Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business [Hardcover]

David Siteman Garland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 7, 2010

Save time and money in building, marketing and promoting your business

With huge recent shifts in the way enterprises are built, marketed, and monetized, these are "wild west" times for business. In this new landscape, entrepreneurs and small business owners actually have an edge in marketing without spinning their wheels or going broke.

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper gives you an innovative, approachable new guide on how to market, promote and improve your business drawing on real world examples and offering practical advice as opposed to fluffy theory. It presents a complete roadmap for marketing and promoting your business with the latest techniques.

• Draws from author David Siteman Garland's extensive experiences as a successful entrepreneur
• Based on countless interviews with successful leaders, including conversations with entrepreneurs and owners of businesses large and small
• Strategies and ideas are easy to understand, digest, and immediately put to use

From learning when to skimp and when to splurge to mastering the art of online schmoozing, Smarter, Faster, Cheaper will save you time, money, and aggravation whether you're building your tenth business or your first.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"State of the art nuts and bolts for the modern marketer."
—Seth Godin, author, Linchpin

"A great read for passionate entrepreneurs looking to market their businesses by inspiring, educating, and entertaining."
—Tony Hsieh, #1 NY Times bestselling author of "Delivering Happiness" and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

“In his smart and practical book, David Siteman Garland shows how to deploy your personality, passion, and knowledge to turbocharge your marketing. This no-nonsense guide will help entrepreneurs large and small spread their message and build their business.”
—Daniel H. Pink, author of DRIVE and A WHOLE NEW MIND

"David is energy, passion, and execution rolled into one package. Bet against him at your peril. David Siteman Garland is a trust agent and future king."
—Chris Brogan, NYT Bestselling author of a Trust Agents

“David brings to business marketing something that is essential to your success, motivation and passion. The stories and lessons shared here are rich with real advice wrapped in vitality and proven through experience. Take this book and go earn your success!”
—Brian Solis, author of Engage, the complete guide for businesses to build, cultivate, and measure success in the social Web

“If you love to spend buckets of money on traditional ads and you can’t wait to cold call sales prospects then you don’t need this book. But if you’re looking for no-nonsense ideas on reaching buyers, then read this book right now. It’s a fast read because Garland is non-boring.”
—David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR

“If you're in to boring marketing books take a pass - this book reads like an enthusiastic success coach urging you to greatness.”
—John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine

From the Inside Flap

We're in "wild west" times for business. Thanks to social media and new technologies, customer-brand relationships are suddenly wide open and up for grabs. Big players are getting taken down, while upstarts are starting up, gunning for market share, and outmaneuvering the Goliaths. So, just when a rethink might seem in order, why do so many act like it's 1982 all over again? Why do they believe product pushing still works? Or still think dumber, slower, and more expensive is the way to engage customers these days?

If you're interested in building, marketing, and promoting your business with agility and grace, not sloth and dullness, get Smarter, Faster, Cheaper. This one-stop guide to the new entrepreneurial landscape—minus the "same old, same old" baggage that drags so many down—gives you real-world examples (as opposed to fluffy theory) from unique, winning innovators, inspiring you to think big and then take successful action.

In Smarter, Faster, Cheaper, you'll meet a slew of already legendary new entrepreneurs and promoters, such as "Nametag Guy" Scott Ginsberg, Bravo's "Millionaire Matchmaker" Patti Stanger, Wine Library founder Gary Vaynerchuk, bestselling author and Squidoo founder Seth Godin, and many, many more. As you learn from their successes and failures, as well as those of author and entrepreneur David Siteman Garland, you'll discover fresh and exciting approaches to:

• Becoming a trusted resource

• Building your audience and community

• Helping others while helping your business

• Using your content as a handshake

• Creating and growing one-on-one relationships with your customers

• Communicating effectively online and via social media

• Avoiding "selling" by educating, inspiring, and entertaining instead

• And more!

Inertia is a powerful force, and many professional marketers and business owners still think "more of the same" is the best way forward. Not you, though! If you recognize the new movement in marketing and promotion, discover how to make your business Smarter, Faster, Cheaper today and win!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (December 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470647922
• ISBN-13: 978-0470647929
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #386,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Entrepreneur, mediapreneur, speaker and author David Siteman Garland is the Founder of The Rise To The Top, The #1 Non-Boring Resource For Building Your Business Smarter, Faster, Cheaper and upcoming author of Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business (Wiley Publishing). He writes/hosts RISE, a a web show for entrepreneurs, forward-thinkers, business owners and marketers, as well as The Rise To The Top TV show on ABC.

His philosophy is simple: Money follows passion and not the other way around.

After starting and stopping several unique entrepreneurial adventures and dabbling in everything from radio to hockey, David became frustrated that he could not find a great resource (that wasn't a snoozefest) where forward-thinkers could learn more about building, marketing and promoting their own businesses by being smarter, faster, cheaper as opposed to dumber, slower and expensive. What was missing was a new kind of TV and web show, one that was entertaining and educational, and that was part of an online hub that resonated with forward-thinking entrepreneurs and others that struck out on their own without multi-million dollar budgets.

Since such a show and website didn't exist, David decided to build it himself by investing all of his savings, time and energy to create from scratch a TV show, online resource and community of entrepreneurs and marketers.

Like many ventures, The Rise To The Top was born through brainstorming in a coffee shop. David shared his idea for the show with friends, successful business owners and creative types, all of whom thought it was a great concept. The Rise To The Top quickly attracted a wide and varied fan base, including not only the targeted demographic of those in their 20's, 30's and early 40's, but also more "mature" viewers.

The show and web resource now has over 100,000 monthly viewers with a big focus on interviews and picking the brain of top entrepreneurs, forward-thinkers and authors including Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library), Chris Brogan (ChrisBrogan.com), Tony Hsieh (Zappos), The Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger, Seth Godin and many others.

He has been featured on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, City TV, My Network Television, as well as on KMOX and in Alive Magazine, The Riverfront Times, Ladue News, and St. Louis Magazine. He has no idea why he has become a media magnet so early in his career, but he's certainly not turning down interviews and requests for videos.

David contributes as a writer and business/entrepreneurial commentator to CNN, CBS Bnet, Small Biz Trends, The St. Louis Business Journal, Personal Branding Blog, Speaker Magazine, Small Business Monthly and Great Day St. Louis. He was recently selected by Speaker Magazine as one of the Hot Speakers Of The Year.

He also has guest lectured at Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis University and Fontbonne University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Taking The Customer Engagement Game to the Next Level, December 6, 2010

By 

Carol Roth (Chicago, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business (Hardcover)

Ok, so there are a ton of books popping up out there on content and customer engagement, but David Garland takes it to the next level in this easy to read (and understand) fun and valuable book.

Mixing a bevy of concrete examples ranging from Gary Vaynerchuk to Patti Stanger (The Millionaire Matchmaker), this book perfectly taps the humanization of brands trends by breaking down what works, what doesn't and how you can implement strategies "smarter, faster and cheaper". He shuns the "old school" mentalities in regards to marketing and makes a solid case for using content, relationships and expert status to get consumers to know, like and trust you/your company.

Here are some particular takeaways that I found helpful:

-The breakdown that the Internet is made up of just three things- content, people and products and how to make the most of that formula.

-Using Interviews to Establish Relationships: As David notes, interviewing can be an amazing relationship builder, as it forges a more meaningful connection between you and the person you are interviewing. David uses his own example of The Rise to the Top and how he used authenticity and a local approach to start and get more referrals and step up to the big names.

-Using a collaborative approach: The book explains nicely how the business mindset has recently changed. Before, the common thought was that if a business was directly competing with you or targeting the same group of customers as you, they were viewed as an enemy. Now, there is a lot of power in teaming up with competitors and viewing them as an ally. You both gain from the relationship, building together to reach a bigger audience.

The Importance of Content: In this social media era that we now live in, creating content on both your own sites, as well as on other sites, is key to marketing your brand. He offers great tips about making your content unique, authentic and distinctively recognizable as your own- a marketing avenue that small businesses have a big advantage over bigger businesses in. Good content will spread, which is an important step in becoming the person/company that consumers "know, like and trust".

A strong marketing reference for the new media age.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of ideas and inspiration for your business, December 9, 2010

By 

Howard B Mann - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business (Hardcover)

David Garland has built a very successful business by using all of the new tools available to all of us. And in the process he has interviewed many of the top thinkers and doers in business today.
This combination of what has worked for him personally combined with the lessons learned by asking (and listening) to what has worked for others is what makes his new book so great.

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper - Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business is a savvy and quick read (As most business books should be). As David points out early on, his goal is not to tell you what to do. Instead, by giving you a set of well articulated ideas of what has worked for him and others, he hopes to spark the ideas that will allow you to connect the new tools of social media, branding and PR to the goals of their business.

Now, there are a lot of books by various "experts" on social media,etc... What I liked most about the book was the way the material was presented. Think no-nonsense conversational style vs. complex schemes and formulas.

I also appreciated his focus on the need for every business to first figure out their passion and personality. The forgotten reality that business is and always will be human. Too many businesses want to skip over this critical step and then wonder why their non-human attempts to engage through new media are not successful. If you are willing to let out the personality and humanity of your business then the tools and ideas David explains will prove very valuable.

The book covers video, marketing, community building, web site strategy and, I thought, a particular useful section on a better way to attack PR.

I was fortunate to receive an early copy because David was generous enough to host me on one of his popular webcast interviews. If the book does nothing else but turn you on to the great conversations he consistently hosts on his site it was well worth the price.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Fluff Here: Great Book For Any Entrepreneur, December 1, 2010

By 

Jeff Rose - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business (Hardcover)

Length:: 3:23 Mins

I had the pleasure of meeting David at one of his "Rise" Entrepreneurial lunches up in St. Louis and I'm here to say that HE IS LEGIT. I was so pumped to meet him, that I filmed my own thoughts on what it takes to become an entrepreneur.....while I was driving. Kids, don't try that at home. This guy is a firecracker and he knows his stuff.


I was smart and pre-ordered my copy and got it just in time to read it over the Thanksgiving weekend. Let me tell you, this book is IT. For any inspiring small business owner with an entrepreneur bug, this book is for you. David shares many great examples of every day folks that were able to follow their passion, do what they love AND make money doing it.


If you are a dinosaur and want to continue to do things dumber, slower and more expensive, DO NOT buy this book. Keeping pumping dollars into your newspaper ads and billboards. If you are a "scrappy entrepreneur" (as David would say) that has an interest in social media and wants to be inspired by other entrepreneurs that HAVE done it, then add this to your bookshelf today.