A Ten Year Retrospective on the Manifesto

David asks Blair some awkward questions to get inside his head about his successful book, The Win Without Pitching Manifesto.

Sketchnote by Emily Mills

Transcript

David C. Baker: Blair, it's not hard to get you to talk about things you love.

Blair Enns: We're talking about me, aren't we? Is this episode about me?

[laughter]

David: The excitement rises. It's like, "Oh my God. It's like Christmas. We get to talk about me again." No, but let the record reflect the fact that this was my idea. This was not your idea. I said, "Hey, can I interview you about the book?" just because I love dragging myself through the mud, and what prompted this is, for some strange, very bad motivation, I went to Amazon and I looked up your book and I was kind of blown away at how many reviews there were. Well, I was even more blown away that they were five-star. I wasn't surprised there were a lot of reviews, just that they were five-star.

Blair: What book are we talking about, David? I've written so many.

David: Yes, right. The good book you wrote The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, which is about 10, 11 years old. That book has had such a massive impact on this field. I can't tell you how many times I've talked with somebody and it comes up that they've read that book. I just wanted to get inside your head about it. This is a good time. Maybe in eight years, we'll do the same thing about pricing creativity, but I'm going to ask you some awkward questions. Are you ready for that?

Blair: Oh, yes, totally.

David: All right. We're going to dive back into your early childhood first. When did you first come up with the idea to write the Win Without Pitching Manifesto and how much time passed from when you had the idea to write it and when you actually finished writing it?

Blair: I don't know. I don't know the answer to it.

David: It's just starting out so well, this interview. Yes.

Blair: I'm a horrible writer of books. You write books effortlessly.

David: So much better too.

[laughter]

Blair: On every dimension except sales.

David: Right. If my books weren't so honest, they'd be as popular as yours.

Blair: That's a great David Baker answer.

David: Writing doesn't flow easily, but you're a writer. You're clearly a writer. You'd written something before, it was that long manual. I can't remember the name of it. I still have a copy of it. Then you wrote this book. Did you think of that first thing as your first book or was this your first book?

Blair: I thought of my first book as my first book, which is the manual that you have that just says Win Without Pitching. It has the old Win Without Pitching logo on it. We refer to it as the Win Without Pitching Manual. When I launched Win Without Pitching as a consulting practice in 2002, I thought, well, I'm going to write down everything I know, and a co-author I was working with, and we just put all of this onto paper and I thought, "Okay, this is the framework for my consulting practice, this is most of what I know about the field of agency new business development, and my point of view on how to win without pitching."

Then I thought, "Well, let's package it up as a book, put it up for sale on the website," and I charged $990 a copy, so I think of that- I did for years as my first book, and I think I told the story not too long ago, I was speaking in Edinburgh a couple of years ago and the talk was being done in an agency and it was a guy who'd grown a successful agency and had sold it recently to one of the big consulting firms. At the end of that talk, I was thanking him for hosting the event. He said, "I have your first book upstairs," and I said, "Oh, the Manifesto." He said, "No, the blue book." "Oh, can we go get a picture? Because I don't have one." I don't even have the electronic files anymore.

David: Oh, I've got two, I think. I'd be glad to send you one.

Blair: Yes. You made that offer a few times. I know where to go get them if I ever want to find them. That was the first book, and then when the Manifesto hit the market in 2010, I quit selling that book and it just went away. I refer to the Manifesto as my first book, but there was one that went before. It was more of a manual.

David: What led you to write the book? Not so much what you've seen, the good that's come from it, but before you actually published the book, what led you to write it? Was it a quest for knowledge? Was it updating some of the stuff that you had in that manual before? I'm also struck by the difference in format. One is a very comprehensive step-by-step manual that lays everything out and the Manifesto is more of a call to arms. It's a manifesto like you titled it, and it's so different. What was all your thinking around that?

Blair: To back up to your first question, what was the impetus for writing a book? The impetus was the pressure that anybody who has kind of a knowledge-based business, who's an independent consultant, feels to publish a book. I felt that pressure immediately. I did self-publish that manual initially, and that took some pressure off for a while, but I felt this pressure to have a more- not broad-based, but far-reaching more accessible book.

