Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action

The Backstory—The Making of Likeonomics

Writing a book is only partially about that moment when you ignore everything else and write. It is everything else that makes it a life-encompassing experience that relatively few people complete. In my case, it included months of combing through thousands of pages of articles and studies to find the most useful research and stories.

Over six months, I purchased exactly 43 books online and in actual book stores (about two per week) about brain science, marketing, retail therapy, spirituality, behavioral economics, visual design, and entrepreneurial stories of everything from starting the Weather Channel to creating and launching one of the world’s most popular games (Jenga).

The entire process was a little like jumping into a pit filled with colored balls—you know you’re not going to drown, but sometimes it sure feels like it. With enough time and thinking, though, the patterns emerge and the flow for the story of the book slowly unfolds. But it takes a while.

One of the central ideas of this book is that unexpected honesty offers a valuable way to help yourself or your organization be more believable. One way I want to do that is to give you an even deeper look into how this book came together.

To see it, you can visit: www.likeonomics.com/backstory.

There you can read uncorrected chapter drafts, the original proposal for the book, hand drawn visuals ideas that didn’t quite make the final edit, and lots more. It is a chance for me to give ...