Two Proven Phrases To Increase Your Conversions And Transform Your Business - I Love Marketing Episode #198

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

Everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. And we are here in a hotel room with a good friend of mine, Michael Fishman, as we're want to do. Yeah, yeah. Which sounds really weird.

It doesn't sound weird at all coming from us.

Well, you know.

Yeah.

So, Michael, first off, how are you?

Fantastic. I'm loving being here. Yeah.

Yeah. And we've known each other, me and you, for, gosh, I don't know, many.

Many years long, maybe eight, nine, something there.

I think it's. I think it's over a decade. I mean, because I interviewed you a long time ago when we were doing this stuff on cassette tapes.

Right, Exactly.

Joe Pollard, Superstar Tape of the Month Club.

Exactly, yeah. And so for people that don't know who you are, I mean, you help companies literally reinvent themselves, Invent themselves. Brand email.

I can tell people his full name.

Michael Fishman.

There we go.

Didn't I say that already?

He said, michael, hey, good to be here.

Really. Well, I'm sorry, I apologize. Okay. Michael Fishman.

There we go.

Who are you? What do you do?

Well, you guys know I've spent well just sharing with everybody, listening. I've spent the last over two decades helping mostly health and wellness businesses maximize their marketing and blow out, build their businesses in marketing information to consumers with books, magazines, newsletters, online content, online programs, supplements, and just health products. So any company, any expert, any personality, selling solutions of any kind around health to consumers is what I've been focusing on, growing and like measured marketing, accountable marketing for the last over two decades.

How did you get into marketing? I mean, why did you pick this?

Well, like a lot of people in marketing, it kind of picked me in a way otherwise unemployable. Right. But I actually started in my early 20s at an agency in New York. So it was more of like a traditional environment, but it was really kind of a commodity environment, very transactional. I really didn't have any mentors in that company and I was just. I've always been fascinated with why people do what they do. It's just a fascination that I've always had. And that's, I think the key to marketing is understanding why people do what they do. And there's been so many popular books helping entrepreneurs and the general public to understand that. So I started an agency and had the opportunity to build clientele on my own. And I made a phone call in 1984 that changed the course of my life. Which was calling somebody down at Rodale, which publishes Prevention and Men's Health and Women's Health. And just without any sales training, without any way of how to go about it, I just introduced myself and said I'd like to come down and talk to you. And that enabled me to help them start building out the circulation, the subscriber list on Prevention and help them build their book business, which at that time they thought they should shut down from less than zero to ultimately probably an annual maybe $350 million through just amazing, you know, just super smart direct marketing.

Well, you know, like all. And I'm going to just say things so that Dean doesn't have a chance asking any questions. But I mean, you know, some of the top marketers, top copywriters in the world, because you've had to work with these people for many years. You know, you were known as like one of the top list brokers in the world. And you were doing all this stuff pre Internet. And we quit messing around with your watch, Dean. You're making all these clinky sounds. It's not Dean eating or anything like that.

I can vouch that Dean is making trouble. Yes.

Yeah, so, but you actually were doing all this pre Internet. You first really were just so knowledgeable about list. And what I'd love to talk about with the time we have here, because this is going to be more of a shorter episode, is the list and the marketing, the creative. What's the difference between the two and that sort of stuff and the difference between maybe offline and online? Just some of your thoughts on all those areas.

Well, the list business where I got my start, the direct mail list business was something that I worked in for over 20 years and had been out of for about eight or nine years. But just like I look at Gene Schwartz's book Breakthrough advertising, written in 1966, and I say it's the best book on Internet marketing ever written. Because the premise there is not about whether you're doing an infomercial or whether you're doing direct mail or whether you're doing Internet, but it's really about understanding at a very deep level why people want the things that they want. Not only in the ways that they can tell you, but very importantly in the ways that they could never tell you. Why people make the purchasing decisions that they make in ways that they're not even aware of. And what we might say, the survival based brain drives a lot of our decision making and why we like personalities and why we like copy and things like that without any real mentorship, I just found my way through marketing by just figuring out why people did what they did and helping my clients identify the right direct mail list based on the psychology or the transaction behavior that got somebody on a catalog list or a donor list or a magazine list and how to understand and target those people for direct mail offers.

So that's interesting. You're saying rather than just focus on the fact that they're on this list. I just want to make sure I'm getting this right. That you would think about what were the circumstances and thoughts that got them on that.

Absolutely, yeah. Look, here's an analogy for today. 10 or 20 years ago, or even today, if we look at people that subscribe to a particular magazine and one group of people come on via a sweepstakes, and one group of people come on via an incentive or a premium that, let's say is a pamphlet or a small book related to the content of the magazine, the more committed people are going to be the ones who got that extra content or that extra editorial piece versus someone who came in on a sweepstakes for an external motivation. External motivation, or what we might call a shiny object or something very opportunistic in nature. Because when people are promised they can win money, it's kind of, oh, screw it, let me subscribe. There's not a lot of commitment behind that subscription. And I look on the web today at things like pop ups, exit pops, which are those things that most people acknowledge are annoying and yet measurably work. And yet I would call it a shiny object. And I'm waiting for someone to segment their list of people who opted into an email list on a pop up versus, say at the end of a blog post. And I guarantee you, you would see the same difference in terms of lifetime value and how, like, what is the commitment behind the opt in for someone who comes in in a pop and says, screw it, I'll just sign up, whatever, get rid of this thing. Versus someone who reads a blog post and loves the content and is like, yeah, I love what I just read. I don't want to miss another post that is a different human being. That behavior is so different.

