Breaking Out

How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas

By: John Butman

Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt

Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

In Breaking Out, idea developer and adviser John Butman shows how the methods of today’s most popular “idea entrepreneurs” - including dog psychologist Cesar Millan, French lifestyle guru Mireille Guiliano (French Women Don’t Get Fat), TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie, and many others - can help you take an idea public and build influence for it. It isn’t easy. Butman argues that the rise of the “ideaplex” (TED, Twitter, NPR, YouTube, online learning, and all the rest) has caused such an explosion in the creation and sharing of ideas that it has become much easier to go public - yet much harder to gain influence. But it can be done.

Based on his own experience in advising content experts worldwide, Butman shows how the idea entrepreneur breaks out - by combining personal narrative with rich content, creating many forms of expression (from books to live events), developing real-world practices, and creating “respiration” around the idea such that other people can breathe it in and make it their own. The resulting idea platform can reach many different audience groups and continue to build influence for many years and even decades.

If you have an idea and want to make a difference in your organization, build a change movement in your community, or improve the world in some way - this audiobook will get you started on the journey to idea entrepreneurship.

©2013 John Butman (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC

Critic Reviews

"In Breaking Out, John Butman gives the marketplace of ideas the human form it deserves. He vividly explores the life history of ideas, the people who espouse them, and the world into which they are flung.” (Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, Professor, Harvard University; coauthor, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives)

Dont Get Suckered In by the Title

What would have made Breaking Out better?

Getting the life stories of 6 people who have hit it big in the lottery might be somewhat interesting, but even if you figure out all the things they seem to have in common, and then emulate those things yourself, it won't increase your chance of winning the lottery. It's a random event after all. The stories in Breaking Out come across the same way. The book profiles a number of people who hit it big in one way or another, looks for commonalities using a variety of esoteric sounding terms, and then seems to suggest that "you can do it too." It's probably almost a random as the lottery, and the book doesn't actually give you any actionable information. Something actionable would certainly help, but it still leaves unclear whether "breaking out" is ultimately a roll of the dice kind of situation, no matter what you do.

Has Breaking Out turned you off from other books in this genre?

It will make me even more suspicious of self-help type volumes. I got suckered into this one by reviews and by the book's website.