I felt that pressure for years, and I'm glad I resisted until I had not only something to say, because I always felt like I had something to say, but a point of view and a tone of voice. I'm a big fan of manifestos. Some of the inspirations for that book were Confucius and Nietzsche. I love this aphoristic writing style. These short, pithy, truce- lofty tone of voice. I've always been struck by those books, and for a long time, I've wanted to write one.

The origins of the Manifesto as a book, originally, it was a blog post. Back then I called it a newsletter. I think it was the end of the year in 2008, I wrote the post 12 Proclamations for a New Year. I thought I would try on this manifesto-ish tone of voice in this blog post. I was the most nervous I'd ever been about publishing content when I posted that to the website and hit Send. I remember thinking, "Highly likely this is a mistake. It's going to seem silly." Then slowly the feedback started to come in and people were telling me, "I've printed that out and mounted it on my wall." It was only probably two or three months after that post went out that I realized, "Okay, this is the book."

David: This is a question I've often thought about. I think I know how to answer it, but I'm not exactly sure. I'd be interested in your perspective on this. What is it that resonates with people? Here you have somebody who's working in a 10 or 30 or 2-person firm. They're in a third-tier city. They pick up a book. They don't know you, they read this thing. What is it that they feel that draws them to the message of the book? I've often wondered, is it, "Oh, finally, somebody who believes in me, and I need to start standing up for myself and understand the value of what I do," or is it something else? Why does it resonate so much with people?

Blair: I always say that your thought leadership people will come for the content, but they'll hire you for the ideology. You're looking for one of two reactions to the ideology or the point of view or perspective, so it's not so much the material, what you're covering, but it's your point of view on it. The two possible reactions that you're looking to get are, number one, we are ideologically aligned. We think about these things the same way. You are my guy, gal. You're my person. We are ideologically aligned. Number two is I've never thought of it that way before. That's interesting work. You convert people to your ideological point of view, so it's one of those two reactions.

I think both of them worked. I think there were a lot of people in the creative professions and still are who hoped that there was a different way that you could do this, who imagined that it might just be possible to actually show up in the sale with some integrity, exhibit some backbone, say no, stand up for yourself and still win the business. The Manifesto was meant to be a "Yes, you can" book. I wanted you to be able to read it in two or three hours, put it down, and be convinced that you could do this.

There's not a lot of how-to in there. Some people have been able to extrapolate a fair amount of how-to. One of the first pieces of criticism I got from a friend who read it after it came out was, "You don't tell me what to do in the book." It wasn't really the goal of the book. When I think of the manual that I first published and my more recent book Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, both of those are "Here's how to" books, "Here's how to do it". I really wanted to get people's attention with the ideological point of view.

David: When I think about the impact that it has on people, I picture them almost ready- maybe not to give up, but they're a little dispirited. Like you said, they can hang on to who they are and still be successful. As an industry, it seems like we undervalue ourselves regularly and you have the outliers who don't, but as an industry, generally, you can see that in how much we push back, what we charge, and all of that. This felt like a cry to see the value in what you're doing and let it show up in the money.

It's a great example of a manifesto. A manifesto doesn't explain how to do it, right? It's just, what should we do? I always think of Martin Luther nailed to the door when I think of a manifesto. The impetus for this was the blog post and there were 12 in there. When you look back on it, this is just a curious question, but do you think that you would pick the same 12? Can you name them all, or is that more just a convenient way to structure a book, a literary form?

Blair: I thought 12 was the right number. I don't remember how I came up with it. Part of me always wanted to write a 12-step program. The 12 that I ended up with in the book weren't the original 12 in the blog post. I don't even know if that post is still around somewhere. Must be somewhere. I think two, three, or four changed, and a few of them may have moved in order. Can I name them? Probably with some prompting. I could probably name them all, and I might be able to get the order. I re-read it recently because I did this 12-part series with Christo on Clubhouse, and most of that's being published to his YouTube channel The Futur, with no E on the end. Yes, it's refreshed in my mind.

