"We can heal and succeed", the testimony of Arnaud Bovière

In his latest book “The Color of Resilience”, Arnaud Bovière recounts his unique life journey.

-

• Adolescent hospitalized and out of school, Arnaud Bovière is now at the head of a start-up specializing in digital communication.

• In a testimonial entitled

  The Color of Resilience

  (Editions First), he returns in particular to the decisive impact of LinkedIn on the success of a play, 

  Aux Fleurs du Temps

  , written in tribute to friends met at the hospital.

• "It took on a scale that I had great difficulty in achieving at the beginning", confides the entrepreneur, who has spared no effort to publicize his text.

He has known school phobia, intense anxiety attacks and hospitalization at the Maison de Solenn, a Parisian structure which welcomes adolescents with mental disorders *.

Now a business leader, speaker and writer, Arnaud Bovière in 2017 co-founded a start-up specializing in communication on LinkedIn.

It is thanks to this social network that he made known, in 2016,

, a play written at the age of 16.

Featuring two characters who have come to meditate at the grave of a friend, this dialogue addresses the themes of life, death, memory and regret.

On the occasion of the publication of

, where he retraces his journey and his unexpected success, the 30-year-old entrepreneur confides in

Your book appeared last Friday.

How did you come up with the desire

to write this testimony?

It started with a meeting on LinkedIn with Editions First, who were interested in my career.

I had already written other texts, especially theater, but I had never written in first person.

I immediately saw it as an autobiography and I didn't feel legitimate at 29.

When people outside my personal circle told me that my story touched them, I was reassured and I went!

The book is called "The Color of Resilience".

Why this title?

Between 16 and 18, I had lost sight of colors after a more violent anxiety attack.

I found it interesting to have this association between a reminder of my medical past and resilience, which is quite positive.

Cover of the book "The Color of Resilience".

- First Editions

You have experienced intense anxiety attacks, treatment and medical appointments, then hospitalization.

How to

build yourself as a teenager?

I think I have built myself through hardship. I left school at 13 or 14 before I even officially dropped out of school.

I think we forge ourselves a lot thanks to the meetings we have in hospitals.

It is a world in its own right.

As sick children living in community, we do not have a classic daily life.

We help each other to put each other in perspective thanks to a maturity acquired due to the ordeals related to pathologies.

This is what allows us to build and which follows us later.

Once healed, our outlook on the world is not at all the same.

Some of your friends have died of illness during your hospitalization.

Are all these comrades still with you today?

They are of course always present.

Like all the children who got out of it, I said to myself at one point: "Why did I manage to get out and not them?"

This is also what is at the origin of the text.

The play had been written to pay tribute to friends who had left a fortnight earlier.

You write today: “Since it was difficult for me to say what I was feeling, I was going to write it.

»The fruit of this work is the 

text« Aux Fleurs du Temps », a dialogue which, through a friend, is staged in Paris from the end of 2015. How did you feel when at 24? years ago, your play was a great success?

I didn't understand what was going on.

It's a text I wrote when I was 16 when I was at Solenn's house.

In my mind, it was not even theater but simple dialogue.

It took on a scale that I had a hard time realizing at the beginning.

After a discussion with Thierry Lhermitte, you decide to share your story on Facebook.

It ends in failure ...

Thierry Lhermitte, who had come to attend the play very early on, invited me to exploit its potential by communicating my story.

At that time I had a simple Facebook account, I didn't even know LinkedIn!

I started to narrate my journey but I only touched my friends, who already knew it by heart.

My parents and a friend then recommended the LinkedIn site, where people did not know me.

You are therefore promoting

 a work of art via a professional social network.

In your book, you write, “[I] spent most of my time building connections on LinkedIn.

I contacted more than 5,000 doctors in the space of three months, obsessed with the idea of ​​seeing them attend the performances of "Aux fleurs du temps" ”.

In the spring of 2016, you write publications "every week to tell the daily life of the play".

That's not common…

It was this unexpected side that made it work.

Doctors are used to being canvassed all day long.

A 25-year-old who told them about his play on children and illness stood out completely.

Many came, enjoyed the show and talked about it among themselves.

Since I had a very recent page with a lot of visits, it took off in the algorithms, and I took the reflex to communicate on LinkedIn as soon as something happened.

Arrived on the network in January 2016, I obtained results from February and March until it reached Matignon and the Elysée in May.

So it was done in a few months.

Everything really started from this network.

Over the whole of 2016, it made 6 million views, which was one of the buzz of the year on the platform.

Did you know of any buzz similar to yours on LinkedIn?

Today yes, but at the time less.

People used it a lot more for recruiting than for communication.

Very few people had exploded like this and since then LinkedIn has been boosted by the takeover of Microsoft.

It remains rare but we see more buzz than before.

It is still start-ups that will emerge.

On the other hand, I do not believe that I have seen any purely cultural projects stand out.

LinkedIn has changed your life, since your experience on “Aux fleurs du temps” led you to carry out your first missions as a consultant in digital communication.

Do you think that anyone can still see their own change thanks to this network?

Yes I think so !

The competition is increased because there are many more daily users.

But on the other hand, it allows greater visibility and therefore more opportunities to take off.

You have to have a different message.

So having an atypical but obviously authentic story.

It's silly, but you have to talk to people honestly, tell a personal story.

And for a start-up, you have to be able to communicate your idea.

To be successful on LinkedIn, you have to be able to get people on board.

It's possible.

There is always a luck factor too.

For my part, I arrived at a time when culture and theater were not present at all, so I had the chance to take this niche.

There are still possibilities if you manage to stand out from the crowd and stay positive in the face of closed doors.

Has your start-up, Arnaud & Alexis, today invested in other social networks?

We have often asked ourselves the question.

By focusing on digital communication through LinkedIn, we stood out from competing agencies which were mainly responsible for other channels (Twitter, Instagram, websites, etc.).

It is this strategy that has made our success in this market.

It is therefore essential for us to keep this specificity.

We have expanded our services, but still in connection with LinkedIn.

Today we remain determined to be the benchmark agency on this network, and I doubt that will change tomorrow.

You already accomplished a lot very young.

Do you have projects in preparation?

Another play,

, which I had written at the time of my hospitalization is ready and should arrive within one to two years.

The big project remains the expansion of Arnaud & Alexis, which we intend to further develop with new collaborators.

And I don't rule out writing a new book in the years to come!

* La Maison de Solenn hosted in the grounds of the Cochin Hospital in Paris in 2004. It was named in memory of Solenn Poivre d'Arvor, daughter of journalist Patrick Poivre d'Arvor.

Society

Coronavirus: With family or friends, how confinement has changed our ties

Resilience: How to Benefit from Trauma

• Social networks

• Theater

• By the Web

• Literature

• Business

• Interview

• Linkedin