After landing at the Denver airport this morning, my husband and I decided to relax over a cup of coffee before heading to the hotel. While we were enjoying our coffee, a lady came over to ask me if I was dM. As it turns out, she’s one of my Handmade Beauty University students! She graciously allowed my husband to snap this photo of us together. It’s such a joyful surprise to meet people in person after connecting with them online.

You may recall that, on February 28, I launched the Indie Business Book Club. Our first book was Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (affiliate link), by Seth Godin. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure how to manage the book club. I just knew that I had to host it since so many people over the years have asked me to do so. In this video, I describe how Indie Business Book Club works. You can also read about it below. (In the video, I said that tomorrow was May 1. I was obviously incorrect. Just a little time zone confusion there. We’ll start on Saturday, May 1!) Here’s how the book club will work:.

1. I’ll choose a book. I will try to choose a book for the coming month during the last week of the preceding month. (Sorry for the short notice this time.) I will announce it here and at my social networking site, on Twitter, and at the FaceBook Page. I hope this will give everyone enough time to purchase the book if they’d like to do that.

2. I’ll post insights, quotes, and questions. Every few days, I will post insights, quotes, and questions at the Fan Page, and invite everyone to share their impressions, experiences, and opinions about the topic covered. I will include the page number from the book so everyone can easily find it.

   If you’d like to see how much fun these discussions are, check out a few of the Book Club updates for Linchpin at the Fan Page here (about throwing yourself under a bus) and here (about the value of emotional labor). As you can see, I post a quote from the book and share a few thoughts to get the discussion started, and then you join in with your valuable insights and opinions.

   I would also like to invite people to start discussions with me. That way, the group can benefit from important points that I might miss. If you’re interested in participating in this way, leave a comment below and I’ll follow up with you!

3. Questions are pushed to Twitter. In order to encourage more people to participate, the Book Club quotes and questions will be simultaneously posted on FaceBook and Twitter. This way, more people will learn about the opportunity to participate and we’ll all learn more.

I applied for and won an advance copy of Tony’s book. If you are a blogger, you can apply to win one for yourself at this link.

You don’t have the have the book to participate in Indie Business Book Club. In fact, the book club is designed to accommodate the busy lives of people who don’t have time to read all the books they want to read. By participating, whether you read the whole book, some of the book, or none of the book, you can enjoy learning from the experiences and expertise of the author via collaborative discussions with like-minded small business owners at the Fan Page. What do you think?

I’ve read the first few chapters of Tony’s book already, and I can’t put it down. I highly recommend that you add it to your list, or at least try to get your advance copy!

Question: Have you followed the amazing growth of Zappos under Tony’s leadership? What if anything have you learned about leadership by following Tony on Twitter or watching Zappos videos on YouTube?

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