In 2009, in Hudson, Wisconsin, a man named Todd Bol ripped the door off his garage.

He thought to himself, “This old door should become something else.”

Sadly, Todd’s mother had just passed away. She was a teacher and she loved books, so Todd used the scrap wood from his garage door to build something small in his mother’s memory—a model of a one-room schoolhouse. The little schoolhouse was just big enough to hold one shelf of books.

Then, Todd attached the model to a post and stuck it in his front yard. He filled it with books, and hung a sign on it that said, “free books”. He hoped others could enjoy the books just as his mother had.

He wasn’t trying to make it impressive, build a business, and he certainly didn’t have a marketing plan or budget. He just wanted to keep him mom’s love of reading somewhere he could still see it. It meant something to him.

To his surprise, his neighbors and friends adored the little schoolhouse of books, so Todd built several more and gave them away. He didn’t ask for anything for them.

Soon enough, he noticed neighbors stopping by and talking to his little library like it was a puppy. Yes, a puppy.

Imagine someone pausing, smiling, and saying something to the schoolhouse before they even opened the door … “Aw, look at you! Aren’t you cute?”

That’s when Todd realized there’s was something magical about it.  

UW-Madison’s Rick Brooks (and a friend of Todd’s) saw the magic too. The two of them were inspired by community gift-sharing networks like “take a book, leave a book” collections in coffee shops and public spaces.

The network just didn’t have a physical shape yet. So, they gave it one—in the shape of a schoolhouse. And they let anyone copy it for free.

That mindset led to the growth and establishment of Little Free Library. The purpose was incredibly simple: share good books and bring communities together. There wasn’t a big plan that involved out-marketing the public library or out-advertising bookstore chains. The whole strategy was to build a little free library, give it away, and let people build their own.

And people loved it.

Little Free Library kept giving the libraries away, complete with wood signs, each one engraved with an official charter number, and they kept getting more popular.

Early adopters, small grants, and partnerships helped them keep up with demand. By the end of 2011, there were almost 400 Little Free Libraries stuck on posts in people’s yards.

That 400 exploded to 4,000 by the end of 2012, when Little Free Library officially became a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Growth continued to skyrocket, and by 2016, over 50,000 Little Free Libraries had been put in all 50 U.S. states and 70 countries. Plus, the organization recognized needs in communities, so they started a program granting no-cost libraries full of books to communities most in need.

In 2018, Todd passed away, but his legacy lived on just like his mother’s.

2022 brought a milestone of 150,000 little libraries in 120 countries, and in 2025, the organization celebrated more than 200,000 Little Free Libraries in 128 countries.

Today, over 500 million books have been shared through those little boxes since 2009.

That’s a lot of books!

And it all started with the mindset that one small schoolhouse-shaped bookshelf was more meaningful than a garage door.

No budget needed.

Today, Little Free Library runs on an operating budget of about $3.2 million a year, which is smaller than what a lot of brands spend on a single ad campaign.

Yet that budget seems big to some and small to others. It’s all relative. “Small” to one company, leader, or marketing team isn’t small at all to another. It all comes down to mindset.

And that’s why you don’t need to be a mega-big brand with a huge budget to build something people love. Small isn’t the consolation prize we’ve made it out to be. Just like the definition of success, it’s something you envision and create your own definition for. Todd Bol, Little Free Library, and endless other successful brands have proven it.

Instead of being big, what you need is the right mindset to start simple and make something meaningful. … maybe you just need a front yard and the imagination to turn an old garage door into a sharing network for 500 million books (even if that doesn’t seem logical).

If an entrepreneur pitched Little Free Library as a business and marketing plan in 2009, most investors would’ve rejected it on the spot. Without any equity to fight over, any valuation to argue about, and nothing to license, the sharks from Shark Tank would’ve been out before the pitch even started. They had no plan, no seed money, and no brand campaign rolling out market by market.

All they had was a box on a post and a stranger’s trust that another stranger would put something back.

Not exactly a logical plan, right? Yet somehow, it worked.

That’s what we forget so often in marketing. We put logic first and we forget about meaning. And when we’re staring at someone else’s campaign, we assume they’re winning because of the size of their budget or the machine behind it. So, logically, we assume we need the machine before we can start.

Little Free Library didn’t need any of that to start. It just needed a reason small enough to matter, and a mechanism small enough to be copied by pretty much anyone with hammer on a Saturday afternoon.

The schoolhouse in Todd’s front yard didn’t scale because it got bigger. It caught on because it stayed small the entire time. And it grew because it stayed true to the meaning behind it—to build community and inspire readers. It’s reached over 200,000 front yards (and counting) and it’s still small enough to fit in any yard, in any country around the world, without any marketing or product team needing permission from headquarters.

That’s the mindset that matters more than logic.

It’s a feeling that people believe in. And you can’t out-budget a feeling.

Todd wasn’t a marketer, but there’s an important marketing lesson we can learn from him.

His tribute to his mother didn’t have to be big, expensive, or perfect to be meaningful.

That’s a tough concept and a harder mindset shift than it sounds like, especially in marketing when we’re almost always told that more is better. More content, more campaigns, and more reach. The more I’ve thought about it though, the more I believe we’re confusing the size of the gesture with the size of the impact.