What do you call that? Like, if you had to give that a term, you have some very interesting terminology that you use to describe human behavior and analysis. I mean, if you had to give that a name, what would you call it?

Well, the person who subscribed to a magazine via a sweepstakes or an email list via an exit pop or a Pop up. There's an opportunism there. There's something very quick and not well thought out. It's a quick response. It's almost like buying the old Ginsu knives off a 30 second TV commercial. It's like it's. And there's not a lot of commitment behind that behavior. So I would call it opportunistic versus committed.

Gotcha.

Okay, okay. Opportune. Things that are things that we want opportunistically, whether it's health, money, or any kind of improvement that would help us be better tomorrow than they are today. You know, if we want it quickly, it's opportunistic. If we know that, you know, the best improvement happens over the long term, that's a commitment.

Yeah. Like earlier today, we were at a marketing conference and there was a couple people that came up to me and you, Dean, that had listened. One of them had listened to nearly every episode of I Love Marketing. And let's just say someone's listening to just this one. Well, I guarantee if we knew everyone that has listened to at least 20 episodes, 30, 100, that is a much different person than someone that has just stumbled upon this podcast and listened to one.

Right? Well, and here's the other interesting thing. Back in the direct mail world, people would always have the desire to reach the multibuyer, the repeat buyer that resided on the list of the list that they were marketing to. But when you think about it, someone who's bought multiple times from a company or has renewed a publication multiple times, that's an expression of loyalty, right? Yeah, that is an expression of loyalty. That person is loyal or happy with the information they got. They're less likely to jump to another source of information with a similar promise, a similar value proposition. And I think the same thing holds true. The same thing holds true on the web, particularly when you're in a particular subject matter, health or money or personal development or entrepreneurship. If people have read a blog for, I mean, there's people that get tons of emails, tons of bloggers and so forth, but people that are discerning, that are actually choosing what to read and what to consume. If somebody is listening to I love marketing over and over, they're. They're happy, it's fulfilling a need. They have limited time to commit to this kind of stuff. They're less likely to jump to someone else. So commitment is a great thing. But when they're committed to you, the flip side of that is they're less likely to jump anywhere else. And that holds true offline. And online.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about human behavior. I mean a couple things you do. You do the Consumer Health Summit, which is one of your events. So you're very well known in the health niche. And also BehaviorCon, which is something you did with, you know, Ramit. I think you've done it what, once?

One time. Yeah.

And so you're a guy that studies a tremendous amount. So I'd like you to talk about just behavior and human behavior and psychology and maybe what are some of your preferred ways of learning about this? Because you have, just like us, you have spent years studying human behavior. And it's more than just marketing. It's like psychology, deep psychology. And so I'd like to get your thoughts on what is that and how does someone, out of all the things you've consumed in literally thousands of hours you've invested, what are some things that are absolute must do's for people that really want to go deep with this?

Love the question. And look, I mean we know there have been many popular books in the last five, six years. Freakonomics, the Tipping Point, Predictably Irrational, Contagious, mostly written by Ivy League academics. And so this subject, this question of what makes people do what they do is a fascination to entrepreneurs and really the general public alike. I mean people are getting super smart about the marketing that's coming at them. You know, I mentioned Gene Schwartz's book Breakthrough Advertising, which is hard to find but not impossible. There's another book called the Culture Code by Clotea Rapai, which amazing book. I've given away hundreds of copies of that. And he actually spoke at the 10th anniversary of Consumer Health Summit five or six years ago.

And you don't record that, so no one can even get.

