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

Transcript

Mario Simonyan: Number one, understand what your objective is. Why are you writing a book? Right. For some people, it may be what I'm thinking, 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 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 80% of the rest of the heavy lifting. All 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. Mario, thank you so much for joining us on author hour.

Eric Jorgenson: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Before we get into the book and the story of the book, would you give us like a 62nd kind of personal bio background? Sure.

Mario Simonyan: 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 going to get a real job? Right. And I was like, this, this is a real job. This is a business. Right. And at, at that time, I mean, this is maybe about 12 years ago at a time, people didn't look at building brands on Amazon as a serious business. So. Things changed 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 1st 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.

Eric Jorgenson: 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, you know, 10 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. Absolutely. Well, we've, we've definitely been blessed.

Mario Simonyan: 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, cause it's the largest marketplace. But what we've noticed is once we remove them from Amazon, they're not just magically going to disappear, Eric. They're going to Walmart and now TikTok, right? eBay. So it's definitely a problem. 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 are able to help these brands recover.

Eric Jorgenson: Wow. So you're eight years into this business, this firm, when did you first get the inkling that a book should be part of your career?

Mario Simonyan: Yeah, I've always wanted to write a book.

Eric Jorgenson: Even before you were like a lawyer, even before you had this business.

Mario Simonyan: 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 it's like, 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 can get into this later, but I'm actually planning my second book.

Eric Jorgenson: Oh, incredible. Yeah. I, uh, 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 kind of like, Oh, 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. It becomes a little addicting.

Mario Simonyan: 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. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Jorgenson: It's easy to get lost in the woods when you're out there by yourself. It's 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've seen it all. We've helped people overcome everything. Like you're going to get this book out. And that confidence counts for a lot, even before you get to kind of the systems.

Mario Simonyan: And again, we, we had a pretty tight timeline at that, at that point, Eric, I was like, okay, I'm going to 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.

Eric Jorgenson: 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?

Mario Simonyan: Yeah. So the whole book, 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 101 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.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. But the, but the war stories are good. Did that vision change dramatically or were you pretty close to the final product is pretty close to your original idea.

Mario Simonyan: Yeah, it was pretty close. I was pretty clear on what to write about.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that makes sense. 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 get 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.

Mario Simonyan: 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 niche down. And have either of them written a book? I don't know to be honest with you.

Eric Jorgenson: Well, I don't know. 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 the 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 feel like there'll be lots of good stories here. What were your expectations of how the book what the book would do for you? And what has it actually done for you?

Mario Simonyan: So I never released this because I wanted to be a New York bestseller or I wanted a million bucks sold. Right. But the main reason I did it was to build authority was this was going to be my, my business card. All right. And that's really what I've used it for. Eric is I think. Any book you, you give, you give to someone, right? They're not going to 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 U S and we're not going to mail it to them, just emailing it to them. So that's what we've used it for is our, our business card.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, let's get real detailed on that, because I think there's a lot of people who have this similar use case. Are you approaching conferences, you're speaking at conferences, or you're just going to a conference with five books in your suitcase? What's the playbook for, for conferences?

Mario Simonyan: 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, Oh, 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 going to look at you differently. It's like, I know, I know your problem. I actually wrote a wrote a book about it volumes.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. It's also, 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 sign them so much the better, because even fewer people are going to, more people are going to take them and fewer people are going to 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 solution that you can offer them. Exactly.

Mario Simonyan: So one of the conferences I was speaking at in Brooklyn, we actually had the books 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 as you said, an artifact that's going to last forever.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. And do you, how much do you focus on selling these books? Like at conferences or on Amazon versus just giving them away.

Mario Simonyan: 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 and get qualified leads. All right. That's really what we use it for. Yeah.

Eric Jorgenson: And how do you use it to, to qualify leads or once somebody has kind of already got a relationship with you, are you sending them out to people that have had introductory meetings?

Mario Simonyan: 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, we'll have a letter go out via USPS and then inside it is going to be a copy of my book. All 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, 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.

Eric Jorgenson: That's awesome. How many of those do you think you, how many copies do you think you give out per year?

Mario Simonyan: this year to date probably around 1002.

Eric Jorgenson: A thousand year to date, 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, 2000 plus copies for the year.

Mario Simonyan: If we maintain this pace, absolutely.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. That's awesome. And for, for reference, like, you know, I'm looking at the Amazon listing now, this book has like 12 reviews on Amazon. And so it's, it's not like screaming best seller. It's not on a, it's not on a list or anything like that. 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 hard on that?

Mario Simonyan: 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. All 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 best seller.

Eric Jorgenson: But I would say 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 a bit close to 10 giving away and sold a combination of close to closing in on 10,000 copies, you'd say. With total probably. Yeah. Total. Yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, near in four years, what impact has that had on the law firm?

