AccelerateBooks is a theological book summary service that distills key insights from 8 books a month to help leaders better steward their time, money, and ministry. Over its lifetime, it’s seen 10K+ members and has served 500+ organizations.
But it didn’t start that way
When the TCB community we had cultivated pitched us this idea, I embraced it and soon introduced our next venture: “TCBMedia Presents: The Acceleration Project”
I started it off by inviting readers to participate as beta testers, and sent out a survey that received 600+ responses
During this time, after SHIFT, I spent hours getting my MBA … from the aisles of Barnes and Noble
While my SHIFT fundraising journey had introduced me to the sales minds of Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Dale Carnegie,
I was encouraged to “move fast” and break things, and quickly set up a landing page based on the mockups I had whiteboarded
Between Jan and May, I spent most of the time continuing to survey the beta testers individually and as a group through our facebook beta group, asking everything from “if we wanted to offer an incentive to encourage prelaunch sign ups, what could we offer”, to questions on microcopy: should a button say “Sign up” or “Get started”, for the beta test.
By May, we had solidified our prelaunch plan, put in place to help crowdfund our initial funding to start forming an official team. And per our beta testers suggestion, we updated the name to AccelerateBooks.
With the help of suggestions from our readers, the prelaunch offered “founding lifetime memberships”, custom Accelerate T-shirts, and a giveaway for bobbleheads of theologians
I created an animated promotional video
Putting all of this together, and with an ambitious goal of securing 500 signups for a total of $2500 to start building the site, I sent the first prelaunch email
I was caught off guard when spots began filling up fast. It was exciting, but when our current TCB lead editor asked what the budget plan was for hiring, software, and marketing, though I’m not a numbers-guy first, I realized that at this level of funding, there would be a significant gap between the vision I was pitching and the reality I could afford
Not wanting to stray from my word, I honored the first 500 signups at the price of $49.99 and promptly closed the funding page.
I rapidly researched other ways to crowdfund and even considered angel investors. Ultimately, a few days after the first 500 lifetime memberships, I held my breath and nervously sent another email. This one offered 100 spots—but this time, at $200.
I made sure to be as transparent as possible, even explaining in the email how the budget would be split between hiring a team, software expenses, and marketing. But still. My face felt hot. The price, to me, seemed uncomfortably high, especially for pastors. And especially for a product that didn’t even exist yet.
Again, I was taken aback: within the hour, I saw 25 sign ups. By the end of the day, there were 60. By the next night: all 100 spots were filled. We had now raised $20K to fund this project
The next step of the plan was to secure our first 1,000 users with the promise of a locked-in early membership price of $9.99, forever. The goal would then be to increase the price to $11.99
One strategy we tried to increase the exposure was by offering prizes for each friend they referred for the earlybird membership. We took a page out of Harry’s razor blades viral marketing campaign for this.
Our main strategy, however, was through facebook, instagram, and twitter (now X) marketing. We knew this is where our readers hung out.
However, despite the careful research and study I poured into learning about and optimizing my user targeting and segmentation, like every ad, it still came across some grumpy eyes. Comments ranged from skeptical to vitriolic. I was tempted to respond impulsively, which, for me, would mean responding snarkily. However, I worked hard to employ empathy—and I do mean empathy, not just sympathy; because, ironically, as a book lover myself, I too, initially took offense at the request for book summaries, until I had the chance to fully understand where the readers were coming from. For this reason, I sincerely could understand why critics might see such an endeavor as evidence of intellectual laziness. Armed with this ability to step inside their shoes, I worked to respond sensitively, but also confidently, knowing this was a conversation held in a public arena and would be observed by many on the fence.
It’s the unknown unknowns that entrepreneurs have to be mindful of at all times to take strategic risks; otherwise, it’s just risk. But even with that in mind, it’s extremely difficult. I learned that the hard way.
By the start of the new year, we were encouraged by the positive feedback from our users. Unfortunately, however, we still had yet to break even. I had underestimated the initial costs of web development, and we were still talking about basic features; a far cry from the mobile app that was most requested. However, we could only build so fast with the limited monthly budget.
So I decided to take a risk. In February 2018, I launched another lifetime membership campaign, priced, this time at $250; I knew this wouldn’t help our immediate goal of meeting our monthly expenses, but my objective was to raise a larger sum of money in order to expedite the technology of our platform—based on our constant surveys, this was the #1 reason many hadn’t yet subscribed.
The outcome? We secured $70K in more funding. I was ecstatic!
The next month? We got into legal trouble. I was terrified.
