TwosWrite things down

Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday

Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday

by Parker · 212 things on Twos

The Art of Making Marketing Work That Lasts
Introduction
Creators resort to hacking bestseller lists, counting social media shares, or raising huge amounts of investor capital far before they have a business model. People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification.
How to make something that can stand the test of time
How to perfect, position, and package that idea into a compelling offering that stands the test of time
How to develop marketing channels that stand the test of time
How to capture an audience and build a platform that stands the test of time
Part I: The Creative Process
From the Mindset to the Making to the Magic
"The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence." —Cyril Connolly
All the marketing in the world won’t matter if the product hasn’t been made right.
It’s a classic “measure once, cut twice” scenario, in that the better your product is, the better your marketing will be.
Hope has nothing to do with it. To be great, one must make great work, and making great work is incredibly hard. It must be our primary focus. We must set out, from the beginning, with complete and total commitment to the idea that our best chance of success starts during the creative process.
So if not with a keen eye toward marketing, where do we properly begin our pursuit of a perennial seller? As my mentor Robert Greene put it, “It starts by wanting to create a classic.”
Legendary investor and Y Combinator founder Paul Graham explains, “The best way to increase a startup’s growth rate is to make the product so good people recommend it to their friends.”
Phil Libin, the cofounder of Evernote, has a quote I like to share with clients: “People [who are] thinking about things other than making the best product never make the best product.”
“Writers write. You don’t wait to get hired on something to write.” - Sarah Silverman
“I don’t want to hear your idea. The idea is the easy part.” - Casey Neistat
To make something great, what’s required is need. As in, I need to do this. I have to. I can’t not.
Because there is a truth that has gone unsaid for too long. Because you’ve burned the bridges behind you. Because your family depends on it. Because the world will be better for it. Because the old way is broken. Because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Because it will help a lot of people. Because you want to capture something meaningful. Because the excitement you feel cannot be contained.
It’s exhilarating because you are giving something to the world. You are connecting with other people. You are solving a problem for other people.
“You should only be a writer if you can’t not be a writer.” - George Orwell
From sacrifice comes meaning. From struggle comes purpose. If you’re to create something powerful and important, you must at the very least be driven by an equally powerful inner force.
“Focus on the things that don’t change.” - Jeff Bezos
You can’t make something that lasts if it’s based on things, on individual parts that themselves won’t last, or if it’s driven by an amateur’s impatience.
“Whether a really good book is finished a year earlier or a year later makes no difference.” - Stefan Zweig
Art can’t be hurried. It must be allowed to take its course. It must be given its space—and can’t be rushed or checked off a to-do list on the way to something else.
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”
“Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail completely. That’s the thing people don’t get.” - Larry Page
“If you focus on near-term growth above everything else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: Will this business still be around a decade from now?” - Peter Thiel
“If you listen to the greatest music ever made, that would be a better way to find your own voice to matter today than listening to what’s on the radio and thinking: ‘I want to compete with this.’ It’s stepping back and looking at a bigger picture than what’s going on at the moment.” - Rick Rubin
Your choices will be hard too—prepare for it.
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” - Ernest Hemingway
“Insights rarely occur fully baked,” he explained. “The creative process is often nonlinear, with many detours along the way that inform the final product. The creator often starts with a hazy intuition of where he or she is going, but breakthrough innovations rarely resemble the seed idea or vision. This is because creative ideas, by their very nature, evolve over time, reflecting the colliding of seemingly disparate ideas. The best we can do is sit down and create something, anything, and let the process organically unfold. Tolerating ambiguity, frustration, and changes in the grand plan and being open to new experiences are essential to creative work. Indeed, they are what makes creativity work.” - Scott Barry Kaufman
If there is any magic in creative expression, it’s how small, even silly ideas can become big, important, awe-inspiring works if a person invests enough time in them.
“Getting into action generates inspiration. Don’t cop out waiting for inspiration to get you back into action. It won’t!” - Robert Evans
Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof
Picking a lane isn’t limiting. It’s the first act of empowerment we take as a creator.
For any project, you must know what you are doing—and what you are not doing. You must also know who you are doing it for—and who you are not doing it for—to be able to say: THIS and for THESE PEOPLE. In some cases, that might be an enormous niche.
