These are people who not only can pull levers to expose our book to lots of people, but they are also people that we want to know about and think highly of our company.
Investing $9.42 to get the book to a person with leverage seems wise to me. When I mail a book in an envelope like you see in the picture, it gets the person’s attention and forces him to make a decision on our book. The envelopes are large and hand-addressed, so I’m confident each person will open the envelope and see the book and the personal note I included. At that point, each recipient will either A) decide to read the book or B) decide to give it to a colleague or a professor or C) decide to put the book aside for future consideration. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there is a fourth option “D” to throw the book away. It’s a 322 page book, not a brochure.
Yesterday I sent a book to seven different hospitality school deans and presidents. I look forward to finding out what happens. I hope they’ll tell their colleagues and students about it. If so, maybe a professor will feature it in her curriculum one day. Maybe another will invite me to come speak to his class about key lessons I learned from the owners I interviewed. Maybe students at lots of schools will soon start using Restaurant Owners Uncorked as a reference tool as they plan their dream restaurants. Maybe it will help somebody succeed when he otherwise would have failed. If any if these happens, our book will have served two of its purposes, by helping people succeed as restaurants owners and helping us build our brand in the restaurant community.
Or maybe nothing will happen. I have no idea. But I like spending $9.42 to find out. It’s more fun (and I would argue much smarter) to spend hundreds of dollars to send our book to dozens of people who will most likely read it and do something meaningful with it, than it is to spend thousands of dollars to send an email to thousands of people who will most likely delete the emails and move on.
Wil