Marie Forleo, founder of Marie Forleo International, runs an eight-figure business training company with her distinct personality front and center. In the beginning, she worried about being her quirky self in videos and writing because at the time that wasn’t seen as the norm in the business world, or even in the world of other leaders she aspired to connect with, like Oprah. Funnily enough, though, it was specifically her quirky self that her audience related to so strongly, and when her platform grew to reach more than 250,000 subscribers in 193 countries, not only did she appear on Oprah, but Oprah named her a leader for the next generation.

In recent years, large corporate business has focused its marketing and promotion efforts on collecting “vanity metrics”—like social media followers, subscribers, or clicks. But those metrics don’t always correlate with sales, profit, or reputation. That is, they don’t measure engagement or trust—they simply show how many people took some form of marketing bait. By considering “collecting” over “connecting” (with customers), these companies are becoming too caught up in collecting page likers and followers and have forgotten to build relationships with those individual customers who are already listening, following, or buying. Having 100 passionate fans of your business who are eager to buy anything you release is exponentially more effective than having 100,000 followers who simply follow your business to win something like a free iPad.

Chris Brogan, the New York Times best-selling author and CEO of Owner Media Group, doesn’t believe in hustling. Instead, he’d rather build long-term relationships with people based on mutually shared interests.

Chris believes that smaller business owners (and companies of one) are sometimes embarrassed about selling, and have an aversion to it, because they believe that selling means pushing your products on others. What he and many others have found, though, is that it’s much easier to sell to people with whom you’ve already built a relationship because they know that you actually care about them personally and their betterment. In this kind of relationship, selling doesn’t have to be pushy. It’s based entirely on a cultivated friendship.

Over the course of eighteen months, the team worked to assemble The Black Book. With the heavy lifting done, Morrison began to ramp up prepublication promotions by contacting 175 radio stations with Black programming and every Black Writer, celebrity, and news outlet she thought would be helpful. She released the Cosby spots to Black radio stations first. Then, she sent review copies to everyone from Barbara Halliday at the Detroit Free Press to Don Cornelius at the popular TV dance show Soul Train.

Morrison’s experience working with Chase-Riboud was instructive. Morrison knew that having a publicity and promotion plan was an important aspect of how well a book sold. But never again would she assume an author would cooperate with her plans without explicitly saying so. She also sharpened her thinking around identifying a primary and secondary market for books she would acquire. Chase-Riboud’s social capital among white cultural and artistic aficionados did not translate into a book buying public. And alternative paths to the book’s success were unavailable for different reasons. Authors needed champions beyond their editors and publishers. If they were not lucky enough to enlist influential supporters, they certainly had to avoid making powerful enemies. The same politics that yielded enthusiastic endorsements could result in quiet condemnation, which could be worse than loud and damning disapproval. The latter might at least get the book some attention.