Stephen King believes that “every novelist has a single ideal reader” so that at various points in the process he can ask, “What will ______ think about this?” (For him, it’s his wife, Tabitha.)
Kurt Vonnegut joked that you have to “write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
What do people need? Not what do people want
So the creator of any project should try to answer some variant of these questions: What does this teach? What does this solve? How am I entertaining? What am I giving? What are we offering? What are we sharing? In short: What are these people going to be paying for? If you don’t know—if the answer isn’t overwhelming—then keep thinking.
The Grateful Dead weren’t trying to be the best at anything; they were trying to be the only ones doing what they were doing. Srinivas Rao, a writer and podcaster, put it well: “Only is better than best.
“I didn’t want to water down. The idea of watering things down for a mainstream audience, I don’t think it applies. People want things that are really passionate. Often the best version is not for everybody. The best art divides the audience. If you put out a record and half the people who hear it absolutely love it and half the people who hear it absolutely hate it, you’ve done well. Because it is pushing that boundary.” - Rick Rubin
Think of the technology that is subject to protests and reactive legislation—from Airbnb to Uber. Eventually, they become a part of our daily lives, but at first there is something deeply shocking and forceful to them.
“Either you’re controversial or nothing at all is happening.” - Elizabeth Wurtzel
You cannot violate every single convention simultaneously, nor should you do it simply for its own sake. In fact, to be properly controversial—as opposed to incomprehensible—you must have obsessively studied your genre or industry to a degree that you know which boundaries to push and which to respect. There’s a reason that shows on Netflix and HBO—even though they don’t have commercial breaks—are still roughly thirty or sixty minutes long. In the self-published era, authors can theoretically do whatever they want, yet in most cases they don’t. Why? Because not every convention is worth questioning, and, usually, questioning too many at the same time is confusing and overwhelming to the consumer.
Why are things the way they are? What practices should be questioned and which should remain sound? This allows us to be both exotic and accessible, shocking but not gratuitous, fresh without sacrificing timelessness.
If you do push boundaries, it’s important to understand that not everyone will love it—not right out of the gate, anyway.
You want to provoke a reaction—it’s a sign you’re forging ahead. A famous scientist once warned his students not to worry about people stealing their ideas: “If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”
“I think what we do is to tell the best story we can, the best way we can, and produce it in the best way possible, and then see how the world reacts to it.” - Robert McKee
Ignore what other people are doing. Ignore what’s going on around you. There is no competition. There is no objective benchmark to hit. There is simply the best that you can do—that’s all that matters.
“The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.” - Steven Pressfield
The hunger and drive to create something great, coupled with the sincere belief that you can do it, can very quickly trip into delusion and hubris if you’re not vigilant. The more nervous and scared you are—the more you feel compelled to go back and improve and tweak because you’re just not ready—the better it bodes for the project. Because your goal is one that should make any rational person tremble a bit.
Those who think they can rush their way to that finish line—or have complete confidence they will get there without breaking a sweat—end up disappearing just as quickly. It takes time and effort and sacrifice to make something that lasts.
Part II: Positioning
From Polishing to Perfecting to Packaging
Audiences can’t magically know what is inside something they haven’t seen. They have no clue that it will change their lives. You can’t be the self-conscious wallflower in the corner, hoping that people will see through the act and just know how great you are. Someone is going to have to tell them. It has to be obvious!
Prior to release, considerable effort needs to be spent polishing, improving, and, most critically, positioning your project so that it has a real chance of resonating with its intended audience. Even the most delicious dish must be properly plated (and presentation affects the taste—that’s a fact).
We have to take this thing that means so much to us and make sure that it is primed to mean something to other people too for generations to come. That it will stand out among a crowded field of other creators sincerely attempting to do the exact same thing. That it will be the best that it is capable of being and that the audience it is intended for is primed to love it. And the best person in the world to accomplish this difficult task? You.
If the first step in the process is coming to terms with the fact that no one is coming to save you—there’s no one to take this thing off your hands and champion it the rest of the way home—then the second is realizing that the person who is going to need to step up is you.
Many creatives want to be just the creator, or only “the idea guy.” They like that because it’s sexy and because that’s what comes easy to us. But I suspect we like it also because we’re afraid. We’re afraid of taking full responsibility for everything that comes next. A lot of decisions are going to be made—many of which can sink or make a project—that it’d be nice to have someone else to put it on. If we hand it off to someone else, then we have someone to blame when the project fails.
