Taking Risks and Deconstructing the Hype in Marketing with Michael Schein

Living a Life in Full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode of Living a Life in Full is brought to you by ATI Physical Therapy. If you need physical therapy, choose ati. ATI offers exceptional care, trusted expertise and remarkable outcomes customized to your needs. ATI has over 800 clinics coast to coast in 25 states. Want to start feeling better fast? ATI can help address chronic pain or recovery from an injury or surgery expertly, quickly and conveniently. ATI's first program uses a performance based methodology to safely return injured workers to their workplace. FIRST is designed to increase strength, endurance and cardiovascular functioning. ATI's sports medicine provides athletic training services to help athletes get back in the game. ATI has hundreds of professional, collegiate, high school, middle school and club relationships nationwide. ATI also offers a variety of specialty services including home health, hand therapy and women's health. To Learn more about ATI's advances in evidence based practice, clinical outcomes and their innovative new smartphone app, please visit atipt.com welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. Hello, I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. Today's guest is Michael Schein. He's the CEO of Micro Fame Media, a digital marketing company that implements systems and processes that turn businesses into recognized authorities in their fields. In order to drive new business, he's created or facilitated the production of content for companies such as eBay, LinkedIn, Tesla Inc, SEER Interactive, and Citrix, just to name a few. He's created or facilitated the production of content for companies such as the Medici Group, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Irvine, Gordon College, United Methodist Publishing House, and many others. Before that, Michael was the Vice president of solution development at the results companies, where he developed and launched the company's first content marketing campaign. During his time there, the company's revenue grew from less than 20 million to more than 100 million. Michael graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with honors and and got his start at Spin the Bottle, the production company behind the VH1 hit show pop Up Video. He also created, ran and moderated the New York Tech Alliance's Interactive Marketing Panel series. He co hosts his own Podcast access to anyone with Michael Rodrick, and he regularly writes for publication publications such as Fortune, Forbes, Huffington Post, and Inc. Hey, Michael, it's great to have you on the show.

Hey, Chris, it's a real pleasure to be here.

Thanks a lot. So I have a lot to cover, I guess maybe. First things first, your origin story. Let's start at the beginning of your career. After graduating, you started at the production company Spin the Bottle. What was that like back in the day?

Well, I mean, you know, I never wanted to go into business. It's kind of weird that I ended up. I mean, I was sort of an artsy kid and I wanted to. I always wanted to write in one form or another, and I always did write, but it took a lot of different forms. I mean, I was into fiction and I was into comic books, and then I got really into music and, you know, punk rock especially, which you don't have to play that well to be involved in. So, you know, I played in bands and things like that. And so the real reason I came to New York, I needed to work. And so I did. But I really wanted to play in a band and Spin the Bottle, you know, it's funny, when I first, you know, it's a very kind of low level position, as you do when you're first trying to break into an industry like that. When I used to tell people I worked for the company that produced Spin the Bottle, everyone used to get really excited. And now very few people know who it is, which makes what it is, which makes me feel really old. But it was all over VH1. It was the thing where the bubbles popped up, you know.

Yeah.

In videos. And it was fun. I mean, I did really menial stuff in the be. I ran videos to the Viacom building, where MTV is, you know, and picked up footage. I did all of that kind of stuff, but I was around it. I got the chance to work on an episode, which was a lot of fun. I worked on, you know, some production stuff, learned from great people like Tad and Woody, who have gone on to do other things, too. They were the creators. And so it was a great education to be 100% frank. Where my head was really at at the time. What was the band? I mean, I had this really humble notion that I was going to change rock and roll. And I put this really theatrical band together and we had a following and this and that. And then it imploded. Spectacular. That was the beginning of my career.

So were you like a New York Dolls or an Alice Cooper? Or like, what. What kind of productions did you do with your. Your band and what was the band's name?

Yeah, I guess we liked all of that stuff. I mean, we liked Devo a lot. We liked Bowie a lot. You know, things like that. We were called the act. We actually, at the time, we were the Apocalyptic party band. The idea was that the world was gonna come to an end soon. So we were kind of the soundtrack for the band. So we would have like, you know, our friends would, who were female, would dance, you know, you know, do like a go go dancer thing, but wear a gas mask and things.

Yeah, yeah. Nothing says party like Apocalypse, right?

Yeah, that was the idea. I wonder why it imploded. But it was fun. We had our. We had our fans and, you know, it was neat.

That is really fun. That is really cool. So how did that then, did that act as a trajectory or transition to what came next?

Yeah, well, looking back now, I, to the chagrin of my parents, I did take it very seriously. But it didn't work out and I didn't know what to do next and I was upset about it and I went home. I grew up a big part of my life in South Florida, and I went back there and got a job that was this entertainment startup that was part of a division of a bigger company. And I got a job in that startup and worked there. And that the guy who started the company was an entrepreneur, but he had the main part of his business, which was a very brass tax business, running customer service centers, kind of just running without his help. And he did this startup thing. So I joined that because it was entertainment based and that imploded. But they, I guess, thought I had a little bit of talent and I stuck around and they moved us into the. Everyone in that team who made the cut moved into the main business. So because I needed a job and because I could write, I ended up in marketing at this company that started to grow and I started to learn a lot and I started to become a bit of a business person. And for a number of years it was worth it because I was learning. I was working for a very, very brass tax company that ran customer service centers. So the people who pick up the phones when you call in for help, a lot of those are outsourced. That's what they did. And I got into the marketing department. I learned about content marketing, which I didn't know what it was called at the time, but maybe I should have left after three to five years because it wasn't really what I was put on this earth to do, but I got comfortable. And after I learned, I stayed there for a lot longer than I should have and my happiness decreased as a result.

So.

So I did well position and all that.

