Growth Hacking with Contact Marketing: Lessons from Stu Heinecke’s Playbook

In today's episode, we're going to be meeting Stu Heineck, and he has the why of better way, and he's going to share with us some better ways that people have used over the years to get in touch with anyone. So if there's somebody that you want to meet and you're not sure how to do it, you're going to love this episode. And then he's going to take that and show you how he transitioned into helping businesses grow like a weed, uses this weed strategy or this weed thinking of how weeds can grow anywhere and overcome almost anything and how you can take that and apply it to your business. You're going to love this episode.

Welcome to beyond you'd why podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to why institute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now, let's meet today's guest.

This week we're going to be talking about the why of better way to find a better way and share it. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and you are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto, I'm often pleased but never satisfied. You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas from one's industry and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. So today I have a great guest for you. His name is Stu Heinecke, and he started his career combining marketing with a one in a million mentorship with top cartoonists from Playboy and the New Yorker, resulting in a new genre of Direct mail and hundreds of record breaking campaigns from some of the world's biggest direct marketers. A twice nominated hall of fame marketer, bestselling business author and Wall Street Journal cartoonist, Stu's first book, how to get a meeting with anyone was named one of the top 64 sales books of all time. His latest release, how to grow your business like a weed lays out a complete model for explosive business growth based on the strategies, attributes and tools or weeds use to grow, expand, dominate and defend their turf. The total weed Award from Stu's book is a new collaboration with the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial center and a major business news outlet to recognize weed like growth among entrepreneurs, startups and investors. Stu has collaborated with several of the world's top management, ideation, sale, branding and publishing experts to produce a series of small groups high dollar strategy sessions in bucket list locations including Dubai, Salzburg, Sedona, Morocco, Iceland, Bora Bora and Sedona. Welcome to the podcast Stu.

Thank you.

Great to join you Gary.

This going to be fun. So from one better way guy to another better way guy, take us back in your life. Where were you born Stu?

I was born in, in Los Angeles and then grew up in mid Massachusetts. In Massachusetts.

In Massachusetts. So what were you like in high school? Take us back to that time in your life. What were you like as a high schooler?

You know, I was kind of a shy kid I think. You know one thing I did have the sense that nobody actually knew me, nobody actually understood me and, and that I was. This was not my peak at all. It was, you know, I was just, just gearing up, just spooling up.

Because you know, some people do peak in high school I think. But anyway it was nothing like that. And you know, but when I look back on it, I was a pretty immature kid too. So I don't know that I would put much credence in all those, all those thoughts that I had back then.

What kinds of things were you into?

Sports. A lot of sports. Hockey.

The town, the place where I grew up, the house, the property, the grounds and so forth. We had a big like a nine acre lake behind us that froze every year, so we play hockey on it and when it wasn't frozen we'd be, I don't know, chasing after the, after the snapping turtles and just all kinds of adventure. Actually it was an amazing place to grow up.

And yes, I loved, loved playing sports, loved that skiing. I was a ski instructor as a, as a high schooler and all those kinds of things. It was, it was A fun, fun place to grow up. Fun time to grow up.

And so when you graduated from high school, off to college. Right.

Where did you go to college?

I went to usc. Ah.

I knew I liked. You did.

Am I talking to a Trojan?

Yes, you.

Oh, gosh. Oh, that's great. Had no idea. Well, what a cool place to go to school. Right? You know. You know exactly what that's like. That was a.

So when were you at USC?

So I was there from 73 to 77.

Ah.

And so who was the football star at that time?

Oh, my God. Let's see. Charlie White, Marcus Allen, one. A guy that I was an RA for. Lynn. Lynn Kane. Was. Was a. Was a fullback, running back.

Oh, my gosh. I haven't thought of these names in a long. Other than Lynn. I'm in touch with Lynn, but I haven't thought of these names for a long time. But does that define the era? Ricky Bell, also. Ricky was. Ricky was my age. Ricky was. He was incredible.

Yeah. Think about usc, and I think you must have seen it as well and said, what an incredible environment to step into. And I mean that because your peers, a lot of them are so accomplished already. And so I think back when I was there, they were saying that if USC was a country, it would rank 14th in the number of Olympic medals won. And so John Neighbor was there, the swimmer, and he was an RA at the same time. I don't know him, but. But he was an RA at the same time I was. And just. They were just incredible. I mean, Ron Howard was there.

He just. I mean, I got to talk to him once, just, Ron, what are you doing here? I mean, why do you need to be here? And he told me he was going to be a film mogul one day, and he. He did it. So it was just an. It's. What an incredible atmosphere to. To step in. Just incredible. I thought it was just. I mean, it was one of. Just an accelerant of mindset and just of your life. It was incredible, I thought.

And so what did you go into? What was your major during that time?

Marketing.

In marketing. Perfect place to do it. And graduated and then got into. What kind of marketing did you start doing?

So my first job out of college was as a manager of marketing for a steel distributor in Carson, California. And that doesn't sound like.

