The One Where Joe Talks With Boardroom Inc. Founder Marty Edelston - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #128

I'm dean jackson. He's joe polish, and this is the.

I love marketing podcast. Hello, friends and clients. This is Joe Polish, president of Piranha Marketing. And today I have got a couple of fantastic people that I'm going to be interviewing. A company that you've heard a lot about, which is Boardroom, Inc. And you just heard some information about Brian and Marty at the beginning of this interview. And can you guys hear me okay?

Yes.

Well, tell me where you're at right now. I'm in Tempe, Arizona, and we're on the phone. And where's your new offices located?

We're in Stamford, overlooking the Long Island Sound.

Awesome.

Awesome. Well, thank you both for taking the time to be on the phone with me and doing this interview. And I'm going to get right into some questions. Marty, you're a legend in the direct marketing business. You run the largest consumer newsletter business, Bottom Line Personal, along with all your other publications. The majority of my listeners are very familiar with Boardroom, and I would like to just pull out whatever wisdom I can get out of that brain of yours. And I know there's a lot. And along with you, Brian, you are an expert in direct market. I just want to go into talking about first, books. What are your favorite books, Marty? And give the listeners kind of some background on reading and what you perceive to be valuable material to read.

The best books I've ever read are things like how to win friends and influence people, how to get control of your time and your life. I'm using the principle there to save a guy right now. He's a friend, and his life is very scattered. So I'm getting him to write down, I hope, the things he wants to accomplish in the rest of his life. And I guess he's about 50, 55, and he's so scattered, he hasn't done it yet. So I just write him a note every couple days and say, how are you doing in your top 10? As soon as I get that list from him, I'm going to send it back and have him put it in order, which is the most important, second most, etc. And that's all from Alan Lakin. My favorite book, though, I think from a development standpoint, is Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono. And he's written all kinds of books on thinking, and everybody should know about thinking, and they don't teach that in any school in America. The Lateral Thinking is available in the bookstores, and it's a superb book, essentially. I don't know why I got the name lateral. I think of it more as vertical thinking. Just keep thinking on your subject till something comes through properly.

Yeah, all those books, I mean, Marty keeps copies of them in the office, gives them out to people, not just employees, but people outside. And he's kind of taught us that the great books are what kind of makes the world go round. And that, you know, when I interview somebody for a new job here, or we talk about, you know, how you're going to get your life in order and whether we hire them or not, you know, these books are what Marty would call the great books. You know, some people will say the great books are Charles Dickens and Nathaniel Hawthorne. I don't think there's any fiction in the list of Marty's great books. And I'll add one other quickie that we've always wanted to. And this is sort of maybe a statement on what most people read and what they don't read and why people do spend so much time going around in circles. We wanted to do a book that takes all these great books and puts excerpts into a larger version, like a big hardcover book with all the best of the great books. Dale Carnegie, how to Win Friends. Alan Lakin, how to Get Control of youf Time in youn Life. Edward De Bono, Lateral Thinking. I think Herbert Benson's the Relaxation Response was one of them. And when we started putting this book together, we realized that no one really wanted to read it, which is really sad that we. We couldn't sell it. I will say that everybody wants to read it, but it was a very tough book for us to sell and actually make a profitable venture out of. And it really kind of speaks to a lot of what our whole business is about, that the stuff that's really important, a lot of times people ignore and it's right under their nose.

Absolutely. And you know what I would say, and the reason that I ask the question is that I look at what you do at Boardroom with the newsletters is really a distillation of wisdom. And I think what, Marty, your genius is, is the ability to look at all the data of the world and distill out the wisdom. What's really important for people to live better, run better businesses, and with your ability to go through the enormous amounts of information that's out there and pull out the useful stuff and deliver it to your readers in the way that you do is brilliant. Because as the world becomes more complex, with information overload and everything, I don't think people just want to sit around and read books and Newspapers and go to seminars and all that stuff. Some people enjoy doing it, but the reason people do it, I believe, is because they want results. And the way you get results is you acquire capabilities. I look at what you guys are doing as really distilling wisdom out of mountains and mountains of data that's out there and then providing it to your clients in a way that it's useful to them and they can get capabilities in their lives. So that's the reason that I ask, because it's always useful to find out what it is that prompts your thinking and has allowed you to get insights in the way that you live your life and run your business.

I think the fact that we continue to be very successful in a world of information overload, you know, the idea that anything that we provide in our publications, theoretically, you could get on the Internet in a nanosecond if you have the right cable modem. However, I think what you hit on is really key, Joe, that Marty's penchant for knowing what's important in a particular book, in an article, what the nugget is, that's going to help you do something that we can actually format that still in a way that people really want it and they still want to buy it, as opposed to knowing that if they did the own research on their own, they probably wouldn't come up with the same kind of conclusions. And that's an amazing thing for us.

Absolutely. What I'd like to ask is, Marty.

Did you want to say. Want to add something to that?

I was just going to say how exciting it is going through this stuff. And when you've been doing it for over 30 years, as I have, it gets easier and more exciting. When you find a nugget that you want to turn around comes from conversations, too. I was talking to one of my friends who runs a farm newsletter in Texas, and I asked her what was new, and she told me a bizarre story that she was working with a radio farmer, and farmers would call in and give him problems, and he would solve it. And one of the problems was dealing with the fungus in the fields. So he told him to just put cornmeal on his fungus. A week later, some guy calls in and says, I had fungus on my toenails. And I listened to your program, and I tried that cornmeal, and it worked perfectly. My nails are fantastic now. And as that story got around, they were getting calls regularly on the radio to soak your feet in cornmeal.

I just want to add one little addendum Also to this whole thing about reading and getting the nuggets, Joe, Because I think when Marty said this to me many, many years ago, and it was so meaningful because I think people look at their bookshelves and they see dozens and dozens of books and it's very intimidating. And they say, how am I going to get to all that? I have this pile to read and I have that pile to read and I'm never going to get to all of it. And I remember Marty looked at me once when I was complaining about that one day, and he said, if you pick up a book and read two or three pages out of it, just pick up something from it and then put that book away and pick up another book and pick up another few pages, that all of a sudden the intimidation factor of seeing these huge thick books on your bookshelf becomes kind of a fun thing, as opposed to this pile that is staring you in the face that you think that you're not really fulfilling at the highest level. And I think that's the way that bottom line is written. So I think you can read like that and get a ton of out of the great books. And I find that most of the books on my shelf, I have not read cover to cover.

Yeah, that's our great books. Not the great.

Not the great books. Right, Our great. But I think in books in general, I mean, I think the great books, eventually you do want to try to get to them cover to cover, but when you can make sure you get something useful that you can use in your everyday life. And these great books are chock full of stuff. Absolutely.

And I mean, what you guys do as a service to millions of consumers, you actually go through so much information and you identify what is useful and you put it together in a very user friendly, readable format that's just chock full of useful stuff. And on top of that, you do a phenomenal job of marketing that knowledge, which is twofold of what I want to talk about, which I want to get into some of.

I'll give you one final quote on that, Joe. The consultant that once said that Marty invented hypertext in 1971 and didn't even know it.

Really?

Well.

You started boardroom Marty in 1972, correct?

Correct.

And just maybe real quick background on what caused you to go into that business.

Primarily, I was very annoyed. I commuted from Jersey to New York and I'd be on the commuter bus reading and I'd see people with business magazines reading too. And I got really troubled by that because I figured they were getting something out of it. And I couldn't get anything out of the magazines. They were about IBM and AT&T. And I wanted to know how to buy, how to sell, how to manage, how to plan. And there are books on that. Usually in each book there's one good chapter. So I thought about it and thought about it and said, I'm not crazy. These magazines are terrible. But there is a way to get the essence of that one good chapter in every book. And there are a lot of experts out there. So I played around with the idea of a magazine, realized they didn't have enough money to start a magazine. So I started a newsletter with a lot of work and attention to detail, and got off to a good start.

And what right now is the current size of Boardroom Inc. What does it consist of in terms of publications and subscribers?

We've got almost a million subscribers to Bottom Line Personal, and then we have three special newsletters. One is Health, another on retirement, and another one on taxes.

Yeah. And then I think with the book division, which has become a big part of our organization in all the same subject areas, we started developing books in. In Taxes, in Retirement, in Consumer Information and Health, and expanded all of that so that we could create our great books from the same subject areas that we saw the newsletters going. One thing that's really important, I think, for your listeners to know is that in some ways, Boardroom Inc. Is kind of a misnomer in that we're not a business publisher, although everything that we supply can help you in both your personal and your business life. But interestingly, over time is that we kind of let the marketplace help us dictate what direction to go, and that we went from Boardroom Reports as the flagship to Bottom Line Personal as the flagship. So the Executive at Home was a much more lucrative market for us and one that needed a lot more from us than the. Maybe not needed, because I think that the executive at business still needed quite a bit as well, but. But we had a harder time reaching them. So from a marketing standpoint, going after the executive at Home was a much better way. And Bottom Line became sort of the key brand. And in fact, before Boardroom Reports was eventually folded into Bottom Line, actually, we folded it into Tax Hotline, but Boardroom Reports was called Bottom Line Business before it folded. So we actually changed the name. And really, so many things in the company now are. In fact, I think we just printed up some hats that say Bottom Line information on them because BOT has become the real brand. But Boardroom Inc. Is very important, I think, for our company to be called, because in direct marketing circles, Boardroom is a direct marketing university. It's a place that people know of. And I think to change the name of the company to Bottom Line is something that is probably not a great way to go. But it's important for your listeners to know that Bottom Line is probably the brand of recognition at this point to the general consumer.

Absolutely. I mean, just being out there, I would certainly agree that's where most people have the recognition and knowledge of it, because it seems like. Have you ever heard of Bottom Line Personal? Oh, yeah, yeah, I've seen that. What is the secret to going through all of the stuff, all the data, all the information out there that you guys do in distilling that wisdom into, you know, readable, exciting, interesting formats? How do you do it?

Well, we have a big machine that starts out with books and magazines. Whenever we read about some new magazine, we'll look into subscribing to it. We have subscriptions to some publications that cost us over $500 a year. We don't wait for publishers to send us review copies. We go out and buy them. So anything that looks like it could have some useful information, we buy.

And I imagine, Marty, you probably spend a lot of time reading.

Yeah, well, I do, but we all do. Not the marketing people, but the editorial people go through Pyle very efficiently. They've been doing it for years. They are incredibly efficient. So we go through it, rip it out, and we have writers we send the rips to who are very experienced in pulling the essence out of each other idea, not doing it legally because we can't just copy a few words. We have to adhere to certain legal restraints.

I'd like to just a quick add on one thing I'd like to add, and I think Marty's even being a little modest in that, really has taught everybody on the editorial staff especially to question everything and be curious. That doesn't sound like any kind of deep, dark secret, but most people don't question everything, and most people aren't curious enough to get to the crux of things. I think also that our story meetings, and if you ever sat in one of our story meetings, which I have as a marketer, I'm just fascinated by the ideas flying around the table about, let's do an article on this. How about this? What's this? And so there's a constant communication of what's the angle that hasn't been explored before. And then at the end of that discussion, it's who is the number one expert on that particular topic that we can go find. And usually it's someone who's written the book on it, you know, the quintessential book on it. And then that's where the bigger articles come from, you know, in terms of the interviews, what we call the A stories. And so that combined with this voracious reading and questioning everything and being curious and ripping out every article that might have a tidbit that we could add into the publication, I'm just amazed at the big articles that come up and the big questions that end up getting answered. And, you know, it's a tribute to. Also to the network that Marty has built over the years, making sure that we're in touch with all of the best experts in the country on every single topic. And, you know, the people that I've just been, you know, sitting here as a, you know, a beneficiary of being able to meet the experts in every area of life. And I couldn't have been luckier to have had that opportunity. I'm a marketer. I'm not even an editor.

Well, you know, I want to read something here that's in the inside front cover of Bottom Line Personal, your newsletter. And it says purpose. And I love this. I think it just really spells out what you guys do. It says purpose to help those who are very busy with their careers handle their personal lives more effectively, to bring to them the best information from the most knowledgeable sources, to select and generate that information free from the influence of advertising. And I mean, that just spells out what it is that you do with finding the expertise, putting it into a format that's not a huge daunting thing to read, and just giving people enormous amounts of extremely useful information free from advertising. I'd like to ask, have you ever considered using advertising, or is there a reason why you have not done that?

Yes, I've considered it many times through the years, and I even figured out how to bring it in. But I think at this time, it would be breaking a promise to our readers. And I don't want to even. We never got into serious discussions.

I'd like to add another thing to that, too. You know, I don't know if, you know, if you remember from Marty's bio that, you know, he spent most of his career before starting boardroom as a salesman, and in most of that selling that he did, he was selling advertising space in magazines. So I think it's the ultimate irony that probably the best space salesman of all time ends up launching the best publication that doesn't have any advertising.

I think it's hysterical that that has been done because that's one of the reasons why I bring it up because I was going to ask you, Marty, a couple of questions regarding you selling.

Advertising in the past, which there is that aspect of. It's a great irony though, because I think that what it's done is that it's given us, as Marty said, it's really given us an incredible credibility with our readers. And it would be really hard to even have them make it seem like we're not being objective when we go out to these experts because we're not doing laboratory testing when we do ratings of things and we do consumer type information. But we really have to be respectful that the person that we're going to, the expert that we're going to, is giving us their best thinking. In addition, I think that the experts stay with us and they come back for more in terms of they do multiple articles with us over multiple years and they keep coming back and they stay friends with us because we're so cautious and meticulous about making sure we don't misquote them. They get probably how Many passes, Marty? 2, 3 passes of their articles before we actually go to press so that they can change things at the last minute. It really, you know, it's the opposite of when you get, you know, when Marty and I get interviewed for the press and direct marketing, you know, if you quote it correctly, it's the exception as opposed to being misquoted, you know, in our editorial. One of the claims to fame, I think is that everybody who's ever been a source will tell you that they love being a source for us because we take such good care of them.

Yes, yes. If you were to put your publications next to magazines out there, I mean, there's no comparison to what you provide in terms of content and usable information versus what is in most advertising filled publications out there. It's a joke compared to how much useful content is contained in one of your publications. Let me ask you a question about. You've already talked about it a little bit, but I'd like to have you elaborate a little bit more on how you actually find true experts and maybe if you can even define what is an expert in your opinion, either Marty or you, Brian?

This is for Marty.

Yeah, well, first of all, we have a load of experts and our data bank is gigantic and we have a sense of we're doing peace in a particular area of which of those has been most provocative in the past, most constructive? We go to them. And then if we don't have an expert in that area, we'll go to our experts that are in a related area and they have their own networks and we get fabulous people that way.

Marty, at one time, didn't you think that. And I guess. I guess more people can publish books these days than ever before. So it's not a criteria as it was, but the idea of getting a book published and having it become kind of the work on a particular, you know, the seminal work on a particular topic has always made somewhat of an impression on you or makes a difference to you.

Yeah, well, that helps us come up with ideas, watching the book flow, and then if we decide to pursue it, our writers can read the book first and have much more effective interviews. Just like you do. Joe, you do a lot of research before you do your interviews.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it helps. Well, that's.

That's really what you guys are. You're a gigantic research and reporting company.

And, and it's got to be very clear because I read everything and it's. If I don't understand it, it's got to be redone and redone until I do.

Yeah, I can imagine you being a very meticulous person in that particular area. Let's talk about that a little bit. How many current employees do you have at Boardroom?

Right now we have 85.

85. And your revenue is, of course, in the million dollar per employee range.

Close to $100 million.

Yeah. Which is, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, from what I've read, that's five times the revenue per employee compared to the majority of Fortune 500 companies.

That's correct.

So you're doing something right in that department. When I was reading some background information about you, articles that you've been Direct Marketer of the Year for Target Marketing. You've been Investors Business Daily Leaders in Success, which is one of my favorite pages in any newspaper, they actually wrote about comments about employees and delegation. And I've read that you don't delegate, you coordinate. And if you could, could you explain this and also, please explain what you mean when you say manage by agenda.

Yes, they tie in together. I do give projects to people and then I meet with them regularly to follow up on it and ask more questions as it moves along. Just through the years, I found that I have a lot of energy and I can work with a lot of people. I don't have to work with 85 every day. But I've developed different systems that allow me to follow up with people.

You know, when I went down and visited you guys on this price three, four years ago. Do you still keep mini recorders in people's desks, leave messages and stuff for. Because I remember picking up that idea while I was there and I use it here at Piranha.

Mini recorder.

There was like a mini recorder on. And I don't know if Marty did this. It was mini recorder for. It was on a couple of the people's desks where when they would work with each other, they'd go and leave a message for someone on the top of everyone's desk when they're just, you know, giving an idea or a delegation. Do you do that at all or.

We do. I mean, the I Power system. I mean, with the advent of email and I guess you're going to ask us a little bit more about iPower, but.

Oh, yeah, that's one of the best things.

Suggestion hat system. But it's much more than that. But I think that there are a lot of opportunities between email, voicemail, you know, constant notes going back and forth. I don't know if there's any one methodology that's better than another, but the idea of making sure that all the ideas get to the right person who can implement them is critical to how the company works. And I think, you know, the other aspect of that that's, I think, really been amazing to watch this company because we've been doing it for quite a long time. The concept of managing by agenda. You know, so many of our meetings, the way the meeting gets organized is that everybody gets a blank sheet in advance of the meeting with some key headings. You know, what I'm concerned about, what I'd like to discuss with everybody, what's coming up, Opportunities, accomplishments, sort of like big headings. And everybody who's coming to the meeting will put something onto that agenda under one of those headings. And then someone, whoever is organizing the meeting can put all of that together. And what happens is you start. The agenda is being created by the employees and what's on their minds, what things need to be prioritized at a higher level. And I just think it's an amazing system that again, is so simple, but the results are fantastic. I mean, the kinds of ideas that start running around the table when someone puts one of their accomplishments on there, and not because they want to brag, but because they just. They were told to put an accomplishment on the agenda. And then someone else can feed off of that and come up with another idea that's better or different or an extension of. That's the way the company really works. So it's not so much, you know, whether it's a. Whether it's a recording device on someone's desk or whether it's an email correspondence or whether it's items on a long agenda that are the participants of the meeting are actually contributing. All of that, I think, contributes to the same type of thing in terms of managing by agenda and making sure that the priorities are in the right place.

What I do now, Brian, was really describing how our executive committee that has about 20 people on it runs now, I come to the meetings with a pocket full of money, and if I hear good ideas, I award them to the people. But I decided to put a penalty on. If they don't give us an idea for the agenda, they have to pay $2. And if they don't show up at the meeting, they have to pay $3.

Right. And then. And then we use that money. Sometimes Marty will maybe use it for refreshments. So sometimes there's a payoff for us for those of us who always bring good ideas to the meeting.

Exactly.

Well, I've been eating very well, I will tell you that.

That's great. What I think it really boils down to, and I'd like you to go into the IPAR system. I think it's phenomenal, and I'd like you to describe that to the listeners is what you said early in the interview, Marty, right at the very beginning where people don't think. And I think you've developed a system that just gives people the ability to think and you reward them for thinking. And now you've instilled a punishment system if they don'. And you've transformed your business as a result of doing it. And I know you've transformed many companies, businesses with this management system and with the idea generation. So if you could maybe give us.

A background on iPower very briefly. Actually, it's a failure. Overall, the program is a great success. But it started out as a failure and came from a conversation with Peter Drucker. I was with him one time. He said, you want to make your meetings more interesting? I said, sure. He said, well, have everybody come to the meeting with an idea on how to make the business grow or how to cut costs? I thought that was great. And I had a meeting scheduled for some people the next day. I sent a little note around asking the people to make some suggestions. And it was A fantastic meeting. And I wrote everything down as fast as I could. Then I lost the list. So I did it again and I got another pile of good ideas and I lost that list. That's not good. So I sat down and thought it through and I just can't do it all. So I had everybody at the next meeting write it down. And then we developed little pads for them to fill it in on. And I went through them.

Actually, the key was making those little chits, you know, two or three parts. So one copy would go to Marty to evaluate, but then one would go into a hat so that it could be, call it registered in a more central database of ideas so that they never got lost. Plus, I think it was very important for at that point in our history for Marty to be looking at all of them because he had the best, you know, aerial view of the company and what could be the big ideas and what could be the stuff that we should just do it and that type of stuff. So the evaluation phase was very important. It was important for Marty to evaluate, but it was also important to give the people credit for the ideas and to have them posted and all that. So I think the combination of a system that documented them plus gave Marty an opportunity to still evaluate them was the beginning of why the system worked so well. I think also that, and I don't say this critically, that, you know, most suggestion hat systems or suggestion boxes or whatever, the system runs out very quickly. Like, people lose momentum because even if they're putting ideas in the hat, no one's checking the hat, no one's checking the box, no one's really committed to it. And I think what we did with iPower, as Marty says in his book, is we made it really, really simple so that it became part of the fabric of everybody's job. And it really wasn't something that was a separate thing that everybody felt was this box that was sitting in some central part of the company. I mean, we had IP hats all over the place. We had more hats than water coolers. And so there was just so much opportunity for idea generation, idea submission, idea checking. And again, I don't say this critically, that it became more quantity than quality in the initial stages, because you just wanted to get as many ideas out there as you could on a regular basis and then worry about evaluating them. Whereas I think a lot of. And I've seen a lot of suggestion systems that if the quality is evaluated right away, it diminishes. First of all, everybody's self worth because they Come up with an idea. And you say, well, we can't do that now. So I'm not putting that in the hat. That takes away their motivation to come back again with an idea later on. So the idea is to get the number out there first and then evaluate. It's sort of like a brainstorming concept that, you know, quantity is important and don't evaluate them right away. We'll have more than enough time to evaluate them later. And I think by setting up quantity systems first gave us a much better quality system, in my opinion, anyway.

And we had a lucky accident. Through some of the ideas, we started making a lot of money and then more money. I realized I had to share that with the people. So we set up a quarterly distribution called Profit Sharing. And one time I was working on that distribution, and I realized that some people are submitting the ideas and others aren't. We set a quota and insisted on that. And everybody shares in the I power now and has for a long time. So we give them some of the profits that they're making and they feel very good about it. So our system has been running for 11 years. It's had one interesting side benefit that no one could have predicted that in those same 11 years, our staff of 85 to 100 employees has not had a single divorce. And in this time, that's incredible. I just think the system supports their egos so they can deal with the arguments at home better.

Wow, that's interesting. Well, you know, I first came into the funnel with your company and your organization by attending an IPower seminar that was put on by an absolutely fantastic guy by the name of Ken Glickman.

Who I believe you've done tapes with ken. Oh, yeah, two of them.

I did an interview on iPower with Ken, which I encourage every one of my listeners who's hearing this. If you'd like to hear that, I'd highly recommend it on top of the book, which they can get directly through you guys, correct?

Yeah, I mean, it's still. You can get it in bookstores, I guess. I haven't gone on Amazon recently or Barnes and Noble to see how easy it is to buy online. Chances are, if it's someone that knows you, Joe, that Marty will probably autograph a copy for them.

That would be great. I would highly recommend any of the listeners. If you want to learn more about iPower. Marty did write a book called I Power the Secrets of Great Business in Bad Times. And I've got it sitting here right in front of me. And the I stands for there's all kinds of things. But what it says on the COVID of the book is ideas, ingenuity, invention, incentive, individual, invigorate, inquisitive innovation, inspiration, intelligence, imagination, and improvement. And it's all about just constant improvement. And it's an awesome system. It's a system that we use at Piranha. And I know you've had hundreds, if not thousands of companies incorporate this system, and I think it's one of the most amazing systems of idea generation and not having people feel like their batteries were drained by giving ideas that they never go anywhere just because of the little tweaks that you've done. And I think the mistakes and the failures that you talk about, Marty, in the beginning, is what has allowed you to develop the program to the level that it is. And correct me if I'm wrong, didn't your revenue, once you started using your system of having your employees bring ideas to the table, didn't it go something like from $25 million in revenue to over $100 million without adding any staff?

That's correct. Incredible.

Yeah. I mean, that is huge. And I didn't want to skip over it, because I think a lot of people that have never heard about this that will be listening to this interview right now. I don't realize the impact of the system that you have developed. And so I'd encourage anyone to read the book and to get more information. Anything else that you two would like to add about iPower?

I think that's more than enough. Good.

Okay.

Do you have any ideas for us, Joe? Send them along.

Oh, I have a million.

No, you're an idea machine yourself.

I love iPower. I think it's awesome. I think every business in America, all over the world, could dramatically benefit and utilize iPower. So I love it.

That's what I'll say.

Let's go back to your past life before boardroom, where you sold ad space in the Yellow pages Cosmo years ago. I'd like to ask you, Marty, what did it teach you? And can you maybe elaborate on a story or two where you made it easy for the other guy, the guy or gal, to buy advertising from you?

To say, yes, Yellow pages was my first job at a college, and when I sat down the first day, the woman next to me said, I hope you last longer than the last guy. Incidentally, that noise that you hear now is the Edelston hour.

Marty has about 25 clocks in his office, and he's got, you know, a lot of them different alarms and Stuff. I think when we start getting the big alarms, Marty, we might have to take a break from this interview and go to the bathroom or something.

Well, you know what, we'll go right back to what you're going to say, Marty. I have actually seen some of Marty's art collection. So at some point during this interview, Marty, if you could maybe share some of your insights on it because you have one of the most eccentric, wild offices and art collections that a person is ever going to see, which I actually.

Meaningful art too. Every piece has a lesson. So that's the amazing thing.

Absolutely, yeah. You gave me a tour of the whole place explaining what different things meant. Talk about the two trapeze people, people working together and the clubs. I remember the clubs of virtues or what? I'm not sure if I'm getting that right, but yeah, perfect. Okay, so you were talking about selling advertising space.

Yellow pages. I sold more increases in business than anyone else in a 40 person office. And that came from just not wanting to get fired. I planned every night. I was single at the time. Then I went out all day and made more calls.

Within the.

More people said no to me than any other salesman. But more said yes. Also, it was those yeses that counted. The no's weren't so bad. But then I didn't like the nos. So I came up with a system. And I had a notebook. At the end of every day, I sat down and made a list of all the objections that people threw at me. Whether they crippled my pitch or not. I made a list. Oh, that's another one of my clocks.

Yeah, there's a train going around the clock right now.

You know, we should have this on video. That would be. Actually, you should probably snap some pictures.

Of this stuff for me.

And then when people, you know, hear this interview, they actually know what it is that, you know, they're hearing in the background. No, hey, I mean, what the heck? You have a huge company. You've earned your success. If you want to have 4 million clocks in your office and all kinds of crazy things, I mean, I certainly think you're entitled to it. And I think it adds an enormous.

Amount of it feeds into the culture of the company too. There's an incredible love and spirit that are throughout this company. And having been here for 22 years and seeing it grow, that spirit hasn't changed one bit in the whole time I've been here. It's only gotten better. It's only gotten even more. More familial. More, more loving and more, more Ingenious. Yeah.

And I mean, isn't that what it should be all about? You know, people spend the majority of their lives at work. They should come to a place that has a personality behind it. Most offices you walk into are so dully boring and bureaucratic, and it's. To me, it's nauseating.

Yeah, no, we're. We're not that. I will say, too. You know, Marty, you mentioned about. And there is no. No, that's become one of our credos even today in 2003, where everything is sales. When you think about it, whether it's selling through direct mail, whether it's trying to create a partnership with another company, whether it's negotiating what we're going to have for lunch, there is no, no. And Marty has got us all thinking on those terms all the time. So. And I think it started in those early days at the Yellow Pages that there was no, no. And so even his nos, he learned something from. But then he went back to them, got his objections on the paper. And those sales lessons are so universal for how we run our business today. And it's not a question of just being pushy salespeople. I mean, we're very aggressive in our direct mail, where we do, I think, some of the best sales copy that's ever been written. And I think it's no coincidence that the company was founded by the best salesman ever. So that part, I think, has transcended the whole history of this company.

Yeah, absolutely. What else would you say, Marty? Just on sales and what you.

I think planning pays. So I planned each of my calls. I knew just what I wanted to do. Sometimes I'd walk in on a customer with two arms full of yellow page books from all over the country, show them different kinds of ads. And the one that I would like to copy for him or her was all there.

You'd also mock stuff up. Like you would take, like someone else's ad and put their name on it and show them. And we still do that today where we kind of show them what it could look like. And, you know, Marty's always been a big believer in, you know, if you show it to them, they're going to get much more out of it, and they're going to get. They're going to get much more excited, you know, when they see their own name in light, so to speak. And Marty's still a master at that.

Well, yeah. And I mean, now you've actually gone from, of course, the way that anyone grows a business with direct mail is you take the best sales promotions, the best sales pitches, and you put it into copy and you put it into the form of a sales letter. And now you guys have a sales force of probably 50 million or more a year of sales promotions put into an envelope and mailed, because you are a massive direct mailer. And I would like to have you talk about now going into. From selling advertising to becoming a direct marketer, and. And all of what you've done in the process. Maybe talk about Mel Martin, your copywriter, and how you guys developed the technique of fascinations for direct mail and the things that you're really famous for with your promotions. If we could talk about that a little.

One of the categories that I called on early on was after I left Yellow Pages was mail order people. So I lived with those people, and I learned from them every day something about copy, about products, about concepts. And along the way, one of the best, most inspiring people was Mel Martin. And at one time he worked for New York Times Books, and he created an incredible situation. He convinced top management that they should take some of their empty space and devote it to their book division. And he created unbelievably good ads. His ads were so good and so entertaining that it was better than the newspaper. But they stopped that free exchange for him pretty quickly because other book publishers who were important to the Times objected and didn't think it was fair for the Times to take advantage that way. Well, Mel and I kept in touch through his lifetime, and he wrote a package for us which was very important, what not to eat on an airplane. He learned this seeing the advertising created by Ralph and Shoshana Ginsburg. And Ralph and Shoshana are friends of mine, fascinating people. And they did probably the first fascination advertising mill saw it, took it apart, figured out how they did it, and then he did it for the rest of his life, magnificently. Finding the oddity.

How would you describe fascinations in terms of what is the purpose of writing that type of copy? What is it that you're trying to do to the reader?

Well, I think it's to grab their attention, and if you buy my product, you'll find out the answer.

I think also that there's been an evolution in the fascination approach as well. And I think that there was the great Gene Schwartz, who was another of the great copywriters who in the same era would go through a book that you and I and Marty would probably think is pretty boring and be able to come up with the tidbit that in some respects, the steak it's always the steak, the sizzle being better than the steak. And the steak's still not that bad. I mean, it's not like we're, you know, we're not selling. We're not selling bad meat. But that this sizzle was so important to get the reader's attention. And Gene had this knack of being able to go through these big books and just call the stuff out, which Mel did, which Ralph Ginsburg did. And it's an amazing technique. And I think what's happened today, in today's direct mail is that the consumer has gotten a little bit tougher in terms of, you know, wanting to be shown something a little bit more. And I will say that over time, there's a lot more direct mail out there that I'll say gives away a little bit more of the stake in the direct mail campaign so that you see fascinations. You see, to use an easy example, that Here are the 10 things you need to know to prevent a heart attack. You give five of them in the direct mail copy. To get the other five, you have to get the book that we're selling or the subscription. But the idea that there's actually real stake in the direct mail promotions these days, I think has been an evolution over time. I'm not saying in the early days that there wasn't. I'm sure Marty could find examples of, you know, situations where they gave away some steak back then too. But I think there, you know, I think the consumer has gotten a little bit tougher and a little bit more discerning. I don't know if you agree with that, Marty, but I. That's what I've seen over the last bunch of years anyway. I mean, a much more demanding consumer, but the techniques are still work. I mean, the idea of fascinations is still such a incredibly powerful technique. Right.

And flying.

Yes.

Well, you know, I mean, my whole business is built around compelling sales copy and emotional copy and using copywriters and writing in a way that causes people to desire what it is that I sell and back it up with sense of urgency, social proof, powerful headlines, calls to actions, all of that stuff. What suggestions or tips can you, Marty and Brian, give to the listeners on maybe some things that you. Fundamentals, things that you've learned about having success with direct marketing that people should really know, like the power of copy or anything?

Well, copy is very important list. Everything is important. Copy, the art, the list. Just knowing how to mail is very important. Understanding how the post office works. So we spend a lot of Money for copywriters. Some of our copywriters have been paid over a million dollars a year by us.

Wow.

And I love paying them that much. That means they're doing a hell of a job, but we might pay it. We have paid as much as $100,000 to the right copywriter to write on a particular project.

You know, I'd like to repeat what you just said there, Marty, because I think it's crucial. You said that some of your copywriters, you've paid over a million dollars, and you're happy to pay them that. And I think that says so much about your ability to have grown your company and developed this, which has reached millions and millions of consumers that you have reached and you have helped through your publications, which comes from the fact that it doesn't matter how good your newsletters or your books are, if nobody buys them and gives you money for them. And you've not only developed awesome products and publications, but you've also done a phenomenal job of selling them using powerful copy. And you're willing to invest money into copywriters and people to write that powerful copy to make that happen. My belief is that copy is the oxygen that makes your sales letters work and makes your campaigns work. And. And I can't tell you how many hundreds, if not thousands of people that I've come into contact with that have the exact opposite attitude of you. They try to be cheap with their copywriters. They don't understand the value of it. What was it that flipped the switch for you that allowed you to see that? Man, Powerful copy is what's going to allow me to take a campaign and grow it. How do you get that mindset?

Well, a lot of that was developed by Dick Benson, who found a way to get a great copywriter to work for nothing as long as he got paid a nickel and order. Essentially, he was getting royalty. The copywriter, Dick Benson, got Henry Cowan to work on a royalty basis. And Henry, whose business at the time was slow, said, that sounds good. And he made millions every year on that royalty concept. Then that rolled out into the rest of the world. They heard about it, and the tougher copywriters insisted on royalties. So it was easy to see that it was worth it. You paid more, but you got more.

But I think in the early days of the royalty copywriters, too, as Marty said, you wouldn't even have to pay them an upfront. You know, they were willing to put their money where their mouth was, as we were. So we were in it together. I think as time has gone on, the best copywriters, it's still, you know, that top of the pyramid is still not as large as we would like it to be. And a lot of those guys and gals get an upfront fee in addition to royalties these days. And. But again, going back to what Marty said, if the results are there, you'd be silly not to pay it the other side of that. And I think you were kind of hinting at this too, Joe. And I think it's an important concept, not just about copywriters and royalties, but just how you run a business. And you got to run a business with incredible integrity. And that's what Marty started the company on. I mean, there's no one with more integrity than Marty and what he's instilled in all of us. And to that end, for example, if we made a deal with a copywriter that was so much in our favor that it was unfair, we're the kind of company that would actually, instead of saying, you know, this is a windfall for us, you know, screw the copywriter. If it's someone that we have a great relationship with, we might go back to them and pay them a bonus or come up with a new structure or do something retroactive. And of course, we expect the other to go the other way, too. That when we make a deal with somebody and the deal doesn't go the way we thought and we end up, you know, losing our shirt when we shouldn't have, we hope that people will have that same level of integrity to make a fair deal. And the whole idea is fairness. And frankly, I've been more disappointed. As you said, you know, most of the people that you meet in your work see are penny wise and pound foolish when it comes to copywriters. I think a lot of people are penny wise and pound foolish in terms of, you know, the integrity of their business and how they run it. And you only go around once. I mean, I don't understand that kind of mentality, especially in a business like direct marketing, where everything is shared. You know, we're all using the same mailing list, we're all using the same copywriters, we're using a lot of the same approaches. There's so much that's being shared to begin with. To start being cutthroat in the way that most people have been cutthroat over the years in business just doesn't seem to work in direct marketing. Marty told me a lesson very early on. My first 10 years, I spent mostly in the list business and made my name in the list industry first before doing more direct marketing stuff on the whole with Marty. And I remember Marty telling me early on that when I was selling mailing lists, that selling lists is not. It's not an or, it's an and. And what he meant by that is that if my list works and your list works for a particular mailer, both lists are going to be in the mail plan. Whereas, you know, if you're selling, it's not a choice. You know, if they both work, they're both going to get mailed. And just that spirit of camaraderie that direct marketing entails, that it's more an and business than an or business kind of permeates everything we've done since. And it's how I run my business life now. And I'm no longer just a list guy. But that's, I think, the roots of where I came from. And it really goes back to some of those early lessons that Marty gave me about, you know, and versus or. Right.

Well, no, that's. That's powerful stuff. That's great thinking on that. You know, I want to just. Not that the listener doesn't already know this, I want to reiterate it. How many letters do you guys mail a year?

Currently, on average, our mail quantities have been as high as, you know, 120, 130 million pieces a year. And that's just not letters. That could be different formats. You know, we call Magalogs and some of the stuff is number 10 packages, number 10 envelopes. And, you know, right now, I mean, with the cost of postage and the ability to segment in terms of database marketing, we actually can mail a lot less at a higher profit. So, you know, I don't want people to be a slave to a number. I mean, copywriters are. If they're getting paid a royalty, they want to hear that, you know, we're going to mail. You know, I hope you're going to mail 10 million pieces instead of five. But I can make the case that we have mailings that at 5 million pieces, you know, we're a lot happier mailing 5 million than 10 million if at 10 million we don't get our return on investment that we really want. So I don't want the listeners to think that we run around and brag about how many names we mail. But we are a big mailer, and on any given year, it's going to be somewhere between 50 and 100 million pieces, depending on what's hot, which products are Doing well, which new products, we get a new control. And again, we had one creative director once gave me an expression that I thought was one of the best, which is the control is your enemy. And I think that, you know, beating the control, if you're not hell bent on doing that every minute of every day, then you really are not cut out for direct marketing. Long live Marty. What's the expression? Long live the king. The king is dead. Long live the king. So we get a new control and we get 100% lift in a response. And the first thing we think about is, okay, who are we going to hire to beat that control now? Now we're going to go roll out with that new control and make a lot of money and do very well, but we're going to also be totally aggressive in wanting to beat that.

I think we have to explain what a control is.

Oh, okay. Well, a control would be the existing package that, well, the best package is. There's another expression that Dick Benson taught us. He said the best package is the best package. And so whatever your control package is means that that's the package that you're trying to be. It's the one that is the current winner. And you're always trying to beat the control. Whatever your best package is, you probably can beat it. And you just have to figure out what changes you have to make. Whether it's a headline, whether it's an envelope change, whether it's a cover change, to a self mailer, whatever that item is. And the other beauty of direct marketing is that little things mean a lot. You know, a few changes of words on an order card makes all the difference in the world. Sometimes a color on an envelope can make all the difference in the world. And you know, you always want to do this. I was always fascinated by. There was one award that was given in direct marketing, I believe it was called the Axel Anderson Award. It was an award that was given to a control that was able to stay the control for more than five years. And I remember writing a letter to that publication that was giving away that award and I called it the ironic award. I said, you know, it seems to me that if you have the same control package for five years, as opposed to being proud of yourself for having such a good control package, I maintain that you probably weren't testing enough. And so I think, you know, in that respect that again, the king is dead. Long live the king. That if you don't keep on trying to beat the control, again, direct marketing, that's what makes that's what makes my life interesting, makes Marty's life interesting. How are you going to beat this? This is the best thing we ever saw. Now how are we going to beat it?

That actually is fantastic wisdom for every one of the listeners. And I have talked a lot about controls and most of the people listening have. And I'm glad Marty asked you to define that. Everyone out there listening, if you've got a particular yellow page ad, a particular postcard, a newspaper ad, all of those could be looked at as control. It's like, what is it doing now? And can you beat it? Can you beat the results? Which goes back to why you, you absolutely have to track your numbers and you have to know what your cost per lead is, your cost per sale and all of those things in order to beat the control. But the control is your enemy, is something that is so good that I'm going to actually take that, Brian, and put that on a sign in the wall because it is great advice. I want to say that for any of the listeners out there, you should subscribe to all of Boardroom's newsletters, all their publications just to be on their list because it's a great marketing education in and of itself just, just seeing how they market. And I'd encourage everybody to do that.

They can do immediately too. Just so you know, we haven't really talked about the Internet and email. And while we're, we think that it's a very good distribution channel and a very good medium. I think that to think that it's the be all end all I think is a mistake that some people have made. On the other hand, I think you have to pay very, very close attention to it. And I would encourage everybody and every one of your listeners, if they go to our website, boardroom.com or bottomlinesecrets.com I think you end up in the same place on either of those URLs. There are two E letters that we offer, both free. One is sort of a general consumer E letter called Bottom Line Secrets. And once a week they'll get an E letter from us with six or seven links to different articles on different topics. And then we also have something called Daily Health News. Daily in Connecticut is three days a week. But anyway it's a three day a week newsletter that again you'll have. It's just on the health category, but they'll get free information. I mean we do embed ads and that's the secret to keeping those afloat and why they're successful. But again, we're giving away very valuable editorial information for free. So while I encourage all of your listeners and customers to subscribe to our paid newsletters, there are two free e letters that I encourage them to sign up for as well.

Awesome. Yeah, same here. I mean, I encourage them do everything they can to get a hold of everything.

I have a couple of ideas for the carpet cleaners.

All right.

I have a couple of ideas for your special ideas for your listeners tie into my yellow page experience. One is that they go to the library, wherever there's a huge collection of yellow pages, or see if the telephone company will let you sit down with all the yellow pages from throughout the country and then look at the ads in your category throughout the country, see which ones you like and copy it.

That's awesome. I think you just. That's amazing advice, Joe, that Marty just gave.

Absolutely. Versus letting the yellow page ads just basically make the ad up for you and just take pieces from this ad and that ad and throw them all together. Absolutely.

It's an expression that one of the great newsletters in our trade in the direct mail business, it used to be called who's Mailing why? By a guy by the name of Denny Hatch. And now it's called Inside Direct Mail. But it's the same basic newsletter. It's a wonderful newsletter that basically tracks everything that's in the mail at any particular time. And I believe it was Dorothy Kerr, who's a good friend of Marty's and mine, who's been in the circulation business for a long time. And I think she gets credit with the phrase steal smart. And I remember that it was actually a lead article in that who's Mailing what Newsletter very early on in the history of that newsletter. And the whole newsletter was launched on the concept of stealing smart that you look at what's working, you look at what's out there. You know, somebody has spent a lot of money, time, ingenuity to come up with the ideas. You don't have to. You don't have to rip them off, you know, word for word. But you certainly are going to get tremendous ideas. And the beauty of what Marty just said, I think also is that these yellow pages are all regional, so no one's, you know, it's a small company in a small city, and you're going to be in a completely different part of the country. Absolutely. Steel smart. I mean, God, what an amazing idea. If I was a carpet cleaner, I'd be at the library now.

Exactly.

Thank you, Marty.

I have another idea for yellow page Advertisers, that is for yellow page or for carpet cleaners. Well, it's good for carpet cleaners and yellow pages that when you're interested in buying a bigger ad or putting a big ad in another neighboring directory, get another telephone number and use it in the new ad so you can get a real sense of what's happening.

Yeah. Track each ad with a different phone number. That's what TV Direct Response does. Is that something that you recommend to your folks, Joe?

Tv, you mean? Or just doing, just in general to.

Be able to track responses by specific source, which is very important.

Oh yeah, yeah. Knowing your numbers is everything. And what Marty, you just said, if someone has two or three different ads and they all have the same phone number, and when someone calls in, even if they're tracking and say, well, I heard about you from the yellow pages, what's to say they're going to know which yellow pages? So no, it's absolutely fantastic advice. And that would apply to any replication of media. If you're running two different newspaper ads, two different phone numbers, you've got to know your numbers. That's why I read in one of your articles that was written about you that the future of marketing is database. And you've got to know what list these are coming from. You've got to know what ads are attracting what people. That's what has allowed you to mail less letters but be more profitable because you have such a deep understanding of who's responding to what it is that your promotions. So absolutely.

It took me a long time to understand databases or database marketing. Actually, it's interesting. Dick Benson wrote a wonderful book on direct marketing. And a few years later he got redid it. He asked me to write the forward to it. I had to read the book again, which was no, no pain. And after I finished getting started on the forward, I realized he didn't say anything in there about database marketing. So turns out he never could redo the book because the world had changed and had become a very important part of the new direct mail world.

And what I would like to do, because we only got a few minutes left and there's.

I thought we were going to stay.

On for it through the weekend.

You know, let me get a whole slew of CDs, Marty. And we could actually do that because, you know, it would be worth it to me. I'd get a heck of an education and we'd be getting a lot of.

And every hour we'd get the clocks going off too.

Absolutely. We could just, It Would almost be like a marathon here. We could do it being Guinness Book of World Records. Well, you know, there's a lot of things I'd like. You know, I'd love to ask you that. You only got a limited amount of time. I've been to one of your four season dinners that you do. What is the purpose of those things? I think they're really cool. And although it's not a huge thing, I think it's worth mentioning you do these dinners at Four Seasons with experts and stuff. What's that all about?

Well, it started very selfishly. I was to several dinners with intelligent people around the table, which is much different than how I grew up. And I had such a good time at those dinners that people stopped inviting me. So I figured as an entrepreneur, I'll try it. So I set up my own. And I had trouble with my first one. As I sent out some invitations, everyone did not immediately respond positively. So I sat back planning the second one and said, what do I do now? I realized I was in direct mail business. So I sent out twice as many invitations and got a full table very easily. And then we had a few leftover. So I set up another dinner. They're great. It's the best way to spend an evening. I had an apartment in New York to do this entertaining. And I found that the dinners were more fun than going to the movies, in ballet or shows. Just listening to people who know what they're talking about. It's fabulous.

I agree, you know, and just quickly on the format that it's amazing. I mean, I think there's, there's so much in the dinners that go into the planning of them that, you know, Marty's very precise about how the table gets set up and who sits with who, because, you know, we look at, we get everybody's bio in advance and we want to put people who would either have a lot in common or we think they could have a lot in common once they start talking to each other based on something in their backgrounds. In addition, you know, the way the format works is that after we introduce everybody who's at the dinner, you know, we spend time, everybody talks to their neighbors because we've already set the table up in a way that, you know, the people are conversing about various topics. And then after, say, the main course, Marty sets it up so that there's one conversation for the whole table and that each person, you tune in then to each person and their expertise. And as Benson says, these are people that know everything about a lot. So, you know, as Marty said, you can't get more out of an evening than when you're listening to the experts talking about what they're expert in. And everybody likes to talk about what their passion is. And the fact that we have the newsletters that we have and we have the experts network that we have, it's just gotten better and better as the years go on because the network gets bigger, the experts get better, the experience of everybody is increasing, of course, because time marches on. And so every dinner is more. We always say at the end of each dinner, this was the best dinner ever. And we hate to tell you, but the next one's going to be the best dinner ever, and the next one's going to be the best dinner ever. So it's a phenomenal experience. And I've had the privilege of co hosting them with Marty now for the last few years. And just an again, amazing experience to have the contact with these amazing, amazing people. And it is better than going to the movies or going to the show or going to a football game or anything like that.

Well, yeah. I mean, I think that just the whole fact that getting together with groups of very smart people and talking about very interesting things, I mean, that's really what life should be all about. And so many people squander their time with, I mean, I think you're not a huge, big sports fan, Marty, but I certainly, I think so much television and things that people spend their time with is a giant waste of time. And I think you're just a company and an individual and a person that has really learned how to find the essence of things and really leverage that.

I don't want Marty to be angry with me on this one, but we've been talking, I've been pushing really hard that we probably that his autobiography is a book that needs to be written and just the case histories and we haven't even touched on that many today because you're not going to do that in an hour or two hour interview. But the lessons in life, I guess you're going to ask something about the art collection, but the lessons in life that. But he's learned, you know, I said all he has to do is have the right editor and all he has to do is keep talking and the book is going to write itself. And, you know, as far as the, you know, just the issues of integrity in business and the issues of, you know, so many people are writing about ethics these days and writing about some of the things that, you know, people talk, the talk but they don't walk the walk. And, you know, Marty's been doing that for 30 years. I've been with him for 22 of them, and I've been with them for 22 of them. And I can tell you for a fact that this is a book that's going to get written. And so I thank you for the inspiration to at least let me put that out there and let your listeners know that we're going to get even more of this on paper.

You know what? I actually, before we even give Marty a chance to respond, I would second everything that you just said, and I would certainly encourage that. And I've spent a lot of time, I've known Marty now for several years, done dinners with him, had lunch with him before. He's given me a tour of the place, and I've sent him some bizarre artwork and stuff in the past. And he's also sent me some really cool things. He sent me a piranha and all kinds of neat stuff. Last week I read all of these articles. When you were Direct Marketer of the year, when you've been in Direct magazine, write up in Forbes, numerous articles. I watched the TV story that was done on you and all of the stuff. And it's fascinating. I mean, I had lunch last week. I spent six hours with Vic Conant over at Nightingale Conant, which is an aside. He actually said he did business with you in the list business. Brian yeah, yeah.

Well, I know. I know Vic. And I don't know if Marty's met Vic. Marty knew Earl Nightingale, I think.

Did you know Earl? Marty?

No. Oh, you never met him? Marty. Okay, well, I knew Vic Conan. You talk about Vic Conan Jr.

Yes, exactly.

We used to do a lot of business with Nightingale. Conan Yes, I know. Vic.

I had just gotten done reading all these articles on Marty, and I brought the copy of the folder of all these articles and I gave them the Vic and I said, vic, have someone make copies of these articles for you. You've got to read this stuff. This guy is like, fascinating, all of the things that he's done. And if you can see the articles that I have, they're all highlighted. And I mean, I've got pages of just notes, not things, just preparation for this interview, but just things that I've learned and insights that I've picked up. So I would highly encourage you, Marty, to do a biography of yourself or have it done because I think it's fascinating.

I have a title for the book, too, Joe. What is it? It's called Nikki from Newark. And the reason why I say that is that all of Marty's friends, he's still very much in touch with those of his friends that are still around from high school. And he grew up in Newark, New Jersey, in a very, very humbly. Did not, you know, was not wealthy, and, you know, grew up working as a very, very hard worker in Newark, New Jersey. I always say all roads lead to Newark, because everywhere we go, it seems like we're always meeting somebody that Marty went to high school with in Newark. But they all. And all of his old friends still call him Mickey. And I've never. I mean, I bought him some Mickey Mouse shirts as a joke, but I've never, you know, I could never call Marty Mickey. He's always been Marty to me. But there's this side of, you know, the idea that Mickey from Newark, he's just. He'll tell you that he's just this average guy that just, you know, put his priorities in the right place and was focused on a vision and worked really hard and got to where he was. But it is much bigger than that. But the fact that it started as Mickey and Newark, and, you know, the fact that he was a track star and he wasn't the fastest guy, but he was as good as anybody else on the track team, is sort of indicative of everything he's done in his life since. So I think I've got the title. I think I got to just get the author, and I got to get Marty to say yes. I really appreciate you, Joe, backing me up here because he's been telling me that, you know, that I'm wrong, so.

Well, I'll only say yes if Joe tells me where he got his fabulous toilet seat that he sent me.

I sent Marty Spider Man. The Spider Man.

Oh, I. Spiderman toilet seat.

I got it at an art gallery called Art one in Scottsdale, which is the neatest little art gallery, because it's the money that this gentleman raises. The proceeds go to help student artists and teenage artists and stuff. And it's. I mean, the art is fantastic. And the coolest thing, which is kind of interesting, when I went to this place, I was referred by a friend who's a medical doctor that has this bizarre art collection. And I'm into some pretty weird art. And I go into this place and mention that this person referred me, my friend Juan. His name is Juan Leva. He's a doctor. And the guy said, well, he goes, anything that you see in the gallery, if you like it, go ahead and take it.

Home.

And if you like it, pay me for it. And if you don't, just bring it back within a week. And I said, okay, so this is like trial art. He's like, yeah. He goes, that's. I go, do you do this with everyone? He goes, yeah. He goes, 80% of my business as repeat clients. And so I walked out of there that day with about $1,200 worth of stuff. The guy didn't even ask me for a license or anything. All he wanted was my phone number. And I said, I'm like, do you have people rip you off? He's like, no, never had it happen. He goes, it's all on the honor system. And I ended up buying the stuff from this guy. But the mere fact is, like, go and hang it on your wall. Put the sculptures on your floor. Do whatever you want. If it works, if it fits, keep it. If it doesn't, bring it back. And I thought that was one of the most aw awesome marketing techniques for selling art.

I think that's how Marty started Bottom Line Personal. One of his consultants, Dave Florence, said, you know, this thing is so good, just give it away, and as soon as it gets in their hands, they're not going to be able to live without it. So it's the same concept and there's a real marketing lesson.

Hold it, hold it, hold it. I'd like to know if you tried out this toilet seat.

No, that toilet seat has never been tried. It's one of a kind. Another one like, it does not exist.

I'm staring at it right now. It's right behind Marty on the wall, behind him, on his desk.

You know what, do me a favor, Brian, if you could, because now that we've done this interview and we've put this on, this is actually going out to the world. People are going to be asking, what on earth are you talking about? And that really is one of a kind. It was a custom made toilet seat with artwork from Spider man that was put on a toilet seat. Lacquered, you know, it's usable.

It's beautiful. I'm looking at it. Yeah.

Take a picture. And that was done before the movie came out and everything. So I gotta imagine that's a huge collector's item now, which is very cool.

Right? Well, you know what? Marty keeps the camera by his desk, so I'll make sure he's gotta take a picture of it and send it to you.

And I knew that that would totally fit Marty too. Which is why when I saw it.

I was like, I got it right behind him. It's in a very prominent spot on the wall. Can I say this art place still exists?

Yes, it's called Art1 and it's in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Now, when I come from boot camp, you're going to take me there.

Yes. The guy that owns it, his name is Craig Foote and he's a very cool guy and it's a really interesting place.

It's on my list of places to visit when I come to a boot camp.

I will absolutely take you there. So, Marty, what are your thoughts on doing the book and does this look like something that you would be willing to have Brian oversee and put together?

I don't know. A lot of work.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't expect to do the work because I got enough to do. Marty keeps me. I keep myself busy. Marty keeps me busy. I think the key is, I think the book writes itself, frankly. You need the right person, someone who's really expert in being able to do interviews. I bet you could write it, Joe, the way your interview techniques are so good. But that's the kind of person that you need because then I think the book writes itself and it really becomes a book about lessons in life more than it does about Marty's life.

Yeah, well, yeah, and I would be more than happy to do that. I would love to do that. And also my listeners, I would imagine, imagine would absolutely love to actually get all of Marty's insights and the things that you guys have learned.

I'll keep working on it.

Yeah, think about it. Let it percolate. If it sounds like something, let me know. And to all my listeners, if that is something that's interesting to you, just shoot us an email or a fax and let us know. And I will use that as ammunition to try to convince Marty.

Toilet seat.

You get an autographed picture of Marty's toilet seat. Perfect.

Perfect. That's great. Well, let's talk about your art collection, Marty. It's not just about art. You actually find meaning, meaning and messages in your art. And it all has a special meaning and purpose to you.

Great lesson for everybody.

Yeah, share that.

What is the lesson?

Well, basically I was out with Gene Schwartz and his wife, who are fabulous collectors, and they were in a big gallery looking at frontline art. And I wandered over into the corner and I saw a funny crumbled up photograph, had two words on, had order and underneath it it had confusion. And I got excited about that because that's what I deal with with my publications. I Bring order out of confusion. It just happens that the artwork was done by the Starne twins, and they make orderly things confusing. Essentially, they took photographs, cut them up. My particular one was all crumpled up, and I asked what the price was. They told me $500. And I had trouble believing that. I bought one picture a few years ago for $100, and it was perfect. No bends, no cuts, no crumbles. So I figured I had found the secret of life and I just had to tell people about it. So I started a collection to show confusion and order. And I kept. As I looked for that theme, I discovered other themes. Like one of my pearls things was a very attractive woman with beautiful breasts sitting on her haunches, nursing her baby. But the baby wasn't a baby, it was a fetus. And the woman with the beautiful breasts wasn't a woman. She was a hermaphrodite. And if you look closely, you could see substantial male genitals, too. So to check your premise, that's a very important line. Key line, of course, in Atlas Shrugged.

Absolutely.

Then I went along and found other things which taught lessons.

In fact, Marty was given an award by the Direct Marketing association of Washington, a visionary award, some years ago and actually created a, at that point, a slide presentation, which I guess, Marty, we should get onto PowerPoint. We've not really pulled it out of the archives, but basically it was selected pieces from his art collection and each one what the lesson in life was. And then I think you were going to do a book on that, but I don't think we ever got around to that. But I think that can be incorporated into the autobiography as well.

Yes, of course. So you could have all the pictures, all the different artwork. I mean, heck, you can tell that's a great idea you got there, Brian. I mean, seriously, you've got one heck of a story here. It could be a visual story. It could incorporate all kinds of things. Well, you know, what about the trapeze picture? What's the meaning behind that?

Well, that's a great photo by a great photographer, and it shows these artists swinging high up in the air and teaches the lesson of teamwork. Because when one of the flying willendas goes off, the other melenda has to catch him. And that's so in life, I sit down with somebody and we start work on a project and I have to trust them not to let me down. That's a great, powerful.

Yeah, I guess a spin off of that one is the Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers. You have a couple of things like that, that kind of a similar theme.

I'm going to actually segue that into a question that I kind of wanted to ask. One of your books that you recommend that I've read in your articles and stuff is how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And there's another book that I actually saw recently which is called how how to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which I thought was interesting. And you said that Carnegie taught you the art of not arguing to get your way. And what have you learned about communicating with people? Because you're a phenomenal communicator. That's what your publications do, that's what your marketing does. And of course that has had to be crucial in you building a team of people to support you in your mission and what it is that you're doing. Brian, you've been working with Marty for what, 20, how many years now?

22 years.

22 years. I mean there's obviously massive amounts of communication. So what is the art of not arguing to get your way?

One of them is to be a black belt and I'm a black belt.

He doesn't scare me with that black belt. I used to. No, you never did.

Well, it's bigger than your black belt. Is that how you met Ken Glickman, by the way? Because Ken is an awesome guy. I think Ken's actual title at boardroom is Consumer Editor at large.

Correct?

Yeah, at large.

I guess that means he's never around or whatever, but he's right.

Well, he's more free. He's not a full time employee, but he has done a lot of appearances for us and kind of represents us in some media and things like that because he also did the IPower Seminars years ago. So I guess that's how you met him.

Yeah.

No.

And Ken, I will have to say, just given the chance to say that Ken is one things of the. The most phenomenal people that you'd ever meet. I love the guy. He's just a fantastic guy and has always done such a wonderful job of representing your company. And the guy's awesome. He's spoken at some of my boot camps. But anyway, going back to the question and not arguing to get your way, explain that if you could.

Well, it's very simple. I realized that every time I was in an argument I lost. If I won an argument you felt bad and that didn't portend well for the future. And if I lost an argument I felt bad. So if I won I felt bad and if I lost, I felt Bad. So there's got to be another way. The important thing is just to recognize that you're in an argument. Sometimes you don't. You get caught up in it. But I just pop. This is an argument. I figure out how to get out of it. Can I take this up with you tomorrow, please?

Gotcha. And so now, was there ever a time in your life where you actually were just such, I guess, rugged individualist that you could not communicate without starting arguments?

I don't think that I have a lot of friends.

Okay, good.

For many years.

Yes, you do. Which, you know, going back to the book idea, Brian should have every one of his friends write a chapter on it.

Yeah, right.

I mean, we're really kind of cornering him into this deal here.

Yeah, yeah, it's going to happen. I just have to make sure I line it up and make it really. I have to make it easy for him to order. Of course, you know, there is no, no. And you know, he. I'm going to make it easy for him to say yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. You know, you're helping me, so I appreciate that, Joe.

Good. Marty, a couple more questions and then.

We'Ll call it a wrap.

What lessons, life lessons, did you learn through karate, which I believe you began at age 45 and you became a black belt at age 57?

What did you learn? I learned that you can do anything that you want that the teacher tells you to do. So I learned I could do, well, push ups. Push ups are a major toughener. So we did it on hardwood floor using knuckles, not the palms. And if you can do push ups on hardwood floor, that's incorporated. Incredible. It really hurts.

I think. Don't let me put it. I think there's a phrase you have for it, Marty, which is not the.

Push ups, but the.

That you can do anything you want to do if you're willing to work hard and pay the price. And I think, you know, that's part of what your dedication to that, to karate was.

Yeah. Demonstrates it very simply.

I want to. I want to talk about. This is going to be the last thing that I'll ask you, and then we'll wrap up. Ten years ago, over ten years ago, in 1994, you were voted direct market of the year by Target Marketing magazine, which, by the way, at the time, I think Denny Hatch was the editor.

Yes, you're absolutely correct.

Which I've interviewed Denny, by the way, and he thinks very, very highly of Marty. His name came up quite a bit in my interview with Denny. And you Were quoted as saying I want to help people live in an increasingly hostile environment. If no one else changes the world, we'd better try and I'm going to decent position to do that. Not only at the time were you in a decent position to do that. I think certainly through your publications and the millions of consumers that you've reached and have been helped and guided and educated through your books and through your publications. You've done that in a huge way and you've influenced millions of people. What is your famous words of wisdom, last words of wisdom you would give to any entrepreneurs out there listening to this interview on what they can do to just become better, bettering their best and just run better businesses, be better people and get the most out of what life can give you.

Well, as an entrepreneur the best thing you can do is get your people into an I power system. Or as a homebody you could sit with the family and promise them that they'll get a quarter or a dollar for every good idea they come up with to make the family function better. That's great. I power is great. The other thing is you can run your own ipower meeting with yourself. Sit down and say I'm going to come up with 20 ideas to improve my business, improved my life and some of it's small. Go to sleep earlier. Get up earlier. I'll keep with them.

There the clocks go again. Yeah man, that must be, that must be. Well, anything. Well Brian, if you want to say anything while Marty's clocks go and probably ring his, his eardrums.

No, no, I know it's almost time.

Well, what I want to say to the listeners is please give me your input on this interview. Any further stuff that you'd like to learn or hear about Marty, please let me know. I don't know if you'd ever be open to another interview in the future Marty, but certainly if you are then I will certainly extend that offer. And I would be happy to help in any way, shape or form with putting together any form of book or any documentation of your wisdom and your insights. And with your guys permission, if you don't mind if I share some of the articles and stuff with my listeners, I'm thinking I may put them up on PDF on the geniusnetwork.com website so people can actually read about Marty if that's okay. And you can let me know which things I can put up or which ones I can't. And I'll make that available to anyone listening, listening to this so you can get a further understanding and knowledge of Marty and what he's done. Because certainly there's so much more than just what we've talked about here. But certainly I appreciate you both taking the time to do this interview with me and to share some of your knowledge and some of your wisdom. And I'll give you one more opportunity, either one of you, to say any final things, and then I'll let you go.

Marty should have the final word.

I hope your listeners come up with lots of questions so we can do this again.

Thank you. Thank you.

And Marty, you are promising Joe a picture of the Spider man toilet seat.

Yes.

Okay.

Awesome. That's great.

We'll do a PDF of that for your listeners as well.

That would be awesome, Brian, if you could give out the contact information for all of our listeners. So if they would like to subscribe to any of your newsletters, get any of your books, or just go to the website and subscribe to the free emails. If you can give out any contact information for the listeners, that'd be great. Yeah.

I mean, going to our website, boardroom.com or bottomlinesecrets.com as the train is going around on that website, you can subscribe to anything. You can buy any of our books. I encourage all of your listeners to sign up for our two free e letters. One Daily Health News, the other one Bottom Line Secrets. So at least they'll be in contact with us. And I think it's not too dangerous to give out my email address because if there are any specific things that I could make something happen for any of your. Anybody who's a friend of Joe's is a friend of ours. So. Bkurtzordroom.com b k u r tzordroom.com and I'll try to take care of any request that I get from anybody who's a friend of Joe Polish's. Awesome.

Thank you. And Marty, again, thank you very much for taking time to do this. Thank you, Brian. And to all my listeners, please give me your feedback on this and anything regarding Boardroom Marty, Brian, that you'd like me to follow up with questions, I certainly will do it. So thanks a lot, guys. Have an absolutely wonderful day.