The One With Richard Viguerie - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #142

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And here we are for I Love Marketing with a very special guest that I have been wanting to interview going on probably now a couple of years.

Wow.

And we finally got him. His name is Richard Vigory. Richard, you're on the phone. Where at, what part of the world are you in right now?

In God's country? I'm on 230 acres out in the country in Northern Virginia, a very rural county called Rappahannock County. I say I shoot at people all week long and they shoot back. And when I cross that Rappahannock county line on Thursday or Friday, that's my hideout till, till Monday. And like some people, crave a narcotic. I guess it's just my. I really look forward to being out here in the country. I look, I work as much out in the country as I do back in my office, but phones aren't ringing, people aren't banging on the door to talk to me, and one thing or another, so very, very conducive to getting a lot of good creative work accomplished. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Well, you know, now a lot of people that are in the marketing business, direct response business, certainly know who you are. You're a marketing legend, if I could even use that term. But I'll read something real quick so people kind of have. This is like about as short of a bio as I can do on Richard, although I'm going to share a couple of paragraphs here. So who's Richard A. Viggory? Richard Viggory's Trans American Politics. By developing technology that empowered tens of millions of grassroots Americans. In many ways, Richard's technology was the Internet of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. And for the first time, regular people could combine millions of small contributions, offsetting the power of political fat cats. For the first time, small organizations communicate messages effectively and affordably across the nation. For the first time, the big media had grassroots competition in the marketplace of ideas. And for these achievements and more, Richard then recognizes the founder of of the modern conservative movement. And he's been honored for empowering people of all political persuasions. Richard's company has mailed more than 2 billion letters over the past 40 plus years. Ronald Reagan's 1968 campaign manager Cliff White and journalist William Gill wrote in their book why Reagan Won. They said in every election from 1966 onward, the Vigory company and its score of imitators brought information to millions of Americans information that quite often the people could not obtain from newspapers or television or mass circulation magazines. Richard has appeared on countless television programs including Nightline, the Daily show with Jon Stewart, the Today Show, Good Morning America, ABC's this Week, meet the Press, Face the Nation, C Span, Book Notes, PBS is now with Bill Mowers, Larry King, Lou Dobbs, on and on and on. He has been a commentator for ABC's election night and inauguration day coverage. He debated David Duke on the Jesse Jackson show, appeared on the pilot and other episodes of Politically Incorrect and appeared as both guest and co host of CNN's Crossf. He and his wife Elaine, have three children and five grandchildren and live in the Virginia countryside. And Richard, right before we started recording, you said this month it's going to be you're going to be married for 52 years.

52 years to the same lovely lady.

Wow.

I've got maybe sometime we can talk about it later in the broadcast. I've got, you know, my own prescription, had a have a long, healthy, happy life.

Well, you know what, I'd love to even hear maybe a couple of the secrets right now we've got all kinds of marketing questions for you, but you've got a new book coming out here at the time we're recording this. It's going to be out soon. And what's the title of that one? And then maybe we can ask you.

A personal life question. Some people will be pleased with it, others might choke on it, but the title of the book is How Conservatives Can Outlive Liberals. And my wife is, as you just said, 52 years. And I early in our married life, we had our first child, was sick for about a year and no doctor, no specialist could help her. And my wife picked up a health book in a bookstore by Adele Davis, who was big guru of nutrition health back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. Anyway, read the book and did what Adele Davis recommended, cured our daughter within a matter of a day or two and confronted the doctors with this and they said yes. Sometimes, you know, a deficiency in her case, vitamin A, can solve that problem. But the doctors didn't tell us that. So from that moment on, we decided to take charge of our health. And so today I would suggest to everybody that the President Obama is not in charge of your health, nor is your doctor, nor is a pharmaceutical company or your local pharmacist. It's you. And it's really worked well for my wife and I. She's made a major study of it, as I have. And you know, it, I'm 80 years old now and I literally work 12, 13, 14 hours a day, five and a half days a week, Love every minute of it. And you know, the book will come out in the summer and I think your listeners will enjoy reading it because it's, you know, it's more than eat your vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. But it just talks about the importance of being grateful in life, being involved in life, being generous, and just give many, many ideas and prescriptions. You know, I'm a person of faith, I'm a Catholic and very much involved in my church, etc. And so following the Bible's instructions about life and all has worked very well for my wife and I. So anyway, I think your listeners will enjoy the book when it comes out this summer. Awesome. That's awesome.

Well, you know, I mean, let's get right into the marketing stuff. I guess I will give some background that, you know, I met you in Strategic Coach for the first time, although I'd heard about you for years, I mean, because you really are one of the sharpest, most influential people in the direct marketing business in the world. I had met Ben Hart many years ago that works with you. I even asked Ben prior to this interview, what are some great questions that I could ask Richard, and he was really kind enough to provide some. But you have this enormous background. So I guess the first thing I'd like to ask you and then Dean me and you can go back and forth is how did you get started in the direct marketing business? Where did it all begin for you?

All right, Just to start at the beginning. When I'm a teenager, literally 14, 15 years old, I'm just consumed with trying to, in my mind, figure out how to help people who have been abused by others, primarily by governments. And in those days, back in the 40s, early 50s, that primarily concerns the communists that were, you know, the number one threat to humanity back in those days. And so I got involved when I got a little older in young Republican politics and just exceedingly anxious to get out of Houston, where I was born and raised, and come to Washington D.C. to seek my fame and fortune in the ideological political arena. 1961, when I'm 27 years old, I had the chance to become executive secretary of a brand new youth organization called Young Americans for Freedom. And it just been founded months earlier on Bill Buckley's family estate in Sharon, Connecticut. And so I'm just a green kid from University of Houston and I didn't know anything about marketing, but I was responsible for raising the money for this new organization. So my boss gave me names of three famous people to call and ask for money. Charles Edison, youngest son of the inventor Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, famous World War I hero and founder of Eastern Airlines, and J. Howard Pugh, president, chairman of Sun Oil Company. So I called all of them, and they all were generous, gave me money. But I realized real quick, like, I didn't like asking people for money. So I started writing letters, and that seemed to work, so I hired a secretary or two, and then I needed to get more letters out, so I bought a mimeograph machine and. And it seemed to work pretty well, and I really was enjoying it. So after a year and a half, I asked the organization to relieve me of all duties except let me focus on fundraising, on marketing, mailing. And they did. And so I did that for another year and a half and got a little cocky, I guess, and felt I knew everything there was to know about fundraising, the mail, and started my own company. Of course, I knew, really nothing had. Probably I didn't know 1% of what I know now, but by then I had a wife and two babies and. But I had one fortunate thing. I was occupying a hole in the marketplace that no one else had occupied before. No one had ever done national mailings through for politics or ideological causes. So anyway, I started and within five, six weeks, lost by one and only client. But again, being young and full of vim and vigor, I just never looked back, never lacked for clients after that because again, no one else was doing this. And lots of people were anxious to try this new means of raising money for their organization.

Wow.

You know what I love about you? Telling that story about just kind of serendipitously discovering that you could get people to send you money by mail. When I started out as a real estate agent, I was doing a lot of cold calling, and I would call people on the phone, and then I discovered direct response. And I sent out some postcards with a business reply card on them, offering renters a free book on how to buy a home. And I remember I sent out 1500 postcards, and I remember getting the responses back back in the, you know, reply card, the business reply card. So I was driving into the office, and you could see into the office, and our receptionist, Joanne was waving over her head something as she saw me coming. And I came in the door and she handed me this little stack with a rubber band around it of these business reply cards that people had sent back to get this book. And I remember just going into my office and instead of making my cold calls, I called the people who had responded for this book. And they were all friendly and cooperative. I would have had to call all night to find people as friendly as these people that I called.

And I just.

It's one of those moments that's like ingrained in me that I. It's the moment that I knew that I would never have to make another cold call again. And I'm wondering if that kind of same feeling when you discovered that you could send a letter to somebody and they would send you back money, how freeing that was.

I mean, it's.

It's ultimately a multiplier, isn't it?

Oh, absolutely, Dana. Just. It's life changing. I had maybe several moments like that when I was interviewed for to be the head of this youth organization, Young Americans for Freedom. The. The organization was housed in a small public affairs public relations company, a fellow named Marvin Liebman, who was one of Bill Buckley's best friends. And he raised money for the concerted calls through primarily newspaper ads in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and primarily for anti communist national defense causes. But I remember him walking me around the office and showing me a cabinet with three by five index cards in them. And he'd have in there one for Mrs. Jones that she gave a hundred dollars to this New York times ad and $250 to this wall Street Journal ad. And he showed me and then he took me to his mail room and showed me stack of envelopes and a postage machine, et cetera. And I remember my eyes getting real big and I said, wow, this is cool stuff. Where is this thing been all my life? And I sort of felt like a duck that had never seen water, but knew what to do with that water. And after I left the organization three years later, I had months before that I had discovered that if in 1964 I'm still working for Young Americans freedom. And I discovered that if you were running for president, you had to file with the clerk of the House of representatives in Washington D.C. all of your $50 plus donors. So I went down one day and started and I looked and said, sure enough, Barry Goldwater, running for president in 1964, had a long list of people who had given him money, 50, $100, sometimes $1,000. So I started with my legal pad writing the names down. I did that the second day. And after second day I realized I'm not making a lot of progress here. So I went out and hired at my own Expense six women. And I gave them three by five cards and they spent about a month. And I ended up with about $12,550 plus donors to Goldwater. And that gave me the courage to go ahead and quit my job and launch my own company. And I remember I didn't know anything about list. There was conservative list market was very, very immature. It just really didn't exist even. But I remember I called a friend of mine at National Review, Bill Buckley's National Review, and I told him I had these 12,500 Goldwater donors. And they said, send us a copy and we'll pay you for them. And I remember a few weeks later, I got a check in the mail for $340. I was just blown away. And I literally closed the office. I had one other employee. It was noon. So we went and had a nice long lunch. I went to the movies that afternoon. I was just on cloud nine. People paid me $340 for a stack of names, you know, and it just was like eye opening. And so anyway, it's, you know, there's many, many ways to make a living. And I think one of the neatest, coolest ways is, is direct marketing. Direct mail, because you can measure. Exactly. You know, I discovered 50 years ago a person who tells me I'm good or I'm not good at what I'm doing. And they've never failed me in 50 years, on every mailing I've been involved in, this person has never failed me to tell me if I was had a good direct mail package or a weak one or so. So. And the name of that person is the. If the postman shows up, it's a good day. If he doesn't, sucks.

You know what, there's so many lessons here. You know, Richard, I want to ask you this. I mean, you've had many conversations about that. I mean, we have the advantage of. We're both in strategic coach together. And we went to, you know, Peter Diamandis event, you know, last year. And you know, we were recently in Vegas and went to dinner with Joe Sugarman. I mean, I've had the opportunity to spend some good quality time with you.

And.

And I mean, you're just a mountain of valuable, useful information. And people today that are making their money on the Internet, that have never done direct mail in their lives, that think that it's old school, that it doesn't work. I want to talk a little bit about that. Before I ask you to talk about it, I want to mention something about a conversation we had last year because you do a lot of, you know, you have a lot of clients that do fundraising. And you talked about the statistics of how much money is being brought in on the Internet for fundraising versus through direct mail. Could you talk about that? Because I think it's fascinating.

Well, the buzz, the excitement out there these days is all about the Internet. And when I got involved in direct mail 50 plus years ago, I didn't have to play Lewis and Clark, quite frankly, because giants had come before me in the commercial world. Nobody had really done much in the nonprofit world where I was operating in. But so I just studied the David Ogilvies of the world and the Dick Benson's and the Ed mayors and others out there and applied their concepts and principles to the nonprofit community and it worked. Today, that's not the case. The Internet marketing is not mature. We're still trying to figure it out. We're still playing Lewis and Clark, and we'll figure it out. It might be in the next few days, it might be five years from now. But the real workhorse today in marketing is primarily, particularly the nonprofit world is primarily direct mail. The organizations in the nonprofit community that are really at the cutting edge and they're doing really, really good work raising money online. Internet is, they probably are realizing 10% of their income from the Internet, and that's just a handful. The vast, vast majority of nonprofit Organizations are getting 2, 3, 4% from the Internet. So the direct mail is still the workhorse. That won't always be the case, but right now it is that way. And very briefly, let me just say that people who are using the Internet to market, as a general rule, are wasting most of their money because they really haven't figured out how to use the Internet successfully in the history of the world. There basically are five main technologies that have allowed people to have kind of quick communication, large communication with large numbers of people. And those five technologies are. First was Gutenberg's printing press. Then second was movable type to allow you to have newspapers, periodicals, magazines, etc. Third is radio. Fourth is television. And the fifth is Internet. And each one of these has unique properties. And you must understand what is unique about each of these five technologies if you want to be successful. No one ever bought a book to learn about current events. No one buys a television to listen to music. You can do that, but that's not why you bought the television set. Radio is a sound of the human voice. Television is moving pictures. The most popular sport in America used to be baseball. But that's been replaced now by football because better pictures. So what is unique about the Internet? And if you don't understand this one aspect of the Internet, you're going to lose most of your money that you invest in the Internet. And the Internet is interactive. You do not interact with the book, with the magazine, with the radio, television. You interact. And used to be the number one reason people went online was for email or maybe chat rooms. Okay. Now that's been replaced by all the social media, you know, YouTube and Facebook, etc. And of course still email and that. Just very, very interactive. So you need to make sure your website is interactive. And if you do that, you'll have a much stronger chance of having a successful venture on the Internet.

Love it.

You know, let's, let's. Unless, Dean, you have something I want to ask him about the Four Horsemen. Is there anything you want to do that before we go?

I just thought I'd have a sidebar comment that it's so exciting to hear somebody who's now 80 years old talking about social media like it's, you know, like he's fully plugged in and understands everything, which most people, you know, half his age, a lot of people don't.

Even.

Know those things, you know, so.

That this is, it's so great to.

See how, Richard, you stayed so, so current and involved and just the. I love listening to all of these things from back in the 60s. I mean, I was imagining you sitting there in the library or in the records room copying out by hand all of these names. It's just, it's fascinating.

Let me make one quick comment on what you just said there, Dean, and that is that at 80 years of age, we have 75 employees. And they're world class. They really, really are some of the best copywriters in America. Some of the best list people, creative. These people are really at the top of their game. But at my tender age, hardly a day goes by that I don't have to remind these world class marketers, well, have you pushed your postal mailing with an email or have you chased it with an email? Have you put it up on the website now have you put it on Facebook? Have you done this and that? You know, because almost all of us walk into the future backwards, facing the past, because we came from the past. We know, you know, they've been, these people have been involved in marketing direct mail for 10, 15, 20, 25 years and they're very comfortable with that. But to turn around and face the future can be very Very scary. I ain't been there before. Monsters lie over there, you know. And so it's a struggle, but if you want to be successful, you have to turn around and walk into the future. And if you do that, you'll be ahead of probably 95% of your competitors just doing that one thing. I love that.

That's great. The other thing that it reminds me just listening to you, Richard, is just the amount of effort it took to even lay out a direct mail piece when there were no computers, where there were no word processing, when you're using typewriters, where you're using X acto knives to lay out a campaign, or using whiteout to cover up a mistake and to get something printed, I mean, if people were to be transported back to the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and just to try to send the letter versus the ease of it today, I mean, I think it would just. It would blow people's minds. The.

When I had these $12,550 plus Goldwater donors, I gave them to a friend of mine who was in the computer business. And a few weeks later, he brought the magnetic tape to me. And so we went back in my office and I unrolled. It was a big, you know, tape foot across there, I guess. And I unrolled about 20, 30ft of tape. And I turned to him and I remember very clearly saying, tom, where are my names? I can't believe names on here. There are no holes in the tape. I thought you had to be holes in the tape. I never seen a magnetic tape before. Right. And then when a year or two later in the postal industry, company said that they're going to go to zip codes. And so I had, you know, 100,000 or 200,000 names, addresses on script o matic, you know, metal plates. I said, I can't do that. That's going to put me out of business. Using zip codes. Well, of course, we all know how that went. Couldn't imagine operating in direct mail now without zip codes. But it was tough to make that transition back in the 60s. Wow.

Wow.

Right.

Well, so you're always talking about the four horsemen of marketing, and I think it's great. So I gotta ask you about that. All right.

Through my many years of reading, and we can talk about that a little bit later. Some of their. There's so many giants out there that we can. We can learn from. But I've identified four key elements of business that you must get right. And if you get these right, life is downhill with the wind. To Your back and pretty, pretty easy going. Get them wrong, any one of the four wrong and you're going uphill with the wind in your face and it's going to be almost impossible to succeed. And these four things you must get right are one is your position. And position is nothing more than a hole H O L E hold in the marketplace. And then you must have it must be different from your competitors. You must differentiate your product from your competitors. The third is your unique selling point, slash benefit. And the fourth is brand. And brand is a combination of these three other principles, plus it's what makes you singular. I live out in the country and I regularly pass fields of 50 black cows here or 40 brown and white ones in another field and they all look the same. You can't tell one from the other. But in Seth Godin, the famous marketer, best known marketer in America, he wrote a wonderful book called the Purple Cow. And if one of those cows was a purple cow, it would stand out. So one of all of our goals in life is to be a purple cow, to stand apart from everybody else. And the, you know, and it applies in not just business, but in your personal life and all aspects of life. When I was courting my wife, I had a lot of competition. She was a young, pretty girl. I didn't realize how serious the competition was. One of the person she was dating ended up later being chairman of ExxonMobil. So in order to convince her to marry me, I had to say, honey, marry me and life will be like a, B, C, etc. So we're all trying to find a hole in the marketplace. And by the way, a hole in the marketplace is something that you identify yourself. It's a kind of a private thing. And then differentiation is what you do with the public to differentiate your product, your organization from all that competition. Then you must have a unique selling proposition or a benefit. And then that brand we talked about, if you do all of those, life is going to be much more successful, have a much greater chance of success very quickly. If you're Rupert Murdoch 20 years ago and you want to start a national TV network, you don't go out there and duplicate CBS, ABC, NBC. You say they've got their market, I'm going to let them have their market. I'm going to serve the right of center market. And it turned out there was a huge market not being serviced. So it wasn't life's most difficult challenge to once you identify that hole in the marketplace to move in and then you differentiate yourself from ABC, NBC, CBS, by the people you have on there, the Bill O'Reilly's, the Sean Hannity's, the Glenn Beck's at one point, Fox and Friends, et cetera. And there's a benefit. You get information news at Fox that you don't get anywhere else. And of course, their brand is well established, and that's why they're the number one cable network in the country, because they identified a hole in the marketplace. They differentiated themselves from their competition, they gave a benefit and they branded themselves.

No. That's fantastic. Rich, I want to ask you about brand because I see so much incompetency and nonsense that is talked about in the area of build a brand. Because what many people that are trying to build a brand do not connect with it is position differentiation, USPs, and benefits. They're just thinking of brand of. You got to just get your name out there and do that. You're a direct response guy. You're a direct marketing guy. So you're very clear on copy, list, packaging, all of that. I'd love to have you talk about your thoughts on mistakes that people make with their marketing.

Well, one of the biggest mistakes that people make is that they focus on advertising, particularly when they start a brand. You do not build a brand with advertising. You build a brand with buzz. You protect your brand with advertising. I saw just a great headline in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago. It was something to the effect that after 25 years, Starbucks is now going in advertising using advertising. But for the first 25 years of their business, Starbucks was talked about.

In.

The newspapers, the media, word of mouth. People promoted Starbucks. And then when they began to get some serious competition, they had to protect their brand. And then they went to advertising. You take the 2016 presidential candidates, whether it's Hillary Clinton or Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or Governor Scott Walker, they're all receiving many, many millions of dollars worth of free advertising. It's called buzz. People are talking about it. And that'll continue until 2016. Then in 2016, they'll start spending their own money to protect their brand, to lock in their brand. But they're not doing that now. You talked about, you know, myself and I'm, you know, have a certain reputation, a certain brand in the industry, and I've yet to spend my first dollar advertising myself. All the publicity, if you've heard of me or what I'm, my, my work in the conservative community, it's all been free advertising. So you want to start building your brand by having Other people spend their money and then at some point in time when you're well established, you can spend your own money to protect your brand. Yeah, that's great.

That's great.

Dean, go ahead.

I got so many questions for Richard, but I want to.

Well, I'd love to hear when you, you've developed these four horsemen over, you know, your whole career here, but I'd love to hear some of the things that you did that kind of built that belief in your mind here. You know, going back to maybe some of the first examples of how you, the genesis of those ideas, how you, how you cemented them to be true.

In your own mind. Well, the, the, the reason that I was able to develop these ideas is because of something that I'm just really, really a strong believer, if perhaps even a nut about it, and that is studying marketing. I, I wouldn't dream of flying in an airplane with a pilot who had the skills of the average person in direct marketing. The vast majority of people in direct mail direct marketing are blind in one eye and have blurred vision in the other. But because everybody else is totally blind about marketing, they look pretty good. They can tell night from day this shape or form there. But you know, they've maybe read one or two or three books, been to a few direct mail conferences, read a newsletter or two, and they hang out their shingle and consider themselves a professional. At 80 years of age, I literally spend two to three hours, six days a week studying marketing. And when I was just started my company, right. Well, a year or so before I left Young Americans Freedom, I realized that I was going to go in this new direction and that was going to be my career. And well, I had a lot of confidence. I knew I didn't know a whole lot about marketing. So I stopped reading the political books that I enjoyed reading the political publications. I read very little of them for the next 10 years and I threw myself into a major study of marketing. I read everything I could get my hands on. I started with David Ogilvy and read everything that he had written. And then I began to read, you know, the others giants that came before me in commercial world. And to this day, you know, I still spend two or three hours a day studying marketing and have been doing it for 50 years. And I don't have very many competitors out there that spend maybe, you know, a few hours a month studying marketing. Right. And so a young person who's listening to us now, if you really throw yourself into a study of marketing and study the giants who have Come before us here. Within five years, you can be in the top 5% of your profession because the competition is, is not, you know, studying marketing. One of the things you want to do as a, as a student of marketing is you want to, you want to be a deviant. Because very few of us go to school to learn what we end up making our living with the rest of our life. A doctor, a lawyer, yes, they, they will make their living with what they learned in school. But probably none of us on this phone call now went to school to learn marketing. I know very few people that studied marketing in school. So we all have to learn something that we were not trained to do. So I used the word deviant earlier. A doctor engages in deviant behavior all the time. It is deviant behavior to take a person, put them on a table and cut them up and do what doctors do brilliantly. You have to learn behavior and you have to learn that long copy is generally more successful than short copy. You have to learn that short words are more effective than long words. One or two syllables is usually more effective than a three or four syllable word, etc. So you have to study. And if you, you throw yourself as a young person starting out in this career into a study of marketing and very, very serious about it, you will soon find yourself, you know, in a rarefied group of people who really are genuinely marketing professionals. And by the way, there are hundreds of books you can read. There's probably 10 or 12 that are the best, so to speak. And if you read those, I say don't read them once you reread them over and over. I have many copies, I give away a lot of copies of books that I'm very fond of. But then I have one book that I of each that I keep and I underline it and 2, 3, 4 times a year I will go through the book. Just takes 15, 20 minutes because I've underlined the key parts and I just look at the key parts, put it down and pick up another one that I've underlined.

I think this is perfect.

Is anything by Al Reese and Jack Trout. Reese and Trout, they used to write together, now they write separately. Al Reese writes with his, his daughter Laurel. Whatever recent Trout haven't written about marketing may not be worth knowing. They've just, they covered it and they've talked about differentiation. They wrote a wonderful book called differentiate or die. They wrote a book called positioning the battle for your mind. Seth Godin, as I said earlier, the best known marketer and brilliant marketer Wrote a book called the Purple Cow. And so by reading all these books, I just kind of assembled all of it together, kind of distilled it down into the four horsemen of position differentiation, unique selling point, benefit in brand.

I think what's probably really amazing though, is that the depth of the knowledge that you gain from not only just studying this stuff, but applying it. And then you see in action, you have a completely different understanding of just the textbook learning that you have. And that all builds on itself. And every time you reread one of those books, you've had more experiences, you've had more testing, more data, more input that either helps you completely understand those concepts or understand why maybe something that.

You tested didn't work. You know, one of the things that helps lock in this knowledge, because we all read so much. There's many good books out there, not only in marketing, but in business and life and health, etc.

But.

If you have the opportunity, and most of us in our career will have the opportunity, and it's a little scary the first time, it arises the second time, but take the opportunity to lecture, take the opportunity to speak, be on the radio or television, or go before an audience and talk about marketing. The old saying, if you really want to learn a subject, teach it. And it is so very, very true. So I've had the opportunity over the years to speak about marketing many times, and before you do that, you really dig deep and dwell deep into, you know, a particular subject and it really begins to lock in a lot of this knowledge and you hear yourself talking and it just, you serve as a backboard to yourself and you, you begin to develop ideas and concepts beyond what you had been reading. And by the way, for those who are interested in fundraising, using direct mail, direct marketing for fundraising. A couple of authors there, Ben Hart, who is a longtime friend and associate of mine, one of our major executives, outstanding copywriter, maybe one of the two or three best in the country in the nonprofit community. He wrote a wonderful book called fund you'd cause with direct mail. A fellow named Mal Warwick, who is on the liberal side, has written prolifically about direct mail, direct marketing, fundraising, and so books by Ben Horman or Mal Warwick. An excellent way for those of you interested in the nonprofit community, fundraising.

No, that's so extremely valuable to hear your recommendations, hearing you talk about how you spend so much time on it. A couple of questions that come to mind for me. For one, you obviously see the tremendous value in marketing. So why does Richard Viggory love marketing? I mean, what caused you to gravitate towards this? And why do you hold it up as such an important subject that you spend two to three hours a day studying it, even, you know, when you're 80 years old?

The motivation for me initially was this, that I'm a young person, first as a teenager, then in my 20s, and I get a few big break. I get the opportunity to run this youth organization founded by Bill Buckley just a few months earlier. And in those days, in the 1950s and 1960s, going into the 70s and most of the 80s, conservatives were impotent. We did not have the ability to really communicate with our, in a, in a mass way with our supporters out there. We were like the tree that fell in the forest. Because the left had a monopoly on the means of communication in those days. ABC, NBC, CBS, New York Times, Time magazine, Washington Post, etc. Public television, public radio. We didn't have access to those microphones. So being a person who was anxious to save Western civilization by sundown, I began to think, how can I help, you know, get the conservative message of freedom and free markets and traditional values out to the country? Because people didn't know about our candidates. They didn't know about our organizations, our causes, our ideas. And so the first the way that it appeared to me to easiest way, the quickest way, was to write people letters. And so using the mail, we were able to bypass the monopoly that the left had on the microphones of the country and go right into people's homes. And it helped revolutionize American politics. And to this day it still does. Now direct mail has been joined by three other major forms of new and alternative media after direct mail, which we were fortunate to pioneer back in the 60s and the 70s. Then in the late 80s came along talk radio, first pioneered by Rush Limbaugh, but many others now have joined him. Then after that came cable television and now the Internet. And all four of these operate basically under the radar. They're not part of the mainstream media. They're the new and alternative media. I remember going to a breakfast with about 25 of the top journalists, news reporters in America, a few days after Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. And it was hosted by a man named Godfrey Sperling, who was the Washington political correspondent for the. I forget the newspaper, but a famous newspaper. And he started the conversation at breakfast with, say, Mr. Vigory. Last week we saw a landslide for a conservative Republican president. We saw the Republicans get control of the Senate and make major gains in the House, representatives in governor seats, legislature, etcetera, how did this all happen? No one saw it coming. And it says, excuse me, Mr. Spurding, you didn't see it coming. But I can't tell you how many press conferences we called where you didn't show up. Nobody in this room showed up. Where we put out press releases. Nobody covered our press releases. Okay? Because you know, you didn't have any interest in it. And we were able to do this by. And Ronald Reagan was able to have 250,000 small donors to his campaign because of direct mail. And if there had been no direct mail back in 1980, I think a case can be made that Ronald Reagan would have never been elected president, certainly wouldn't have got the nomination. When he was running for the nomination, he was able to fund his campaign with $10, $25, $50, $100 donors, 250,000 of them. His competitors, Howard Baker, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, John Connally, Bob Dole, George Bush were relying on the thousand dollar donors. Reagan didn't have very many thousand dollar donors, but he had a quarter of a million small donors. And that all came about through direct mail. And so direct mail in direct marketing has had a very positive impact on American life. I think it's gotten politics out from behind the smoke filled rooms where a few people were making decisions. And now millions and millions of people at the grassroots level are involved in politics because of direct marketing. And not only do they give money, but they involved in lobbying their elected officials and they communicate with each other through direct marketing. Politics has radically changed in recent years because of direct marketing and some very positive, exciting development.

I guess that sort of explains why you love marketing. So that's pretty good. When I first was introduced to you, right before I met you in person, I think Dan Sullivan said it to me. He's like, yeah, Richard's pretty much Reagan. Being in the White House was pretty much a doing of Richard Viggory because he's responsible for putting Reagan in the White House. Now, I know you probably wouldn't come out and blatantly say something like that, but just what you have pioneered, I mean, if people could just imagine the influence that your mind and your actions and your implementations and your figuring out of marketing strategy, how much it has influenced politics and organizations and nonprofits. I mean, it's unbelievable.

Let me just say I appreciate what you said about me in our efforts helping Reagan, but every once in a while I hear somebody talking about themselves being involved with Reagan and how they help Reagan here and there, and it reminds me of somebody running alongside a moving freight train and they're pushing it there and they say, look at me, look at what I'm doing here. Reagan was all the rest of us were very, very minor players at best. There were a lot of people involved. But I think that Reagan was a fan force of nature. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

By the way, I was trying to remember earlier, the publication was Christian Science Monitor that I was. Oh, there you go. Yeah, you're good with that.

You're good at remembering names and people. I love that too.

You're really excellent at simplifying here. But it does eventually usually. So let me ask you about.

Because we have to during this interview, how would you rank the importance of copy, list, subject and packaging? Because these are elements of a direct mail campaign. They're the subject of Me and Dean are always talking about marketing is what you say and who you say it to and how you go about doing that. The list is critical, the messaging is critical, the subject matter, the offer, all these are important elements and I'd love to have you touch on those.

You know, I don't think you can give one answer by rating the, you know, the copy, the list, the subject, the packaging that would answer, you know, all marketing projects, all opportunities to market a lot depends on the product. A well known charity will approach the importance of copy and list, et cetera. Different from a startup, a new restaurant opening in a community that's part of a famous chain has different marketing needs, priorities than, you know, a new mom and pop restaurant is starting here. But as a general rule, the creativity is, you know, it's key not to minimize anything else, but the creativity is so vital. You know, we all read periodically about new ad agencies starting whether they're general advertising or direct mail or direct marketing. And hardly ever do you see anybody other than a creative person starting an agency. The creative director at one agency will leave and start their own company. I've never heard of vice president of finance starting an ad agency or the vice president of H and R starting an ad agency. It's always the creative person. But that's not to minimize, you know, these other areas. I was fortunate in terms of advice and counsel for young people or anybody in the business. A lot of good advice you can give. And for me, I was very fortunate in that I had two mentors, had two men who were giants in their field. So if you have the opportunity and rather than wait for the opportunity to come to you, seek out somebody who's really at the top of their marketing game. And tried to be a mentee. Have them be your guru, right? I had Ed Mayer, who was a giant in marketing back in the 60s and the 70s, as my first mentor. He passed away in the late 70s. Weeks later, Dick Benson, another giant, called and said, richard, your mentor Ed Mayer just died. Can I be your new mentor? And I said, dick, you got the job. And he was just. He wrote one of the best books about marketing called Secrets of Successful Direct Mail. And it's just a great book, so I commend it to everybody. Secrets of Successful Direct Mail by Dick Benson.

But you know what, Richard, I gotta mention this too, because Brian Kurtz from Boardroom, who, me and him recently did an episode that we put up on I Love marketing, about direct mail. And you know, the late Marty Edelston, who was a dear friend of mine, we actually have copies of that book, Dick Benson's book that we give the 25k members, including also breakthrough advertising from Gene Schwartz. That is here. These books have been written years ago, but they are so relevant to anyone, you know, learning marketing, just like you're saying. So.

Ed Mayer used to come to my office for well over a dozen years and spent all day with me and my executives going over our direct mail, our clients needs, et cetera. And then Dick Benson used to do the same. But Dick got to a certain stage in life, we didn't want to travel anymore, so we would pack up our suitcase and go visit him. I was fortunate. He was, you know, honored to have him make reference to some of our projects in his book, Secrets of Successful Direct Mail. By the way, one of the things before time gets away from us, we're talking about the importance of copy list subject packaging. One of the most underappreciated concepts of marketing is the importance of a technique. And people who are less sophisticated might refer to it as a gimmick. But it is very, very powerful technique in a marketing package. Whether it's direct mail on the Internet or radio or television is just key. The most successful technique in marketing for the last 50, 60 years has been sweepstakes. Sweepstakes are not used just by Publishers Clearinghouse or some other charities. Time magazine and American Express and Fortune 500 companies use sweepstakes, and games and contests drive a package. And Reader's Digest, you know, has mailed hundreds of millions of sweepstakes over the years. And I don't ever remember getting a mailing asking me to subscribe to Reader's Digest, But I've got hundreds of letters asking me if I wanted to win a million dollars or a new or a new house. And after they got me in the mailing and became interactive, then they would talk about a subscription, but they would get my attention with these techniques. So when you're preparing your campaign, that gets into the whole creative concept and it just so, so important. The professional people who are top of their game all know this. That's why you have organizations like American Express and Time magazine using these involvement techniques. And I made that comment earlier about the importance of using being interactive with the Internet. And it is just so key to be interactive. If you're a nonprofit, it's easy to put something up interactive every day, every week, quizzes, what's up, you know, ask people a question. If you're involved in ideological, political cause, you can put petitions up there, you can do surveys, polls. And people love to get involved and have their voice heard. That's amazing.

I completely agree. You know, you know, it's interesting with the work that I do with Peter Diamandis and then the contests and everything that I've done with Bill Phillips way back when. Creating response and involvement mechanisms is so critical. And you're right, Richard, people do poo poo techniques and gimmicks, but they don't realize you want to have hooks and engagement devices all the time. Because if you don't bond, connect and engage with people, your marketing is not going to work. And people have and create some of the most boring, uninteresting, as David Ogilvy to say, you cannot bore people into buying.

Exactly. You know, I want to mention one thing here that I hardly ever talk to anybody about how to have a successful project or successful life without mentioning this one thing. And I don't want time to get away from us before I mention it. And that's the importance of having a risk written plan. Lots of studies have been done for people who have written plans versus people who don't. Studies going back the 1920s with Yale graduates. The 2 or 3% who had a written plan for their life achieved far more than all the rest of the class. The 97% that didn't have a written plan. And so a lot of us conservatives at the national level used to go off on weekends back in the 70s and 80s, Friday and Saturday. And we'd plan and design strategy to how to be more effective communicating and trying to become get to a point where conservatives would be governing America. And when we'd have the, it'd be 20, 25 of us and we'd come up with this Problem or this issue was a young congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich, who was a freshman congressman in those days, maybe a second, third, fourth termer. He would invariably go to the blackboard. We didn't have white boards in those days. And he'd write four words on the blackboard. Vision, goal, strategy and tactics, or slash projects. And an hour later, after we had filled these four things out, vision, goals, strategy and tactics, we saw a way forward in our project. Our path to a solution to our problem was clear. And the number one benefit, by the way you get from writing a plan is not working. The plan, that's important, but that's secondary. The number one benefit of writing a plan, writing the plan. It helps crystallize your thinking, clarifies your thinking. You thought you needed to go a certain direction, but when you write the plan, you say, no, I need to go over here and I need to do more of this, less of that. And so writing a plan is hugely important to launching any venture. And by the way, share it with others. Bill Clinton had a plan to be president United States. And he would tell, as a 16, 17 year old kid, he would tell others that Hillary Rodham, when they were dating, she would introduce him and here's Bill Clinton, my boyfriend, who's going to be president United States. So when you have that plan, you share it with others, it puts pressure on you to, you know, to succeed, to make sure you're following through on your plan. You have a plan to lose weight, share it with others. So it puts pressure on you when you're having dinner and you, that pie is in front of you there and you've shared with everybody your goal of losing weight here. It's not likely you're going to dig into that pie with that audience there watching you there. So anyway, prepare a plan and share it with others, and it'll do great things to increase your chances of success. I love that.

You know, you got it. You got a few more minutes, Richard? I'd like us to do just maybe a little bit longer of an episode for. I love marketing here because I think what you're. What you're.

I got a couple of things I.

Need to ask, too.

Yeah, if you have time.

Okay. Keep talking.

Yeah, you know, well, go ahead, Dean. You go ahead and ask some questions. And I want to.

Well, here's what I'm really interested in is you kind of set the stage with, you know, sitting in a room and hiring these ladies to gather these 12,500 names of $50 donors and the first thing that happened was somebody bought those names for $340 and you went out and had a nice lunch. But I'm curious, what happened? What was that the seed for, for you going forward? What did you end up doing with those 12,500 names that it sounds like that was. You told that story because that was really the beginning of something for you.

Well, you're very perceptive, Dean, very perceptive. Because you're exactly right. You know, when I started the company and I had this, my wife and two babies, I had a lot of confidence, that ego and you know, just self confidence, which is necessary for an entrepreneur to be successful. But I also realized, you know, that I didn't know a lot I needed to study. That's why I devoted the next 10 years to a major study of marketing. But of all the things that I needed, I realized the number one thing that I needed above everything else was names and addresses. I had to, I can have great copy and great ideas and great clients, but if I don't have anybody to mail to, then it all goes for naught. So I, after I was successfully rented to National Review that first group of 12,500 names, I said, well, gosh, if, if you have to file at the, at the clerk's office in Washington D.C. if you're running for president, what if you're running for governor or for senator in California or Texas or Florida. And sure enough, the same thing applied there. So I got on my, my pony, so to speak, and I flew around the country and I went to California and Austin, Texas and Florida and one place or another accumulating these names. And then I began to look for people who might be have mailing lists that would want to sell them. And by the end of the first year, I had accumulated about 100,000 names and addresses of people who had given to conservative causes or candidates organizations. And to this day we are still the leader. That's 49 years. We'll be 50 years in business next January. And today we have about three and a half to four million names and addresses of people who are conservative activists, donors, people who participate in the political process for right of center causes. And that's been huge. Without that mating list, I don't think I'd have been very successful. May not have grown beyond one or two employees. So that first 12,500 in the success I had renting that encouraged me to focus on accumulating the largest list of donors that I could out there.

And do you remember the thing that you do you remember the first thing that you, you mailed yourself to those 12,000?

I used them first for the, the organization. We, our first client was Young Americans for Freedom. So we did mailed them for Young Americans for freedom probably two or three times. I met a man named H.L. bill Richardson, who was running for this special election in March of 1965. I'd just been two months and he was running in a special election for the state Senate. So I raised money around the country for him and no one to best of my knowledge, had ever done that before. And that was successful. And Bill stayed in the State Senate for 25 years and was a major national conservative leader and still very active today. But the idea that people in one state and say in Florida would give to a political race or political cause from in California or New York was, was very eye opening. And to this day I think people are surprised that people will, in one state will support causes and candidates that are thousand, two thousand miles away. Amazing.

Yeah, it's very, totally incredible. You know, Richard, before, before we wrap up, we're in strategic coach together. We have a good friend, Dan Sullivan. Me and Dan do a podcast called 10X Talk for Affluent Entrepreneurs. And you know, you have structured your life to where you, you work a lot and you get a lot done and you love what you're doing. And you also, I think, have some great distinctions and rules for success, not only in business, but also in your life. And I'd love to have you share some things that you think would be useful for new entrepreneurs, people that are already in business, the things that you've kind of learned over the years, maybe some rituals or anything that you do that have really served you well.

Well, if I wish I had my, my book available now, How Conservatives Can Outlive Liberals. The title is Tongue in Cheek because I hope everybody buys it, whether you're Republican or Democrat or conservative, moderate level. Because I think there's very good advice in there about how to structure your life and enjoy a long, happy, healthy, productive life. Because you don't want to just live a long life. You want to be healthy, you want to be happy, and you want to make a difference. And it's not original with me for certain, but years ago I began to structure my life around three things. And that's my faith, my family and my friends and everything else is background noise. And I used to play a lot of golf, and quite frankly, I like to watch golf on television, but I haven't played much golf in, you know, 12, 14, years because I've got other priorities. I've got goals and a vision and those are more important to me. I've got six grandchildren that I'm very involved in their lives and children and my community, my, my church.

The.

One of the things that you and I have learned from Strategic Coach, our friend and coach, Dan Sullivan, is to arrange our life so that we have a bigger front than a back. And at 80 years of age, I am totally, completely, 100% convinced that I have a bigger front than a back, which means that whatever I've done in the past is going to be dwarfed by what I achieve in the future. And I approach every day that way with excitement and energy and passion. And I just can't wait to get up in the morning and charge the day. I can. I feel like some days I'm charging hell with a bucket of water, but I enjoy it.

What's a day in the life what's a day in the life of Richard Vigor? You said you work 10 or 12 or 14 hours a day. What's your week or your day look like?

You know, I say it's work, of course it's not work, as a lot of people do it, because I enjoy it so much. But I'm chairman of my marketing company, American Target Advertising, and half of the time I'm at the company in Manassas, Virginia. The other half I'm working at home here. And when I'm at home here, I start in the morning with my faith life, whether, you know, with prayers or meditation or reading from the Bible, religious things. I say I live a bookend life. I start with two uppers. Then I go to war for, you know, 12, 14 hours. Then I have two downers in the evening and my two uppers are my two cups of coffee. And then I, you know, do all my activities and I enjoy my two glasses of red wine in the evening. And my wife and I enjoy just, you know, having our wine, talking about the other day. And the French, Vigory is French, and I guess it's the French in me that likes to eat late. And so I will have my wine starting around 6:30, 7 o', clock, and then around 8, 8:30, sometimes 9 o' clock, we'll have dinner, which is not good. That's probably one of the few things that I do that's not good for my health. I eat too late. Probably you should eat earlier so your food can digest before you go lay down to sleep, you know. But I'm very involved with grandchildren. I've got two grandchildren that live a few minutes from me. I got four grandchildren that live an hour and a half and I will in a few hours will leave and go to a play at school that one of them goes to and have dinner and go to the play that my granddaughter's involved in. On Sunday, I will take three grandchildren skiing. And, you know, I just enjoy spending my time with family and friends. One of the things that's very important is community. I'm involved in about six communities. You know, one of the secrets to a long, healthy, happy life is to be involved with communities. Hermits don't live as long as people who are very active involved in life. I Sunday morning hang out on a front porch of a mom and pop grocery store, about 15, 20, mostly men, a few women, a few wives of the men there. But there'd be lawyers and famous artists, a former US Senator, a former Cabinet officer under Reagan, a sitting federal judge, you know, just really neat, interesting people and Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals. And by the way, I half of my communities involve people who have different views and sometimes values than myself. But I learned from them and hopefully they learn from me. And it's very stimulating to be involved in lots of communities. I think that's very important.

You know, that is so awesome. That is great.

I love this whole. Richard, isn't it? Yeah.

I'm actually going to send a copy of this to, you know, former Justice Sandra Day o', Connor, a retired justice, because, you know, I recently interviewed her on video at my office here during one of our 25k meetings, which is cool. I think she would get a kick out of listening to this. And you know, you're doing so much stuff and what really there's so many takeaways. And I hope all of our listeners listen to this several times. I mean, there's so much wisdom here, Richard. And I'm going to ask you in a minute to give out any websites for American Target advertising or anything so that people can, you know, obviously read any of your books that you already have have written, because you have written several books, hire your company if it's a fit for what they do, and obviously set the stage for your new book that's coming out, which we'll certainly notify everyone about when that does come out. That's an I love marketing listener. So I'd love to have people that have heard this to make comments@ilovemarketing.com and it also has reinforced me and Dean do our best to try to be mentors to many people that are out there. Because when we started, I love marketing, one of our goals was to rebrand how people think of marketing because I think marketing gets a bad rap from a lot of people that don't understand it, don't get it. And we know it's critical for a successful business, a successful cause. I mean, nothing happens in the world without effective marketing. At the time we're doing this episode with you, We've got over 145 hours of free content@ilovemarketing.com and some people listen to the episodes every day. And we are doing this to just educate people on how to do it and then to hear you say you spend two to three hours a day studying marketing. Anyone that is going to come to me in the future and says, well, I don't have time, I'm busy and I just really want my marketing work, I'm going to send them a link to this interview and say listen to this because I don't want to hear you whining about it because if you really want to be world class at something, you got to learn it, you got to understand it. And I think you've really made that point. Dean, is there anything else you want to ask you want to say before we wrap up here?

Thank you so much. It's inspiring. It's really inspiring to see somebody at 80 years old invigorated, with a bigger future and an amazing past. So I thank you so much for sharing. I'm really looking forward to meeting you in a few weeks here.

My pleasure. You know, it didn't happen today, but I promise you before the sun sets tomorrow, I will save Western civilization.

Richard, how do people find out about American target advertising or anything else that you would recommend that they go look at or subscribe to or our company.

AmericanTargetAdvertising.com is, you know, our, my marketing company and we have, you know, Internet division list. We're full service direct marketing advertising agency. We are the largest conservative marketing agency. We're probably larger than all of our competitors combined. And I have a website called Conservative HQ.com stands for of course for Conservative Headquarters.com and the purpose of ConservativeHQ.com is exclusively focused on building the conservative movement, helping conservatives come to power so they can help govern America. And, and God forbid if there's a terrible plane crash or some other natural disaster or some other issue unrelated to the conservative movement, we don't cover it. We try to follow my advice and have a hole in the marketplace and position and our hole in the marketplace is that we're just focused on helping conservatives come to power in America. So if that has any interest to you, you might want to check it out. It's a very active, popular site. I know I go to lots and lots of conservative meetings many times a week, many times. And I never go that major conservative leaders don't compliment me on it and say nice things about it. So it's well read by the most of the major conservative leaders in the country. Wonderful.

And you know, and Kathleen, who's your president and CEO of American Target Advertising, who's great, she's also in our Strategic Coach class. So I've got a great advantage there, which you don't, Dean, which makes me feel superior to you.

I know. Well, I'm very, very fortunate. Kathleen came to me some years ago as a kid right out of William and Mary and stayed a couple of years and then left and did some other things. And she came back to the company about 10 years ago and she and my president of corporate and legal affairs, Steve Peck, who is not in coach, both of them are an answer to all my business prayers and allows me to focus on trying to save Western civilization as well as helping our clients. So I'm very, very blessed that I've had these other people in my life. And it's so important to surround yourself with people who are as sharp or better than you are in these other areas and to set things up in such a way you have accountability. So many people fail because they don't have accountability in their life. And I have people I am accountable for. And it used to be before I had people who I'm accountable to, I would get up in the morning and chase this Rabbit. And at 10:30 I'd say, hey, look at that one. I'll chase that rabbit. And 11:30, another one, you know, but when you have people that you're reporting to, you're accountable for, you have peers working with you, it makes all the difference in life of keeping you focused on doing what you should be doing. Yeah.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, you know, Richard, thank you so much. And I want to say to all our listeners, Richard Vigori spelled V I G U E R I E. Look him up. We will notify you when his new books come out. Share this episode with anyone that you think could benefit from it, which is probably pretty much anyone that works in any sort of capacity in the, in the non nonprofit or for profit world. Please post your comments@ilovemarketing.com and me and Dean, our goal and objective is to bring to all of our listeners the smartest, sharpest genius level, useful wisdom and strategy and techniques and know how that we can. And so that's why we are always getting amazing people. And Richard, you are incredible. So thank you for taking the time. Really appreciate it. And we'll have to do a follow up interview at some point when your new book comes out and go from there.

I look forward to it. I've benefited by having this time with y'.

All.

It's been educational for me as well. Thank you all.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Thanks, Richard.