They Are Buying You

You probably know Suze Orman as an author, speaker and television personality.

But you might not have heard the story of how she moved from garden variety financial advisor to best-selling author…

In 1995, still largely unknown on the national scene, she penned her first book “You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It”. She pitched it to a wide group of the usual big publishing houses, but not one was interested.

Eventually, a small publisher who had met her in person decided to publish it and gave her an advance of $10,000. Suze’s only concern was getting enough copies for her clients and prospects.

But once she had the book in hand, she got creative. She went on QVC (whose pre-Suze book sales were limited to cookbooks) and sold over 800,000 copies in hardcover. Suddenly she realized that the audience was buying her.

And when she decided to write her second book “The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom”, the very same publishers who had turned her down before started a bidding war.

While there is an interesting sidebar story about why she stopped the bidding at $800,000, it was clearly a turning point that changed the trajectory of her career, her brand and her platform.

We can pull several morals from this story, but the one I like best is this: her audience wasn’t just buying her advice, they were buying her.

It’s true for her—and it’s true for you.

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