It'S not terribly glamorous, but it was interesting because at the same time, I was also very, very interested in. I've been interested in cartooning since as long as I can remember. Really. But so by then I was also a published cartoon in la, so I was getting published in the LA papers a little bit and, and I was a member of the cartoonist guild. And that changed a lot because what they sent me one article didn't just send it to me, they sent it to all the members. But they sent us one article from Folio magazine and that's the magazine for magazine for people who produce magazines. I don't know if it's still around actually. But anyway, they sent this one article that talked about cartoons, how they were showing up in readership surveys, editorial readership surveys, as the best read and remembered parts of magazines and newspapers.

In the case of newspapers, they were better read than the front page, which is interesting. So I was thinking, my gosh, I've got to combine the two. I think cartooning would be a great device in marketing. And, and that was an interesting bumpy ride. All of it's been bumped. Why wouldn't it be bumpy? I mean, that's life. But it was an interesting bumpy ride.

So why cartooning? What interested you in cartooning? And when did you start? When did you draw your first cartoon and why did you get into it?

I don't know when I drew my first cartoon, but I know why I got into it.

Okay. So my brothers and I used to, I was about 10 years old at the time and my brothers and I discovered that my father had Playboys in his dresser cars. And so we would sneak them out and look at them and of course we read the articles. You know, there was always the joke about Playboy, but anyway. But yeah, you know, Playboy actually was an amazing cultural phenomenon back then. And, and so of course they had the pictures and they, they led a, they had a, they had an interesting place in the sexual revolution, I suppose. But, but they were also just excellent, just from a, from a journalistic standpoint. And that certainly carried through with the, with the cartoonists and so Yehan Wilson and Eldon Deini. And I was so, I was looking at the cartoons and I'm just saying, who does these? How do they do this? That's incredible. I was looking at some of the best, some of the work of some of the best cartoonists in the world. So it should be amazing. And it was.

And then later in life I, I'm skipping ahead quite a bit, but later in life they became my, my mentors, but they became part of my, my marketing group and, and so, so that was amazing. It was that though I was just looking at the, at the, the Just. Just to.

Just if they would. It was. It was just so audacious. It was so well done, and it was just absolute perfection to look at how they produce the drawings. And of course, it's not just drawing. Just drawing is actually almost a minor part. I shouldn't say it's a minor part, but it's writing that is the major part of it. You have to write a gag, and if the gag isn't funny, then the drawing is not going to help.

So that's what I was about to ask you. What's the difference between, you know, for. For those of us that are. That's not our thing. Even though we do read them and, and see them. What separates a good from a great cartoon or cartoonist?

Well, I. It's really just about this. This will be true for all forms of humor. I think humor is about truth revealed in a twist. And so that's why when we find something funny, we're laughing before we can catch our breath. We're saying, oh, my God, that's so true. It is like that. Or I know someone like that. I've been through something like that. I just put some cartoons away, but I have one of. Of this guy, and he's on the phone, he's cradling the phone on his shoulder, and he's looking through some papers on his desk and he's saying, hey, listen, we got your proposal and we like everything except having to pay you. I'm thinking that is the problem with every proposal, isn't it? That they have to pay us. And so that's. We laugh because there's something true about it.

And why do you think that cartoons are so, you know, like, like you said, they're so well read. So people. Remember people send each other cartoons probably much more than they said each other. An article.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I mean, because it's. It. I don't know that they actually are aware that it's delivering a message. I mean, you can see the caption, but. But I mean, an. An underlying message and a deep message, but it's the reason why it's funny. So if they find it funny, they're agreeing with it and they want to. They want to share it. That's actually what's happening now. That's really dry. A dry understanding or level of it. But because. Because on the surface level, it's just funny and it's fun when you, if you, if you see a cartoon.

The New Yorkers have gotten pretty political, I would say, lately. So they're not as Funny. But. But when they're funny, when they're just actually just about life and about what's true in life, then what's funny is that I think I. I don't know. There's. There's something also very mysterious about it. Because. Why would we laugh? Because it's true. Because you could also say, well, that's true. Right. So I don't. It does appeal to something deep inside that. That I couldn't quite quantify or explain. But when it hits us in a way that's just. That just tickles us, then, you know, somehow surprise presented in a surprising way, that's our reaction, and it's a very, very powerful reaction. We know what the. We know that. That laughter is healthy for us and that.

Relieves stress. It's actually an amazing. An amazing thing in our lives. And I suppose it's more mysterious than I. Than I realized when I started explaining what it is. Because ultimately, though, the effect is that it's. It's. It's expressing something that we find true, and that's why we want to. That's why we want to share it. I think it's also why we want to read it. It's. I mean, it's a simple thing to. To read and suddenly, oh, that's funny, and I'm going to share with someone.

Yeah, it's kind of like the ROI is. Is so high in cartoons because it takes very little time to read them. You don't have to read, you know, five paragraphs on it. You just read a few words. I mean, is there. How many words are there typically in a cartoon? Probably not a lot.