Gotcha. So what, what was content marketing like back then and what sort of sounds like maybe the early days of it.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't, it wasn't really called content marketing. I, you know, we were always looking at ways to generate leads for the business and establish ourselves as experts in a very commoditized business. So I did a lot of things in the company. I mean, I didn't do marketing at first. I worked in operations, I went to the call centers, I did all kinds of things. But eventually they brought in a CMO as the company grew. And I, you know, I actually used to do scripting for the agents as well, which was a really good education because you learn about human psychology and how to use words to get that human psychology to work with that human psychology. So essentially what happened was because I could write, I kind of became the de facto writer. Because a lot of people who get attracted to that industry, they don't get attracted for that reason. A lot of times they were an agent and they were just really good at what they did and climbed the ranks. I mean, you'll find a lot of executives, some of the smartest people you'll ever meet. But in the contact center industry never went to college because it's one of the few industries that really does have a path for advancement just by being talented, you know.

I see.

But I did have a very, a lot of education. If anything, I'm over overly educated. And I was always a writer and I was always reading and writing. So I became kind of the go to writer. And once the scripting thing ended and they started to grow quite a bit, and fortunately, I think I was at a little something to do with that because we, our scripts helped fix a lot of the problems that agents were dealing with in accommodating complex projects. They brought in a CMO and I worked directly for her. And she was great. Her name was Jerry Green. I learned a lot. One of the things we came up with the idea, I came up with the idea that if we created white papers and used, you know, a little bit of this newfangled Internet to get those white papers in front of the right people and they downloaded them, that meant they were a pretty good lead. So that was what they call now demand generation. And that it did well for us. And that's how I cut my teeth.

Wow.

In that space.

That's very cool. Is that what led to then the VP of Solution Development, or was that with a different company?

No. Yeah, that was what. That was the title of what I did, Solution Development. That was when I worked for the cmo.

Gotcha. So then with that, did you. Did that lead then into like, specific kinds of marketing campaigns or what was that process like?

Yeah, it was. It was a cool thing because the cmo, everything we had done until that point was kind of by accident, marketing savvy. So the people who started the company and the people who ran the company were so fist. Were smart, you know, smart business people. But they built it by trial and error. And at a certain point, the company grew and they, you know, they brought in other partners, private equity people, and they got serious. Not that they weren't serious before, but they got. They got more sophisticated with their marketing. So they brought in Jerry and she was a real cmo. So before we. I sort of learned the difference between branding, which is this amorphous thing, which many people don't know what it means because it doesn't have a real definition. You know it when you see it. But she. She took a website and. And way of doing business, the way we presented ourselves to the world and a logo and a way of talking to people that was just all over the map. Whatever the person who happened to be doing it had thrown up that day to solve a problem and systematized it and modernized it. And that. That. And I saw how that helped with lead to bigger clients. Right. And more success. And then we did then. So then I finally, after learning that and sitting in on those meetings and helping execute that, got to come up with ideas. And that's when we started doing the white paper, you know, marketing. And that led to leads, and then we started running conferences. And that really helped our clients see us in a new light and give us more business. So it was just. Yeah, it was. It was a whole lot of things. I don't know that it was. Today we launch a campaign, and it's soup to nuts. Completely strategic. From the beginning, I think this was sort of more of a. The wheel was moving. Let's.

Yeah.

Get it on the road as we move. But it worked out well.

It sounds like it also teed you up to be able to see different components that could actually be parts of, you know, growing as an entity from the intellectual side of things with white papers and providing good content and value that way, to then saying, well, let's also put together helpful speakers and put together a conference and be able to provide value in those ways. And it's almost like a very nice halo effect, you know, when people think about a good experience or good content or good value. That was all, you know, brought to you by, you know, Michael and his efforts at this company.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

So talking about being successful in the marketing realm, I want to circle back to your company in a little bit, but first, I want to talk a little bit about your writing career, because it seems like a lot of the things that you've enjoyed and a lot of the successes that you've had has really been predicated on. On your writing. I stumbled upon you by virtue of. Of seeing some of your pieces. And, you know, you're. You're in Forbes, you're in Fortune, HuffPost, et cetera. And one of the things that really caught my eye was two pieces you wrote. One was on Tony Robbins, and the other is on Gary Vanderchuck. And your perspective was a little different than. Than a lot of the many. A little bit of the Emperor has no Clothes, which, frankly, I found very refreshing.

Thank you.

Did that feel risky to toss some. I mean, I'm terrified every time I post something in writing or even these podcasts, you know, that, you know, someone's gonna, you know, save up their rotten vegetables to, you know, lambast me. But what was it like doing that? I mean, you know, gosh, these are like, yeah, they. Even though Tony says I am not your guru, he is certainly people's guru. So was it a risk or what? What spurred that?

Yeah, I was scared to death. It's funny, because when. I mean, to get into. When I published the first of those kind of articles, I mean, maybe it goes back to my punk rock background where I like getting under people's skin a little bit.

Yeah.

I mean, to your face, I'll be completely nice, but then, you know, when you've turned around, I'll let you have. I'm a nice guy that way. But, yeah, I was terrified. I mean, I left my job and I became a freelance copywriter. I wasn't going to start a business, and I struggled in the beginning. And because I had a blog that some people liked, I got this Ink column and I was just writing articles and they were doing okay. And I would see Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, this wasn't made up. I mean, I. And again, I said in the article, it's called why Gary Vaynerchuk is Flat out wrong. And as I said in the article, I think he is so talented, especially in marketing himself, you know, But I think that maybe some of his advice doesn't translate well to all of the aspiring young people who follow him so tightly for a number of reasons. And so I wrote the article because I believe that, but also the way I wrote it was obviously incendiary because I like doing that, but I really debated whether to send it. I mean, I remember I have this image in my head of my hand hovering over the mouse, like, get. Like, I don't know if I should send this, but. And I did. And I had a great lesson, especially with that article, because what happened was this. And again, I wasn't doing very well then. I. Financially, I mean, I was really. You know, I had clients, and whenever they hired me, they liked my work, but I was just one of many copywriters, and I didn't have my shtick yet. You know, that. Which everyone needs to stick, right? So. So I wrote this thing, and I published it. Like, two hours later. Gary Vaynerchuk recorded a video saying my name and lambasting me about why I was wrong. But he was agitated. He was sweating.

Oh, man.

He pretended that he wasn't mad, but then he went off into this thing about, like, you know, how successful he is and etc. Etc. And he was sweating. So then all his fame started blowing up. My phone with what, you know, you don't believe in hard work and blah, blah, blah. They obviously hadn't read the article very closely, and it was funny. But what I realized was by the time I went to bed, I had added 50 new Twitter followers, and that had never happened to me, and I had to turn my phone off, and it was like my career took off, and it just led me to realize that if you pick fights with people, other people who are secretly feeling the same way, then join your tribe. And so I figured, you know, okay, I mean, let's go with this.

Wow. Wow. It sort of reminds me of the Derek Seaver's, you know, viral video of the, you know, how to. How to start a tribe or how, you know, how to start a movement kind of thing? Oh, yeah, yeah. With the dancing kind of thing. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's a lot like that.

Yeah. So how. How does one, you know, crack into getting into, you know, placed like, in ink and huffpost and Fortune and things like that, where you always. Again, you're obviously a upenn grad and with honors and a great writer. Is it. It's always going to be quality of the writing. That's a, you know, a foregone conclusion. But how do you pick what topics? How do you pick. Does this go to HuffPost versus Fortune? You know, what's your. What's your calculus behind how you manage your. Your writing?

Yeah, I guess there's a couple questions in there. I mean, the first question is how do you get the column? I mean, I think there's not a pat answer, you know, So, I mean, I. People say I'm going to apply for a column and whatever. I mean, the first thing to know is that while I am a writer first and that's underneath everything I do, Forbes and Inc. Have a contributor model, so you don't have. They prefer people who actually are doing work in the field that they're writing about versus a pure journalist for the digital versions. I'm fortunate in that I've worked a lot on my writing so I can come in as the agency owner and teach people. But, you know, I have fans of, of the column, especially the Forbes column, because I think I do a good job on the actual delivery. But you can get through the door without being a professional writer. But like anything else in life, I think it's part of. It's crack the writing crowd, I mean. Oh, yeah. What I mean by cracking the writing crowd is just that I have had a blog and it was getting more and more popular, and it allowed me to have samples and it allowed me to get people to vouch for me. But at the end of it all, I ingratiated myself. Ingratiated is the wrong word because that sounds negative. And I say that tongue in cheek. But I like hanging out with other writers and I like hanging out with people doing interesting stuff. So I moved to New York. I was in the Brooklyn writers space where there are a lot of people who have access to these columns. I went to the New York Tech, you know, council and I volunteered my time, literally standing there with a clipboard and making sure people from the other side of the workspace didn't come into where they were serving food until they noticed me. And, you know, I became part of the inner circle. And then I was able to, once these people became my friends, and it sounds manipulative, but it wasn't. I liked these people. There are plenty of people who I don't like who could help my career, who I don't hang out with, but these people are people I like, and I got to know them. And eventually it was, hey, you know, I'm Looking to do a column. Do you know anyone? And they're people will help their friends. So that was sort of my approach. It's remiss and I think that's marketing. I mean if you read biographies of any great self promoters from Dorothy Parker with the Algonquin Roundtable to gosh, I mean some of the biggest PR and advertising people of all time, yeah, they do all the marketing stuff but without fail they are all part of a scene or an in crowd and they leverage their friendships. I mean it's just, you know.

Sure. Well, networking and what Keith Ferrazi and a lot of the things that he's written too of his couple of books. So it's also reminiscent to me of, I believe, if memory serves, like I think Tim Ferriss way back in the day did similar kinds of things of you know, volunteering to be at a, you know, at a conference and be a gopher and just, you know, putting yourself out there and, and providing, you know, the, this will be so cliche but providing value and, and that's, that's how friendships, relationships and trust is developed. I think so.

I think so.

So how, how did you then step into the consultations and things with working with companies like eBay and LinkedIn and, and Tesla and what kinds of gigs were those like for you?

Yeah, I mean it went in phases. So the first thing was I became a freelance copywriter. I mean when, you know, the last couple years in my job and you know, I have nothing but good things to say about the people I worked for, but I was unhappy. I mean it's a lot of work being in the call center industry. It's a lot of travel and I'm okay with that. I, I work hard now, but it was never my goal to do that. I fell into it. And I had always seen myself doing something that was creating something of my own or just creating something. And the call center industry, unless you're the one who founded the company, you are servicing people and that's great, but you're not really building very much or at least it wasn't something that I had ever planned to get into. And I kind of said to myself, you know, what am I doing? But I was again scared to leave. I mean I made pretty good money. I made enough money to make it hard to leave.

Right, right, right.

So, so actually what happened was, and this sounds very cheesy, it sounds very Hallmark movie, but it's true. My wife got pregnant, as spouses are apt to do, especially wives. And I remember you Know, my just kind of daydreaming and thinking about my daughter having some sort of like, take your parents to work day and saying, my dad is a vice president of Solution Development. And I was just like, wow. Like, I don't want to do that. I mean, I wanted to be a novelist or I wanted to own a record label or I wanted to play in a band.

Right.

So I, at the same time had read an article in Writer's Digest, which I always read because of the writing about fiction. It was about writing white papers for money. Freelance. Wow. I can do that. I know how to write white papers. If I do one white paper a week, I can make what I'm making at my job. Now, that didn't happen, but I started to build a side practice, a freelance practice. So, yeah, I, you know, I got the jobs by doing a good job and by networking and doing all that stuff. But what really changed things was that there was one client that I had who was, you know, they hired me kind of as an informal consultant. So they had always. They were. They're really kind of complicated, excuse me, business to business software product, very expensive in the energy industry. Not worth explaining what it does. It's very complicated. But it took me about three calls to understand it. That being said, they. They did all of their lead generation through trade shows and it worked really well for them. And it stopped working because of the Internet. So I had written some stuff for them and then they had hired someone in England, where they have a branch, to run their business development. And that business development person, the first thing they did was hire a branding agency. And so the owners who I knew said, hey, we'd like to pay you a little bit of money to go over to England and sort of sit on the meetings and make sure that this digital branding thing is worth anything, especially that it's in line with the American brand. So I said, sure, you know, I can do that. It's very cool. So I went over there and I had really a revelation and it really led to my business because what happened was, first of all, these people came in and their name was. I won't say what their name was, but they had a name and I was just Michael. So the first thing I noticed, and they had a deck and a PowerPoint. It was really just two people. One was a copywriter, one was a designer, and they weren't really an agency, they were a freelancing thing. But they were charging like four times what I charged. So that was the first thing I learned about Packaging and branding. But more importantly, they went through their whole thing and they went through this whole sort of presentation and questionnaire kind of thing. And then they left. And the Biz Dev guy, the guy who ran Biz Dev, said to me, what do you think? And I said, well, I think you're gonna have a really fantastic website. And I did. I mean, they were really talented designers, you know, but I said, you know, they sent me over here because you need to generate new sales. Like, what is it that you're gonna do after the website goes up to generate sales? They said, what do you mean? I said, well, are you gonna blog? Generate content? Are you gonna generate. Liz said, well, we have a website, we have brands.

That's all we need.

Well, yeah. What do you mean? And so I said, well, how much content can you produce? They said, we can do about a blog post a month. And I said, well, you just wasted your money. But normally I would have done what you did. I would have laughed. I would have gone home to my friends in the business. I would have made fun of them. I would have said, oh, the client doesn't know. But I had this light bulb moment and I realized they don't have the time. So this is a group of mainly engineers. They have not. They're staring at a blank page. Go write content, Go. And they didn't know. So what I said to them was, I just had this idea and I said, look, what if I did this? What if I interviewed everybody who English is their first language? Because they had a couple of, you know, people who English wasn't their first language, but, you know, they had about 28 or 27, you know, team members who English was their first language. I said, what if I, you know, kind of suck dry everything in their brains and then structured it for each of them in an outline with fill in the blanks. That would make for a good piece of content. And then what if I gave that them and everyone did one every month and they wouldn't start with a blank page? And then what if we put it out in the world? And I basically created this assembly line process for content production, and it worked.

Wow.

And so what I realized. Yeah, so what I realized was I was like, wow, other people have this problem. You know, people want to. In the modern world, they need to dominate a niche, and to do that, you need content, and they really don't have the skill set. So I started creating these efficient ways of doing it. And then where it went from there is that I realized that the people who needed this the most were consultants, because a consultant is only selling their ideas. So if you're selling a product, you can make the case that your product is better. You can use all kinds of things when you're selling ideas. It's always a function of, once you get to a certain level of competency or even excellence, there are people who are really excellent at being a consultant who struggle for every piece of work that they get. And then there are people who are maybe a little less good, who are multi gazillionaires and the only difference is how well they're able to frame themselves and how efficiently they're able to do so. So I started to apply those processes to consult and then the business did take off.

Wow. So I think that is so true. I did work years ago for listeners that may not know, and I don't think you would know this, but I was a clinical psychologist. I still actually maintained my license, but I haven't practiced for over 20 years. And one of the things that I learned back in the day was in graduate school and in whatever postdoctoral experience, no one ever taught you how to market yourself. And if you want to work for a practice, that's fine, but you still, in some sense, I guess you need to pitch yourself to get the hire. But if you're in a private practice, you're a small business owner, you're a startup, you're an entrepreneur, and you know, a lot of people had the, you know, to the parallel. Your point with the website, you know, well, I've opened up a practice, therefore I'm in business. It's like, well, just because you have a website or just because you've put out a shingle doesn't mean that, you know, anyone knows that you exist, let alone the fact that you know that maybe you're quite skilled and competent. So I did a couple of books for Wiley on how to start a private practice and how to improve your practice and things like that that, you know, really sort of, you know, hit a nerve. And I think that's, you make an excellent point that sometimes people may even have less quality but better, you know, skills of horn tooting and they're the, the gazillionaires. So it's, it's nice to see being able to do the scalable kinds of, of work that you did with companies, to be able to, to match the exposure to a company or the realization that these, you know, that these entities exist, to be able to then put together, you know, the good services that they can Provide. So that's. That's awesome. That's terrific.

Yeah, it's funny that you say that. I mean, you do do that, that really well. And I think the reason I write about people like Tony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuk and these kind of people is that I have this idea that's really coalesced, and I'm actually writing a book about it. It's called the Hype Handbook. It's this idea of reclaiming hype. I mean, because if you look. If you look at a Gary Vaynerchuk or a Tony Robbins or, you know, anyone like that, the things that they do to get their stuff across, I mean, the stuff that the president does, the stuff that the Nazi party did, if you take out the horribleness of the content. Martin Luther King, Richard Branson used the same underlying principles, you know, and what I've done from those kind of accidental beginnings of starting an agency is I say look at the people who are best able to drive a huge amount of irrational excitement about their message, take out the underlying principles, don't do anything immoral. Quite the opposite. But look at the sociology and psychology and then see how you can reapply it to great ideas that are making people's lives better. And I think that's so important because psychology is psychology. I mean, you probably know that better than anyone, but psychology is psychology, you know, in groups and out groups. Right. That whole thing you said about being taking a risk with Gary Vaynerchuk, people behaved like human beings, you know, textbook 101. They formed a tribe around the anti Vayner. They were the anti Gary Vee's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It really does, I think, have such generalization, like you said, to movements, to business, to politics, you know, you know, it is a part of human nature. I think it, you know, there's certain, you know, even crosses cultures as well, too. So with this, I want to shift gears just minorly because I think the topic will kind of be the same, but for listeners that aren't familiar. And we'll put links in the show notes for this. Tell us about your podcast access to anyone and your partner and what you guys focus on on that show.

Well, it's funny. Michael Roderick, my co host, is one of my great friends. I parted ways with the show not too long ago and not for any negative reason at all. I love the show. We took. We created the show, you know, from nothing, and it's become quite successful. And it's about. And I'll tell you why I parted ways it has nothing to do. The show still continues to grow and do very well. It's about kind of that in group stuff that we just talked about. I mean, Michael Roderick, for those of you who don't know who he is, and I say that because it feels, it seems like everyone knows Michael Rodrick and knows who he is, but he's like the master of anything relationship oriented. I mean, he knows everybody. He knows how to get access to anybody. And I'm the hype guy. And one of my big principles of hype is make it seem like a grassroots revolution, but know how to align yourself with the string pullers. So it was kind of this dynamic. So the show is called Access to Anyone. It's about how to get access to anyone. And we have some great guests on there. The reason I recently stepped away, which was very hard to do, is because a couple, you know, you let your business tell you what your business is and you let your life tell you what your life is. And the dark side, quote unquote, of what I do has become my brand. So the show has a very upbeat, you know, has a very upbeat message. It's about relationship building. It's very light in that way. And I've gotten, you know, to be the punk rock guy. You know, I, I.

Are you the foil? Were you the foil for the show?

I was the foil and that was what made the show work. But I realized our brand, we're going all in on the brand because we have the, you know, I have the book that's being produced. My most popular articles are the ones you just talked about. I have a hype and a hype book list. So I had to make a decision. I want to be four things or do I want to be one? And I just decided on, so. But the show is, is tremendous. It's still great. It continues to grow. It has. I. Michael's even gone further than I did. So.

Well, that, I mean, that speaks also to. You're kind of walking the talk and practicing what you've preached. Right? I mean, you're, you're being supportive of what your brand is and, and not trying to be all things to all people, but being very specific to what you're, in a sense, product line is. Right?

Yeah, that's, that's, you know, in the beginning, you try lots of stuff and you try lots of approaches. And this was actually even beyond the fact that I liked meeting with Michael every week to do the thing. It was hard because it actually got us some business. People liked it. You Know, it was popular, but yeah, I had to. Just like you said, I had to, you know, maybe I had to lose a hundred fans to get a thousand.

Yeah.

So to speak.

Yeah. Yeah. So then let's segue into being CEO of Micro Fame. What's your experience like that? Tell us. Tell people that aren't familiar with what Micro. Micro Fame is all about.

Well, first of all, I can't. I never would have imagined how much I like owning a business. It's really a great vehicle for all the creative stuff I want to do, but also for getting the good ideas, the ideas that are truly good to get the audiences they deserve. Which means a lot to me because I get really frustrated by how many people are able to get subpar ideas adopted and out into the world because of some of the negative hype that we talked about. So, yeah, I mean, the short story is that anyone who is selling ideas, we work with them and we start out, we won't take anyone on unless they first engage with us for something that's called a scientific method program. So for about three or four months, we come up with a hypothesis on, okay, in the digital age, we live in, if we were to dominate a niche online, because it's easy to get lost in the digital age, more easy than ever before, but it's also easier to find a niche and dominate it and use that to have as much success as you want. So we say, okay, what's the right niche? What do these people want to hear about? What problems do they need solved? And what is a hypothesis for a kind of contrarian idea and media that will blow that up? And then what we do is on a very small scale, we put that hypothesis out into the world, we do all the research and we do a very small test and then iterate, test, iterate. Because while human beings are more alike than they are different, the variable, there's like a 20% variation between industries and between people that you have to adjust for. So we, you know, we might come up with a contrarian idea and do two podcast episodes and see if that generates content. If that doesn't work, try another one based on what we learned or a small digital advertising campaign to get to put articles in front of people that drive in action and then do a very small spend to see if we can get a handful of people to sign up to an email versus another. And once we do that, we say, okay, we have for you, and you could follow this plan that we give you step by step. And if you blow it up, if you scale it up, you will become the dominant authority in your niche. Because we've done that much testing. And then at that point, because I think we do a good job, it becomes a menu. It's. You can either do it yourself, you can do part of it yourself, or you can pay off to do it. But it's a la carte. These are the tools you should use. This is how you should do it. And that's how we kind of start our relationships. But that's sort of the nitty gritty thing that the bold reason we exist is because there are a lot of people who are selling ideas, and the ideas are kind of the currency I play. And I'm interested in ideas who don't get the attention or are not able to make the impact they want to make because they aren't able to hype themselves up the right way.

So.

And we do that.

Is it like, do you do like. Like, click through rates and stuff? How do you measure like. Like success of. To say this was a flop, or this was. This was spectacular for your. Your empirical testing part of it.

