12/14/2023
Republished from other platforms. Book strategy and ghostwriting booking for 2024 (this offer for completing before the end of 2023 was taken 🙏). If you are at all involved in the dirt world (construction, excavation, etc.), please DM ❤️
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Sometimes we spend for status. Like a Burberry rain coat.
Sometimes money is spent for value. Like a good wine, or a Tesla.
Last year I published a book. I didn’t know what I was doing and there was no shortage of cheaper publishing options. But since it was the first book, I wanted the best.
So I paid for what I thought was the best.
They weren’t the best. Just like wines sometimes don’t deliver the value with what you’d expect from “best in class.”
It might have been fine because they did a mostly good job – save a colossal screw up which took away a lot of the good.
To add insult to injury, what ultimately transpired with the company defines why people are tired of lifeless marketing efforts called virtue signaling – to use a boring but appropriate cliche.
And let me state unequivocally that this is not about kicking anyone in the balls when they are down. It is to call out bs that customers end up working very hard to pay for.
The co-founder of Scribe seems to have imploded in a fog of bad leadership after – get this – preaching endlessly about good leadership and publishing his own book on leadership.
I don’t know what happened. I was just a client.
We all mess up (I’m a master Effer-Upper.)
No blame for that. But there should be ire for flagrant abuse of societal emotion for one’s own gain.
Customers pay for it. Employees seemed to pay for it, despite endless lectures about “people first.” So which “people” was he talking about, if not clients and employees? The privileged few, as usual.
More empty words, and a reminder that you don’t always get what you pay for.
But here’s what I learned. There are commodity aspects of a book. Then there’s the writing, and the marketing behind it, which should be as bespoke as you can get. A book written to show off your personality is DNA more potent than the real stuff.
People think they keep their legacy alive in their kids but … in a couple generations, you’ll be forgotten.
The Queen was a pretty impressive cat for like a hundred years and no one’s talking about her anymore.
We all die. A book that shares your unique expertise with the world, in just that perfect collection of skills and experience that is yours alone?
Lasting.
Maybe you prefer a name brand, like Scribe. I get it. I have a Burberry raincoat hanging in my closet, too. Mostly unworn though because unless you’re naked underneath, how sexy is a raincoat, really?
For the more sexy, who want more modern marketing elements integrated in their book that a name brand can’t and won’t get you (we’ll discuss), there are 11 weeks to the end of the year.
It will be tight and it’s a big investment – but one that pays off more than children who forget you.
If you’re cursing 2023 ending without a book AND you’ve got an expertise you use to sell something, send me a DM. Special incentives if your area is the dirt world.
No, not “everyone has a story to tell.”
Maybe you do.
(Photo created with Midjourney)
