Three Big Takeaways:
 

1. By focusing on building an audience first and defining products and services second, an entrepreneur can change the rules of the game and increase the odds of financial and personal success. Once a loyal audience is built, one that loves you and the information you send, you can, most likely, sell your audience anything you want. (pg. xviii)
    

2. From personal experience, building a blog, writing books, and spreading my message through public speaking have been the three most impactful strategies for growing my personal brand. All three have led to the most amazing business opportunities. A blog is a place where you distribute your differentiated story on a consistent basis and which is shared by your audience to gain wider reach. The book is the greatest business card on the planet. The book is your story in physical form. If someone asks you what you are all about, you hand the person the book. The blog and the book lead to public speaking opportunities. Conference providers from around the world will reach out to you to gain your insight and expertise in the area you now own. You will get paid to get your message in front of an entirely new audience! (pg. 203)
    

3. It's next to impossible to truly be a thought leader in your industry without a killer blog, a thoughtful book, and a speech that rocks. Yes, the first two are critical, but it's as a regular speaker where you hit the lottery. When you get regular speaking engagements, people talk about you, spread your message, and want to actively do business with you. It's where the magic happens. (pg. 208)
   
    

Other Key Ideas:​
 

Without a doubt, the biggest reason content marketing fails is because it stops. I've seen business after business start a blog and stop after a few months. Content marketing is a war of attrition. It's a process. Success does not happen overnight. You must commit to the long haul if you want to be successful. (pg. 23)

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Sometimes to find your content tilt, you simply have to get started, do the work, and discover the opportunities. You might never find out what you were meant to do if you don't put yourself out there creating content. It's completely acceptable that you take your best shot at a content tilt and start developing the platform. Maybe then you will find the niche that will drive your success. (pg. 81)

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The beauty of content is that it actually grows with the individual. So it grows the content creator at the same time. That means it almost forces you to evolve your thinking. When you're creating content and you're getting feedback from the audience it allows you to hone your vision, as well as embed your vision ultimately with whatever it is that you're creating. (pg. 97)

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Consider using a pop-over when someone is trying to leave the website. Our best subscription generator is a pop-over tool called Pippity. (pg. 151)

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Business-oriented web pages with images have performed 91 percent better than those pages without images. When in doubt, always add an image to your textual content. (pg. 164)

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For all four of my books a lot of the material, ideas, and content originated from existing blog posts. If you have six months of blogs, you might already have half a book. Now writing a book is not an easy endeavor, but you may have a lot of the raw content already at your disposal to develop a book. The "blog-to-book" strategy can be amazingly effective. As you create content for your . blog, keep your book in mind and start to build the chapters as you go, using the blog as the conduit. (pg. 204)

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If you decide to publish the book yourself, try services like Amazon's CreateSpace or Lightning Source. Both services do on-demand printing. If you are willing to pay a publisher, check out a service like Advantage Media. It's pricier than doing it yourself, but the company handles everything in the process for you, including the ongoing marketing if needed. (pg. 206)

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As a conference producer looking to choose the best speakers for our event, the first place I got is the prospective speaker's blog. A consistently delivered blog is proof of both dedication and passion to the industry. Also, if done properly, the blog very quickly shows your area of expertise. That means if you blog about all sorts of topics, it will hurt you. Get focused on what makes you a leading expert in your field. (pg. 209)

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Be patient. There are only nine months between when I believed I was a complete failure and when I started something that looked to have the promise of success. I launched the business in April 2007. It wasn't until the end of 2010 that I felt we were on to something. (pg. 279)