“Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.”
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter
Thursday of last week was “Clarity Day”, and (thanks to your help) The Little Book of Clarity shot to number 1 success in an astonishing seven Amazon categories! I had lots of people congratulate me on the book’s success, and more than one person asked incredulously “Is it really that easy to get an Amazon number 1?” My answer was unequivocal…
“Whatever gave you the idea that it was easy?!?”
Here’s the backstory. In 1998, I had a profound insight and realised I wanted to become a trainer and coach. I massively restructured my life so I could travel around the world and learn from the best teachers I could find. I started a couple of businesses, and grew a large community of people who read my articles, watched my videos and bought my products.
Then, in 2009, I had a profound insight into the inside-out nature of life. I realised in a flash that this represented the future of psychology, and quite possibly the future of our species. I called up my business partner, Nikki, and told her we were changing direction. Once again, I restructured everything so I could travel around the world and learn from the best teachers I could find. I immediately started sharing what I was learning with my clients, and started writing articles and recording videos about this new understanding.
Many of the people in my community weren’t interested in this new direction, and my community shrunk in size by quite a lot, however something amazing happened…
The people who stayed with me were even more passionate about my new direction than they’d been about what I was doing previously. It was as though my optimism, hope and excitement was resonating with something in them. Nikki and I ended up selling our old business (Salad) and launching a new business, Jamie Smart Ltd. My first book, CLARITY: Clear Mind, Better Performance, Bigger Results was published in 2013, and became an instant number 1 bestseller. We started receiving emails every day from people whose lives have been transformed by learning about the principles behind clarity. Meanwhile, I kept deepening my own understanding of these principles and sharing what I was learning with my community.
Then, late last year, my publisher told me they wanted to release a concise version of CLARITY. I was delighted! I relished the challenge of paring CLARITY back to its bare essentials, and giving people the “minimum set” I believed they needed to get impacted by this understanding. It was also an opportunity to further refine the terminology and create additional diagrams. You see, in the two years since the launch of CLARITY, my own understanding had deepened significantly, and I had plenty more real-world experience to draw on.
When the book was nearly ready, the publishers excitedly told me that WH Smith (the UK’s biggest bricks and mortar bookseller) had selected The Little Book of Clarity for their deal of the week, and that it would be prominently featured in hundreds of bookshops at the beginning of March. The response was amazing, with thousands of books flying off the shelves, and it coincided perfectly with “Clarity Day”. The day we originally launched the book CLARITY was March 12th 2013, so we’ve now chosen it as a day to recognize the vision of #WorldClarity. I’ll be telling you more about #WorldClarity in the weeks ahead, but here’s a taster of what it’s about…
The #WorldClarity Project
- Purpose: Psychological freedom for everyone.
- Mission: To eradicate chronic psychological suffering globally by 2030.
- Vision: The first global generation of “clarity natives”; a generation of children born into a world where understanding of the inside-out nature of life is normal and commonplace.
Anyway, a few weeks before the launch, I spoke to my closest community of clients, people who have been through one-year training or coaching programmes with me. I told them about the launch, and asked if they would mind pre-ordering the book. They were happy to do it, and their pre-orders took The Little Book of Clarity straight up Amazon’s “New and Future Releases” chart. Then, I created a 20-minute “Instant Clarity” audio and shared it with my community. Thousands of people downloaded this audio and asked to be placed on a VIP Advance Access list so they could get on the “guest list” for the launch of the book. A number of my dear friends and colleagues very kindly shared this audio with their communities as well!
Finally, when Clarity Day arrived, we created a page with reward packages for people who buy the book. We structured it with the look and feel of a Kickstarter campaign, because we thought that would be cool and fun for people, and we liked the idea of creating rewards that would give you many times the value of the books you purchased.
When we sent out the emails to our community on Clarity Day, we were delighted as we watched the book climb the charts, but the big surprise came the NEXT day. When I woke up on Friday morning, I discovered that The Little Book of Clarity had taken the Amazon number 1 slot in an amazing seven categories, including:
- Number 1 in Small Business and Entrepreneurship
- Number 1 in Management Skills
- Number 1 in Business Time Management Skills
- Number 1 in Self Help Time Management
- Number 1 in Higher Education Biological Sciences
- Number 1 in Cognition and Cognitive Psychology
- Number 1 in Psychological Schools of Thought
This was an incredible result, and it definitely wasn’t easy. It relied on the sustained connection, engagement and generosity of this amazing community, and a shared vision for what’s possible. If I was to sum up the “secrets” of getting this number 1 bestseller, they would include…
- Find great mentors and deepen your grounding in the principles behind clarity
- Uncover the sense of purpose and direction that is already there within you
- Build deep relationships through authenticity and service
- Give great value to people because you genuinely care about them
- Ask for help
It also really helps if your book is about something you feel truly passionate about. My team and I have worked crazy hours over the last few weeks, and put in tons of energy over the past few years. It’s a lot easier to do that if you passionately believe in what you’re up to.
By the way, the Clarity Day reward packages will be available until midnight this Friday, March 20th. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, head over to www.JamieSmart.com/LBOC and claim your rewards!
To your increasing clarity,
Big love
Jamie
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