Category: regular

I was on the super-secret launch team for Jon Acuff’s new book START, which launched April 22nd 2013, and I think I just broke the first rule of launch team.

Here are my initial reactions to the book, having finished reading it last night. Full disclosure: I was given a free copy, but am under no obligation to give a positive review.

I’ll give you the one-word, one-sentence, and full-post versions. At whatever point I have convinced you, feel free to click on the “preorder now” link at the end of each segment. Those aren’t affiliate links, I don’t get anything for you buying the book.

One Word

Visionary

One Sentence

There have been few books so intensely practical, applicable, visionary, and encouraging; from beginning to end Jon gives you both rails to run on and hilarious introspection—lessons from his own “journey to awesome.”

The Long Version

I am what you might call “biased” because I went into this book expecting to love it. Mainly because I’ve read every book Acuff has ever written, and have loved them. But this one (and to a certain degree his previous, Quitter) is different. Acuff is coming into his own as a legitimate force in the already-crowded motivational/vocational non-fiction genre.

Where this book stands apart from what you might read elsewhere is that Jon Acuff comes across as a regular guy. So much so that I find it odd to write his full name hop over to this website. Even though we’ve never met, I feel like he’d say “don’t call me Acuff, call me Jon.”

Where most self-help gurus will tell you how amazing their life currently is (after they went through this simple 4 step process that you can get for only $199.95 + shipping), Jon is honest. His humor is self-deprecating, his tone is conversational, and his language treads the line between “I don’t have this all figured out” and “I have enough of it figured out to be a genuine help to you.”

START pairs nicely with Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath, which I am also currently reading. The two books taken simultaneously have been hugely helpful for me in my personal season of change. (ahem, those links at the top were made for clicking, and that’s just what they’ll do)

If you are already comfortably awesome, and living your dream, this book is not for you. If like me you find yourself longing for practical help getting from where you are to where you want to be, do yourself a favor and buy two copies of this book. One for you, and one for a friend to walk through it with you.

I love those things. But as design goes, (and I’m not sure if this is just me) it seems that the guy making it is unaware that it will regularly be tilted to about 45 degrees or more. It’s a pitcher. The primary purpose it has been assigned on this planet is dispensing water. By tilting it.

Yet, as soon as you tilt it beyond about 15 degrees, the lid that up until this point has simply been a suave looking white piece of plastic goes rogue, clacking onto the floor in front of the fridge.

Which makes me want to throw it out every time I use it, despite how cool it looks. No matter how sleek, well designed, and cool something looks, if it doesn’t work, it’s useless.

We are no longer talking about water pitchers. If your digital marketing strategy is focused on high quality production and presentation to the exclusion of usefulness, your potential customer will opt for less shiny, more functional alternatives.

If you build a compelling case for engagement on your blog, but then have “your comment is being moderated” as the primary feedback when somebody finally does take the time to say something, the lid just fell off the water pitcher.

If you make a flawless $10,000 ad campaign for your product, but the online ordering page requires a degree in computer science and a minor in long-suffering, your lid just fell off. (tweet that sentiment)

In the digital world, there are just too many things that you can do in “one click.”

That’s not to say that everything should be a clear call to action or “click here.” That comes off as a bit sleazy. (Sign up for my emails for a free course on how NOT to be a sleazy salesman.)

It’s just that when you DO call somebody to action, make it simple and rewarding, like a cup of freshly filtered water.

If you need me, I’ll be cleaning up the water I poured on my foot when I leaned over to pick up a cool-shaped plastic lid earlier.

I’ve spent the last few days getting the sermon feed turned into a podcast over at my church website. I use the fantastic SermonBrowser plugin, and in the process of teaching myself how to use that plugin to create an iTunes-friendly podcast, I thought I’d share the wealth. Here’s a screencast detailing the process.

You can get to your podcast.php file at /wp-content/plugins/sermon-browser/sb-includes/podcast.php

I personally use and love TextWrangler (on a mac) because it can directly open (via FTP) those files.

Here’s the final code from that screencast (lines 106-119 minus my email randomly typed in)

Also be aware that any time you modify that podcast.php file, you’ll want to keep a backup copy so that when the plugin is updated you don’t have to repeat this process again.

I will update this post as folks comment or point out ways to make it more helpful.