I'm look specifically for people who have never been a CEO before, at least not of a big successful company.
The main point, if not the main point, of this project of creating 12 companies and hiring 12 CEOs is to help uplift those people who I hire.
Good business is always mutually beneficial. By nature, it's about consenting adults voluntarily choosing to make an exchange or transaction that benefits both parties and thus creates wealth. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Wealth can be created. Once you learn how to create it (namely by helping your fellow human in a consensual way that respects freedom), then you can create as much wealth as you want and become as rich as you want.
For these companies to be successful, they have to be win-win-win. Everyone involved needs to win: the investors, the customers, the employees, the shareholders, and the CEO. To be successful, I must see me as helping all these people in creating these businesses. But, nonetheless, in this case, the person I see myself as aiming to help most and indeed helping most is the CEO I hire.
To start this first company, I am going to do a contest to find the right candidate.
I am going to allow up to 10 people to enter.
I will let each of these people create their own separate prototype book publishing company to publish one book in hardcover and paperback: My book, the upcoming soon-to-be-finished 3rd Edition of In It Together.
I'll give each of these 10 new baby publishing companies--and only these 10 companies--the rights to publish the print version of the 3rd Edition. I won't be publishing it. OnlineBookClub publishing it.
The point of this contest is that I don't want me or OnlineBookClub to ever publish another book again except through the winner of this contest.
I'm essentially going to give the publishing department of OnlineBookClub.org to the winner of the contest. Thus, every time OnlineBookClub publishes a book in the future, it's actually going to be the winner's company that's doing the publishing. It will be an exclusive high-value deal. Anybody who wants to be able to say and have it written in their book that "OnlineBookClub.org published my book" will need to go through this new company of which the winner is half-owner and full CEO.
I also have 900+ pre-purchased ISBNs that I will give to the winner, which is a great asset since a single ISBN typically costs about $30 if bought individually.
To make the contest fair, I will make sure all 10 people are sent the completed manuscript at the same time and signed publication rights deal at the same time.
All revenue from sales of the book will be split 50/50.
For the contest, you will only be publishing the new print edition, not the ebook.
If you win, of course the full-fledged publishing company we create together will publishing ebooks and audiobooks as well.
Before the contest official starts, I will turn all the old previous editions to "out of print" to help avoid there being accidental competition in the market from them. In other word's, I'll unpublish the old editions.
All entrants will be required to put their company's name in the title, such as "In It Together (Joe Smith Publishing Edition): The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All". This is to easily distinguish each one.
Additionally, each version will need to have its own different book cover.
I'll choose the winner on almost entirely objective metrics:
1. How many "verified purchase" reviews their version of the book gets
2. The average rating of the book by the reviewers
3. How many sales the book gets
If your book is #1 on all three of the above metrics, then you will be the undisputed winner without any subjective judgement on my part.
In contrast, if a different book wins in each of those categories, I reserve the right to subjectively decide between those 2-3 books is the winner.
While those are the three bottom line objective measures, keep in mind that countless factors will affect them. For instance, I'm not going to decide if you win by how good the cover image you make for the book is, but indirectly that will be a huge factor because a book with a good cover image will sell more.
Likewise, I'm not going to decide you are the winner directly because you create the best quality product (e.g. a well-formatted attractive interior with a nice looking font etc.), but that's going to greatly affect both sales and the ratings by reviewers.
Those are just a couple. There's countless factors. You will need to do great on all of them to beat all 9 of the other entrants.
To enter, you must have already read my book and given an honest 5-star rating. I don't want people publishing or advertising my book who didn't even read it, or who didn't get it or didn't like it. It's not personal; it's just since the book itself is literally the product you would be producing and advertising, I only want to work with people who are familiar and passionate about that product.
Since this is only open to 10 entrants, for the first week (from this post) I will accept entrants who are already signed up for my free mentoring program. If that's you, reply below to say something like "I'm in" and explicitly state how many days you've been in the mentoring program and doing the daily tasks without missing a day (i.e. how far into or past the first 100-day period you are).
If there is more than 10 entrants in this first week, I'll accept only the 10 who are the furthest in my mentoring program.
If less than 10 entrants have stepped forward in the first week (i.e. by October 12th), I'll then open it up to anyone else who has read and loved my book who is interested, even if they aren't in the mentoring program yet, at which point it will be first-come first-serve to fill the rest of the spots until we reach 10 entrants or until the end of October, whichever comes first. If 10 people having stepped up by the end of October, we'll move forward with just the number the have, increasing the odds of winning for each entrant.
Here is an important thing to keep in mind: Even if you aren't the #1 winner of the contest, this is still a great deal. There's no losers. You are still getting the benefit of me signing over publication rights to my book and letting you sell it for life for money. Every time someone buys a copy of my book from the listing you make for it on the retailers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble, you get paid. For the rest of your life, and beyond. It's a residual income. If you aren't yet familiar with how powerful and important residual income is, you will learn through my mentoring program. It's the key to financial freedom, and it's the key to exponential financial growth (i.e. riches). Note the difference between those two things, you can be rich but not financially free. You can be making a $100,000 per week, but if you have to work 90 hours per week to get it then you aren't financially free. In contrast, if you make $100,000 per year but do it while doing nothing except laying around on beaches in the Caribbean, then you are financial free. Riches and financial freedom are both valuable and nice but they are two very different things. I'm telling you that residual income is the key to both. It gets you both.
I could easily instead sell the rights to this book to a full-fledged publishing company for tens of thousands of dollars ($10,000+), if not way more. But I'm not interested in working with some pre-existing big publishing house. I'm interested in making our own big-time publishing house.
My dream isn't that this one book becomes a bestseller a third time. In fact, at this point, the thought bores me. Instead, my dream now is to work with you so that in 5 years or so the "OnlineBookClub.org Publishing House" is the biggest, most successful, most well-known publishing house in the entire world, and you are the CEO of that.
I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm saying that's the aim, and that's why I am doing this. Whether or not it actually happens is primarily up to you. I'll do my part. As I often say, success is a choice.
If you're in, comment below to say so.
Don't say "I'm interested". Interested isn't in. This is a contest. There's no room for wishy-washy. There's no room for the half-hearted.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
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