The One About “Intuition Hacking” (With Michael Drew) - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #92

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast.

Recording.

Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. What do you have to say today, Joe?

Well, you know, it's a. It's a very interesting day. We've got a special guest for I Love Marketing. That's what I'm just going to talk about right now. I could tell you about earlier in my day, but I won't. We're just going to go right into this episode now. This is kind of a cool dude. Knows a lot of very interesting, unique things that many people in business don't. And here's a couple things that I want to preface this with before I tell you who this person is, which you'll find out in about 10 seconds. You know, one of the things we do on at I Love Marketing is we not only share insights and perspectives on how the world, you know, is influenced Persuasion. Well, it's been 10 seconds, so I better say his name. His name is Michael Drew, but I'll get to that in a minute. But Michael has literally built a career teaching authors how to make their books best sellers. But he actually has a new book called Pendulum that he did with a really smart dude by the name of Roy H. Williams. And the subtitle is How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future. What's kind of cool about this episode is that we're going to talk about Pendulum. But also one thing I want to mention is that Michael, for people that are authors, he actually teaches them how to be bestsellers. So there's a couple of things going on here. One, the topic of his new book, which we're going to discuss with him, but also how you actually take a book and make it a bestseller, which is really has a lot to do with, well, if not everything to do with the marketing, with the caveat being you actually gotta write a good book. I mean, Michael will be the first one to tell you if you have a great book.

Well, there's that.

Yeah, you can only go so far on a crappy book. You could maybe. It's kind of like a bad movie. If they have a really great book, they might have a good opening week, but it's not going to go beyond that. So that's what I would say. Can I mention something about his bio, Dean, or do you want to say anything before I just.

No, why wouldn't you? Go ahead. Yeah, absolutely.

So I've got his bio here and usually we don't read bios, you know, During I love marketing episodes, we just ask, you know, the people that say who the heck they are. But I just want to share a couple of things that are on here. He has been marketing books for his entire career. He's become the world's most successful book promoter. He's helped launch 74 consecutive books onto the bestseller list, many of them number one titles. And beyond merely helping authors, you know, sell books, Michael has benefited from these writers insights into social trends. And so he himself has observed up close the shifting dynamics of society, as with his work on Pendulum, which is what we're going to talk about today, and has seen firsthand the rapid and long term changes in the publishing industry and how content reaches today's varied audiences. He honed his skills at such respected publishers as Bard Press, Entrepreneur Magazine, Longstreet Press, and Thomas Nelson Publishers. He's mastered the intricacies of publishing. And in adapting to today's fast evolving industry, he founded his company, which is Promote a Book to work directly with writers to help them spread their message. And so he's helped writers and authors, thought leaders, speakers, entrepreneurs, marketers, et cetera, built upon an essential component of continuing success, which is creating a platform for their writing and their message so that they can expand their audience and adapt to social shifts. And so through his skills in website creation, his strength as a speaker, his career in coaching, and his innovative use of Personas to intensify the effectiveness of all sorts of writing, he's been a force in the creation of a new generation of thought leaders. And so what else could I say here? He has helped them become more effective entrepreneurs who nourish today's idea hungry marketplace. And as shifts in society continue, Michael has expanded, promoted book service to include consulting and planning on everything from Internet distribution and website building to video creation, book trailers, podcasting, et cetera. In his personal time, this is what's most important. He loves cheering for BYU teams, dining at the best sushi house in North America, which is Yuchi's in Austin, Texas, which hopefully has ownership in since he actually would promote them and spending time with his daughter Savannah. So anything you want to add to that, Dean? And then I'll ask Michael.

Well, it's all very exciting because he's, you know, he's got quite a track record and he's worked with several of our friends too.

Yeah, yeah.

And here's the most important thing. He recently came to a 25k group meeting at my office in Arizona and gave his Pendulum presentation with some Q and A to the group of 25k members. And it was a big hit. Got his book and, you know, so we're going to talk today about the perspectives that he has. And Michael, What? Did I leave out anything?

Well, I would say I don't own Uchis, but that's my transparently endorsing a product that I really believe believe in there in Austin. Happen to love their sushi.

Well, now I'm going to have to go there. I'm going to have to rearrange my whole schedule so that I could go eat. This better be some damn good sushi in Austin.

Maybe we could meet there like next Tuesday. Joe, I'm pretty open next Tuesday.

Why don't we invite every listener of I love marketing to meet us?

Let's have a meetup at Uchi's.

Yeah, I mean, we could literally take over the entire city. You know what's so funny, Dean? If every person that if 10% of everyone that listened to I love marketing actually was to go down there, every hotel in Austin would be booked.

That's true.

It is true. Okay, Michael, you've discovered some pretty interesting stuff. You've got this book called Pendulum. Let's I guess start with what the heck does the word pendulum mean in the context of you writing a book about it?

Great question. The reality is that every one of us can sense a shift in how society goes from one mentality to another. There's been a recent shift that everybody can viscerally feel but can't explain. And what we attempt to do in the book is to give language to the visceral feeling that everybody's been having about the shift from me to we. A pendulum as an object will start off at point zero. It'll swing up to its height, Gravity will pull it down. The momentum created by the gravity will pull it up and back and forth. What we attempted to do in the book, Roy and I, was as marketers, we want to understand where society is headed. Why? Because as marketers, we want to give our clients a competitive advantage. The best way to give someone a competitive advantage is to know what the customers want before they know that they want it. And so Roy and I had the assumption that in the hypothesis that there must be a pattern in how society changes from one ideology to the next. And so we went back and researched the last four, pardon me, 3,000 years of recorded western civilization looking for that pattern. And what we found astounded us. Human beings are not the unique snowflakes that we'd like to pretend to be. We very predictably like clockwork change from a 40 year mindset of me about the individual to a more community based we mentality. And by understanding these trends, we've been able to help our clients have a competitive advantage over their competitors. As an example, the last several years Roy and I have seen an average increase of 30% in top liner gross revenue for clients simply by applying one of the seven principles that we talk about in Pendulum. And that is in the next 20 years, what's going to be more important is not what you stand for, not stating what you stand for, but rather stating what you stand for by stating what you stand against. Meaning people will identify whether they're part of your tribe or not based upon how you define what you stand against. So Netflix is against brick and mortar stores. They want to be able to give you instant access online or send it to your home. Someone like myself, I stand against manipulation within marketing. I believe in authenticity and transparency within the marketplace. So by stating what you stand against will give your business a competitive advantage as we move further into this we cycle. Cool.