Totally not too many. And yeah, it's a simple. It's. It's just this pure idea that gets. That gets expressed very, very quickly. I mean, I have one that sometimes it's just a sight gag. And so I have one of. Of some people walking down the street in the. I mean, walking down the sidewalk in New York, and there's a little sandwich sign out on the sidewalk, and the sandwich sign is saying. And they have to sort of bend. They're having to avoid the sign. And the sign just says, please excuse our sign. Thank you.

But you could have just taken it out. Yeah. You could apologize, or you could just remove the sign from the sidewalk. There's just all these little funny things that just. You think, oh, I got, you know, I've had another one psychiatric. These two. Sort of. Well, sort of a grandmotherly woman, and then another one that's older but not quite a Grandma. So the grandmotherly woman is. Is demurely knitting. And it's not until you follow the. The line down the yarn line down to realize what she's really doing is taking a thread from the other woman's coat and just completely unraveling it.

And I guess. Can I. I guess sometimes I'm not sure what the message is, but I guess it's just sort of a. There's mischief in all of us. I don't know, something like that. But you look at it, it just gives you a good feeling. It's just funny to. Fun to do and fun to see, fun to take it in.

So take us through how you create. Develop. Think up. Think of a cartoon.

Man.

Sometimes I don't. I don't. I don't have a formula for it. They. They just come. And sometimes it's when you're. When you're sort of half asleep, that's a problem because you better write it down or you're going to lose it. But which I think, you know, I've listened to songwriters talk about where songs come from, and I think it comes from the same sort of thing. Sometimes it's a very quick thing. Sometimes it takes a long, long time. The. The one that I just told you about with. The guy's going through papers and he really is looking through your proposal. That one came from one of my clients who we did. We tested something and he said it worked, but we don't really want to pay for it. I thought, well, that's really interesting. I've done everything you asked and you don't want to. Why am I. Why did I do it? I mean, what is. What's that about? So. So that's where that one came from. It just came from. You know, it's just a circumstance that came up in life and. And it converted into a cartoon very easily. So it just sort of runs the gamut, I would say. You know, I just. I just was watching an interview of Paul Simon, and he was talking about where the Bridge Over Troubled Water came from and what a beautiful. One of the. One of the prettiest pop songs I think ever produced. And. And he said it just popped into his head and he didn't even know where it came from. And. And it's. I'm just saying that's exactly where cartoons come from, too. Yeah, I think it's the same thing. And, you know, probably the same thing as well is that just that songs probably are. If you think about it, songs often express truth as well.

It's Interesting, Stu, because. And for those of you that are listening, that are familiar with the yos, your why, how and what Stu's why is to find a better way and share it. Right. How he does that is by challenging the status quo, thinking differently, thinking outside the box. And ultimately what he brings is a trusting relationship where others can count on it. And that sounds like that's the essence of what cartooning is. It's a better way to connect by doing it differently and becoming that trusted voice, that trusted source.

Yes, that is true. It's a source of insight. If you become a source of insight. If people become used to, aware of and then used to reading your cartoons and they look forward to them, we know what's happening with your develop. You're, you're imparting something that that is, is describing some element of truth and, and so you're helping people understand it better. But that, that changed later in life. So cartooning is still, it's still, it's sort of a big part of my life, but it's not the, it's not the primary driver anymore. I mean, that's really writing books. The two books that, that you're aware of, how to get a meeting with anyone and, and, and how to grow your business like a weed. And I think about, I, they don't sound like serious. If I wasn't, if I wasn't the author of them, they might not sound like very serious books. You know, I was, I think it's probably the, probably the probably books that only a cartoonist might write. I don't know.

Well, then let's keep going. So, yeah, when you graduated and you got into working for the steel company doing their marketing, how long were you there and what was that like? And kind of keep us going forward. What happened after that?

I was there for a couple of years and a significant part for me was that I inherited this weekly direct mail campaign. So all this thing was, was this large sheet of paper with all these different sizes of, and different types of steel spelled out with their pricing. That's it. That was just a big price list. But I thought, you know what, this is interesting because this thing goes out to the entire, the entire client base and prospect base for the company. This is a place to create a lot of visibility for what I'm doing. And so then I convinced them, I said, you know, I want to put a cartoon in this each time. I want to create a little bit of fandom for the, for the pieces, otherwise it's rather trash. And I said, okay. Let's give it a try. And we didn't really have any way of measuring response, but we were hearing great reactions from the people that were on the list, so we kept doing it. That was great. And of course, the fact that I inserted my cartoons into that gave me a lot more visibility within the company instantly. So it was kind of an unfair advantage. And unfair advantages are going to come up a lot in our conversation. But it's one of sort of my first discovery of my, one of my unfair advantages was cartooning. Gives you a, you know, you, you can go out and reach a lot of people and can give you a whole lot of visibility. Suddenly you show up to everyone. They know who you are.

Okay, so you were with that, the steel company for a couple years. What happened after that?

Laid off. And so the next thing I discovered was I went to the competitor and said, this is what I've been doing for, I'm sure you're aware of it, but this is what I've been doing for this one company.

And I'd like to do it for you. But this time I didn't walk in asking for a job. I walked in with a business card and I was the president of my own agency. All you have to do is make the card and there you are. So I, I walked in and told them that and they said, yep, you're hired. That's great. And in fact started making, oh, God, FedEx has just shown up, so the dog is going to talk to us. But, but.

