Make Marketing Suck Less

Today is cause for celebration over here at Communication Rebel headquarters because it has been one year since the 3 Word Rebellion book launched! Happy birthday book!

Frankly, I can't believe it's been a year already. I just re-read the book launch debrief 
post that I did last year and yes, all of those lessons and all of those takeaways still stand, but what I learned still stands, asking for help is always a must and I should have asked for way more help. And honestly, I'm still learning to ask for help in my business. I wouldn't wish Ingram Spark on my worst enemy and I still love doing podcasts interviews more than anything. It's such a great way to connect with other people, to get your work in front of new audiences and hey, if you'd like to have me on your podcast, feel free to reach out to me at any time (
hello@michellemazur.com), I'd love to hear from you because it is really one of my favorite ways to connect with new people. It's so much fun. 

So now that we're celebrating the first anniversary, we've hit some milestones. We've sold 1,200 books, there's about 50 reviews of the book on 
Amazon and in other places. I've gotten a one star review from someone who truly, truly hates the book, but even though they hated the book, it was kind of a cool one star review because they told me that it was a great framework and that you should go check it out on my 
website for free, which hey, if you don't have the money for the book, checking it out for free on my website is a great place to start and it's led to so many great opportunities to work with amazing people to speak on stages and I'm just grateful for the 3 Word Rebellion and I'm grateful to see how it has impacted the lives of others.

I'm grateful to see that you've been launching your own 3 Word Rebellions. And now I am in the marathon of book promotion because my rebel friend, if you are writing a book, you are promoting this baby for the rest of your life. And if it's not for the rest of your life, it's literally for the next three to five years because nothing breaks my heart more than seeing a business owner or a speaker put all of this work into a book and launch the book. And then you never hear them talk about the book again. And I feel like they treat it like it's a disposable piece of content when really it's not.

In our businesses we should be creating assets that we promote again and again and again, because this is a marathon and when we're building a business, we are running a marathon.

So what does this marathon of book promotion look like for me? And what can you learn from it?

So that is what we're going to be talking about today on the Rebel Rising Podcast, how to promote an asset that you've created, that you've poured your heart and soul into over a long period of time because patients and building something brick by brick, it takes time. There's no such thing as an overnight success. So how do we go the distance?

So before I talk about what I'm going to be doing in book promotion and asset promotion going forward, let's take a look back at the year that was, I always think it's important to review, to celebrate and see what things I would have done differently going forward. And here's the great thing. If you are a self published author or if you're creating any other kind of asset that you have ultimate control over, you can always change things. And that's an amazing, amazing thing.

So there are three things that I wish I would have done a little bit differently and two of them are personal things I want you to know about as business owners who as you get more visible in your business are just things you're going to have to deal with and prepare yourself for.

So the first thing I would have done a bit differently is I would have positioned the book a little bit differently.

My business that the book is supporting, that my message is supporting, is more than just about three words. Because the 3 Word Rebellion book has a very clear promise and wants to help you create a one of a kind message. And that is a great promise. It is a big promise for a book. But for the business Communication Rebel, we do so much more than that. We create all of the messaging you need to get those three words accepted.

So if you've been to any of my webinars towards the end of 2019 you might've heard me kind of poke fun of this a bit. I would talk about how when 
Simon Sinek came up with “Start with why”, it wasn't like he was on the street corners of Seattle saying “Start with why. Start with why. Start with why.” No, no. He had a whole host of messages that supported “Start with why,” he had the golden circle framework. He had stories, he had examples, he had research that supported his 3 Word Rebellion.

And for you that is what you need. And for me, when I first came up with a 3 Word Rebellion, I was like, oh this is really cool and now how do I get people to, except this thing that I just created. And that's where the whole
 ecosystem of messaging came in. So if I was going to do the book a little bit differently, I would have made sure I talked about the ecosystem more. It's definitely mentioned in the chapter about inciting incidents. I would've done more of that.

So that's the positioning lesson. I would've done a bit differently, but like I said, I can always go back and reposition the book if I want to do an updated version, which I'm going to talk about a little bit in a second.

Now,the other two more personal issues.

Number one, I would have had stronger boundaries around who I was going to accept feedback from about the book and who I wasn't.

When the book launched into the world as a finished product overall, the feedback was positive, but every once in a while someone would slide into my DMS as people do and say, hey, I noticed a typo in your book, and I'm the kind of person who was like, oh, okay, my baby's not perfect. Oh no, please tell me how is my baby not perfect?

