Latest / Author Hour / Mario Simonyan: How He Never Ran a Book Ad and Still Distributed 10,000 Copies

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Mario Simonyan: How He Never Ran a Book Ad and Still Distributed 10,000 Copies · Author Hour

• speaker-0: Number one, understand where your objective is. Why are you writing a book? Right. For some people, it may be what I'm thinking, what what I want to say needs to be out in the world. That's fine too. All right. But understand what steps come after that. For example, with me, like I mentioned, mine was never to sell a billion copies. It was to use it as an authority piece. And that's what I've been using it for. I knew from day one how it's going to be used, and that's how I've been using it four or five years later. So understand what you're going to be using it for. Once that's done. you guys could do let's say eighty percent of of the rest of the heavy lifting. Right. You just need to be sort of a participant in the in that car. But you guys will drive, make sure everything's on track. But as long as they understand why, right, then the rest is very easy, thanks to you guys. speaker-1: Mario, thank you so much for joining us on other hour. speaker-0: Thank you, Eric. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. speaker-1: Before we get into the book and the story of the book, would you give us like a sixty second kind of personal bio background? Sure. speaker-0: Sure. In law school, I started selling on Amazon, built that business, law school. I'm I'm done with law school. And then I passed my bar. I still have the two brands that I created while in law school. So I remember at that point everyone asking me, like, when are you gonna get a real job? Right. And I was like, This this is a real job. This is a business, right? And at the at that time, I mean, this is maybe about twelve years ago. At the time, people didn't look at building brands on Amazon as a serious business. So Things change when I sold when I sold my brands, my Amazon businesses. And then they're like, wait, tell me what you do again? Right. It was one of those. But after that, we went ahead and started this law firm. And for the past eight years, we actually celebrated our eight year anniversary, June first of this year. So a couple of days ago. Congratulations, thank you. And what we do is we help out brands, brands that have an e commerce presence. And have infringers or unauthorized sellers that are stealing their sales or stealing their ideas. So that's what we've been doing for the past eight years. speaker-1: Interesting. And ⁓ for people unfamiliar with this problem, I know enough friends who work in this space to know that this is a huge and extremely painful problem. I mean, people lose their livelihoods that are d you know, ten plus years of work into through these copycats and Amazon is not, in my experience, particularly helpful in shutting them down. So I imagine there's no shortage of work. speaker-0: Absolutely. Well, we've we've definitely been blessed. I not to pound myself on the back, but I think we're one of the best at what we do. And Amazon is the main marketplace where most of these copycats and most of these infringers will go to because it's the largest marketplace. But what we've noticed is once we remove them from Amazon, they're not just magically gonna disappear, Eric. They're going to Walmart and now TikTok, right? eBay. So it's definitely a problem and it's not getting any better and I don't think it'll ever get better, but at least there's people like us who who are able to help these brands recover. speaker-1: Wow. So you're eight years into this business, this firm. When did you first get the inkling that a book w should be part of your your career? speaker-0: Yeah. I've I've always wanted to write a book. speaker-1: Okay. Even before you were like a lawyer, even before you had this business. speaker-0: I I don't know exactly when, but in my head, like I've always wanted to do it, right? And no one in my family has has done it. And I've got two young boys, seven and eight years old, Leo and Nicholas, right? And one thing I always preach to them is if something seems difficult is because you don't know people around you that have done it. But when people around you have done something, it just becomes so much more accessible, so much more like easy to accomplish, right? So say that's one thing that I wanted to not do only for the business, but also for for my kids, right? But I'm super glad that I did and we could get into this later, but I'm actually planning my second book. speaker-1: ⁓ incredible. Yeah. I I ⁓ I often ask and I think for the same reason the first book feels like climbing a mountain, but once you've done it, you're kinda like, ⁓ I I understand how it works. I know I've done it once. I learned a lot about how to manage myself through the process. I think I could do that again. Yeah, it becomes a little addicting. speaker-0: Absolutely. And and to be honest with you guys, I mean, you guys did a great job in helping someone like me who's a new author, first time author, go through the process. So if I were doing it alone, I think I would still be writing that book or working on that book four or five years later, you know? Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, it's easy to get lost in the woods when you're out there by yourself. But to your point about, you know, just put yourself in a situation where what seems impossible is normal. You know, we we we publish hundreds of books a year. So, you know, there's no there's no doubt when you're kind of talking to people from our team, it's like, yeah, no, we we've seen it all, we've helped people overcome everything. Like you're gonna get this book out, and that confidence counts for a lot, even before you get to kind of the the systems. speaker-0: And and again, we we had a pretty tight timeline on at that at that point, Eric, I was like, okay, I'm gonna dedicate X number of hours per week to this, right? And I stuck to it and your team as Scribe did a great job of number one, keeping me on track, but number two, being able to sort of maintain that timeline and honor that timeline. So that's something that four or five years later I still remember. speaker-1: Fantastic. So yeah, tell me about the story of the book. What was the first kind of version of the idea? When did you actually start working on it in earnest? speaker-0: So the whole book I I wanted to write about the experience that Amazon sellers go through. This was sort of like, Hey, I'm an attorney, I know intellectual property, but most of the clients that we were getting at the time, they didn't understand IP. So it's sort of like IP one ⁓ one for Amazon sellers, anyone that's going to be selling on Amazon and the issues they may face on Amazon and sort of what are common solutions that they could try on their own without even needing an attorney and when to reach out to an attorney. And obviously, some more stories from us. speaker-1: Yeah, but the but the war stories are good. Did that vision change dramatically or were you pretty close to yeah, the final product is pretty close to your original idea? speaker-0: Yeah, it was pretty close. I I was pretty clear on what to what to write about. speaker-1: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean it a lot of times when we see authors who are like, Look, I've been having this conversation all day, every day in my day job, you know, there's not a lot of conflict about what goes in the book and what doesn't. You've got a super clear niche. You have the stories, you have the experience, you know who you're talking to. And this is a great example of like no niche to niche. You know, I think people are often surprised by that. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean what we're doing, there's probably three other attorneys or two other attorneys that do it in the world. So definitely a niche down. speaker-1: And have either of them read written a book? speaker-0: I I don't know to be honest with you. Yeah. I d I don't know. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. This is a great example. Like if if you are a seller on Amazon and if you are having IP issues, there's suddenly no more important issue in the world. Like it's an existential threat to the business. And there's one book written about it. And so when you go searching for experts in this subject or searching for guidance and you find one person who's really like written the book on this niche that can help you solve your most important problem, this is an incredible example of that to me. So so tell me about Like I I I feel like there'll be lots of good stories here. What what were your expectations of how the book what the book would do for you and and what has it actually done for you? speaker-0: So I I n I never released this because I wanted to be a New York bestseller or I wanted a million books sold, right? But the main reason I did it was to build authority was this was gonna be my my business card, right? And that's really what I've used it for, Eric. Is I think any book you you give you gift to someone, right? They're not gonna throw it away. Like if you think about it, when was the last time you threw a book away? You may donate it, you may give it to a friend, but you'll never throw it away. Where if you go to a conference and you're handing out business cards, how many conferences have we been to and how many business cards have we stuffed in our pockets or or in those bags and just you get home and throw it away, right? But we've we've ⁓ we've used this book as if we're mailing out to potential clients, providing a copy of that book, a hard copy in there, or giving away just emailing the PDF to potential clients, you know, that are in the US and we're not gonna mail it to them, just emailing it to them. So that's what we've used it for. Is our our business card. Yeah. speaker-1: let's get let's get r real detailed on that because I think there's a lot of people who who have this similar use case. Like are you you're you're approaching conferences, you're speaking at conferences, you're or you're just going to a conference with like five books in your in your suitcase. Like what's the playbook for for conferences? speaker-0: So at conferences, we we we tried all of them, right? So if you're speaking at a conference, obviously it'll be mentioned on the slide or presentation and you may have a few copies. But worst case scenario, even if you're not, even if you don't have any copies on hand at the conference, or even if you ran out of copies, I think being able to be like, ⁓ I know what you're talking about. I actually wrote about this. ⁓ here's the Amazon link, right? Or here's the link to to the book. I cover it in chapter five. I think what's important is They know that now you wrote a book and automatically you get this certain level of respect, right? They're gonna look at you differently. It's like, I know, I know your problem. I actually wrote a wrote a book about it, right? Six volumes. speaker-1: Yeah. I it's it's also like you know, if you get a chance to speak at a conference, I think it's awesome to like put a book at every place. And not everybody takes it, but way more than half take it. And then for the whole rest of the day, people are like walking around carrying your book and everybody's holding it. And if you can assign them so much the better, 'cause even fewer people are gonna more people are gonna take them and fewer people are gonna throw them away. And then you've got that like physical artifact in their office. You know, it's sitting on the shelf or it's sitting on their desk and it's just this like tangible reminder of of you and your name and their expertise, ⁓ the expertise the the solution that you can offer them. speaker-0: Exactly. So one of the conferences I was speaking at in Brooklyn, ⁓ we actually had the books g given away to all the attendees at the welcome desk as part of their welcome gift. And ⁓ a few weeks later someone emailed me, goes, I didn't know you wrote a book, but I have it in my hand and he had emailed me, right? So it's like that's something that you said, an artifact that's gonna last forever. speaker-1: Yeah. And and do you how much do you focus on selling these books like at conferences or on Amazon versus just giving them away? speaker-0: I I don't look at this as a revenue source. I particularly don't. Like I mentioned, my intention was never to sell a million books or anything like that. It's here to help the business generate leads, you know, get qualified leads. Right. That's really what we use it for. Yeah. speaker-1: And and how do you use it to to qualify leads or once somebody's kind of already got a relationship with you? Are you sending them out to people that have had introductory meetings? speaker-0: So what we do is if we're doing like a cold email a cold letter, right? So if we're sending it out to potential clients that we know that hey, you guys need help, but they've never heard of us. So we'll let we'll have a letter go out via USPS and then inside it is gonna be a copy of my book. Right. So that's one way. Number two, if my team is having sales consultations and they're like, Hey, would you like a copy of the book or something comes up and they're like, Hey, we actually cover that in this book. Mario covers it in this book in chapter three. And then they'll say, Would you like a copy? or I or I could send you a PDF. Based on whatever they select, we could even either mail it to them or obviously send them a PDF copy. speaker-1: That's awesome. How many of those do you think you how many copies do you think you give out per year? speaker-0: This year today, probably around a thousand two. speaker-1: thousand year to date? Yeah. Okay. So I mean we're we're recording this in June. So we're at like it'll be, you know, two thousand plus copies for the year probably. speaker-0: Year to date. If if we maintain this space, absolutely. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. That's awesome. And for for reference, like, you know, I'm looking at the Amazon listing now. This book has like twelve reviews on Amazon. And so it it's it's not like screaming bestseller. It's not on a it's not on a list or anything like that. How how much how closely are you able to track the the impact or the ROI of the book on on sales or do you you don't work too? speaker-0: Yeah, sales we don't pay attention. Like even on Amazon, like we've never ran ads to Amazon, like, hey, buy my book. Here's my book. We've given away a lot more copies than actually sold copies. Right. And again, doesn't mean that you're not going to get sales. Every month I'll get an email from Amazon saying, Hey, we're sending you a check for this amount. It's never a big amount. But again, that's never that was never our intention was to sell this book or or to sort of be a bestseller. speaker-1: But okay, we're three years out from publishing now, a little more, three and a half. And if you've done this, you know, you've probably given away bit close to ten given away and sold a combination close to closing in on ten thousand copies, you'd say? speaker-0: W total? Probably, yeah. speaker-1: Total, yeah. Yeah. So like you know, near in four years. What impact has that had on the the law firm? speaker-0: We we we keep growing. I don't know if that's ⁓ that's ⁓ an impact of of the book itself or just the market itself needs needs our services, right? And I'm sure like most things it's it's a combination of of everything. But we've we've been well and we've we've been definitely blessed and like I mentioned, looking to write a second one with you guys. speaker-1: Nice. What what's your thinking about how the second one what it is what's the frame of the second one gonna be? So speaker-0: first one what when you're writing a book, it's it's it's it's your first time obviously, right? But it's like you don't know exactly what to write and how how to write in and sort of what to include, what not to include. So I do feel like with my first time, not enough of my personality and my background and some personal facts came in. So with the second book, I think including a lot more of that, but then really focusing on brands that are doing five million to a hundred million and what issues they face and what solutions are out there. So focus more on