Well, exactly. It's kind of, you know, it's like the safest space in the planet for that kind of discussion. And what we have not recorded breaks my heart. But at the same time, the level of disclosure is such that if we were recording, it just would not, it would just be different. There's no doubt. But you know, I've been studying this since way before any of these popular, I mean Breakthrough Advertising came out in 66, all these other books were like you know, late, like early 2000s and more recently even 2005 to the present time. So I knew there had to be connections in the way in which we were presenting marketing to people and how they would respond or how we could cross promote. I mean as an example from the direct mail world, when the four color Magalog came out, which were these like the same dimensions as a magazine, and 32 pages or thereabouts, and four color. I thought, well, there's no way you could send a closed envelope to someone who had ever bought from an infomercial because it just didn't seem like the behaviors had anything to do with one another. Because you come into an infomercial anytime in those 26 minutes, you always can have a sense of what's going on. They repeat the certain cycles and the calls to action every few minutes. You can come in just about any time and figure out what's going on. An envelope had that massive barrier to entry, which is the sealed flap, right? Which behaviorally is a huge obstacle. But I thought, well, in Magalog, where you can kind of flip to any page and it's color and it's exciting and you can find out what's going on on any page, it was kind of like a paper analogy to a 30 minute infomercial. And it turned out to be true. And we were able to mail probably hundreds of millions of maglogs for Rodale and Boardroom and Healthy Directions and other companies to infomercial buyers, principally based on the physical format of what we were putting in front of people. Because to get people to migrate from one medium to another is very difficult. If you send somebody a piece of direct mail right now and say, please go to my website. That requires them, or even from TV to the Internet, or from direct mail to the Internet, it requires them to get up from their TV or get up from the piece of mail, go to their web, you know, to their computer, get past Facebook, get past whatever else is coming in, you know, all the kind of the hurdles that have come. So it's a hard migration to get people to go from anywhere to the Internet. You know, I mean, my friend Vani Hari, who is, you know, the foodbabe.com, you know, when she goes on the Today show, or you ask any author who's been on the Today show or national TV and you look at their web traffic for Monday through Friday, you can't tell what day they were on national television. But she was on Joe Mercola's podcast, where people are on the Internet and there's a link for Vonnie's site, and bang, they click and they're right there. And the traffic was huge. So migrating from anything other than the Internet to the Internet is very hard. Most people, I mean, this is what. I'm kind of going off topic here. But the point being, most people that go on the Today show or CBS News, whatever, it enables them to say they did it. It is clearly social proof versus anything that drives traffic. And the other piece on psychology is that, and I've talked about this at your event, Joe, and other platforms. Knowing what people are aware of when they receive marketing or when they think about a product, knowing what they're aware of and also knowing what, what might drive their decision to buy that they're not aware of. You know, those domains are very, very important. You know, it's like. And people could report to you what their feelings are and how they think about a person or copy or a product, but they can't report to you what is happening in the part of their brain that is there to help them survive. Right. They're unable to do it. Although we're all animals, biologically, we're animals. And we have, you know, the three of us are sitting here, our brains are on the lookout for snakes and tigers and fires and, you know, lions and tigers and be well.

Plus that spider monkey that's perching on.

Gene's shoulder right now is a little freaking.

Our brains are designed to keep us alive. And the brain is always looking for survival threats. And in fact, there can be survival threats in marketing. According to the brain. We don't want to put those in front of people, but sometimes without meaning to, we do.

Okay, I want to ask you a question. Why do you think there's so many people that are anti marketing, that are out there? When I say anti marketing, I mean, I don't think I'm manufacturing this or whatever just because I happen to be in the field and I see the resistance to it. I just think culturally, people, even the term marketing, a lot of people, it conjures up a negative connotation because I think of someone that high pressured selling them. And people have so many different definitions of marketing. But what is your take on it? Why is there this fear of marketing?

Well, it's really interesting because, and this is a relevant lead in, right when people opt into an email list, a lot of times on the button that you click to actually opt into the list, the button says sign up or get updates or join us. And for me, that activates the five year old in every person that said to their mother, you're not the boss of me, right? It's like marketing is a lot of it is telling people what to do. Like that the button copy is saying sign up. Well, instead of putting a velvet rope around that offer and having that person say, I'd love to join or please let me in or something. So when that voice is in the voice of the visitor to the website, it's more likely that they're going to click because you're giving them their voice instead of ordering them around and unearthing the psychology of resistance as a child. Okay, so the answer to your question from me is that people resist marketing or think it's bad or any of that stuff, because as much as they want, they may want the product and find appeal and even benefit or experience in what it is that's being presented to them. It's the internal battle of, do they allow you to be right? Do they allow you to win and them succumb or surrender to actually order? There's always that psychological battle, no matter how much they want it.

That's a great response.

No matter how much they want it. So, you know, that's the internal battle or, you know, sort of obstacle that you're always facing. No matter how much somebody loves what you have to say, yes, they need to allow you to be right.

Can you give us a couple of examples of that? Like, so one where we're not letting them be right and one where they are.

Well, I think. I mean, I think from. Thanks, Dina. You know, I think it's. I think it's universal. I don't know if I can think of a particular example. But, you know, the key to what seems to be working more and more, and you can see it because a lot in personal brands, a lot of personal brands write their own copy. And, you know, maybe they shouldn't do that. And I always tell my clients, like, hey, you should be envisioning the future of the company, not writing copy. But the fact of the matter is sometimes they are their own best copywriter, and that's because they're speaking in their voice. Their purpose as a human being is coming through. Their compassion for the audience and the individual people that they're serving is coming through. And there's also a lot of content in the marketing. So whether someone buys or not, they get a lot of useful stuff and things they can do and use and apply to make their life better. So marketing is the good marketing in the last 10 or 20 years in health and money and lots of other subjects, has had content in it so that everybody can benefit whether they buy or not. The best marketing in recent times has become more compassionate, more loving, and has actually been the kind of marketing that creates relationships, not transactions. Any company, no matter what they sell, has to be creating relationships, not Transactions. So that by definition a relationship is something that persists if it's good. Right. If it's good. Right. A transaction is a one time shot that may recur, may not. And that's why the other point is that other companies that are not necessarily media companies or companies that generate content, meaning articles or blog posts, every company now is now a content company or needs to be to generate relationships.

So what are some companies that most people would know that you think just do some really great marketing? Are there any examples of marketing from big companies which we don't always see a lot of great marketing, but they're very big and they've grown a lot. And some of these companies are huge. So people that are small business owners model them and sometimes they just crash and burn because for reasons beyond their comprehension why something is working, they try to copy what they think it is, but it's something else. But then there's other big companies that do some pretty damn effective stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Picasso said, learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. And so, you know, I think knowing the basics is very important. I mean, if you don't know what it is about a wing that helps a plane stay in the air and you want to innovate a new wing, you have no chance to have it work because you don't know how a normal wing works. So to know, you know, I think knowing how marketing works in terms of best practices or what's been proven to work is extremely important because if you want to depart from that, you have to be able to measure your risk or to what extent am I departing from what actually works.