As a young entrepreneur oblivious to a business world full of legal, all-bark-no-bite, scare tactics, I was completely sidelined when I received word from a major Christian publisher that we were infringing on their copyright. According to my legal education of 5 copyright books, our summaries included commentary and thus valid, but to be safe, I immediately contacted the lawyer we had on retainer.
Pausing all marketing efforts and shifting my focus away from my initial goal of our web development, I worked with our copyright lawyer to respond to the publisher, and further, to proactively begin establishing partnerships with other publishers—many of whom had already implicitly endorsed our service by sending us free books to summarize.
In addition to my reaching out to countless publishers in the faith space to formally establish partnerships or obtain permission, another part of this process meant taking another look at the current summary template I had designed, and updating it, just to further safeguard from any copyright issues. This had to be done retroactively for all the summaries we had already published.
This process was not only lengthy—extending into the summer—, but expensive, and demoralizing
The clouds began to part by the end of summer and into fall, and with our legal ducks in a straighter row, I could think once again about our web tech goals.
With our budget nursing its wounds, I decided it would be too much of a risk to initiative a mobile app; instead, I pivoted to considering a web app, either a Progressive Web App (PWA), or Single Page Application (SPA)
Reinvigorated, I made sure to communicate our updated strategy with our team, our investors (as I saw our lifetime members), and our customers. In an email, with a due date awkwardly absent, but determined to remain enthusiastic, I optimistically laid out the roadmap. “Drumroll please“, I began to type, “We don’t know about you, but we feel like 2020’s a great year for Accelerate version 2!”
Covid hit us hard. Primarily because Covid hit pastors and ministry leaders hard. With churches closed, so did their wallets.
Email after email, we heard from pastors slashing budgets and cutting credit cards. We heard from pastors worried about groceries or struggling with student loans. And we felt their pain.
Uncertain if I had have the continual means to pay my writers and our software expenses, I hit the brakes on our web development project, as the world, too, came to a screeching halt.
While I did my best to cut expenses, as we neared the year’s end, we also neared the end of our financial runway.
For the first time in my life, I had to let people go. If I said something else was hardest part of this business, I lied. To deliver gut-wrenching news—despite having just sent them a wedding gift—and look them in their eyes as they welled up, when every part of me wanted to hide? That was the hardest.
At this stage, between the downsizing of our team and the shift of focus from growth to preservation, our team communication needn’t extend beyond Slack.
But we still upheld our commitment to 8 new summaries a month; it just meant I had put growth on the shelf and reassume the roles of editor and publisher, and keep things afloat.
We qualified for and accepted an SBA loan to extend our runway, but having never had the chance to break even, unless we secured new users and turned a profit, it put Accelerate at risk of remaining in debt.
But it was a risk I was willing to take—it was a risk I had to take. I had to, because I made a commitment to all the lifetime members that believed in Accelerate and made the launch possible. And I didn’t want to let them down.
But nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feel I’d failed thus far; between the legal stresses of 2019, the painful consequences of Covid-19, and two deeply distressing personal hardships, I was hit with wave after difficult wave, and only learning how to tread water.
I share this now, because I also shared this then—with our Accelerate readers. While remaining attentive to the line between authenticity and oversharing, I expressed my genuine discouragement and deep regret for failing to deliver on the vision as promised; I shared how, from the start, this felt like building an airplane already flying in the air and—because of the pandemic—through a hurricane with no foreseeable end; but, I also shared how this process was also teaching me the importance of mental health.
And I’m glad I shared. Because the warmth that I, and the team, received from our users was tangible. Stories poured in about similar feelings of overwhelm, burnout, anxiety, and depression—realities that they, as pastors, also felt reluctant to share.
I was quickly reminded that this business—and any good business—was always, first, about serving real humans, before it was about scaling profits.
And these interactions empowered me to give myself permission: to stop feeling guilty, to admit that I was burned out, and to seek recovery; and to admit that perhaps Self-Empathy gets right, some things that hustle culture gets wrong.
This refreshed mindset gave me a new resilience and self-awareness: to acknowledge that my wiring as a visionary (or idealist) is helped, not hindered by a healthy does of reality. And the reality is: vision is achieved by both gazing at the clouds, and by minding your steps. We’re at our best when we pursue success in all areas of our lives.
What does that mean for Accelerate?
First and foremost, it means a shift from blitzscaling to a building sustainably, especially in unprecedented times; it means knowing that sometimes the most innovative thing to do is faithfully serving the community—not burning out in pursuit of vision for its own sake.
And from that place of health, it means serving our readers well, no matter the scale, because success is measured by the quality of our service.
