What We Can Learn About Book Coaching From a Duke Business School Professor's IG Reels
Some thoughts on human nature
The internet served me up an Instagram reel from a professor who teaches entrepreneurship at Duke. His name is Aaron Dinin and the video was about a challenge he had his students do. He handed each one of them a Jolly Rancher — just one— and said their assignment was to sell it for $100.
No one off the street would pay $100 for a single piece of candy, so he also gave them a list of all the students who had previously taken his class and their phone numbers. The task before these students was to try to make a connection to someone who understood the value of the sale: those former students.
I watched this reel three times. I was riveted by the whole thing — by the former students dismissing the current students and by the one student who got the $100 “win” because the former student remembered so well having to do similar, seemingly insurmountable assignments.
What a brilliant way to show people that selling is not just about the thing itself. It’s not always a simple transaction. It’s often about people, and what we experience, and what we value.
What’s the lesson? Not to devalue our services by thinking we are conducting a transaction. The work we do with writers is transformational, not transactional.
More Videos!
Because I spent so much time watching this video, the internet kept serving me up more of Dinin’s reels — and they are so great. He’s teaching specific skills and ideas around building an audience but he’s also teaching about human nature.
There’s one video where he tries to get someone to sit in the front row of the classroom (where no one wants to sit because it’s the “hot seat”) and enters into a negotiation on how much he would have to pay the student to do it. $20? $100? After all that, the guy’s buddy walks in, sees him in the front row, and sits right down next to him — for no cost whatsoever. It’s a great lesson in the power of relationships.
What’s the lesson? Word of mouth is the best way to convince anyone to do anything. If you serve one writer well, they will tell their writer friends and your influence will spread.
My favorite video was when the university cancelled classes at noon due to a snowstorm, and Dinin’s class started at 11:45. He waited in the classroom to see who would show up for just 15 minutes — and why. Four students out of 21 showed up — and the lesson was about situations where there is no right or wrong answer. It’s a lesson in ambiguity and how we have to make so many decisions when things are not clear.
What’s the lesson? This is pretty much the definition of being a book coach! It’s never clear if you should offer one package or another; put one price or another on it; promote it by doing a live event or a series of videos. It’s also never clear how you should show up for any individual writer and what you should ask them to do. There are frameworks and guidelines and processes you can follow, but it’s a practice in listening and discerning and making decisions when things are not clear. You have to get comfortable with the discomfort.
Take Action
I loved all these reels because Dinin is a great teacher. He is showing, not telling. He has such deep compassion for his students and for how hard it is to be in college, but he also holds them to high standards. He has a recurring bit about learning to fail — and in order to fail, you have to ACT. He inspires students to act.
An article from the Duke Chronicle said that “During spring 2023, his students’ content reached over a quarter of a billion people around the world.”
Whoa!
He is also going first — doing what he teaches. His own TikTok account — which he says is devoted to showing students the human side of their professors — has 84,000 followers and more than 10million likes. His Instagram had 300,000 followers. He is out there doing the work he is asking his students to do.
What’s the lesson? The work of connecting to people in the digital age is central to the work so many of us do. I’m not even on TikTok and I don’t post reels anywhere, so I’m not about to tell anyone to go do reels on TikTok, but the lesson here for me is to do something. To take some kind of action to connect with your writers — and to speak to them about what they will do to connect with their readers, in turn. All these digital platforms are just tools. How we use the tools is what matters.
So Who Is This Guy?
After enjoying a bunch of videos, I thought, Who is this guy? I started doing some digging and found this bio on his website:
“I help students and professionals building amazing businesses and audiences.You can have the greatest product in the world, but, if nobody knows about it, they can't buy it. I spent 15 years learning that lesson the hard way while building venture-backed tech companies. Now, I'm obsessed with teaching others how to avoid the same mistake by helping them build audiences online.”
So he’s a tech guy who now teaches.
Some further digging on the internet showed me that Dinin studied English as an undergrad at Duke and earned a PhD in English from the University of Maryland. I was delightfully surprised by this news and loved Dinin’s explanation of how the two things he has devoted his life to go together:
“English and software development rarely overlap, but the research skills I cultivated in Duke's English program gave me the skills to teach myself how to code. In addition, the critical reading and analysis work I did as an English major fostered a unique perspective on software engineering that allowed me to identify market opportunities for my apps, while the writing and communication skills I developed gave me the ability to commercialize and promote my products.”
I am always talking about how English majors and people in the humanities make great entrepreneurs if they can find a way to believe in themselves. This was the topic of a recent panel discussion I hosted at AWP.
The book coaches in Author Accelerator’s community usually need to be convinced that they can run a business, master the technology they need, and learn how to market their work. But time after time, I have seen them prove to themselves that they can indeed do all these things, and more.
I was so excited to hear someone like Dinin out there talking about this capacity too.
What’s the lesson? We have the skills, talents, experiences, habits, and mindset we need to to build successful businesses. We have the power to change the narrative about what writers and book people can do as entrepreneurs. We can do great things!
Become a Certified Book Coach
Are you interested in learning more about Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification Program? In June, we are enrolling a cohort of 12 students in fiction, memoir, or nonfiction. I’ll be doing a live webinar to teach the three keys to running a successful book coaching business on June 4, 2025, at 5pm PST. It’s a great chance to learn all about being a book coach nd ask me anything about our program. You can sign up to join me for that training HERE.
I work on a campus and alternate between seeing it as a detached ivory tower, vs a microcosm of a fascinating testing ground for the broader world. I love that this professor has tapped into such a great niche to share the best aspects!
Would love to hear you interview him for the podcast!
I LOVE his videos. They can cut so deep and inspire even deeper. So glad you discovered them Jennie. But thank you for taking it one step further and connecting his message to me as a book coach. I will watch his videos with an even deeper insight now.