Herman Pool - One Hour Marketing: The Entrepreneurs Guide to Simple, Effective Marketing

THE ENTREPRENEURS GUIDE TO SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE MARKETING

Find Your Target Market,
Get More Clients and Build
a Stronger Business Fast!

HERMAN POOL

New York

ONE HOUR MARKETING

THE ENTREPRENEURS GUIDE TO SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE MARKETING

Find Your Target Market, Get More Clients and Build a Stronger Business Fast!

2017 HERMAN POOL

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To Anita.
You have made me more than I thought I could be.

I am so happy and honored you have selected my book. It means a lot to me to have my writing in your very hands this very minute. In the next few chapters, I will share some personal stories of my journey as an entrepreneur who decided to focus on marketing in order to succeed.

When I was young, poor, and struggling I found a few books on marketing in my local library. I did not have the money to afford those books so finding them at the library was a real blessing. The things I learned from those books completely changed my understanding of how to become successful in business.

There is really one skill I have that has best supported me and that is the ability to simplify complex knowledge so I can use it myself or teach it to others. The goal of this book is to provide you with a fast, simple way to embrace and execute a marketing strategy that can give you a clear path to enjoy the type of success my clients and I have had.

I do not have all the answers. I am not a guru. I am just like you. I am someone who wants to improve not only the life of my family, but the lives of my clients, employees, and anyone that doesnt mind doing the work it takes to succeed.

If you are helped by this book or have a question, please visit my website at http://www.hermanpool.com

Thank you and best wishes.

Herman Pool

If youve picked up this book, Im going to go out on a limb here and assume that you need help with marketing. Maybe youre an entrepreneur starting from scratch with a new business. Maybe youre a small business owner whose old (or nonexistent) marketing plan isnt working, or a marketing director looking for a fresh and effective approach. If so, youve come to the right place.

However, I need to be honest with you. Lets say I snapped my fingers and handed you the perfect marketing plan, tailor made for your personality, your business model, and your ideal clients. If youre like most entrepreneurs and business owners I work with, youd probably say thank you, put it in your to-do pile, and let it get buried under more urgent tasks. So many business ownerseven when they know they should be marketingfind a reason not to. I think its because, deep down, many people resist the very idea of marketing. I know, because I was one of the many business owners that fell into that camp.

So many business ownerseven when they know they should be marketingfind a reason not to.

In the mid-90s I was a teenager going to college, working a job at a retail store called Computer City, and living at my parents house. One day I was helping one of my professors write some lesson plans for a class on computers and he asked me, Why dont you start your own business? You dont need a degree for that. For some reason, I instantly gravitated to his advice. Maybe a little too much, because I dropped out of school that day and quit my job at Computer City.

I went home that day super excited to tell my mom I was going to start a business. I burst into the house and said, Hey Mom, I dropped out of school and Im going to start my own business. To my mother, this news was sudden, it was risky, and it didnt sit well.

My mother gave birth to me when she was fifteen years old and dropped out of school to take care of me. When I was old enough, she went back and got her GED, went to college, and became an educator who specialized in helping at-risk students. In other words, she specialized in helping kids stay in school. She loved me, but she just couldnt support my decision to drop out of college. So, I had the option of returning to school or moving out. I chose to move out.

If youve taken a risk to start a business or follow a big dream, then I know you can relate. The people who love us the most dont like to see us take risks because they dont want to see us get hurt. Nevertheless, sometimes you have to sacrifice to be an entrepreneur. So I sacrificed.

Like so many entrepreneurs before me, I started my first business with a really small budget and a mindset to save as much money as possible so I could invest in my new venture. All I had to my name when I started was a blue Honda Accord and a few hundred dollars. I decided that I would spend money on inventory rather than waste it on rent. During the day, I went door to door in the 100-degree heat of South Texas selling memory upgrades to business owners so I could establish relationships for future business. At night, I slept in the backseat of my little blue 1989 Honda Accord.

I soon found that my Honda was great to get around in but made for a terrible apartment. Not only that but going door to door in South Texas in 100-degree heat in a suit is not the most comfortable way to do things. I had to find a better way.

I felt my services were better than a lot of my competitors. So, why were they getting more work than me?

I figured out the answer was marketing. All these guys were marketing, and I wasnt. Like many business owners, I just felt that marketing was a waste of time and that word-of-mouth and great service were the only things I needed to have a great business. Yet here I was living in a car, working my rear off every day, and I just wasnt getting enough business to make it all work.

It seemed that the competition knew something I didnt. I needed to know more about marketing. So, I went down to the library and began by looking up the definition of marketing. Heres how Merriam-Webster defines marketing: 1(a): the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market. 1(b): the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service. 2: an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer.