The Reluctant Marketer

I'm a software engineer. In our language, we have a term called "technical debt". It occurs when someone has created a piece of software with barely enough effort.

That developer has created "deferred rework". Someone will need to work on that same piece of software again later – to make it easy to use, testable, portable, or secure.

Software people think of this as a form of "debt" that needs to be repaid. If you continue to defer the necessary rework and begin to build new software on the flawed piece, you create a risk.

The risk is like interest on the debt. It accrues over time. One day the program will break, and you will have to repay the debt all at once!

Yesterday, I realised that as solopreneurs we do the same in marketing. We love to build lots of stuff, but we ignore the necessity to market what we build. If you don't market what you build, you create a kind of "marketing debt".

In German, my native tongue, the word for debt ("Schulden") is the plural form of the word for guilt ("Schuld").

As solopreneurs we feel indeed guilty of not doing enough marketing. We know exactly that we won't sell anything if we don't do the necessary marketing.

With my new book, I set out to free solopreneurs of that guilt. I realised I should rename the book, and the promise that it makes.

So this is what my new book will say on the cover:

GET OUT OF THE MARKETING DEBT

Business owners: Learn how to do just enough marketing to make your business thrive and get back to the work you love!