David: This was written to a particular audience. If a different audience, say, another branch of the professional services read it after you had changed some of the language, would it be as effective if it were changed and modified to that audience, or is there something about the creative marketing, advertising, digital, design, that whole umbrella? Is there something about that target that makes this book uniquely resonant to them?

Blair: I think so. I think it's uniquely resonant to a creative professional although it has a broader appeal. I'm often saying the target is smaller than the market. The target is that which you aim, the market is that you're happy to hit. When I wrote the book, I imagined a designer. Sometimes I would imagine she might have two or three people working for her, but I just imagined a designer. That was my audience. I knew I would go narrow and hoped it would have a broader appeal.

Ironically today, 11 years later, the training that we do for companies that are outside of that area of focus, and the number of people who show up to public workshops who are outside of that area of focus, it might be as high as 20% now. The mistake, and I've had a lot of people suggest and outright cajole me to try to do this, but I see it as a mistake, would be to broaden out to try to change the language, or write the same book for a broader audience. I've said this before, I don't feel like I'm an expert in selling. I feel like I'm an expert in the peculiarities that make selling difficult for a creative person.

Then there are a lot of creative people or people who share characteristics of creatives for whom the message resonates. I'm aiming at the audience that I know, and love, and want to support. If others outside of that target find resonance in it, they're welcome, but when it comes to the material in training, et cetera, it's up to them to bend our material to their business in any way that their business might be different than our target market. We are always teaching to the creative firm.

David: When I ask people to put things on their website, either client criteria or service offering, how we personalize it, all that stuff, they're often nervous because they think maybe a competitor will read it, and then they'll lose a step. They won't have as much competitive distance with the firm that tries to copy and learn from them. I don't hear people talking about that with a book because the book carries with it so much more impact, at least temporarily.

That's another question I want to ask you later about the impact of books. You decided to give away a lot of information, and tens of thousands of people have benefited from it without giving you anything more than whatever Amazon's cut is of it. Then you went beyond that, and you actually let people read it for free. Have you ever second-guessed those decisions about giving away so much information?

Blair: No. I'm going through that with the next book that I'm working on. As a rule, after the last book, I don't talk about the next book.

David: [chuckles] Because talking about the last one was so bad.

Blair: I'm going through that because it's a different type of book, and that's all I'll say. This is me as Martin Luther nailing my theses to the church door. That's what it was. It was like me putting my point of view out there in the world. We've got some training around positioning and expert lead generation that follows on that positioning because they build on each other, and one of the modules we had is, "Nail your thesis to the church door."

It doesn't have to be a book, it can be a 400-word blog post, but you have to put your point of view out there in the world. If you do, if you have a point of view, and you put it out there in the world, it's going to make everything so much easier. There's nothing in there that I felt like I was giving away that I was worried that others would pick up on.

David: Unlike maybe the next book, or the one before that, the training manual.

Blair: Yes.

David: How successful has this book been at building your platform and giving you more opportunity to have impact? Obviously, it's been good, but do you have a way of quantifying it? Obviously, you know how much money the book made itself, but what other influences do you think? I'm asking this question because a lot of the people listening have either written a book or they're thinking about writing a book, that's one of the questions they have. I don't think anybody's hoping to get rich from the book itself, although it's probably done pretty well for you.

Blair: One of the ways this really worked is because it's an ideology book, this is our point of view, it was my point of view back when it was just me, when it was published. Now, it's our point of view. It's become a really powerful tool in the sale. If somebody reaches out to us for training and previous to us being a training company, I was still a solo consultant, if somebody reached out and they weren't aware of my ideology, I would ask if you read my book. If they hadn't, that was the homework. Go read the book. You will be on board, and effectively, I will have no competitors. We will do business together or you won't be. It'll really be that simple. That's the most powerful thing.

It just reached- 40,000 people have read that book now. It's broadened my and our reputation, but from a sale advantage point of view, there's something to be said. There's a lot to be said for having a polarizing ideology and putting it out there into the world and letting the market select based on either ideologically aligned or I'm not. People come to us who are not owners of the business and say, "We really want to bring you in. What can I do to get my boss to bring you in to do some training?" The answer is always, "Give him the book or her the book." They read it. Great. If not, it's not going to happen. It's really that simple. It's a clear dividing line. You've read the book and you agree with the ideology, or you've read it and you disagree, or you haven't read it. Those last two, we're not going to do business together.

David: It's an efficient new business screening tool in a way and for those of you that don't know much about the publishing world, a business book published in Canada is considered a well-performing book if it sells 5,000 copies. In the US, it's 10,000 copies. A book that sold 40,000 copies, especially directed to a pretty niche audience, is considered a really successful book. Do you think books have the same impact now than they did 10 years ago? Where are we headed with that?

Blair: Yes. There's so many different ways that people get their information now. I'm biased towards books because I love to read books. I read a lot less blogs, we may have talked about this previously, but just a lot less. I listen to way more podcasts. I still read a large volume of books. To me, and it might just be a function of my age and everything's changing behind me, but I don't think so.

I think there's something in the medium that you don't get. You get other things in this audio medium, lots of other things, and it's great in its own way, but you don't stop, highlight, go back, reread the highlight, et cetera, slow down your reading, go back, and read the previous sentence the way you do with the book. I think the learning sticks more with the book. I think there's research that supports it, although I can't cite it. I'm a pretty big believer in the book being around for a long time.

David: I am, too. I faltered on that about maybe six, seven years ago, but it just seems to me like to have tremendous staying power. If I just summarize how I personally feel about books as a consumer, as a reader, the biggest thing that matters to me in a business book is that one person spent a lot of time on a particular codified idea. I may not agree with it, but I can be sure that they spend a lot of time thinking through this. That makes it worth me interacting with it. I probably read fewer business books than I used to. Now, I'm reading more other kinds of things, but there's just something about it. Has this book gone beyond English? I remember you talking about it at one point, but I never really checked on it.

David: Yes. I think you talked about- 40,000 is a pretty good number for this book. It's almost 11 years old. The most interesting thing about that number is annual sales have risen every year since it came out until the last year, 2020. When the pandemic hit, all book sales of both my books fell off a cliff. It's taken almost a year for them to get back to where they were, and now that line is on the upward trend again. If we take last year as an anomaly, the fact that a book is been in print with weak support from the publisher, my first publisher was crap- [laughs]

David: Yes, I know. I met him once.

Blair: Now you have to tell the story. You are my first publisher. Then you fired me. Your question was about language. It's only available on Amazon, and Kindle, and Audible. Then we also sell it in bulk hardcover, in bulk on our website. There's a French-language translation that was done by a friend of mine years ago. That's not even available on Amazon. I think you go to moneydesign.org, you can find it there. That's a sleeper copy. People have reached out over the years and said, "Hey, do you mind if we translate this into some language?"

I've been paid a small amount of money for it to be translated into Ukrainian and Hungarian, I think in maybe another language. They go away, I don't even know where they are for sale. It's been translated into Farsi and Arabic, but I've just granted permission. Somebody who translated into Farsi said, "Hey, here in Iran, I don't legally have to get your permission, but I want to ask it." I said, "Yes, go ahead, and just send me a copy." I think there's probably eight or nine of those more obscure languages where you can find it out there.

Currently, we are translating it into German. We are getting more serious about better global distribution through Amazon. Right now, even if you're in the UK and you buy it, you're buying it through a secondary reseller. You're probably paying 30 pounds for it and 10 pounds to ship it. In a few months, it'll be available across Europe in the hardcover edition in whatever market you're in at the usual price. It's being translated into German, Kindle, and hardcover version. Then we're going to Spanish. Because it's a timeless book, and I wrote it thinking it's going to be around forever, I've been really slow to do things like go to an Audible audio version of it. We've been super slow with language translation, but it keeps selling, so we're going to begin translating it. Then again, without giving too much away, the next book, we'll do all of that so much quicker.

