The Event
This past Thursday night on November 2nd at Knowledge Academies in Antioch, a suburb of Nashville, TN, I held my first ever book launch event, the launch event for my upcoming book, The Millionaire Choice. The night was a bit rainy, but that didn't keep people away.
Needless to say I have a lot to learn about marketing and launching books, but we still had a lot of fun at the event. From food to giveaways, we had a great evening.
We started out the evening with a bit of food including the traditional chilled shrimp, cheese and smoked salmon on crackers followed up with sandwich rolls, cheesecake, and keylime pie.
After the arrival mixer, we moved on to the preliminary program which included Art Fuller, Founder and President of Knowledge Academies, talking about some of the innovative and entrepreneurial work they are doing in the community and school. You don't often associate innovation and entrepreneurship with schools, but that's what Art is doing through Knowledge Academies to affect the community and equip the kids to be more successful in life. It's one of the reasons he chose to use The Millionaire Choice as the foundation for his students financial education.
Then it was my turn in front of the audience. It doesn't matter how many times I'm in front of a audience, I still get a bit nervous. For 20-30 minutes, I walked the audience through The Millionaire Choice and the Ten Keys of the Millionaire, the life and financial principles that helped me become a millionaire by age 40. I was delighted by the audience's response to my material. No matter how hard you work on a product, it's the audience and customers response that tells you if you've done a good job. Fortunately, I got a great response at my book launch.
I grew up in a lower income family, and on the evening of my book launch event, I was able to speak to lower income families. The hope that I saw in their eyes and smiles has made the last year an half I've spent working on the book worth it. I'm looking forward to seeing many more people gain a hope for their financial futures and lives.
Book Signing
Another first for the evening, I held my first ever book signing. I've been practicing my signature for several weeks now and I've finally gotten it down just in time for the event. However, I still panic that I'm going to mess up someone's name or the words I add. I'm sure it will get easier the more I do it, but for now, I'm a bit paranoid!
The moment was surreal. People standing in line to have me sign a book. Really? Again with the eyes and the smiles. Families came through the line. Teenagers came through the line. Single moms came through the line. At that moment, I knew this group of people had a chance to change their financial futures. They have a chance to become millionaires.
The Giveaways
We wrapped up the evening with a few giveaways for door prizes although it didn't quite go as planned.
The audience consisted of fifty percent friends and family and fifty percent Knowledge Academies families. We began the giveaways with gift cards to O'Charleys, Buca di Beppo, and Sperry's steakhouse before ramping up to the bigger prizes. During the gift card giveaway, I felt a little guilty because one of my friends won a gift card, but I rolled with it. Then we drew for a bigger prize, a 4 day, 3 night stay at one of my beach homes on 30A in the Florida panhandle, and that's where the problem started.
Originally, I planned to give away a 4 day stay at our beach townhouse (sleeps 10) and 4 days at our beach house (sleeps 13). Drawing for the townhouse, we hit a snag. Once again, one of my friends won the prize. Honestly, I felt a little bummed. I was hoping one of the families from the community would win it. What did I do? Well, we gave away another 4 days to the townhouse, and lo and behold, another one of my friends won that drawing as well! So what did we do? We drew again! In all, we gave away three 4 day stays at our townhouse.
Then it was time to draw for the beach house, and guess what happened. Yep. One of my good friends won the beach house drawing. We ended up giving away three 4 day stays at our beach house as well.
In all we gave away six 4 days stays at our beach properties mainly because it was really fun giving stuff away and the audience really got into it! I figured at the core of my book is building wealth to enjoy it, share it and help people in need so why not live it out by giving stuff away.
The Millionaire Choice is available for pre-order at all major booksellers and will debut in stores on November 13, 2018.
Special thanks to Meghan Cary of Megan Cary Photography for the photos!
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