Adults create perennial sellers—and adults take responsibility for themselves. Children expect opportunities to be handed to them; maturity is understanding you have to go out and make them.
At a very basic level, if you’re not amazing in every facet, you’re replaceable.
Seth Godin explains that “being really good is merely the first step. In order to earn word of mouth, you need to make [your product] safe, fun, and worthwhile to overcome the social hurdles to spread the word.”
Find an editor because when people are close to their own projects or their own talents, they can lose the ability to see objectively. They might think they’ve taken a project or their talent as far as it can go, and, strictly speaking, given an individual’s limitations and inexperience, this may be true. But ultimately, to take a project where it needs to go, you’ll need to rely on an editor to help you get there. This is the most counterintuitive part of any creative process—just when you think you’re “done,” you’ll often find you’re not even close to being finished.
“The first draft of anything is shit.” - Ernest Hemingway
What are the chances that your prototype is perfect the first time? The Great Gatsby was rejected several times. WD-40 is named after the forty attempts it took its creators to nail the working formula.
Every project needs to go through this process. Whether it’s with an editor or a producer or a partner or a group of beta users or just through your own relentless perfectionism—whatever form it takes is up to you. But getting outside voices is crucial. The fact is, most people are so terrified of what an outside voice might say that they forgo opportunities to improve what they are making. Remember: Getting feedback requires humility. It demands that you subordinate your thoughts about your project and your love for it and entertain the idea that someone else might have a valuable thing or two to add.
If you don’t know what you’re looking for, how will you know if you’ve found it?
“OK, what was I trying to make here? Did I get there? What do I need to change or fix in order to successfully do so?”
Attempt to write out exactly what your project is supposed to be and to do in . . . One sentence. One paragraph. One page. This is a ______ that does ______. This helps people ______.
Everything that has a clear path to commercial success is in a genre. We need to be able to put things into categories so we know where they fit. And you as the creator need to be clear and honest with yourself about where this work is going to fit for people.
In forcing ourselves through this process, we also force ourselves to explain succinctly what we have, what it does, and why anyone should care. If we’re not able to, then it says something about the potential viability of this thing we are creating and our ability to explain it to the audience.
The most important part of the process is comparing the results of the exercise against the product we’ve made. Does your one-pager really describe what makes your screenplay worth producing? Would your one sentence capture an investor’s attention in an elevator? You might find that, yes, your answers are compelling, but the work itself does not rise to meet the proposition they promote. Alternatively, you might find that the work is a lot more complex and important than your encapsulation suggests. If that’s the case—if your product is great but your one-pager is blah—you probably need to rethink how you’re talking about it. Perhaps you don’t truly understand the topic well enough yet.
Now, just as you did with your one sentence, it’s time to return to the intended audience—to see whether you’ve actually produced something they need. Then, depending on that answer, adjust either the audience or the product until there’s a perfect match.
You must start somewhere—ideally somewhere quantifiable. By which I mean: Who is buying the first one thousand copies of this thing? Who is coming in on the first day? Who is going to claim our first block of available dates? Who is buying our first production run?
There is nothing more badass for a reader than to see themselves as the hero. He also wanted them to be able to see their friends, family, and colleagues—so they could recommend it to them.
You must create room for the audience to inhabit and relate to the work. You must avoid the trap of making this about you—because, remember, you won’t be the one buying it.
Work that is going to sell and sell must appear as good as, or better than, the best stuff out there. Because that’s who you’re competing with: not the other stuff being released right now, but everything that came before you.
“Speak in short one-sentence answers and don’t go in with all the legalese. Talk about the movie as a movie and the effect it will have on the audience from an emotional point of view. If you continue to be boring, I will hire an actor in New York to pretend that he’s Errol Morris. . . . Keep it short and keep selling it because that’s what is going to work for you, your career and the film.” - Harvey Weinstein
You’re going to have to describe to other human beings what this project is in an exciting and compelling way. You’re going to need to explain to reporters, prospective buyers or investors, publishers, and your own fans: Who this is for. Who this is not for. Why it is special. What it will do for them. Why anyone should care.
In an elevator, when you’re actually pitching people, you’re also going to need to explain what ______ is, why there is a market for it, and why people should read it.