David: Is it easier for you to right now that you've done so much writing, or is it still difficult?

Blair: Oh.

David: What's the process look like? Do you have a certain place you go to write, or is there a certain time of the week, or do you have to have a separate pen? People are curious about that.

Blair: Yes, the place is- I go to hell, and the process looks like this: Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, euphoria. That's the process. I like saying, "I don't know how to write a book." I've written two. I guess I've written three, but I can't tell you the process. I can't tell you how to do it because I just stumble through it.

David: But it's worth it.

Blair: Oh, yes.

David: Absolutely. You're a coy little fella. I don't know if this is all just a teaser or what, but can you tell us about the next-- Not the format, but can you talk about topic at all, or is that just need-to-know and not-needing-to-know at the moment?

Blair: Need-to-know and you don't need to know, my friend.

David: Yes, so that's it.

Blair: You know what it's not. I'll just say that.

David: I know what it's not.

Blair: I think you know what it is, but you're not allowed to talk about it either.

David: No timetable either, presumably. That would be an even worse question to ask.

Blair: Oh my God. I said publicly when the last book Pricing Creativity was gonna hit the market, I think it was 2.5 years late, so no timetable.

David: I got one last question for you. You're invited to give a TED Talk, not a TEDx thing, but a Ted Talk. I can get TEDx talks all the time, but nobody in their right mind is going to have me do a TED Talk. You're in a TED Talk, and you're introduced before your 18-minute speech, and somebody says, "Today, we have a treat for you. It's Blair Enns. Blair Enns has--" What is the mark that you put on this world that you and I serve? How would you phrase that?

Blair: The goal is, Blair Enns has changed the way creative services are bought and sold the world over.

David: You've actually focused more on the bought than the sold. Maybe you need to get those people.

Blair: On the sold, not the bought.

David: On the sold, not the bought. Maybe instead of lecturing you, I should just figure out what words mean first.

[laughter]

David: That's true. That has happened, right? It's so cool to think about when you know the people that have influence, but to think about all the people out there that you've never had any contact with, and they were just in a sales conversation, one of those four conversations, and it went so much better than it would have before because they learned something from either the training or the book. I don't know. I'm feeling a little bit sentimental at the moment, but thinking about- every one of us wants to have an impact somehow. If nothing else, we want our kids to love us, or our brother, or sister, or parents, and then it extends out from there, but the opportunity to change 40,000 people's thinking, and how that filters down to the better lives that they are living because they feel more in control of their destiny, is a really powerful thing.

There's got to be people listening to this who have a book in them that hasn't escaped yet. Of course, you've been really encouraging about the process. Pain, pain, pain. Who's going to write a book now? I just think it's a great story. It's a selfless sort of thing. Yes, you made money on it, but you bled. Every human only has a certain number of books in them, and then after that, and they don't grow back. You're taking out a part of your body when you'd write one, and it's got to feel great. I know it must feel great. I'm jealous. I think, "Wow, that book has been so impactful. I wish I'd written something like that."

Blair: Yes, maybe one day you'll write something worthwhile, David. Maybe you'll have an impact on people's lives. Give me a break. I appreciate that. Because it's an ideological book, there's more resonance there, right?

David: Yes.

Blair: You wouldn't compare it to the financial management of a marketing firm. It doesn't strike a chord in somebody's soul, the financial management book, but it does change people's lives, right? Probably more than the inspiration. They still have to do something after reading my book. They still have to figure out a path forward, but I am really proud of it. I think if this is it, this will be enough. I want more. I have so much more to say. The timing of this recording couldn't be better because, after next week, I'm largely out of the delivery business. I've largely let go of everything else other than content creation, so you watch me go over the next few years.

David: Thanks for letting me ask some pretty deeply personal questions, Blair. It's been interesting and fun.

Blair: I really appreciate you coming up with the topic. Again, I'm really proud of the book. Any chance I can talk about it, I'll take it, so thank you.