Michael Port - Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling

About the Author

Called an uncommonly honest author by the Boston Globe and a marketing guru by the Wall Street Journal , Michael Port is the author of four bestselling books, including the first edition of Book Yourself Solid , Beyond Booked Solid , The Contrarian Effect , and the New York Times best seller, The Think Big Manifesto .

A television personality, Michael can be seen regularly on cable and network TV. He receives the highest overall speaker ratings at conferences around the world and offers inspiring, collaborative, and results-oriented mentoring programs for small business success.

At the end of the day, his most significant accomplishment and responsibility is probably just like yours, the job of being a devoted parent, son, friend, and citizen.

Michael speaks to companies and associations throughout the world on marketing and sales. For availability, please e-mail .

Learn more at MichaelPort.com .

Authors Note

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a mans entire existence.

Honor de Balzac

In early 2000 I was utterly dissatisfied and completely disillusioned with my work as the vice president of programming at an entertainment company. The environment felt like a prisonlong hours, unresponsive colleagues, and no personal engagement. Sound familiar? I decided to embark on a new career path as a professional business coach and consultant: a service professional. I secretly passed the time reading, researching, studying, and honing my coaching skills. After much planning, my freedom date was marked on every calendar in my apartment with a huge victorious smiley face. My resignation letter was signed, sealed, and ready for delivery. I could hardly keep my legs from sprinting out the door to follow my heart and head (both of which had checked out long ago).

On that auspicious day, I received the envelope with my bonus inside, ran to the bank, cleared the check, and proudly delivered my letter of resignation. The joy, pride, and satisfaction that I felt at that moment was incredible. I floated home and woke up the next day to plunge into my career as a business owner serving others.

I didnt bask for long in the glory, however, before I realized I was in for trouble.

Call me crazy, but I really thought clients were just going to fall into my lap. I expected them to meet me, fall in love with me, and trade their money for my services. Instead, I moped about my very costly New York City apartment, panicking, feeling sorry for myself, and doing trivial busy work that wasnt going to generate a dime of income.

Within six months I was desperate, which heralded a new phase of my life. I was fed up. Id reached my limit. I was not going to throw in the towel and give up on my career as a business owner. My innate need to support and provide, to serve the people I was meant to serve, kicked into high gear one chilly New York morning. Rather than dwelling on the cold reality of my financial struggle and the bitter temperature outside, I worked every single day for no less than 16 hours to succeed and pay the bills. I poured myself into more resources and studied everything I could get my hands on about how to attract clients, communicate effectively, sell, market, and promote my services. First and foremost, I wanted to learn how to love marketing and selling by turning it into a meaningful spiritual pursuit.

It worked. Within 10 months I was booked solid with more clients than I could handle. But the personal checks I cashed were not the most valuable part of my business. The real heart of what I was creating was the turnkey system that propelled my business and income every month. I started sharing my success secrets with a small group of trusted clients, and I watched their success unfold before my eyes. I could hear confidence, pride, and accomplishment in their voices. Their businesses boomed!

My clients, who were service professionals of all kinds, started to get booked solid: massage therapists, mortgage brokers, accountants, therapists, acupuncturists, dentists, hair salon and spa owners, bookkeepers, web and graphic designers, business consultants, chiropractors, professional organizers, financial planners, virtual assistants, health care providers, insurance brokers, attorneys, personal trainers, travel agents, photographers, physiotherapists, Pilates and yoga instructors, coaches, Realtors, reflexologists, sales professionals, naturopaths, and others were getting more clients than they could handle.

I immediately began to engineer a completely replicable system that I could pass on to you. That system is the Book Yourself Solid system, and youre holding it in your hands, the same system Ive been teaching to thousands of other service professionals around the world in my live seminars and Book Yourself Solid Intensive Coaching Programs. The results are powerful.

Over 93 percent of clients who have used the Book Yourself Solid system have increased the number of clients they serve by more than 34 percent and increased their revenue by more than 42 percent within the first year .

And that was before I published the book. When the book released in April of 2006, Book Yourself Solid was the Number 2 best-selling book on Amazon.com . It has since become an evergreen resource for professional service providers all over the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Its been translated into Spanish, Vietnamese, Bulgarian, Polish, Bahasa Indonesian, Orthodox Chinese, and Korean. Its included in curriculums at graduate-level business schools and is touted as recommended reading by professional associations like the National Association of Realtors, which called Book Yourself Solid a must read.

The thing about a published book is that once its printed, its done. Yet, over the years, in my speeches and coaching programs, Ive changed important parts of the system, fine tuned others, and added new, up-to-date material. Enter the second edition. It keeps the best of the Book Yourself Solid system, clarifies essential parts, and trims the fat, doing away with anything that you dont absolutely need to know. Ive even added an entirely new chapter on pricing and another one on the most up-to-date social media marketing. I believe this new edition of the book should make for even easier reading, faster and more effective consumption, and bigger, more impressive, and profitable results.

Id like to impress upon you right now how realistic it is for you to become a successful self-employed professional. According to Daniel Pink ( Free Agent Nation citing a study by Anne E. Polvika, Into Contingent and Alternative Employment: By Choice?, reported in the October 1996 issue of Monthly Labor Review ),Full-time independent contractors earn an average of 15 percent more than their employee counterparts. Daniel Pink also shows (from a study by Aquent Partners) that, independent professionals are twice as likely as W-2 workers to have personal incomes above $75,000 per year. In fact the Aquent Partners study shows that one in four Americans is now an independent professional.

Thats great news, isnt it? It proves that youve made the right choice to go out on your own. But Id like for us to think even bigger. What if you could do more? Just imagine how different your life would be if you were earning $10,000 each and every month. How about $20,000, $30,000, or $40,000 each month? How about $100,000 each and every month? Amazingly different. I can tell you from personal experience that it opens up a world of possibilities. And you can do it too! Because the Book Yourself Solid system will get you up and out into the world in the biggest and most profitable way.

You need to learn the skills necessary to promote your work and become the go-to person in your field before its too late. I dont want you to start working through this book two years from now. I want you to reap all of the rewards that you deserve now. If you havent yet reached the level of success you expected or wanted in your business, there is only one small change you need to make. Put yourself smack-dab in the middle of my Book Yourself Solid system. This one move will get you sprinting (not walking... not running... but sprinting!) to monthly income and personal satisfaction that will change your businessand your life. Think of all the freedom, abundance, profitability, and joy you can create for yourself.