What is it that you want? What is truly motivating you? What are you trying to accomplish with this project? The answer should be clear by now: I am making a ______ that does ______ for ______ because ______.
“What’s required is “confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path, and not led astray by the many tracks which cross yours of people who are hopelessly lost, though some are wandering not far from the true path.” - Seneca
A person on a singular mission can’t be distracted; he can’t chase every colored balloon he comes across. If your goal is to create a perennial seller, you can’t measure yourself against people who aren’t aiming for the same thing—you can’t be endlessly checking industry charts or lists, and you can’t be distracted by the trends and fancies of other creators who are hopelessly lost.
If you’ve fallen into the sway of tracking your fellow creators on social media or you check the charts every week to see what other people are doing, you’re going to sap yourself of the discipline required to do what you are trying to do.
Only idealists or masochists would think they can appeal to everyone and are entitled to everything. Only crazy people would compare themselves to people on totally different tracks.
If you’re looking at two different deals, one of which is for a lot more money and the other of which is with someone who can’t afford to pay as much up front but who genuinely understands what you’re trying to accomplish, take a pass on the money.
If you have a launch date looming and everyone around you is “all systems go” but you feel some serious doubt that you’re not ready, please make the difficult choice to stop the presses and take the time to get it right, even if it means extra costs.
Steve Jobs didn’t think about what other people would do. He didn’t think about what he should do. He did what he felt was right for the company over the long term. He wanted the computers to be beautiful down to the circuit boards, even though no one would ever see that.
To survive in business, you must make other people (and yourself) money. You must serve customers. To believe otherwise is bad business.
Too many creators are distracted by critics, by prizes, by buzz or media attention or impressing their friends, and they forget this. They forget their audience, customers, fans. The fashion designer Marc Ecko has good advice: We can’t prioritize the gatekeepers (the media) over the goalkeepers (the audience). To do so is foolishly shortsighted.
“The distinction between starving artists and thriving artists. One adopts all the tropes and clichés of the bohemians and supposed purity. The other is resilient, ambitious, open-minded, and audience-driven. Who do you want to be?” - Jeff Goins
Don’t let that inner hipster critic hold you back either. You cannot expect to sell unless you’ve put the work in and made the sacrifices and decisions that allow success to happen. You have to be ready for what comes next: the real marathon that is marketing.
The artist’s life is hard. The road to a perennial seller is long—and it may seem, at times, that you’re heading in the wrong direction and that the sidewalks are lined with hostile faces. No matter.
Part III: Marketing
From Courting to Coverage, Pushing to Promotion
“Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen and it’s harder than it looks.” — Peter Thiel
“You’re better off with a great salesman and a mediocre product than with a masterpiece and a moron to sell it.” - Herb Cohen
To have work that lasts, you can’t have a mediocre product or be a moron. You have to be brilliant at all of it.
Who is going to sell your movie, your app, your artwork, your service if not you? Even if you pay someone else a lot of money, how hard are they really going to work?
If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson for your product. Even if there are salespeople working for you, you’re still the boss and will have to lead from the front.”
CEOs are very busy. They have meetings, phone calls, business dinners, and countless other day-to-day responsibilities. So, naturally, CEOs delegate the marketing to other people. But this is a huge mistake. If you delegate anything, you should delegate the chairmanship of the next fund-raising drive.
You can cut back on a lot of things as a leader, but the last thing you can ever skimp on is marketing. Your product needs a champion.
Marketing is an opportunity for you to distinguish yourself, to beat out the other talented folks whose entitlement or laziness holds them back.
While marketing is a job and it’s your job, it’s also a fun and worthwhile job. You’re selling something you believe in, that you’re invested in, and that you know people will like. If this was pushing something no one wanted or needed, sticking the responsibility on someone else might make sense. But in this case, why should you let them have all the fun?
Accepting your own insignificance might not seem like an inspiring mantra to kick off a marketing campaign, but it makes a big difference. Humility is clearer-eyed than ego—and that’s important because humility always works harder than ego.
People are busy. They have no idea why they should care about this thing.
It is my job as the marketer of my work to make people care, and that’s not going to be possible if I start with any illusions or entitlements. Instead, I’m going to start fresh. I’m going to win my readers, customers, and fans for the first time, one person at a time, all over again.