Yeah, that's an interesting point because you take Boy who Wrote. I'm trying to think of the title of that book. It'll come to me and then I'll bring it up. But there's books that are out there that are talking about don't copy what anyone else is doing, be totally innovative. And you give that to someone that doesn't even know how to take a model of something that does work in a proven recipe and they're trying to reinvent a new recipe because they think that's where the breakthrough is. Most of those people just flat out don't succeed because they just don't know the fundamentals you're talking about. For the listeners, how do they go about doing that? Then maybe we'll come back to brands. I do want to talk to you about brands and different companies.

I think it depends on how your Business is positioned. So if you as a personality are the face of your company, let's say positioning the way Martha Stewart or Oprah, Tony Robbins, whoever you are, you are the face of your company, then the best place to look is for people who are personal brands or personalities positioning their business, who do it in a great way. Examples of that that are maybe not household names, but that we know and that we know are extremely effective are people like Marie Forleo, Chris Carr, Ramit Sethin, Lewis Howes. Those are some examples that come to mind in terms of personal brands, in terms of companies that are just doing really great customer centric, loving, compassionate, great customer service, great product. Even just getting emails or shipping confirmations from a company like Zappos and just seeing how they do it and how they make you love them so freaking much. You know, I mean, Zappos, a multi billion dollar company. But there are things that are done there, I mean, now in web design and in the technology that we have, it's not hard necessarily to do some of the things and to put some of the imagery and to have some of the capabilities that the biggest and the best have.

It's definitely a more level playing field that everybody can do all of these things. I wanted you to say something about, we were talking at lunch about the difference between. You were talking about personal brands. But then there's another level too that's parallel to that.

Well, I think, you know, like we said, there's personal brands in which you as a man or woman are the face of the business. And so you're that. I call that positioning the business with you. Then there's another way to look at your presence or your public presence in the outward face of the business, or what web visitors or the public sees, which is humanizing your company. So if the company doesn't bear your name and you're the ABC health company, or the ABC flower company, or the ABC whatever company, that company is not positioned as a personal brand. But you as the founder or the visionary can have a little bit of a peripheral or somewhat offstage presence where you're warming up that situation. You may have a blog, the emails may come from you, first name, last name, slash the name of the company that will increase your open rate, guaranteed so that there is a person associated with that business, but not necessarily the name of the business, but that it warms up the situation. It creates some warmth and some dimension and some depth and ultimately again, helps to get past transactions into relationships. People love having relationships with people more than faceless businesses. And that's just human nature. We are creatures that let's socialize and connect with other human beings. So any business, just like I said, any business, regardless of what you sell, should have content to make a vet to build relationships. And any business, regardless of content or subject, the founder or the CEO can have some visibility. It does not impede or compromise the name of the business. Ultimately, it does not compromise the ability to sell that business. Companies that are personal brands are much harder to sell. If anybody is building a sustainable business where you're controlling your own destiny, you're doing paid traffic, you're not dependent on other people sending for you in the JV world and you want to sell your business. Being a personal brand makes it devilishly hard to actually accomplish that. So there's a lot of implications both in marketing every day, warming up the business, creating relationships, and in ultimately exiting if that's what somebody wants to do.

Well, I've seen many people, I recently had a dear friend pass away who was just a giant in his field. But now his work, because of the nature of just being all about him is it's probably never going to have anywhere, not even a fraction of the impact when he was alive because it was built like that. So for our listeners, you know my take on brands, you've heard me rant about different things. What are the smart ways to think about brand and what are the dumb ways?

Well, Brandon, look, no one, very few people that are listening to us right now could ever pay the money that it takes to have brand awareness. Like for me, the ultimate brand awareness is that millions of people know you even if they've never bought from you, they're just aware of you. And you can't buy that for less than billions of dollars. And it makes, I mean it's just irrational, makes no sense. And no one should ever think they could get to that point. Unless you're viral or you're on the, I mean in rare exception can you ever, you just can't create that. But the effective way to look at branding is, you know, for any size business, what do people expect from me and what is the experience that they can rely upon time after time after time? You know, what is repeatable about this business and how our products look or taste or smell or work or you know, deliver an experience that people can repeat, that people can expect over time? What is our service like? What is our customer care like? What is our website like? And so there's an experience around the business that people associate with emotionally Right. Not just, oh, I like this product or it delivered on time, but an emotional response to that business, which has a lot of moving parts. It could be what your box looks like or the ribbons that you put on your. You know, it could be anything. It could be anything. So, you know, I think. And the other, the other thing to acknowledge is that it's a huge mistake for anyone in your business, most especially you as the visionary or entrepreneur or founder, to think you're more well known than you are. Companies make this mistake all the time. And the fact is, even big brands and big publishers and big personalities need to reacquaint themselves, even sometimes with their own customers, to remind their communities about the sources of their credibility, the sources of their integrity, the sources and the details of their track record. So assuming you are better known than you are ultimately leads to mistakes in product development, mistakes in marketing, and it leads to assumptions in the ability to write copy in a particular way. It just leads to trouble.

