’t worry about how good or bad each idea is. Dump them on the page and focus your energy on maintaining the daily habit. If you need a few extra ideas to achieve your daily goal, spend a focused moment to think and jot them all down at once. No matter how you reach your daily goal, the momentum of your consistency will soon surprise you. The longer you maintain this daily routine, the more you’ll feel your mind flexing in new ways.

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With these physical notebooks, I must warn you to check your pockets before you do laundry. I once had a solid idea book that went through the wash. I was able to transfer some of the thoughts into a new idea book, but there was still a sense of loss. Having space to scribble is key, but it’s smart to back things up digitally as well.

You can also add wrinkles of complexity to continue challenging yourself. Focus on a theme. To give this a try, think about ideas for a specific person, product, service or market and imagine ways to improve it.

The pure quantity of ideas you’ll amass will result in many worth forgetting. That’s the point. Amongst all the clutter, you’ll find yourself returning to a few sharp ideas. These are the treasures to spend more time exploring.

This sounds easy, but like working out after a New Year’s resolution, it’s easy to burn out. Here’s what will happen. You’ll track some ideas for a week. Soon after, you’ll start mentally sidelining ideas. You’ll document them all at once for a few more days to maintain your streak. This will feel efficient, but then you’ll miss a day or two. Before you know it, your idea book sits on the shelf collecting dust. When this happens, don’t be hard on yourself. Even a little time committed to this exercise can spark a more creative mindset.

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It’s crazy how quickly the mental effects are felt from this simple exercise. Whenever I activate this practice, I love how the abundance of ideas lead to things I can share with fellow founders.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Pure Wonder

Children embody a state of wonder that entrepreneurs can learn from.

They wake up each morning without a plan. They have no preconceptions. No judgments. No worries. A lack of expectations allow kids to naturally live in the moment. They get excited about the little things and cry over nothing. Their states of pure wonder is fascinating.

Now, fast forward 20 years. The world hardens us. We want to impress and make our mark, but life can feel exhausting and the need to make ends meet adds constant stress. Our experiences make us more intelligent, capable and aware of our surroundings, but they also limit our ability to feel pure wonder.

As you’re building a business, release from the daily grind by thinking like a child. Pretend you were born yesterday. Be silly once in awhile. Forget the agenda. Color outside the lines. Get weird to solve problems. Laugh at your mistakes. Play in your sandbox and have fun getting messy. Let a child-like sense of wonder shrink your ego to make room for what’s next. What you’re building matters and if your work allows you to feel pure wonder, be thankful and pass it on.

By Ben McDougal, ago