Voxie Media Blog

Announcing Look, Lead, Love and Learn by Bill Sheridan

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Beta Author Bill Sheridan‘s new eBook, Look, Lead, Love, Learn, was published this week by Voxie Media. It’s $0.00 today and I encourage you to download  it and take a look at what a short, polished eBook on a business topic looks like.

Bill Sheridan is chief communications officer and a veteran blogger for the Maryland Association of CPAs award-winning blog, CPA Success*. He and I worked together to cull from over 1,000 blog posts on topics related to the evolving CPA profession, identify themes and put together a short book that turns Bill into a professionally-published author.

Below, Bill and I talk about his lessons learned going from idea to eBook.

Q. & A. with author Bill Sheridan

DW: You started with over 1,000 blog posts to draw upon, what was the biggest challenge going from existing content to finished eBook?

BS: The biggest challenge was the shear volume of material that I had to draw upon. I had been writing for CPA Success for more than five years at the time I started compiling the book – that’s a lot of content.

I really had no idea which direction the book would take when I started, but as I reviewed our archive, those four buckets – Look, Lead, Love, Learn – quickly became apparent. From there, it was fairly easy to identify which posts belonged where. That’s a wordy way of saying the biggest challenge was deciding how the content should be organized. Once I did that, the actual act of organizing it was pretty easy.

DW: What is your goal for your eBook?

BS: I’m an incredibly lucky guy. My job sends me all over the country to cover some exciting events that are aimed at helping CPAs succeed. My job is to share what I’ve learned with our members. That’s the purpose of our blog, and that’s the purpose of this e-book, too.

I simply want to share what I’ve learned over the years with our members so that they can out-learn the incredible rate of change. As (MACPA CEO) Tom Hood says, the single most important skill we need going forward is the ability to learn new skills. If I can help our members do that – even in the smallest of ways – I’ll count this e-book as a success.

DW: Choosing a killer title is a real challenge. How did you come up with yours?

BS: As I reviewed our blog’s archive, I noticed a pattern. Our posts seem to focus on leadership, learning, and looking ahead to the future. I immediately liked the “L” alliteration, so I zeroed in on that as a possible title. It just seemed to naturally fall into place.

DW: What is your best advice for other aspiring business eBook authors?

BS: Write about what you know. We’re all experts at something. Find out what that something is, and then – here’s the really important part – figure out why it matters to other people. In his book Start With Why, author Simon Sinek puts it best: People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. Figure out your “why.” The rest will fall into place.

DW: What’s your next eBook?!

BS: The CPA profession is on the verge of a tipping point. The old guard is fading away and a new generation of CPAs is stepping in to take its place – and they’re doing things much differently than their predecessors did. We call it “The Movement.”

I want to write about “The Movement” and help the profession find its footing in a world that is changing radically, almost before our very eyes.

Publisher’s note: huge congrats, Bill!

* Full disclosure: I worked with Bill Sheridan and Tom Hood six years ago to help MACPA launch their CPA Success blog. Needless to say, they are among my most successful corporate blogging clients.