I wrote a marketing book. Then I killed it.
It would have worked. That was the problem.
There was a version of me that wrote a branding book the way the market expected it. Bullets. Case studies. Chapter titles like loaded guns. “The first impact is a shot.” “Words are bullets.” “Your tone is your DNA.”
167 pages. Seven chapters. Fully laid out. Ready to print.
I never published it.
Not because it was bad. Some of it was good. Some of it was the sharpest thing I’d written at the time. But the book was doing what branding books do — it was performing. Loud, aggressive, quotable. It sounded like someone who wanted to be heard.
And I realized I didn’t want to be heard. I wanted to be understood.
So I killed it.
Here’s what it sounded like.