More doesn’t automatically make something more meaningful. More is just more. Meaning comes from mindset, and mindset is created by you.

It’s the same reason the small shelf my dad built is worth more to me than the giant couch that cost us thousands.

Something “small”, modest, made with your own hands, or out of your own grief, can matter more than something engineered to impress.

And it can grow and become more successful too.

Todd didn’t buy expensive wood from a specialty hardwood dealer to build his little free library. He literally used the old wood off his garage door. And guess what else he didn’t do? He didn’t run a focus group on the sign. He just put it up and paid attention to what happened next.

That’s mindset with meaning and empathy built on observation, which leads to real understanding. Logic came last.

We could learn a lot from that when it comes to marketing.

His brother’s description of how he remembered Todd says it all, “… he really protected this idea …” Protected. Not scaled. Protected … because Todd kept bringing the whole thing back to its grassroots origination and meaning, even as it went global. That protection is what led to Little Free Library’s growth.

Are you protecting what means most in your own work, even as the pressure builds to make it bigger?

I think that’s a question worth asking, before we add more tactics.

Marketing with meaning must start with mindset, and that mindset starts with you. You can then expand your impact by observing and understanding what resonates with the people you’re trying to reach. And logic … well, logic has to come last, so it’s built on mindset as a foundation and empathy as an extension.

Those fundamentals of marketing make up The MEL Method—a formula for doing what’s good for people and what’s good for growth, so you can create differentiation that feels like it’s yours.     

The MEL Method shows up in countless brands that are competing (and winning) on meaning vs. size. When you start to look closer to notice it, you better understand it, and you can start applying it.

Little Free Library is just one example of it in action …

Mindset That Matters

When your mindset is prioritized and built from what’s real vs. what’s big and impressive, that’s when your work starts to have more meaning, and your marketing will too.

For Todd, it was the difference between building a memory vs. a monument. He didn’t need the schoolhouse with one bookshelf to be massive. He needed it to be honest—a simple representation of what mattered most to his mother.

Mindset is powerful because it can completely change how you look at things. It creates purpose and clarity, and even something like “small” can take on new meaning. Plus, no one is you, so your unique mindset is your foundation for building something that stands out.

Empathy from Observation

Empathy for people often gets misinterpreted as asking people what they want. The truth is, people are terrible at articulating what they want, especially when it comes to products that marketers are promoting. So, asking them a direct question like that isn’t going to get you valuable insights.

Todd didn’t ask his neighbors what kind of library they wanted. If he would have, chances are zero to none that his neighbors would have articulated the little schoolhouse model stuck on a post.

Observation of the little things that others dismiss is so much more valuable. Just like how Todd noticed his neighbors talking to the box like it was a pet. He paid attention and noticed the magic, while others would have laughed and moved on. That’s how you build human connection through feeling, not through a survey asking people what they want.

Logic That Stays Small

For Little Free Library, logic came last. It followed the mindset to stay small, and empathy for what giving felt like.

Todd started with a simple idea that meant something to him. Then, he noticed the magic in it. Only after that did logic show up, and even then, the purpose wasn’t to build a business. The purpose stayed true to the same mindset and empathy already built—grow by logically showing complete strangers how to build their own.

If logic had come first, it would have told Todd not to give away his product.

He didn’t start with a business plan, a production schedule, or pro forma. And I’m not saying those things are bad or unnecessary. I’m saying they shouldn’t come first. Mindset and empathy tell logic where to aim. Logic alone just tells you how to get “somewhere”, but it can’t tell you where that “somewhere” should be.

Little Free Library has stayed successful because it never got too big to remember what it was for and why it mattered—it stayed small. That’s their advantage, and it’s still working.

Anyone can build a little library. When I walk my dogs in our neighborhood, I walk past three or four of them.

We treat small like it’s the opposite of scale, when it can fuel it. After all, scale is just a bunch of small things, repeated by people who believe in them. Just like 200,000 Little Free Libraries, all fueled by the same one built in Hudson, Wisconsin.

I’ve been noticing this for nearly 20 years. It’s a fundamental of marketing that hasn’t changed. Regardless of AI and any new technology or trend, brands like Little Free Library built on mindset and meaning continue to win and grow sustainably.

They’re obviously onto something, and they’ve inspired me to start something small of my own.  

For the past year or so, I’ve been writing a book—the book about marketing that I’ve wanted to read.

Not one about quick hacks and big brands that got bigger, but one about marketing that means something and how the brands winning aren’t always the biggest.

I can’t wait to share the book. One copy is going straight into a Little Free Library. Not because it needs exposure. Because that’s the point—something small that means something. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when it’s ready. 😊

What You’ll Need:

Find a Little Free Library near you and walk to it. Leave a book. Take one if something catches your eye.

Remember that giving something away might matter to someone you’ll never meet. Notice how that feels compared to the last “engagement strategy” you built in a spreadsheet.

If this story sparked a thought, a question, or even a gentle disagreement, I’d love to hear it. Let me know what resonated—or what didn’t.

I’d love to make this a conversation so we can learn and grow together.