The mark of a future perennial seller is a creator who doesn’t believe he is God’s gift to the world, but instead thinks he has created something of value and is excited and dedicated to get it out there. Guess what? A sense of entitlement is not how you’re going to reach them. Hunger and humility make the difference.
“There is no silver bullet. . . . No, we’re going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.” - Ben Horowitz
We discover things by word of mouth. A friend says, “Hey, you should check this out.”
No one has the steam or the resources to actively market something for more than a short period of time, so if a product is going to sell forever, it must have strong word of mouth. It must drive its own adoption. Over the long haul, this is the only thing that lasts.
“A boy has to hustle his book.” - Truman Capote
Yes, “launch windows” are artificial. But just because something is constructed, as I once heard a wise person say, that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. In fact, the artificial notion of a launch is almost more important now than ever—customers have so much choice, they tend to choose what appears to have momentum. As Sunstein observed, people choose what others are choosing.
Record labels know that the more times you hear a song, the more likely it is to be a hit. That’s why they hold tracks back until they get a number of stations committed to playing it.
What are we working with here? Relationships, media contacts, research or information from past launches of similar products, favors they're owed, potential advertising budget, resources or allies
Aside from racking your own brain, one of my favorite strategies to kick off this process is simply to ask your world. I call this the “Call to Arms”—a summons to your fans and friends (see Platform, Part IV of this book) to prepare for action.
Hey, as many of you know, I have been working on ______ for a long time. It’s a ______ that does ______ for ______. I could really use your help. If you’re in the media or have an audience or you have any ideas or connections or assets that might be valuable when I launch this thing, I would be eternally grateful. Just tell me who you are, what you’re willing to offer, what it might be good for, and how to be in touch.
However many of these relationships you have, however tenuous or weak you might feel they are, put them all in a spreadsheet. Lay it all out—names, outlets, promises, debts—and see what you’ve got to work with.
If it’s a tiny spreadsheet, that’s okay. If that is the case, though, I’d take a minute to consider what this says. Is it that you’ll need to go it alone and make up for this lack of resources with extra hustle and intensity? Or would waiting until you’re better supplied and prepared make the most sense?
“The problem for most artists isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.” - Tim O'Reilly. In other words, we spend a lot of time insisting that nobody steal our work or get it for free . . . but we forget that being unknown is a far worse fate for an artist than being underpaid.
When we say, “Hey, check this out,” we’re really asking for a lot from people.
The more you reduce the cost of consumption, the more people will be likely to try your product.
Our initial audience is just as important. We have to get them hooked somehow, and free is often the best way to do it.
What is the right price to create a perennial seller? This is going to be controversial, but my answer is: as cheap as possible without damaging the perception of your product.
A classic of any kind has two characteristics: 1) It’s good, and 2) it has been consumed by a lot of people (relatively, at least).
One of the best ways to build a readership, viewership, listenership, user base, or customer base early on is by making it cheap.
“To these people [in publishing], literature is more or less the central fact of existence. Whereas, to vast numbers of reasonably intelligent people it is an unimportant sideline, a relaxation, an escape, sometimes even a source of inspiration. But they could do without it far more easily than they could do without coffee or whiskey.” - Raymond Chandler
They should be focused on bringing more people to the dinner table (i.e., reaching people who otherwise wouldn’t be reading books in the first place).
An effective strategy is to be cheaper and easier than the things they’re currently buying and using.
What we’ve created is a central fact of existence to us—after all, we made it. But to most other people, it’s optional. They can easily do without our work. A savvy creator embraces this reality and makes taking a chance on it as easy and frictionless as possible for the audience.
The more accessible you can make your product, the easier it will be to market. You can always raise the price later, after you’ve built an audience.
How to work with influencers:
The first step is the hardest: making something really awesome that exceeds the expectations even of busy, important people with exacting taste.
Influencers are typically hyperfans and their continued success depends on being seen as tastemakers and leaders.
Focus on making their audience look good. Even better, forget the “looking” part—just make them good, period. Or, as Sierra puts it, make them “badasses.
Do research: Who seems to have a big following? Who has a reputation as a tastemaker or trendsetter? Who seems to be highly connected or to hold a position of prominence in your industry? Who seems to have a hunger for films, apps, food, or services like yours?
What’s the best way to ask someone to endorse or share your work? Trick question. The best way is not to ask.
