Published 2026
No Elk in Maine
Enduring Marketing Principles for Small Business in the Age of AI
By Dustin Berg. Published by Desert Covenant Books, LLC in 2026. Out now in paperback and Kindle.
The premise
There are no elk in Maine.
"You can hunt that wilderness for a full season with the best gear, the best guide, and the best intentions, and none of it will matter, because the animal is not there."
"That is where most small business marketing goes wrong. It is rarely the budget and it is rarely the tools. The money goes into the wrong things, in the wrong order, in places the customer was never standing."
Enduring marketing principles for anyone who owns, runs, manages, or markets a business. No Elk in Maine cuts through the noise to what actually works: no shortcuts and no hype, just the principles that hold up when the tools change again.
What the book is
Nearly twenty years of scar tissue, handed over without the sales pitch.
- Collected from inside the industry, across more than a thousand small businesses.
- For the owner signing the check and the marketer who wants to deserve it.
- The author sells monthly marketing services for a living, says so in the introduction, and asks to be weighed knowing exactly what he sells. The hard jabs at agencies in the book land on him too.
As the book's website describes it.
What is inside
Where the money belongs, and in what order
Where the money belongs
The order that makes it compound
Build trust, be found, make it easy, follow up, measure, grow.
The Foundation Check
Twenty-seven items
So you know what is missing before you spend another dollar.
Who to trust with it
A marketer worth trusting
How to tell one from a marketer selling a product instead of a solution.
What AI is actually good for
In a small business
And why everyone using it the same way is starting to sound like it.
The No Elk System
Seven stages. Run them in order.
Start with the plan, then build trust, be found, make it easy, follow up, measure, grow. The book and its checklist run in that sequence. Skip a stage and you pay for the one you skipped, usually twice. A two-person shop might take a year to walk the whole list, and that is fine, because the order matters more than the speed.
Start with the plan
Answer who it is for before anything else. Business plan before marketing plan. Run the Foundation Check and fix what you failed.
Build trust
One name, one look, one message, held. Show up in the community until you are part of the place.
Be found
Claim the Google Business Profile. Pick the one or two channels where buyers actually decide.
Make it easy
Optimized instead of beautiful: fast, mobile, and obvious about what to do next.
Follow up
Answer the phone, and answer new leads within the hour. Stay in front of the warm ones.
Measure
Track what you spent, what a lead costs, what came back. Are you bigger than last year?
Grow
Scale, optimize, or sell, picked deliberately. Widen the customer. Narrow the system. Automate last.
Formats
Paperback or Kindle
Book resources
Every code in the book, and where it goes
Eight QR codes in the book point to free tools on noelkinmaine.com; one more page is printed at the bare domain, and one was built from a chapter. Nothing is behind a paywall, and none of it requires the book to be useful; the book is where each one earns its context.
The list is the book site's own index at noelkinmaine.com/book.
- The Foundation Check twenty-seven items, scored live (opens in a new tab)
- The Channel Decision Tool six questions, one or two channels (opens in a new tab)
- Sales & Onboarding Field Kit five one-screen tools (opens in a new tab)
- Is My Marketing Working? the four numbers any marketer owes you (opens in a new tab)
- The Resource Library the reading list and the measurement tools (opens in a new tab)
- The AI Marketer's Starter Kit the delegation test and the prompt builder (opens in a new tab)
- Glossary every term printed in the book (opens in a new tab)
- Get in Touch the form the last page of the book points to (opens in a new tab)
- The Campaign Launch Checklist printed in the book at the bare domain (opens in a new tab)
- The Operational Will built from the Death and Access chapter (opens in a new tab)
noelkinmaine.com
The book has a website of its own
The free tools, the glossary, the reading list behind the book and Dustin's own form, "Tell me about your business", are on the book's site.