That, that was a revelation because I, I, I was making a lot more than I was very quickly from, from consulting and doing running agency work than, than, than when I was there as an, somewhere else doing the same job as an employee.

Okay, and so you were an agency for the competitor, and how long did that happen? And then did you just start adding more companies and more people?

Well, so I started with that one steel company, but I wasn't very excited about steel. And so my next clients actually, because I thought, I want to find out how far this can go or what, who else can I work with? And I really, I knew that I wanted to work with the magazine industry because they were, they were the world's biggest users of direct marketing at the time. And so.

So I reached out to Bon Appetit and to Rolling Stone, and I told them, you know, I think we should put this to the test because, because look, people read, they love cartoons. They're, they're, I mean, this is going to make the cart, the direct mail piece stand out in the pile of mail that everyone's getting. And we know what, what happens is from the editorial readers, readership surveys, we know that they're going to be the best read and best remembered part of the, of that stack of mail, at least that day. But maybe it'll draw them further into the piece. And we can do some things. We can offer a print of the cartoon. Because the cartoons were, were personal. I was also using personalization. So each, on each mailing, the cartoons were about each recipient. And so that, so those were my next two clients actually. So it was the steel company, the steel, the local steel distributor, and then Bon Appetit and Rolling Stone. And both of those test campaigns that I produced for them beat their controls. What it means is, I mean in statistics we test against a control group. And so in direct marketing, the control group or the control is the most effective thing they'd put in the mail. And, and I beat it. First two, first two mailings out, those personalized cartoons beat the, beat the controls. It was like a rookie walking onto the major league baseball field and hitting two grand slam home runs right away. And that opened the door to everything else that happened.

And I don't want to be a run on answer. I'm sorry, I won't go any further.

That's great.

But I mean what it did was just open what I, I did that set those two records and, and then I thought, okay, this is my opportunity to reach out to the rest of the publishing industry. And so I put together a little campaign. Didn't know what to call it, so I called it a contact campaign. And it consisted of a little 8 by 10 print of a cartoon, each personalized, each recipient and then a note. And this went out to, I was just trying to break through to the, to the publishing industry. So there's not a lot of published big magazine publishers. So I needed to reach either the directors of circulation.

Or the directors of consumer marketing at Conde Nast and Time Inc. And I mean they're all names that are familiar. I think they're still familiar to us, but Wall Street Journal and Forbes and so on. And I needed to reach out to these people. They're at the director level. They weren't going to be very easy to reach. Just so, okay, fine, that's fine. But put together that little campaign and I'm curious, I just want to play this game with you a little. What do you think I got as a response rate? Any, any guesses? 85. Well, now keep in mind that that indirect Response. They were saying that if you get a 1% response rate, you're doing great. Right. But you are close. I. 100%. All of them, all of them responded. All of them agreed to meet. All of them became clients. It was worth millions of dollars to me and it came from a campaign that I spent about a hundred dollars on that was my first contact patch with or my first exposure to using contact marketing. That's my term for it. And it comes out of, out of my, my book how to grow your business. Like, sorry, how to, how to get a meeting with anyone. But that was my first, my first experience with. It was 100% everything meeting rate, conversion rate and response rate. And it's funny because I couldn't talk about it. Everyone was saying 1% response rates are what you should expect in direct response. And 100% response rates are absolutely impossible. So I thought, okay, I can't talk about this at all. No one's going to believe you. It's like, how did, and I see that you also, you've been abducted by UFOs as well, right? Yeah.

So how did you meet the demand then?

Demand for, for your work.

Because now you had 100% response rate, 100% of these companies wanting to work with you.

Were you.

Would you be able to. Oh, I guess you would use, would you use the same cartoon in each.

Oh, no, no, they'd, no, they'd be different cartoons. And.

I mean the thing was there was a season to their, to, to their testing. And so it was. They do it twice a year. And so twice a year I'd go to New York and meet with all the, these new, these new contacts. And some would buy and some would, some weren't ready to create tests. So they'd be paying me for, to create new test campaigns. And you asked about the cartoons? Actually, you know, I'm the cartoonist, but I'm also saying, you know, look, I really want to bring the best. This really does come out of that, that why Os thing because I really wanted to bring the very, very best product I could to my, my clients. And so I started reaching out to some of the cartoonists that were my heroes of cartooning. So I mentioned Gahan Wilson and Eldon Denia. I knew Eldon from before. I also knew Leo Cullum from before, one of the New Yorker cartoonists. And so I started getting introduced. And so, so Cahon Wilson became part of the group and Eldon Dadini, those both from Playboy and then Leo Cullum and Bob Mankoff and Arnie Levin and all these amazing cartoonists became part of my group. And then as I was going around showing the clients, okay, so I'm saying, look, this is what we can do. And now I have a stable of cartoonists, and here's a little booklet that shows. You'll recognize their work, but you won't know their names. So this is what Elvin's looks like. This is what Gahan Wilson's looks like. And so I was selling a lot of. A lot of assignments for the cartoonists that way. And I was still writing the copy and producing. I was creating the whole thing, other than pulling in the cartoonist. Well. And a lot of times my cartoons were chosen. The clients wanted mine, which amazed me. But so.