Marc Ecko never asked for anything—he just made great work and sent it to select influencers he knew might appreciate it. Eventually, he got his first shout-out on the air, and the brand was never the same.
When you find an influencer who likes your product, hold on for dear life. (Send them more stuff than they know what to do with—chances are they have influencer friends!)
Always put yourself in their shoes: How would you feel if everyone wanted a piece of you? How would you feel if you got dozens of emails a day from total strangers trying to trick you into endorsing products, essentially for free? You’d be overwhelmed. Or you’d be jaded. The fact that most creators—especially big companies—just hire PR agencies to do this pitching for them is an opportunity for the DIY creators who don’t. Be a person. Be nice. Think relationship first, transaction second.
Authors are inundated with requests for blurbs from other authors; meanwhile, generals, academics, and CEOs are asked much more rarely. Who would be better to go after, then? Try to find the people least likely to get a request from someone like you, and approach them first, instead of going where everyone else is going. Be bold and brash and counterintuitive not only in how you create your work, but also in who you use to market it.
John Calipari was sending a message: Play for me and you can end up like these guys. That is the kind of message we want to send to the people we’re trying to recruit to our work. We have to look for creative opportunities to do it.
Almost everyone—from brands to artists—overestimates the value of traditional PR.
When Apple does bestow a coveted featured spot upon your app, you get to rise above the noise, but the result of that is a lot of noisy would-be users . . . The masses may not be asses, but they can be fickle.
It’s better, he says, to start with smaller media and smaller features, then work your way up to the big score.
What many creators fail to realize is that the media is desperate for material. Reporters sit around all day hoping to find good stuff, anxious to beat their (many) competitors in getting to it.
Writing about you and your supercool, awesome masterpiece might be good for them, but they don’t know it yet. It’s on you to take up the burden of explaining to them—rather, showing them—why.
My only strategy for finding and getting media is straightforward. I google reporters’ names to find their email addresses and phone numbers (yes, they’re publicly available). Then I reach out and explain what I’m doing or what I’ve done. I let the work and the fact that it matches what they cover—that it’s interesting and compelling, and likely to do well for them—do most of the talking for me. (I don’t assume it should be interesting to them because it’s interesting to me. I make it interesting, period.) There’s no real trick to it other than that. Nor does there need to be. If there is a secret to media, it is in the work you’ve made—in the risks you take and the things you do.
The most newsworthy thing to do is usually the one you’re most afraid of. The thing you joke, “But of course, we can’t do that.” (One of my most famous stunts began with those exact words.) And then you have to actually do it.
Make some noise. With the timeline we’re considering—years and years of relevance—in the end no one will remember being “offended” by something. The world will just remember having heard about it in the first place.
The real goal is establishing a presence or building a reputation and profile. Publicity is about temporarily breaking through the noise—if only for a single news cycle—and contributing to the word of mouth that a product eventually needs to succeed.
Advertising can add fuel to a fire, but rarely is it sufficient to start one.
A rational, efficient advertising campaign involves two key things: knowing how much a customer is worth to you (or a customer’s LTV—lifetime value) and knowing how much it will cost to acquire that customer via the advertising you intend to use (or CPA—cost per acquisition).
There are plenty of easier things they haven’t done or don’t want to do that would produce results right now. Taking time off work or hiring a babysitter so you can write fifty personally crafted emails—that’s hard and unsexy. Paying for a plane ticket and a hotel so you can give a talk at a major nonprofit—that’s time and resource intensive. Joining a group or a cause to build relationships you can draw on later—hard, unsexy, and difficult to quantify. Spending serious money to create samples and give them away to targeted audiences? That’s hard and, understandably, feels like the opposite of selling. Working on improving your product until it screams “Share me with everyone you know”—that’s less fun than buying a back-page ad that everyone (who still reads newspapers) will see.
Creative advertising is probably the least competitive sector of advertising, because most brands either aren’t creative or are afraid to be. If you had a billboard in Times Square with a picture of the cover of your book, it might make you feel great, but it wouldn’t move the needle. I have a little personal experience in this regard: After I did an interview with NASDAQ in 2016, they featured the cover of my book Ego Is the Enemy on their six-story billboard in Times Square for a few minutes as a thank-you. I got a great picture of it—and my parents thought it was awesome—but as I scanned the crowd around me, you know what I saw? Complete and total indifference. Even though there were thousands of people around, I didn’t see a single one of them look up. When the ad disappeared, the only thing that remained was my fleeting memory and a pretty cool Facebook post. I certainly didn’t see a sales spike.