So what are the fundamentals to go back to the thing of learning the basics. What are the things that people really need to say not only learn, but have a level of competency all the way up to mastery in their area if they really want to be one of the top.

In marketing in their.

Category, in their industry or not per se? You know, let's just say someone wanted to be as brilliant as Dean, Dean Jackson here.

Well, I was going to ask. They'll take that in a parallel direction. But in all the experience that you've had, you have a couple of magic tricks that you could. Like if I go in to somebody's business, the, the nine word email is like a magic trick that I can go into somebody's business and if they've got a list of people that have inquired but not yet converted, we can send an email to them that says, hey, Michael, are you still interested? Are you still looking for a house in Winterhaven? Have you got some kind of magic trick that.

Well, yeah, I love the question I mentioned before. Make the copy and the opt in button. Their voice, not yours.

And you've tested that to say that please let me in or I'd love.

To join is better than that.

I'm in. Let's do it.

I'm in, I'm in.

Or let's do it like two or three simple words. The other thing, and this is a little more of like a mantra than a specific. I mean, this could be executed so many ways, but the point is we work so hard to have people understand what it is we as businesses do and offer and why it's the best and why they should have it. So we work hard to have people understand us. How hard do we work to have them feel understood by us? And those things are hugely, hugely different. You know, Mandela said, when you speak to. When you speak to a man in your language, you speak to his brain. When you speak in his language, you speak to his heart. Words to that effect. So if someone has a relationship with you as a business, that resides in their heart, a transaction resides in their brain. A relationship resides in their heart. And so if you're dealing with them, you want to speak the language that they speak in their experience or the way they would articulate the challenge that they have with respect to what it is you're promising or offering. And the other thing that's very close to that is don't be easily understood. Be impossible to misunderstand. And that also is a huge gap, because anytime you use words where you're like, oh, most people will get that. Well, no, I mean, Visine Eyedrops gets the red out. 100 out of 100 people will understand those words and interpret them in the very same way. So understanding and interpreting, also two different things. Will everyone understand it, and will the interpretation be uniform? 100 out of 100. And now you're communicating effectively.

You know what? I want a little slogan like that for Genius Network. Like, that's as easy as. Get the. What do you think just off the top of your head? Manufacturing. That's three words that can describe genius.

The funny thing is, like, these three and forward things. I mean, I work on this with clients all the time, and it literally takes hours.

I want it right now. No, I'm kidding. Let's see. It's kind of a funny day. We got a bunch of people in town for Genius Network. You're getting ready to go to dinner with our buddy Sean Stephenson. We're gonna go to dinner with Sally Hogshead. We've only got a couple of minutes before you need to rush out the door. So me and Dean are probably gonna just talk about this episode.

Yeah, we'll talk about it in the.

Car on the lake. So this will be a weird episode. We'll start up another recording with me and Dean, and I'll let Dean just kind of go off and ramble about what he thought about you, Michael. But to wrap up, any recommendations or final things to go deeper with what you're talking about, other than what you've mentioned, some of the books mentioned earlier, you should Read those books. And how do people, if they ever want to hire you? I mean, you don't put out a lot of information, products or anything. People really hire you to strategize, and you're not a cheap consultant, but you're hired by people that really want to reinvent the companies or dramatically increase their revenues and their business. So let's talk about.

Well, look, everybody listening. Everybody listening knows the difference between something that's valuable and something that's expensive. Your genius network is valuable regardless of what it costs because people in their participation get a multiple of what it costs to participate as a return. They pay 25,000, they get hundreds of thousands and in many cases millions.

It's reassuringly expensive.

You know, so, you know, none of us, all of us sitting here charge significant dollars, but you know, people that charge far less than we do are very expensive because they're just not as effective.

That is a great. That is true. Not only is it a great point and it sounds like a positioning thing, but it is true. It is absolutely true.

100%. You know, $5,000 with somebody who can't produce is a major expensive waste of money.

Paying 50 grand for someone they can is absolutely grand. You overspent.

Absolutely. And the other thing for me is everybody that I work with, I mean, a lot of this stuff sounds qualitative or kind of just theory, but everything I've talked about can be proven in specific analytics on websites, in email marketing, in opt in rates. So I think you guys know I only work with what I call a scoreboard. I want to be measured every step of the way so that I'm always valuable and never expensive.

I've been recommending you for years to the right type of company. If they need someone to come in to see things, understand things, dialogue through stuff, and figure things out that they cannot, will not and won't on their own. That's when a guy like you is called upon. So who are people? At what point does someone seek out and invest in things like a guy like you?

Well, usually it's an organization or personality that has meaningful enough traffic where the company tests we want to do on their website can be actually put on the site and do the split testing, which I think people are familiar with and actually evaluate. Is headline A better than headline B or is this opt in box better than this opt in box or those kinds of things. And so within a few days or a week, we can usually measure the results and go with the better version and continue to build and build, test One variable at a time and ultimately just usually double, triple the business. I mean, those are not unusual outcomes, but. Sorry, put me back.

No, no, no.

You were answering the question who's ideal? Somebody who's already got significant traffic.