So what do you say to that Dean?

Well, you know, I loved watching your presentation about the Pendulum. And you know, that whole concept, that whole shift is just fascinating to see how you went about kind of identifying it and illustrating it. I'm sure you're going to share some of those things with us about how you can tell that we've made that shift or are making that shift right now.

Blahy Sherrod, the famous sports writer for the Chicago Tribune, stated, the reason history must repeat itself is because we pay so little attention to it the first time. And King David said in the Book of Solomon, the thing that has been is that which shall be, and that which shall be is that which shall be done. And there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything where that may be said? See, this is new. It has already been a whole time which was before us. Again, as I stated a moment ago, human beings are not the unique snowflakes that we'd like to pretend that we are. We very predictably shift from one mentality to another. And you know, if you think about it, those of us that those of us that grew up in the 60s can remember our parents rejecting our rock and roll just like those of us that have kids today, maybe rejecting the music that's replaced. Rock and roll is the new innovative form which has been rap over the last decade. You know, it's interesting, in my presentation we talk about Eminem being an alpha in music. Eminem's first album came out in 1998, which was 40 years after Elvis Presley came out with his first album or his most successful album in 1958. And it's interesting because I don't know if you realize this, but that was 15 years ago. Eminem just turned 40. And it's interesting to see what we take for granted in terms of cultural norms today from a technology standpoint. We take for granted that we have Google and we have YouTube and we have Twitter and Facebook, but almost all of that technology was developed in the last six, seven, eight years. Google certainly existed before, but they went public in 2004 and they, I mean, we really did not have the social technology that we have today. And our contention from the book based upon these cultural trends is that the social technology that we have today is a reflection of the needs of the youth and of what society demanded. Not that it shifted society, but it came into existence because of this shift from individual to the collective to we, the community.

It's interesting that the, you know, you mentioned Eminem in 1998 and you know, I remember back in 1998 that was the full swing of the, the boy bands and the Britney Spears and all of that. And that I think that's. That time is marked as like the, the high water mark of the traditional music business too, of that just. I don't know whether that's coincidental or whether it' any significance to that. But the whole album sales themselves have been on a constant decline since that high watermark there.

Well, there's been a technology change and shift as well. If you look at, even at copyright law today, most people look at copyright and they say, well, we don't want to infringe or we don't want to go in and get sued for using someone else's material. But what most people don't realize is that the copyright law that exists today was written during a WE cycle. And its intent was actually to allow others to sample and reuse what people had created simply to make sure that they were getting credit for what they had created. But during this past me cycle, from 63 until 2003, the lawyers in a me cycle said, no, let's protect this information. Let's have it reinterpreted in a way that doesn't allow for the sharing and repurposing of the same information. The only thing that really survived the initial law's intent was that of parody. Obviously someone like Weird Al does a great job or most comedians do a great job with parody and they're Never sued because it was very clearly stated in the initial law. And everything else was left up to interpretation. But, you know, it's really interesting. Would it be okay to talk about Playboy, guys?

Absolutely.

Just making sure it's okay with the audience. It's interesting because Playboy, one of the things that we talk about in the book and in the presentation is that we have alphas that always come before the new cycle. So Eminem or Elvis were musical alphas that came out five years before the new mindset, before the new trend became culturally accepted worldwide, or at least in Western society. And so I guess just to give the listeners a brief overview, between 1923 to 1963 was a we cycle. From 1963 to 2003, we were in a me cycle. From 2003 to 2043, we're in a we cycle. Now, what we state in the book and in the presentation is that 10 years before the tipping point, year zero, the beginning of a new cycle, we always see alphas emerge in literature and technology. And if 1963 was the beginning of the. Of the last me cycle, 10 years before would have been 1953. That have been the last 10 years on what we call the downswing of the pendulum from we to me. Well, in 63, we see the release of J.D. salinger's A Catcher in the Rye, we see Jack Kerouac's on the Road, but we also see the release of Playboy. 1953 was the first year that Playboy came out. And most people don't realize this, but the initial issue had, of course, Marilyn Monroe, but there was no actual nudity in that edition of the publication, except for some drawn figures, but no actual human nudity was in. Was in Playboy. Now, from 1953 to 1963, this emerging youth generation that would become the movers of society into a me cycle were the rebels. They weren't the mainstream. Not yet, anyway. They weren't the mainstream. They were considered the rebels. And so playboy in the 1950s was very, very tame. There was very little actual nudity in Playboy. In fact, there were less than 20 actual visual images of nudity within Playboy between 1953 to 1960. And Hugh Huffner actually said that his intention was not to a work of porn, but rather to create a lifestyle magazine with sex as being one of the major topics within the magazine. Most people might be familiar with the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Most of us in North America anyway, read that in junior high or high school or possibly college, but most People don't realize that that book was first serialized in Playboy. In the 1950s, Playboy had articles or journalists that were nominated for Pulitzers. Playboy was about the written content. It wasn't about nudity. In 1960, they started bringing out Playmate of the Month. Playmate of the Year, they went to full color. But in 1958, for those of us that are old enough to remember, Playboy released the first desegregated TV show. Again, Hugh Hefner was about being a voice of a generation, talking about exclusivity and sophistication. And he literally wanted to be the voice of that youth generation. And of course, the youth generation wanted things to be desegregated. The youth were the ones that ultimately pushed for the desegregation that happened throughout North America, throughout the United states in the 1960s. Also in 1958, Plyboy. Again, wanting to maintain their prominence as the voice of this youthful generation, they started publishing articles by Bob Dylan and by Elvis and by the Beatles before the Beatles were were well known. They published articles and editorials by this new form of rock, this new form of music, rock and roll. And they cemented themselves in the 1950s as the voice of an emerging me generation. In the 1960s, they continued their prominence as the voice of this me generation by allowing or by featuring people, journalists and nonfiction writers like Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike to contribute to Playboy. And then what happens in every cycle is that we always start to take a good thing too far. So in the 50s and 60s, where Playboy was about being the voice of an emerging generation, in the 1970s, they start to become a little bit more plastic and funny. Most people don't realize this, but Playboy did not include full frontal nudity in their publication until 1973. That was the first year that they had full frontal nudity in even one image in the publication itself. Because again, remember that Playboy wanted to be the voice of an emerging me generation. And so again, we take a good thing too far. And in the 70s and 80s, we watch as Playboy becomes more plastic and funny, literally plastic and literally funny. And then we hit 93, which was 10 years before the tipping point, the beginning of this Wii cycle. And that's when we see AOL come out. That's when we see the birth of the Internet. And a lot of people would say that the decline of Playboy over the last decade was based upon the emergence of the Internet, but I would suggest otherwise. Playboy launched the first porn site in 1994. They launched the first porn membership site in 1995. They purchased their biggest competitor in 1998 with Spice Entertainment. When they bought it for $95 million, Playboy sunk literally hundreds of millions of dollars into the Internet and tried to cement their dominance within that sector by spending that amount of money into the technology. Of course, in 98 is when Eminem came out and became an alpha, predicting what it was going to be like in the next decade, in the next Wii CY early 2000s, rap, starting in about 2003, rap dominated the billboards and dominated the Grammys. In terms of the awards that they won. I mean, they won 90% of the awards between 2003-2005. Yet Playboy, unlike what they did in 98, pardon me, in 1958, when they featured the featured contributors from the emerging rock and roll music movement, they didn't feature a single rapper in their publication until jay Z in 2004. So whereas in the previous me cycle they had maintained their dominance by becoming the voice of a me generation, they actually lost that by not understanding the voice of this emerging we generation. And between 2000 and last year, Ployboy's public evaluation went from a little over a billion dollars to $187 million last year simply by not understanding the cultural shifts from me to we.

Yeah, that's pretty fascinating if you think about it from that perspective.

You know, I love marketing. Really has a little hip hop kind of voice in it, too.

What does? We.

I was saying how I love marketing. We really have kind of a hip hop pedigree, too, because, you know, we often refer to you as the Flavor Flav to my Chuck D. Nice.

And yeah, we also have this running Batman and Robin thing going on with, you know, it's clear, clear that, you know, Dean is Robin and I'm Batman, but I once in a while let people call him Batman because he's known to be a pretty smart, intelligent guy. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. So what cycle are we in right now? And when did it start? Can you go over that again, Michael?

Yeah, so the last we cycle about community was 1923 to 1963. The last me cycle was 1963 to 2003, and then from 2003 until 243, we're back into a we cycle. Now, what's interesting, I wonder how the.

Economics of that, like, just when you say those years when you. I just want to kind of frame it and you say, you know, I think about 1923 to 1963. What kind of happened in those 40 years is, you know, from 1923 to 1930, ish, we were very. It was a prosperous time. It was, you know, the go go 20s. And then we went through the Great Depression and then the war and the big rebuilding after that through the 50s, the biggest boom. And now you're saying from 2003, which arguably 2003 to 2006, big, big economic gains, we've gone through a recession that's been the biggest that we've seen. And now just on the cusp of that, I wonder, is there any similarities in that?

I actually had a conversation with Harry Dent Jr. About this and of course he's one of the leading economists in the world and he indicated and indicates in his books that there's a recession or depression every 80 years. And it just so happens that that recession depression happens at exactly the same time to the day, but within a very small window. And what happens is in a me cycle, we believe that we can be bigger and better than who we are. Interestingly enough, the majority of the personal development industry was built at the height of a me cycle. Tony Robbins came out in 1983, you have Stephen Covey and all of these business and personal development gurus that came out in that time frame. And this is true of previous cycles. Anyway, in a me cycle, we believe, and we're taught to believe that we can be bigger and better than who we are. But in a we cycle, our currencies are authenticity and transparency. And when we look back at the inflation that we create as individuals and as business, during a me cycle, we always see a recessionary or depression come out of or happen during the transition from me to we. And it's happened every single time in modern economics that as we shift from a me cycle to a we cycle, we always have a recession or a depression.

Very interesting. I mean, there's so many, I guess, parallel things, right? Because you look at. I know Harry Dent is really most well known for his demographic profiling.

I guess.

It is quite interesting to look at different segments of culture and society, be it technology, be it music, be it literature, be it economics, or even politics. All of these things are a cultural reflection of the mentality of society as a whole. One of the interesting things that happened when we researched the book, I know that you've both, both seen the presentation, but in the book, Roy and I, we actually went back to scientifically challenge our assumptions. One of our friends, his name is Kerry Mullis, he's the winner of the 19, I think it was 1991 Nobel Prize for Science he was the one that came up with the polymer chain reaction theory. Anyway, he had challenged us when we went back to research and write the book. He said, you know, there are very few true scientists left in the world today. Most people come up with a hypothesis and then go out to disprove it or go out to prove it. But this is bad science. There is no one better qualified than you, the creator of the hypothesis, to be able to go out and try to disprove your hypothesis. So with Kerry's words ringing in our ears, we went back and said we're going to go back and disprove our hypothesis. We're going to go back 3,000 years, we're going to look at every 40 year segment for the last 3,000 years in recorded Western civilization and we're going to really work to disprove it. And what was scary is that when we went back and researched the last 3,000 years, we couldn't disprove our hypothesis. And in fact what we discovered was not only were there these two 40 year cycles of me versus we, but there were four 20 year cycles that created movement from a me to a we cycle or back from a we to a me cycle. And those cycles include a cycle of I'm okay, you're okay, which would have been 1953 to 1973, I'm screwed up, you're okay. Hero worship or guru worship, which happened from 73 to 93. Again at the height of that was the guru worships that we saw in athletics with our sports artists, with our musicians, and of course in personal and business development. From 1993 to 2013 we're in a micro cycle of I'm screwed up, you're screwed up. So let's both get over it and move it along, shall we? And from 2013 to 2033 we're moving into a cycle of I'm okay, you're screwed up. And this goes back to what I was saying earlier about in the next 20 years what's going to be most relevant in terms of marketing and communication is defining who you are by stating what you stand against. We call this, we've nicknamed this 20 year cycle the cycle of witch hunts. Because throughout the history of mankind, if there's been a witch hunt, it's happened within the same 20 year time frame. The Spanish Inquisition, Bloody Mary, the actual Salem witch trials, the American Revolution, the first French Revolution, the Civil War. Eighty years ago in Europe we had Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. In the United States we had Joseph McCarthy and Japanese intern camps which is culturally very scary. But from a business and marketing standpoint, what society is saying for the last 20 years in the I'm screwed up, you're screwed up mindset, we all work together to try to accomplish something, something we didn't accomplish, that whatever those things were. And it's very difficult for somebody to say, well, that's my fault, we didn't do that, so I need to change me. What normally happens and what we see throughout history is that we start to say, well, I did the right thing, you didn't do the right thing, so I can't be to blame. You have to be to blame. What we're going to see for the next 20 years from a business standpoint are those businesses that are able to articulate what they stand against will build more powerful tribes of people who agree with that sentiment and will therefore be stronger brands.

It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, you look back and it's fascinating when you can overlay something that you've really observed and go back and it turn out to be absolutely true. But the really exciting thing is then extrapolating from that and pushing it forward into seeing where to go with that information.

Oh, absolutely. There's no question about it. It's scintillating to be able to know where society is headed and how you can utilize that information to be able to do good. Certainly people can do bad with that information, But I firmly believe that we can actually have a positive impact on the world knowing that what the cultural needs are.

So let me ask you, Michael. So if someone really, for one, I want to talk about the validity of in play devil's advocate, you know, like, how the hell do you know that this is actually accurate? And have you speak to that. And again, I say that because I know you and we've had discussions and I've seen your pendulum presentation and I read your book, so I kind of have a background on it. I'm really speaking more for like a layman who doesn't really know to the degree of the research that you guys have done and that sort of thing. What I want to kind of get to is talk about, you know, what was your research? How did you verify all of the points and all.

It's a great question. So the obvious question would be, how do we know that you didn't pick and choose your data points to support your position? And that's a fair question. In fact, that was one of the issues that Roy and I wanted to address when doing the research for the book. Because we didn't want to be accused of that. And admittedly, when we put the presentation together, we went in with a bias and we went in to try to prove that bias. And so again, with, with what Kerry Moles had challenged us with what we said is we're not going. Well, the other problem that we had was that we were saying that this was true for Western society and reality. We were only showing and illustrating our point with examples from North America, specifically the United States. And so what we did is we said, all right, so we need to pick one source of data and information. Someone could question the bias of that one source. But if we simply use that because we're trying to prove a cycle, we're not trying to take a bias towards a liberal or conservative viewpoint, rather simply illustrate a cycle or trend. Let's use one source of data or information. And so the source that we used for our research was Wikipedia. Now some might groan and say, well, that can't be accurate because it's online and it's created by normal people. But the reality is that the research that's been done on Wikipedia is that it's more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica or most other volumes of information. So we used Wikipedia so that nobody can say that we use biased information to support our position. And we also went out from a musical standpoint for the last 100 years to, to not simply look at Billboard, which is very biased towards North America, but rather we went out to search for some way of figuring out what the best listen to and selling music was in all of Western civilization. And we thought we were going to have to do all of the compilations ourselves for the last 100 years. And we actually found a website, we thought it was created just for us, called Tsort, that had done all of the work for us. And so we used Tsort as our source for data with music. Instead of using the New York Times, which has, some people consider has a liberal bias, we decided to use Publishers Weekly, which is a list that includes all of the English speaking world for their best sellers list, as our, as our literary point. And we simply use those three points of data to be able to go back and research and to illustrate and prove our point. Again, some can claim that any of those have some bias, but the reality is that each of those three doesn't have a bias towards saying that there's a trend or there's not a trend. And again, our goal with our research was to be able to prove or disprove, in this case, the 40 year cycles of me versus we.

It was fascinating to see the implications of the songs. I know you were using Grammy winning songs too.

Like what?

That's what's going on there. And it was amazing. When you're playing them from 1973 and you're playing them from 1993 and you're seeing how absolutely similar they are, it was really something.

It is. And it's why in the presentation we use music because it's very difficult to argue with the point when you can see the cultural movement. Now what's interesting also to further clarify Joe's question, Roy Williams, what Roy teaches is that he believes that all talent is simply ripe brain pattern recognition. That everything that happens in science is also true of the individual or the human. And that chaos theory which states that there are patterns larger than what the left hemisphere of the brain can comprehend. While that's true in nature and science, that is equally true for human beings. And the goal of the research for Pendulum was to go back and figure out the chaotic system that is mankind. Because there has to be, if it's true in science and in nature, it has to be true of man. And the reality is everybody can feel and notice that there are these trends going on. It's simply a matter of having enough data and a large enough time horizon to be able to see what those trends patterns are. And we really worked hard to be diligent in our research to make sure that we weren't being biased, that in fact these trends were actually real. And once we found out that indeed that they were real and we found these four 20 year micro cycles, it really clarified to us why different types of music are like at different times, why different marketing messages work so well, why even, and I won't address this year's campaign, but even why Barack Obama won back in the 2008 election. And I'll quickly just illustrate the point with the previous primaries in 2007 on the Democratic ticket, in the primaries you had a feminist and you had a community organizer. A feminist works really well in a me cycle. And a community organizer of course works well in a we cycle. On the Republican ticket you had Mr. Perfect, you had a maverick and you had a populist preacher. And of course, if we were to look simply based upon the description of what would work best in a we cycle, a maverick, of course as a term is a very me term. People view a maverick as someone breaking away and doing their own thing, which would work well in a me cycle, not in a we cycle. Someone who's not viewed as relatable. Someone who's looked at as quote, unquote, perfect. It doesn't fit within the cultural demands of authenticity and transparency. And something that you hear all the time is, yeah, and all that, dog. Yeah, and all that. It doesn't work for someone who's viewed as too perfect. So the right choice based upon moniker would have been the populist preacher. But of course the Republicans picked the maverick and the Democrats picked the community organizer. And of course, putting a community organization, community organizer up against a maverick in a we cycle, the natural assumption would be that the community organizer would win. I'm not taking political sides. I'm simply showing you how you can see these trends even within politics.

Fascinating. What about the music of today? What are we hearing today that is setting some trends or indicating the trend that's going on?

You know what's interesting is last year there was a big hullabaloo and I had a lot of people asking me, what's her name? Lady Gaga and how is she illustrative of a we over a me? And it was really interesting to watch the release of her album and what happened. First of all, from a very superficial standpoint, Lady Gaga, her message is that of coming together as a tribe. She brings together the different, the strange, the little monsters. Yeah, the little monsters. Not acceptable by the by society as a whole. But she was kind of the voice of subgroups. But her music really lacked depth. And so her album came out and I believe the number was 1.5 million albums sold the first week, but over a million of those albums were sold on Amazon.com for a dollar. So really she sold about 500,000 copies for the retail price of the album. That same week there was a woman who published an album called 21 and it sold about 450,000 albums. In week two, Lady Gaga, her album sales dropped to 600,000. And this album called 21 sold 750,000 albums the next week, the third week out, Lady Gaga's album sold less than 100,000 copies. And this album called 21 sold over 1 million copies. And of course, that album was by Adele. Now Adele, if you want to look at the music of Adele, she is real, she's raw, she's relevant, she tells it as it is, and she's deep. So if we want to look at music, there is what's called the so called dance music which people go out and dance to. But in terms of what actually sells, it has to do with the depth of the content and being Able to speak.

That's really interesting. What is real on that about Adele? Because you look at right now, I guess Taylor Swift right now has the number one album. That's interesting. You would say that she relates to her, you know, to her audience. That's. Yeah, that's amazing. Very interesting.

Well, it is. And if you look.

No, no, go ahead. I was gonna just say something about gangster rap, but I don't need to.

Well, no, no, it's cool. So a couple of interesting things. I'll just gangster up too. Taylor Swift is interesting because she's getting a lot of news right now for her infidelities. People are really interested in how real people are. You want to look at reality tv, and Paris Hilton built her entire career in this. We cycle on. She actually is the Trump. That transparent person that she says she is. She is a baddest allo. She says she's a little smarter than she. She lets out, but she is that person. And people like watching that train wreck. Now, in terms of gangsta rap, you know, gangsta rap, N.W.A. and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and. And. And Eazy, E. They all came out in the late 80s, 88, 89. And then you had Dr. Dre's solo album, Snoop Dogg and others, Eazy and others in. In the early 1990s at the same time, you had out of Seattle, the grunge movement started by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains and that music. And if you look at it, their music was not accepted by the mainstream, but was accepted by that youthful generation. And you would not have a musician like Eminem if it were not for both the emergence of gangster rap and. And Nirvana and the grunge movement at the same time. Because both musics were talking about what it was like to grow up real. For gangsta Rapp, it was what it was like to grow up in the ghetto. And for the grunch movement, it was about what it was like to grow up as a white guy in suburban America. And again, because of the emergence of those two music, it's what led to the acceptance of Eminem and what he was saying.

That's amazing.

What I would like to ask you about. How does our listeners. What do they do with this knowledge? What do they do with this information? And then let's talk about Call Me Maybe. And I'd like to hear Dean sing.

That Call Me maybe. Because I don't have the confidence to say, absolutely, do it now. All right, so what can we do now? The first Thing that I would say is that most business and marketing was built in a me cycle. And I would suggest that one of the reasons that we're not out of the recession yet is that the majority of business owners, while they understand that there's a shift, they viscerally and emotionally understand that a shift has occurred. They don't understand why the shift has occurred. So instead of being able to principally apply new strategies and tactics in their business, they are simply using social technology as band aids on their business. Social media is a tactic that can successfully be used if you understand the mindset of society as a whole. Yet most businesses use it in a more me ideology. My opinion of the Internet is that the Internet is not a marketing or sales tool. I believe that the Internet is a relationship building device and everything that we do online should be reflective of what we do offline. So how do we build relationships in the real world? Well, what we're doing here, which is having a conversation, it's my opinion that in a me cycle it's about push. In a we cycle it's about pull. And if you look at the Internet as a whole, Google, where nobody's forcing anybody to go to Google to do a search, we're going there because we believe that if I put in this question that Google will kick out websites that say they have the answer to my question. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Most of these technologies are used in a conversational way. They're used to either create or deepen relationships with our customers. So the first thing that I would suggest is better understanding the cultural needs of society as a whole and not simply utilizing new tactics. Because new tactics improperly applied end up being spam or they end up being highly ineffective. So I would first say understand where we've been, where we are and where we're headed. Then what I would do is I would study the youth because the youth will determine, will dictate and tell us where society is headed and at what rate. The other thing is I would look at once you understand where society is and you understand that we're no longer in a me push society, but a pull society, you need to understand the difference between seduction versus intimacy. Playboy worked in a me cycle because it was about seduction. We wanted to believe as a society that we could be bigger and better than who we were. And you can seduce me by telling me that that was true. In today's we society, that's not true. It's about building intimacy. And according to psychologists, in interpersonal relationships there are literally 12 steps to creating intimacy within interpersonal relationships. And according to psychologists, if you want to have a long term relationship with someone, if you Skip more than one of those 12 steps, the probability of that relationship existing long term is literally less than 5%. That's true in interpersonal relationships. That's also equally true in business relationships. And as society, or in terms of business and clients and all of that, as society has moved away from me to we, we've moved from transaction, which is a very me mindset, to relationship. And we need to focus on how do we build relationship. And to build relationship we have to create intimacy. And how do we create intimacy. Again, it's going back to understanding conversation. And you mentioned earlier that my background is in books, which is true. Really what I do professionally is helping thought leaders build their thought leadership businesses. And the number one way that we do that is by helping our clients engage in conversation. And the great thing about the technology that we have today with the Internet and websites and blogs and social media and beyond, is that we now have the opportunity to be able to converse not just one on one, but to be able to have conversations with many, many people all at the same time. I mean, and even this podcast that we're doing now, the three of us are having a conversation, yet this conversation is going to be shared with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people. That's the value of this type of technology, is we can share this conversation with many other people. I think the number one thing that I would focus on is trying to understand where society is today and what the values are of society. And number two, I would focus on building relationship. And number three, I would focus on building relationship through having conversation. Some techniques, like a technique I mentioned earlier, is that in today's I'm okay, you're screwed up mindset, your customer wants to be able to identify that they're part of your tribe by you stating what what you stand for. By saying what you stand against.

Yeah, very, very interesting. Well, so in terms of a question about if pendulum has predicted the swings of society accurately, can you predict what's going to happen in the next decade or so?

Well, I can try to make some predictions for the next decade. I think making predictions beyond that are a little easier. But what I'll tell you is that there's a certain portions of the United States worry about the mark of the beast and losing our own personal autonomy and those types of things. And I think it's interesting as we move into this, we cycle as we require and demand community how much of our own personal autonomy we're giving up. It's interesting you look at technology right now. Most individuals are willing to give away all of their personal information to sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter. We freely give that information. We freely give those conversations. Other technologies like RFID tags, which is the technology that you find that you put in your vehicle that allows you to go through a tollbooth quickly without having to pay. Most people don't realize this, but more than 2 billion units of clothing last year featured RFID tags. And who's bidding on getting the access to the data from those RFID tags tags? Google and Facebook. Because the more information they know on us, the better they can be. The reality is, it's interesting from a marketing opportunity because the information that's being given away allows us to go in and help our customers know what they want before they even know that they want it. But I think what we're going to see with this release of technology and people freely giving their information is a little bit of a frog boiling in a pod. We're going to start to worry less about people and government and businesses having our own personal information. And I can certainly see at some point in the future eye scanning or other types of personal ID that allow us to engage with each other wirelessly. I think we're going to maintain in the next decade staying in a recession. If economics, what's happened in the past economically is reflective of what's going to happen in the next decade. We're going to stay in some state of recession like we're in now. But there are other issues that go along with that. But there's also hope. I believe that we as a culture and society have the opportunity to change the way that we think about business and education, to be able to become the thought leaders not just for Western society but for the world, and to be able to change the dynamics of how economics and businesses run both in North America and the world. I think we're going to see in North America that the wealth is quickly going to move away from the middle of the country and away from industry and towards centers of technology and thought leadership. Cities like San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Austin, Texas, Boston and New York, a little bit Chicago, a little bit Atlanta, but really to areas where technology is the primary focus. And I think that we're going to see an emergence of a middle class that is technology and information based. Now what's going to happen after the next 10 years is interesting because What I think is going to happen as we approach 2033, which is 10 years before the next me cycle, is we're going to start to see a minority of people in Western society start to reject the loss of personal autonomy, reject the amount of information that government and business has. And by 2033, I believe that we're going to see a. We're going to start seeing groups and communities that are going to be built, that are going to be technology free, that are going to be rejecting the amount of information that is now accessible on the average person to government and society. And by 24.

Well, you know, it's really interesting. There's a book written In, I think 1996 or 97 called the one to one future. I don't know if you're familiar with that book, but it was something, I think it's even more relevant now than it was then because it talked about this sharing of information, of sharing, you know, what, what would be considered private information in a way that makes things better for you. Like just like you said, you know, Facebook depends on, you know, for Facebook to be great. It depends on that trust of sharing your personal information. And the same thing with those with all the transponders, even one click ordering from Amazon. You know, you share your information like that and it, you have a trusted relationship with Amazon, but it also makes your life better because you've trusted them with that.

Right. That's what I'm saying in terms of the frog boiling in the pot. Because the reality is it does make our life easier. And the faster we can get things delivered to us to the time that we have a pain or a need, the better we're going to feel. At the same time that loss of personal autonomy will lead to other potential scary things. I think that we're going to benefit from the technology for the next decade and we're going to Slowly start from 2023 to 2033, start to see small groups start to reject that. And then we're going to see a real movement with the youth in 2033 in rejecting the technology that allows government and business to have all of that personal information. And I also believe, because we're going to see, especially in Western society, a, a movement of wealth towards cities that focus on technology and information marketing. We're going to see a larger and larger group of people in poverty. And the more people that are in poverty, they're going to look for something to blame. And by 2033, I believe that they're going to be blaming the Technology that gave us the, it's actually giving us freedom now to be able to have more time, to go do more things. I think that we're going to see the youth of society start to reject the regimentation, conformity that that technology will by then have created.

You talk about a we cycle here and I don't think it's probably inconsequential that, you know, we're looking at generation Y right now, the largest generation ever. Bigger than the baby boom. More, more, more young people under, I think, 27 years old right now than any other, than any other generation. And that, that all those kids have grown up in a world where in athletics, in everything, it was very inclusive. It was very. They didn't keep score in the soccer games and they didn't. Everybody gets a ribbon, everybody gets acknowledged for their contribution or their participation. And I wonder if that has anything for shaping what it really is coming here. I mean, you kind of mentioned that before it starts, there's a 10 year period kind of leading up to it, and that's probably been the predominant thing of the last 10. And it seems like that's almost a rebellion from the parents against what they grew up as in the ME cycle.

And that's, that's exactly right. You, you are spot on. And the, the children of those that are between the ages of 18 to 27 will be the youth that reject the we cycle. Again, we always take a good thing too far and we're going to become highly regimented, highly conformed. The those that are between the ages of 18 to 27 were the ones that sold to their parents and their grandparents the values of a WII cycle. We had really gotten bad in the previous me cycle. We become exceptionally plastic, exceptionally phony, essentially a society of posers. And the youth said, uh, I ain't taking that anymore. I want what's real, I want what's raw. What they don't realize is that when they start espousing that to their kids and what happens within society is that we're going to start losing our personal sense of autonomy, our personal free, our personal freedom. And I'll give you an example. A teetotaler wants everybody to be sober, a vegan or vegetarian. Most of them want people to be vegetarians. We as a society, as we head more into this we cycle, we're going to say the same thing. We want people to be more community oriented. An example would be if you said that you recycle and I recycle. Well, I recycle, but you only recycle glass. And I'm going to say what? You only recycle glass? You don't recycle paper and plastic? What's wrong with you? Because I'm okay and you're screwed up for not doing a better job. So that's what happens as we move farther into this we cycle. And the kids of those that are between the ages of 18 and 27 today will be the ones that come in and create the revolution. From the overreaction of we to the beauties of the beginning of a me cycle. This is why these changes happen over and over again, irrespective of what technology is released. Human beings change their mindset agriculturally. We are emotional beings. We are not. Technology simply allows us to communicate easier or faster, but it doesn't change the way that we feel or the way that we change the way that we feel. Most people change their position on something not instantly, unless they have some type.

Of.

Mind or life shattering experience. Most people change from one position to another over several years, getting a lot of data points. Now it may seem to most of us that we change our position in an instant, but the reality is that our subconscious is gathering information for a long period of time before we actually change that position. And that's really what we're showing in this book is not what the shift, the agricultural shift is for an individual, but what the shift is for a culture or society as a whole.

And I guess it's all related even to the whole Occupy movement too.

Well, Occupy, Occupy Wall street and the Tea Party are actually two different sides of the same coin. They're against what is big. Occupy Wall street is against big business. The Tea Party is against big business. But they're both against. They're both against big. So I would say they're both a great example, right? Yeah, probably. Big government. Yes. Big government versus big business. That's what the two different groups are against.

Well, you know, I think. Well, let's talk about the book Pendulum. Because of the time that we have. I mean you've got years of research and things that you've pieced together and you finally, after working on helping other people make books, best sellers, you've come out with your own. And for I love marketing listeners who really are people that have products and services. Some of them are speakers and authors, others are just entrepreneurs that are out there selling what it is that they sell and what's in Pendulum has a tremendous amount of recipes and blueprints and things to think about as it relates to understanding the World and society and why people behave the way they behave and the approaches that they take. And so for a marketer, how is this book most useful to them? I mean, I know you've talked about it here, but I just want to go a little bit deeper on what will someone really get out of it. Why should someone read your book? They just heard us talk for a while. Why should they read it and why do they need it?

I would say they should read it if they want to be in business five years from now. I know that's a bold statement.

Oh, that, yeah, yeah.

Just a little thing called being in business. You know, the thing is that most of us, including myself, we are really good at one thing. We do that thing really, really well. And it's not most people's jobs to go out and understand everything about business. It's why we hire accountants, it's why we hire marketers. It's why we hire people to do operations or other jobs within our company or organization. But I do believe that it's our responsibilities as business owners and as marketers to understand the hearts of people. Because truthfully, any product or service sells when we can speak to the heart and meet the needs of the heart of individuals. And the reality is that how we discuss and describe and offer solutions to our customers is dependent upon the cycle that we're in that dictates the type of communication. If you want to be in business five years from now, you need to understand how to communicate with your audience then. And if you are a laggard, if you wait to see what everybody else is doing, you're going to lose the game because your competitor will figure out how to do it before you do and they'll put you out of business or they'll take a major part of your lion's share of your business. What's really interesting is in a recession, many companies will cut back on their marketing budgets. For those of you that are marketers, that think you like this, the reality is what each of you should be doing and what all businesses should be doing is increasing their marketing budgets. Those marketers and business owners that increase their marketing budget. Understanding where society is and where it's headed, understanding how to, as Roy would say, how to speak to the meat at the heart of the dog in the Pavlovian sense of for all dogs. How to speak to that underlying felt need. If you can do that, if you can speak to that felt need and you can do it before your competitors do, you will increase your market share. You will Deepen the relationship with your audience. Now, I think the number one thing that I would ask the listeners to do is to change the way that they think about communication marketing, to look at it not in terms of push, but in terms of pull, not in terms of transaction, but in terms of building relationships. If you focus on relationship first, then you will be able to build the community or the tribe that you're looking to build in this recycle. If you do that in context of defining what you stand for, by stating what you stand against, you'll be able to powerfully communicate to your audience who you are and be able to help them identify that they want to be part of your tribe.

Yes, that's what I'm trying to say.

That is what you're trying to say.

And the reason that I wanted to do this episode with you and that we wanted to do it, Michael, is because, you know, obviously your book just came out and it's a really important message. And when people, you know, hear it, they're like, huh, wow. You know, it causes them to think about things that they never even thought about. And part of, you know, being a good marketer is understanding, you know, human psychology and human behavior and why people do the things that they do. And you're looking at, you know, from a historical standpoint, identifying things that are incredibly useful for entrepreneurs. So people can get your book on Amazon, Obviously it's called Pendulum. Since you have helped so many other people sell their books, what unique ways are you using to offer yours?

Well, I'll tell you what. The goal of Roy and I, I mean, being a bestseller would be fantastic, but Roy and I are really looking to try to change the way that businesses market in today's we society. I firmly believe that if we simply, if businesses and marketers simply adopted the new we mindset and understood what that meant, that we would be able to market our way out of this recession that we're in. And so our goal is to be able to get this book into the hands of as many business owners and marketers as possible. So we're actually looking to give away 100,000 copies of the book. And so what we've done is we've done something special for I love marketer listeners. We've actually set up a website specifically for you@penduluminaction.com IloveMarketing. That's P E n D u L u M I n a c T I o n c o m I l o V e Y o u m a r k e T I n g ilovemarketing pendulumaction.com ilovemarketing and what we're going to do is we've talked about the presentation quite a bit here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give everybody listening access to the presentation. We're going to give them access to a Playboy case study, and we're going to give them a copy of the book. All we're asking is that your listeners cover the shipping and handling costs of the book, which in the United States is $7 per book. And we're going to give your listeners all of that. Again, our goal is to be able to change. We really believe that we can change the trajectory of our economy and where we're at simply by changing the way that we market and communicate with our audience. Wow, cool.

That's very generous.

How would that work for them? Could they still do that?

They can. The shipping and handling internationally is quite expensive. Usually it's around $20, but we're not looking to make money. We're just charging the shipping and handling, which in the United States is $7. It's a little bit less in Canada and it's $20 throughout the rest of the world.

Okay, well, I would encourage anyone to certainly take you up on that because that is, I bought copies of the book for all my 25k members and it was much more than that.

Sorry about that.

No, that's very generous.

Thank you.

And so, you know, I guess, boy, there's so much more that I would, you know, could ask you, but we are kind of at the time, so what I want to do to leave the listeners with. I mean, this is, you know, a book that I really think has deep roots in it. I mean, it's something that could totally shift the way that you think about the world, run your business, do your messaging, communicate with people. It covers everything from, you know, elections to music to, you name it. Just, it's. It's a historical sort of perspective and will help you, you know, plan for the future and how you do it. So what's the best ways for people to make the most out of this? I mean, I would say not only read the book, but. But you said the presentation. They definitely would get a lot of value out of watching this. What's the best recommendation you have on how to get the most out of what you've documented here?

Well, you know what, Again, we've made this really easy in terms of getting the book and getting the presentation and getting the Playboy case study. Actually, we Talked about on this call, the 12 steps of intimacy. We have a training module on that with it. So certainly that would be. Would be one way to be able to get the most out of this. The other is if you can take one thing away from what we've talked about today, what I would say is go and change your marketing message to state what you stand for. To say what you stand for by stating what you stand against. I'll give you a quick example. There was a radio group out of Ottawa, Canada, that has been using this strategy for the last year. Before we started working with them, Roy and I, their ads, they were an alternative rock station. Their ads were like, we play Green Day and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all these other bands. And after they worked with Roy and I, they changed their marketing to say, we are Bieber free. We are Gaga free. And they increased their listener base by 22%. And they increased the amount of advertising budget that their advertisers spent on the station by 20% just by making that one small change. And I would suggest everybody listening to this, that they would go change their marketing message from saying what you stand for to saying what you stand against. You'll see immediate impact on the ROI on your. On your marketing.

That's fantastic. And that's a brilliant campaign. I mean, that's. You get it? That's a crystal clear illustration of that. I like it.

Well, totally. And since, especially since we've talked about Justin Bieber quite a bit on here, you know, one thing too. I do have a Fisker that I bought, and Justin Bieber does drive a Fisker, and the Fisker is going to be used as a 25k group prize, which is a whole other issue. But call me. Maybe we need to say something relevant about that as it relates to this, and then we can actually end this episode and I'll have you give out that website that you set up again, Michael, which was very nice of you. So that's cool.

I'll tell you in. In.

Good. No, no, go. I was just.

What I was gonna say is, in the song in a me cycle, it wouldn't be call me. Maybe it would be call me right now, jerk, or I want you right now, call me.

Yeah, funny that. In the 80s it was. Well, there was a song, Call Me.

Or what was the song? Blondie. Right, Blondie. There you go. And there was also the song When I think about you. Anyway.

That one.

Yeah. So you have. In a me cycle, we're far more direct. But in a we cycle, you Know what? I like you. You're cute. I'm not going to be so overt to say give me your number and call me. I'll just say, here's my number. So maybe call me or call me maybe. It's far more open to the possibility and it not happening and that being okay in a me cycle. It's call me or, or when I think of. Anyway, so there's that in terms of again, what we're offering, we're offering the book in North America for $7 shipping and handling, plus the 90 minute pendulum presentation, plus the Playboy case study, plus not presentation, but a training on the 12 steps of intimacy, plus a bunch of other stuff all just for the $7 shipping and handling. And that can, you can get all of that@penduluminaction.com IloveMarketing P E N D U L U M I N A C T I O N C O M I L O V E Y O U M A R K E T I n g penduluminaction.com ilovemarketing Very cool.

And if someone cannot spell, then they're hopeless at this point because you just spelled every single word. So what I will say for all of our listeners, go buy it. Read the book. You'll get a lot out of it. And secondly, since we do teach marketing, you should take a look at how Michael's actually doing the positioning and the whole marketing and promotions of this book. And then you'll kind of see how he takes his own advice and applies it to a particular campaign which is instructive in and of itself. And for seven, there's no extra charge for that. Yeah, yeah, no extra charge for that. And that's what people really should be doing. We don't promote a lot of stuff here and I love marketing. We'll promote individuals and we'll talk about books and you know, reason is that's, you know, in a lot of ways people always ask, you know, me and Dean when they meet us and stuff. So where'd you guys get your marketing education? And I always have that funny line, well, you know, like Abe Lincoln himself taught, you know, read a lot of books, talk to a lot of bright people, people and more importantly, go out there and test things in the real world and see what people are responding to. So get the book. Michael, thank you for taking the time. Appreciate it. Really happy that your book is having been released and it seems to be having a roaring success. That is awesome. And any famous last words from either of you, then we'll call it a wrap.

I would say something that Roy Williams told me a decade ago when we were walking through New York. I was 23 at the time. And he said, michael, the winners and losers in life are determined when the teams are picked. There are two teams that are essential to success. The first is the team of people who pick you to be on their team. The second are the people who you pick to be on your team. Both teams are needed for success. And I would say that those of you listening to Joe on these calls and Dean know that you've picked the right type of people to be on your team in terms of your marketing education and keep coming back.

Awesome.

That's great. Thank you.

Cool, man. All right, so you guys have a wonderful evening. That's what time it is at the time we're actually recording this episode. And. And to our listeners, go to penduluminaction.com ilovemarketing. Did I get that right, Michael? You sure did, yes. And get his book. And then make comments about what you learned from this episode and we will talk to you on the next I love marketing episode. Thank you.

Good night, guys.