I thought, well, you know, I can fix the typo once again, self published author, and so this happened once and the woman came back and she's like, oh yeah, I'll let you know what that typo was that I saw. Then a day or two later she came back and she was like, oh Michelle. The editor of your book, she did such a terrible job. And I'm like, what? She's like, there are so many typos in the first five pages. And little did I know that this woman was actually an editor herself.

I really felt later that she was positioning herself to re-edit my book. Like it was just a bad situation. And what I learned from that is I should only accept feedback from people who are in my inner circle because one of my best friends said to me, if there was an issue with the editing of your book, I would have told you, I would have told you long before it came out.

So having good boundaries in place are essential when you're launching big pieces of work into the world.

And the other personal lesson I would say is your own patience.

I still have the big audacious goal of selling 5,000 copies of this book, but that is going to take time. It's going to take investment and it's going to take a bigger audience. It's going to take many things.

I felt, when I first launched the book, very disappointed that I didn't sell more copies and being the overachiever that I am, I was like, how? How? How come it's not more popular than it is? Even though I had a very successful launch, the book was very profitable for me right away. And the thing is when we're doing work like this, we're innovative and we're launching something new and different into the world. We need more patients.

Once again, this is a marathon. It took someone like 
Mel Robbins and The Five Second Rule over 10 years to get where she is and she's a self published author too. It's going to take you, it's going to take me sometime. Patience, patience, patience.

All right, so those are my learnings. That's what I wish I could change. So what is next?

So here's a big rebel truth for everyone. The book, the 3 Word Rebellion concept and framework, it's still revealing itself to me. I am getting to learn more and more about the 3 Word Rebellion the more I work with it. And if you've been to some of my workshops, my webinars, you've probably seen how the concept has evolved since the book has come out.

For instance, I've developed a tool called the intrigue loop, which was partially developed out of necessity, but it's a freaking useful tool to help you assess whether or not you have a good and useful 3 Word Rebellion and don't worry, I'll probably do a podcast episode on it.

I'm definitely going to release a secret chapter about this, which I'll talk about in a second. I've also discovered a third type of 3 Word Rebellion, which I'll talk more about and that's kind of the nature of thought leadership. You are going to develop more thoughts about your thought leadership, especially if you are a creative and innovative type. Don't just think because you've published a book that you are done.

So yes. At some point there'll probably be a revision of the book, but I am going to take a lesson from 
James Clear because I think he did a really innovative thing with Atomic Habits and he is traditionally published, but recently he just released a secret chapter of his book and if you purchased a copy of his book, whether it was during his launch or if you just bought a copy of his book, you sent him the receipt or you got his toolkit and he would send you his secret chapter.

So I'm going to do something similar for the intrigue loop and the third type of 3 Word Rebellion relatively soon. So if you have the 3 Word Rebellion book and you haven't gotten the additional resources, the 3 Word Rebellion toolkit yet, I would definitely go do that 
here. That's where it's going to be released and I'll definitely be doina launch with it. I'm really excited to talk about these new tools because that's the great thing about being self-published, you get all of this control.

Another great thing is exploring ads because part of this marathon of promotion is not Facebook ads, but Amazon ads. If you are a self published author and you are not doing Amazon ads, you aren't doing your book a huge disservice. I was running ads last year with zero training, like just a couple of articles and with about $1,000 of investment and I sold about 115 books, but about two or three I believe of those books converted into clients, which is a pretty tidy return on investment. So I'm spending more time this year learning about Amazon ads and focusing on those because I want to up my Amazon ad game because it's a great way to get in front of new people who do not know me. So if you have a, if you have a book on Amazon, should be checking out some Amazon ads. Trust me on that 

I'm also going to continue with speaking. I'm still thinking about doing events and obviously you've heard me talk about building out an agency to be able to serve more people and help them create their 3 Word Rebellion and their messaging so that I can train other people to do what I do and scale in that way.

But for me the biggest takeaway is that I am focused on creating assets for my business. I'm done with creating disposable content.

I want to create content that makes an impact. Things that I can market again and again in my business. And as you grow your business, I challenge you to do that too.

Your action step for this episode is, if you haven't bought the book, please do that 
here. three wr book.com and if you bought the book but haven’t left a review, please do that as well too. But I do want you to think about what kind of assets you can start creating for your business. Is it a book? Is it a speech? Is it a webinar or masterclass? What is it that you can create that you can market for the next year or for the next two years so that you're not always in this frenzy of like, oh my gosh, I got to create something new. I got to put something new out there that you have something tangible that you can market again and again and again so that you have this predictability in your business because that is how you can grow. And that is how you can save your energy and put it into doing what you love, which is serving your clients, spending time with your family and friends, friends.

Lastly, tonight what I'm going to be doing is raising a glass with my hubby and celebrating the year anniversary of the book.