How does someone go from a self-published author with 20,000 copies of a book no one wants in their basement to one of the most respected business owners in the world? Mike Michalowicz did it, and by age 35, he had built, grown, and sold two businesses that were doing over a million dollars in revenue. However, we all start from somewhere, and Michalowicz wasn’t always successful.
Self-Publishing His First Book
Michalowicz graduated from Virginia Tech (Pamplin College of Business), majoring in finance. He had an idea for a book that he knew would sell well. His title sounded more like a Fall Out Boy song than the title of a book: The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur: The Tell-It-Like-It-Is Guide to Cleaning Up in Business, Even if You Are at the End of Your Roll. Naturally, no publisher would touch it, so he published it himself in 2008.
He was so confident the book would sell that he ordered 20,000 copies and stored them in a warehouse. On the first day, he made zero sales, and it quickly dawned on him that the book wouldn’t be an instant success. No, he would have to plan around this and work out how to move these 20,000 copies.
Learning From His Mistakes
After that disastrous opening, Michalowicz learned a few things. He realized that he was going about this the wrong way. How could he even expect people to know he had written a book? How would they know what the book was about and who he was writing for? How could he get people to see that he was an expert in the field he was commenting on?
While knowing where you want to be is a powerful motivational tactic, you also need to know where your audience is, what they want, and how you can provide that to them. Becoming a successful entrepreneur requires learning a few hard facts, and Michalowicz had to learn them firsthand.
Know Who Your Audience Is
You have a product, and you know someone wants it. How do you sell that product to the right people? Michalowicz notes that when he first wrote his book, he wasn’t sure who would buy it. He suggests that entrepreneurs take time to figure out where they were in their mindset at different points in their lives and target those people.
However, he does say that sometimes entrepreneurs might miss the mark for their target demographic. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Instead, it’s a chance for the entrepreneur to redirect their marketing efforts towards something more aligned with the new target demographic. The new demographic is usually close to the mark, so there’s not a lot of retooling that needs to be done.
Test, Measure, and Improve
Michalowicz says numbers tell a story. When you have your first set of sales numbers, you can figure out what works and what doesn’t. Usually, you get specific responses from your audience, and based on that feedback, you can streamline your marketing efforts. Michalowicz did split marketing on his website and found that people were more responsive to images than words.
As a result, he changed his landing page to be more image-centric, increasing the number of signups he got from his website from people who wanted to learn from him. He says that testing gives you data that you can use to make decisions on pricing and what sort of people will buy the product.
Don’t Focus On Dead Marketing Channels
As a writer, Michalowicz was focused on what would sell books. In the early days, he thought that TV ads would be a great way to move books. He realized the error of his ways when he tried the marketing channel and realized something he should have known. People who watch TV are usually not the kind who buy a book and read it to learn something. They’d rather rent a video.
The lesson he learned was that some marketing channels are just dead for some entrepreneurs. The same money and effort he was putting into a TV ad could have been spent on magazine ads or ads from Amazon. Both of those would catch the demographic he was aiming for and potentially cost a lot less in the bargain.
Build a Fan Base
Kevin Kelly is famous for coming up with the idea of “1000 Raving Fans.” The gist is that if you can get 1000 people who are superfans of your content, they will support your content creation journey through their sales and subscriptions. Michalowicz says you don’t need 1000, but a small group of 40 should be enough to jumpstart the process.
Michalowicz prefaces this discussion by saying it’s just his assumption, but he estimates that less than 20% of the people who buy the book he sold completed it in its entirety. However, if you sell 1000 books, that works out to 40 raving fans, and that’s not an insufficient number to start with. Sales are likely to increase after the first thousand people buy it.
Nurture The Fan Base
Fans are like a garden; you have to spend time connecting with them, taking care of them, and feeding them good content they enjoy seeing. Michalowicz leveraged his most vocal fans as reviewers for the latest book. He suggests they give him some of the best reviews instead of sending it out to journalists who wouldn’t be the target audience anyway.
He says that while mainstream publishers have massive market coverage, they don’t know who is most likely to buy the book. The same goes for any business marketing a product. Knowing and leveraging your fan base will guarantee that the company’s product gets sold out every time.
Still Helping Entrepreneurs
To this day, Michalowicz has been helping entrepreneurs discover new ways to grow their businesses and realize their profits. He’s the author of the hugely successful Profit First, which teaches entrepreneurs how to put their profits above other things. He’s also designed Clockwork, which automates the business process. He’s still a writer at heart, but now he spots good business ideas and leverages his earned money to be an angel investor in projects he thinks will succeed.
