Connecting with celebs

How do you hook up with celebrities, or at least someone who is more famous than you? And how can you get them to promote your products and services? Here's an approach I took recently to try and persuade a well-known author to promote Changing Minds.

He was doing a 'lecture tour of the book' so I bought the book beforehand and sat in the front row where he could see I had it. I then jumped up to catch him after the talk where I asked him if he would like a copy of my book. Of course, as I had bought his book he could hardly say no.

The next step was to ask for his business card, so I could send him a book. He countered this by saying he didn't have one with him, so I just asked for his email address, which he had little choice but to give me. I later followed up with a carefully-crafted email, including a proposal for reciprocal publicity.

Do such approaches guarantee success? No, but they certainly give it a chance. In this case the guy didn't get back to me, despite a couple of chases. The process wasn't wrong -- he just probably prioritized it down on a busy schedule.

So why talk about something that failed? because failure is not 'bad' (as we often assume) and it doesn't imply something is wrong. In this case it didn't work, but I have had success elsewhere with similar approaches.

The bottom line: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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