May 2007 Newsletter

An Interview with Michael Port
Author of Book Yourself Solid

[Tara] Book Yourself Solid is all about serving the right clients. Yet you start the book by telling people to create a "red velvet rope policy" to turn the wrong clients away. How do people get the courage and discipline to turn the wrong clients away?

[Michael] I've tried to come up the framework that gives people the courage to do it before they've done it. But that hasn't worked. To build courage, you actually have to learn in action. People will read this concept of a Red Velvet Rope policy and start to understand from an intellectual perspective how important it is to very specifically choose a target market. Then they'll start with the best of intentions but eventually, they'll let in people who are less than ideal. And after some time, they'll experience what it's like to work with people are who not ideal and they'll come back to the red velvet rope. Meaning that sometimes we don't know what's really good for us until we know what's not good for us.

Kind of like a negative example.

Yes, and that's ok. We have to experience it. You can't convince someone until they have had the experience on their own. Like when my wife tells me about a problem she's having and I say 'oh, here's what you should do' and she says, 'no, that's not a good idea.' Then she goes away and comes back three days later and says 'I've got it!' and tells me what her great idea is and it's what I said three days ago! We've all been in that kind of situation. Sometimes these principles in Book Yourself Solid have to be experienced. Book Yourself Solid is principle and practically based. But until people have experienced that practical element, it's hard for them to buy into the philosophy that underlies it.

What inspired you to create Book Yourself Solid?

I read a lot of research in the areas of sales and marketing. Often times, the opposite of what one thinks is the way to proceed often is the way to proceed. The status quo is often not that effective. Small business owners tend to focus on sales and marketing tactics. But tactics are a very small part of what we need to do to be effective.

We focus on marketing tactics but we forget about serving the people that we have the opportunity, the responsibility, the honor of serving. So when you look at Book Yourself Solid, the self promotion strategies are basic, they're the core self promotion strategies. I didn't come up with anything new or genius. I looked at what are the most basic ways of creating real awareness without interrupting people, without spamming them, without bothering them, in a way that builds community so that when they actually do come and check you out they feel that they're in the right place.

Book Yourself Solid is very systematic in its approach and one of the reasons it works is because when people look at marketing and sales, they tend to skip the entire foundation or do a very cursory way of looking at it. They sort of talk about the idea of building trust and credibility but they're still so far focused on making sales quickly that they skip it and do lip service to it. But the underlying mentality is "drive for the sale." And of course, when you do that you're engaging in one-step selling which is one-stop selling because it stops the whole thing dead in its tracks.

The likeability factor is huge. If you don't think likeability is proportional to how booked solid you are, then you've got another thing coming. Certainly all of us can point to someone that we don't like that's doing very well but there's something about them they're customers really like. Or they've got a monopoly! The things that are hard are strategic decisions. Which way to we go? How many resources do we put into this opportunity over that one? Those are challenging questions. The things that are easy are treating people like they're as important to us as they actually are.

Building any kind of business is an opportunity for self expression. If you're not fully self expressed in your business then how do you create real connection with the people you are meant to serve? Meant is the operative word. There are certain people that we're meant to serve in this world. Not kinda sorta supposed to because they're in the target market that we've cleverly chosen. It doesn't work that way. I don't know why else we're here unless it's that we're supposed to help certain people in this world connect with other people. Whether that's by volunteering or building a business or whatever, it doesn't matter.

My feeling is that what we're supposed to do is search very hard for the people that we're meant to serve and the only way we can do that is by bold self expression. The more self expressed we are, the more the people we are meant to serve can see that we are meant to serve them. If we water ourselves down, they cannot. And the more self-expressed we are, the more we're going to push away the people we are not meant to serve and that's a good thing.

So what about blogging? Does that fit in here?

Yes. The most successful bloggers are the most self expressed. Sometimes I think it goes too far in that [some] bloggers are trying to rile people up, saying the most provocative things to get the most attention so they get sent around in a viral fashion. That's not what we're trying to do. But the concept of radical transparency is different.

It suggests that the companies that are the most transparent are going to do the best because nowadays, you can find out anything about anybody, right? And so, one of the blogs I read is Mark Cuban, who is extraordinarily transparent. This is one of the reasons he is so successful and people follow him. He's letting people see what he's really all about. It potentially leads to high level of accountability and credibility through that. Big businesses have always shunned that but the small businesses, the ones that are most successful, are often very radically transparent. That's why I'll talk about what I'm doing at anytime no matter how it makes me look even if the stuff I'm doing isn't working. But that gives me more credibility because people know nobody is perfect.

How did you make the decision of branding Michael Port over branding your company?

I wasn't sure at the beginning. It depends on what kind of business you're creating. I was creating an information-based business that was based on me speaking in public, me leading coaching programs, and me writing books. I needed to build a very meaningful brand identity around myself.

Through that process, I've been able to systematize what I do and bring in other coaches to do it as well. But I think it's very hard to develop an information-based business without some individual or individuals to base it on. Over time, if you look at some of the Dale Carnegie courses for example, they've moved past one individual but it takes a long time to do that. If you look at most of them, they're based on somebody and you grow it from there. If I wasn't building an information-based business, I wouldn't do it like that. The reason Booked Yourself Solid works for people is that they're having a conversation with me, not a third party. You need somebody to believe in if you're going to engage in that kind of personal journey. As you grow, you do more collaborative projects. You can transfer some of the good will to others then.

What's next for you?

I'm working a new book, Beyond Book Yourself Solid. When you get booked solid, you say "this is insane! I can't keep up with this forever!" You have to build the confidence to go to the next level. It's about how do you take what you've done and leverage it so you can make more money while working less while serving more and more people to the best of your ability.