Dear friends of Bryant and friends of HOPE,
First and foremost, please allow me to thank you.
On August 24th, 2009, I sent you a rare personal note asking for your help – to help propel my new book, LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World, into the best seller list. With your help and support, and early purchases of books we did precisely that. Love leadership debuted at #8 on the CEO Reads Top 10 Best Seller List, and also held the spot as the #1 Hottest New Book for Amazon.com globally for more than two weeks. Most important to me, friends like you purchased the book and really seemed to love it (no pun intended), resulting in a dozen 5-Star reader feedback reviews online at Amazon.com alone. Thank you! The ride has been amazing thus far, and humbling all at the same time, as this book really is the love story of the organization I founded more than 17 years ago, Operation HOPE, with more than one million served by our work.
Here is a quick snapshot of developments for Love Leadership since its release:
· Debuted at #8 on CEO Reads Top 10 List for business books.
· 11, 5-Star reader reviews at Amazon.com.
· Made Recommended Books to Read Lists, including the Washington Post and the Korean Times.
· Love Leadership profiled in a featured article in BusinessWeek last month, entitled “The Value of Suffering.”
· Resulted in me writing a regular piece on business for the incredibly popular site, THE HUFFINGTON POST. See my recent articles here.
· Generated a number of complimentary news stories, appearances and articles, including a feature on Fox Business News, and just last week, the second largest church in Asia, and the largest in Singapore, City Harvest Church, publishing this article entitled, A LOBBY FOR LOVE LEADERSHIP, in City News of Singapore.
· Love Leadership is now being carried nationwide at Borders and Barnes & Noble, online at Amazon.com and Walmart.com, in South Africa at Exclusive Books, and internationally at a bookstore near you.
· A 100-day book tour entitled “A Conversation on Leadership,” which so far has taken me from Montreal, Canada with 2,000 members of ICMA, to Atlanta, Georgia, where I was honored to speak on the same program with my personal hero, civil rights icon Ambassador Andrew Young, to New Orleans, Louisiana hosted by Wolters Kluwer, to Washington, D.C., where I shared the stage with icon Dr. Dorothy I. Height, to Singapore, where I shared the podium with my friend and fellow Young Global Leader, the Honorable Penny Low, Member of Parliament in Singapore, where Love Leadership was a big hit at her Global Social Innovations Forum.
· On this Friday, October 16th, 2009, you can join a special breakfast session “On the Future of Leadership Post Crisis,” taped by C-SPAN, at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, with my hero Ambassador Andrew Young and former Fortune 500 CEO Bill George, who wrote the Forward to my book and has recently authored his third book, 7 Lessons of Leading in a Crisis,
· Coming soon, Love Leadership will be published in audio book format, as read by me, and various digital formats, including a digital book summary around the holidays.
· Invited to speak behind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s pulpit, speaking on Love Leadership, at Ebenezer Church, Atlanta!
Yes, most proud of all, on this coming Sunday, October 18th, 2009, I was invited to stand behind the pulpit of the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to speak on Love Leadership on the occasion of Men’s Day, at the historic Ebenezer Church, in Atlanta, Georgia. A special thank you to my new friend Rev. Raphael G. Warnock Ph.D., the 5th pastor of Ebenezer, whose extended this amazing and humbling invitation to me. If you would like to attend the Ebenezer Church or Andrew Young School events this week in Atlanta as my special guest, please contact Jaime Fontaine at jaime.fontaine@operationhope.org.
My new goal is to surge Love Leadership onto the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best Seller’s Lists by Christmas. Of course, you can still help. If you haven’t purchased a copy, please do so at your local bookseller. If you have already purchased Love Leadership, please add a reader review online. You can also purchase bulk copies of Love Leadership at a discount through Jaime Fontaine, with proceeds to benefit Operation HOPE!
Once again, thank you!
John Hope Bryant