That is why I ended up. Here's the race. The really amazing thing about all that was that I started then hanging out with my, you know, my heroes of cartooning. And. Because when I went to New York, a lot of them were in New York. And I lived in LA at the time, so a few lived in la, but most were in New York. And so when I went to New York, I'd hang out with them and I'd work with them on assignments. And so I was. That was their creative director on the assignment. So I had a lot of exposure to the cartoonists. And what I realized later is that. And nobody realized this, Nobody knew this was happening, but I ended up being mentored by the best cartoonist in the world. That's really what happened. That was the net, net, net of it all.

Wow.

And then when did you write? Now, how did that lead to getting a meeting with anybody?

Well, so when I sent that little contact campaign to the. To the 24, the two dozen people in the marketing. I'm sorry, in the publishing industry, I just thought, well, that was weird because I had never done it before. So all of a sudden, 100% response rate at every level. That was interesting. And so. Okay, that's really cool. Who else? How far can I take this? So I started sending cartoons to impersonalized cartoons, to presidents and prime ministers and celebrities and lots of top decision makers. And I was getting through to them. So, okay, cool. I have a secret weapon, these personalized cartoons. They're incredible devices here. So then. Then I. I started hearing stories about what other people were doing to get meetings. And, you know, this is just. This is a long tradition. People have been doing a lot of things to get really interesting things to reach out to people they don't know and get meetings with them. And so what I discovered was that there's this whole shadow form of marketing out there.

And the more I was exposed to it, the more I thought, I got to write a book about this.

I haven't heard of these stories anywhere. So I've got to write this. I mean, I've got to get this out there. And so that's where how to get a meeting with anyone came from. That was the genesis of it. And as I research more and more of these stories, it's amazing what people are doing to get meetings. They're very, very clever, audacious things. And, you know, I've always asked, do you have to be a cartoonist to. To use contact marketing? No, you don't at all. You can use. There are all kinds of really interesting ways of going about getting meetings. And that's such. We could do hours on that subject. I don't know that you want to do that, but we could really. We could literally do hours. I'll just say that the, the highest response rate that I know of from a contact marketing campaign is somewhere between 3 and 400%. Wow, that's an odd number because you send a campaign to a certain audience and if all of them respond, that's 100% response rate. So how on earth can you get more than 100%? And the fact was that the device was so compelling that the, the recipient was showing it around, and the people who saw it said, wait, I've got to, I've got to contact this person too. So, so they, it's getting three or four times what the number of. The number of people that he reached out to as response. So now here come.

So you called it, you called it something shadow marketing or.

No, contact marketing.

Contact marketing. Okay. And why do you call it that?

Because we're using it to get in contact with people. Okay. Connections with people. Yeah. So, and then, and so the, the, the other one. This number is going to just really blow your mind. The highest ROI that I, I've found among these stories is, is 96,500,000% ROI. And so what, what that means is that. Is that a bizarre number or what? I mean, how could you even wrap your head around a number? Because it's a percent. So. Or a percentage. So how could you wrap your head around it? There was a, there was a startup, they had produced this, or they, the founder had invented a tongue scraper device, and they were selling it for. They'd been selling for about a year through YouTube videos. So they had this very young group of people from Brigham Young University, producing videos and just having fun with it, but producing videos that were on, on YouTube to sell this tongue cleaner. So they were, they had that first year of, of operation. They sold about a million dollars worth of tongue scrapers. And, and I was interviewing the, the former CEO for this, for the story, for the, for the book. So.

So then they decided, well, you know, what's next? Well, why don't we, we ought to break into, into Walmart. That would be incredible to be featured, I mean, just to be sold throughout their network. So they applied like everyone else does and nothing happened because of course, you know, it's such a, you know, we need, we need to avoid crowded channels. That's a great, that's a great piece of advice. Avoid crowded channels. So, so the young guys got frustrated at one point and they decided, let's run an ad in Facebook. We'll make up our own ad. They use the spokesperson from the, from the videos. And so someone who held a big giant tongue scraper. And it was said, walmart employees have bad breath. And then. But if you, that was the headline. But if you, if you carry our product, it's. Nope, I don't know what it was. I forgot what the rest of the ad said. But it was basically, if you, if you carry our product in your stores, you won't. And it was targeted to the Bentonville, Arkansas, just specifically to the zip code of their Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters. And then, you know, also education levels and age, age ranges. Basically they were trying to reach the right buyer at WALALMART and within 48 hours they got, they were contacted by Walmart, but it was their legal department. And the legal department was saying, are you the people behind this ad? They said, yeah, would you please take it down? Of course, we'll take it down, of course, but. And they're saying, did you run this thing nationally? No, no, no, we targeted it directly to your. I think the only people who saw that were your employees. So we targeted it by zip code and education and age. Wow, you got, you're really rather good digital marketers, aren't you? Well, that conversation.