Humor and levity will probably do more for your brand over the long term than trying to beat people over the head with brilliantly effective advertising copy.
Platforms come and go like the wind. It’s always better to focus on the bigger picture, on the things that don’t change.
When it comes to creating a perennial seller, the principle to never lose sight of is simple: Create word of mouth.
The best strategy is to try everything and see what works for your project—because it’s going to be different for every single project. When you find something, stick with it. Marketing is the art of allocating resources—sending more power to the wheels that are getting traction, sending it away from the ones that are spinning. And investing in each strategy until the results stop working. Then find the next one!
Part IV: Platform
From Fans to Friends and a Full-Fledged Career
“I had acquired what, to my mind, is the most valuable success a writer can have—a faithful following, a reliable group of readers who looked forward to every new book and bought it, who trusted me, and whose trust I must not disappoint.” — Stefan Zweig
They care about their fans and their fans only. Those are the only people they talk to, the people inside what we are going to talk about in this chapter: their platform.
A platform is your social media and the stage you stand on, but it also includes your friends, your body of work, the community your work exists in, the media outlets and influencers who appreciate what you do, your email list, the trust you’ve built, your sources of income, and countless other assets. A platform is what you cultivate and grow not just through your creative work, but for your creative work, whatever it may be.
“Platform is not a stepping stone. It is the finish line.” - Casey Neistat
If I could give a prospective creative only one piece of advice, it would be this: Build a list. Specifically, an email list.
If you want people to consume your work and to know what you do next, you have to make it possible for them to hear about it as easily and regularly as possible.
Tim Ferriss' networking strategies
Never dismiss anyone
You never know who might help you one day with your work.
Treat everyone like they could put you on the front page of the New York Times . . . because someday you might meet that person.
Play the long game
It’s not about finding someone who can help you right this second. It’s about establishing a relationship that can one day benefit both of you.
Focus on “pre-VIPs”
The people who aren’t well known but should be and will be.
It’s not about who has the biggest megaphone.
The best time to have built your network was yesterday. The second best time is right now.
The best time to get to know people and develop relationships is before you have some favor you want to ask them (this is called being a human being).
Be generous, do favors, help other people with their products. Email reporters who cover things that you’re interested in (or at least read their work and take genuine interest in it).
Networking is not going to networking events and handing out business cards—that’s flyering. It is instead about forming, developing, and maintaining real relationships. It’s about being valuable and being available so that one day the favor might be returned.
Developing the right relationships with the right people is the long game. This is how legacies are made and preserved.
While relationships with the “in crowd” matter and they help create an enduring career, nothing you build will last very long without the most important relationship of all: the one you have with your fans.
“Authors who want long-term success should adopt this mantra: Participate. Participate. Participate.” - Barbara Hendricks
People who want long-term success must participate—and do so authentically and honestly.
The more intimate and personal the connection between creator, work, and fan, the more the relationship can endure.
“I urge authors to consider how long it took them to write their books and see them published and to devote at least that much time to pushing them.” - Barbara Hendricks
Audiences often need to hear about things multiple times and be exposed to them from multiple angles before they’re willing to give something a chance.
"Success always requires an unstoppable author" - Stephen Hanselman
Once you have started to see the slow accumulation of success for a work over the long haul, you can’t quit on a project. There are many things you can do to continue to update and expand your work.
Small continual improvements make a big difference.
No one can guarantee that your project will be a success, but it can be safely said that if you quit on it before your audience does, it’s guaranteed to fail.
The best marketing you can do for your book is to start writing the next one. More great work is the best way to market yourself.
“If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.” - Steve Jobs
Woody Allen goes for “quantity” as a way to get to quality. “If you make a lot of films,” he said, “occasionally a great one comes out. Films never come out in the end how you expect them to at the start.”
“The greatest respect an author can have for his public is never to produce what is expected but what he himself considers right and useful for whatever stage of intellectual development has been reached by himself and others.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Don’t be afraid to try crazy things. Don’t let your brand tie you down to the point where you don’t explore or experiment. It is precisely these little endeavors that might illuminate a new direction for your career. They might expose you to a new community or group who will eat up your other work.