Yeah. So, yeah, click through rates. I mean, that's a tool, you know, that's a metric. We start a little even broader than that. So I got this idea from Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, but we always start with this exercise called the Five Dials. Well, we say two things, I mean, and it's just completely ripped off from Dan Sullivan. I'm giving him credit. He's a really smart guy, and you should check his stuff out. But the first thing he says that I say to everybody is, if you and I were sitting down like this a year from now, and I do it for three years as well, and everything has gone as well as it possibly could have gone. What has to happen between now and then for you to be able to tell me that it was a success? Because a lot of times people don't think of it. I want to market myself. I need social media. What does that. You know, you need social media.

So what is it?

But if I can get them right, then once we figure that out, I do an exercise from Dan Sullivan, again, ripped off completely, called the Five Dials, but it's really useful. And what he says is, you know, if you ask a pilot how they make sense of all the gauges and buttons and dials in their cockpit, they'll tell you that they spend about 90% of their time looking at five, five of them. So I say to them, you know, you want all kinds of things. You Want a following, you want this, you want that, you want engagement, you want branding, you want, you know, you want listeners to your podcast, you want, et cetera, et cetera. But if there were only five indicators that if they were going up, you would be thrilled as punch that you found us. If they were going down, you'd be mad at us and sad that you ever hired us. And if they were going sideways, we needed to fix it, what would they be? And people will say things like engagement. And I say, well, what is that engagement? And finally what you'll find out is, you know, they'll say, I mean, we had one person basically say, look, I'm thinking of selling the company and I need to be having regular meetings and cups of coffee with high level executives so that I'm well prepared to sell it to the right person. That was one major dial. We made that happen. That person just got sold the company and got a big executive job. You know, so people say these things, but you really have to drill down. Some people say, I want a lot of social media followers. Do you? Why? Well, I'm assuming that's how you'll sell stuff. Well, what if I could instead of getting you social media followers, build an email list of highly qualified people who hung on your every word and then, you know, sell a percentage of them consistently? Well, yeah. Would you need social media followers then? No. Okay. Or yes, I do, because I don't know. I mean, people have their reasons, right? So that's what I do.

Do you have a sweet spot of like a certain type of industry or a certain type of business? I mean, it sounds like what you've described in these examples. You know, that it's fairly diverse. But do you, is it, is it indeed diverse or, you know, do you, do you have a sweet spot of like here's, you know, here's what micro fame specializes?

Yeah, I mean, what we're not really great at or because we don't want to be is just like, you know, I don't know, e commerce, you know, you know, I'm trying to sell this new invention. We have people approach us with that all the time and it's not really the greatest thing or we're, you know, what, what. But I say consultants. So what does that mean? Innovation, Consultants, people. These companies are very common now where people come in because innovation is so important and help corporations come up with workable ideas. And some of those businesses do very, very well, but they're not the dominant companies in the niche like one of our clients for A long time was the Medici Group. So this gentleman, Franz Johansson, he wrote a book called the Medici Effect and it was a big hit. And it's a great book, really good. And he built a company around it, very successful, never stopped being successful. But his challenge was that he got so busy with running the company that he had neither the headspace nor the time to do the very thing that got him successful in the first place, which was to generate thought leadership and content. So we made that happen. We built a systematic approach to free up. You know, we created a podcast where we got David Copper. We didn't get, I mean we had the podcast with David Copperfield on the show and lots of, lots of big names. We, you know, helped repurpose that content into other stuff. And as a result, you know, he, he's back on track to hit the next phase of his business. So consultants like that, coaches things like that. A weird industry has opened up lately that we never expected. And that's big ticket technology like B2B technology products. You know, if there's a tech like, you know, if there's a great company that we work with that anyone in this space should check out. And I'm not just saying that because they're our client. They work with HR and learning and development centers and big corporations because they have a technology that is like a virtual coach for speaking. You talk into it and it will tell you if there are ums and you knows and are you hesitant and it's so great. The reason they brought us on, they're doing very well. The reason they brought us on is because they could either sell this as a technology or they could sell it as a thing to facilitate communication. And they're really. They have a background of being experts in communication. It's the way that Casper doesn't sell itself as a mattress company, they sell themselves as a sleep company. They're experts in sleep. So that's opened itself up. So it's stuff, stuff like that. Anything that has ideas behind it which has, which has been B2B technology on a lesser scale and consultants and high end coaches.

I'll be darn. That's. I would have never put that together. So.

And we sell some books too, some company because coaches often sell books. We have a lot of consultants and thought leaders who need to get a bigger audience for their books. And since that's a thought based product work, we're pretty good at that as well.

So do you help ghostwriter, co author or how.

No, I help build buzz around the books.

I see. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so did. I may have gotten my research wires crossed, but did you guys do something with the chain smokers?

No.

No. Okay, there's some. Something I'm gonna have to dig up the link. I'll send it to you offline. Because there was some. Something that I came across. I thought, gosh, that's. And knowing your music background, I thought, oh, that didn't surprise me. But I just wanted to kind of scratch that itch because I wasn't sure if there was something that sounds cool. Yeah. That you had done with that. So maybe I'll get. Get back with you and back channel with that. So I am. I'm a fan, and one of the things that I have signed up for that I'd like you to just kind of share, because I just. It's sort of like when I find something cool. That's why I have the podcast. I want to share it with friends and other people. Yeah. So I am looking at. I printed out the November 29 issue of the Hype Book List, and I just love it. I mean, it's so, you know, I'm such a, you know, just a book nerd kind of guy anyway, but Me too. Yeah. Tell us how. How do you. How do you consume your reading? How do you find these books? You know, just kind of give us the backstory of your hype book list.

Well, I am writing this. This hype handbook, which is, you know, started as one of these things where, hey, I'm a writer and it's good to have a book if you're selling your ideas. Let me do that.

Right.

To an obsession, you know, and it's become really a big part of what I think about every day. And, you know, or it's. I don't. I don't want to come out with the stage of acceptance that it's in yet, but I think, I think some good things are going to happen with it. You know, knock on wood. Fingers crossed.