Or led to them to being introduced to the buyer of dental products. And that introductory call led to.

About a $2 million order. And, and then, and I was asking, I've asked the CEO. Okay, so before that phone call, you were not in, you were not featured in, in Walmart, and after that phone call, you were, you were destined to be rolled out throughout. I think it's 6,600 stores in their, in their network. What did that do to your valuation? And he said, I think it was 10x. And I think our, because our, our earnings were $1 million the first year, if we just do a 2x multiplier on that, then we went from a 2 million dollar a year comp or $2 million company to a $20 million company. So that was, it was all of that. All that $20 million in the $2 million.

Order came from a $28 ad. Wow. And that's crazy. That's the nature of contact marketing. Contact marketing is amazing.

Yeah.

Because when you were saying contact marketing, I was thinking about the. More like a CRM type thing versus what you're talking about is getting in contact with the right person.

Yes. Can I show you something? Can I just hold something up? So I mentioned using cartoons. And, and I use that. This is what I use for, for clients now. So this is a big board. I have to go way back. And it's so, it's 18 by 24 inches, quarter inch thick, foam core board. And, and on the front is a cartoon. This is one of mine.

I have to personalize it if I tell you the caption. So I sent one of these to Mark Cuban. And, and, and so of course, Mark is the owner of the Mavericks. So this woman is telling her friend Mark. Mark Cuban says you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their Mavs tickets. They tend to agree. Of course Mark does as well. And so, and there's a message on the back explaining who, who's who. Whoever the sender is, is explaining who they are, why they want to meet, the next steps. But that, that big board ended up, it's framed and up on Mark's wall in his office. So that's the kind of effect that it has. And, and when you send something like that, when, when you have that kind of an effect, when they, when they're saying, who is this? Be like, I got to meet this person. I know I need to know who this is. And, and I love the way you think. And so when all that is happening, then you're connecting, but you're also connecting many, many steps ahead of just connecting. If you were, I don't know, if you just broke through on the phone, they already like you. They already, they're, they're already impressed with how you think. And, and they want to know how to just. Okay, what do you want to do? Let's, let's talk. So that's, that's sort of the net, the net effect of, of contact marketing. I would say also, though I. I mentioned unfair advantage earlier, that the cartooning turned out to be an unfair advantage for me. I. I can. I can show up to. I could when I do that, if I use a cartoon, and let's say maybe the cartoon is. I have a high school reunion coming up. So my cartoons are sort of. They're in the cartoon, they're in the communication. And so it's going to be. I'm not shy anymore, but if I had been, then, you know, I'd be going up to people and I don't know if I remember you, Stu, but they'll remember me. Everyone will remember me because I'm the cartoonist. I'm the guy behind the cartoons that were part of the invitations. That's always been an unfair advantage. Well, another one is the ability to be able to get a meeting with virtually anyone. That's an incredible unfair advantage, and you'll see that. I don't know if you had a chance yet to read my latest book about how to grow your business like a weed, but one of the things, a few things that weeds do.

That make them so special, and one of them is that they never do anything without an unfair advantage. So they're constantly cultivating unfair advantages. And I should say they've been evolving over tens of millions of years. They've evolved some really great unfair advantages. All you have to do is look at a dandelion and watch the seeds blow away and realize that plant is spreading sort of in geometric progression as compared to, let's say, I don't know, an acorn falling or acorns falling from an oak tree. They just fall right at their roots. They don't go anywhere. So, I mean, squirrels may take them somewhere, but those seeds that fly, and some weed seeds can fly hundreds of miles. So their spread is just incredibly rapid. And that's an unfair advantage. It's one of their unfair advantages. Anyway, those show up a lot in weed strategy as well.

Well, let's talk about that for a minute. So how did you get into. So the second book, I've got it here on the screen, is how to grow your business like a weed. Where did that come from?

I was driving down the freeway in LA one day and.

I noticed this. I noticed a dandelion going from a crack in the concrete median. And I could have driven by because we see this everywhere. They just inhabit cracks in concrete everywhere anyway, but it just. I noticed it and it looked like it was bouncing around. It looked happy. And those happy yellow flowers and those Seed. The seed pods of geodesic seed pods, and the seeds are flying around, and it just looked happy running its process. And I thought, well, that's. That's incredible. This all happened in just a split second. But that's incredible because, you know, if you think about it, I mean, you might wonder, well, how on earth did a. This is no place for a plant to take root. So how did it get there? Well, we know how it get there because we see the seeds blowing around all the time. That's exactly how they probe every possible opportunity to take root, which is already sounding like the ultimate entrepreneur, isn't it? It. So. And. But then also, it just, you know, it didn't look. Let's say.