Yeah, somebody has significant traffic so that we can very quickly validate that my participation is worthwhile. Now, sometimes people are starting from scratch and there isn't enough traffic to necessarily prove things. But they want to make sure that the foundation of their building enables them to build a tall, strong building because the foundation counts. Also, sometimes I come in six months or a year or two years later and I say, okay, we need to go back to the foundation. Because you can't build the way you want to build based on the foundation you've laid down here won't support it. So if somebody wants to spend that kind of money for the insurance of having a strong foundation, sometimes I'll work in those situations too. But for the most part it's a business or a personality with meaningful enough traffic where the testing and the validation of what we're doing can happen within days, if not weeks.

Right. One thing I want to point out, because a lot of times people will misconstrue this as a setup to try to pitch someone. You should hire this sort of guy and things like that. And in many cases it is because I'm very open about people that I think are awesome. If you're a right fit client, you would be well served to actually invest that money. The thing is that what a lot of people don't understand, especially if they're new in business or they're new to marketing, is you see all these people that are New York Times best selling authors. You see these people that have built these big companies. What they don't realize is that this shit didn't just happen. Rarely did they figure it out on their own. I mean, there are certain people behind the scenes and it wasn't the book.

That got them on the New York Times. That's the thing. Nobody's getting launching to notoriety from a book that they've written. They're taking the notoriety that they developed and launching to the New York Times list. It's all marketing.

I mean, it's such a marketing game. And so the thing is, if you are going to become successful, the sooner you realize that it's like Dan Sullivan says, if you got enough money to solve the problem, you don't have a problem. And if you can actually, if you've got some area of your business where you're stuck or you want to get yourself over the mountain, you can just trudge along, trudge along barefoot. Or you can say, maybe a pair of shoes would actually help. Maybe a guide will actually help. Maybe some skill in this area. Maybe rappell will actually help take some donkey. Right, exactly. And so there along the way, if there's anything that I've done, because I don't consider myself a very smart guy in a lot of areas, if there is one area I want to give myself a lot of credit, is I'm insatiably curious. And secondly, I was always willing to invest along the way in order to find people that had been there, done that. That could shorten the learning curve. And so therefore, I've seen people that I really think started off very bright, very tough, but they wouldn't invest money, they wouldn't hire people, they just wouldn't go to seminars. They wouldn't do certain stuff.

That's the difference if you look at your path, the difference between writing all the copy for your info business by yourself or hiring Dan Kennedy to write your copy. And it's an advantage to have Dan Kennedy writing the copy for your business. And there are other people, we all know them, who started their businesses at the same time that didn't launch to that same level of success because they weren't willing to invest in something that's going to get them there faster.

Yeah, exactly. And so here we are, we're at the Phoenician Hotel in Arizona, right? And we just had lunch with Lisa Sasevich.

Okay.

She's a new Genius Network member. And when me and Dean were interviewing her, she said this statement, like, I'm doing my best to be the client I want to attract. And then she talked about other stuff, and I came back and I said, I really love that line.

And.

Right. She actually joined Genius Network live on a podcast recording. Because I brought that up. She goes, you know what I've been thinking about it for? I'm just going to say it here. I want to do that. And the thing is, there's people here that are listening, going, who is the client you want to attract? You want to attract the very best people. And if you want, they're going to give you money. Are you doing the same thing? Are you actually hiring experts? Are you learning from the very best? The best advice I can give people is, look, if you don't have the money, you don't have the money. So apply what it is you learn. Make the money. But as soon as you've got anything that is going to give you, you added advantages, unfair advantages. An edge, a skill set, a capability. Go and get it. And the quicker that you can do that, the better. How do people track you down if they want to find out if you're a guy that can help catapult a business?

I'll answer that. But I'll also say, third year Genius network member, proud of it. Return on investment every single year. Thank you. I just recently hired Clay E. Bear, who's a brilliant consultant in New York in crowdfunding and other of web entrepreneurial ventures, to support me in a venture that I'm working on. So I'm out there seeking out the best people that can show me my blind spots and take me by the hand and down what might be a black cave to me. And they can kind of shine the light and illuminate the whole situation. So I love it. And value is the key. I'd be honored to answer questions or whatever. My website has an email opt in and a contact form MichaelFishman Consulting, or if you prefer Twitter, ichaelfelfishman.

Cool. Any famous last words before we're all.

Off to this is fun.

It's great.

I loved it.

There's a different energy in the hotel room episodes we do, you know, well.

You know, a hotel room and we're sitting there with a little recorder.

I love it. It's nice to be able to look at people, you know, it is a different energy. Plus, we've had this the day we've been hanging out together, so it kind.

Of builds the other thing. This is a different program than you interviewed me for eight, nine years ago. But what a treat to come back to your program. So thank you guys both.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You're a super smart guy. So I hope everyone listening really got a lot of value out of it. Me and Dean will continue with some very special editing. We're going to continue on and we're just as if we didn't even leave.

Through the magic of the pause button.

Yeah, through the magic of the pause button. And please put your comments on what you got out of listening to Michael. What sort of insights, what perspectives, and share this with anyone that you think could gain value from it, which are most entrepreneurs and business owners. And you put your comments@ilovemarketing.com and you can subscribe on itunes or wherever this podcast is aired. So thank you again, Michael, and we'll do another one in the future because you're awesome. Awesome.

Yeah.

Thanks, Mike.

Thank you, guys.

And we're back.

Yeah, we're back.

See how easy that was?

Well, we're back. We're in a noisy car now.

That's okay.

It's gonna. So anyway, we're driving in a vehicle. I'm driving right now. We're gonna hear the. We're heading over to convention center to pick up Sally Hogshead. She just gave a presentation earlier today to over 3,000 people at an InfusionCon conference, which is what Infusionsoft does. And I'm. I'm a Fusion Soft second customer, which is kind of funny. And you can watch that episode with Clayton Mask and you know, Scott are the founders. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. So we're going to talk about Michael Fishman.

Yeah. Which was. What a great episode that was. I mean, it was a great conversation. And we've been hanging out with them for a few hours. Yeah. Through the day. So that sets the context for it. And, you know, I found really useful this distinction that he made between a personality brand and humanizing a brand. That. That was, I think, a very key distinction. And when he used, we talked at lunch, some of the examples that he used, you know, like you're using Tony Robbins as a personal brand and Oprah and Martha Stewart, their personal brands. And then used examples like Steve Jobs humanizing the Apple brand and Dave Thomas from Wendy's, you know, humanizing. And Lee Iacocca with Chrysler. And so that was a pretty interesting distinction because it changes the way and the tone of how you communicate with people. I just think, I think Michael is really brilliant and thoughtful at thinking through the other person's perspective, their view, you know, really thinking it through from experiencing it from. From their perspective.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And you know, plus he's such a student of psychology. I mean, yeah, he really studies behavior and he is very analytical and he's kind of a perfectionist in that area too. And you can tell by the way he talks and the way he thinks about it. And I think one of the lessons there is how seriously do you take little things that could make a big difference? You know, the same little hinges swing big doors. I mean, you know, his comments about the opt in button and putting it in their voice versus your own voice or telling them what to do. I've never heard it quite described that way, although I've, you know, I've actually sat through wisdom.

It's 20 years of concentrated wisdom on that. The behavioral elements of online marketing.

Right.

The psychology of that. Of not just online, but offline, any kind of marketing. And yeah, it really is that kind of stuff. You know, he's the epitome of, of the guy we talked about last episode that you and I did in your, in your conference room in the library that the, you know, field reports versus book reports is. There's a guy who is 20 years full of field report knowledge right in the field, real results, knowing definitively that if you put these words I'm in or let's go or something that's in their voice, that that makes a difference compared to sign up or you instructing somebody. I want to, you know, I see that definitely as a, you know, that was some wisdom that he dropped on us there. Well, it really was. Because, you know, it's something you. For me, a lot of the times I always use things like what it is Download now, Instant Access, which are things that are the benefit of what's actually going to happen when you push that button. That's been my go to thing, which is different than sign up or you know, subscribe now or any of those kind of directive things. I've always used benefit oriented copy. But he's saying, using their affirmative language, copy. It's almost like it's coming, like it's their idea.

Yes, that's an interesting talk about maybe what he talks about as applied to Gene Schwartz in Breakthrough Advertising. Because a lot of people have not read that book. But, you know, he mentioned it a couple of times.

You know what, it's one of those books that, it's just so funny. I actually have it constantly, like I have more than one copy of it and I have it constantly, you know, out to reference and it's underlined and noted and excuse me, using all of the things that I work on. I'm using those as, as notes. But that book is one of those wisdom books that is like transformationally full of wisdom and in a way that you can go back to the well and you know, it's one of those kind of like a tool for thinking about your thinking in a lot of way. I haven't thought about that before, but this is the first time I'm saying it like that, that you can bring the challenge, the copy project, the product or service that you're working on, right. Then you can bring that with the forefront on your mind, bring that thought to the book and you experience the book in a different way as how it applies to that particular thing that you're doing. I look at it that it's never the same book twice because you've had different experiences and different results. Every time you open it up. Yeah, every time you come to it.

And then our buddy Brian Kurtz, he's also dear friends with Michael Fishman. He actually owns the rights now, too. I told you guys would hear.

We're turning left.

Not yet.

No.

It says in half a mile, four miles.

So keep going. Keep. Keep hitting them with.

Well, the funny thing was I'm driving. Yeah, we're in the same. So we're in that world just to talk about how, like, we're hanging out here with people at the highest level of the game. The highest level. Right. And you're talking about Brian Kurtz, owns the rights to this. He's at the. The top level of the game. Michael Fishman, for 20 years. Paris Lampropolis came, hung out with me on Sunday, and we were talking about Breakthrough Advertising. We were talking about Eugene Schwartz, because we were having a conversation about. He came to my house, I was showing him the things I had done with the Tidying book. And then we were talking about the next step in the process for me is books and how I'm going to, you know, winnow down my book collection. And we both agreed that breakthrough advertising has to be in the books that bring me joy.

Right.

You know, because I know how much money that book has made me. You know, I get particularly joyful when I think about a book that sparks the thought of an idea that I had while reading the book and executed it and made a lot of money. I get joyful about that. So I like to keep those books around. You know.

The whole thing is, I wish there was a way to download that sort of knowledge into someone's head and say, oh, you don't have to read this book, but at the end of the day, you kind of do. And, you know, there is really no way to impart that in the time if you would take. And Breakthrough Advertising is not as an easy book to get through. It's a deep book, but it's a highly reflective book. And if you get that into your.

