Mike Michalowicz - Different Is Better: Marketing That Gets Noticed and Gets Results

I did inhale.

Yanik Silver blew a cloud of pot smoke right into my face. I had only one option: breathe it in.

I never anticipated that my greatest lesson in marketing would come during a game of billiards, capped with a ganja exclamation mark. It was the contact high that lasted a lifetime.

Yanik is considered by many to be the godfather of internet marketing. He helped innovate the use of email marketing in the early days, when people still looked forward to hearing AOLs iconic notification Youve got mail. Back when people thought an innovative website was one with an animated under construction GIF, he pioneered long copy sales pages with professional product images and clear call-to-action buttons. Yaniks marketing savvy yielded the company of his dreams, Maverick1000. He created a global network as a manifestation of his lifes purpose: to help support visionary entrepreneurs grow their businesses and have a bigger impact on the world.

I had just launched my first book, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, and I had bought into the belief that a great book will sell itself, hook, line, and sinker. I believed it so much that I feared Id run out of copies during the first month. After all, if you build it, they will come, right? So I scratched together money through friends, emptied my break only in case of an extreme emergency emergency savings account, and ordered twenty thousand hardcover copiesall of which were now sitting in a fulfillment center, gathering dust. My book launch flopped. On release day, I sold zero copies. Zippo. Nada. Zilch. Do you feel me? My own mother didnt buy a copy that day. Ouch.

Defeated, I had two choices: learn how to market effectively, fast, or abandon my dream.

But where to begin? The strategies touted by some successful marketers at the time nauseated me. Marketing online by 2005 had become so commonplace, people doing it had a title: infomarketers. At least to their faces they were called infomarketers. Behind their backs, the smarmy ones were called names I wont repeat here. You know the ones Im talking about. Some guy stands in front of a private jet (that isnt his) on a tarmac (that he sneaked onto), leaning on a new Bentley (which he rented for a few hours), and promises you the world. Their methods were gross and inauthentic at best, manipulative and predatory at worst.

Yanik always played a bigger game beyond the tactic of the month, and he didnt need to prove he knew his stuff with disingenuous pictures and messaging. Yanik marketed authentically, genuinely, real-ly, and that is why I sought out his advice.

I desperately wanted people to notice my book, but I didnt want to use those gross info-smarm-eter tactics. So instead I had tried to follow book-marketing checklists in the way all traditional authors are told to marketsend out a press release, throw a launch party, start a blog, get a big-name endorsementand yet all my efforts failed to generate anything beyond onesie-twosie book sales.

Twisting my cue stick, I shared my frustrations with my new confidant.

Five ball. Corner pocket.

Moving through the table with ease, Yanik called out shots, and the balls rolled into the pockets at his every command, all the while listening intently to my story. He capped the game by sinking the eight so expertly that the cue ball slowly rolled back to the exact spot for the start of the next game. Meanwhile, I stood off to the side like a potted plant. A potted plant that overshares its story of struggle, but a potted plant, nonetheless.

The game finished, Yanik motioned for me to grab my beer and head outside to the deck with him to look out over the rolling hills of Maryland. After what felt like one of those too-long, dramatic crescendo movie moments, he asked, Is your book better than the stuff everyone else offers?

Yes.

Does your book serve the reader better than those infomarketers?

Hell yes. It is everything I know. It will serve entrepreneurs.

If customers buy the infomarketer stuff and dont buy yours, what will happen?