that. But I was talking to ⁓ my CEO earlier today and ⁓ I had pr sent him something, goes, I see the outline in the book already. Right. I was like, Yeah, that's exactly what what I see too. So I'd send him some document about like an order story that I'm working on. That'll probably be the first part of my second book that I that I write. But that's that's definitely learned a lot going through the first time. And I feel like the second time it's gonna be number one, easier, but also a c even better product. So that's why it's like goal is to get it done by the end of this year. speaker-1: Nice. I like it. Another another tight timeline. So from your first book, what was you know, looking back over the last few years, what was the biggest moment of of celebration for you? What was the high point? speaker-0: ⁓ seeing it on ⁓ on Amazon, the listing itself finally going live 'cause that's when you know it's like everything's done. 'Cause in what once you're once you're done drafting, there's still like the marketing pieces you gotta put together and stuff you gotta do, right? But I feel like when it went live on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and everywhere else, that's where I was like, it's done. That was like the finish line. speaker-1: Yeah. It's it's done. speaker-0: Yeah, I still remember. Very exciting. speaker-1: That's so cool. Yeah, it gives you gives you chills and it gives you something to look forward to on the second one, you know, crossing that that finish line. speaker-0: I I'm I don't know if the sa if the second one will be as exciting, right? Like n n nothing is better than the first time, right? Anything. So second one, I think it's it's it would probably be a different feeling if if I were to sort of just if I were to just look forward. I mean like just imagine that scenario, right? It's like the second book is now live. I think it's a different feeling. I think it's more of accomplishment and less excitement and more more understanding of what's to come. Right. So it's like I know when when my second one is out, I would be giving out more of the second books than the first one. All right. And maybe you think that's natural, but I I think it's also a pivot of where our our law firm has has gone. Where it's like we've evolved too. We're no longer focused on on the sellers that are just entering the market and not aware of IP. This one, the people we're dealing with, the brands that we're dealing with now, the clients. They're a lot more sophisticated. So the book has to also represent that. speaker-1: Yeah. It's a great refinement of your sort of target audience as your business grew and the experience that you've got. ⁓ I think that's a really that's a smart approach. A lot of times some of my favorite stories end up being these like doors that open that you didn't even know were there, like opportunities that sort of arise organically as a result of the book being out there and having just like a little more surface area in the world. Have you had any ⁓ like unexpected good things? happen as a result of your book being out in the world, new invitations, surprising connections, small world moments, stuff like that. speaker-0: I I don't know if I could attribute any of them specifically to the book, right? If if if we're being honest. And there's obviously there's been been a lot of amazing things that that have happened, but I don't know if I could attribute any of them to to the book. I think the way I look at the book is number one, I knew exactly what it was going to be. It was going to be my my business card, building authority. But in addition to that, I knew that this isn't like the silver bullet that takes care of every other problem that I've had. There's still work to be done. And this is just one piece of it. speaker-1: Yeah, it's it's been a it's a great pillar on your website too. I think you did a good job integrating it into your you know, it shows up if I go I Google your name, it shows up in the panel. It's like prominent on the website. You got it behind you. I hope every day, but certainly today in the video. Every day. Okay, good. Yeah. speaker-0: Again, it's also a conversation starter. Right. Instead of me grabbing it from from my bookshelf over there, it's like, ⁓ yeah, okay. I'm gonna send you a a free copy of this, take a look at it, and and I'll tell you where to read, but we we cover it. speaker-1: How how did you, you know, if we could rewind, you know, I know this is like maybe four or five years ago now, how did you decide to use Scribe in the first place? speaker-0: Well, number one, I I knew I knew that I wasn't gonna do it alone, right? I'm I'm mature enough in business to know that if if I'm gonna be doing something for the first time, I need to hire professionals. But as far as how I found you guys, ooh, this is going back a long time. I think I'd heard about you guys on a podcast and I can't remember which podcast it was. But back then I think Scribe was called Book in a Box or something. speaker-1: ⁓ early days, yeah, long, long time ago. speaker-0: That's yeah. Again, I've I've been around for a while, right? But but I think that's that's how I found out about you guys, Eric. speaker-1: Cool. Yeah. It it's it's fantastic. We're delighted to to play a part in getting this book out in the world and so glad that it's been paying dividends for you for for years, you know, four years out now and and good on you for still using it daily, you