Mario Simonyan: We, we, we keep growing. I don't know if that's a, that's a, 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.

Eric Jorgenson: Nice. What's your thinking about how the second one, what are the, what's the frame of the second one going to be?

Mario Simonyan: So the first one, 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 it 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 5 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 sent him something that goes, I see the outline in the book already. I was like, yeah, that's exactly what I see too. So I sent him some document about like an origin story that I'm working out. That'll probably be the first part of my second book 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 going to be number one easier, but also even better product. So that's why it's like goal is to get a 10 by the end of this year.

Eric Jorgenson: Nice. I like it. Another, another tight timeline. We better, we better get after it. 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?

Mario Simonyan: Uh, seeing it on, uh, on Amazon, the listing itself finally going live. Cause that's when you know, it's like, everything's done. Cause once you're, once you're done drafting, there's still like the marketing pieces you got to put together and stuff you got to do. Right. But I feel like when it went live on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and everywhere else, that's where it's like, it's done. That was like the finish line. Right. But that, that moment I remember very exciting.

Eric Jorgenson: 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 finish line.

Mario Simonyan: I don't know if the second one will be as exciting, right? Like nothing is better than the first time, right? Anything. So second one, I think 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. It's more of accomplishments and less excitement and more, more understanding of what's to come. All right. So it's like, I know when my second one is out, I would be given out more of the second books than the first one. All right. And maybe you think that's natural, but I think it's also a pivot of where our law firm has gone, where it's like we've evolved to, 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.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. This is 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 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?

Mario Simonyan: I don't know if I could attribute any of them specifically to the book, if we're being honest. And there's obviously 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 where 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.

Eric Jorgenson: And this is just one piece of it. Yeah. It's, it's been a, is 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 Google, 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. Okay.

Mario Simonyan: Good. Yeah. It's also conversation starter. All right. Instead of me grabbing it from, from my bookshelf over there, it's like, Oh yeah. Okay. I'm going to send you a free copy of this. Take a look at it. And I'll tell you where to read, but we cover it.

Eric Jorgenson: How did you, you know, if we could rewind, you know, this is like maybe four or five years ago now, how did you decide to use scribe in the first place?

Mario Simonyan: Well, number one, I knew, I knew that I wasn't going to do it alone. Right. I'm, I'm mature enough in business to know that if, if I'm going to 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.

Eric Jorgenson: Oh, early days. Yeah. Long, long time ago. Yeah.

Mario Simonyan: Again, I've been around for a while, right? But I think that's, that's how I found out about you guys, Eric.

Eric Jorgenson: Cool. Yeah. It's, it's fantastic. We're delighted to play a part in getting this book out in the world. And so glad it's been paying dividends for you for, for years, you know, four years out now 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 a great work.

Mario Simonyan: Yeah, absolutely. I have 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 that are doing book tours, right? You guys know, you guys are the experts in 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.

Eric Jorgenson: 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 send it out on their own?

Mario Simonyan: So everyone gets a copy of the book PDF and obviously the physical book. But as far as how we train them to use it, we just told them they got to use it. It's not complicated. Yeah.

Eric Jorgenson: All right. So for, for authors who are maybe six years past in the past where you were just considering it, they 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?

Mario Simonyan: Number one, understand what your objective is. Why are you writing a book? All right. For some people, it may be what I'm thinking, 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, as an authority piece. And that's what I've been using 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 80% of the rest of the heavy lifting. All 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.

Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's a very good point. 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 like to say like, 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 wanted to represent you and achieve your goals for you. But as long as you keep making decisions and don't quit, your book will be great and it will be out in the world and we will not let you publish a bad book and we will make sure it's professional and represents the very best of you. But it takes a clear vision and a clear goal to feel good about the decisions you're making. Otherwise, you're building a camel by committee, as they say.

Mario Simonyan: And plus if they've been 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 they may sort of mute for a while, but it keeps coming back. So if that's where you are, just make the jump, right? Make the decision. And the rest will be a lot easier after the first decision.

Eric Jorgenson: All right, Mario. Thank you so much 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?

Mario Simonyan: 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. All 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 world a worse place, right? I love it. I couldn't agree more. Where can people find you, follow along, hire you, pick up the book? Where would you send them? Sure. So our website is esco.com. That's E-S-Q-G-O.com. Or you could find me on LinkedIn, Mario Simonian.

Eric Jorgenson: Okay. Awesome. We'll link to everything down below. The book is on the corner of IP and Amazon and follow Mario because he's got another book coming soon. Very soon. Thank you so much. I'm going to 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.

Mario Simonyan: I love it. We've got some clients that are authors too.

Eric Jorgenson: Awesome.

Mario Simonyan: Thank you, Mario. Appreciate it.