the weekly giving hour & stealing a TV show, 3 secrets, 2 links, 1 quote

Reader,

**TOMORROW @ 11AM PST/2PM EST**

Kary Oberbrunner is the most knowledgeable person I know on protecting your IP, intellectual property, as we head into 2026.

He even presented on IP protection to the USPTO on a special panel which was later presented to Congress in a 2024 report.

I’m grateful to have Kary joining our ShelfLife community tomorrow morning for a free session on making sure your IP is protected as an author.

Just reply to this email to reserve your free ticket.

I learned today’s secrets from current Before The Bestseller resident guests and authors of Lead It Like Lasso, Marnie Stockman and Nick Coniglio (part 1 out this week, part 2 coming next week).

Marnie and Nick were two total unknowns who wrote a Ted Lasso-inspired leadership book, set a “let’s-see-if-this-works” goal of 25K sales in year one… and somehow hit 38K.

3 Secrets:

1. The giving hour

The two biggest sales days for Before The Bestseller (so far) came from 2 book marketing influencers endorsing my book in their newsletters (Ricardo Fayet, and Dave Chesson).

300 sales in one day.

$0 in ad spend, $0 admin fees paid, $0 in any type of payment to either of them…

In fact I made money that day.

Yes, no money was exchanged to make it happen…

It was paid for with 5 years of “networking”.

NETWORKING – the word alone makes people scrunch up their faces at the thought of fake relationship building.

BUT, as you see above, the “value” of networking can’t be overstated…

It would have cost over a thousand dollars easily to move those copies but instead 2 friends made it happen for free.

Okay so what exactly is the secret here?

Previously mentioned, Marnie Stockman, calls it her Friday ritual. Let’s call it “The Giving Hour”.

It’s your new weekly ritual to un-slime the word networking.

Here’s how it works:

You pick a day and time each week and just listen. You listen to what the people you want to connect with are posting on their social media profiles. You pay attention to anything you’re uniquely suited to help with or ways to add value to their life based on what they’re saying.

Here’s how it worked for Marnie:

During her giving hour, Marnie saw that the host of the top Ted Lasso podcast just got the same dog her co-author Nick. She had just finished knitting Nick’s dog a sweater and thought, “I should knit one for him too”. She did, and it was the perfect way to lead with something she knew the host would enjoy.

When you put it in perspective, would you rather spend 4 hours a month building genuine relationships or spend AT LEAST $1,000 to market your book. In this case, time is literally money.

2. The tiny podcast approach

“I don’t have the time to go on a podcast with 10 listeners”

Marnie and Nick (who are well on their way to selling over 100,000 copies) did.

Marnie’s thinking is that even if each of these small podcasts only have 10-20 listeners, it’s their ticket to seeding themselves in these little pockets across the world.

They used the previously mentioned matchmaker.fm (not .com lol, that’s a dating website ;))

For Marnie and Nick, it’s 50 small shows and counting.

3. Leveraging an existing audience

Don’t have an audience when writing your book?

Can you position your next book to steal the audience of an existing fan base?

Or as Marnie and Nick did, steal the audience of a whole TV show!!!

In my interview with Marnie and Nick, I dive deep into how Marnie and Nick made Lead it Like Lasso based entirely off the fictional characters in Ted Lasso to explain their approach to leadership.

Their thinking is that this strategy would make them inherently interesting to a few million people vs. screaming into the void trying to get someone to pick up your work. It also made them inherently interesting to a lot of Ted Lasso-specific fan shows and platforms where people discuss the show. An inherent blueprint on how to market the book-anywhere fans of the show existed. The book was essentially launched with a very specific marketing strategy simply relating to a TV show people already love and adore.

Part 2 of their interview (dropping next week) covers all the relevant copyright laws with Marnie so you can make sure you’re not doing anything illegal.

2 Links

Before writing Lead It Like Lasso, Marnie and Nick built and sold an edtech company for eight figures in just three years without a single sales rep. In this episode, Nick and Marnie sit down to share the story behind their unconventional success. Listen here. Next week, we’ll talk with them about how they sold almost 40K copies in their first year as authors.
Every author (who fits the criteria) should apply for a BookBub feature every 30 days. It’s one of the few email lists that still moves copies. We apply all of our authors for it every 30 days as it can take 20+ applications to get accepted, but boy is it worth it.

1 Quote

“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” — Libba Bray

with love and sincere appreciation,

Alex
BeforeTheBestseller | ShelfLife
alex@getshelflife.com

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