What Would Oprah’s OWN and The Domino Project Look Like Together?
What would it look like if you merged Seth Godin’s long-awaited Domino Project with the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)? You would have Oprah the Queen of Books working with Seth the Prince of Publishing. I believe it would be an exceptional partnership. As part of the project team for the Domino Project, I have been knee-deep in conversations with the other Domino team members—the most active, brilliant community I have ever experienced.
I’ve also had the benefit of participating in Oprah’s online community as well as having a book on her show and getting a chance to visit last week for lunch with one of her employees. It was great fun. I met wonderful people and got a fantastic vegan lunch. But I digress.
What I see as a partnership looks something like this:
• A group of book-loving leaders, the Domino Project team, listening deeply to their respective “tribes” to unearth the best topics and questions bubbling up from their conversations.
• This team, along with Seth and Oprah, taking the topics and questions and pulling insights from thought leaders for future books.
• Taking the most powerful ideas and questions and using them, identify top author thought leaders who are currently writing on these topics.
• Create Oprah-Seth Godin book clubs that can get the whole world reading these great books as they come out.
Oprah and Seth love bold books that change the way people see the world. They are positive change agents. They want to help people learn and grow. They want to create a sustainable way to make the world better for all. In summary, this would be a great partnership.
Most importantly, this partnership would be “revolutionary” rather than “evolutionary.” It would also start bringing together what I call “Consumer TV” with “Business TV.” I remember after my book, 50 Fabulous Places to Raise Your Family, was on Oprah. I had been working with one of Oprah’s employees who had been her head of marketing. She really loved another book I had written on networking but she would say to me, “Oprah doesn’t do business books.”
I believe we are now moving beyond whether books are business books or non-business books into books that make you think, big idea books, books that make your life better, books that matter. Both Seth and Oprah are on the great book bandwagon.
My bottom line is that OWN needs more great programming. Oprah loves good books. Seth loves good books. The Domino Project Team loves good books. Books convey ideas that are stickier which makes them easier to transfer ideas to others faster and better than even blogs or webinars. We need to spread these books and their ideas faster around the world. Is this a great partnership or what? Your thoughts?