RecomMONDAYtions ~ 2026.09.21
Recommended Event
How to Use Your Book to Get Booked and Hired (live Thursday)
Thursday evening I’m hosting a free, 45-minute live Boardroom Session, and you’re invited.
It’s for you if you’ve written a book, or you’re writing one, and it hasn’t brought you the clients you expected. Not more book sales. Clients.
I’ll walk through the system my clients use to turn a book into booked calls and signed engagements.
Thursday, September 24, 6:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. CT
Recommended Reading
Five Things Guy Raz Learned From the High School Dropout Who Built a $100 Million Bag Company
Kim Vaccarella dropped out of high school. She waitressed and bartended through her twenties, then landed a steady job in commercial real estate lending.
Building a company was never the plan. She wanted to patent one idea and sell it to Crocs. She called, got bounced around, and finally reached someone who told her Crocs had two hundred people in R&D paid to come up with ideas like hers. Then he hung up on her.
Her reaction: fine, I’ll make the bag myself.
Guy Raz pulls five lessons out of their conversation. My favorite: The defective run. Twelve hundred bags came back with black streaks through nearly every box. She was crushed. She quit the business and gave the whole batch away to Hurricane Sandy victims who had lost everything.
Months later, those same people came looking to buy more. They had hauled those bags through mold and floodwater and never once mentioned the streaks.
She had been grading her product against a standard nobody else was applying. Are you?
Read: Five Things Guy Raz Learned From the High School Dropout
Email Is Dead, Long Live Email
The inbox you deliver to is no longer the inbox your reader reads. An AI assistant now sorts and summarizes the messages before a human sees them. Permission got you in the door in 1999. Deliverability got you in the door after that. Now you have to be chosen.
Ann Handley’s test is simple. Pull up your last three sends. Would your readers miss them if you stopped?
Read: Email Is Dead, Long Live Email
Podcast (The Story Power Marketing Show)
If You Think You Need a Brand Now, You’re Already Late (with Jessica Sorentino)
Jessica Sorentino is an author brand strategist with more than a decade of experience helping writers and thought leaders connect with their readers. She has worked with Simon & Schuster and Macmillan Publishers, writes Open Book: Where Storytelling Meets Strategy on Substack, and co-hosts the Third Glass: Reading Between the Wines podcast.
This week we talk about why authors and thought leaders should build their brand early, long before the book comes out. Jessica draws the line between branding (what you’re known for) and marketing (the campaigns you run) and makes the case that branding belongs at the start, because trust takes time to build. Her advice is to skip the logo and the origin story and get clear on who you serve, then find common ground with those people that has nothing to do with a transaction. We also get into balancing one-to-one relationships with systems that scale, why word of mouth still sells books, the “professional persona” trap, and protecting your creative wellbeing so you don’t burn out.
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
~01:59 — Branding Versus Marketing
~04:11 — Start With Audience
~06:31 — Stop Making It About You
~10:37 — Niche Down With Joy
~15:07 — Relationships And Scale
~19:28 — Sell Books Like Readers
~24:16 — Creative Wellbeing Boundaries
~31:00 — Where To Find Jessica
~31:47 — Final Thanks And CTA
LISTEN ON: Apple | Spotify | Amazon
Recommended Humor
The Workslop Tax
Companies are chasing AI adoption numbers. Tom Fishburne (a.k.a. “The Marketoonist”) reveals the bill that isn’t on the dashboard.
Workslop is AI-generated work that looks polished and complete and turns out to be bloated, confusing, or flat wrong. The research he cites, from BetterUp Labs and the Stanford Social Media Lab, found 41 percent of employees had received workslop from a coworker in the past month. The people on the receiving end spent close to two hours fixing each piece. Longer than doing the work themselves.
Funny. And a little too true. If you use AI to draft anything your clients read, this is your reminder that the tool doesn’t sign the email. You do.
See the cartoon: The Workslop Tax
Recommended Book & Event
Video Authority by Aleric Heck (and the Book Club meets Thursday)
Thursday is a double-header. Before the evening training, Ted Prodromou and I host the Mastermind Book Club to dig into our September selection.
Aleric Heck has spent 16-plus years on YouTube working out how to turn viewers into paying clients. Video Authority lays out that system. Attract the right audience instead of chasing view counts, then convert them at scale, on any platform.
Attending costs nothing. Join the Club and you also get the online community and replays of every meeting.
Thursday, September 24, 2:30 p.m. ET / 11:30 a.m. PT
Get Video Authority | Click here to join the live session
Recommended Viewing
The 12 Years That Changed Steve Jobs
You know the Steve Jobs who came back in 1997 and saved Apple. You know he got pushed out in 1985. What happened in between usually gets skipped.
Shane Parrish sits down with Geoffrey Cain, who spent years reconstructing the decade Jobs spent outside Apple. NeXT lost money for years. His co-founders left. His investors lost faith. At one point he was a weekend away from shutting the company down. Somewhere in that stretch he became the leader Apple would eventually need.
If you’re in a stretch that feels like failure, this is a good hour to spend. Thanks to my friend Jonathan Jones for the recommendation.
Watch: The 12 Years That Changed Steve Jobs
Words to Ponder
“When speed becomes cheap, judgment carries a premium.”
— Ann Handley
Don't go away yet..
p.s. Coaches, authors, and consultants hire me to power-up their creative content and storytelling to captivate prospects, stand-out and book more business.
Whenever you're ready, here are several ways I can help you become a storytelling stand-out so you'll land more clients without pitching and prodding:
1) Get the Story Power Profit Pack -- 52 Strategies, Tips, and Tactics to Transform Your Content from Ignored to Adored.
2) Watch the free, 7-minute Micro-Training: “The 3 Most Important Storytelling Keys to Captivate Prospects and Inspire Them to Act -- Without Pitching and Prodding.”
3) Become a Story Power VIP: Master how to discover, assemble, and deliver business-building stories. Twice-monthly live masterclasses. Members-only content. One-on-one feedback and consulting sessions. And more… If you'd like to learn more about our VIP program, just reply to this email and put "Story Power VIP" in the subject line. I’ll contact you with more details.
4) Work with me one-on-one: If you’re interested in working directly with me -- to discover, assemble, and deliver powerful, business-building stories -- simply reply to this email and change the subject line to "Private Client." Tell me a little about yourself, your business, and what you'd like to accomplish, and I'll reply to discuss options.
5) Invite me to speak at an event: I can tailor a presentation that meets the specific needs of your organization. Informative. Entertaining. Virtual or live. Potential for continuing education credits when applicable for your group. If interested, reply to this email and change the subject line to “Speaking Engagement.” I’ll circle back to discuss the possibilities.
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