I gave a lot of thought about what I should write about this month. There seems to be no shortage of topics to cover about economic development and entrepreneurship. But I feel that over the last two years I may have covered most of the subjects people beside me would find interesting.
Wanting to be helpful, Robb Zerr, colleague of mine, suggested that I should write about the new book I’ve just published, Startup Wisdom: 27 Strategies for Raising Business Capital. But I felt that was a lot of self-promotion, even though the book is FREE.
Sure, Startup Wisdom has received glowing reviews from the likes of Jack Shultz, the guru of entrepreneurship who set a high bar with his book BoomTown USA. Gifford Pinchot, founder of the Bainbridge Graduate Institute and author of Intrapreneurship, also wrote to say how wonderful Startup Wisdom was, especially since it was FREE. Even Mark Nager, who created the world’s largest pre-accelerator and is the founder of Startup Weekend, thought Startup Wisdom was revolutionary in its assistance to entrepreneurs. I suppose I could have also mentioned that Chris Britt, the nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist and winner of the Sigma Delta Chi awards, one of journalism’s most prestigious awards, did the illustrations. But I didn’t think being a namedropper was really appropriate for this column. George Clooney, Kim Kardashian and Bernie Sanders.
By its very nature, blogging lends itself to feeding one’s ego. But I didn’t want to take up precious bandwidth and your valuable time just so I could stroke my own ego by mentioning my new FREE book, Startup Wisdom: 27 Strategies for Raising Business Capital. It didn’t matter that co-author Jordan Tampien and I spent days, maybe even a whole week on it, thinking up all these strategies and adding in the pros and cons for each. But in the end, I had to tell Robb that, “No, I will not lower myself to push my own publication Startup Wisdom, even if it’s available for FREE online.”
I think it was the Dalai Lama who said, “The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.” At 66 years of age, I’m hardly in the mood for any additional suffering. I already have a bad back, so I know that I couldn’t handle boils, locusts and pestilence very well (I don’t even know what pestilence is, but it doesn’t sound very good). As egotistical as I seem at times, as self-centered as I may appear, and as much as I love strangers idolizing me, I find it very crass to be a self-promoter, especially for my book Startup Wisdom which is being offered for FREE at the press of a Download Now button.
But then Robb told me how valuable this book would be, how relevant it is for this generation and generations to come. He said that there was no other book in the history of mankind that had the title “27 Strategies” in it. (He was right, I looked it up). The only piece of literature that comes close is the U.S. Constitution and its 27 amendments. And look how long that document has stood the test of time. 27 strategies? 27 amendments? Coincidence? I don’t think so…
So please understand when I say that I really didn’t want this message to seem self-centered or even vain. I still think of those heady days with Carly Simon. I remember the time she sang me a couple lines from a new song she was working on and I casually laughed, “you probably think that song is about me.” Who would have guessed that long kiss goodnight would be our last? Years later I would come to learn the harsh lessons of that fateful evening: Never date a musician and always copyright everything you say to her.
Feel FREE to download Startup Wisdom: 27 Strategies for Raising Business Capital. The Founding Fathers would have wanted it that way.