Stop shouting. Start talking. A marketing note for authors and coaches.

I was on Motivation Monday with Eric F. King, Leah Garcia, and Zion Inaugurary recently. The topic was how to attract customers and grow a business. When it was my turn, the first thing I said was the thing I find myself saying to clients every week.

"Don't be that person. Don't be the one screaming and shouting as if you're on a megaphone at everyone who walks past."

A lot of what passes for "marketing" online right now is that megaphone. Post, post, post. Boost, boost, boost. Shout into the feed and hope something lands.

I get why authors, coaches, and founders do it. It is what most of the gurus told them to do a decade ago, and they are still doing it. The problem is the world changed and the playbook did not move with it.

The principles have not changed. The application has.

Principles of marketing from 1995 and principles from 2025 say the same thing. Get to know your customer.

What has changed is that for the first time in history, "get to know your customer" is not a slogan you put on a slide. It is something you can actually do. Your customers are on social media every day. They are telling you, in public, what bothers them, what excites them, what they are stuck on, what they would pay money to solve.

For years we all said "we know our customers". In truth we had no clue. Today you have a chance to really know them. If you take the chance.

If you have to sell, you have already lost

Here is what I told the room. If you really talk to your customers, you never have to sell.

Selling gets hard when you are a stranger asking a stranger for money. Selling gets easy when you are the person who has been showing up in their feed for eighteen months, writing about what they care about, answering their questions in the comments, and being useful long before there is a product to pitch.

That is not a hack. That is the whole game. And it is the reason I build every Global.Media engagement around relationship and audience before we ever touch a launch.

The 100% rule

I said something on the episode that I want to put in writing too. If you want customers to come to you, you are going to have to post 100% of the time about what they want, what they like, what bothers them, their problems, their solutions, their interests.

Not 70% them and 30% you. Not "value posts" punctuated by "book a call" asks. 100% about them.

Does that sound like you disappear? It does not. Because when you write about their world well enough, they can see you clearly inside it. You are the person who understood them first. When they are ready to buy, they come looking for the person who understood them. Every time.

Build a community, not an audience

An audience watches. A community shows up.

Eric's Motivation Monday room is a community. The same friends turn up every Monday. It gets bigger and bigger. When someone in that room needs a coach, an author, a financial strategist, they do not go to Google. They turn to their left.

That is the bar. Do not build an audience. Build a community of people who know you, like you, trust you, and recommend you without being asked.

Treat the DM like a golden egg

One last thing I said on the episode and want to underline here. If a customer ever DMs you, do not spare the niceness. Treat that message like the golden egg it is. Give them first-class service. Not because it is a conversion tactic. Because it is the whole point.

The customer who feels cared for tells three people. The customer who feels processed tells nobody, or worse, tells nobody for the wrong reason.

---

Watch the full episode below. For the practical version on book promotion specifically, see How to promote your book on LinkedIn on Global.Media.