know, ⁓ weekly. Like a lot of authors, I think, treat it like a treat it like a launch and not integrate it into their daily process and teach their teams to use it and give it out and continue to reference it. So I give you huge credit for Just persistence and consistency in making it pay itself back. ⁓ you know, that's that's a great work. speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. I have I'm zero regrets, like I said. I'm definitely planning on doing a second one. And it's just another tool in any business owner's toolbox. And if you're not going to use it, then obviously it's not going to be worth it. But there's plenty of ways to use it, right? I'm just using it in one specific way. But there's a million other ways you could do it. There's people that wrote books and are are doing book tours, right? You guys know. You guys are the experts of that. So there's a million ways to use it. It's all comes down to the owner. The author and how creative they could be. speaker-1: How did you get your team on board with using it? I thought that was a good thing that you referenced. Does every new ⁓ you know, employee of yours read this book? Did you train your sales team, you know, to reference it and and send it out on their own? speaker-0: So everyone gets a copy of the book, PDF and obviously the physical book, but as far as how we train ⁓ to use it, we just told them they gotta use it. It's as simple as that. It's not obligated. Yeah. speaker-1: All right. So for for authors who are maybe six years past ⁓ in the past where you were just considering it. They have always wanted to write a book, they're not sure if this is the right time, whether to take the leap. What advice do you have for somebody who's just considering starting on their book? speaker-0: Number one, understand where your objective is. Why are you writing a book? Right. For some people, it may be what I'm thinking, what what I want to say needs to be out in the world. That's fine too. Right. But understand what steps come after that. For example, with me, like I mentioned, mine was never to sell a billion copies. It was to use it as an authority piece. And that's what I've been using it for. I knew from day one how it's going to be used, and that's how I've been using it four or five years later. So understand what you're going to be using it for. Once that's done. you guys could do let's say eighty percent of of the rest of the heavy lifting. Right. You just need to be sort of a participant in the in that car. But you guys will drive, make sure everything's on track. But as long as they understand why, right, then the rest is very easy. Thanks to you guys. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that's a very good point. You need you need to have a clear vision. Because if you got a clear vision, you can teach all of the other the smaller decisions, the creative decisions become clear. And we we like to say like you're you're on the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt will move, but like you'll reach these checkpoints, these decisions that ultimately you have to make because you are the owner of the book and we want it to represent you and achieve your goals for you. And but as long as you, you know, as long as you keep making decisions and don't quit. Like your book will be great and it'll be out in the world and we will not let you publish a bad book and we'll make sure it's professional and represents the very best of you. But it it does, you know, it takes a clear vision and a clear goal to feel good about the decisions you're making. Otherwise you're kinda, you know, building a camel by committee, as they say. speaker-0: Yeah, and plus if if they've been thinking thinking about it for a while, then something is probably there, right? There's something in the universe that's pushing them and saying, Hey, you need to write this, you need to write this. And there's probably a feeling and a thought that th they may sort of mute for a while, but it keeps coming back. So if that's where you are, just just make make the jump, right? Make the decision. And the rest will will be a lot easier after the first decision. speaker-1: All right, Mario, thank you so much for for taking the time. Is there anything that you consider to be important author wisdom or book knowledge that you have that we didn't hit on yet today? speaker-0: I I th I think we covered most of it and like I said, all of it comes down to making the first decision. If you've been thinking about it, go ahead and pull the trigger, right? Get on board and do it and the world will be a better place with with your book out there. There's never been a book that's out there that sort of made the w made the b world a a worse place, right? speaker-1: ⁓ I love it. I couldn't agree more. Or where can people find you, follow along, hire you, pick up the book? Where would you send ⁓ speaker-0: Sure. So our website is esco dot com. That's E S Q G O dot com. Or you could find me on LinkedIn, Mario Simonian. speaker-1: Okay. Awesome. We'll link to everything down below. The book is on the corner of IP and Amazon. And follow Mario 'cause he's got another book coming soon. Thank you so much. I'm gonna shoot this to a few friends who are in need of your services. And if you work with authors and books, we got some work for you there too. speaker-0: Very civved. I love it. We we've got some clients that are that are authors too. speaker-1: Awesome. Thank you, Mario.