The author has a well-developed platform due to his "celebrity" job as an astronaut and over a decade promoting his speaking venture. The author's speaking enterprise will offer opportunities to promote and sell the book with years of experience as a successful professional expert speaker, he is well-known in the industry and corporate America. He has a client list in the hundreds, maintain partnerships with over three dozen speakers bureaus, and has personally addressed well over 100,000 business audience members. He has completed the Certified Speaking Professional designation for platform and business excellence awarded by the National Speakers Association. With his background he personally knows many senior business leaders, government officials, and media professionals. Combining his speaking experience with the rarity of having been to space as an astronaut, he continues to have many media opportunities in print, radio, television, and online. He's been approached by national level news outlets, specifically CNN, ABC Nightly News, Fox News, NPR, and the Larry King Show, when space-related issues or policy questions make the news. Through these requests he's built an extensive network of media contacts. Additionally, he's worked directly on productions for National Geographic Television and the Discovery Channel.
Social Media: The author is on Linked In with several hundred in his network. His website, www.ricksearfoss.com will include a blog, capability for subscription-based, web-delivered elearning of the content, and links to the book-specific site www.liftofftoleadership.com. He has a significant You Tube video presence as well. In addition to his live in-action professional speaker demo video, he's also posted a dozen short clips shot. They present stories summarizing key leadership, teamwork, and innovation principles. There are dozens of other space-themed interviews with him on the web.
The author has consulted on three Hollywood movies and appeared in one, qualifying for the Screen Actors Guild. His additional current role of test flying unique prototype rocket planes for XCOR Aerospace and having piloted more rocket-powered flights than anyone else alive on the planet today offer additional leveraged publicity opportunities. Because of an arrangement between XCOR and Warner Brothers he appeared in-person with the cast of The Big Bang Theory at the San Diego Comicon event. Recently with XCOR's partnership with Luminox Watches he was also a featured speaker and interviewee at the 100,000 attendee Basel World Expo in Switzerland, the largest watch industry trade show in the world.
As part of book promotion, the author will call on his extensive network and further expand it, leveraging his status as an astronaut to do so. Because this book is the only business book an astronaut has ever written, it presents a unique and powerful hook for developing publicity opportunities. He's had a interview with a film production company in the UK. This company is starting work on a documentary that Hollywood director Ridley Scott will direct. Its focus is on the human side of human spaceflight and the personal experiences of the infinitesimal fraction of people on the planet who've flown in space: a perfect tie-in to the book.
With the author's current platform, he will be developing promotional tours and signings. There are opportunities annually at events including astronaut signings and meet-and-greets. In September he is traveling to England for such an event. Participates in a program at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex entitled Astronaut Encounter. He gives dozens of presentations, meet a few thousand people, and have multiple dedicated signing sessions. The author has invested in an in-house video to expand production of the short promotional "principles clips" and converting content from the book to videos and distributing them on You Tube.
