If I had any hair I may well have pulled it all out this morning. However, after some technical difficulties our web guy has done us proud and we’re finally good to go with the 1,000,000 Giveaway. As of now, because I have made the final affiliate payments, 90% of the proceeds or every sale will be going directly to print the physical versions of How To Be Rich and Happy.
At this stage (and it could well change as we move forward) we have targeted 4 separate groups of people to give the free books to, high school/university age kids, single parent families, unemployed people and homeless people.
We have no idea how long it will take to generate the money we need to place our first order, so to give ourselves a head start we are ordering 3,000 copies and will pay for these ourselves.
It takes about 12-16 weeks to get the books printed and shipped to the US and we still have a final edit to do. So realistically speaking it will be June before we have them in our hands ready to start giving away to worthy causes and our supporters.
If we waited until we raised the $5,000 or thereabouts we’ll need for the first print run, it may take us a few weeks to get there and we’re very impatient to make this happen now!
We have set 3 price points with varying goodies thrown in to help entice you to part with your hard earned cash. The eagle eyed amongst you will see we have set a lower price point than was originally the recommended retail.
The reason for this is not to invite people to pay as little as possible. It’s purely that we realize not everybody can afford $47 no matter how much they want to buy the book and help other people.
Seeing as the whole project is to help people that may not have the financial means to help themselves, it seemed somewhat counter-intuitive to then price hundreds of thousands of people out of the market.
We still really, really need your help to make this happen and yes I am on bended knee groveling. This is only the beginning of what I personally hope will become an ongoing project that spreads overseas to tens of millions of people across the globe.
Yep, I like big, hairy, audacious goals.
If you like this blog, then the book is 100x better!
It’s actually also 100x better than my own blog at The Discomfort Zone.
The best material from both blogs is in there, but it’s improved upon because it’s been re-written expanded on and organized to flow in a logical and easy to follow order.
Plus there is all of Johns great stuff to boot, and trust me he’s very knowledgeable on self-development and finances.
The single worst bit of feedback we have received about the book is when somebody left this blog comment:
“I have read How To Be Rich and Happy and I quite liked it”
I felt stunned and a bit like I’d been damned with feint praise when I first read that. Until I realized I’d had almost 100 pieces of feedback and that was the worst by some way!
Can You Help?
If you have the book already or it doesn’t really appeal to you in any way shape or form, you can still help us if you would be so kind?
Tweeting this post would be ubercool as would mentioning it on Facebook or Stumbling/Digging it.
In fact any social media mentions would be brilliant as well as forwarding on to your friends.
If you could link from your own site directly to the How To Be Rich and Happy site that would be even cooler and would lift you up to Saint status as far as I’m concerned.
I’d love to do any interviews and I’m prepared to whore myself in pretty much anyway to publicize the project, as is John to a somewhat lesser extent!
So that’s pretty much it I hope you can help with this, and if you do so, please accept our sincere thanks.
Tim and John,
Everytime someone wins a bid on the Mona Lisa Million (my new project) I’ll set aside 5% of the (after tax and fees) proceeds to you.
This isn’t money for you to replace your sunglasses and hats with. This will be so that you can get some of your 1 million books printed and distributed. Not sunglasses. Not hats. Books. Got it?
Seriously though. This is a massive challenge for you and I wish you every success.
Cheers
Dave.
Not much more I can say than “This is awesome-cool.”
Great idea Tim and I hope you score with this, it’s fantastic!
Cheers mate. Never be arsed.
@ Dave and CTK – Thanks a lot, we’re really grateful for your support and we will not be spending the money on anything else!
Great idea for a project that can make a fundamental difference to people. However. As someone who mostly fits three of the four categories, I do wonder about the assumptions being made about ‘us folks’. Was the list made up of the four categories who have the least money for books? IMHO if we could easily and happily benefit from the book, we would be finding ways around the cost, like reading your blogs, cruising the Sally Ann stores (in a year or two) for a $3 copy, or asking the library to bring it in. So what other assumptions were being made, hmm?
For those who don’t read much or at all for personal development, which unfortunately seems to fit a lot of people, regardless of income, the free book does have a chance of being appreciated and dipped into, mostly because of the title. Mostly, I agree with an earlier comment about needing someone to create interest, shape a process, support the risk of change, and make all of it safe and fun to jump into. In other words, a translator or a bridge for people who don’t turn to books and can’t afford the coaching. So that brings me to the next step.
My suggestion for distribution is to identify all the organizations that use volunteers–national ones, local ones, one-ofs. Many of those volunteers will themselves fit one or more of the categories. Almost all of them will be in regular contact with lots of other people who do and who would possibly benefit from such a gift (‘possibly’: not for the quality of the book, but for the valuing and appreciation of it). Let the volunteers tell you how many books they could give away, and you have their buy-in; landing a crate on the front steps will just give them more work. This way you get into the organic roots of the networks, rather than working the treetops.
The final piece is that the organization would be encouraged to offer some kind of workshop or coaching or talks so that people can be helped to find their own meanings from the books. Not everyone is skilled at taking life guidance from written material, and many of the suggestions, while making perfect sense to your ‘tribe’, will require additional skills and thoughtful discussion before they can be used by people who didn’t pursue the book in the first place.
So if you want to go a bit deeper than just distributing a million books, and actually want all of them to be used and make a difference to people who wouldn’t normally buy them, you do need to have a creative distribution system and a creative support system to get the content being accpeted by those who may not normally lean to to books. Imagine a little group of homeless people sitting round the shelter talking about your ideas while a volunteer asks great questions. Or single moms in a side room discussing a chapter from the book with a student/teacher while their kids are in the daycare or kindergarten next door. Or street kids coming in to the centre for hot soup and the topic of the day, both served by volunteers. What about a seniors centre offering a free copy of the book to everyone who comes to the book club to hear about it and get invited to a weekly discussion group about the ideas?
Sure many would read it, try it out, get great results on their own. But if only half of them need some more support to get it or get moving on it, that’s half a million people with a lost opportunity.
I think you need to write a facilitators guide for volunteers, that goes out with any bulk shipments to organizations, and that can be easily copied and distributed to the volunteer facilitators to put into action. You could include some guidelines about how to put the coaching/discussion/group sessions into the different contexts–like homelessness, single parenting, youth and poverty, but also health promotion, mental health, college students, midlife crisis, and seniors.
I don’t know much about funding, though with this kind of a model you might be able to find community development kinds of funding sources, as it benefits multiple levels of people, not just the individual book recipients.
Sorry to be so long-winded. I usually am.
Maggie it’s impossible to do this kind of thing and not make assumptions.
Some of the stuff you mention is already under way and we are talking with a major charitable organization that can hit a lot of the areas we want to.
Having said that, financially speaking I still have to see clients and just doing what we are doing now is taking up all of my spare time and we’ve barely begun. To do what you are suggesting would probably require a full time staff of a dozen or so people.
If I had enough money to live on I’d like nothing better than to do this full time, but at the moment I’m not even close to that.
You can look at it as half a million missed opportunities, I prefer to think of it as half a million home runs. To be honest if we get the full 1 million books out there, I’ll be delighted if we truly help 100,000 people.
No matter what demographic you’re working with, there’s always going to be a huge percentage who won’t read it, or won’t put it into practice. Any demographic, any group of people.
There’s no point focussing on those who won’t use it, focus on those who will and do it for them.
I really love the idea of a facilitators guide, or even just a list of discussion questions for each chapter.