It’s been 10 years since I wrote my first and still my favorite book. I was faced with the challenge of deciding if I wanted to write a new book or update the original.

I finally decided that this book was still relevant and its concepts were solid, but some information had become outdated or irrelevant, however, that did not make the whole book obsolete enough to want to start over.

So here we are!

At the time, I wrote the original (2013-2014), I'd spent the last decade-plus running a marketing business that started because I was fired from my second job in two years.

In 1999 I was headhunted for a position as a marketing manager for Arther Andersen. I had been working for a media production company that bought my recording studio business, and that relationship had started to wither and run its course.

At that time, website tools were just starting to come into the picture. Google was new to everyone as a search engine and advertising platform. It was a time when we were building CD-ROMs, Flash animations, and other leading-edge media that do not exist today.

Social media had not been born or become mainstream yet.

We had recently built a new custom house and moved to a different city for that Arthur Andersen job, which lasted only a year.

Then, I quickly found myself working for a suburban ad agency as their only digital and online specialist.

A year into that job, I had a heated verbal spat with their sole salesperson, who immediately ran to the owner to tattle on me. Once again, I was unemployed.

I remember feeling sick, having to come home and tell my new wife that I had just been let go (for the second time in two years), and I had no idea what was next.

It took both of our five-figure jobs to support our lifestyle and kids, and I just cut that in half. I started looking for jobs in the Sunday Chicago Tribune. This was before Monster, Indeed, or LinkedIn killed the classified ads. I had experience but lacked a marketing degree, putting me at the bottom of most resume piles.

My degree was in electronics. I had built multiple recording studios, moved and rewired a video production facility, and I had years of experience as an audio engineer and producer, and video shooter, editor, and producer. It was an odd mix that was becoming passe with the recent explosion of digital audio and video editing and computer-based systems.

On top of all that, my wife said, “You can never play in the corporate sandbox again.” She was right, I was way too entrepreneurial to survive or thrive in a cutthroat and backstabbing corporate life.

I was resolute, yet scared that I needed to start over and build my own business. I wasn't successful before. But, I'd always made enough to keep things afloat, but usually at the cost of taking on too much debt to pay myself a sub-standard wage.

I took the Arthur Andersen job because it was paying me nearly twice what I ever paid myself or had earned working for others. I thought I won the lottery, but life had different plans.

The Birth of B2b

Although I was depressed, struggling, and unsure of myself, I was determined to rebuild. I opened B2b Interactive Marketing, Inc. In August 2001, I never looked back.

With a Blueberry iMac, a printer, and a CD/DVD burner, I started making interactive business card CD videos for small companies. Then, I bought a CD/DVD duplication tower and started to build up a duplication business.

That kept me going for a few years. But then YouTube, Google, and Facebook started to change the way people were communicating and promoting their businesses. Email marketing was becoming mainstream and starting to take business by storm.

Next, the Apple iPhone was introduced in 2007, and the marketing business was changed forever — or was it?

The Teacher

I've always been an avid learner. When I built my recording studios, I read books, and magazines and watched videos about studio design, acoustics, and cutting-edge techniques.

In the 2000s, as technology was changing at a rapid pace, I was heading to the library and searching for information about social media, email marketing, and online marketing techniques.

I started my blog in 2006 to share what I was learning with people in my community. My early posts were just plain bad. Yet people read through the terrible grammar and typos to learn more about how to use iPhones and apps for marketing.

I was promoting the use of online tools to reclaim the attention of audiences who were dumping subscriptions to shrinking newspapers and magazines.

People started to reach out to me. They invited me to speak at local networking events and even teach as an adjunct professor at community colleges.

The Birth of this Book

Through my speeches and blogs, I started to see the beginnings of my first book. After six months of organizing, rewriting, and help from an editor, designer, proofreader, and more, I gave birth to BACON.

I would love to report that I became rich and famous (which I dreamed of while going through the process). But alas, I was still a struggling small business owner trying to scrape by on a modest living.

Now, I was being invited to speak to bigger audiences at conferences, yet I never achieved that fame and fortune.

I sold my first 1000 books that first year by selling them in the back of the room at presentations. That helped me break even from the expense of producing the book. Yet I still had so much more to learn.

I developed courses, wrote more books, and even took a stab at business coaching, but I found that no matter how much I taught people, very few would implement and benefit from my experience.

Another factor was that the landscape of online marketing was changing incredibly fast. It was a constant struggle to keep up with current trends without building new presentations and revising multiple courses every month.

Fast Forward 10 Years

As I looked forward to the 10th anniversary of writing this book, I was looking back at how much has changed.

New social media platforms have emerged (TikTok, Clubhouse, Threads) and disappeared (Google+, Vine, MySpace, Blab).

I also discovered that this book's foundations have not changed. As a matter of fact, I believe the 2020 pandemic has strengthened the concept of Relationship Marketing. People long for authentic, empathetic, personal relationships after being cooped up in their homes and working remotely.

I am not talking about dating apps. Those are just social media platforms where people try to self-promote their best selves. I am talking about in-person meetings and one-on-ones that allow us to grow, emote, and engage.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) has burst into the mainstream in 2023 with the likes of Open AI's ChatGPT, and so much more. I am sure portions of this book have been scraped and added to thousands of articles, books, presentations, and more.

What has not changed is the principle that people do business with people.

What has changed is that I now run a successful agency that focuses on Business-to-Business marketing. Consumer marketing can be very transactional, while B2B is built on trust and personal relationships.

10,000 Hours

Over the last ten years, I have become an expert. I say that humbly yet with conviction.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book “Outliers,” makes the case that success is not as magical or haphazard as we have previously romanced about it. He makes the case that real genius and expertise come with practice. Specifically, many of the most successful people we revere were actually a product of them spending 10,000 hours working toward becoming successful.

Over the last ten years, I have consumed thousands of books and podcasts. I have also spent at least 10,000 hours working in, on, and around marketing.

I have focused on how that works in the last five years, especially in the B2B business. By working with business sales teams and helping them build better relationships with current, past, and prospective customers, Relationship Marketing has helped them sell more with less effort.

Marketing has always been about story, connection, and relevance. Whether you deliver it through snail mail or email, social or in-person networking, the relationship matters.

Trust has to be built and earned. No amount of advertising can make someone in a B2b business put their job on the line to buy your products and services.

Throughout those 10,000 hours, I have continued to learn about humans, their nature, and emotional intelligence. These concepts have helped humans since we began to stand up on two legs and thrive by building relationships.

Relationships that are fundamentally built on trust are what have been motivating us to change, take chances, learn, stay alive, and become better human beings!

It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you’ll be.
~ Malcolm Gladwell

Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.