Yeah.

But as a result, I did a lot of research because the idea is, okay if I'm really. You know, I've always read a lot about hype artists because I figured after reading all the marketing books, I said, everyone's reading these same books. Let me look at the people who really are the good self promoters. And I started to see these commonalities, you know, and so I said, okay, what if I just kept going because I would get such insights and people weren't talking about this stuff. I mean, everyone reads and they're great Books, I mean, made to stick or, you know, hooked or some of these things. But. But no one reads like the True Believer by which is about how to build movements. But he's talking about movements like communism and Nazism, Christianity, and it's fascinating.

Yeah.

And when. And so I started to say, wow, this stuff is so fascinating. And not only is it interesting, I'm learning a lot and I apply it to my business and hopefully don't hurt anybody, but I'm able to repurpose it. Plus, the books are mischievous. That's the thing. I mean, you know, it's not like you're just read. Reading a typical business book, you know, you recommend to someone to read.

Yeah.

Gosh, I mean, the history of the WWF or whatever, wwe. It's mischievous.

Yeah.

So I said, would anyone else be interested in this? I mean, I think this is something, you know, I would enjoy writing. And I'm doing it anyway, and I think people. And it turns out people have really liked it a whole lot.

Yeah, I, I also, I have a thing that I used to post. Gosh, it's been a couple of years since I've done anything with it, but it was just basically like the, the top 10 banned books or, you know, banned books during this era and things like that. And sometimes it's really sort of surprising to see kind of what, what shows up in that. But I think you did that.

I would love to see that.

Yeah, I'll. We'll stick a link in the show notes. I'll. I'll send it to you back channel too. So, I mean, and then there's, you know, it's sort of some, you go, oh, you know, it's sort of like, oh, I get it, like Mein Kampf or something, you know, so. But it's, it's, it's an interesting kind of hodgepodge of, you know, it's almost kind of like the what the tastemakers of the time were thinking, you know, of what would be offensive, you know, and nowadays it's sort of like, you know, my gosh, you got to be super freaking careful, you know, of, you know, something, you know, accidentally, you know, hurting somebody's feelings and then backlashes and apologies and things. And I thought, also, I just wanted to make one little shout out about it too, the, Your bonus book of the Queen's Gambit. Because I have seen. I'm sort of like a closet voyeur around marketing stuff. And one of the things that I just see constantly repackaged and repackaged for people's Come on, give the freebie. If you sign up, you'll get this free book or whatever and it's always like, Think and Grow Rich. Napoleon Hill has been published more post mortem than I think he ever did while he was alive because it's public domain. And so people put in some, you know, a paragraph at the front end and slap on some PDF, you know, cover that they, you know, put together in their third bedroom and all of a sudden they've got a free giveaway. So, yeah, it was just really, I appreciated your little comment on that with the Queen's Gambit so public. Tip of the hat to that.

So I. Yeah, so the Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, I had to throw in there. It's the best novel I've read in a long time. You guys should go check it out. It's really inspirational. It is a novel. It's about an orphan who's a chess prodigy. It's extremely good, even if you don't like chess. I do not play chess and it's really good. But you know, the thing Chris is talking about is that I said it's more inspirational than Think and Grow Rich. If you want to. Really. If you're into mastermind groups and the Law of Attraction and all the stuff that Think and Grow Rich invented, you can do a quick search and find out this guy was a borderline criminal. Napoleon Hill. It was the first successful thing he ever did, was write that book. He was a con artist. He was driven out of state for fraud. He did not meet all those famous people. There's no record of him meeting Andrew Carnegie. He's a complete crook and he's been fooling the world 100 years.

Well, that, that kind of parallels John Brinkley, right?

Yeah. But everyone still loves this guy.

That's true. Yeah.

I mean, John Brinkley is a crook. I mean everyone. If you know about John Brinkley, I mean, this guy, I mean, at least

Napoleon Hill didn't kill anybody that we know of, right?

John Brinkley was a murderer. But, but Napoleon Hill is. If you're basing your life on his ideas, you should be careful. It's better to pay. Yeah. Got everyone to believe in him, so.

Well, that's right. Good. Well, we, we will give everyone. This is like the, the refreshing dose of informed consent of, you know, be careful what you read and, and you know, scratch the surface a little deeper than the superficiality. So.

So for the book list, because I love sharing that, you know, if anyone wants to get those books, I Don't know the best way to send them to people. But I have so much fun, like hearing that you like the thing about the Queen Gambit is so much fun to me. So anyone wants to get it to them.

Well, good. And so this is a nice segue. So if people want to, you know, connect with you and start to follow you, learn more about what you've written, what your projects are, how to get on your list for the Hype Book List, things like that, what are some good ways to do that? We'll put this in the show notes, too, for those that are working out or driving and can't write this down, but just to say it out loud, too. What are some of the best ways to get in touch with you, Michael, or follow you?

Yeah, I mean, I think the best way is the Hype Book List only because it's a very ongoing communication. You know, it's a way to learn sort of how my brain works, but also just. It's just fun and it's. And it's good. And the best way, I think, you know, you can put a link to the actual form, but that's hard to say on here. So if you want to just email me. I love getting emails, too. So it's mfs. My middle name is Farley. Who knows why? But It's. So it's MFS, my initials, Michael Farley. Shine@microfamemedia.com. so the name of the company and, and, and, you know, other than that, I mean, check out the website, see what we do if you're in the market. But if you're just anybody listening, I'd love to throw you some great book recommendations.

That's great. And we'll, we'll put as many too, if you want to. I can put this, you know, the ones that you put in the November 29th mailing as our show notes, too. So people can kind of see that. So how, how do you, how do you stumble across these? I mean, they are so wonderfully rich and diverse. I mean, it's like there's not a, you know, there's not an eclectic section in Amazon or something, I don't think. Or at the. At Barnes, your local Barnes and Noble. How. How is it that you find these gems?

