In this podcast episode, I talk about my brand new book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson).

Yesterday was the official publication date. I am celebrating this entire week with a special, AMAZING offer that I can’t wait to tell you about. If you can’t wait, you can find the offer here.

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Episode Outline

Four centuries ago, William Shakespeare said, “all the world’s a stage.” That is more true than ever before. If you have something to say or sell—whether it is a product, a service, a brand, or a cause—you are on stage.

The problem is that the stage is very crowded.

More than one million new books were published last year. Amazon has more than 27 million in its online database.

There are more than 164 million blogs in the world.

There are thousands of radio and television shows.

More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 60 days than was produced by all three major networks in the first 60 years of their existence.

This doesn’t even include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, apps, or games.

That’s why you need a platform.

What is a platform? It’s that thing you stand on to be heard. But it’s no longer made of wood or steel. Today, a platform is made of people: contacts, connections, customers, followers, fans.

As you may know, I have spent my entire career in the book publishing business. About ten years ago, I started noticing a disturbing trend: We kept turning away authors with good content. The reason? They didn’t have a platform.

Content was still king, but platform had become queen. Without both, it was difficult to get a publishing deal.

Then in 2004, I started blogging. I accidentally created a platform. You can see my traffic growth and the implications here. Here’s a chart that summarizes the numbers I shared in this episode:

You can assemble a powerful, personal platform with just five planks:

Start with wow.

Prepare to launch.

Build your home base.

Expand your reach.

Engage your tribe.

These are the five parts of my book, which is divided into sixty short, practical chapters.

Listener Questions

Question #1: Pilar Arsenec asked, “When you were first starting out, how did you personally discover or find your voice?”

Question #2: Tor Constantino asked, “For a person who is just starting to build a platform, what do you think is the single most important thing to do?”

Question #3: Mary DeMuth asked, “What are the top two to three things you would tell people to do to get the biggest return on investment?”

Question #4: Dana Pittman asked, “How do you reinvent your platform if you want to go in a different direction?”

Question #5: