The Empire Building Kit

For 24 hours in April, Chris Guillebeau sold his latest product, The Empire Building Kit (part of his Unconventional Guides effort). I (Palmer) made sure to pick it up within that time, at the mid-tier of the price structure, and in doing that, learned The Empire Building Kit’s first, important lesson (which will come up in the “product launching” section later on, I have no doubt): Scarcity (in this case a limited-time offer) breeds urgency and increases value. Well done, Chris.

So far, in the Kit are several video interviews that Chris did with other internet-based business people, transcriptions of those interviews, a slew of PDF files of case studies of small companies (some of them are compellingly interesting), some other videos and guides, and a series of 365 daily emails (at least he says that it will be 365, so far I’ve only received 10 of them).

The content thus far (10 days in, see above) is interesting if not wholly compelling but seems to be lacking in action items and directions or even many objectives. We’re kinda new to this, and giving us a whole view of the amazing possibilities of the path we’ve chosen can be daunting (though it’s the possibilities that sold us on this path in the first place). There has been one action item so far, but even its direction seemed kinda vague, though I’ll admit that I was perhaps looking for a magic kick-into-action bullet at that point so maybe my expectations were a little high.

Here’s hoping that things get more concrete as we move along through this kit.

The emails from Chris are a delight to get. I love his writing style, and he seems so personable in all the videos.  He seriously helps me feel like this is all possible, even if I don’t wholly see the path for the forest nor the forest for the trees.

It’s a product doled out in bits over an entire year, so I’ll update you as I get updated.