Well, I think what I was saying earlier is that it is a more impactful book if you're coming at it with an experience and with a particular project in mind.

Right.

That it creates that. Because now you've already had some experience, you've had some thoughts you can understand where you know what the mass desire that you're just trying to focus on your product or service and that. That I think if you could sum up, like, if you were to say how the book about tidying is really to surround yourself with Things that bring you joy.

Yeah. Maria Condor Marie.

Yeah, the book we talked about last episode and that breakthrough advertising. One of the biggest impactful ideas from that book for me was this idea that you can't manufacture mass desire. You can only identify it which mass desire your product is going to most be benefited by and direct that mass desire on your product or your service. That's been. That's where, you know, the early idea of, you know, understanding the distinction between compelling and convincing, that compelling is once you tap into the mass desire. And it's kind of a cool thing to understand what mass desire is the most beneficial to what you're trying to accomplish. And knowing that when you tap into that, it's like getting in the jet stream. It's like, it's that, you know, it's immediately there's already movement, that people are already moving in that direction of the things that they want. And we had a great experience of that this morning because what a day we've had, actually, when you think, if you're just to like, break down the things that we've done today alone for.

People, why don't we describe as a day in our life.

Why don't you describe.

You stayed over my place last night?

Yeah. So we wake up and we left the house about 7 o' clock and we went and had some. Well, first of all, we were going to the convention center, so we got to the Icon infusionsoft conference.

Yeah. We only went there because I'm doing Genius Network this week, so we didn't have time to go to the whole conference, but we saw.

So we were there to see. Sally Hog said. Yeah. And so the cool thing is, you know, we, as soon as we get in the elevator where we see these guys coming, we're holding the elevator, and they're guys who, you know, have listened to almost every I Love Marketing podcast. And so we get, you know, have a nice conversation with those guys. We take some pictures and we go. And, you know, it was everybody, every ten paces, we were running into people who listen to the podcast, which is really kind of.

And then we make fun of our friends who are like, you know, well known, quote, unquote, gurus, but they actually aren't approachable, I think. Like, we are. I mean, we don't, you know, we try to go. We don't like, barricade ourselves. We go out and try to talk to people when we can and be nice and all that. But it was fun to do a little bantering on that. So we show up and so we did that.

So. But here was the lesson from watching Sally today. She was brilliant. And, you know, the. The overriding thing that we learned from there is she did a brilliantly simple thing that just amplified the fact that people have an insatiable appetite for their self interest.

Yeah. Because her new book is how the World Sees You.

How the World Sees you. And the way that she did it, the way that she presented everything and offered her gift to people, was very. Just completely focused on. Got your attention focused on you, which is the thing that everybody is most interested in. So that was just a nice amplification of that. Then we left there and we went. We popped by Dean Graziosi's office, and we had, you know, just hung out there for a little bit with Dean, and Brendan Burchard was there, Jeff Hayes was there, Ethan Willis, and all friends.

Because of Genius Network, of course.

And. Yeah, all with the. With us. With each other, too.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That whole. It's the thread that really.

No. Genius Network ties everything.

It really does. Yeah.

Then what did we do?

Then we hightailed it over to pick up Michael. Yeah, we picked up Michael. Michael Fishman.

Then we went and had a great lunch.

We had a great lunch at this great restaurant called the Henry, which is just a perfect, really great environment.

My girlfriend joined us because I needed to throw that in.

Yeah. And then we went over and met with Lisa Sasevich for another sort of.

After you visited my house.

Oh, yeah, we went up to your house. That's right. And that was great. And that was where Michael and I, while you were on the phone with John Butcher, Michael and I had a great conversation about this idea of. And we were looking over the valley, and I said to Michael, you know what every one of those people are doing right now? And he laughed. And I said, they're thinking about themselves. They're consumed by it. And it's absolutely true. And nothing better than the talk that Sally gave today really just amplified that. Everybody was fascinated by it because it's about themselves. Then we went up to Michael's room and we recorded the first half of this episode. And then we ran all over the. The property, had people taking us around on golf carts, trying to get from one side of the resort to the other. And here we are recording the second half of this. Of a great podcast, and we're on our way to pick up Sally Hogshead to go and have dinner, and then we're gonna have a great 2 days at 25k at your office. Tomorrow and Friday and there you go.

And that's. That's it. So that's how we do things.

In the words of the great American poet Kanye west, my life is dope and I do dope shit.

And by the way, I don't believe he's great, but there you go.

So that's awesome.

And you know, give us. I think that's it. Do you have anything else you want to add?

I think there's just. There's a lot of stuff.

Stuff there.

I think that the directive would be read the read breakthrough advertising. If you haven't already done that, certainly there's something great there. You should actually do an episode talking about breakthrough advertising.

Yeah, we could. We'll do it with Brian Kurtz at some point in time. Maybe invite Michael Fishman back onto it. And so what I want to do is I to want to thank Michael again for great episode. Very bright guy. And he gave his website out earlier. I think it's Michael Fisherman Consulting. And check it out and give us your comments on ilovemarketing.com and again, you can subscribe to our episodes on itunes. So you get one of these delivered every time we do a new one. And we will talk to you next time. Thanks for listening and share this with your friends and loved ones.

Bye.