I. It didn't look depressed. I don't know if a plant would look depressed. It wasn't drooping or something. It didn't look. It looked happy to be doing its. Running its process wherever it landed. And I just thought, what is it about weeds that makes them so special, so adept at. We know what the. I mean, we all know what it means to grow like a weed. So what is it about weeds that makes them so adept at doing that? And. And. And I was wondering, you know, do they have a model that they all use? Is there something. Is there some sort of unified string. String or consciousness here? Something. Is there some sort of theory that's running through this that. That they all use? And it turns out there is. There is. And I think it's actually the theory of everything about growing anything. So that was that drive down the Santa Monica Freeway many years ago. I just. First, you know, the thing was, I resolved. I thought, okay, I want to be like that weed. I. You know, I know that I've been traveling around a bit. I mean, I had been to England where. Where the economy was really much tighter, and people. I noticed that people held on. They just really held onto their jobs for life. And that wasn't happening in the States so much. But. And then there's some companies. I remember Saatchi and Saatchi, a big ad agency popping up out of nowhere, and the Saatchi brothers became millionaires because of it. So how did they do that? How'd they pull that off? They're a weed. And so how did they pull that off? And anyway, I wanted to study it, wanted to figure that out. What is it that weeds are doing? What makes them so special, so adept, so well equipped to growth?

What do they do that we can do? And it turns out there's a lot.

If you could give us one thing that a weed does that would, we could copy, that makes, would make the biggest difference in our own business. What would that be?

Well, first let me just describe real quickly the nature of weeds.

Weeds deal with what is. And that sounds so simple. But they have a mindset. They have an apparent mindset. Let's say there's some sort of collective intelligence about them and they don't give up. We know exactly what it is because we see it in our yards. They don't give up. They don't show up alone. If you cut them down, they're going to go right. But they go right back to their process and keep running it. And they're absolutely resilient and adaptive and aggressive and urgent. And I would say even optimistic because when we're optimistic, we act in certain ways. We're more, much more focused and ready to accomplish what we need to accomplish. We're excited about it. So I would say even optimistic. Even though they don't have brains. So that's the first thing they deal with, what is. And the next thing is that they never do anything without an unfair advantage. We've talked a little bit about that. They never do anything alone. They're one of nature's great collaborators. You never see a dandelion, like if you see a dandelion in your lawn, look up and you'll see at least dozens more, if not hundreds more. They never show up alone. If they showed up alone, they wouldn't be a factor. But when they, when they're there in that kind of volume or that kind of scale, you're never going to get rid of them. I mean they're each producing about 15,000 seeds per plant over their 5 to 10 year life span. You're not going to get rid of them. And so that's one. They always focus on what makes them win, which is really, really alludes to, to process. They've got ironclad process that, an ironclad process that's been built over millions of years and also is, is adaptable to, to challenges very, very quickly. And I think finally, finally they, they thrive best in disrupted ground. Disrupted ground is our farmland. And, and we're the ones that disrupt the ground mostly. But if there's a forest fire, whatever it is, they, they're the ones that move in first. They thrive in that they're not doing anything differently than they usually do, but they're just so adapted to so well, so well evolved into that, that challenge. They, they're the ones that show up first and colonize it first. So that's the nature of weeds.

I think you and you were asking me, I think you were asking me what's the most important thing they do or the most important thing that we could do?

Yeah, if you could give us one thing that we'd do or the most valuable thing that we could take away for our own businesses to be more. To grow our business like a weed, what would that be?

Well, I think my favorite part of it is that, is that they're just radical collaborators. And I think if they could talk to us, they would tell us, if you want to grow your business, you need to team up with the smartest people you know as fast as you can. That takes a lot of forms. And in fact, I would say that all the people in your network, the reason they're in there, in your network, in the yos network, all this, all those coaches are doing exactly that. They're collaborating and you're giving them that opportunity to do that. I've been using it in my business and I've been using it to grow my book. And, and so.

One of, one of the things to grow my book.

The book launched that is how to grow your business like we launched traditionally. And it did that a year ago. So in June last year. And I had a publicist out there and the publicist was shopping it to all the, all, all of the various media outlets.

But they're one of, I don't know, thousands. Could there be thousands of publicists out there maybe, probably who are all hawking their clients stories? And a lot of them are books. And it's a very crowded channel. I mentioned crowded channels before. They're just, they don't really pay out very well. And so.

Okay, fine. They. It produced what it produced. I've been on a lot of podcasts. I get on a lot of podcasts. But. But there was no play with, let's say CNBC or Inc. Or Forbes, any of the business media outlets. There was no play on this book. There has been on earlier books. And so, okay, fine, as I said, we tell us deal with what is. And that's exactly what I did. And so I though I had. I asked Nicola Corzine, the executive director of the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial center, if she would write the forward to the book. And she agreed. Wow, that's fantastic. She's a great source for a forward for a book like this. And so after the book came out, we were talking and I said, nicola, I mentioned in the book that I'm going to start a new award called the Total Weed Award to recognize, celebrate, we'd like spread and growth among entrepreneurs and startups. So I'm just wondering, could we collaborate? Could the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial center become the home of the award? She said, sure. I almost fell over, like, wow, this, wow, that's fantastic. And so we've developed this further and further. We just, we just launched the awards in May, so we just granted the first awards. And what's really cool about this is that, you know, we're, we're going to be pulling in a media partner from this. We don't know yet who's going to be that, but.

This is part of nasdaq. After all. The NASDAQ has partnerships with a lot of big media partners, so, or media outlets. So that's not going to be hard getting through to them. And we're going to have a, I mean, and the conversation will go something like this. We've got an interesting property for you that we'd like you to become involved with us on as, as our, as our media partner. Okay, what is it? Well, it's called the TOE Lead Award. Okay, that's cute. Where, where does it come from? It comes from this book, how to grow your business. Like a. Wait, huh? Do we know anything about this book? So I guess the long and the short of it is one of the benefits I get from that is that now instead of my publicist, one of thousands of publicists telling these, these outlets about the book, suddenly it's NASDAQ telling them about it. I think that the reception is going to change drastically. But at the same time, I'm giving them. It's not just that I partnered with them and I got all the benefit. I'm giving them, pardon me, a new vehicle to attract sponsorship. So new sponsorship and new fundraising opportunities. It's going to create buzz because the, the awards are about one of them. One of the awards is the most audacious, actually the most ingenious unfair advantage. Well, I mean, companies are out there creating all kinds of really interesting unfair advantages. But the fact is that without, without knowledge of these stories, it doesn't really. We need, we need to know about these stories. And the more we know about these stories, the more traction NASDAQ gets as a center of. Well, I mean, as. Well, yeah, just as a, as a source of, of, of insight about how to grow your business. And, and one of those elements is how to create unfair advantages in your business. And there are several other areas of weed strategy that we're focused on. But it gives them this new, this new great source of buzz in, in the, in the marketplace. So a lot of different things that come out of it. But, but I would never. I would never even have dreamt of. Of teaming up with. With NASDAQ with a part of NASDAQ before, but the weeds tell me, go do it. And, and, and it, it works. And there are other. Other. It takes other forms. You and I might. Or you and, and your partner, Daniel and I might be doing one together. And so, yeah, they're really, really interesting ways of, of reaching out and making things happen in your business and in another five, maybe other things that you want to grow, like a movement or, I don't know, something else. But. But it is sort. I mentioned earlier that I think it's the theory of everything about growing anything. And I mean by that, that you can apply it to growing just about anything.

Wow, that's awesome. That's exciting that you were able to see that, capture it, write it down, create a structure around it. And now it's helping so many other people. So last question for you, Stu. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever given or been given?

You know, I, I have to. I have to tell a quick story if that's, if that's okay, if we have time.

So growing up, we used to sail out of. Out of a little town called Westport in Massachusetts. And it's south of Cape Cod. Beautiful place to go sailing. There's all these islands out there, but. Including Nantucket and, And Martha's Vineyard, but there's a whole string of islands out there as well. And it's just a beautiful place, wonderful place to cruise. So. So one day we were, my parents and I, we went to the. And my brothers and sisters, we were going to the boat that weekend. And so we headed down to Westport. And when we got there, we discovered what's foggy and. Oh, well. So we still were getting ready. The boat is out in the morning, so you've got to. You've got to go out and get the boat and then you've got to dock it. And my parents belonged to a yacht club. And everyone at the yacht club was saying to my father, was saying they'd be asking, are you going out in this? Because it was quite foggy where we were. And he said, yeah, of course. And they kept. More and more people kept coming up to him, are you going out in this? Yeah, of course. And so we got ready, got everything loaded on the boat took off into the. In that great white wall of fog, and, and it was quite thick until we reached the end of the breakwater, when all of a sudden the fog disappeared. And we look back and realized the only place that fog existed was over. Over the harbor of Westport. And we thought, well, okay, that's great. We've got this beautiful sunny day. We've been sailing around with a couple of islands and had a blast and came back and the fog was still there over, over the port. And, and we realized that. That everyone else, like, the furthest they got was to the, to the sandbar, just, Just. Just before the breakwater, and they hadn't realized that they were sitting in the fog the whole time. And so I, you know, I took a lot of advice out of that. That, out of that object, that object lesson, and that was incredible. Never take no for an answer. If you know just because it's conventional wisdom, question it and, and, and test it out for yourself. And if somebody says something is. Is impossible, that's our opportunity, really. It's our. It's our invitation to go do it. So it's. All those things flowed out of that one day.

That's awesome. Well, Stu, thank you so much for being here today. I know we're kind of running out of time, and if there's people that are listening that want to connect with you, want to follow you, want to buy your books, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Well, to get in touch with me, love to have you come to my site, stuhynek.com because if you sign up on my list, then I'll send you the first two issues. I'm sorry, the first two chapters of how to grow your business like a weed. And also I'm working on a new. A new report, new white paper about how to create unfair advantages in your business. So if you sign up, you'll get that for free. Otherwise, connect with me on LinkedIn. Just mention that you heard, heard me, or saw me speak with Gary on the YOS podcast, and I'm happy to connect that way as well.

You better spell your last name for everybody.

Sure. So, so my name is ST U Stu. And then last name Heineck. H E I N E C K E. And you can look me up on Amazon. You asked where to get the book, too. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, everywhere. So you can also find me that way.

Awesome, Stu, thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to staying connected and seeing how we can help each other out.

Thank you so much for having me. What? What a pleasure. Thank you so much.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to yinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.