By now, if you're a reader of this blog, my other blog, my articles on LinkedIn or all my advertising on Twitter, you know that I'm pushing my latest book titled Leadership Is/Isn't Easy. For another two weeks I'm offering a package deal; after that I'm just selling the book on its own and the other offers go away.

Picture 49

In my mind, the strangest question I've been asked is why I wrote a book on leadership. I keep thinking it's an odd question because most of the articles on this site are geared towards leadership. My first book was on leadership. Most of my products are geared towards leadership. I love talking about the concept of leadership, reading about it, talking about it with others. So, in my mind it initially seemed like a strange question.

That is, until I started thinking about how the majority of people know me. Odd as it might seem to those of you who only read this blog (all 10 of you lol) but most people know me for other things. I'm not one of the best known people in the world by any means, but I do have an audience; just not necessarily for leadership.

Most people know me for blogging and social media. Does that seem strange? Well, my blog I'm Just Sharing is my most popular blog. On Twitter, more people follow me for the two terms I mentioned above than they do on leadership. In the general blogosphere, that's what most people know me for; on Google Plus it's the same. LinkedIn folks know me more for leadership; I have no real idea what Facebook people think about me. 🙂

Why is that? I pretty much attribute it to two things. One, most of the blogs I've commented on are people who talk about those subjects. I do comment on blogs that talk about leadership but most of those people don't ever respond to comments. Thus, most leadership blogs are fairly barren; there's no real community.

Two, for many people the topic of leadership is for older people. I don't necessarily mean "old people", but older. Whereas I've had conversations with younger people about blogging and social media, the overwhelming majority of people who'll talk to me about leadership are over 35.

For someone like me that seems strange. I was in my first leadership position before I turned 25, and have been in leadership way more years than in the employee ranks. When I was a kid I was always the leader, the guy who picked teams. In college I ran the bowling league and a few other things.

For me, there wasn't a question that I wanted to be the leader. Yet, when I think back on it, there was never any real conversation about leadership with anyone but my dad. I never even knew if there were any books on leadership until after I wrote my first one in 2002; isn't that strange?

Truthfully, that was the reason I wrote my first book on leadership... because I didn't know there were any other books on the market. I knew there were leadership trainers, but the closest person to anything leadership related I'd heard of (not including religious people or athletes) was Anthony Robbins, and he's not really leadership. What a shock I got after I wrote my book and started doing a bit more research to find out there there were other books already on the market; ugh! lol

Yet, I'd have still written my book because, since I hadn't read any other books, I still had my own point of view. It was wonderful finding out later that most people who write about leadership, even if they advocate a different style, agree with me on the topic. Not that I didn't already suspect that after an incident with the only leadership training I ever received.

True, I did write another short book on online marketing, but leadership is pretty much a passion of mine. I love health care finance also because I'm good at it, but that's not a group that likes reading all that often; trust me on this one. lol If it doesn't have to do with regulation, Medicare or Medicaid, or denials they're not reading what I have to say, which is odd because the most popular article I've ever written on this blog involved something called RAC Audits; if you're not in health care don't ask. lol

Anyway, that's why I wrote my first book on leadership, and why I put together a second book on the same topic. Next Wednesday is my 14th anniversary in business, and I expect I'll have some kind of post acknowledging it. Who knows, maybe I'll unveil a 3rd book on leadership on that day... nah! 🙂