I guess a couple of ways. So there have been a few key books which set me down on this path. So I was browsing in a bookstore a long time ago and I found Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday.

Oh, yeah.

Do you know that?

Oh, yeah. I love Ryan Holiday. Yeah, yeah.

And that was the one. He's become sort of this apostle for stoicism. And that's all really great stuff, but he was a lot more mischievous before. You know, he did the marketing for American Apparel. And that book's basically about how he gamed the media. And it's really funny, and you kind of want to take a shower afterwards, but in the best possible way. And I just thought. And I thought it was so refreshing. I said, well, are there other books like this? And then, you know, the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene, I think is fun. So I, you know. You know, so I would browse bookstores, but, you know, I found Goodreads to be a really great source and Amazon, because you can type in topics, right? So, like, I don't know, maybe give me an example of a book and I'll tell you maybe how I found it, because I do a lot of searching online, find things.

Well, like the charlatan one. I mean, that seems like, you know. And I remember hearing you guys talk about it on. There was some episode of some podcast about that. But how did. How'd you stumble upon that? And because some of these aren't, like, you know, newly released books either.

I mean, gosh, I wish. I think that might have been a recommendation. So once in a while, I'll read about someone in another book, like, I don't know, Madame Blavette. So an example is, you know, Madame Blavatsky. I read about her in another book, and then I went and typed her name in and found this book on Madame Blavatsky's Baboon. You know, or it's usually like that. Like, I'll, you know, I browse bookstores, but I think the main thing is that I dig deep. So if I hear about something somewhere else, I'll say to myself, gosh, can I learn more about that? Can I. Can I dig in deeper? Like, for example, I just read this book that I got a recommendation from my local bookstore because they know the kind of stuff I'm interested in called Other Powers. And it's about this woman, Victoria Woodhull, who was one of the original suffragettes, but she also was a spiritualist. And it talks about the connections between, like, seances and spiritualism and the original woman's rights movement. Right. A lot of people don't know. So, yeah, while it was an interesting book, she wasn't as much of a hype artist as I thought. But they talk a little in it about the first people who did Seances. And they were these young girls. They weren't even seances. They heard knocking sounds in their house, and it started this mass movement, and they became like the leaders of a religion, and they were called the Fox Sisters. And that was almost more interesting to me. They were. And, you know, so. And they. You know, so I looked up and there's a whole book about them. So I bought that. So that's the kind of stuff. Stuff that I. That I.

That's great. I mean, honestly, you know, Michael, that's like a great public service, you know, of. Of doing that. That kind of research and then, you know, sharing it out to the world. So that's terrific.

A lot of people. I thought I'd save people the work because you can learn a lot more from some of these books than you can from marketing tips for the 21st century or whatever else.

Yeah, Yeah, I totally. I mean, it seems like a lot of those things are so concocted and formulaic and, you know, old wine and new bottles kind of a thing, so I think so, yeah. This is so, so different and so refreshing. So I really.

That's why podcasts are good, too. A lot of times someone will talk about a book on a podcast, and then I'll go out, find it there. So that. That's another. That actually may be how I found the Charlotte. Oh, no. I know there was one Shep Hike in Alice Cooper's manager, but he was. Yeah, he was interviewed and he had written a book, so I bought that. And that was like a guide to marketing yourself. It's called they Call Me Supermensch. Everyone should read it if you want to attract attention.

Yeah, I think. Is there a. I think there's a documentary on him, too. Like, there is called Super Minsch or something. Yeah. Yeah. He's really an amazing character. So. Well, Michael Mann, thank you so much for the generosity of your time today. I've so enjoyed this and been able to learn more about you and your history and your work. We will put, as mentioned earlier, your email. Be careful. Hopefully that will not create a burden and be able.

I hope it does.

Okay, yeah, good point. And I just. I really appreciate your spirit. I appreciate your sort of taking the road less traveled. But maybe, you know, in my book, I think it's a little bit more informed, a little bit more, you know, intelligent and. And just really sort of like the, you know, spit and vinegar kind of aspect that goes along with. With you because you've got the. The intellectual chops and brain power to back it up. I mean, anybody can kind of, you know, everybody's got a platform and can say whatever it is they want. But I mean, I think with the things that I've had experience with your writing and your work is that it's, you know, truly well informed. So I guess maybe my last question for you is, do you have any kind of trajectory for when the book might. Your book might be hitting the shelves?

Well, first of all, Chris, thank you for those ridiculously kind words. I mean, that means a lot, especially coming from you. I mean, your stuff is great. I mean, you're no slouch yourself. Yes, well, you know, basically I have an agent and I just brought on the agent and he's a wonderful agent, and we are shopping it right after the year, so that will determine the trajectory.

So, yeah, keep me in touch because we are recording this a bit in advance of 2019. It'll drop in early 2019. So if we can coordinate that with some show note links, you know, that the book's out and things like that, that would be great. And I have to ask you, so if people are fans of you and your book, are they hypochondriacs or.

I should use that. I like, I never thought of that. It's really good.

Oh, thank you.

I think they are. There you go.

There you go.

So the book will be a while, though. I mean, it won't line up with this episode because I still, you know, again, I'm feeling confident about it, but it has to sell and then there's a lot that goes into.

Well, I am more than happy. Yeah. Just do keep me posted because I want to. I want to be first in line to get a signed edition, man. So, again, big.

And maybe you'll bring me back on.

Well, you know, that would be very cool. Yeah, I would be happy to. You got a deal. You got a deal. So. Well, good luck with this. Thanks again, Michael, for everything. And I will look forward to round two with you and hopefully the near future.

Thanks, Chris.

Living A Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks. And until next time,