Tom Teague’s new book Online Business Success for Thought Leaders: Create Visibility for Positive Impact is a comprehensive, easy-to-understand exploration of what it takes for a business to have an online presence that includes, but extends beyond, a website. Teague has written this book after seven years of building his own and other people’s online businesses and learning as he goes. He has made it the kind of book he wishes he had at the start of his entrepreneurial career, which he affectionately calls the Graduate School of Internet Marketing.

Before Teague began building online platforms, he spent thirty-five years as an innovative, high-performing contributor and leader of information systems and software development teams at Exxon and NASA. In between, he also taught chemical engineering design at Texas A&M and Rice University, and led joint industry technical data standards efforts for several years as an independent consultant. He later became an independent entrepreneur and business owner, as well as an author. He wanted to create an online presence to promote his first book, Awaken to Choice, and decided to learn how to do it himself. Online Business Success for Thought Leaders walks us through the process of learning from him: what advice was given to him when he started out, and what was right and what was wrong with that advice. He is honest about the mistakes he made, his own shortcomings, and the strengths and weaknesses of the various tools he used to build his online platform.

Ultimately, Online Business Success for Thought Leaders reflects Teague’s discovery of how to systematically solve the puzzle of building an online business in a way that is taught. Today, he teaches his processes to others, and this book contains his knowledge in a nutshell. Teague’s goal is to help business owners succeed in not only building a website, but also creating greater visibility for their business so they have more opportunities to accomplish their missions.

The book is divided into four parts, each of which has three or four chapters. The parts are titled: Clarifying Business Strategy, Selecting Systems, Building Online Assets, and Racing to Success. The first part may be the most important because you can’t build an online presence without knowing what you want to accomplish through that presence. Teague discusses how to understand your business, engage your audience, and craft a business strategy. In the second part, he walks you through selecting the types of systems he needs to implement that strategy. In parts three and four, he walks you through a systematic approach to building your online platform assets step-by-step to support your trading strategy.

The book is rich in information (too much to discuss all the parts and chapters in detail here), but Teague has included a comprehensive list of all the possible tools you may want to incorporate into your trading strategy, and then offers advice on how to use them. Topics include: building an email list, selling a product online, creating course content, the right platforms for blogs and vlogs, using social media, and perhaps most importantly, how to determine which of these tools you need, how to will use. and how to put them all together in a systematic way that supports your business in the short and long term. Overall, Teague teaches how to build a custom system to meet the unique needs of your business and fuel your success.

Beyond how to use these tools, Teague spends a lot of time understanding their customer journey. How does your customer find you, get to know you, interact with you, and ultimately buy from you? He talks about how to have conversations online and offline to build trust with your customers and help you better understand how to serve them. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, he explores how to decide who you want your customer to be and how to attract that type of customer.

Finally, Teague discusses how to streamline processes and not clutter your platform, but instead create a healthy balance of complexity, features, and ease of use to make your platform attractive to your customers while making their lives easier.

I really appreciated all of Teague’s advice because, as an author and independent entrepreneur, I learned from scratch how to create my first website using templates back in 2005. Over time and struggling to get it to do what I wanted, I could have used Online Business Success for Thought Leaders to help me better understand my true needs and make my sites effective. I am by no means a technical person, but I found the book easy to understand and follow, and it made me rethink some aspects of how I do business myself. I think anyone who has built their own website and tried to attract customers will find this book valuable. For anyone just starting out in business, this book is a must.